Dungeon No. 353: Feathered Serpent Temple (3)
Go Hyeon-woo sprang forward in an instant.
- Boom!
A heavy stone pillar came crashing down a heartbeat later.
Fatty had thrown his arms around the pillar he'd just slammed into the ground and was barreling in headfirst, driving it before him like a battering ram.
- Screeeeech,
The floor tore itself apart beneath the grinding stone.
Getting caught in that charge would be no different from being run over by a freight train. And yet Go Hyeon-woo did not step out of Fatty's path. He stood his ground and faced him head-on.
Then, when the distance had narrowed enough, he coiled a wisp of wind around his blade and lashed out at the pillar.
- Thwack,
It accomplished precisely nothing.
Needless to say, the charge didn't slow by so much as an inch. At the very last instant, Go Hyeon-woo took one wide step to the side and slipped out of the path of raw, battering force.
"Hm......"
- Shaaaak!
A sharp shriek of split air rang in the ears of the brooding swordsman. In the next breath, he recognized the source — poison needles, spat from Skinny's blowpipe.
He shifted his footwork at once, weaving aside from some of them and batting the rest out of the air with a sweep of his ritual dagger. As he pressed swiftly forward, footwork never stilling—
- Boom!
Fatty's stone pillar came down hard behind him. An all-or-nothing attack that had thrown his whole body into it; there was bound to be a gap in his guard now.
Go Hyeon-woo spun to counterattack — then recalled his blade and drew back instead.
- Shaaak!
Because Skinny was already covering him with a fresh volley of needles.
From somewhere drifted a snickering laugh.
"Heeheehee......"
In the meantime, Fatty had recovered his stance. He hoisted the stone pillar high and swung it in a sweeping arc.
Go Hyeon-woo tilted this way and that to evade the pillar, and once again coiled a thread of wind about his blade and struck at it.
- Thwack,
This time, Fatty's movement wavered — minutely. It was the sort of deviation so slight that most eyes would never have caught it at all.
"Mmm......"
Go Hyeon-woo kept up a low, thoughtful hum, as though lost deep in some problem, doing nothing but deflecting and evading the onslaught. He swung his sword from time to time, but it amounted to nothing more than playfully tapping the pillar away.
- Boom!
Once more Go Hyeon-woo opened distance from the descending pillar. But this time Fatty did not press in with a body charge as before. Instead he stopped right where he stood and asked in that guttural, halting voice:
"Why...... not. Fight. Proper."
- Tatatatang!
All the while, Skinny's poison needles kept streaming in. It would be nice if I were given even a moment to hold a conversation.
Swatting the needles aside, Go Hyeon-woo answered.
"It was no idle effort, I assure you. But the technique is unfamiliar to me still, and it seems it wanted a little practice."
Part of why he had yet to mount anything resembling a real counterattack was that the two sub-priests' combined assault was finely coordinated, leaving barely a hair's breadth of opening. But part of it, too, was that he had wanted to test the technique he had newly refined.
A technique polished through what he had absorbed from the Mentoring sessions, and through the large and small insights gleaned from gazing upon the Bodhidharma Statue. Coiling wind around his blade and tapping at the pillar had been his attempt to get a feel for it.
Fatty asked again.
"Practice. How long. Will take."
"It ends this very moment. I am ready now."
Fatty gave a wordless nod. Then the muscles of both his arms swelled as though they would split, he heaved the stone pillar high overhead, and swung it down with his entire body behind it.
- WHOOOONG!
A whoosh of displaced air that seemed to tear the space itself. The pillar filled his vision from edge to edge in a blur of gray.
"......."
Even so, Go Hyeon-woo's eyes remained calm and settled.
With each step of his footwork — one, then two — the pillar shaved past him by the narrowest of margins. And then, in a single flash of movement, he gathered his momentum.
A gentle breeze circled the space around him once before wrapping itself around the blade. He extended it forward just as it was.
The descending pillar seemed to freeze dead, a hand's breadth from the blade.
The next instant, Go Hyeon-woo moved his sword sideways as though pushing it — and the pillar swung sideways along with it.
To those watching, it looked as though the stone pillar were simply sliding aside along the arc of Go Hyeon-woo's lightly stirring blade.
Fatty wielded terrifying, monstrous strength — but when a boulder of that weight suddenly flew off toward some unintended direction, there was no helping being dragged by its own momentum. His motion swelled huge, and with it an enormous opening was exposed.
An opening so wide that Go Hyeon-woo could deflect the needles, link into his next technique, and still act long before Fatty could respond.
A gale rides the blade — one strike, blinding as a flash flood.
- Whisper,
A single streak of light traced across Fatty's throat.
A thin red line was carved into his neck, and his massive frame staggered wildly. Before he could fall, he wrung out the last of his strength to steady himself, looked Go Hyeon-woo straight in the eye, and spoke.
"You...... great...... warrior......"
Then, eyes still wide open, he toppled sideways to the floor.
The masterless stone pillar rolled away with a heavy, mournful rumble.
"Your assault was magnificent as well. A fine contest."
Go Hyeon-woo offered Fatty this final courtesy — and then a ritual dagger planted itself upright in the ground beside him.
Pop-pop! A couple of poison needles smacked against his blade, and his brow creased slightly.
"Battling for your lives or no, was that truly necessary?"
Could he not be granted even a moment to pay his respects to a worthy opponent?
Go Hyeon-woo launched into his footwork toward the barbarians at once.
Spears and poison needles came flying mixed together, but the moment they touched the sword qi he wielded, they crumbled uselessly in mid-flight.
- Whisper! Whisper!
Like a lone wolf diving into the heart of two flocks, Go Hyeon-woo plunged into the midst of the barbarians and cut loose without mercy. He churned through the crowd of bodies — and then his gaze locked onto a single point. Because he had caught it: a gaunt, wiry shadow moving fast.
There you are.
Go Hyeon-woo chased down Skinny, cleaving through everything that barred his path in a single stroke. Skinny fled with nimble, fleet-footed grace, but with Go Hyeon-woo devoting himself to that one pursuit alone, there was nothing he could do.
Now that Fatty — the sturdy wall that had shielded him — was down, even less so.
The distance between them collapsed in an instant, and Go Hyeon-woo closed in right behind Skinny's back, batting aside the desperately fired poison needles with ease.
"Heeheeek!"
"Running to the very end — have you no shame, sir?"
- Thwack!
The blade punched through Skinny's chest and out the other side.
Go Hyeon-woo swung his sword sharply against the floor once, flinging the blood from the blade. And then he happened to notice a small chest glinting beside the fallen Skinny.
Brother Kim will be pleased.
Tucking the box into his coat, Go Hyeon-woo surveyed his surroundings at leisure — but the remaining barbarians merely shuffled in place, not daring to rush him.
Come to think of it, their momentum had broken the moment both sub-priests had fallen in the last assault as well.
A brief lull. But it did not last long.
- Ssssssss......
At the strange sound, Go Hyeon-woo lifted his gaze upward. The golden barrier that had shrouded the temple was melting away, dissolving into nothing.
He didn't know what had happened inside, but a well-maintained barrier releasing like that meant, nine times out of ten, that something had gone wrong with the High Priest's person. Glad tidings for Go Hyeon-woo — dire news for the barbarians.
"Protect the High Priest!"
"Ignore that one — the High Priest comes first!"
The barbarians surged toward the temple interior like a flood tide — and a sword wind soft as a passing breeze swept through them.
- Krrrshhh,
Then it tore apart everything within its reach, sparing nothing.
Go Hyeon-woo stood calmly before the carnage he had created.
"None shall pass — not until I am felled first."
"That's finally over with."
"Kh...... kh......"
The High Priest leaned against the wall and slid slowly down to the floor. Deep in his chest was buried a sword, its teeth long since worn away to nothing.
The central chamber now held only me, the High Priest, and the shriveled corpses.
With the living sacrifices to absorb life force all used up, the ritual's effects had withered rapidly — and at last, damage was getting through to the High Priest who had boasted such formidable endurance. He looked to have nothing left to resist with, yet I kept my distance and simply watched him from afar.
Sensing my hesitation, he asked:
"Why do you not finish it?"
"I'd like to, believe me. Something just feels... off about this."
"......."
Certain bosses carry a final desperate gambit pattern right before death, and this Feathered Serpent High Priest was a textbook example. Playing defenseless like that while lying in wait for an opening — that was exactly what he was doing.
I walked across the central chamber and picked up a wooden spear dropped by one of the barbarians. I flung it, and it sailed through the air and thunked deep into the floor beside him.
The High Priest's face twisted.
"Khh, you wretch......!"
"Quit dragging it out. If you've got something stashed away, out with it — chop chop. We've still a long road ahead."
"Gruuuuuh......"
"I'm throwing another one."
"FINE—! FINE—!"
— FLASH—!
The High Priest's whole body blazed with light and shot upright from where he sat. Not of his own will — it looked for all the world as though someone had seized him and hauled him up.
His once-imposing frame deflated like a popped balloon in the blink of an eye, and his plump, springy skin shriveled into wrinkles. Before the High Priest — now gaunt to the point of bone showing through — a supremely compressed sphere of golden light materialized.
Its appearance resembled the sphere he had been spamming at me moments ago, but its power would be the difference between heaven and earth. Pouring every last ounce of himself into manifesting this final spell, the High Priest slumped back down to the floor.
And the reason he'd left himself a single thread of life? Even if he was going to die, he wanted to watch me fall first. What a truly nasty piece of work.
"As you...... wished...... it is done. Now, let's see......"
You try to watch me die, that is.
- Weeeeeng,
The golden sphere came flying straight at me.
The speed of its flight itself was nothing remarkable. But when I casually sidestepped, the sphere didn't simply sail past — it stopped dead, banked, and came hurtling at me again.
- Weeeeeng,
I dodged again, and again it curved around and gave chase. A spell with an honest-to-goodness homing function on it.
- Vmm, vmm, vmm,
Worse, it gained a little speed with every turn it made.
I had been holding an overwhelming speed advantage through Thief's Step and Overheat, but the orb I'd been toying with at first was catching up to me with growing ease.
"Heh heh heh......"
And as I ran for my life like this, the mummified High Priest let out a low chuckle. From his perspective, I must have looked like I was thrashing about in sheer desperation. No wonder he was enjoying himself.
And no matter what I did, a future of taking a direct hit from that sphere waited at the end of it — which would only sweeten his pleasure further.
Meanwhile, my feet worked fast as I thought.
It's built up quite a lot of speed now.
How many times had it banked? The golden sphere was on the verge of looking less like a sphere and more like a golden beam of light.
- Vmvmvmvm,
At this point even my maximum speed could barely shake it. That felt like enough — so I stopped.
And stood with my back to the wall.
Deciding I had finally given up, the High Priest's wrinkled face split into a grin of pure delight.
"It ends...... NOW!"
- Weeeeng—
In the very instant the golden sphere moved to engulf me, I extended my hand lightly forward.
Distortion has been activated.
Cooldown: 23:59:59
The trajectory of the incoming sphere warped violently, buckling in mid-air — and, unable to withstand its own speed, it smashed itself straight into the wall.
The High Priest's eyes bulged as though they would tear open.