Week 9 Midterm (7)
The conflict with the Swordsmanship Club had been settled for the time being, sealed with a promise to rescue Jang Bodo.
Others, however, kept baring their teeth at me — most persistently the Black Way faction that Mak Daewoong belonged to. They had tried taking me down with their assassin prodigies Jang Sam and Wang Pil — Jang Mugeuk and Wang Chunsam, in other words — but the Disciplinary Committee had stepped in at just the right moment, and their scheme had come to nothing. Now, true to the warning Jang Mugeuk had given me on the eve of the midterm, they had loosed their thugs to carve me up.
I hadn't expected to run into them as early as the morning of day two, but early or late, this was a fight that had been coming all the same.
I addressed the one who seemed to lead the pack.
"So what's your name?"
"Sagong Wook."
"406? Sounds like a hotel room number."
"It's Wook, not six."
"Whatever you say."
Sagong Wook glared at me for a long moment, then let his gaze slide over to Go Hyeon-woo.
"Go Hyeon-woo. Word of your skill with a blade has well reached my ears. But should you interfere in the Swordsmanship Club's affairs, you will not walk away unscathed either. Step aside."
"I can only be grateful that you think so kindly of me."
Go Hyeon-woo flashed a smile.
"But it seems you have yet to hear this particular rumor. Brother Kim here is the first friend I have ever acknowledged. When a friend like that is caught up in a quarrel, standing idly by — merely because the other side is the Swordsmanship Club — is something I cannot do."
"You would court danger for nothing? Foolish."
"I hear that often enough. Young Miss Han calls me a 'blockhead.'"
What on earth did you do to earn that from Han So-mi?
Curiosity prickled, but that mystery could wait. I tossed a different question at Sagong Wook instead.
"By the way — are you all actually confident?"
Jang Mugeuk, a genuine rising star, and Wang Chunsam — a rising star at a generous 0.8 of the grade — had come at me together and still failed to lay a finger on me. That was my point: could the six of you manage any better?
Sagong Wook answered with a snort.
"That is not yours to worry about. Six of us will be more than enough."
He had grounds for the confidence. All six thugs were respectably skilled — Sagong Wook and one other sitting in the 900 Point Tier, the remaining four at 600 or above.
No wonder Mak Daewoong had sent these men rather than the two assassins a second time.
Bang! Bang!
Gunfire was still booming from the tower. Beyond the six thugs in front of me, a whole crowd of teams was closing in on it, and Seo Ye-in had to hold them all off alone.
Which meant I couldn't count on her concentrated support — and that if I wanted to get back to defending the tower, I had to end this fight, fast.
Guess I'd better show what I can do here.
I raised Root and flicked it toward two of the thugs hanging back.
"You two."
"……?"
"You're too close."
"The hell's that supposed to—"
Whoooosh—
A whirlwind erupted between the pair and dragged them toward each other. Caught off guard, they clawed desperately to escape, but their bodies were being pulled and wrenched out of true; even staying upright became a struggle. And the instant they tangled together in one spot, the compressed air detonated.
Pang!
"Urgh."
"Oof."
Both sank into a groggy stupor — one sprawled face-down on the ground, the other crumpled to his knees.
What was that about six being plenty?
I flashed a grin at Sagong Wook.
"That leaves four, doesn't it?"
"……Attack!"
With Sagong Wook at their head, the remaining thugs charged as one. But no sooner had they closed the distance than they were forced to scramble back open again—
KRRK-KRK—
—because Go Hyeon-woo's Clear Stream had just swept the ground in front of me. Into that opening, I pointed Root at a third thug, and a whirlwind gathered around him.
Whoooosh—
"Nngh…!"
He flailed to break free, but it was resistance in vain. If the technique could momentarily lock down even Dang Gyu-young, a third-year, no first-year was slipping it.
Pang!
"Oof."
Like the two before him, he was left half-folded to the ground, groaning.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Go Hyeon-woo shielded me from the remaining three, weaving Following Stream into the exchange and devoting himself purely to blocking and deflecting their strikes. His opponents were no pushovers, and he looked faintly strained, but he was holding.
Sagong Wook's face, meanwhile, had gone stiff with bewilderment.
"What in the world is with these…?"
The 'these' that baffled him weren't us — they were his own men, sprawled out and groaning. All that had actually happened was a lump of air exploding, yet every last one of them had been knocked senseless, flailing like drowned men. The reactions were so wildly out of proportion to the humble visuals that the whole scene felt surreal.
He couldn't begin to understand why not one of them had escaped a mere whirlwind, either.
My answer to that was simple.
"Take a hit and you'll understand."
Three prerequisite skills composed Spiral Explosion. Considered separately, each had obvious strengths and weaknesses; fused into one, they patched over each other's flaws almost perfectly.
Point Explosion offered superb freedom of placement, at the cost of a narrow radius and unremarkable destructive power — but layered with Air Burst's blast, it covered range and firepower at the same time. Air Burst, being a projectile spell, suffered poor accuracy — yet combine Point Explosion's freedom of placement with Twister pinning the target in place, and missing became the harder outcome.
Thus was born a skill that was miserable to predict, miserable to dodge, and — thanks to its innate defense penetration — all but impossible to block: Spiral Explosion.
Its C-Rank destructive power was enough to shred a training-room steel dummy in a single blast. It punched straight through the stacked defensive gear Dragon Slayer Academy students wore into every fight and dealt its damage regardless. Rendered in an ordinary person's terms, the impact was akin to taking a full-force kick straight to the chest or gut.
Pang!
"Ghhk……"
Seen that way, it was hardly surprising that everyone who ate a Spiral Explosion stayed down.
"Just the two of you left now?"
"……"
At some point, only Sagong Wook and one 900-Tier thug remained. Their early swagger had evaporated, replaced by dead seriousness. Before long, without so much as a word between them, the two surged their spirit to its peak — each intending to unfold his ultimate technique.
"Nope."
I denied them the time, pointing Root crisply at Sagong Wook. He abandoned the technique mid-gesture and snapped himself out of its path. Reflexes worthy of the 900 Point Tier, indeed.
However—
"—that one was a feint."
Whoooosh—
The whirlwind converged not on Sagong Wook, whom I'd pointed at, but on the other 900-Tier man. Spiral Explosion inherited Point Explosion's traits; anywhere within my awareness — ahead, behind, left or right — was fair ground to cast it. Ignorant of that fact, Sagong Wook had walked straight into my feint, exactly as designed.
Pang!
"Kh!"
The compressed air burst against him — and still the 900-Tier thug stayed on his feet, grimly enduring. As if to declare he was cut from different cloth than the 600s.
But that was where it ended.
CRACK!
Seo Ye-in's follow-up shot slammed into his skull, and he pitched over backward, ejected from the dungeon on the spot.
"You…!"
Only then did Sagong Wook grasp that he'd been played, and his face burned scarlet. But Go Hyeon-woo was already charging him, sword sweeping down, leaving him no window even to rage.
I watched the two trade blows for a beat, then—
Pang!
—loosed a Spiral Explosion at the perfect moment.
"Ghhk……"
"Hurts, doesn't it? Once you've had a taste."
"……"
The agony had robbed Sagong Wook of speech. Bloodshot eyes glared at me with murderous intent. I shrugged and waved him off with perfect equanimity.
"Give my regards to Senior Mak Daewoong."
Fwoosh!
A single stroke from Go Hyeon-woo judged him combat-incapable, and he was gone.
Where the six thugs had fallen, two crystals remained. I offered one of them to Go Hyeon-woo.
"One each sounds fair."
"I am not certain I have earned one. I did precious little this time around."
"Precious little? Who exactly was holding the line?"
Without Go Hyeon-woo standing as a sturdy wall in front of me, I could never have spammed Spiral Explosion so recklessly like this. And Shin Byung-cheol's handling of the crystal charging mattered just as much — thanks to him, the rest of us had been free to commit fully to defense. Had Seo Ye-in and I alone faced all six thugs, we would have struggled far harder than we did.
"So — one apiece for each team."
"Hm. If Brother Kim insists, then I shall accept with gratitude."
"All wrapped up, bosses?"
Shin Byung-cheol came sprinting over just then and wedged himself into the conversation. In his hand gleamed a freshly charged, green-glowing crystal.
When we held up the loot we'd just claimed, his jaw dropped.
"One more crystal apiece."
"Aigoo~! You bosses truly are something else. Is it really okay for me to be the only one riding your coattails like this?"
"Your role matters too."
I took the charged crystals from Shin Byung-cheol and passed him the uncharged ones.
"You just take those and get them charged, good sir."
"Aigoo, of course, of course. That's my job after all. Yessir."
Shin Byung-cheol accepted the crystals with a flurry of respectful little bows. His combat power was in another league below mine or Go Hyeon-woo's, so the calculus favored keeping him on charging duty rather than rotating him into the line.
Easier on his body that way, too.
Shin Byung-cheol zipped off toward the tower—
Bang! Bang!
—where, up at its peak, Seo Ye-in was still raining shots on targets all around. Go Hyeon-woo and I threw ourselves back into the defense as well.
Once the charging was done, we took a breather a little apart from the Sanctuary — part rest, part accounting. The final tally: Seo Ye-in and I each held three crystals, and Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol two apiece.
[Red Crystal — 100%]
[Blue Crystal — 100%]
[Green Crystal — 100%]
Red Crystal No. 2 had been traded off for the green one, and the blue crystal we'd wrung out of Sagong Wook and charged to full. All that remained was to get our hands on a yellow one, and the midterm subquest would be complete.
Not that there was such a thing as too many crystals — I intended to collect as many as the opportunity allowed.
"Let's split up from here," I proposed to Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol.
"That seems wise to me as well."
For crystal hunting, pairing off beat all four of us thundering around together. Our combat power per team would drop, true — but the crystals would now flow in from two fronts instead of one.
And so we agreed to regroup after tomorrow's supply drop. With the Twin GPS keeping tabs on both teams' positions, finding each other again would be no trouble at all.
"One more thing before we go."
I produced the Crystal Detector I'd stripped from Cha Hyun-ju the day before — an item that displayed the locations of the nearest crystals. Cooldown: twelve hours. When I activated it, three diamond-shaped icons floated up around us, each pointing a different way. So I left the call to my lucky mascot.
"Go on, pick one."
"……"
Seo Ye-in stared down at the detector for a good while, then slowly raised a hand and pointed down one direction.
I nodded and turned to the others.
"We're off to wherever the Lucky Mascot has divined."
"Then we shall try our luck elsewhere. Fortune go with you."
[184] The Support Ate It All