Week 16: Player Versus Player (Part 4)
Cha Hyun-joo glared at Seo Ye-in for a long moment before tightening her grip on her bow, her lips pulling upward into a bellicose smirk.
"Fine by me. I was itching to go another round with her anyway. Consider it a change in the order of business."
Seo Ye-in met her gaze without flinching, though her expression made it abundantly clear that she found Cha Hyun-joo thoroughly unpleasant.
"Always using bad words."
"Bad words? Hey, put yourself in my shoes for once! Who wouldn't be cussing up a storm?!"
"......?"
Ye-in glanced back toward me, then tilted her head in utter incomprehension.
"Don't know."
A thick vein throbbed on Cha Hyun-joo's forehead. Yet, having slipped into full combat readiness, her gaze remained frosty and focused.
As the two stood locked in mutual hostility—
Clank.
A metallic snap echoed through the labyrinth as another trap armed itself somewhere in the corridor. With that single sound serving as the opening flare, the battle erupted.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Twang-creeeak!
Mana bullets and mana arrows crossed paths midair, lacing the corridor in a chaotic web of incandescent blue light.
A long-range artillery duel.
In an exchange like this, victory belonged to whoever could evade incoming fire while landing their own. Seo Ye-in wove through the barrage with Feather Step, slipping around arrows with fluid grace, while Cha Hyun-joo executed her own evasive footwork, stepping briskly from side to side.
However, this dungeon imposed one brutal caveat.
The place is carpeted with traps.
When maneuvering at high speeds to evade ranged attacks, triggering traps was an inevitability. Do you step on a trap to dodge an arrow? Or do you tank the arrow to avoid tripping a trap? Every split-second demanded a cold-blooded, reckless decision.
Rat-tat-tat!
Ye-in laid down a steady burst from her assault rifle as she cut diagonally across the passage. Beneath her boot, the flagstone sank by half an inch.
A pressure plate.
Instantly, the corridor shuddered.
Rumble!
The masonry walls on either side slammed inward like a giant vice. Caught between them, she would be flattened into a pancake. Ye-in bolted forward, conjuring and manipulating a dark cloud of mist to swat away the oncoming arrows. Even so, a pair of shafts grazed past her shoulder and waist.
Cha Hyun-joo fared little better.
Twang!
Releasing an arrow mid-stride, her foot clipped the outer rim of an arcane circle, triggering an explosive burst of lightning from its core. She avoided the brunt of it, but errant arcs of electricity lashed out and scorched her.
"Tch."
Clicking her tongue in irritation, Cha Hyun-joo never let her hands or feet stop moving.
Twang! Thwip!
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Meanwhile, I watched their skirmish unfold from the comfort of a safe vantage point.
Cha Hyun-joo still has the upper hand.
With both combatants moving at full tilt, neither allowed clean, direct hits. But whenever two or three mana arrows grazed Ye-in, barely a single mana bullet managed to even brush Hyun-joo. It meant Hyun-joo’s overall combat prowess stood half a step above.
There’s an inevitable gap in their raw specs, after all.
While Ye-in held the edge in sheer micro-control, her repertoire of active skills and traits was comparatively narrow—a stark disadvantage against someone of rising-star caliber. Hyun-joo seemed to realize this as well, constantly shifting her attack vectors to keep Ye-in off-balance.
Twang!
Another volley of mana arrows drew glowing blue lines through the air. Only this time, they were not aimed at Ye-in. They streaked toward the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
At first glance, it looked like a wild misfire. But the moment the arrows collided with the stone, they ricocheted like billiard balls, hurtling toward Ye-in from unpredictable angles.
Ricochet shots.
Far trickier to read and evade than projectiles flying on a straight trajectory.
"......"
Even so, Ye-in swept her gaze across the room with unflappable composure. One step, two steps—her Feather Step carried her directly through the gaps in the lethal geometry. She batted aside what she could with her dark cloud, though two more arrows grazed her flank, shaving away a sliver of her health.
Still, from where I was standing, it was a masterful display of defensive maneuvering.
The problem is, that's not the end of it...
Crash!
Another trap went off. The ceiling rattled violently before coming down in a catastrophic cave-in. While Ye-in scrambled to evade the plummeting rubble, Cha Hyun-joo already had her bow drawn taut, her arrow trained squarely on her. Vast reserves of mana coalesced at the arrowhead, expanding into a radiant orb of destructive power.
Her decisive blow.
The instant Ye-in broke clear of the collapsing ceiling, the arrow left the bowstring.
BOOOOOM—!
The projectile screamed through the corridor like a thick beam of light before fragmenting mid-flight, descending as a torrential downpour of deadly shards. Faced with an attack that looked entirely inescapable, Ye-in merely gazed back with impassive eyes.
Just as the barrage was about to obliterate her—
Flash!
Her grey eyes seemed to ignite with a razor-sharp brilliance. In the next breath, her figure glided forward in a blur.
"Whoosh."
She had combined Bullet Time with Ghost Steps. The arrows seemed destined to impale her, yet every single one missed her silhouette by a razor-thin margin.
As she closed the distance in the blink of an eye, I could not help but feel a flicker of bewilderment.
She's forcing close combat here?
Ghost Steps had granted her the initiative, and point-blank shots certainly boasted a higher hit rate. But did she really need to close in that aggressively?
The answer came immediately.
Having closed the gap until she was breathing down Cha Hyun-joo's neck, Ye-in did not fire her assault rifle. Instead, she reached out of nowhere into her dimensional inventory. What emerged was a wide, round disc of heavy black cast iron, complete with a sturdy handle—
...A frying pan?!
Gripping the skillet with both hands, Ye-in swung it down onto Cha Hyun-joo’s head with merciless precision.
CLANG—!
A remarkably crisp, bell-like strike rang out, sending Cha Hyun-joo reeling on rubbery legs. Her mouth hung slightly open in utter, catatonic disbelief as she stared at Ye-in.
"I... I got taken out by some damn..."
CLANG—!
A second blow mercilessly cut her off.
Hyun-joo's pupils rolled back, and her knees buckled as she slumped to the floor. A brilliant halo of light enveloped her form, dissolving her from the arena. Incapacitated.
With only the two of us remaining, the scoreboard flashed overhead to declare the match result.
1st Place: Kim Ho & Seo Ye-in
While Seo Ye-in gazed quietly up at the scoreboard, I walked over to her side.
"Great job, but where on earth did you get that?"
"Borrowed it."
"From where?"
"The kitchen."
"To use as a weapon?"
As if asking why I was even questioning something I had just witnessed with my own eyes, Ye-in casually lifted the heavy cast iron pan.
"Sub-weapon."
I thought the Haeseong Group was having a custom sub-weapon forged for her... Guess this is just a stopgap?
A sudden thought struck me, prompting another question.
"Where’s your pot?"
Ye-in carefully stashed the frying pan back into her inventory and pulled out a dented pot instead—the one that still bore the clear, indelible indentation of my skull.
"Kim Ho Pot."
"Right, that one. Why didn't you use it?"
Ye-in shook her head firmly, clutching the Kim Ho Pot against her chest like a prized treasure.
"Can't."
"Because if you hit her with it, it’d become the Kim Ho-Hyun-joo Pot?"
Nod, nod.
"Good grief."
To think she had acquired a taste for beating people with cookware. If I had known this would happen, should I have refused to take hits during our squeaky hammer games? Alas, what was done was done.
"Let's head out for now."
"Okay."
The moment we stepped out of the arena, we scanned our student IDs at the matching terminal. While waiting for our next pairing, we conducted a quick debrief of the previous match.
"How did it feel fighting Cha Hyun-joo one-on-one?"
"Strong."
"She’s a beast, yeah."
In truth, Cha Hyun-joo had already burned a substantial amount of stamina breaking through our ice walls, suffered damage from traps while pursuing us, and even fought off the monk duo, Il-gong and I-gong. By the time she reached Ye-in, her stamina had been nearly depleted, and her most potent skills and traits were likely on cooldown. Yet even in that weakened state, she had managed to hold the upper hand in a straight duel.
That was the true grit of a top-tier prospect.
"If you two fought at full strength, you'd probably lose."
"Yeah."
Ye-in nodded in concession, though a faint, competitive spark flickered in her grey eyes.
Nothing wrong with having a healthy rival.
It would only motivate her to train harder. And since Cha Hyun-joo would undoubtedly push herself to the brink to avoid falling behind, it would create a virtuous cycle for both of them.
Soon enough, our second match was locked in. Ye-in and I stepped onto the teleportation circle. Our vision warped, and we materialized inside a compact room enclosed by stone walls on all sides. After a brief pause, the countdown commenced.
"Let's wrap this second match up quick, too."
"Wrapping it up."
We set off down the labyrinthine corridors at a brisk pace. In the previous match, the late stage had been crammed with so many traps that there was hardly a place to put a foot down. Right now, at the very start of the round, the path felt remarkably spacious.
Whenever the corridor branched, we relied on our Lucky Charm Radar.
"Straight ahead?"
"Straight."
"Take a right?"
"Left."
"Got it."
Pushing forward at a steady clip, we suddenly slowed our pace in near-perfect synchrony. Faint signs of movement resonated from up ahead.
Sure enough—
Whoosh!
Slender, chopstick-like metal rods came whistling through the air. Rather than targeting us directly, they aimed at the surrounding floor and walls—a blatant attempt to trigger the local traps.
I reacted instantly, blending Wind Force with a Twister.
Fwoooosh—!
The sudden gale warped the rods' trajectories, sending them clattering harmlessly into irrelevant corners. And the culprit behind the throwing needles was...
"Well, well. Look who it is."
Just as expected: Shin Byungchul.
Considering we had crossed paths so soon after the match began, our starting zones must have spawned adjacent to each other.
I called out, "Weren't you sitting somewhere in the four- or five-hundred-point bracket?"
"Give or take. Five hundred and three, to be exact."
"Then how in the world did you get matched against us?"
"Heh-heh. Everything happens for a reason, my friend."
Shin Byungchul let out an oily chuckle, gesturing grandly to the teammate standing just behind him.
"You know I've been quite the hot commodity this week, right? I brought in a real powerhouse."
At Shin Byungchul's signal, the male student took half a step forward. Looking closely at his features, the uncanny resemblance struck me immediately.
"By any chance, what's your relation to Senior Jeong Chong-myeong?"
"He's my older brother. I'm Jeong Jin-myung."
"Figures."
Jeong Jin-myung was also a mage-class hunter, though much like Jeong Chong-myeong, he exuded no distinct elemental affinity. A non-elemental mage. Almost certainly affiliated with the White Magic Club.
And his point score must be pretty high.
The average score between Ye-in and me sat in the low eight hundreds. For matchmaking to pair us together, their team average had to be comparable. Factoring in Shin Byungchul's confessed score of 503, Jeong Jin-myung had to be sitting at roughly a thousand points. That was the realm of academy prospects and Student Disciplinary Committee elites.
"You really did bring a powerhouse."
"Heh-heh! What did I tell you? Said you'd regret it, didn't I?"
Shin Byungchul beamed with rare, unadulterated confidence.
Jeong Jin-myung did not join in the gloating. Instead, he fixed his gaze on us and said levelly, "Let's get down to business. We don't have time to waste."
Just as he said, this was not the place for leisurely chitchat. New traps could materialize at any moment. Furthermore, with a four-digit powerhouse on their side, they clearly had no intention of avoiding a clash.
As Jeong Jin-myung gathered his mana, Shin Byungchul stepped slightly ahead to screen him.
Right at that exact second—
KRA-BOOM!
A colossal wall of thick ice erupted from the floor between the two of them, sealing the corridor from floor to ceiling without leaving a hair's breadth of space.
Shin Byungchul whipped his head around, frantically clawing at the frozen barrier in sheer panic.
"Wait, what the hell?! What is this?!"
"What does it look like? A room divider."
I replied casually, shooting a quick sidelong glance at Seo Ye-in.
She responded with a subtle nod. Then, reaching into her inventory, she gripped the cast iron frying pan.
"All alone..."