No. 388 Feathered Serpent Altar (3)

Shrrk!

With a wet crunch of parting flesh, the barbarian's body crumpled to the ground. He was the last of them.

Go Hyeon-woo drove his cracked iron sword deep into the earth. It looked ready to snap at any moment, and it was better to let the old blade retire with honor now than to have it shatter mid-battle.

Drawing a fresh iron sword from his inventory, he set off along the path once more.

“……”

Walking at a brisk pace, Go Hyeon-woo's gaze snagged on a massive boulder to his right. Beyond it lay nothing but deep darkness — but he knew. An ambush. The guide had spelled it all out in black and white.

There was no reason to grant the enemy the first strike.

The instant Go Hyeon-woo launched himself toward the boulder, the barbarians lying in wait yelped in alarm and burst out of hiding.

“We've been spotted!”

“Kill him!”

Javelins came hurtling in. Go Hyeon-woo met them with the same composure as before — one soft sweep of his iron sword drained the oncoming throws of their force and dropped them to the ground, and the next sweep parted the barbarians from their heads.

Shrrk!

There was not an inch of hesitation in his blade. Mercy was a luxury one did not extend to men who offered living sacrifices on altars. Even amid the blood-soaked carnage, Go Hyeon-woo's expression remained utterly unmoved.

He flung himself toward the next site at once. No time to waste. By now Kim Ho would be locked in a one-on-one, life-on-the-line duel with the boss monster — his senior had claimed the hardest role for himself precisely so that Go Hyeon-woo could secure the hidden piece.

So what was the best he could offer in return? To achieve his objective as swiftly, and as precisely, as possible. Having memorized the Feathered Serpent Altar guide cover to cover and then set foot inside the dungeon, he had realized one thing: in practice, it was nowhere near as convoluted as it looked on paper. He could afford a mistake or two and still reach his goal without strain. They had probably made it simple and gentle on purpose, all things considered — this was everyone's first underground dungeon.

But Go Hyeon-woo had no intention of settling for halfway. I will carry it out perfectly, without a single hair's breadth of error.

And in doing so, he would prove something — that his back could be trusted even in the Deep Layer, in dungeons a hundred times more treacherous than this one.

His musings broke off as the path ended and a fairly spacious chamber opened before him. The Feathered Serpent Altar had been distinct even from a distance; up close it was grander still, as though it swallowed an entire side of his vision.

Before the altar, the ritual preparations were in full swing. Prisoners soon to be offered up as living sacrifices stood bound in a line, waiting their turn like cattle, the life long drained from their eyes — resigned to a death that could never be escaped. A few barbarians circled them, sprinkling something from baskets over and over.

What would one even call that stuff... Seasoning?

The barbarians, for their part, had armed and fortified themselves in their own fashion. Word of Go Hyeon-woo must have reached them already; it was only natural. Hostile glares poured in from every direction, and bearing every one of them, Go Hyeon-woo cut through the crowd with bold, unhurried strides.

“What are you dogs doing?! Seize him, this instant!”

“You're free to cut him down!”

At someone's shout, every spear and blade in the chamber swung to point at Go Hyeon-woo. From that moment he began to accelerate, cutting down whatever blocked his road with a single stroke as he ran hard in one direction.

He slipped past a man thrusting a spear at him, and the next instant a long gash yawned open across the man's chest. Another swung his sword from behind a raised shield; Go Hyeon-woo tilted his body just slightly, drew one lazy line with his iron sword — and shield and swordsman alike split cleanly in two.

“Gyaah!”

“Khek!”

Leaving the death rattles behind him, he pressed swiftly onward. He knew exactly where he needed to go — and there, a giant was waiting. A frame conspicuously taller than any ordinary man and grossly swollen with bulk, his face painted in garish blotches that set him worlds apart from the common barbarians.

So that would be Fatty.

Among those stationed at the altar were two vice-priests — ranked directly beneath the high priest, mid-bosses in plain terms. In Kim Ho's guide they went by the nicknames Fatty and Skinny.

I would not mind testing my blade against them, that much is true. The pride of a warrior stirred within him, but Go Hyeon-woo did not lose sight of his duty. For now, I simply follow the guide as written.

“……”

Fatty locked eyes with Go Hyeon-woo, then wrapped his arms around the thick log embedded in the floor nearby. As he heaved, the log came grinding up out of the earth — and all the while, Go Hyeon-woo closed the distance stride by stride.

And what did the next entry in the guide say?

Just before Fatty could haul the log fully free — at the very instant his opponent stood most defenseless — Go Hyeon-woo's iron sword drew a single unbroken line.

A fierce wind howled up at his back. His blade rode that current and accelerated all the faster — the swift sword he had tempered through his duel with Jang Sam unfurled in full.

Pah!

The next moment, Fatty's movement stopped dead. He stared wide-eyed for a breath as if he could not believe it, then clutched at his throat and toppled. Colossus and log struck the floor one after another, erupting clouds of dust.

KU-THOOM!

Go Hyeon-woo released the crumbling iron sword and drew a fresh one, seized the rapidly cooling arm of the dying giant, and tore the bracelet from its wrist.

“One down, for a start.”

The next instant he wheeled about, blade sweeping. Tang! Something cracked against the iron sword and spun away — a glance at what had fallen showed a poison needle, thin and short to the point of near invisibility.

Go Hyeon-woo's eyes made a slow circuit of the barbarians ringing him in, and caught a shadow flitting nimbly between them. Nine times out of ten, that would be Skinny.

Fwish!

He shifted half a step sideways and let the second volley of needles slide past. He traced the shot back to its origin with his eyes, but the figure had already melted from sight again. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A tactic of propping up a wall's worth of barbarians and raining poison needles from behind it. Annoying. That was Go Hyeon-woo's honest impression — a style no true martial artist could ever bring himself to love.

One consolation, at least: the barbarians' guard was nothing like as airtight as Park Na-ri's companion tiger. Clearing Fatty out of the picture beforehand was proving its worth.

And the guide's next instruction suited Go Hyeon-woo down to the ground.

Head-on battle was precisely where his confidence lay. With enemies crashing in like a tide, the motion of his iron sword turned slower and slower.

A soft wind washed over the barbarians. What unfolded in its wake was anything but soft.

KAGAGAGAK!

“Kuaaaargh!”

The sword qi riding the wind tore through a dozen-odd barbarians within its reach without discrimination. The men behind scrambled to fill the gaps their fallen kinsmen left, and the wind blew again and reaped them in turn. Fanatics who hurled themselves forward heedless of death they may have been, but when a single stroke dropped them by the fistful, there was nothing to be done about it. The human wall crumbled in moments — and the man who had been hiding behind it stood revealed. Skeletal and gaunt, a long slender tube clamped between his lips. Go Hyeon-woo was not in the habit of passing judgment on faces, but this once he had to concede: Brother Kim certainly has a gift for nicknames. Skinny fit the man like a glove.

Whoosh! Skinny spat out another spray of needles. This time, Go Hyeon-woo's manner was leisurely. He simply kept tracing slow, gentle arcs through empty air — and the needles ground themselves away to nothing mid-flight.

“!!”

Skinny's eyes shot up in pure horror. Go Hyeon-woo leveled his sword point-blank at the man as he stood frozen in place — as much as to say, you're next. Skinny jolted and bolted, but however quick the legs, no man outruns the wind. As Clear Stream converged on him, his whole body writhed and twisted as blood fountained out, until a mangled mass no longer recognizable as human settled onto the floor and went still.

“……”

Go Hyeon-woo stepped up to the corpse and recovered the necklace. Fatty's bracelet, Skinny's necklace — fitted together, the two joined as seamlessly as if they had once been a single whole. It was a serpent emblem, coiled in sinuous loops, its entire body adorned with feathers, so dynamic it seemed poised to surge into the sky at any moment.

Next, the altar.

The ascent drew far less interference than before. With both vice-priests dead, the barbarians' fervor seemed to have sagged at a stroke; more than that, they hung back from the altar itself, as though it were holy ground no foot should dare desecrate. Only the occasional one or two who flung their lives away regardless fell beneath a single stroke of his blade.

The entrance into the altar's interior stood sealed fast behind a thick stone door — which reacted the instant Go Hyeon-woo drew near. The serpent emblem in his hand gave a tremble, and the door swung open of its own accord, as if in welcome.

Within, not one mote of dust: everything was immaculately ordered, and at the exact center rested a single longsword. Fashioned of gold yet with little sheen, its blade etched with countless hieroglyphs — closer to a work of art than a weapon.

But Kim Ho had kept the high priest pinned down in the village, and Go Hyeon-woo had reached the altar first — ownership of the shamanic sword had passed to him. Even so, it was not over yet. One step remains.

The moment Go Hyeon-woo took the shamanic sword in hand and stepped out of the altar, an unseen, alien energy came flooding in. The sword devoured every last wisp of it, ravenous —

The rank had climbed half a step, from D to D+. The worn stretches of the blade had been largely mended, and the hieroglyphs had grown that much crisper. It had fed on the souls of the barbarians and the vice-priests to strengthen itself. One final soul, and the enhancement would be complete.

To the village, then. Go Hyeon-woo started back the way he had come. Kim Ho had left markers along the route, so finding the village would pose no difficulty.

KWA-KWA-KWAANG!

I twisted this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way and that, dodging the golden blasts — I had long since lost count of how many. For a moment I stopped and let my eyes take in the chamber. The village had been smashed to pieces, as though a natural disaster had rolled straight through it. Barbarians sprawled this way and that — most of them the priest's handiwork. My own sins amounted to nothing more than running away. Well, I had flicked the occasional obstructive pest aside with Wind Force, so I would concede to roughly ten percent fault.

“Blast it...!”

Mid-barrage, the high priest broke off and turned ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his gaze toward the altar. The severing of his link to the shamanic sword had reached him. The sword's ownership changing hands meant someone had breached the altar — and that meant both mid-bosses were down.

Looks like they've finished. Satisfaction settled over me, thick and warm. Gauging the time elapsed, it matched my estimate almost exactly. He had followed the guide to the letter. Had Go Hyeon-woo surrendered to his pride and taken on Fatty and Skinny at once, he would have burned precious time; and had he failed to clear out the barbarians first, as instructed, before taking Skinny, it would not only have taken far longer — he would have been stuck hunting down the remainder of the hundred barbarian souls the shamanic sword demanded afterward. Because he had set my walkthrough as his highest priority and executed it faithfully, everything concluded within the projected window. He passes. This much, and I could hand him the next hidden piece with my eyes closed.

“Hold that wretch! I shall make for the altar.”

The high priest pointed at me and barked orders at the handful of barbarians that remained, then scrambled to tear himself away —

“Mister. Where do you think you're going, all by yourself?”

WHUMM—!

A headwind erupted square in his face. Struck by that tremendous physical force, the priest resisted with every ounce of strength he had, but within moments he was stumbling backward in a daze and landed on his backside with remarkably little grace.

He howled, his face blazing scarlet.

“That fiend!!”

“Cutting out halfway through a fight? Now that just hurts a man's feelings.”

“Do not interfere!!”

“There's nothing left for you up there anyway. It's all over already.”

He really needn't have hurried — Go Hyeon-woo was on his way here regardless. The final requirement for enhancing the shamanic sword was none other than the absorption of the priest's own soul. The road here would be clear as a parade ground; I had planted the markers myself, after all. It wouldn't take him long at all to arrive.

“Shall we bring our little dance to an end as well?”

My fist drank deep of a dark crimson flame.