Ghost Valley (4)
"You're really seeing other people in there?"
"Not exactly. Think of it more like this moment being copied and shown to them directly."
"...That's incredible. Is it a sorcery from the world the Stranger came from?"
Kang Hwi watched the chat scroll by with an expression of pure wonder.
"Time to focus up."
"Oh—right."
The moment I shut off Chat Share Mode, the chat window vanished from before Kang Hwi's eyes. He blinked as if waking from a dream.
"Truly wondrous..."
"It is, isn't it."
To have built such a polished system in so little time. The title of Magic King was no empty boast.
I should look after Gi-hyun properly later on.
Last I'd seen, the man seemed to have been camped in his research lab for days without once going home. Well, thanks to that, no one in Cheonseong's tech development team was calling him a nepotism hire anymore.
Even the haughty Lee Si-hyun had grudgingly admitted that recruiting Gong Gi-hyun was "the one thing my brother has done that was actually worth something."
"Now, what should I have him build next..."
"I beg your pardon? What did you say?"
"Nothing, nothing. More importantly, get ready."
The interior of the cave was damp and dark. At the edge of my Five Senses Amplification's reach, a black shape flickered into view.
"It's coming."
The instant the words left my mouth, a Dark Ghost shrouded head to toe in shadow lunged forward, baring its fangs.
"Not today."
The cave ran in a straight line, which meant there wasn't room for any wide-swinging attacks—but the spear had techniques made for exactly these cramped quarters.
Chal-lyeon (Stabbing Chain)
Countless thrusts, strung together—taking the principle of the stab and chaining it into an unbroken repetition.
Pwabubububeong!
In a heartbeat, the Dark Ghost's body was shredded into rags.
This is exactly what skills are for.
The moment you acquire a skill, you gain a perfect understanding of the technique it embodies. From there, you can adapt and bend it to suit the situation—or your own taste. Sometimes the process even births an entirely new skill.
"Dark Ghosts rely on speed and ambush. Put another way, that's all they've got. As you can see, their defenses are pathetic."
"Let's keep moving, then."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Kang Hwi swallowed hard and fell in behind me, and I pressed on with the clear without pause—mostly working off the intel Baek Seo-ha had given me before my regression.
"A fork in the road. We go right here."
"This looks like a dead end, but there's actually a gap over this way."
"This place... we'll just break through it."
Where combat was needed, I simply overwhelmed them with raw skill. A dungeon inside a B-rank gate carried real difficulty, but—
This much, I can cover with the experience I built up before regressing.
And thanks to my training at the Sword Sect, I'd just grown considerably stronger. A small stroke of luck was layered on top of that, too.
Rank: B
The divine power option I'd sought out for the Graveyard of Knights was doing its job here as well.
Every ghost and water-ghost haunting this cave counted as an undead-type monster, after all.
"Whoaa...!"
Kang Hwi stared at my movements, transfixed.
About an hour had passed, I figured.
"We should be nearly at the end by now... oh. Found it."
We had reached the end of the cave—a vast cavern opening at the road's final stretch. It looked exactly like the kind of place where a reclusive master in a martial arts novel might stash his collection of rare elixirs and secret manuals.
"Wh-what is all this...!"
But look closer, and the place was crammed with grotesqueries. Several withered, twisted corpses stood upright like specimens, while the traces of countless rituals lay scattered in chaotic disarray.
"I never imagined a space like this existed so close to the village."
Kang Hwi gaped as he circled the carcass of some unidentifiable animal hanging from the wall.
"No reason you would have. It probably hasn't been exposed for long."
A barrier formation must have been laid over this cave as well—one far older than the one protecting the village. Then, for some reason, it could no longer be sustained, and the place had simply surfaced.
And there is exactly one being in this gate's world capable of installing a formation.
"Huh?"
"You still haven't figured it out?"
I picked up a few of the books lying on the floor and examined them. Rough brushstrokes had scrawled the titles across their covers.
[Treatise on Revival]
[Treatise on Spell Erasure]
[Rite of Shedding Possession]
Attempts to come back to life, to erase the rituals, to break free from possession. The traces of desperate struggle were everywhere.
"The master of this place was an immortal sage."
And not just any sage.
"One who already became a hungry ghost."
I raised my head. Someone was walking out of the darkness—violet-skinned, tendons and veins bulging along its neck. It exuded an aura unmistakably different from the ordinary water-ghosts.
An Epic Monster.
A mid-boss-class entity that appeared only in specific gates—like the Necromancer Wengrum had been.
According to what Baek Seo-ha had told me...
"The Medicine Immortal, Dang Ak."
"The Medicine Immortal?! You're telling me that wraith is the Medicine Immortal?!"
"You can look right at him and not see it?"
Merely standing in his presence made my skin crawl. This was killing intent of an entirely different order from the jiangshi born when a mere water-ritualist died—one who had achieved mastery and reached the summit of his craft as an immortal sage.
If I'd had zero intel on him, this might have gotten a little dicey.
Not that I would lose.
"Fall back."
I signaled to Kang Hwi and raised my spear.
"Fighting while keeping an eye on you would be a real pain."
"Ah—! Yes, sir!"
Obedient as a puppy. Well, he knew as well as I did that against the water-ghost before us, he wouldn't last a heartbeat.
"Thank you for waiting for me."
"Uh... uhh..."
The unfocused, bloodshot pupils gradually found their target. What they fixed upon was me.
I need to widen my perception further—
The moment the thought formed, light flashed.
"...!"
I jerked my head aside on pure instinct, and a violent gust of wind sliced past my ear.
Just as the chat said—at the end of the gust's trajectory, a long, needle-sharp dagger stood buried in the rock.
"Grrhh..."
When the first throw missed, the creature drew its hand back into its billowing sleeve. And out it came—
Shrrrring!
Dozens upon dozens of daggers.
Their tips were blackened—poisoned, perhaps. Left sitting for ages, most toxins lose their potency, but—
Poison from the Medicine Immortal himself, after all.
Getting hit was not on the menu.
"Grrh... Ah! Kraaaagh!"
Dang Ak, now flying into a full-fledged frenzy, set both hands moving in a blur. Razor-sharp daggers came streaking in from every direction, tracing lethal arcs.
Forget dodging them all.
I tightened my grip on the spear. Dodge what I could dodge. Deflect what I could deflect. Cut down what could be cut down.
"Hsssh—!"
Air flooded my lungs. I wedged forward through the gaps between the blades and swung my spearhead in wild, furious arcs.
Kang! KAANG!
For thrown weapons, they carried startling force. Sparks flew every time steel met steel.
Here it comes again!
Ten times more daggers than before.
"Watch out! That's the Ten Thousand Bee Needle Daggers!"
Kang Hwi's warning cracked through the air behind me.
"They're coming head-on!"
Dang Ak stepped back, then hurled a mass of qi-laden daggers straight at me.
Vuuuuuung!
True to the name Ten Thousand Bee Needle Daggers, the blades parting the air hummed like the beat of a bee's wings—a menacing symphony produced by ten thousand insects at once.
Feels like standing in front of a swarm.
Sharp, and venom that corrodes you on contact. A poisoned dagger shares a bee's every trait.
No way I can dodge and deflect all of that.
Which meant, counterintuitively—meeting it head-on was the better play.
Hissssss!
Mana coalesced along my spear. The spear art unfolded.
Cheonha-ji Wolgwang-umwoo (Moonlight Rain Dance Drenching the World)
Dozens of branching streams of mana spread out like sheets of falling rain.
In raw power, this art still fell far short of mine. So then—
Adjust the flow!
I torqued the spear, redirecting the course of the force. The rain of mana swung all at once toward the right, brushing the flanks of the oncoming daggers, tapping each one lightly as it passed.
Then, little by little, the daggers began to turn.
Tuduk.
Tududuk!
Curving to the right. Within moments the whole wave of steel bent like the flow of a tide, every dagger swinging its head rightward before burying itself in the wall with a rustling hiss.
"...Ahem."
Ugh, damn it. Moonlight Rain Dance really does bleed mana like a sieve. One cast and every muscle in my body ached with a deep, dull soreness.
But the opening is now and only now.
Right after unleashing a big technique, his guard is laid wide open. I had to close this out decisively.
PAH!
I kicked off the ground and closed the distance to Dang Ak in a single burst.
"Krak!"
The unique stench of a corpse stung my nose. Even after death, even as a hungry ghost, he was this much trouble—
How strong must he have been in life?
Just as I bore down on his skull with reverence I couldn't quite suppress—
"N-not yet!"
Kang Hwi's cry caught me from behind.
"There are still daggers left!"
Still daggers left? Even so, at this range there'd be no way to throw them—
"His mouth! Watch his MOUTH!"
His mouth?
...No way.
"Grulk! KRAK!"
For an instant, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Something was climbing up Dang Ak's throat from deep within his belly.
The Belly Blade.
A technique where a blade is kept hidden inside the body, then launched at an unguarded moment to end an opponent's life. I'd seen a humanoid monster in another gate use it—that was the only reason I recognized it. Never would I have imagined a water-ghost pulling it off.
I caught the glint of the dagger's edge flashing at the back of his throat.
Too late to dodge.
I fixed my gaze. If this Belly Blade differed from the other daggers in any way—
Yes. That's it.
Fine. If that's how it is—
"All or nothing!"
I scraped together every last scrap of strength and poured it not into defense, but offense—a technique to punch through that massive, armored-looking skull.
Nameless Spear Art
Nanpung (Chaotic Wind)
A furious gust of blade-wind howled forth. In near-perfect unison, Dang Ak spat out the dagger.
PWOOOK!
KWADEUK!
The needle-sharp blade sank into my shoulder—and a heartbeat later, my dark-crimson spear qi drove straight into Dang Ak's brow, blasting it apart and splattering his brains across the floor.
You have slain the Epic Monster, "Medicine Immortal Dang Ak."
The system message rose, clean and clear.
Good thing I saved the strength for one last technique.
Fortunately, I'd been able to finish it in a single blow. Even as an incomplete martial art, it was a move that had swallowed the entire Seventh Form of the Azure Dragon whole—sheer destructive force, if nothing else.
"Stranger!"
Kang Hwi came sprinting over in a panic.
"Are you all right?! That dagger at the end—it definitely hit your shoulder...!"
"Don't worry."
Deliberately, showily, I pulled the dagger free of my shoulder.
"...It barely went in at all?"
"It's a spitting technique, so it loses quite a bit of force. There was hardly any qi behind it either."
Still, it was by no means weak. A hunter built around mana stats would have lost the whole arm, and even one who'd pumped Strength would have needed to say goodbye to muscle and tendon.
That's the Iron Bones trait for you.
Its constant boost to my physical defenses was the only reason I could gamble so recklessly.
And I don't have the Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity trait yet.
A Belly Blade has to be kept inside the body—which meant, I judged, it couldn't very well be poisoned. Thankfully, the call proved dead on.
The chat's reaction wasn't bad either. I'd fought flashily enough—there'd be plenty to watch.
But that's not what matters right now.
I fought hard and I won.
Which meant it was time to claim the golden reward—the rare treasures left behind, the legacy of the Medicine Immortal himself.
Before regressing, everyone split this loot up.
This life, I'm monopolizing all of it.
"Eeheehee!"
"...You're drooling, Stranger."