Week 7 Mentoring, PvP (12)
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[Start!]
The instant the match began, Gwak Ji-cheol swept his staff through the air. A broad dish of packed earth took shape and settled onto the ground, and the moment he stepped aboard, two hands of stone rose up from the soil to bear him aloft and carry him swiftly along. Riding the swell like a surfer, he shot straight up to the top of the terraced cliff.
"Found it."
He had barely glanced around before his eyes flashed. Apparently he'd already pinpointed the crystal's location — the small fortunes really did favor him. Back on his earthen dish, he sped off without delay.
Il Gong, by contrast, was moving at little more than a stroll. His manner was so unhurried you'd think he'd come out for a walk rather than a PvP match. Every so often Gwak Ji-cheol threw a puzzled glance toward his opponent's side of the field; it seemed the fact that he hadn't yet so much as glimpsed Il Gong's bald head was nagging at him. But now was the time to focus on his own task. He retrieved the crystal and headed straight for the Sanctuary.
- Vreeee—
The moment Sanctuary and crystal were linked by a thick beam of light, Il Gong's gaze — wandering along at its own pace until then — turned toward it. After all, at the far end of that beam stood Gwak Ji-cheol. Only then did the monk begin to pick up his pace, though still without any visible urgency.
By the time Il Gong finally came face-to-face with Gwak Ji-cheol, the crystal's charge was already well underway. He pressed his palms together and smiled gently.
"This humble monk arrived a little late."
"A little? You're very late."
Gwak Ji-cheol answered with an easy laugh of his own. If anything, he was nothing but grateful that Il Gong had taken his time. Thanks to the delay, his preparations were complete. The whole area around him had already been fortified with every earth-attribute spell he knew: stone walls raised and reinforced layer upon layer ringing his position, two golems, and an Earth Cluster besides.
Il Gong kept that gentle smile in place as he slowly took it all in, then offered Gwak Ji-cheol a word.
"Then I shall make my move."
"Come at me, as much as you like."
As Il Gong drew up his power, his entire body took on a faint golden glow, while Gwak Ji-cheol's Earth Cluster gradually spun faster and faster.
- Pap-pap-pap!
Il Gong flicked out three golden palm-force strikes in rapid succession, but one of the stone walls rose on its own as though alive, took the blows in his stead, and burst apart. A fresh wall surged up from the ground and filled the gap in an instant.
- Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Bullets of dirt and gravel spat from the Earth Cluster. Il Gong met them with palms of both hands, but the dirt rounds outnumbered his strikes, and the leftovers peppered his body.
- WHUMM!
On top of that, the two golems swung their massive fists. The swings were slow and simple, easy enough to dodge — but take even one, and you'd be dead. So even Il Gong couldn't quite afford to ignore them outright.
- Thud-thud-thud-thud!
With his attention split, even more dirt rounds found their mark, and the damage kept piling up.
It was a style of fighting that couldn't have been more Gwak Ji-cheol: hunkered down inside a fortress raised in perfect safety, raining one-sided attacks through his golems and Earth Cluster.
"..."
But Dang Gyu-young, watching the match, didn't look pleased — and Song Cheon-hye and Hong Yeon-hwa's expressions weren't much brighter.
"This doesn't look good."
"It's gotten a lot harder for him."
To be sure, Gwak Ji-cheol's side was holding a one-sided advantage. One-sided, yes — but not overwhelming. If a mage who had prepared more than amply, to the point of excess, could only secure a slight edge over his opponent, that was nothing to celebrate.
Case in point: even after a long, dense barrage of dirt rounds, Il Gong's health had yet to drop a full ten percent. The faint golden aura rising from his body was keeping the damage to a minimum. It was the Devil-Conquering Buddha Shadow Diamond Qi — a Protective Astral Qi technique renowned for its sturdiness.
'Even my Hummingbird got stopped cold by that.'
Granted, the copy I'd taken from Song Cheon-hye carried only E-rank power, but it had been blocked perfectly, without so much as a sliver of paralysis slipping through. A textbook demonstration of just how strong that Protective Astral Qi was.
- Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Gwak Ji-cheol must have realized his damage wasn't landing either, because anxiety crept across his face. But he seemed to have no real means of attack left; at best he could mix in a few earth spells to keep Il Gong at bay.
"..."
Il Gong, meanwhile, still wore that placid expression as he batted away incoming dirt rounds and slipped past the golems' punches. And if the card he was about to draw happened to be the perfect answer to this situation—
'Then that kid is simply going to get blown apart.'
There was no way this wasn't a crisis. Sure enough, Il Gong — who had been weaving between the two golems' onslaught — abruptly spun around. He thrust one hand straight out, pushing forward, and for an instant the hand seemed to swell to two or three times its size—
Great Palm Imprint — Mahamudra
- KRA-KOOM!
The upper half of one golem simply flew off. What remained collapsed in a heap. Then Il Gong nimbly stepped forward with his footwork, shook off the second golem's attack, and drove a single fist into the layers of standing stone walls.
At the sight, Gwak Ji-cheol let out a scornful laugh — one that did not last long.
- WHUMP!
"Ghk—?"
Gwak Ji-cheol's waist folded in half. It was the reaction of a man who'd just taken a fist full-force to the gut.
- WHUMP!
"Ghak."
Another heavy impact rang out, and Gwak Ji-cheol clutched his stomach.
His eyes brimmed with pain and disbelief. He'd raised the walls this thick, this many layers deep — so how, by what trick, had the damage crossed them to reach him?
Meanwhile, I grasped the whole sequence of events at a glance and cocked my head.
'Baldy really has learned his craft properly.'
The art of Striking the Ox Across the Mountain. Just as the saying goes — strike the mountain, fell the ox — it is a martial technique that strikes an object directly in front of you and transmits the damage to a target far beyond. It was a decidedly advanced art, and his mastery of it still looked rough, but for beating down one powerless mage, it was more than sufficient. However many walls he stacked, they offered no protection at all — which made Il Gong the perfect counter to Gwak Ji-cheol.
- WHUMP!
"Hurk."
Gwak Ji-cheol's health was dripping away before everyone's eyes. In effect it had become a slugfest — and in a slugfest, he had no chance of winning whatsoever.
His best option now was to fill the remaining charge by any means necessary. Gwak Ji-cheol reached that judgment in a flash and swept his hand in a wide arc. The stone walls, the golems, the Earth Cluster — all of them shattered at once and crashed down on Il Gong like a tidal wave.
- KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA—!
Having bought himself time that way, he leapt onto his earthen disc and glided away.
Almost there. He only had to hold out a little longer. So Gwak Ji-cheol thought, trying to steady his heart — until he had no choice but to snap his eyes wide in shock.
"What the— you're kidding me!"
Because there was Il Gong, right beside him, with no telling when he'd caught up. There hadn't been so much as a whisper of pursuit, which was why he'd noticed so late. Even now that he had, Il Gong's presence was strangely hard to sense — and when Gwak Ji-cheol's gaze dropped, he saw himself speeding along atop his earthen dish while Il Gong was simply standing upright on two legs. In other words, Il Gong's feet weren't moving at all, yet the two of them were traveling at the same speed.
It was an application of the Immovable Wisdom King's Step, though Gwak Ji-cheol seemed to have no way of knowing that. To the man, who was a hair's breadth from tearing his hair out, Il Gong offered a suggestion, gentle as a lesson:
"Patron, why not stop here?"
Naturally, Gwak Ji-cheol was in no mood to listen, and Il Gong — as though left with no other choice — let out a wry smile and extended one hand forward.
- WHUMP!
Gwak Ji-cheol was knocked clean off his earthen dish and went rolling across the ground. He swung a fist of compacted earth at the approaching Il Gong, but it was casually blocked, and he was sent sprawling once more.
- WHUMP!
As Gwak Ji-cheol struggled upright, Il Gong approached at an unhurried pace and made his offer once more in that same gentle tone.
"Will you hand over the crystal?"
"Heh, heheh... I'd rather..."
A low laugh spilled from Gwak Ji-cheol. The emerald on his staff drank deep of a fierce green light, and the whole area trembled as though an earthquake had struck. Then he slammed one foot down hard into the earth—
"I'd rather... tell you to forfeit—!"
- KWAAAAAA—!
The ground heaved over, and a tidal wave of dirt, gravel, and boulders bore down on Il Gong. He watched it come the entire time with eyes that never lost their calm — then gathered his strength. The golden energy of his whole body converged into the palm he held out before him, and his hand looked two, three times its size.
Devil-Conquering Buddha Shadow Great Diamond Palm Imprint
A colossal golden palm-force erupted forward.
- WHUUUUNG—!
The wave of earth collapsed in on itself, and Gwak Ji-cheol's body was driven far, far backward. Glaring at his opponent with seething fury, he barely managed to stay upright — then his consciousness blurred and he crumpled to the ground. Il Gong hurried over and caught him.
"That was a fine match."
"I'm sorry."
The moment Gwak Ji-cheol came to, he bowed his head first thing. He'd been the one to ask to be sent out, only to return having lost — he couldn't very well face Dang Gyu-young, who had trusted him with the spot.
Dang Gyu-young looked down at the crown of his head with an even gaze, then threw out her questions.
"You did your best?"
"Yes."
"Tried every means you had?"
"Yes."
"Fight him again, you'd still lose?"
"...Yes."
"Then that's that."
"...?"
Gwak Ji-cheol lifted his head, his eyes asking, You're not even angry? — and Dang Gyu-young answered.
"You did your best — what is anyone going to say to that? Skill you lack, you simply build from here. Go over the match later; for now, go get some rest."
"...Yes."
A little moved, Gwak Ji-cheol relocated to one corner of the room, and Dang Gyu-young came up to me and slipped in a whisper.
"Kim Ho, be honest with me. You were hoping for a 3-to-0 bus ride, weren't you."
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping at all."
If Gwak Ji-cheol won, I'd pocket the rewards without lifting a finger — naturally I'd have liked that. But once the match actually got underway, Il Gong's skill had climbed far more steeply than before, and I'd given up on that bus ride long since. As things stood, the score was 1–1, with two matches remaining.
"Looks like you'll have no choice but to show some skill yourself."
"I suppose so. By the way — setting Bukgung Han-seol aside, the last one still hasn't been revealed, has it?"
"Beats me. I'll have to ask."
Dang Gyu-young angled her messenger screen toward me. To communicate with that side, she'd had no choice but to unblock Kim Gap-du on her messenger.
"Tempted to block him again..."
Dang Gyu-young clenched her fist as though she wanted to take a swing at the frog, muttering under her breath. I was in complete, utter agreement with that muttering. So that senior was that kind of character.
In any case, one thing had now been settled beyond doubt, and Dang Gyu-young asked:
"Next up is Bukgung Han-seol, locked in. Which of you two wants to go?"
"..."
Hong Yeon-hwa cautiously searched my eyes. She looked for all the world like she was seeking permission. Why she'd defer to me with her mentor standing right beside her, I couldn't say — but from where I stood, drawing Bukgung Han-seol did seem the better option. The 900-point-tier fighter slated for the fourth match might well be a poor matchup for her.
I sent back a small nod of assent; Hong Yeon-hwa nodded in return, then raised her hand.
"I'll go."
"Good call. Want me to request a handicap?"
The 900-point tier had one more fighter on Kim Gap-du's team, so we had agreed in advance to attach a handicap to a single match. But Hong Yeon-hwa slowly shook her head.
"I'm fine. I don't need anything like that."
Confidence brimmed from Hong Yeon-hwa's voice.