The Duel (4)
Go Hyeon-woo watched the duel from the spectator stands, seated alongside Seo Ye-in and Shin Byung-cheol.
He let out a short breath of admiration.
"Hooh. Truly a masterful stroke of craft, is it not?"
Since the martial art Go Hyeon-woo practiced was itself closely bound to the wind, his eye for reading its flow was sharper than most. He had caught at once the brief, ferocious current that flickered around Kim Ho's hand.
What came after it, however, even he could not fully decipher.
…….
Seo Ye-in, too, uncharacteristically had both eyes wide open, wholly absorbed in the duel.
"What is it? What is it?"
Only Shin Byung-cheol hadn't managed to catch even a whiff of it.
Go Hyeon-woo moved to explain what he knew — then abruptly recalled what had been done to him before.
"Not telling~ I'll save it for tomorrow's fun."
"Heh heh... the way of the jianghu lies fallen in the dust..."
"Curious, are you?"
"Course I am. What's with the rock out of nowhere?"
"I shall tell you once it is over."
"Aw, no, c'mon, juss a little!"
So this is how Shin-hyung felt back then.
Go Hyeon-woo chuckled, thoroughly enjoying himself.
Gwak Seung-jae and the third-year club heads, with their wealth of experience, could see a great deal more than most — yet even they had not grasped the full picture.
It was Dang Gyu-young, whose understanding of hidden projectiles ran deepest, who came closest to the truth.
It's wind magic?
The instant the duel began, Kim Ho had loosed a single strand of violently compressed wind. He had used it to strike a loose stone, then guided that struck stone to fly true into Gwak Ji-cheol's face.
She understood it in her head, but honestly, it defied belief. Hitting a small target at long range was basic among basics — but hitting a target with another target?
Even for Dang Gyu-young, that would be no mean feat.
And with it, naturally, came the same question she had harbored before.
Is that kid seriously a first-year?
"Uuurgh……."
Gwak Ji-cheol had taken a rock square to the face and was in no state to collect his wits for a good long while.
In truth, the match was all but decided at this point. In a real fight, he would have lost several lives during that window alone.
But Kim Ho simply stood where he was and waited, unhurried — as if to say that the first blow had been a mere appetizer, and the meal was only now beginning.
Damn it... what was that? Another trick?
To Gwak Ji-cheol, the man on the receiving end, it was an utter mystery. Light had burst before his eyes in a flash, and he had barely clung to his scattering consciousness.
Had it not been for the armor borrowed from his seniors, he would likely have fainted on the spot.
Desperately reasserting his stance, Gwak Ji-cheol caught the movement of Kim Ho's hand.
Terrified of taking another hit without so much as a response, he scrambled to raise his mana and cast a countermeasure.
It looked frantic, but the spell came together at impressive speed.
Earth Cluster
The stones large and small strewn across the ground were drawn, as if by a magnet, toward a single point in the air, clumping together one after another until they formed a massive sphere.
It was a spell that kneaded the very earth into a ball, serviceable for offense and defense alike.
Gwak Ji-cheol swung the sphere forward to shield himself.
The next moment, a lone stone bounced off with a sharp crack. No prize for guessing who had flicked it over.
When Gwak Ji-cheol ran his hand along the Earth Cluster, the sphere began to spin faster and faster. The compacted rocks shot outward one by one.
Kim Ho threaded his way through the incoming projectiles at an unhurried, strolling pace — and the glance he threw in as he did so somehow seemed outright provocative. Gwak Ji-cheol ground his teeth.
Let's see how long you can afford to be so relaxed.
The emerald set into his staff flared with light. Stone after stone streamed together, and a second Earth Cluster took shape.
The equipment really was superb. Wrapped head to toe in second- and third-year grade gear, every spell he cast came out faster and mightier than it ever had before. On his own merit, sustaining even two Earth Clusters would have been a struggle; now he had room to spare.
At this level, I could manage three.
Just as he had reckoned, the third sphere came together without difficulty. Three Earth Clusters whirled, spitting rocks like a battery of machine guns.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
"Yeah, that's the stuff!"
The sensation of wielding monstrous power. The longer he used it, the fainter grew the awareness that this was strength borrowed from another.
I am strong. There is no way I lose!
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Just watching Kim Ho's leisurely footwork quicken was enough to lift his spirits. The man might be dodging everything neatly for now, but as time wore on, clean hits would slip through one by one — and then he would fall.
Kim Ho, for his part, seemed to believe his own time was running short.
At least, that was how it looked to Gwak Ji-cheol.
Dodging the ceaseless hail of gravel, Kim Ho shaved away the distance little by little. And once he had closed in sufficiently, electric current gathered in his palm.
Gwak Ji-cheol's mouth curled upward.
Finally showing your hand, are you?
The hummingbird of lightning sliced across the air.
Without a thought of dodging or blocking, Gwak Ji-cheol flung his chest wide open and welcomed the Hummingbird head-on.
BZZZT!
"Thought that would work? My condolences."
…….
Paralysis was one thing — Gwak Ji-cheol didn't so much as look lightly singed.
Judging that things had gone sideways, Kim Ho broke away and reopened the distance, suddenly pressed just to evade the stones streaming from the three Earth Clusters.
A sensation of everything going slack washed through him, and Gwak Ji-cheol threw his head back in gleeful laughter.
"Hwa-hahaha! So what's left in your purse now, I wonder—"
WHAM!
And his face was driven into the ground.
To the spectators, it looked precisely as though a transparent hand had seized Gwak Ji-cheol by the head and hurled it down with all its might.
A telling glint entered Ha Suyeon's eyes.
So that's the skill, then.
A skill he had authored himself using the Blank Skillbook handed over by Park Nari. She didn't know its precise effects, but he had compressed the wind itself and hammered it down like a bludgeon.
Crafting a skill like that — and putting it to use — was beyond the reach of just anyone.
And it didn't stop there.
It was all by design.
Kim Ho had dug his trap for the express purpose of deploying that nameless wind spell. With Hummingbird as the bait.
There was no way he hadn't known the Emerald Magic Tower side would come prepared with a countermeasure. And knowing it, he had cast Hummingbird anyway, bold as brass.
Measured against the replay footage, that Hummingbird had been sloppy in every respect. He had pinned no hopes on it from the outset — it was thrown purely for show.
Gwak Ji-cheol, by contrast, had been so keenly conscious of — so eager to flaunt — his paralysis-resistance item that he had taken the Hummingbird head-on deliberately.
And in the span of Gwak Ji-cheol's attention straying to the hummingbird before his eyes, the wind overhead had been gathering, compressing, taking aim.
Genuine skill of his own, layered under a meticulous schemer's mind.
Were he an enemy, he would most assuredly be an exhausting man to handle.
Ha Suyeon exhaled a silent sigh of relief — thinking, yet again, how wise she had been to gift him the Rank Up.
"Uuurgh...!"
Gwak Ji-cheol dragged his head up with effort. His face was past being smeared with dirt — it had effectively become a mask of it — and a line of blood trickled down from his nose.
The trembling of the two arms propping him up was not the mere aftermath of the impact.
By the time he had barely gotten upright, Kim Ho was already within arm's reach.
POW!
The fully extended fist connected, and Gwak Ji-cheol's jaw spun sideways. He reeled backward out of his mind — and slammed into something like a transparent wall.
He had no way of knowing that the wall was in fact a faint wind blowing in from behind him.
POW!
Next, a kick buried itself in his stomach, and Gwak Ji-cheol's spine folded in half.
Damn it... damn it...!
What, exactly, and where, and how had it all gone wrong? Mere moments ago, he had been two hundred percent certain of victory.
POW!
As though refusing him even the time to diagnose the cause, Kim Ho hammered his fist into his face once more.
Staggering, Gwak Ji-cheol thought:
This can't go on.
Left as it was, the match would end with him having accomplished nothing but absorbing a thorough beating.
His conversation with Mok Jonghwa flashed across his mind.
"Keep the golem out of it unless you absolutely need it."
"Sir? Why not?"
"As for gear, so long as it looks modest on the outside, even third-year equipment hardly draws notice. The golem is another matter."
"...!"
"One look and anyone can tell it's a third-year golem. What do you suppose people would make of that?"
"It would do precious little for Emerald's prestige."
"Understood. I'll win without the golem. Overwhelmingly."
...And yet here he was, being overwhelmingly beaten to a pulp.
Winning with the golem would, at best, break even. But if he pinched it carefully and lost like this?
Emerald would be reduced to a laughingstock for the next several years — and so would he, the star of the replay reels.
And then there was expulsion from the club. What a terrifying word.
That much, at least, he had to prevent.
Fine... I'll grant that you're something else. But the one laughing last will be me!
Kim Ho, who had been hanging on him and swinging away, abruptly kicked off the ground and sprang back.
THOOM!
And where he had stood, a wooden fist the size of a human torso came crashing down. The stones carpeting the ground shattered into fragments and sprayed in every direction.
A colossal wooden golem. Its upper body was grotesquely oversized next to its lower half, and its hands were positively bloated.
"Oho. So that is the golem they speak of?"
"What, you've never seen one?"
At Shin Byung-cheol's retort, Go Hyeon-woo — his gaze locked fast on the wooden golem — nodded.
"I have not. Truly, since entering Dragon Slayer Academy, firsts have abounded. And yet — I was given to understand that golems are, as a rule, wrought from the terrain itself... Have I been misinformed?"
What business did a wooden golem have erupting from ground that lacked so much as a blade of grass, never mind a tree?
Shin Byung-cheol considered paying Go Hyeon-woo back for his impertinent stunt just now — then decided to simply explain.
"What you know is right. Basically. But if you lean on the terrain alone, you end up helpless whenever there's no material at hand. So they forge one in advance, like that, for exactly such occasions."
A golem refined from choice materials, long hours, and innumerable spells layered one atop another. It existed on an entirely different plane of power from anything conjured on the spot.
And that wooden golem was decidedly beyond what any first-year could refine.
Had that been possible, the Magic Tower Association's prized prospect would have been Gwak Ji-cheol, not Hong Yeon-hwa.
No wonder Dang Gyu-young had spat out a curse the moment she laid eyes on it.
"Hey! You shameless bastards! This crosses the line!"
…….
Mok Jonghwa gave no answer, eyes fixed straight ahead.
Gwak Seung-jae wore a conflicted expression, as if he hadn't imagined Mok Jonghwa would stoop this far — but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Dang Gyu-young deliberated for a moment.
Shouldn't this be stopped? Could anyone even take that thing down?
Only Dang Gyu-young knew that Kim Ho had learned Inferno Fist. But Inferno Fist was a forbidden skill, full stop. It could not be used on an official stage like this one.
The replays were running, after all, and Gwak Seung-jae of the Disciplinary Committee was watching with the sharpest of eyes.
Which meant this had to be settled without the flaming fist...
He does look fine, for now...
A read of Kim Ho's complexion showed him as serene as ever — even as his body moved without a moment's rest, weaving between the golem's fists.
Dang Gyu-young resolved to watch a while longer. If he so much as took one hit, she would have to step in.
WHUMP!
The ponderous wooden arm swept the ground. Hard on its heels, the opposite wooden hand clenched into a fist and hammered down. The thing moved with an agility its massive frame had no right to possess.
That heft, at that speed. A single clean hit would mean instant incapacitation.
A smile slowly crept back onto Gwak Ji-cheol's lips.
"You thought the golem was all I had? Then try dodging this as well."
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The Earth Clusters, which had gone still, resumed their spin. Kim Ho's feet worked far harder than before — fleeing the golem one moment, dodging incoming boulders the next.
That his vitality still hadn't fallen from one hundred percent, even amid all this, was worthy of acknowledgment. It meant every single attack had been evaded, without one exception.
But how long could that possibly last? The golem could be sustained indefinitely; that bastard's stamina could not.
Gwak Ji-cheol drove his will into the Earth Clusters, and the spheres began to whirl still faster.
Then Kim Ho looked squarely at Gwak Ji-cheol — and flicked his hand.
A fierce gale from somewhere slammed into Gwak Ji-cheol's body and drove it, crushingly, into the rapidly spinning sphere.
"KRAAAAAAGH!"