Newbie Slaughterer (2)
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you need not fear a hundred battles.
Cheonsol had an androgynous face. The hair was long, but even among the Jin clan earlier there'd been a man with long hair. Back in the day you might have written off a pretty guy as a cross-dresser on the spot, but these days you had to keep every possibility open.
An alien species from another planet — for all I knew, they had a third sex. Hell, even Earth had hot transgender, genderfluid, Homo sapiens, and whatever else.
Cheonsol was nothing like that scumbag Jincheon. Judging by looks alone was a mistake.
The cult leader had come out skipping every intermediate step — no clan head, no elders — so I still didn't know their main martial arts beyond the Absol Blade. I also needed to figure out Absolu's angle in sacrificing the disciples first and only then sending out the leader.
"You have slain Absolu's disciples with impunity. This lady shall exact from you the price of blood."
Cheonsol drew a slender sword. Similar to Evrande's rapier, but double-edged, which put it in the thin-sword category.
"Yohan! I found out the main race of the Appsol planet! They're Vampir!"
"Vampir? Like vampires?"
"How dare you!"
I'd asked Sophia, but Cheonsol was the one who blew up.
"To compare us to a lowly race like vampires! We can live without drinking blood!"
"Well, that's a surprise."
It actually was surprising, so I made a point of sounding sarcastic. A provoked opponent not only simplified their movements — their mouth got looser too.
"We Vampir command blood itself! Behold!"
Cheonsol stepped into a pool of blood, and the blood climbed their body. Both edges of the slender sword and its tip stained crimson.
The leftover blood spread in every direction and rose into pillars. Got it.
"So it's the Blood Cult concept from the wuxia novels."
The stock villain that shows up like a free side dish and exists to get beaten by the protagonist. If they'd been holding a staff or a wand it would've been a mage, but with a sword it was Blood Cult all the way.
"I've got your measure. Boring enough that I'm starting to want to die."
"Enough bluster. Bloodflame Under Heaven."
Cheonsol swung the sword and the world turned red. I didn't panic — I assessed.
Hallucination techniques were everywhere in games. The Blood Cult's standard play was to use a medium to deploy a formation. A Vampir close enough to the Blood Cult would work the same way.
The blood pillars standing in a circle had to be what dyed the world red. Blood was seeping out of them, which meant Cheonsol was producing the medium needed for the technique.
"You are a rat in a jar!"
Cheonsol gripped the slender sword tight and charged. The blade seething with blood qi looked genuinely threatening. I still didn't know its power, so no trading blows head-on.
"Running will avail you nothing!"
"Shut it, you knockoff!"
"Wh-what?"
"Bloodflame Under Heaven is a proud quote from Admiral Yi Sun-sin! No matter how much you Vampir idolize Korea, you can never become Korean!"
"You—! How freely that loose mouth of yours runs!"
Seemed even more worked up than before. Time to push a little harder.
"You mad?"
"What did you say?"
"Sorry. Didn't think you'd get that angry. But plagiarism's still plagiarism."
"I will kill you!!"
Enraged, Cheonsol swung the slender sword. I thought I'd slipped it by a hair — then the blood qi surged and carved open my back.
Hot pain flared, but I clenched my teeth and kept moving. Pain on this level I'd eaten for breakfast back in the early high-sync VR games.
"Stand still!"
At Cheonsol's shout, blood erupted from the blood pillar I'd been aiming for. Even without mana in it, that much liquid would hammer a body.
But I trusted Iron Man and charged straight through. The blood sizzled and burned my skin, but the pain was bearable. I gritted my teeth and swung the longsword.
Crunch.
The blood pillar collapsed with a sound like a cookie snapping. The world clawed back a little of its original color.
"Got you!"
Cheonsol cheered. Losing a formation axis should have made them furious. So there was a hidden play here too.
A chill ran down my spine and I rolled hard to the side. A scorching sensation raked from the back of my skull all the way down past my hips.
My head spun and strength drained out of my whole body. The spot I'd rolled up from was soaked red.
I knew at a glance. That was my blood. Stay like this and I'd bleed out.
Self-Healing
But I had a recovery skill. My body snapped back to normal.
"That's all you've got?"
"In a sacred battle, how dare you use a recovery skill!"
"Mm~ then use one yourself if you're so mad~"
"Have you no seriousness at all!"
Cheonsol got angry again.
"You've got anger management issues. That's a disorder."
"You bastard!!!"
I dodged the attacks of a Cheonsol so furious the sword paths were falling apart, and thought it through. Nine pillars left. Remaining uses of Self-Healing: six.
Taking out the pillars was unrealistic. I could force it, but Cheonsol might still be sitting on a trump card, and I couldn't burn every heal on this.
So it came down to a straight fight. I stopped running, spun around, and found myself face-to-face with Cheonsol's features drowned in bloodlust.
"Die!"
"How undignified. What kind of 'die' is that."
I blocked the slender sword, denser with blood qi than before. The instant the blades met, my arm went numb and my grip failed. I clenched my teeth and seized the sword again.
"A wound upon the back is a swordsman's shame!"
"Scram!"
"Ping!"
"What?"
Cheonsol faltered. The opening was now. I drove my sword into the gap.
Riiip.
Cheonsol's outer robe tore open, and the bandages wrapped around the chest came into view. Not just the outer layer — the bandages themselves were lightly cut, revealing a soft, rounded contour.
"A woman?"
"To the cult leader who serves Absolu, gender is meaningless!"
Cheonsol gritted their teeth and swung. Every clash of blades stacked shock into my body, but that wasn't even a problem.
"Heh heh heh. So you were a woman?"
"Do not look down on me for being a woman! I am the foremost martial artist of this age!"
"Number one under heaven, is that it."
Number one under heaven on the Appsol planet. Suddenly my motivation was surging.
"But your pussy's third-rate, right?"
"Insolence!"
"Your minion has lost his mind."
"…"
Sophia didn't push back against Absolu's muttering. That was exactly when you were supposed to deny it and prop up your minion's morale. Instead, Sophia turned on me.
"Yohan! Not that skill!"
"Spare me the fretting."
Impregnating
"I said no!"
Strength seven times my usual welled up through me.
Clang.
"No—!"
Every time our swords met I'd been driven back several steps — for the first time, we locked even. The sticky, acrid smell of blood turned as sweet as virgin blood. Whether my Impregnating had cowed her or not, the blood qi on Cheonsol's blade thinned.
"Now I shall show you my [True Nature]."
"Uwegh…"
Sophia gagged, but I paid it no mind. A woman throwing up had zero charm except when she was having morning sickness.
"Impossible! Blood Burst!"
Blood exploded from every direction. Mana-charged droplets punched holes through even Iron Man's tough skin. Flesh wounds only, though. The bone was fine.
"Bloodflame!"
The blood that had come out of my body seethed and boiled. This too only burned the skin. I endured every bit of the pain and aimed for Cheonsol's chest.
Cheonsol swung the slender sword not to attack but to defend. Thin and light — it was quick, no question. Since the only place I was aiming was the chest, her defense came easy.
"You lecher! You villain! Where do you think you're aiming!"
"Just wanna see the tits."
"Y-you—!!"
Cheonsol clenched her teeth and gathered internal energy. Before I knew it, the blood pooled on the floor and the faint blood mist in the air were rippling.
"You don't telegraph a big technique like that."
The trash game Oriental had instant-kill moves. The kind that ran on "if you don't know it, you eat it" — but they took more than three seconds to cast, so even newbies rarely got hit.
An instant-kill even newbies dodge, and a veteran like me eats it? Not a chance. Two ways to cancel an instant-kill: hit them, or beat the absolute hell out of them.
Squelch. Squelch.
I forced my feet free of the clinging blood and charged. Cheonsol tried to backpedal, but unless you're moonwalking, walking backward is slower than walking forward.
"Blood—!"
"Too late."
Before Cheonsol could swing, my blade touched her wrist. Like a moth flying into flame, her wrist came to my edge and was severed.
Hand and sword gone in the same instant, Cheonsol gritted her teeth. She raised the arm spraying a fountain of blood to hose me down with it — I slipped it easily.
"Tit Slash."
It fit the wuxia vibe, so I announced the move. My sword flashed like lightning and opened a wound from Cheonsol's collarbone down to her stomach.
Pat-pat-pat.
The bandages the blade had cut fell to the floor. The chest that had looked like a flattened sticker under the wraps revealed its true presence.
"C-cup?"
"Y-you… you lecher!! Looking at my chest—!!"
Cheonsol teared up and coughed blood. Crimson clots gathered in midair like steel rings and slammed into me. I tried to dodge, but they were too fast — one punched through my shoulder.
"Bloodflame!!"
The blood dripping from Cheonsol's chest reversed course and sprayed at me. Too late to dodge, so I just avoided the fatal hits. I raised my sword like a shield and covered my neck and heart.
"Kh…"
Blood splattered across my face and the whole upper half of my body. My eyelids glued shut and cut off my vision, and the burning pain they call the worst of all pains tried to break my will.
Self-Healing
One cast wasn't a full clear, so I fired it again. Recovery skills were such broken cheats. Good as new.
"Done with the cute tricks, then. Tit Smack."
Slap. Smaack.
I swatted Cheonsol's chest with the flat of the blade. Neat sword-shaped crimson marks bloomed on a well-shaped pair of breasts.
"Nipple Smack."
"Hhk—!"
This time I hit her nipples with the flat. Cheonsol let out a strange little moan and sank to the ground.
Roughly neutralized. Time to get a proper taste. The moment I moved to restrain her—
"I surrender!"
Newbie Trainer — Sophia Wins!
Cheonsol vanished, and I was relocated to Sophia's side. Cheonsol's wounds must have been too severe — she didn't reappear next to Absolu at all. She was just gone.
"Ah."
I'd been curious what a vampire pussy was like.
"This seat acknowledges today's defeat. To think a female-form minion would carry such a flaw. This seat shall never repeat the same mistake. Deranged pervert minion. And pervert goddess. This seat shall never forget today's humiliation!"
Absolu left his threat hanging and disappeared.
"Fuck."
Give me back my vampire pussy and then leave.
"Fuck? Did Yohan just say fuck? The goddess who wants to swear here is me! I told you not to use that!"
"Ah…"
Why did I catch a lecture every single time I won. I didn't even get to have sex this time. This really sucked.