The Mountain King's Counterattack
When the round 55 competitive gate raid featuring both Mir Guild and Kirin Guild was finalized, every industry insider said the same thing.
This was a black hole.
Sword Derby, greatest breaking season ever—none of it mattered. This single match would swallow everything whole.
And they were right.
The moment the match began, every form of media competed to flood the airwaves with updates.
As Mir Guild’s new weapon appeared, experts drooled over themselves trying to explain it.
Exactly as predicted? No—the pressure was far more blatant than anyone expected, and experts argued fiercely over it.
And then—
The moment the man once called the league’s gentleman revealed a vicious side completely opposite to his reputation, people couldn’t look away, muttering, This house really knows how to deliver drama.
How could the broadcast stations not salivate over such a lavish buffet? Especially since various scheduling and programming issues had prevented them from fully capitalizing on the competitive raid special during the first half of the season. They moved more aggressively than ever.
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“Bullshit!”
Bullshit? Bullshiiit?
Anyone who had just turned on the TV would have doubted their ears. This was on public broadcast?
That’s right. A passionate fan debate funded by your viewer fees!
KBC’s no-holds-barred debate starts now.
“This was a dirty, underhanded play! It was a complete foul!”
The Kirin Guild announcer jabbed his finger forward passionately. A white headband reading DOWN WITH MIR was wrapped around his forehead.
“Just look at what the Mountain King has been doing these past few days! He herded the monsters, manipulated the surrounding terrain, erased their escape routes, and trapped them perfectly! If what the Mountain King is doing isn’t a foul, then what the hell is?!”
“Exactly!”
The female idol from Royal Sword joined in. Naturally, she too wore a DOWN WITH MIR headband.
“Hye-mi agrees with that statement. This is a match! A competition with rules and good sportsmanship! Fair play should be the foundation, but the Mountain King isn’t doing that at all! I can feel the malice!”
“Ahem. I agree on this particular point.”
The comedian from Core Guild quietly added his spoon to the pot. To reflect his guild’s current lukewarm stance, he had slyly erased the characters for “Down With” from his headband, leaving only MIR.
“Targeting their sleep time so persistently and striking the exact moment their base camp was set up—it can only be seen as deliberate on the Mountain King’s part.”
“Hmph…”
“At least he still has a conscience.”
“Ahem.”
Despite their awkward appearance, the three had formed an alliance against Mir Guild.
But the man sitting across from them didn’t look intimidated at all. If anything, he was overflowing with composure. His sheer presence was crushing the other three combined.
“Hmm, isn’t it fascinating? We watched the same match, yet our perspectives can differ so completely.”
The national treasure actor with three films that each broke ten million admissions and had even won an Oscar—Choi Young-sik—sat with his arms crossed behind the Mir Guild nameplate.
This was the same actor who rarely accepted variety show offers and wouldn’t appear even if you waved a wad of cash at him. Yet here he was. The only reason?
Choi Young-sik was a natural-born Yongbung.
“It seems everyone has completely forgotten what the first day looked like. Let me describe what I saw. In the early stages, three teams openly formed an alliance and focused their monster herding on our guild. Representative Lee Shin used mysterious tactics to wisely block their attempts.”
“Wait a moment. Even for you, Mr. Choi, calling it ‘blatant’ feels a bit much.”
“Good point. Let’s correct it to ‘completely shameless.’”
“Mr. Choi!”
“Still, I’ll give credit where it’s due. The monster herding your three guilds performed ‘as one body’ was quite successful. Clap, clap! The coordination really was fantastic.”
And so Mir Guild had been forced to endure a difficult time against their opponents’ shameless scheme. Their kind-hearted Mountain King captain couldn’t bear to watch his young teammates’ faces grow haggard.
So, holding back tears, he chose to buy them time.
“…That was the herding. Sigh… It must have been an incredibly difficult decision for the league’s gentleman, the Mountain King. Just imagining it brings tears to my eyes.”
Choi Young-sik pinched the bridge of his nose.
The three panelists dropped their jaws. Gentleman? Difficult decision? Tears?
“Wow…”
“Sunbae, your packaging is way too much!!”
“Ahem. Seeing how he’s currently catching other guilds like rats, the tears seem like an overstatement?”
But like guild, like fan—Choi Young-sik was the same. Typical Yongbung behavior. They only ever talked about their own side, as if they were the guild’s official representatives.
“It’s sad. The answer to all these questions is already in the story, isn’t it?”
“??”
“??”
“??”
“First, the claim that he targeted their sleep time. Did any of you protect our sleep time?”
“…Ahem.”
“Using terrain features to obstruct their path? There’s no point in even discussing it, so I won’t. The rulebook clearly states that anything is allowed as long as there is no ‘direct contact.’ That’s exactly what Kirin and the other teams have been doing day and night from the beginning.”
“That’s not—!”
“And it was your side that started the herding first. No, actually, your side did it even more blatantly. Completely. Shamelessly.”
Therefore, even if the Mountain King’s herding was a little aggressive, even if he continued the persistent monster pulling well into the mid-game—
“…It’s simply a form of legitimate self-defense to protect his team!”
That was the truth.
From the moment he drew the sword of herding against the three guilds’ concentrated fire, the Mountain King had changed. He tormented the three guilds with relentless persistence.
Some might ask how one person herding monsters could be so devastating, but the one doing the herding was the Mountain King.
The founder of modern strategy. The unparalleled commander.
And this was a forest?
It was a field where the Mountain King’s authority could be exerted at two hundred percent.
The Mountain King read every enemy strategy and delivered monsters at the most painful timing and in the most lethal positions.
A K.O. usually came not from a punch thrown from the front but from one that flew in from a blind spot at an unexpected moment. The Mountain King’s otherworldly herding using the forest completely erased the enemy’s numerical advantage.
In the end, the weakest guild, Core, quietly raised the white flag. They had fallen into a situation where they could no longer continue the herding.
What else could they do? The more they tried to herd, the more damage they took.
The only choice left was to raid normally.
This put Kirin Guild and Royal Sword in a difficult position.
The core of the Down With Mir Line was to harass the opponent without giving them a moment’s rest for twenty-four hours. With one axis missing, the encirclement loosened. Thanks to that, Mir Guild had finally secured at least some sleep time.
So Choi Young-sik’s claim of the Mountain King’s “grand decision for the sake of the team” wasn’t entirely wrong.
“No, but still, Mr. Choi! This is too much! Blocking their escape route—where does it say that’s allowed!”
“Hoho, blocking escape routes? They’re just minor obstacles.”
“It’s too vicious!!”
“It just shows how deeply he cares for his teammates.”
From the beginning, the moral high ground had been on this side.
After pulling that stunt early on, it was ridiculous for them to cry foul when they got hit in return. Just endure it with sheer willpower and malice.
“Wait a second, then what do you think about that ‘thing’ they’re doing lately!”
“Ahhh… That ‘thing’?”
The panelist pointed out the new tactic that had appeared after the Mountain King’s herding, but Choi Young-sik answered with a proud expression.
“It’s love.”
* * *
Flash! Flash!
Yellow sparks flew as lightning streaked across the forest.
It was hard to even follow with the eyes. Lightning moving at speeds beyond the limits of perception.
“She’s here!”
“That bitch!!”
The situation had changed. With Core Guild’s withdrawal, the plan had collapsed. Neither Royal Sword nor Kirin could afford to focus solely on herding anymore.
So they increased their hunting ratio to secure their own path forward… only for an interloper to appear as if they had been waiting for exactly this moment.
This lightning was one of them.
Crackle—!
The lightning drew a skid mark in the air and stopped. Yu Ri-ra appeared there, snapping off a salute.
“Hellooo~!”
Then, with a whirring sound, she gripped the spinning pistols tightly in both hands.
If her father, who called himself the pride of the Korean Army, saw this, he would clutch the back of his neck and yell, “What the hell are those dual pistols!”
Sorry, Dad. Can’t be helped for the sake of my teammates.
Yu Ri-ra smiled brightly and pulled the triggers of her twin guns.
BOOM—!!
The lightning bent at bizarre angles and swept over the area. Holes were punched cleanly through the bodies of the dark trolls.
The dark trolls screamed at the dazzling, almost painful barrage of lightning strikes.
The interesting part was that not a single human mixed among them had been so much as grazed. The Royal Sword raid party froze at the experience that went beyond impressive and straight into spine-chilling.
At the same time, a similar scene was unfolding with Kirin Guild’s hunting team a short distance away.
“Fuck!! That son of a bitch.”
“Don’t! Touching them is a penalty! Absolutely do not engage!!”
A flash of light brushed past the dark troll pack.
Unpredictable movement and trajectories that couldn’t be tracked.
It was clearly the movement of Royal Sword’s ranker, the Light Sword. But the person who appeared at the tail end of that flash was not Jong-yu.
The one standing on a dark troll’s shoulder was Baek Yeon-woo.
“…Hoo.”
He exhaled the breath he had been holding. The moment his sword drew an elegant arc and shook off the blood, crimson exploded from the dark trolls’ bodies.
Every strike was fatal. Perhaps frustrated that they had been hit without even realizing it, the dark trolls roared and glared at Baek Yeon-woo.
The two who had swept in like the wind and instantly stolen the monsters’ aggro—
“Byeeee~!”
“Hmph.”
Left greetings in their own styles and departed.
Taking every single dark troll their opponents had been hunting with them.
“This is so fucking annoying…”
“Sigh… Isn’t this going too far?”
That’s right.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, herding for herding. After gaining some breathing room, Mir Guild had begun stealing the very monsters their opponents were trying to hunt and leading them away.
Everyone knew about killing monsters to steal them, but this method of snatching them alive and dragging them off? What kind of demonic brain had come up with this?
The broadcast team seemed to have a pretty good idea.
⊳ “Commentator… No matter how you look at this steal…”
⊳ “It looks like Representative Lee Shin’s handiwork. This isn’t the Mountain King’s preferred style.”
⊳ “Haha, interesting. Representative Lee Shin said every single happening in this match is his responsibility. Looks like he had situations like this in mind.”
⊳ “His vision is so wide. Just how far ahead is he looking?”
⊳ “Yu Ri-ra and Baek Yeon-woo are leading the monsters their opponents were hunting back to their main camp! And the one greeting them is this raid’s biggest star—Princess Yena!”
Lightning and flash.
Yu Ri-ra and Baek Yeon-woo brushed past Seo Ye-na, whose cape fluttered like wings, and slipped into their camp.
“Princess~! Take care of these!”
“Good work.”
“I told you not to call me princess, sis. Yeonu, you head in too.”
Seo Ye-na rolled her shoulders.
The weight of the shoulder she grabbed suddenly made her feel depressed for a moment… but the sound that reached her ears immediately after chased that feeling away.
“Princess!! Fighting!”
“Milky-white Princess!”
“The pride of the healer team, Princess!”
Along with the immature older brothers’ cheers came all sorts of magic spells.
Warrior transformation complete (forced).
Feeling her mace become as light as chopsticks, Seo Ye-na thought:
Is this boiling emotion because of the magic, or because of deep-seated irritation?
One thing was certain—our Princess was furious, and a pack of dark trolls stood before her.
“Uwaaaa!!”
Crack—!
The dark troll at the front was instantly shredded into pieces of flesh. Starting with that one, Park Su-bin and Hwarang, who had been waiting behind, joined in to clean up the monsters.
⊳ “As the opponents’ herding weakened, it is now Mir Guild that has taken the initiative to herd instead.”
⊳ “If the Mountain King used his ability to control the forest to strike at strategic gaps and deliver monsters, then Yu Ri-ra and Baek Yeon-woo are using their specialty—speed—to snatch monsters away from their opponents.”
⊳ “They create chaos around them and take the profit. We’ve gone full circle, but…”
⊳ “It’s the classic Mir Guild match style.”
⊳ “Yes, exactly. It is the classic Mir Guild way.”
Whether simple or complicated, plain or flashy.
Whether they get hit in the early game, fight fiercely in the mid game, or the process isn’t particularly beautiful.
If they go all the way to the end, we win.
That was Mir Guild’s way. That was Lee Shin’s way.
⊳ “The situation has already reversed. Now it’s not Mir Guild who has to make a decision—it’s their opponents.”
⊳ “We will stay with you until the end to see what picture the goddess of victory will draw in this late-stage competitive raid.”
Even at this moment, the score continued to widen.