Nightfall - Hidden Route (7)
It was a battle that conjured a scene straight out of myth.
Whoosh!
A Ruler the size of an entire mountain range lashed its tentacles at a single human target. Each tentacle was large enough to recall an ordinary building; even without a scrap of mystery woven into them, a direct hit would obliterate any human on the spot.
BOOM! CRASH! RUMBLE!
Dozens of tentacles hammered the ground at once, shaking heaven and earth as if an earthquake had struck. It was more than enough force to pulverize one man—an overwhelming power no different from a natural disaster itself, something no human strength alone could ever hope to resist.
And yet there stood one who faced that disaster head-on with nothing but a single sword in hand.
Yujin.
Whoosh—!
With movements as dazzling as an acrobat’s, he slipped past the enemy’s assault and swept his blade through the Ruler’s tentacles. Every time the golden radiance leaking from the Holy Sword flashed, tentacles the size of buildings were sliced away as cleanly as pieces of cake.
The sight of the Ruler and Yujin locked in a blood-soaked struggle—each refusing to acknowledge the other—was so thoroughly absurd that the viewers could only stare, dumbstruck.
Exactly.
Anyone completely ignorant of the situation might have simply marveled at Yujin’s outrageous physical talent. The viewers, however, knew the full story behind the spectacle.
Right now Yujin was laboring under the effects of his Insanity value—a penalty severe enough that an ordinary person would not even be able to stand upright. And yet, in that absolute worst-case state, he was still pulling off acrobatic movements that defied belief?
In that very moment Yujin closed the distance in a flash, dodged a tentacle, and vaulted straight onto it. Even if the tentacle was roughly the size of a building, leaping onto one mid-battle was a sight that felt utterly unreal.
He then sprang from the tentacle, landed on the main body—roughly where a human’s head would be—and in a single stroke obliterated the dozens of tentacles thrashing around him!
Whoosh—!
[■■■■■■■—!]
The Ruler’s massive form reeled, and it let out an unintelligible howl. No matter how you looked at it, the blow had landed hard.
The chat was roaring for Yujin, yet the man himself muttered in a voice tight with frustration.
“…Thirty-four times in total. I’ve cut off that many tentacles already, and it was all wasted effort.”
He had prioritized severing the tentacles to keep the enemy in check and deny it its primary means of attack. The strategy had accomplished nothing. The moment he sliced a tentacle free, it regenerated as though it had never been cut at all.
At this rate the fight would never end. And if it dragged into a war of attrition, the one at a clear disadvantage was Yujin—because he was still forcibly suppressing the side effects of his Insanity value just to stay in the battle.
As anxiety flickered openly across his face, the Holy Sword in his grip—Yuria—spoke in a low, quiet voice.
“Master, attacks like these will not work. To fell a Ruler you must strike the heart that serves as the source of its mana.”
“…The heart?”
“It is the wellspring of the Ruler’s infinite mana and, at the same time, its sole vital point. Unless you deal a direct blow to the heart, those tentacles will regenerate without end.”
“Then where exactly is this heart?”
“I am afraid I do not know. The location differs with every Ruler. The one certainty is that it will not be in an extremity like a tentacle—it is almost certainly somewhere within the main body.”
Yujin could only feel absurdity at the Holy Sword’s advice. “Main body” sounded fine in theory, but the Ruler before him was larger than most mountains. He was supposed to just casually hunt down a heart somewhere inside that colossal mass and hit it? And she was calling that advice?
Damn it. I was trying to save it for as long as possible, but do I already have to use it?
The moment Yujin hesitated over whether to call on Uinyeom, the system spoke.
Continuous contact with the Ruler’s true form has been established.
You have encountered knowledge forbidden to mankind. Your Insanity value rises sharply.
Vmmm—
“Kh!”
A faint dizziness stabbed through his skull at the same instant the Ruler before him burst into mad laughter.
“Amusing. To think a mere human—no better than an insect—could resist me this far.”
Astonishingly, the Ruler’s words—previously nothing more than howls—had become fully intelligible.
“An insect’s rebellion made for rather entertaining sport… but the sacrilege of pointing that sword at me is something I cannot forgive. Shall we end this here?”
Speaking in a tone of genuine amusement, the Ruler raised a single tentacle and pointed it at Yujin.
“Dodge it! That is the unique authority of the Star-Gazer—Reversal!”
“What?”
Yuria’s warning came too late. The beam that lanced from the tentacle struck Yujin’s body in the blink of an eye.
“…!”
The moment it hit him, he felt no pain—small mercy. He was not dead. No blood spilled. Yet Yujin understood with pure instinct: though he still drew breath, the instant that beam struck him he had been finished as a human being.
“…What the hell was that just now?”
Yuria answered in a trembling voice.
“The Star-Gazer is a Ruler who grants wisdom to the mad and life to the dead through the authority of Reversal. And Master… because that authority struck you directly, something fundamental about you as a human has been inverted.”
“…What?”
Then it hit him.
A sharp sting!
“Kh!”
Yujin involuntarily dropped the Holy Sword. A searing pain had lanced through the hand that held it, forcing him to let go.
“Just as I feared… the Star-Gazer has reversed Master from ‘human’ into ‘something that is not human.’ Once the Reversal is complete, you will no longer be human—you will become something beyond humanity. That is why my very essence has rejected your touch.”
A transformation into the inhuman sounded grand, but it was little different from death itself.
“…Then how long until the Reversal finishes?”
“This is the authority of a being as exalted as a Ruler. Even with the Holy Sword’s aid, resisting to the utmost… I believe one minute is the absolute limit.”
“One minute, huh…”
Yujin clenched his fist and carefully tested his strength. Whether from the Reversal itself or from his body already shifting into something non-human, power of an entirely different order was now boiling inside him.
Was this the final thrashing he was being offered—transcendent strength that shattered human limits, bought at the price of death one minute later?
In pure physical terms the power was roughly half of what he had possessed in his prime, yet now that it was here, what did that matter—
No. Wait. With this much strength, maybe…
The calculations finished in his head. Yujin turned to Yuria with urgent intensity.
“If I kill the Ruler within one minute, what happens? Does the Reversal authority cancel automatically too?”
“Pardon? I believe so. If the Ruler that is the source of the authority is annihilated, the Reversal placed upon Master should lose its power as well. But defeating a Ruler in a mere minute is impossib—”
“No. One minute is plenty.”
With that, Yujin picked the Holy Sword back up from the ground.
He could do this. It was entirely possible.
Until now he had fought the Ruler as nothing more than a single hunter, and that was why he had been pushed to the brink. But with this level of power he no longer needed to fight as a hunter. He could draw out even a fragment of the strength he had once wielded as a hero in his prime!
“…From this moment on, things are going to be different. Look forward to it.”
The hero who had once slain even the Demon King in another world was about to be reborn in this very place.