Faith vs. Conviction (5)
Two apostles collapsed in front of Simon.
The fourth disciple and the fifth disciple—Philip and Paul.
Neither of them was any match for Simon, the second disciple.
“Hah.”
Simon let out a long breath and steadied her ragged breathing.
Her toughest opponent had been Andrew, the third disciple. If Andrew had joined in as well, she would have had a hell of a time with this. Thanks to Choi Yongki stepping in and taking Andrew out, though, the situation had been easier to clean up than she expected.
...Just how did he do that?
She prided herself on understanding the strength of the Twelve Apostles better than anyone else. Andrew was by no means weak. Yet Yongki had cut his throat in the blink of an eye.
An amazing man.
Simon glanced at the mask lying at her feet.
The childish religious game was over. There was no reason to hide their identities anymore.
Though the apostles hired as mercenaries had surrounded her, not one of them dared rush in first. They were all being held back by his momentum.
Simon continued her thoughts.
No, it’s not just that he’s amazing.
She had once exchanged blows with Choi Yongki on the emergency stairs. Back then, her judgment had been simple: he still wouldn’t be able to beat John.
But Choi Yongki had gone and killed John in front of everyone.
If John had been a man born with a heaven-sent talent for the sword, then Yongki’s sword was rough and clumsy by comparison. But it was also relentless.
Slow, but steady.
Like a turtle that never stopped moving.
He’s growing every single day.
And finally, at long last.
Simon raised her head.
A cold wind brushed her face. Over the open stadium sky, blue-gray clouds rolled in.
On the stage, two figures were facing off.
A masked man in purple stood atop a skeletal cross, while Jeong Myeong-su looked up at him from below.
Simon swallowed hard.
So that man was the Purple Devil.
It didn’t matter whether his identity was as a hunter or as the Purple Devil. What mattered was this.
Simon tightened her grip on her sword.
I’ll handle my job.
She charged toward the mercenary group.
You survive too!
I stood on one foot atop the cross and looked down at Jeong Myeong-su.
He looked back at me from beneath his robe.
“Judas. So it was you. The real traitor.”
Jeong Myeong-su curled his lips into a sneer.
“Your real name is Choi Yongki. You’re a hunter from Dio Guild, aren’t you? ...And what the hell is that ridiculous outfit supposed to be?”
Apprentices weren’t supposed to know one another’s identities, but Jeong Myeong-su had a frighteningly good grasp of who each apostle really was.
“What do you think? I’m the Purple Devil—the purple apostle who came up from hell to kill a dwarf.”
“Kekeke! So you’re trying to play hero?”
He acted relaxed, but he quietly concentrated mana in his right hand.
“Kill me? Go on. If you can.”
In the next instant, Jeong Myeong-su spread his palm and fired a fireball.
I sprang upward to dodge the incoming blaze and leapt into the air. The fireball slammed into the top of the cross, then struck the edge of the stadium roof. The barrier covering the stadium caught the blast and began to melt away.
Heat burned across my face. I had already activated Divine Aura and wrapped my body in a protective barrier, but even so, I could still feel the heat all too clearly.
If I take that head-on, it’ll be bad.
Simon sent a message over the in-ear communicator.
- The cult leader has a barrier around his body too. Physical attacks won’t work.
She darted into his blind spot and tried to attack from behind, but her sword was bounced back, and the surprise strike failed.
- I’m busy. Later.
After cutting the comm, Simon fought a bloody battle against the mercenaries below the stage.
Jeong Myeong-su clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“You dodge like a rat. I was going to roast you into a blackened corpse.”
I landed back on the stage and rested my hand on the hilt of my sword.
Looking closely at Jeong Myeong-su’s body, I could see a faint, circular barrier shimmering around him.
What if I used a slash like Na Sang-min did?
Maybe I could cut through the barrier in one go.
But my Ilcheon-illyu was still too crude.
I wasn’t even close to the level Na Sang-min had reached.
I needed a different angle. Not brute force—something else.
In that case, the strategy I chose was simple.
A magic showdown.
I clicked on the blue window floating in the air.
Ding.
- Mirror Turn has been activated.
Fifty million won.
I used one of the most expensive skills in my life.
It burned through a ridiculous amount of money, but I didn’t care.
This feeling is...
I spread one hand and raised it toward the sky.
Sensing the change in atmosphere, Jeong Myeong-su flinched and staggered back.
“W-What?!”
And yet, even after several seconds passed, nothing happened.
Jeong Myeong-su tilted his head.
“Bwahaha! What the hell are you trying to do? You dancing or something—”
He never got to finish.
His eyes were no longer on me.
They were behind me.
No, more precisely—he had lifted his head to look at the sky.
Above the stadium.
There were dozens upon dozens of fireballs floating there.
Each one was larger than the ones Jeong Myeong-su had summoned, blazing like miniature suns.
If they fell from that height, it would be no different from a meteor strike.
“Now try to endure.”
I lowered the hand I’d raised.
I could feel it at my fingertips—the crushing pressure of the fireballs, the ferocious heat shimmering off them.
Countless fireballs came crashing down toward a single point.
“You mother—!”
Jeong Myeong-su dropped into a stance and strengthened his barrier.
The absolute shield that had protected him.
With Ganro-ryu gone now, he had no choice but to build his own defenses.
BOOOOM!!!
The stage sank downward, and the whole world trembled.
The fireballs kept slamming down on Jeong Myeong-su without pause.
And in the middle of it all, I realized something incredible.
My mana’s barely dropping?
There was no way I could have summoned that many fireballs with my own power.
True to the skill’s name, Mirror Turn reflected the enemy’s own technique back at them like a mirror. And not just that—it returned it with several times the force.
It was an absurdly broken trump card.
Of course, it costs a fortune.
I didn’t forget to check my remaining balance.
Awakener's Balance
￦827,154,006
The billion won I’d had a moment ago had dropped into the eight-hundred-million range. If I kept throwing money around like this, I’d burn through the whole thing.
Still, there was a reason I chose this skill.
I need to hit him psychologically.
If I showed him magic far beyond what he could handle, Jeong Myeong-su would naturally shrink back.
The smoke drifted away on the wind.
“Ghk.”
Jeong Myeong-su was still on his feet, his body blackened all over like charcoal.
Even the little hair he had left had been burned almost completely away.
“You look like Gollum.”
“You little bastard!”
Jeong Myeong-su bulged a vein in his neck.
He didn’t look cocky or smug anymore. His exterior had clearly taken a beating, but...
...there’s almost no internal damage.
He’d layered multiple barriers over himself in an instant, blocking the mass fireball strike.
Even after spending fifty million won, I still hadn’t decided the match.
As expected, it’s not easy to drop him in one shot.
Jeong Myeong-su threw off his now-ragged robe.
“Fine. Let’s throw a wild party today.”
Black aura flooded out of his body. Then, to his right, a subspace opened. He shoved his hand inside and pulled something out.
It was a staff with skulls dangling all over it.
“A party needs guests.”
Black mana surged up from the staff in his hand like ink.
The mana burst apart like fireworks and scattered in every direction across the stands.
Then, one by one, the victims who had been burned black by the fireballs began to rise.
“Uegh!”
“Grrrhh...”
“Kraaaah!”
As hundreds of zombies let out ghastly howls, the stadium turned into chaos in an instant.
Necromancy.
Jeong Myeong-su had become a necromancer and called forth an undead army.
“Hear me! My faithful servants. Drag that bastard down to hell!”
The zombies turned their heads toward me.
Then, as if seized by some invisible spell, they started charging at me.
They shoved each other aside, tripped over the seats, snapped their own necks, broke ankles, trampled one another, and kept coming anyway.
Their only target was me.
Jeong Myeong-su’s mouth curled upward.
“Heh heh. How do you like that? Go on, try your little fire tricks again.”
If I blinked, the zombies would already be at my feet.
I couldn’t use another fireball with that much delay.
Should I use Mirror Turn again?
If I reflected it back at them, I could create thousands of zombies too.
But that means another fifty million won.
While I hesitated, Jeong Myeong-su chuckled.
“What’s wrong? Scared? Better be careful. The undead army under my command is especially vicious. They’ll be scarier than monsters. Kekeke.”
...Under his command. Monsters.
Actually, this works out better.
Ding.
I used a skill.
Not Mirror Turn.
Eden’s first skill.
- Alusia has been activated.
Hallucination and brainwashing magic.
It couldn’t be used on intelligent humans.
But for anything else, it was highly effective.
I pressed my palm to the ground.
A massive magic circle spread out across the floor, with me at the center.
The zombies within range sensed the change.
“Grrrk?”
“Kuek?”
“Kuhh?”
The zombies that had been rushing toward me like iron filings to a magnet suddenly twisted off course.
They changed direction and charged straight at Jeong Myeong-su instead.
His eyes widened.
“Damn it!”
The puppets he had been controlling all lunged at their master at once.
“Kieeek!”
“Kueeek!”
The horde of zombies forced its way through Jeong Myeong-su’s barrier and started tearing at his arms and legs with their teeth.
There were so many of them that, in an instant, they piled up like a mountain and swallowed him whole.
Jeong Myeong-su was no longer visible.
“Hah, hah...”
I panted hard.
My strength had drained away, and sweat poured down my forehead like rain.
I’d burned through a huge amount of mana in that exchange.
Focus, mental stamina, physical endurance, the delicate sense needed to control mana...
Magic was...
really hard.
I hadn’t known before.
I hadn’t realized it was this difficult to use sorcery.
I honestly didn’t seem to have the talent for mage work.
Better to use a sword, honestly.
Then I paused.
Heoksikdo was still tucked neatly at my side.
Do I really have to win with magic?
Even if brute force wasn’t the best match-up...
As long as I can lure him in...
There was a sudden explosion.
The zombie horde shot up into the sky and rained back down like drops of mud.
Every zombie Jeong Myeong-su had summoned went limp at once, losing consciousness.
In the gap between the heaps of zombies, Jeong Myeong-su stood there.
“Grrrrgh!”
His eyes had turned pitch-black, and black veins bulged all over his body.
Just as the Black Ghost Statue used another person’s body as a medium, curses and black magic always came with a price.
The more dark skills he used, the more the backlash came back to him.
“You son of a bitch! How dare you, how dare you, how dare you!!!”
With the barrier gone, Jeong Myeong-su repeated the same words like a broken record and pulled out his final card.
He flailed the arm bitten by the zombies, spraying blood everywhere.
His blood splattered onto the suit he was wearing.
“There. Heh-heh-heh.”
The subspace beside Jeong Myeong-su gaped open like a monster’s mouth.
He pulled out a grotesque little doll about the size of his palm.
“You really made me use this.”
Jeong Myeong-su cackled and drove his sharpened nails into the doll’s chest.
“Ghk.”
Pain crashed over me all at once.
I clutched my heart and vomited blood.
My skin was perfectly fine.
But the pain was real.
It felt like my insides were being ripped apart with a nail.
“You. You can reverse my magic, can’t you? Then I guess I’d better kill you before you pull that crap.”
Jeong Myeong-su attacked the doll’s face with his nails.
Its forehead split. Its nose was torn off. Its eardrums burst.
“Aaaagh!!!”
The ongoing torture forced a scream out of me.
“Heeheehee!”
Jeong Myeong-su whistled as he manipulated the doll.
I stood there with my arms spread wide, like Jesus nailed to a cross.
“Kek. You can’t move, can you? Better stay still. If you resist, I’ll tear your body apart alive.”
The moment he finished speaking, Jeong Myeong-su twisted the doll’s arm.
At the same time, my left arm bent in the opposite direction.
“Ghk!”
A sickening crack of crushing bones echoed out.
And that wasn’t all.
Jeong Myeong-su grabbed my right ear and ripped it, then snapped my left ankle.
The hairs on my body stood on end.
By the time the pain reached its limit, I couldn’t even scream properly anymore.
My vision was blurring.
My consciousness was fading.
...Cold.
“Kahahaha! Serves you right, you bastard!”
Jeong Myeong-su burst into deranged laughter.
“...”
Something cold touched my face.
A chill wind blew.
Snow mixed with sleet drifted down from the hole in the barrier near the ceiling.
It was the first snow, arriving early.
“Kgh...”
I coughed up a mouthful of blood.
I can’t even twitch a finger.
Tens of thousands of Cheonyang-ji believers were desperately trying to escape the stadium.
Simon was locked in a bloody battle against a hundred mercenaries by herself.
Just as expected, Jeong Myeong-su wasn’t going to make this easy.
...If I die like this,
then Jeong Myeong-su will rebuild his kingdom.
And Cheonyang-ji will take even deeper root in this land.
Jeong Myeong-su stepped up in front of me.
Seen up close, the front of his pants was bulging grotesquely.
It was almost as if he got pleasure from other people’s pain.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Hurts like hell, right? This merciful little god will show you some mercy. Hurry up and head to Cheonyang.”
Jeong Myeong-su extended the nail of his index finger until it was long enough to aim at the center of my forehead.
“Go to hell.”
At that moment, I clenched my teeth and moved my right hand with all the strength I had left.
I couldn’t budge at all, but I forced my body to resist the curse.
In an instant, my body began to break apart.
Like a cicada shedding its shell.
The skin on my right arm tore apart in strips.
A hand with the muscles laid bare clutched Heoksikdo and attacked.
“What?”
Jeong Myeong-su’s pupils caught the reflection of my purple mask.
I drew Heoksikdo.
And slashed upward from below.
Right through Jeong Myeong-su’s groin.
Rrrip.
The dwarf’s swollen organ was cleanly severed in two.