The Crack in the Sky
Bang!
The guy had blocked even my dagger with ease, so I couldn't afford to let my guard down.
I leapt straight up from where I stood.
I can't fly, but a jump like this at the right moment—I can reach him.
I aimed a single powerful blow at the one blocking my fragments.
My spirits soared.
And that alone is reason enough to strike.
This time I clenched not a dagger, but my fist.
Blades probably wouldn't work, just like before. If that was the case, an attack using my own body would land better here than any blade.
"Hah."
I channeled the shadow attribute into my mana.
Having already used Shadow Pressure, pushing further would strain my body.
This is the last arbitrary attribute shift.
I wouldn't be able to use it freely again until I leveled up. Still, this one strike felt like enough for now.
Thud!
Until a moment ago, that is.
What just hit me?
I'd been struck, and I didn't even know by what.
I had been driving my fist toward that handsome man, and it had clearly been a hair's breadth from connecting. But just before it landed, I suddenly plummeted to the ground.
The momentum was there.
I could have gone even higher. Yet I had been driven straight down into the floor, like a vertical drop.
The opponent was a Taoist, so nothing strange should have surprised me—but.
I didn't feel any Taoist energy just now.
The organ that sensed Taoist energy had only recently awakened. Which meant it was still a raw, hypersensitive sense.
And even that sense caught nothing. No white threads.
As if there were none at all.
Is he concealing his Taoist energy?
Up until moments ago, the white lines had been perfectly visible. But ever since I crossed into this terrain, they had vanished.
Complete concealment of power?
Even I couldn't do that with Arrogance. Taoist energy might be different, of course, but every power I'd encountered so far had limits to its concealment.
Concealment had boundaries. It had cracks. Find the crack, and you could peel the concealment away.
There's no crack here.
I had found the crack in Arrogance and stripped its hiding place bare. But from this man, I could see no such opening at all.
"So I can't see your Taoist energy?"
Then the handsome man spoke again. And with a smile, he answered my question.
"This is the space of the relic. What I do with my own Taoist energy is my business."
That single line told me everything.
So he's hiding it.
Invisible Taoist energy was a bigger problem than I'd thought. Every technique requires preparation beforehand.
Instant activation? That's impossible in reality.
Even I couldn't do it with Arrogance.
Even in 0.1 seconds, every action carries some minute preparatory motion. When casting a skill, you speak its name and your mana moves. When using a technique, mana and body follow in its wake.
But now I can't read any of his preparation at all.
If I knew more about Taoist arts, there might be another way. But all I knew was the fuel called Taoist energy. That was the entirety of my knowledge.
Losing my information stings more than I expected.
In any battle, information is a critical weapon. And I'd just been stripped of mine.
I guess I have no choice but to batter him with my body….
The reason I could make that decision was that the handsome man only reacted to my attacks—he never struck first. As long as he didn't take the initiative, I could challenge him again and again.
Let's keep going until it stops being fun for him.
I immediately used my footwork and leapt.
Roughly a day had passed since I began the second trial.
There were no clocks, and with all the fighting and falling, I'd long since lost track of time. I was only substituting meal counts for a sense of it.
If I eat this one, that makes two days?
The sun simply hung there forever—a place practically designed to make you lose track of time.
Fighting that perpetually aloof handsome man had taught me a few things.
First, he never moved from that spot. He'd been pushed back slightly by my attacks, but always returned to the same position at once.
Some kind of restriction, maybe.
Second, he had no other weapons. No matter how I attacked, nothing else appeared. He blocked everything with his fan and bare hands alone.
No hidden armaments, that's certain.
Otherwise there'd be no reason to insist on keeping his other hand empty.
Third, his defensive patterns were monotonous. Whether by choice or by necessity, the man relied only on defense with fan and hand—or on dropping me straight down.
Or maybe he just doesn't need to show me more yet….
I couldn't call him arrogant at this point. His skill was real. If I were a little—a lot—stronger, I might manage to exchange a few blows. He might be as strong as I was when I fought Arrogance.
Well, if he won't move from there, I can run all kinds of experiments.
Until now I'd attacked head-on with brute simplicity. From here on, I would test everything.
Thick mist welled up around me with each step.
The first test: whether illusions worked on him. If they didn't, I'd have to exclude any footwork carrying the Illusion element entirely.
No reaction so far….
Unfortunately, my mist didn't reach far enough to touch the man floating in the sky. Even when illusions were on display, I was the anchor—the mist had to stay fixed around me.
Let's test it….
I swapped the broken hilt for a throwing dagger and hurled it at the man.
Clang!
But it was blocked far too naturally.
It was like he already knew the attack was coming.
Then there was a real chance the illusions weren't working. And if there was even the smallest chance of that, I was better off not using the ability.
I boldly cut off my footwork.
"Done with your parlor tricks?"
"Not even close."
He had evaded it before by some means—but now, rooted to that spot, he couldn't.
The moment Shadow Pressure activated, the air around the man began to tremble.
He's resisting it.
The way he strained against it told me there was no dodging it.
Keeping the pressure on.
I couldn't celebrate just because he was resisting. My goal was his acknowledgment—and for that, I had to land a clean hit.
For someone planning a one-hit knockout, I've been pretty tame.
Shadow spikes erupted with my steps, hunting the man suspended in the air.
Then the man spoke, unhurried.
"This one's worth a look."
He spread the fan in his hand and swept it once. The Shadow Pressure pinning him down, the spikes hunting him—all of it vanished.
"Dispel?"
No. It was nothing like that.
Dispel analyzes and interprets an activated anomaly, then unravels it. What the man had just done was closer to making it never have existed at all.
Regression….
If I had to compare that phenomenon to anything, it would be regression.
"Now then, amuse me once more."
An utterly arrogant remark. Yet it didn't feel wrong. He was strong enough for it, and he had the power to be arrogant.
Losing again, am I?
In that instant, my mind snapped awake.
Since when had I been fighting with defeat already in mind? I had challenged losing battles and overcome them. I had fought on with a stubbornness some would call foolish. This thought didn't belong to me.
Shards of Break tore through the air toward the man.
And I laid my heart bare—my unconscious, fully exposed.
It's trembling.
I was afraid of that supremely arrogant man's martial prowess. Of course I was. Fear is human instinct; feeling it before a stronger enemy is only natural.
But the fear I felt now was somehow different.
This is… fear of the challenge itself?
Impossible. I had always fought my way through deadly straits, and I always would. Yet my body and heart were refusing to fight this overwhelming power.
People look at the strong ones they've seen and call them heaven. And no one thinks of challenging heaven.
I had thought I was different. A human who would challenge even heaven. I had thought that was me.
Turns out I wasn't so special after all.
Deep in my unconscious, the belief that heaven could not be beaten had taken root. I spouted pretty words, but somewhere instinctive, I'd believed it impossible.
And that's exactly why it can't be allowed.
It couldn't stand. The road ahead was long. The Seven Fiends, the angels—perhaps even gods. To protect what surrounded me, there were still so many strong ones I had to fight.
Vmmm!
I activated the mana of my lower dantian and the Taixu Heart Method. Mana began racing through my entire body, and my trembling hands gradually steadied.
I have to move forward regardless.
Carrying this fear forever, I'd never take another step. I'll erase it here—by earning that man's acknowledgment.
"Oh? Your spirit's changed."
My body still refused to fight. But my hands no longer shook like before. I could move. Ten times, a hundred times. If it took a thousand, I'd challenge a thousand.
And I will win.
I steeled my heart.
With each step I launched myself at the man, dagger sweeping.
Clang!
Perhaps because my heart was settled, the force behind the dagger was different from before. A single shift in resolve was changing my physical capabilities.
"You're a completely different person from before."
The man spoke as he deflected my attack. Just as he said, there might be a real gulf between the me of moments ago and the me of now.
"Before, it was as if an empty shell were attacking with nothing inside."
Clang!
"Now there's a little substance to you."
Clang!
"But… still not enough."
Bang!
With those words, the man sent me plummeting straight down. But unlike before, I twisted my body and blunted the impact.
My body feels lighter.
As I adapted to my stats and suppressed my unconscious, controlling my body grew easier. Even my movements were visibly different from before.
If I adapt just a little more….
It might have been my imagination, but a certainty was rising in me that I could do it.
I'm going to forge a new, higher footwork.