Ding. Ding. Ding.
System
In crisis lies opportunity. You have gained new insight during a battle in which life and death hung in the balance!
Your Middle Dantian has opened!
The opening of your Middle Dantian has increased all attributes by 20!
Circulating your qi has become vastly more effective!
Your ability to perceive and control the flow of qi has greatly improved!
Muscles and Bones and Sinews and Meridians have increased!
The System notifications kept ringing in my ears without pause.
A breeze stirred my sweat-soaked hair, and I felt the new power and changes permeating my entire body.
Even the final, crystal-clear chime.
Ding.
System
As a reward for your enlightenment, you have gained a large amount of EXP!
As a reward for your enlightenment, you have gained 50 points!
Level Up!
As an effect of leveling up, all status ailments and fatigue have been cleared, and some injuries have healed!
The status effect Curse has been removed!
Your temporarily reduced attributes have returned to normal!
And I wasn’t the only one who sensed the changes.
A master could hardly fail to notice what his own hand had done. Realizing that his curse magic had been broken, the Arch Lich asked in disbelief,
“How in the world?”
I shrugged at the single word that contained every question he had.
“Well.”
“‘Well’?”
“Yeah. Well.”
“Do you think that explains anything?”
“Of course not. But why should I explain it to you?”
The faint tremor in the Arch Lich’s glowing eyes conveyed his sheer incredulity.
“You are clearly not a mage.”
“I wanted to be one. Mages get paid more. But I didn’t have the talent. I wasn’t smart enough, either.”
“Even the humans you call Grand Mages could not break my magic so easily.”
“They can’t. But it’s done.”
“What utter nonsense!”
I had to admit it.
The Arch Lich’s magic—no, his skill—was unquestionably superior to mine.
Even I, who had already far surpassed the limits of an ordinary Hunter, had been unable to avoid his curse magic. And his massive illusion spell using Bone Spears had been genuinely dangerous.
If I hadn’t gained that insight, I might not even be standing here now.
But…
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“……!”
I had the System, and I had merely done my best with the power and effort I had been given to overcome the crisis.
If he thought that was unfair, he could use the System, too.
“That’s just how the world works. Even if it feels like shit and pisses you off, you have to suck it up and move on. What else can you do? It’s already happened. Right?”
The Skeleton Warlord, who had been screaming only moments ago, muttered,
“Wow. You really have a way with words.”
I could be like that sometimes.
“But, devious human, that one does not appear willing to suck it up and move on.”
The Skeleton Warlord was right.
The next moment, an enormous vortex of magical power formed, and an eerie voice rang out.
“Explode. Sonic Buster.”
And at the same time—
Fwoooooosh! Boom!
Highly compressed wind exploded outward all at once.
The sphere of wind shot forward at the speed of sound, pulverizing concrete and snapping steel rebar with the slightest touch.
Every window in the high-rise buildings shattered under the aftershock, and countless shards of glass were swept into the gale.
In a single instant—before I could even blink—the enormous mass of wind had reached the tip of my nose.
“Human!”
The Skeleton Warlord’s scream from inside my Inventory echoed like a cry from far away.
Was that bastard worried about his own safety, or mine?
Whatever the real reason, it didn’t matter.
There was a world of difference between who I’d been a few minutes ago and who I was now.
Ah.
The area around my chest grew hot.
The place martial artists called the Tanzhong acupoint, or the Middle Dantian, had opened wide.
It allowed me to take in everything around me—to feel it against my skin and see it with my own eyes.
So that’s what it was.
The world slowed, and everything became clear enough to see and understand.
The enormous sphere of wind, its currents whipping like blades.
And the flow of magical power that made it possible.
Shh-shh-shh-shh-shhk!
Everything had a center. Magic was no exception.
And now, I could see it.
Now.
I swung my spear through the slowed world.
The sphere of wind that looked ready to sweep away everything in its path split in two along White Flame’s spearhead.
The single enormous mass broke into hundreds—thousands—of wind blades. Freed from the magical power controlling them, they veered left and right, tearing through everything around them.
Shhk! Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!
The raging wind whipped my clothes and hair around. With a faint smile on my lips, I looked up at the Arch Lich.
“Come down. My neck hurts.”
“You…!”
“Or I can come to you.”
Crack-crackle! Boom!
One stomp.
The solid ground caved in, and I shot toward the ash-gray sky.
Boom!
The instant Jin Taekyung launched himself from the ground, the Arch Lich realized what he had to do.
I must not let that human come any closer.
Every mage knew to avoid close combat, but for the Arch Lich, those words carried a different weight.
This body feels threatened by a mere human.
He prided himself on having reached the pinnacle of dark magic.
Although he had lost considerable power during his resurrection as an Arch Lich, even now he possessed enough magical power to regard Grand Mages as beneath him.
But the human hurtling toward him now…
He is dangerous.
Yes. Just like that bastard back then.
It was a memory the Arch Lich never wanted to recall again. Clenching his still-intact teeth, he cast a spell.
“Gravity!”
Unlike before, the shout carried palpable power. Invisible gravity bore down over a radius of several dozen meters.1
Just as the pressure—too great for even an S-rank Hunter to resist—was about to engulf Jin Taekyung’s entire body—
Pop!
Compressed air burst from the tip of Jin Taekyung’s foot.
His body escaped the range of the gravity magic with Stepping on Empty Air, then stepped on the empty air again.
His graceful movements resembled a hawk’s, but no mere bird could compare to his speed.
What is this?
The red glow in the Arch Lich’s eyes darkened as he watched Jin Taekyung race through the air toward him.
Jin Taekyung had not only identified the precise range of his gravity magic but had also evaded it with some strange technique.
As I thought. He did not dispel the illusion magic through mere luck. Then…
Whoooooooom!
Magical power poured from the Arch Lich’s entire body, shaking the surrounding space.
“Gravity. Gravity. Gravity.”
High-level spells that even a skilled high-ranking mage would have needed to chant at length came pouring out without pause.
This time, the Arch Lich was certain he could knock Jin Taekyung from the sky.
Fall, human.
This time, he reduced the strength of his gravity magic in exchange for expanding its range.
How could Jin Taekyung possibly escape gravity pressing down over a radius of several hundred meters2—
Shhk!
The Arch Lich’s glowing eyes trembled.
The gravity magic bearing down on Jin Taekyung dispersed, and the Arch Lich felt the magical power connecting him to the spell snap like a thread.
He froze for an instant, stunned that his magic had been broken.
Then Jin Taekyung stepped on empty air once more and shot toward him like a cannonball.
Bang! Shweeeeeek!
With a sharp crack through the air, Jin Taekyung hurtled in front of the Arch Lich—no, a step above him—and brought White Flame down.
Fwoom!
A line of blue flame streaked toward the Arch Lich.
Crash!
In the slowed world, the invisible barrier surrounding the Arch Lich shattered.
The flames of Force, fueled by three jiazi3 of Scorching Yang Qi, smashed through dozens of layered defensive spells and surged toward the Arch Lich’s body.
At that very moment—
“Great Bone Wall!”
With an eerie cry, a wall of black bones rose into the air.
The highest-level defensive spell, manifested barely a meter away,4 collided with the flame-wreathed spearhead.
High in the ash-gray sky, an enormous shock wave and a thunderous roar erupted around the two figures facing each other across the bone wall.
Kwaaang!
Compressed wind exploded outward.
The clouds circling far above scattered. Buildings that had barely maintained their shape collapsed, and half-rotted corpses were swept away by the wind.
Yet the two beings responsible for it all remained perfectly still, staring at each other through the barrier.
“That was close, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, quite impressive. No…”
The Arch Lich stared at the transparent spearhead piercing the center of the wall and continued,
“I shall call it dangerous.”
The length of the spearhead that had passed through the bone barrier was no more than the width of a finger joint, but the Force that erupted in that instant had reached the tip of the Arch Lich’s nose.
It had been a fortunate escape for the Arch Lich.
For Jin Taekyung, it had been unfortunate.
“You got lucky.”
“You are arrogant, human. But I will admit this much.”
“What?”
The Arch Lich slowly continued as Jin Taekyung stared at him in confusion.
“You have earned the right to be. If you truly are the Adversary.”
“……The Adversary?”
“That is right. The king’s Adversary. His eternal nemesis, bound to him by a god’s machinations. I cannot yet be certain, but… that must also be why I was able to rise again after stepping into the River of Death.”
Jin Taekyung frowned.
What was the king’s Adversary? And what kind of nonsense was this about a god’s machinations?
“Do you have middle-school syndrome5 or something? Get rid of those bones and show me your right hand. Let’s see if there’s a Black Flame Dragon in there.”
The Arch Lich shook his head.
“This is something neither you nor I can understand. But one thing is certain.”
The deeply sunken red eye-lights flared fiercely.
At first, he had thought Jin Taekyung was merely a strong and unusual human.
Not anymore.
He remembered sweeping across this planet decades ago while serving the king.
He also recalled the figure of the human he had encountered on the day he lost everything and fell into the River of Death—the first and last time he had ever met that human.
The Adversary.
The human who had killed him and even assassinated the king.
The one he had tried to stop but could not, the one he had tried to approach but could never reach—the only human he had ever feared.
And today, during his battle with Jin Taekyung, the Arch Lich had remembered that day.
“You… will definitely die here.”
His voice was eerie but more resolute than ever.
Jin Taekyung’s answer was simple.
“What the hell are you talking about, dumbass?”
And the next moment—
“Eat this, fucker.”
Fwoom! Kwaaaaaa!
With those quiet words, a fist wreathed in blue hellfire shot forward, erasing everything in its path.
It struck the curtain of black bones.
Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist.
Crack-crack-crack!
The bone barrier that had seemed capable of blocking any attack collapsed.
Beyond the countless fragments of bone scattering in every direction, the Arch Lich’s face came into view.
Jin Taekyung spoke with an expressionless face.
“See how much better this is? My neck doesn’t hurt, either.”
“……!”
“Down you go.”
Wham!
A single punch, fired like a ray of light, slammed into the Arch Lich’s jaw.
Footnotes
-
Several dozen meters is roughly 30–90 m, or about 98–295 ft. ↩
-
Several hundred meters is roughly 300–900 m, or about 980–2,950 ft. ↩
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A jiazi is a traditional sixty-year cycle; three jiazi equal 180 years. ↩
-
One meter is about 3.28 ft. ↩
-
“Middle-school syndrome” refers to adolescent fantasies of possessing hidden powers. A Black Flame Dragon is a stock example of such an imagined power. ↩
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