Outing (3)
The mock combat training room Min Chae-won led me to was far larger than the mana measurement chamber.
Roughly half a soccer field. It was indoors, but the ceiling hung maybe fifteen meters up, and the entire vast space sat completely empty.
But damn, it's white.
I scowled for a moment at the eye-searing sea of white. White fluorescent lights, white floor. The only mercy was the lack of gloss. I had no desire to linger here, so I asked Min Chae-won,
"…What do I do?"
"Right here, you'll choose a weapon."
She pressed the white wall a few times, and a section of it slid out to reveal a hidden weapon rack and protective gear.
The weapons on the rack weren't in bad shape. Nowhere near the artifacts I'd scavenged from the dungeon, but a weapon's reliability comes down to durability more than anything.
And at least these were well-maintained, with decently balanced weight.
Better than those rusted-out pieces of junk, at least…
"Can I… take a lot of weapons?"
"Regulations only allow two…. is what it says."
Tch. Waste.
I quietly set the armful of javelins I'd been cradling back in their places.
Javelins are the best throwing weapon a human can use bare-handed, and their power is absurd. If I could have, I'd have stocked fifty-plus and just hurled them at everything — but apparently that method wasn't allowed.
Then this would do.
I took one halberd and one dagger instead.
The Deep One race has an extremely high affinity for the polearm weapon group. The reason, of course, is that the race is modeled on mermaids.
Mermaids mean tridents, and spears mean polearms. Since spears fall under the polearm category, halberds come naturally too. At least, that was how the game set it up.
Helmet on, breastplate, greaves, gauntlets to protect the hands — and that was it.
"Ready."
At that, Min Chae-won gave one last rundown of the mock combat.
"Combat… basically starts at D-class. Each rank generates a monster wave, and once you clear that wave, the rank goes up and a new wave begins."
"Max rank?"
"…S-class. We don't deliberately measure beyond that. The Association's internal facilities can't handle the simulation, and at that point we can't guarantee the examinee's safety."
"Got it."
Min Chae-won bowed at the waist in farewell and left. Immediately after, the room began filling with mana.
I had no intention of holding back. Without magic, I was basically gear-dependent anyway.
By the time you hit Ascension-tier specs, you were fighting in full-enhanced gear — T-shirts, armor, gloves, helmets, boots, cloaks, all of it plastered with enhancement scrolls until everything was maxed out.
Even critical resistances like magic reflection and magic resistance came from equipment: dragonscale armor, mirror shields, that sort of thing.
With no wand, no scrolls, no potions — just empty hands — I wouldn't even be able to twist my body properly. The moment my mana ran dry, I was done.
Of course….
If there was something I wanted, I would kill whatever stood in my way to take it.
Whatever losses I took, whatever I had to abandon — pursuing the absolute peak was the resolve every Ascended was supposed to carry.
"……."
Hah.
What was that? I just got weirdly intense. Is it because this place feels similar to being inside a dungeon?
I shook my head side to side like I was flinging off stray thoughts, then settled the halberd across my shoulder with a solid thunk.
Well. Whatever. Focus on what's in front of me.
D-class Mock Combat Assessment. Commencing.
With the voice from the speakers, the white room transformed into a dense forest, and enemies began materializing before my eyes.
Opening act: three gnolls. Fully armed except for their dog heads, the musclebound mongrels charged straight at me.
"Tch…."
So that was why the room was a blank white box?
I tapped a tree lightly with the halberd shaft. There was resistance — real pushback.
I had no idea how they did it, but… what I was seeing now was best treated as a solid illusion with actual mass.
Just in case, I closed my eyes — and Telepathy still mapped the enemies' positions. Small comfort.
The problem was the dense forest. Using a polearm in here was going to be a pain in the ass.
"Kung! Kung!"
A gnoll with a square shield strapped to its arm and a mace in hand. It charged with the shield forward, trying to pin me down head-on.
Fine. If you're going to trust that shield and come running…!
I planted my feet wide and took a long two-handed grip on the halberd shaft. Twisting my waist so the axe blade faced behind me, I watched for the timing.
And the moment it closed to point-blank range—
"Hup…!"
Front foot pivots. Back foot drives into the ground. The reaction force travels up through the legs into the waist, and at the same time both hands rise from behind the waist up over the shoulders.
The waist, already wound tight, uncoils and releases the elastic energy stored in the muscle. The force point passes through the shoulders into the arms, through the arms into the hands, and finally into the blade of the halberd.
Every scrap of energy in my body condensed at once for the axe blade's massive rotational swing, then exploded outward. The blade carved a half-circle and dropped toward the gnoll's greatshield like a guillotine.
The gnoll reflexively raised its shield, trying to deflect on a diagonal — but—
At the last instant, the halberd spun half a turn around its shaft, and the blade became a hook.
KWAANG!!
The shield caught on the hook was dragged straight down and slammed into the dirt.
Even a musclebound dog-headed gnoll couldn't absorb a full-body downward strike with a single arm.
So its upper body was forced to stare at the ground, and on the rebound of that impact — using the shield's edge where it met the hook as a fulcrum — my body lifted into the air.
I didn't fight the momentum. I released the halberd shaft, flipped acrobatically over the gnoll's head, and drew the dagger from my waist in the same motion.
Seogeok!
The sharp blade punched through the soft flesh of its throat. Instant kill.
"Greatshields. I hate those things…."
Bring gear like that into a low-floor dungeon and every newbie would get wiped out.
I pulled the blade free and looked ahead. The two remaining gnolls had skidded to a halt. They exchanged a look, then circled opposite ways to take me from both flanks, keeping their distance.
This is exactly why intelligent ones are a problem.
One had a spear. The other dual curved blades. Me: one dagger. Either matchup was a nightmare.
If I moved to grab the halberd again, they'd stab in immediately. They wouldn't want to lose the reach advantage.
The silver lining: even a slight left-right shift of the spear snagged on the trees, so its attack lanes were limited.
I walked slowly between the trunks, circling near the halberd — deliberately showing my back to the dual-blade gnoll, the more dangerous of the two.
"Huh… huhhh…?"
In the monitor room, watching the mock combat, Min Chae-won's expression shifted by the second.
Because Yu Sia was far weaker than she'd expected.
The sole returnee who had caused a dimensional inflection beyond even demons. The one projected to be the strongest of all time….
Struggling against three measly gnolls was not what I saw coming…!
Granted, the flow of the fight itself was tilting in Yu Sia's favor.
She deliberately kicked the halberd shaft upward to provoke a gnoll. The instant the spear thrust came, she read the trajectory, shoved the shaft aside, and wedged it into a gap between trees.
Then, against the curved-blade attack from behind, she ducked behind a trunk and, in the same motion, thrust the spear shaft she'd seized forward — separating the spearhead from its shaft entirely.
Aggressive use of the surrounding terrain. Slowly eroding the opponent's advantages. Taking calculated risks to seize control of the fight.
None of that was bad. It was efficient, stable, and occasionally produced a devastating surprise strike. The results themselves were clearly excellent.
But.
But….
Wasn't this how a weaker fighter fought?
…Why?
Min Chae-won couldn't understand it. Had the measurement results been wrong? Had she overreacted?
Or did Yu Sia possess overwhelming power and simply choose to fight this way on purpose?
Questions piled on questions even as the battle continued.
The dagger Yu Sia threw buried itself between the eyes of the gnoll still reeling from the loss of its spearhead.
The dual-blade gnoll, thinking she was unarmed, scrambled after her — but Yu Sia circled counterclockwise around a tree, cutting off its left-hand attack, then used the spearhead she'd secretly scooped off the ground to slash the tendons of its right wrist in a sudden strike.
The moment the severed tendons made it drop one curved blade, she seized the remaining arm, took it down in a wrestling throw, mounted its chest, and stabbed the spearhead relentlessly into the gaps in its armor until it died.
No aura to cleave armor and body in a single stroke. No mana-enhanced physique to crush it with raw force….
A primitive, savage fight.
For the first time, Min Chae-won found herself wondering what kind of life Yu Sia had lived before her return.
…I'll save that for after the license is issued. There'll be a chance then.
Right. Team Leader Park Min-cheol had said it himself — you needed to know a returnee's Stake.
Sitting atop the gnoll corpses, barely having rested at all, Yu Sia pressed for the next rank of mock combat.
"…Next."
"Ah, yes…. Just a moment, please! I'll start it right away!"
And so, for now, Min Chae-won focused on supporting Yu Sia.