Study With Peace of Mind
In the distant past, after losing the Righteous-Demonic War, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had scattered to every corner of the land, dreaming of rebuilding itself from the shadows.
But that dream had ultimately come to nothing, and the name of the Demonic Cult seemed all but destined to fade into the back pages of history.
That was when a new center of gravity emerged: the Blood Cult.
With the overwhelming martial might of the Blood Cult Master of that era, every surviving faction of the demonic path was absorbed, and as the years rolled on, the Blood Cult of today had established itself as one of the most feared armed forces in the world of Dragon Slayer Academy.
And this man was an elder of that very Blood Cult.
Among the elders, no less—one of the stronger ones, in terms of raw ability.
To a master of that caliber, there was no way the likes of Slick and Dang Gyu-young should ever have registered on his senses.
The Blood Cult Elder regarded the two of them with languid eyes.
"So that was what felt off. A trap, was it? And yet you dug it with such flimsy diggers. Surely you aren't short of talent."
"Hey, watch your mouth— I mean, watch your mouth, sir!"
- Whirrrrrr—!
Slick unleashed the skill he had been holding in reserve.
For the first ambush he had used a restraint device, in case he happened to snare the wrong person by some fluke; what he was unleashing now was his trump card, everything he had, all at once.
Ten vivid threads shot toward the Blood Cult Elder.
Each one was charged with razor-sharp energy—touch one, and you wouldn't be tied up so much as sliced clean apart.
Dang Gyu-young likewise came attacking with every ounce of power she possessed.
Her shadows spread out in an instant, laying a square garden plot across the whole area.
Shadow butterflies fluttered above the plot, and dozens of massive shadow hands burst up from the ground, each gripping a different shadow weapon as they surged forward.
- KWAAAAAH—!
"..."
The Blood Cult Elder simply watched it all with detached eyes.
The instant before his body would be diced by the ten threads and skewered by the shadow weapons—
the blood-red astral energy in the shape of Asura moved for the first time.
First, two of its six arms clenched their fists and slammed them hard into the ground.
- THOOM!
A crimson shockwave burst outward from the Blood Cult Elder, scattering every shadow within its range.
Two more of the astral arms shot out straight and knife-hand chopped the incoming threads.
All ten threads snapped limply, strand by strand.
The remaining two arms each hurled a palm-force blast at Dang Gyu-young and Slick.
- BAM!
"...!"
"...!"
The two who took the palm force head-on were launched away at terrifying speed and slammed into the wall.
Such was the overwhelming majesty of an A-Rank. Even after unleashing the very best techniques they possessed, they had been stopped cold—and counterattacked on top of it.
The Blood Cult Elder spoke.
"There, you see? If that is not pathetic, then what is—"
"What about this, then?"
- Shk—
The Blood Cult Elder's eyes bulged, and he twisted his head around over his shoulder.
"You...!"
"This one turned out rather nice, didn't it?"
I withdrew the index finger I had driven into his shoulder blade.
My finger was frozen rock-solid, holding a jade-blue glow like polished gemstone.
The moment Dang Gyu-young and Slick unleashed their trump cards—
that instant was the first and last chance to strike at the Blood Cult Elder's opening.
And so I had already used Overheat to crank my physical abilities to their limit,
and Amplification to raise Hyneum Jade Demon Finger to A-Rank.
Then, timing the exact instant of their clash, I had driven my finger home.
- Fwip!
The Blood Cult Elder came chasing after me the moment I kicked off the ground and retreated.
His speed exceeded even the velocity I had pumped up with Overheat.
He hadn't become a Blood Cult elder for nothing.
All six astral arms swung solely at me.
I dodged the swinging fists, slid the chopping knife-hands aside with my rain cloud, and dodged the incoming palm force as well.
But in the end, one astral fist pierced through my abdomen at tremendous speed—
Distortion has activated.
Cooldown: 23:59:59
—and right before it could finish me off, my body warped and bent clean out of its path.
The Blood Cult Elder was stunned yet again.
"Wh-what the devil!"
In the meantime, I widened the distance further and returned to the rooftop where I had started out.
"Whew. Nearly died there."
If not for Distortion, the moment that astral energy connected, I would have boarded the express train straight to the afterlife.
I had invested heavily in speed, and I liked to think I had a veteran gamer's control, but it still wasn't enough to overcome the raw spec gap against an A-Rank.
And now that Distortion had gone on cooldown, all I could do was sit out the fight and watch.
'Still, I'd done my part.'
Strangely enough, the Blood Cult Elder did not come after me again—or, to put it precisely, he couldn't.
Because—
'Looks like it's finally taking effect.'
- Krrrk-crackle—
A bone-chilling sound rang out from the Blood Cult Elder's body.
Wasn't that exactly the kind of noise something makes when it freezes over at tremendous speed?
By now, a ferocious battle had to be raging inside his body.
A battle between the frost qi I had infiltrated with Hyneum Jade Demon Finger and the internal energy he possessed.
- Krrrk-crackle-crackle—
"Grrrraaagh...!"
The Blood Cult Elder glared at me like he wanted to kill me, but his movements kept stuttering and cutting out, leaving him unable to do anything either way.
Before long, he seemed to change his mind: he planted himself where he stood and gathered his focus.
Three of the six astral arms went limp and melted away, and his halting movements smoothed out considerably.
He appeared to have diverted part of his internal energy into walling off the frost.
Then he spun around and kicked off the ground—apparently intending to get clear of the area first, then purge the frost completely by circulating his energy.
'But would he really be allowed to?'
- Whirrrr—!
Vivid threads wove a spiderweb across his path, cutting him off.
The Blood Cult Elder slashed out with knife-hands and severed the threads just as before, but the shadow butterflies that came flying in behind them exploded right beside him.
- BAM-BAM!
The Blood Cult Elder landed back where he had started.
His eyes burned with fury.
"You damned punks...!"
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"Why not play with us pathetic punks a little longer?"
Blocking his way, of course, were Dang Gyu-young and Slick.
Both of them were in terrible shape after taking that astral force head-on, but they had dragged themselves desperately upright and returned to the fight.
'Now it should at least be a fair fight.'
The Blood Cult Elder's astral arms had dwindled to three, cutting the power of the Asura Blood Demonic Art in half.
Which meant they wouldn't be overwhelmed as one-sidedly as before.
And besides—
'Reinforcements have arrived.'
- Rumble-rumble—
A wooden door shot up out of the ground a short distance away.
The one who burst through it at a run was not Gwak Seung-jae, but a woman with long hair tied back in a ponytail.
She looked to be a graduate—apparently, after Gwak Seung-jae and the third-years had been bested by Slick, she had decided to step in personally this time.
"You thieving bastards—huh?"
But the ponytailed woman had no choice but to freeze dead in her tracks.
Because to her surprise, Dang Gyu-young and Slick were locked in a pitched battle with some grizzled old man.
And of course, her reaction to the blood-red astral energy was the same as Slick's.
"The Asura Blood Demonic Art!"
The third-year Disciplinary Committee members and Gwak Seung-jae, who followed her through the door, went just as wide-eyed.
It was the first time I'd ever seen Gwak Seung-jae so rattled.
The ponytailed woman recovered her composure first, like the professional she was, and started issuing orders.
"Seung-jae, go request backup! Not the Disciplinary Committee—the faculty office! Bring the teachers! And the rest of you, don't follow me—stay here and guard Seung-jae!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Understood."
The Disciplinary Committee members bowed their heads, then took up positions around Gwak Seung-jae like a protective wall.
The Blood Cult Elder would be a formidable opponent even she couldn't guarantee victory against.
She would have liked to press every scrap of fighting strength into service, but she had apparently judged that requesting backup came first.
Hence leaving the third-years behind, so that even in the worst case Gwak Seung-jae wouldn't be taken down or the wooden door destroyed.
Leaving Gwak Seung-jae chanting his spell behind her, the ponytailed woman threw herself into the fray without a moment's hesitation.
And when the Blood Cult Elder thrust a blood-red astral fist at her, she met it palm-to-palm with a mana-soaked hand.
- KRAKOOOM—!
A detonation split the air hard enough to tear eardrums, and the ponytailed woman was driven backward in a long slide.
The clash had gone against her, but she gritted her teeth and charged in again all the same.
Blood-red astral energy, threads, shadows, and palm force tangled together in a dizzying melee.
- BAM-BAM!
'He certainly lives up to the name.'
The Blood Cult Elder, having taken the Hyneum Jade Demon Finger, could exert only about half his true power—and he was being triple-teamed on top of that.
Yet despite all these handicaps, he held the upper hand from start to finish, as if to prove exactly why he was a Blood Cult elder.
All three of them could manage was to pin him down and keep him from leaving the spot.
"Hm."
In the middle of the melee, the Blood Cult Elder spotted something, and his eyes flashed.
Gwak Seung-jae, chanting his incantation behind the firmly shut wooden door.
Since the Disciplinary Committee, ponytailed woman included, had arrived through that very door, it wasn't hard to guess what Gwak Seung-jae was up to.
Requesting further reinforcements.
He absolutely could not be left to his own devices.
"Out of my way!"
- KWAKWAKWAKWA—!
The three astral arms whipped out in every direction like flails, shaking off all three opponents.
The Blood Cult Elder immediately kicked off the ground and charged for the wooden door.
A third-year Disciplinary Committee member blocked his path, shield raised.
Mana rippled off the great shield, forming a wall—but a single astral fist smashed into it, and the sturdy barrier shattered in one blow.
"Gwah!"
The Disciplinary Committee member went down, vomiting blood.
The member who rushed to fill the gap took an astral arm to the body in turn and was knocked flying.
Gwak Seung-jae, pouring all his concentration into linking the wooden door to another space, was completely defenseless.
"No!"
The ponytailed woman cried out in desperation.
She was chasing the Blood Cult Elder down with everything she had, but she looked a step too slow to protect Gwak Seung-jae.
Just as the blood-red astral fist was about to crush Gwak Seung-jae's skull—
a streak of blue light cut across from somewhere,
- KWAANG—!
and a massive lump of mana, like a cannonball, slammed into the Blood Cult Elder.
The impact was so great that for one brief instant, even the Asura Blood Demonic Art was broken apart.
The Blood Cult Elder skidded backward before coming to a stop, then ground out his words as if chewing them up and spitting them out.
"And who the hell is it this time!"
He wasn't the only one bewildered.
Everyone turned toward the direction the Magic Bullet had come from, but there was nothing to be seen.
It was simply too far for the naked eye to make anything out.
"...A sniper?"
"Who on earth?"
'It really happened exactly as Kim Ho-nim said it would.'
Ahn Jungmi marveled inwardly.
Just as Kim Ho had asked of her in advance, she had been keeping watch over the place he'd mentioned at the time he'd mentioned.
Sure enough, a suspicious old man had appeared right on schedule, and his identity as a Blood Cult Elder had been laid bare.
'How on earth did he know...?'
Neither the academy nor the graduates were pushovers.
To eliminate any possible threats, they had spent the entire month scouring Dungeon Island from end to end.
Yet they hadn't caught so much as a trace of the Blood Cult—so how had he known an elder would show up there, and given warning in advance?
And how much more did he know?
She had sensed from their very first meeting that Kim Ho was no ordinary person, but even after a month of dealing with him, his depths remained impossible to fathom.
There was, however, one thing she was certain of.
'We must make Kim Ho-nim an ally, by any means necessary.'
For the sake of Hyeseong Group, and for the sake of the young miss.
And one more certainty: the Blood Cult Elder was an obstacle to every last one of them.
Ahn Jungmi took up her sniper rifle once more—a weapon taller than she was.
She leveled the muzzle at the Blood Cult Elder and set her index finger on the trigger.
'Miss. Kim Ho-nim. Please study with an easy mind.'
'I will clear away anything that gets in your way.'
- BANG—!