Payback in the PK Zone
YggON had warned him, but Ryu Hwi wasn't listening.
"Fifty percent? You pathetic piece of trash!"
Linpel roared and lunged at him.
Watch the spear, and a fist came flying. Block the fist, and a kick came flying.
It wasn't just a matter of stats. Linpel Darius's split-second judgment, his combat instincts, his strategic sense — everything about him was exceptional.
"Good thing this is a PK Prohibited Zone, wouldn't you say?"
The light of a meteor whipped past. Linpel's spearwork was unpredictable yet dazzling all at once.
"Shut up!"
Toying with him one-sidedly. Ryu Hwi swung his Gunsword in sheer desperation.
"From what I can see, your build is Swift Step, a Sword Mastery, and Parrying? What an absolute mess of a composition. Your character itself is basically a bug, isn't it?"
Ryu Hwi was sent flying off the translucent shield that unfolded around Linpel's spear. The moment he hit the ground, an intangible force materialized in the sky above and came pouring down at him.
"Try a little harder, won't you? You said you'd make me regret it, didn't you? Well, here's your chance for revenge! You bragged about fifty percent, but suddenly your movements look sluggish to me."
He hastily activated Swift Step to evade the attack, but Linpel had already anticipated his movement and cut him off.
"If you were going to provoke Linzea, you should have expected I'd come out. What, some nobody you'd never seen or heard of pokes at you, and you didn't think the guild's ace would move right away?"
The role of an ace was to maintain the guild's standing, constantly challenging game labyrinths and mining Yggdrasil's resources. It was not a position light enough to be moved by some nameless provocateur.
"I love shattering those kinds of expectations. Where's the fun in anyone acting the way you think they will?"
Linpel sneered at Ryu Hwi's weakness.
"Playing with weaklings isn't any fun either..."
Zero-delay, instant-activation close-combat skills swept over Ryu Hwi. Low in power, but so fast to trigger they were nearly impossible to block.
Once the first blow landed, Linpel chained a combo into it.
Skill after skill linked together, methodically crushing every inch of Ryu Hwi's body.
"All that talk about fifty percent. Pathetic. Even two hundred percent wouldn't save you."
Having lost interest, Linpel launched Ryu Hwi high into the air to finish him off. Nowhere to dodge, suspended in the sky. Linpel began charging in a throwing stance, spear leveled at his 'target.'
"You might end up a vegetable from the pain, so let me apologize in advance. Sorry about that."
A brilliant light of annihilation gathered around Linpel's spear.
Meteor Shower
The spear, transformed into a single streak of light, pierced clean through Ryu Hwi.
* * *
Linpel clicked his tongue in disappointment as he looked down at Ryu Hwi's battered body.
"That's all you've got?"
He'd enjoyed himself to an extent, but it fell short of his expectations. Like slaking a mild thirst.
"Ugh, so noisy."
The alarms had been going off nonstop. The guild's upper echelons were raising hell over Linpel acting on his own.
"Oh? Big Brother sent a message too."
He didn't care what the Linzea upper echelons shouted at him — but if the one sending it was his 'brother,' that was another story entirely.
Gabriel Darius.
He was the one person Linpel could never lift his head in front of.
"Damn it. What a waste of time."
Linpel pulled up the system window to log out.
"Wait. Right there."
"?!"
The quiet voice from behind stopped Linpel in his tracks.
No way. He turned around — and his breath caught in his throat.
A PK Prohibited Zone.
In a PK Prohibited Zone, players don't receive death judgments — but the pain they feel is exactly the same. Because they can't die, they can be tormented endlessly.
Gamers who'd been reduced to 'vegetables' or brain-death from sheer agony were legion.
"How the hell are you standing? That's not pain anyone can just endure."
"Gh... ugh."
The instant Meteor Shower had run him through, searing agony had scorched through Ryu Hwi's brain. It was pain severe enough that, just as Linpel wondered, going brain-dead would hardly have been surprising.
"I'm just lucky, that's all."
YggON lamented as it looked Ryu Hwi over, top to tatters.
Among YggON's configurable options was 'Sensitivity.' The fifty percent Ryu Hwi had spoken of was an instruction to drop it to its absolute minimum floor of fifty percent.
Because every one of his body's senses dropped to half strength, his movements slowed — a fatal drawback that made it unusable in real combat. But this time, he had lowered it for one reason: to blunt the pain.
There was no other way. To get a read on Linpel's data, he'd had to take the man's attacks with his own two hands and feel them firsthand.
Everything, for the sake of a complete and total victory.
YggON's voice echoed inside his head.
"Like I... could die."
Three years ago.
Ryu Hwi had everything taken from him. His name, his family, his entire life.
He had sworn that from now on, nothing would ever be taken from him again.
"That bastard... can't take anything from me. Not anymore. The one getting stripped bare... is him."
Forcing himself to endure the pain, Ryu Hwi raised his Gunsword at Linpel.
"You're about to die, and you're still... I don't know how you're even upright, but just give up and lie down like a good corpse."
Linpel seemed to have no intention of fighting him any longer.
"Give up?"
Ryu Hwi let out a scoff of pure disbelief.
"If I were the kind of guy who'd quit over this much, I never would've started. Come on, let's play a little longer. Gamers are supposed to have fun, aren't they?"
"You. Do you actually want to die?"
Linpel scrunched his face in irritation.
"Why? Scared?"
"A guy half-dead already, pulling that..."
"Are you scared of your big brother, Gabriel Darius?"
Those words were more than enough to set Linpel off.
"What did you just say?"
"I'm guessing you ran off on your own, right? When you act without orders, there's no way Gabriel Darius just watches from the sidelines. He's probably... furious with you right about now."
As he spoke, Ryu Hwi steadied his breathing.
He had analyzed Linpel down to the bone. What topics would set him off, how he'd react to any given provocation.
And that was: Linpel harbored a complex about his older brother, 'Gabriel Darius.'
"Scared of your great older brother's wrath now, are you? Well, I suppose it's only natural a defective second-rate copy like you would wet himself over Gabriel Darius."
"You little son of a—"
There was more ammunition if he needed it.
That person had appeared before Ryu Hwi earlier. At first, he'd wondered how she'd even gotten into a game labyrinth. But when he thought about what 'she' must have been thinking back then — selling him out and currying favor with Linpel — the answer was obvious.
"I heard you forgot the name Ryu Hwi? Then do you remember the name 'Cynthia'?"
In that instant, a killing intent flooded Linpel's eyes — incomparably fiercer than anything before.
"What's your relationship with that woman?"
"You remember Cynthia but you can't remember me. What a wonderfully convenient memory you've got."
"Answer the question! I asked what your relationship is!"
Watching Linpel's violent reaction, Ryu Hwi confirmed it — exactly as predicted.
"Well, no need to guess. She used you for everything she could get and then threw you away, didn't she? Maybe she even got you your account through a guild recommendation before dumping you. People forget what they've done to others, but they never forget what was done to them. Am I wrong?"
At Ryu Hwi's taunt, Linpel's face flushed red, then white, then red again.
"Hah..."
Before long, Linpel let out a hollow laugh.
"Hahahahahaha!"
The laughter swelled louder and louder.
After laughing for a long while, Linpel finally stopped and let out a deep breath.
"Fine. I'll kill you. I'll kill you in the real world too. A worthless Unranked like you had better be prepared for what happens when you poke at Gold."
"Try it if you can. Well — Gabriel Darius, maybe. But I have no intention of losing to defective trash like you."
Linpel moved.
Movement on an entirely different level from anything before.
"Die."
Linpel's spear punched straight through Ryu Hwi's chest.
This time it was really over. That was the moment he thought it.
Thok.
"GWAAAAAAGH?!"
A sudden, violent shock tore a scream out of Linpel.
The moment Linpel had skewered Ryu Hwi's chest, certain of his own victory, Ryu Hwi drove his Gunsword deep into Linpel's unprotected abdomen.
The pain beyond anything imaginable very nearly blacked Linpel out on the spot.
"Fall for a taunt that... easily, and... you die."
With the spear still through his chest, Ryu Hwi forced the corner of his mouth upward into a grin.
"You got cocky... just because... you pierced my chest..."
Linpel couldn't understand it.
He had clearly run him through the chest. Normally, the shock alone would have knocked him unconscious.
"Kraaaaaagh!"
Squeezing out what strength he had left, Linpel wrenched his spear free and swung. Ryu Hwi, still skewered on it, went flying a good distance away.
"Hah, hahuk, hah... gh, krrgh..."
Cold sweat drenched Linpel's forehead.
In all his years as a gamer, he had never once felt pain like this.
The damage reduction and defensive stats that were supposed to dull pain simply weren't registering.
"Shit! F—!"
Curses poured out of his mouth without end. The pain was so intense his legs were trembling. Merely standing still was a struggle.
"Huh? What the...?"
Far across the field, Ryu Hwi planted his Gunsword into the ground like a cane and hauled himself to his feet.
"All that screaming... over one little stab. What a... filthy drama queen you are."
"You bastard!"
"Save... the theatrics."
With superhuman endurance, Ryu Hwi swallowed the pain and gripped the blade of vengeance.
"We haven't even started yet."
"...!"
Crushed by the aura pouring off Ryu Hwi, Linpel involuntarily took a step backward.
That fact wounded the pride of an ace. His sanpaku eyes flashed savagely.
Forcing down the agony of a perforated stomach, Linpel ground his teeth.
"You land one hit, and suddenly you think you can look down on me?"
A wounded beast bared its fury.
"Don't scream. The pain isn't going to fade that quickly. You'll only make yourself suffer more."
Ryu Hwi waved a finger at him, slow and deliberate.
"Come at me. Defective copy."
"Shut — UP!"
The beast roared and charged.
Enraged, Linpel flew at him like a madman — but the agony in his gut was so extreme that he couldn't bring his usual strength to bear. He swung his spear over and over, yet unlike before, each strike was battered away weakly by Ryu Hwi's blade.
"That's really all you've got? Or did I just set the bar too high for a defective copy?"
All of it — every last moment — was unfolding exactly according to Ryu Hwi's plan.
Having worked as a Linzea analyst, Ryu Hwi knew a great, great deal about 'the ace' Linpel Darius.
His signature skills, the tiny habits that surfaced when he attacked — all of it.
And by enduring everything with his sensitivity dragged down to the floor, Ryu Hwi had confirmed it: Linpel's movements hadn't changed one bit from three years ago.
It was a tactic only possible here, in a PK Prohibited Zone where no attack could ever kill him.
'What is this? He's reading every single one of my attacks?'
Linpel's composure was cracking.
'He's wounded just like I am. So why...?!'
Linpel was rediscovering, for the first time in far too long, just how wretched a sensation genuine pain truly was.
"Damn it!!"
His body wouldn't move the way he wanted.
He had to end this fight, now.
Linpel used Swift Step to tear open the distance in an instant.
Meteor Shower
Meteors came pouring down from above.
Every single one was a lethal strike. But Ryu Hwi didn't panic.
SR+ — Sword Saint Lv1
The countless meteors raining down — Ryu Hwi batted away every last one without missing a single strike.
"Is this all the Meteor Shower that Linpel Darius is so proud of amounts to?"
"You bastard! You're half-dead, and you're strutting around over blocking one skill?"
"Pot, meet kettle. Your face has gone the color of a corpse."
"If it weren't for that bug of yours, you'd be nothing!"
"Don't whine just because you're stagnant water, has-been!"
Still not enough.
Simply winning wasn't enough.
He would strip Linpel Darius of everything he had.
The trump card he'd been saving took shape in Ryu Hwi's hand.