Spear vs. Fist (2)
It had only been a short while, but I'd done my own homework — research on the opposing team, analysis, a plan of attack.
One of the advantages a brand-new guild has is the sheer asymmetry of information.
Silla was famous enough that their data was exposed all over the place, while information about our side was so thin you could call it nonexistent.
If I take Kim Jin, then...
The next most annoying presence was Jeon So-young.
She'd made a name for herself as an assassin-class hunter, and her skill was nothing to sneeze at. In particular, her ability to create variables in one-on-one combat was sharp enough that even upper-tier hunters had a hard time dealing with it.
Honestly, she was my biggest headache.
And as it happened, the event had been set as crystal defense.
Jeon So-young's Manashi was the eye that saw mana. It was such an excellent detection skill that I assumed she wouldn't have bothered learning any other, and that prediction turned out to be dead on.
"Well, look at that — no urgency in the fight at all."
By now, Jeon So-young was probably drowning in confusion over the hundreds of 'mana coordinates' that had multiplied across the field. If it got bad enough, she might abandon Manashi altogether and go running around on foot searching for them herself.
And in the meantime, I'll be the one smashing your crystals first.
I circulated mana and awakened every nerve in my body. Sure, I was short on detection skills too — but for this, I didn't think I'd need one.
I can feel it.
A killing intent so fierce it pricked at my skin. An energy that, far from concealing itself, was announcing its presence to the world at full volume.
"That's the direction."
I sprinted toward where the fighting spirit pulled me. What came into view before long was...
"...So you came."
Kim Jin, arms crossed, standing with his back to a red crystal.
Figures.
I'd had a vague sense of it for a while now — this guy wasn't fighting for Silla Guild's sake, and he felt no particular belonging to it. To him, Silla Guild was nothing but a nameplate for self-validation. He saw this guild war as nothing more than a stage to fight me on; he didn't consider it a battle he had to win.
Which was exactly why he was pulling a stunt this stupid.
"Made you easy to find, by the way. That murderous aura of yours was leaking out all over the place."
"Is there a reason to hide?"
Kim Jin loosened his fists and let his icy gaze slide over me. "Every second of every hour, my hands itch to smash you into pieces."
"What a coincidence. Same here."
To win this match, all I had to do was destroy the crystal behind him. Simple enough in principle.
But it won't be that easy.
The fool had deliberately broadcast his position for the sake of fighting me — but I was a fool of considerable caliber myself.
"Come on, then. I'll let you have the first move."
"...Insolent wretch!"
Black energy surged up around Kim Jin's two fists.
Hyunmu Ink Fist
Hard as ink, heavy as a mountain. Two fists steeped in the sect's deepest mysteries carved their arcs toward me.
Then I'll have to match him, won't I.
Hyunmu Ink Spear
Black ink energy erupted from the tip of my spear. Two different strokes collided in midair, spreading a bone-deep shockwave through the arena.
"...?!"
Watching Kim Jin's eyes blow wide with shock, I let an exaggerated grin spread across my face.
"I'd love a lesson, sunbaenim."
Today, I would complete the Ink Spear.
"What the hell is this stadium so complicated for?"
A hulking man grumbled his way through the spectator concourse. In his hand, a paper ticket marked VIP SEAT had been crumpled into a fist-shaped wad.
"Just where in blazes is this so-called VIP section?!"
The Fist King stomped his feet and fumed. Normally he wouldn't have spared a guild war so much as a passing glance — but then word had reached him that two of his disciples would be facing off in a duel.
So he'd idly let his interest show around his niece, and she'd said:
'Uncle, you sitting in the general seating would be a disaster... I'll get you a VIP seat, so watch from there.' — and handed him some strange piece of paper. She'd even walked him through exactly how to get there and what to do step by step.
"GRAAAAGH!"
But a man's-man among men's-men had absolutely no business remembering things like that.
Just as he was starting to wonder if he'd end up leaving without so much as seeing his disciples' faces, someone spoke to him.
"You seem lost. The VIP section is three floors up."
"Hmhm?"
When the Fist King turned, a man with a familiar face stood there.
"Well, if it isn't the Sword Emperor!"
The Sword Emperor, Seong Yong-ho, approached with a benevolent smile. "It's been a while, Fist King. Still as boisterous as ever."
"KHAHAHAT! And you've gotten plenty old yourself. Retirement really does turn a man into a crotchety old geezer, doesn't it."
"...Your tongue has lost none of its edge, I see."
They say a man can change overnight — but in the Fist King's case, that boundless personality of his could stand to change a little and it would be no great loss.
Seong Yong-ho swallowed his discomfort and spoke again. "Remarkable. I never thought I'd see you come somewhere like this in person. Don't you usually bounce between gates and the mountains?"
"I've got my own circumstances these days, you see." He cocked the corner of his mouth up and declared, "Two of my disciples are about to duel, and what kind of master would I be if I didn't watch!"
"Disciples...? Don't tell me you mean Lee Tae-hyun."
"That's the one."
A short conversation followed after that — that Lee Tae-hyun had entered the Fist Sect and received his tutelage, and that in the process, Baek Seo-ha had also stayed and trained there.
"......"
Seong Yong-ho's face twisted strangely.
"Come to think of it, that girl was your direct disciple, no?"
"...Not anymore."
"You know I detest complicated stories, so I'll keep it short. But this much I can say."
The Fist King remembered. He remembered the sight of her, swinging her sword through grueling struggle as she trained alongside Lee Tae-hyun under him. The hours she'd spent clawing her way through it — biting her lip until it bled, gripping her blade until her hands wore raw.
"It seems to me this time, you've made the wrong choice."
"The wrong choice? Me?"
For an instant, the composure Seong Yong-ho had been forcing cracked clean through.
"Well, regardless — thanks for the directions! I won't be late after all." The Fist King waved a careless hand and gradually moved away.
As Seong Yong-ho stared at his retreating back, several tendons rose along his forehead.
"Kang Hyuk-jin...!"
As always, the man made his irritation boil over. The urge to draw his sword right now and drive it into the man's back swept over him. He was hovering at the tail end of his prime, but if he started with a surprise attack, he had absolutely no confidence he'd lose.
Clank.
His fingertips rested briefly on the sword's hilt — then, with a sigh, he forced the impulse back down.
"Not yet..."
It was too early to make a move. Once Fujiwara Manabu was successfully seated as Sect Leader, putting the Fist King down and carving him into cuts of meat would take exactly one exchange.
"The contract... will be fulfilled."
So he murmured, and turned away. Malice seeped from every wrinkle of his hands and face.
KWAANG! KWAAM!
Every time the ink energies collided, the ground within arm's reach quaked and everything around it was torn apart.
"So you can wield ink energy too."
Kim Jin recovered his composure faster than expected and wound his ink energy even tighter. What had lingered only around his fists now coiled all the way up past his elbows.
"I don't know how you caught the master's eye... but if we're dueling with ink energy, you cannot beat me."
Kim Jin kicked off the ground, and in an instant his figure vanished from view. I stretched my senses wide and caught his presence directly behind me.
"Between you and me lies an ocean of difference in time!"
His fist carved a rapid line through the air.
Hyunmu Ink Fist — 5th Stroke
It hit like a boulder flying straight into my body. "Khh!" I barely twisted my spearhead into a guard, but I couldn't bleed off all of the impact.
The 5th Stroke, huh.
It belonged to the upper tier of strokes, and its power was no joke. To be able to pull that out with zero recoil — well, he was the Fist Sect's sole successor, after all.
KUUNG!
Kim Jin swung without pause, and I kept conjuring ink energy around my spear in turn.
Hyunmu Ink Spear — 1st Stroke
A single stroke. Pathetic next to the ink energy Kim Jin was unleashing — but ink energy was ink energy.
KWAKWAKWAKWANG!
I barely managed to ward off the barrage of both his fists with my spear. Every deflection sent shocks great and small rippling through my whole body. It was like standing face-to-face with a massive waterfall.
"I don't understand. Why aren't you using your other abilities?"
Mid-assault, Kim Jin suddenly asked. "You have other talents, don't you? Your spear techniques, and your flames."
The Nameless Spear Art and Flame Soul. There was also Rannachal and the Spear Dance — but I was deliberately keeping those sealed, unused.
"Because I win without them."
"Don't get cocky. In a battle fought with ink energy alone, you cannot break me."
Pride saturated every word that came out of him.
"No matter how much your skills have grown, when it comes to handling ink energy, I stand far above you."
He wasn't wrong. Going by raw numbers alone, I was only barely sustaining the 1st Stroke, while Kim Jin wielded up to the 5th with room to spare.
"I've handled and studied this power since I was a child. You've barely had a year."
"......"
"So someone like you has no business showing off."
He began pulling together an even denser ink energy. A force strong enough to swallow his shoulders whole shimmered like heat haze.
"My ink energy, Ju-ah — I've spent longer with them than you can even compare to! A length of time you couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams! So stay out of—!"
"Gonna have to decline that one."
If I listened to any more, my hand would curl up and I'd be combat-incapacitated. I swiftly cut his speech off at the knees.
"In the end, you haven't changed one bit since back then. All you know how to do is appeal to time."
Kim Jin and Seong Ju-ah were childhood friends — a special bond, built on more years shared than with anyone else.
But time was hardly the only yardstick for judging what mattered. Something didn't automatically mean more simply because you'd known it longer, and a technique honed over decades had no guarantee of staying ahead of someone who'd catch up.
Besides...
When it came to time — hadn't I piled up far, far more than Kim Jin ever had?
"Between you and me, there's a difference of one entire lifetime."
Every bit as long as the span of one person's life — spent scrambling, envious of the strong, desperate to chase them down.
"That's the last of your nonsense!"
Finished with his preparations, Kim Jin charged in a straight line.
6th Stroke
The shape of a colossal ink serpent that would plow an entire district under flickered into being. If I took that head-on, there was no doubt I'd be unable to move.
"...Whew!"
I was a little tense — but I wasn't worried. Because I believed in myself.
In the me who was eerily strong in a crisis. In the me of days past, who achieved growth at the absolute limit every time I was pushed to the brink.
The Ink Spear and the Ink Fist. In the end, both are just ways of wielding ink energy.
Spear versus fist was, at its core, nothing more than a difference in the vessel used to express inner power. The Fist King instantly drew out ink energy and grabbed it to swing it, while Kim Jin wound his ink energy around like a bandage, coiling and binding it.
In other words, the two of them handled ink energy in entirely different forms.
It was a fact I'd learned with my own body over the course of trading blows with Kim Jin.
Even wielding the same Ink Fist, each of them shapes the energy in their own way.
So then — I didn't need to chain myself to any one method either.
Freely.
All I had to do was express the ink energy the way I wanted.
"It's not that any one way is more comfortable than another... but there's one skill I used to the point of nausea before I regressed."
One I'd grown so accustomed to, I couldn't help but master it.
[Reinforcement]
My one and only skill.
With a low, grinding hiss, I raised the ink energy — and in the same breath, spread it across the entire length of my spear, binding it together in an instant. The way one would reinforce a weapon with ink energy.
"Hyunmu Ink Spear."
Right now — I felt like I could do it.
"2nd Stroke."