A New Beginning (1)
Things were better than before. That didn't change the fact that the hurdles still left to clear were enormous.
The unique ability she had just awakened only slowed time. Getting hit still dealt damage—it simply arrived in slow motion. In the end, the harm taken was exactly the same.
The reason choking her had seemed ineffective was only because the time it took her to pass out had stretched along with everything else. The damage hadn't vanished; it had merely been delayed. The limits of this ability were painfully clear.
So time slowed down and dodging got easier? Then just throw an attack she couldn't dodge. If all the ability did was buy her a few extra seconds of being hit, a clean area-of-effect skill would settle it. A guaranteed-hit skill would work just as well.
Still… he doesn't seem to have any AOE. I can hold out…!
Even if he could use something like that, he hadn't pulled it out yet. That was enough. He couldn't have fully grasped this ability either.
I have to sell it like even an AOE wouldn't work…!
The ability was basically bullet time from a video game—everything around her temporarily slowed. Bullet time at least accelerated the user; this only dragged the surroundings down, which made it even less useful on paper.
But he didn't know that. Until a moment ago, she hadn't known it either. If she played that ignorance against him, she could endure.
"How irritating…"
Her opponent's eyes bulged as he drew another dagger. That made three already. Where was he even keeping them all?
He charged and thrust. The moment the blade touched the field around her, its time slowed. She slipped past the strike with deliberate, almost leisurely ease.
He yanked his hand back and retreated, changing his pattern. Mana gathered in his palm, then a thin pulse of force shot from the dagger's tip.
Fweesh—
The attack was far faster than anything before. Her field still dragged it down, but her body was already exhausted. Dodging a speed-focused strike perfectly was beyond her.
She avoided a clean hit, but a residual edge of mana grazed her. Blood welled from the shallow scrape.
"…So the damage still goes through."
"Figured it out, have you?"
"If absolute speed itself were reduced, there'd be no reason to dodge at all. I already suspected it only slows external relative velocity around you. Which means an unavoidable attack would put you down."
"And you can throw one of those?"
"The ability's range is the space right around your body, so yes. Even point attacks, stretched out long enough, become a line. And since it only applies near you, setting that up should be easy."
He was a villain who fought people, not gates—and he was already reverse-engineering her unique ability on the fly. Of course he was. He'd crossed blades with enough humans to make analysis second nature.
But those words had also confirmed something. An unavoidable attack. From that alone she could read his next move. He had no AOE. If he did, he wouldn't have bothered with that little speech.
Projectiles didn't slow on their own—only once they entered the space around her body. So he meant to scatter them, fencing her movement until she had nowhere left to go.
Of course, he could be bluffing about not having AOE… but the odds were low. Beating her wasn't enough. He had to subdue her and vanish before anyone else arrived. He wouldn't waste time half-assing his power level.
"Let's finish this quickly."
Branching streams of mana poured from his dagger tip, spreading like a single trunk splitting into a canopy of skyward limbs, then diving toward her.
Any one of them was dodgeable. Dodging every raindrop falling from the sky was not.
The honed shards of mana came down in a deluge. The instant they touched her field, they all slowed as one.
But that was only deferring the future. Nothing actually changed. Having more time didn't let you squeeze through a hole smaller than your body.
However—
"WindBlast."
For anyone else, maybe not. For her, extra time was meaningful. She wasn't a battle mage. She wasn't a swordsman or a brawler either.
She was a mage—someone who paid for near-limitless versatility with the steep casting time of every high-grade attack.
Time, for a mage like her, meant powerful spells on a lean mana budget. It meant overcoming the class's signature weakness.
A magic circle bloomed at her fingertips and birthed a vast current of air. The wind couldn't have shifted a head-sized rock—but it was more than enough to shove those mana blades aside.
The razor-edged projectiles veered off her body. The hole that had been smaller than she was forced itself wider, and she slipped through the gap.
Thank god! Because it's my unique ability, I'm free from the slowdown!
Anything wrapped in her own mana refused to slow, body or not. The ability ran on her mana, and her body moved freely inside it—so of course that followed.
Looking his way, she could feel the shock from here. As long as her mana held, he wasn't getting through.
A mage's versatility was nearly unmatched. The orthodox way to beat one was to drop them before they finished casting.
But this mage had been given time. So how do you win? Crush her with sheer weight class—or pull out some mystery that erases time itself.
Neither was possible for him.
"…Damn it."
He was experienced. You didn't get sent alone on a job like this otherwise. Which meant he recognized a lost cause when he saw one.
Unlike her, the price of defeat on his side was incomparable. He straightened his clothes and started running the other way.
"…Until next time."
With that, he vanished into the distance. Just in case, she kept the ability running and held position.
About five minutes passed.
"Over there…! There she is!!!!"
"Found her!!!!"
From far off came the thunder of people rushing in a pack.
Haha. They got here fast…
No—she shouldn't be thinking that. She should be grateful they'd come at all. She was alive. That was enough.
She had survived another day. That was enough.
Thud—
The sight of approaching people unspooled the last of her tension, and she collapsed. Consciousness slid away; for a while, she slept.
"…So. How is she?"
"The young lady appears to be all right."
Lee Jihyeon was looking at the situation with a complicated mix of feelings. An assassin had targeted Baek Sowol. They had split up, and somehow Sowol had escaped all the way to the entrance.
All that remained was for Sowol to make it back—but one minute passed, then two, then three, and she never appeared. Something had clearly gone wrong, so Jihyeon had put out an emergency SOS.
As an A-rank Hunter, she'd managed to grab people's attention. The problem was that this was a C-Rank Gate.
Walking into an unknown threat carried real risk. Not even a C-rank villain—an A-rank. Trusting a wounded Lee Jihyeon alone and charging in? Not an easy call.
But then—
"That person just now. Her name… Baek Sowol, correct?"
Two figures in black suits appeared out of nowhere. They introduced themselves, vaguely, as fighters of A-rank or higher—and the moment they joined, the mood flipped.
They would handle the fighting. Just find the location. People moved.
I figured she was some rich family's daughter the second she became a kidnapping target… but this is beyond anything I imagined…!
Two A-rank Hunters. And that was only what they'd claimed—for all anyone knew, they were stronger still. Together they headed for the last place Sowol had been seen, and found her staggering before she went down.
The two men in suits were already checking over the fallen Baek Sowol with careful hands.
"Anyone here a supporter or healer? The injuries aren't critical, but they could turn at any moment—we need to act fast…"
"We'll compensate generously. As quickly as possible…"
Under the black-suited men's intense attention, Sowol's condition improved at a startling pace. A whole crowd clustered around a single person.
Things ordinary people would never experience, Baek Sowol was living through without lifting a finger—not because she'd asked, but because everyone else chose to.
Some chaebol family? Or is she the president's daughter or something?
Jihyeon watched her and wondered. Just who was this girl? Even her looks made her seem like a different species—and now it turned out her family was loaded on top of that.
Her future was bright, too. A mage. Someone from a completely different world than Lee Jihyeon.
But… what was that feeling back then?
The real question was simpler. Jihyeon had felt an unexplainable, powerful pull toward Baek Sowol. Why? What on earth had caused it?
She had no answer.
"Young lady…! Are you all right?"
Sowol seemed to be coming around. Jihyeon stepped closer.
"Uh… who… are you…?"
Baek Sowol didn't seem to fully recognize the men in suits.
"You don't recognize us…?"
"Sorry? I mean… who are you…?"
"Do you at least remember your own name?"
"Me…? I'm Baek Sowol…?"
Her memory clearly wasn't intact. Jihyeon moved in closer.
"Ah! Jihyeon—did you get away okay?"
Thankfully, Sowol knew her. The men exchanged startled looks and pressed further.
"Young lady… is your memory fuzzy?"
"What's the earliest thing you can recall…?"
"Huh?"
Sowol looked flustered, thought hard, then spoke.
"Wait? Wait—I… up until about a month ago, I definitely…?"
Her memory wasn't whole. Everything from the past month seemed stripped away, leaving the rest of her past in pieces.
One of the men wrote the fact down at once.
The other was already on the phone, explaining the situation in detail. Sowol's gaze drifted back to Jihyeon.
"Sowol… are you okay…?"
"Yeah. I almost got kidnapped, but I managed to stop it."
"I'm so sorry. I never thought something like this would happen…"
"Don't be. It was my carelessness. If anything, if I hadn't been here, you never would have gone through this. I'm the one who should apologize."
Sowol was the one comforting Jihyeon. Thoughtful to a fault—looking out for someone else even when she herself had to be hurting the most.
And she was five years younger than Jihyeon.
"We should go. You've got plenty of stories to unpack on stream, right?"
Half her memories gone. Standing in a situation where those memories might miraculously return—and Sowol casually brought up the things waiting right in front of them.
It was almost absurd. She'd nearly been kidnapped and cut off from her family for life, and she could still say something like that with a straight face.
Just like Heo Donghyun.
The thought struck Jihyeon out of nowhere. If—just if—
"Yeah. We should."
If Heo Donghyun had been a woman. If he'd become a mage exactly like that.
He would have acted just like Baek Sowol.