Extinction (2)
I had heard of it before.
That certain powerhouses could reshape their abilities to suit their own nature and wield them that way.
Strictly speaking, the Ink Art practiced by the sword sects also qualified — mana reforged into a form befitting their fists — but that was, at most, a minor variation performed within the boundaries of an existing shape.
What I was facing now was something else entirely.
The Knight of Extinction closed his hand around his sword.
Droplets of blood ran dripping down the blade.
That blood was Aura itself, made manifest.
Park Sung-chan's Starlight Sword had always been devastating in sheer power, and now that it had passed into Extinction's hands, it had grown into something even worse.
Nothing like Yoo Sung-wook's sword-energy release.
The Grand Duke's Knight's projected blades had certainly been lethal. But they could be broken in the end — which made them incomparable to this tide of blood.
As the crimson blade swept through the air, a wave of blood surged along its path.
Sea of Blood.
The entire vista before me was flooding crimson. If that wave swallowed me whole, it would be game over, right there.
I'm not going down that easily.
I locked my grip on the spear shaft and wreathed it in Karma Flame.
Flame Soul Crescent Blade
— Blazing Thrust
BOOM!
I split the wave down the middle and leapt toward where he stood.
The droplets of blood gathered toward the sword and hardened into the shape of a colossal greatsword.
Great Blood Sword.
At a glance it looked like nothing more than a senselessly oversized slab of metal — but it was, in itself, a massive condensed mass of power.
"Guess we'll find out which of us is the reckless one."
I swung the spear without releasing the Crescent Blade.
KWAANG! KWA-KWA! Tzzzzzzt!
An uproar of sound and shock so violent it was hard to believe two weapons were colliding.
Extinction swung that enormous greatsword as lightly as if it were a one-handed blade.
This is my first time fighting while sustaining the Crescent Blade.
Flame Soul Crescent Blade — a technique that shaped Karma Flame into the form of a crescent moon-blade, amplifying the spear's destructive power. Until now I had only used it as a temporary buff to reinforce Rannachal, but this time I was holding the form continuously.
Otherwise, I can't withstand that greatsword.
Fixing Karma Flame into a single, stable shape was extraordinarily difficult. I had only managed to grasp the Crescent Blade after acquiring the Flame Dominion trait, and even then I couldn't sustain it for long — which was exactly why I'd always used it as a momentary boost.
But now, the moon-blade has to be my baseline.
That was the minimum requirement for fighting that greatsword on even terms.
Unable to land a meaningful blow, the knight changed tactics.
One ponderous, crushing overhead blow.
Blood Cascade
KUUUUNG!
I stepped through the footwork of Mist Shadow Step and slipped clear in an instant, leaving a massive pool of blood blooming where I'd stood a heartbeat before.
In the handful of exchanges we'd traded, I'd realized something.
He hasn't fully adapted to that body yet.
One thing was certain: this knight was weaker than any of the other Corps Commander-class knights I'd witnessed before my regression. His movements creaked, and the path of his blade drifted slightly off true.
Extinction flexed his hand open and shut a few times.
He admitted it with surprising docility.
And then.
I blinked, and the sword was already at my eyes.
Instinct threw the spear up to guard my body, but the greatsword had already fallen.
"Kgh—?!"
A jolt of searing pain spread through me, and my body went flying. With no time even to feel it properly, my mind was already dissecting the blow.
I couldn't read his movement at all.
The speed I'd thought was evenly matched a moment ago had inflated in a single breath.
He's adapting to that body in real time.
Which meant this had become a race against the clock. Once he finished adapting, my odds of winning would collapse to nothing.
While his adaptation rate was even one percent short of complete—
Gritting my teeth, I caught my balance in midair. Blood dripped, drop by drop, from the gash across my torso.
Thanks to my Iron Bones, it seemed I'd avoided anything fatal.
Extinction's current speed exceeds Cheonmagwi's.
If my eyes couldn't keep pace on their own, then I'd catch up by other means.
The Eve Before
A small domain unfolded, and my senses melted into it. My stats had climbed so much lately that I could now sustain a domain of this scale in full.
Ssshhk!
The instant the domain deployed, I concentrated mana into my fingertips and rapidly traced something across the ground.
Minimal insurance.
The moment I finished, a blood-red glint flickered in the darkness — the Knight of Extinction closing in, faster still, to cut me down. I closed my eyes and surrendered my body to the expanded senses.
The mocking voice drifted in from every direction at once. Unshaken, I honed my senses sharper still.
Closer. Closer.
Until his foot crossed into my domain. I killed even my breathing and concentrated my mind.
At last, when I could feel the strike tearing into my domain—
I shattered my focus and unleashed the spear art.
Swaaaaaah!
The phantom of a Yaksha spread across my entire body.
Ascension
The form of the Nameless Spear Art unfurled at lightning speed. The climbing spearhead crushed against his armor.
"Gruuugh!"
At long last, my attack had landed on him. I meant to carve something — anything — off of him then and there.
But—
The spear refused to move any further.
The Crescent Blade collapsed!
Spreading the domain art and launching the spear art at once, the Karma Flame sustaining the moon-blade guttered out.
Extinction drew the spear from his body. Light seeped out from the wound.
The massive greatsword rose above my head.
The sword fell.
But in the instant before that blade of blood shattered my body—
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
Azure chains erupted from the ground and bound the Knight of Extinction, limb by limb.
Nothing special, really.
Right after I deployed the domain, I had simply, quickly, laid a light barrier art into the ground. I hadn't even had the leisure to make it elaborate, so I'd gone for the simplest, most certain effect available.
Expedited Barrier — Halt
Barrier arts were never built for combat. Even the simplest ward took minutes to raise — which, on a battlefield where life and death turned in a tenth of a second, made the whole discipline about as useful as a boat anchor.
To shore up that fatal flaw even a little, the sect master of the White Tiger Barrier Sect had once proposed a solution.
A barrier that could be raised in mere seconds.
By roughly sacrificing range and effect, you gained speed and potency instead — a pragmatic, pragmatic ward. That was the Expedited Barrier.
It was called "expedited," but in truth it was far from easy to use. To guarantee results with such a stripped-down formula demanded a correspondingly exquisite degree of precision.
Extinction thrashed and shook the chains loose.
Halt held its target with certainty — but not for long.
Against his level of mastery, ten seconds at most.
How I used this window would decide victory and defeat. Life and death.
"…I didn't want to use this twice."
No help for it, though. With my current strength, I could not kill a fully adapted Extinction.
Swallowing the sigh rising in my chest, I drew a ring out of my subspace.
Cursed Artifact
Grants stacking berserk power at the cost of sanity.
The moment I slid it onto my finger, a familiar yet vertigo-inducing euphoria crawled up my spine.
Stack: 1
Stack: 2
…
"Tch!"
Shaaak!
Having torn the chains away completely, the Knight of Extinction let out a ragged breath.
Having my movements restricted is profoundly unpleasant.
Still, he was confident the same trick would never work on him twice. He simply wouldn't grant the time needed to set up such a insidious trap again.
He had dallied far too long. The barrier sagging over this area would soon dissolve, so he had to break out of here before it did.
It was a shame he'd failed to claim the two women who were worthy of being made knights — but killing this man alone would deal humanity a devastating loss.
The spearman before him was, frankly, a marvel.
In raw physical strength, many beings surpassed him. But this man knew how to wring his own talent to its absolute limit. A creature with a fleeting lifespan, achieving what even near-immortal races could not.
Had he never met me, he might have become this species' final torch.
But now, that flame of hope would be extinguished.
Fwoooong!
The instant the greatsword swept down to snuff out that light, the spear met the blade and stopped it cold.
He began pressing down with raw force — and then—
"…?!"
Extinction saw it.
A violent, feral aura blooming across the man's body.
What he felt there was unmistakable.
The Iron Blood Monarch…!
The power of the main body itself.
Lee Tae-hyun pressed one hand against his forehead.
Stack: 23
Stack: 24
He didn't know why, but the stacks were accumulating faster than before. The voice of hunger rang through his skull like something about to shatter.
KAANG!
Lee Tae-hyun's spear smashed into the greatsword.
He could not yet fully command this body, true. But being bested in sheer strength by a mere human was stupefying.
Unforgivable!
He drew together the highest output of blood his current form could muster.
Heaven-Shrouding Blood Tide
A deluge made of blood crashed toward Lee Tae-hyun all at once — a rolling wave of death itself.
And Lee Tae-hyun, watching it come, planted his stance without a flicker of movement.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
With an iron grip on the madness and strength amplified by the ring, he steadied himself.
He unleashed the Spear Dance he had never once succeeded in performing.
"Spear God's Wild Dance."
Its third dance.
⟨ Primordial Unity Extreme: Dance ⟩
The power of a spiral wove itself into the spear's tip, compounding rotation upon acceleration until it ascended into something that would grind space itself apart.
KUGAGAGAGAGA!
The spiral spear bored forward, carving through the oncoming tide of blood.
What is this power?!
Extinction found himself stumbling backward before he realized it. Instinct was screaming.
Do not let that touch you. Ever.
I have to dodge, now—
By the time thought moved to become action, it was already too late. The spear — the spiral — was already there.
It was tearing his torso apart.
As if his pleas couldn't be heard at all, Lee Tae-hyun gritted his teeth and drove the spear deeper.
KAGAGAGAGAGAK!
The spiral gnawed through his body, disassembling it at random.
How can a mortal wield power so far outside the bounds of reason?! I'm going to die — I'm actually going to die!
Right before the spiral could close his throat for good, Lee Tae-hyun's spear reached the end of its life first. The shaft, fatigued beyond its limit, snapped cleanly in half.
"Tch."
He tossed the ruined weapon aside without a moment's regret, and the instant he moved to finish Extinction off with Karma Flame—
The air between the two of them split open.
Clawing his sanity back from the brink with the berserk state barely leashed, Lee Tae-hyun stared at the woman who had stepped out of the split in the air.
Dark skin, a face veiled in cloth.
Extinction shouted her name as though he'd glimpsed salvation itself.
The woman called Elpiros scooped the half-torn-apart Extinction into her spatial rift.
Lee Tae-hyun lunged at the opening — but for some reason, he passed straight through and faceplanted onto the other side.
She seemed to know him already.
Genuine regret soaked through her voice. The rift in the air began knitting itself shut.
"…!"
The Advent Church.
This was the moment he laid eyes, face to face, on the ones he owed his reckoning.