The Whip Cracks Like Thunder
The crack of the whip split the air like a thunderclap.
“Wait, that’s definitely a whip sound, right?”
“Isn’t that what lightning sounds like when it strikes?”
“How the hell does a whip make a noise like that? The Whip Master class is straight-up broken.”
“For real, lol. Who the hell said Whip Master was trash? Sounds like a noob talking out of their ass.”
The moment Dekai finished grumbling inside his head, a mana pill appeared on the stall right in front of him. He snatched it without asking. The shop owner shouted something, but Dekai didn’t give a damn.
“Sylphid!”
With the wind spirit’s help, Dekai burst into a sprint. An average player would’ve slammed into a wall from the sudden acceleration, but Dekai was a veteran who had played as a spirit archer since his pro days. This was nothing to him.
He ran for a while until he spotted a gourd sitting on a distant stall. Lucky me. He’d expected to have to search for much longer. Dekai grabbed the gourd in a hurry and looked up at the sky. Judging by the sun’s position, he’d need to head west to reach the center of the market. There was no time to waste. He’d take the shortest route.
Dekai kicked off the air and leaped high. It burned a lot of mana, but it was the best option right now. He stepped on the wind platforms Sylphid created—forward, then forward again. At the end of his path, he saw the Open Sect master standing with his arms crossed, looking anxious.
Dekai landed right in front of him and shoved the gourd into the man’s hands.
“Here! This is what you were looking for!”
“Ohhh! How did you know I was in trouble? Thank you so much. This is—”
“I already know, so save it for later! Right now we need to—”
Bang!
A whip cracked right in front of Dekai. It wasn’t a miss. It was a deliberate threat. When he turned around, Hwaryeong revealed herself. She had just finished fighting the government troops—how was she still in perfect condition?
“Did you finish them all off?”
“Yeah. They were just boring small fry. Not even worth getting excited over.”
Even so, how does that make sense when you barely lost any stamina? Dekai let out a dry laugh.
“Those kids from earlier weren’t your full force, right? I’d like to believe you’ve prepared something much more impressive.”
But it’s going to take a while to get that ready. If he asked her to wait, would she actually do it like she had with the Outer God last time? He was seriously considering banging his head on the ground when the Open Sect master stepped forward.
“Benefactor. Is that person your enemy? She looks strong.”
“And who are you?”
“This one is called Dan Jang-yong, a member of the Open Sect!”
“So you’re just another Open Sect bug.”
“What did you say?”
The Open Sect master rebuked Hwaryeong for her rudeness, but she didn’t pay the slightest attention to his voice. Instead, she looked at Dekai with a cold gaze, as if scolding him.
“Is this the best you can do? Relying on someone like him?”
“Hmm. It seems the young lady is quite confident in her skills?”
The Open Sect master spoke calmly, but his voice carried clear anger. It was only natural after being so blatantly disrespected by someone who looked much younger than him. Yet even in the face of that fury, Hwaryeong simply looked at him with disdain.
“From the way you talk, it seems you’re confident in your own skills as well. Then what are you waiting for? Come at me.”
“I will!”
Provoked beyond endurance, the Open Sect master charged forward. There was no backing out now. If he lost the Open Sect master here, their winning chance would vanish. Dekai’s entire strategy had been built around a two-on-one fight from the beginning.
Originally, he had planned to stall for time while collecting items until the very last moment. But now—!
Dekai urgently shoved every pill he had gathered into his mouth and drew his bowstring. The Open Sect master tried to swing his staff at Hwaryeong, but before he could, she grabbed his wrist.
“Let go!”
Despite his desperate struggle, the Open Sect master’s arm wouldn’t budge from her grip. Hwaryeong toyed with a man twice her size like he was a child. Only after Dekai fired several arrows in quick succession did the master finally break free. He ground his teeth and glared at Hwaryeong.
“She’s not an easy opponent! Let’s fight her together!”
“My apologies. I underestimated her. I will fight with full sincerity now.”
Even if you go all out, it won’t change anything. Dekai bit his lip hard and sent a command to his spirits. The basic battle plan was for the Open Sect master to engage Hwaryeong in close combat while Dekai supported with arrows and spirit magic. He had never planned to actually defeat her. The goal was to stall for time, accumulate damage, and win through the time limit.
He had assumed that even Hwaryeong wouldn’t be able to maintain perfect dominance in a two-on-one fight.
His prediction was completely wrong.
Hwaryeong moved with total ease while completely overwhelming both the Open Sect master and Dekai. She didn’t allow a single attack to land, constantly threatening the master’s life. If Dekai hadn’t been supporting him, the man probably wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds. And that was even though Hwaryeong wasn’t fighting seriously.
The whip. That damn whip was the problem.
The whip she used was practically a living creature with its own will. It twisted and changed direction at random, making it impossible to predict its path. And the power behind it was no joke. The fact that the Open Sect master was already ragged after being hit several times was proof enough. He flinched every time the whip moved, as if he had developed some kind of trauma.
I never thought I’d live to see the day I’d think the Whip Master class is actually difficult.
Dekai instinctively knew it was over. At this rate, the Open Sect master would fall soon, and once exposed to that whip, he himself would be screaming in no time.
“Beggars! Gather here!”
The Open Sect master’s desperate cry. He used a technique that summoned the beggars of the market to form a formation. The market beggars weren’t fighters, so they wouldn’t be much help in combat, but they were excellent for buying time. If only he had the stamina advantage, he could have tried running away to stall. But right now, the one with more stamina was Hwaryeong.
What should he do? How could he turn this around?
“Benefactor! I’ll buy you time—run away!”
If he was going to lose either way, he might as well hope for a miracle. Dekai gave the Open Sect master a slight bow and turned his back.
“If I’m going to lose anyway, I might as well look for an Awakening Pill!”
“Shut up!”
Almost as soon as he snapped back at the viewers’ mockery, an explosion rang out from behind him. Is this Apis or a horror game? It wasn’t just his imagination that Hwaryeong seemed scarier than most horror game bosses.
Using the explosions as background music, Dekai frantically searched every stall he could find. But miracles weren’t called miracles for nothing. What came out of the stalls weren’t the Awakening Pills he wanted, but only items that restored stamina and mana. At least his stamina was fully replenished now. By then, however, the distant explosions had already stopped.
She was coming. The monster was coming.
Dekai was running desperately when a spirit beside him sent a warning signal. He immediately rolled forward. Right where he had been standing, a whip slammed down. When he quickly got back up, he saw the crater left in the ground.
That’s a whip mark? It looked like a landmine had gone off.
“I was expecting you to bring something more interesting. How disappointing.”
You’re the one who’s abnormally strong. Normally, when teaming up with an Open Sect master, the opponent shouldn’t be able to pressure them like this. Dekai grumbled inwardly as he watched Hwaryeong land gracefully.
“Is this the end?”
Instead of answering, he desperately scanned his surroundings, hoping for some kind of variable. He remembered what an Awakening Pill looked like. It came in an octagonal box with a dragon pattern on top. Huh. Was that… for real?
“What is it? Have you found hope?”
“Was it that obvious on my face?”
“Your eyes got that big. It would be strange not to notice.”
Wow. Was it that bad? He must have looked pretty pathetic.
“Whatever it is, go ahead and try it. It would be too boring if it ended like this.”
Dekai didn’t refuse Hwaryeong’s generous offer. No matter how ugly, dirty, or shameless it was, he had no choice. He was the one desperately struggling right now. Even if he summoned an Outer God, it would be a close call. Eating an Awakening Pill wasn’t enough to make him feel any guilt.
“What is that?”
“You’ll see when I use it.”
The Awakening Pill was a kind of cheat item that existed in the Market map. It was also the very thing that turned the Market map into a pure luck-based map. Consuming it caused a character’s stats to skyrocket and awakened various abilities. For a spirit archer like him, the spirits would change form. The spirits, which were originally the size of butterflies, would transform into adult-sized figures. Their AI would improve so they used abilities automatically, and their power would increase to a level incomparable to before. It was essentially like the player multiplying from one to five.
Of course, there were restrictions. After one minute, the effect would end and all the power would disappear. Still, even current pro players couldn’t guarantee surviving a full minute against someone who had taken an Awakening Pill. It was basically a guaranteed victory.
That should have been obvious, yet Dekai couldn’t feel certain that he would win. Because if it was Hwaryeong, she seemed like she could not only endure the full minute but completely destroy the awakened character in the process.
“Hoh. The scale of power suddenly increased. Is that the kind of pill it is?”
“Doesn’t this seem more fun now?”
“It does. Good. To be honest, your spirits have been bothering me. Now I can torment them properly.”
So you’re planning to crush us from the front. Watching Hwaryeong smile calmly as she spoke, Dekai swallowed hard. He was the one with the power advantage now, so why was he feeling scared?
So this is what you were preparing. Even though you could have crushed them at any time, you waited. It was worth it. The irritation I felt because of that bug who called himself a master has completely vanished.
The Open Sect idiot truly didn’t know his place. To act so arrogantly without even realizing who stood before him. And when it looked like he would lose, instead of sacrificing himself honorably, he tried to drag others down with him. It was utterly pathetic.
On the other hand, the spirits standing before me now are quite pleasing. That young, defiant gaze. The immense power dwelling within their bodies. Doesn’t it feel like enjoyable times have arrived?
I stood relaxed, waiting for the opponent to attack. The spirits moved first. The ice spirit was the first to act. She created nearly a hundred ice spikes around me. However, there was a slight delay before they could be launched, and that gap was more than enough time for me to swing my whip and shatter them all.
As soon as the first move was neutralized, the wind spirit summoned a storm. Were they trying to wrap the entire market around me and blow me away? Before the storm could grow large enough, I struck the center with a massive shock. The gathering storm scattered into harmless breezes.
Next was the fire spirit. She surrounded me with a massive wall of flames. Breaking through this was even simpler than the previous two. Did they really think a warrior of my level would be harmed by mere fire? I simply walked through it as if taking a stroll. Then, in front of me, a wave of earth rose up.
So the fire was meant to block my vision. They planned to bury me completely in the ground using that wave.
I folded my whip and raised my fist. There was no need for Divine Fist. That technique was only useful when splitting the sea. For dealing with a wave like this, an ordinary punch was more than enough.
Kwaaaaang!
I punched through the center of the wave and stepped forward. Ten pairs of eyes stared at me in utter shock.
“What’s wrong?”
I believe this isn’t the end yet. We’ve only just begun. There is still plenty of time left before the game’s time limit runs out. Move your power. Take up your weapons. Think about how you can kill me. Hurry!
Entertain me. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to defeat you first.