Chapter 15

Chapter 15. I Was Already No Longer There

***

The edge of the ruins was filled with the smell of death. As we pushed through the forest of collapsed buildings, an old, rough parade ground revealed itself.

This place, which must once have been a military facility, was now nothing more than a concrete grave overgrown with weeds.

Each time I set a foot down, broken cement powder puffed up and stung my nose.

The gray sky had settled so heavily it seemed ready to collapse at any moment, and the air held moisture and dust, making my lungs feel damp with every breath.

HISSSSS—!

What broke the silence was the trembling hand of the Hunter at the front. The signal flare he fired split the air.

Blue flame shot upward, tearing through the gray curtain-like sky. It was a signal of survival and a proposition announcing the end of this hellish exam.

"It is over......"

That single short sentence, slipping from someone's mouth, became the trigger.

"We survived. We, we really survived!"

The Hunters whose tension had snapped collapsed to the ground one by one. Their faces were smeared with mud, the black blood of monsters, and their own sweat.

Groups C and D. The momentum they had possessed when they first passed through the Gate was nowhere to be found. Only seven people had survived.

Leaving dozens of comrades behind, the sight of them standing at the exit was not merely tragic, but shabby.

But in their trembling eyes flickered the relief that only survivors could possess, and the bizarre pride of having walked out of hell.

Step, step.

Lee Seong-chan took heavy steps and approached me. The huge shields that had weighed down his shoulders were dented and bent here and there, no longer retaining their original shape.

He tapped my shoulder with his rough hand. The arm muscles that had gripped those shields were trembling faintly, as if seizing.

It was the medal a man who had stood at the very front as a tank and received countless claws and fangs had to bear.

"Mr. Do-jin, you really worked hard."

His voice was rough, mixed with a metallic rasp, but it held a sincere bond within it.

"You worked hard too, Mr. Seong-chan."

"Haha, well...... I cannot do this twice. I really do not know how many times my head nearly flew off."

He sank down right where he stood and took a water bottle from his waist. The tips of his fingers trembled as he opened the cap.

Lukewarm water ran down his throat, and his Adam's apple bobbed heavily. The other Hunters around him were the same.

They checked one another's wounds, gathered their torn clothes, and savored their sense of release.

The hope that they could now go back, wash their bodies in cold water, bury themselves in a soft bed, and fall into a deep sleep without even dreaming.

That sweet fantasy filled the parade ground.

But I could not sit down with them.

A cold sensation ran down my spine. Mana was rippling.

No, it was not a simple ripple, but a massive wave compressing the entire atmosphere.

Beyond the clouds, at an unreachable altitude, something with enormous mass was in free fall.

'......It is coming.'

My intuition warned me. Before my lips could even close.

KUUUUNG—!

The atmosphere screamed. A tearing sound poured down from above my head, loud enough to rip my eardrums.

The gray clouds in the sky swirled around a single point, and a black meteor plunged straight down.

It was a fall close to disaster, beyond the physical force a human body should be capable of producing.

The center of the parade ground flipped over with an explosion. The concrete slabs that formed the ground crumpled like sheets of paper and scattered into the air.

A storm of dust spread in every direction and swallowed the Hunters. Those shoved back by the shockwave screamed as they tumbled away.

In an instant, the parade ground became a scene of chaos.

"Cough! What, what is this! What the hell happened!"

"Is it an ambush? Did they follow us all the way here?"

"No...... It was not over?"

Confusion and fear devoured the parade ground once again. The Hunters hurriedly reached for their weapons, but their muscles had already reached their limits and would not move as they wished.

Within the thick settling cloud of dust, a shadow, strangely calm, slowly rose to its feet.

Step.

The footstep was heavy. It was not the sound of a foot stepping on the ground, but pressure that directly trampled the survivors' hearts.

When the wind blew and the dust cleared, the figure that appeared defied everyone's expectations.

A black sleeveless T-shirt. Across the muscles bulging beneath it, rough scars were scattered messily, as if proving countless battlefields.

On his shoulder, he rested a massive Battle Axe taller than a person.

It was the examiner, Yoo Hye-sung.

"You endured well."

He slowly, very slowly, looked over us as we stared up at him blankly. Wherever his gaze touched, killing intent prickled against the skin.

"But do not misunderstand. The picnic ends here."

Clack.

He lowered the axe from his shoulder to the ground.

He had merely placed the axe blade on the ground, yet the air of the parade ground sank heavily, as if thousands of tons of lead had been poured into it.

"From this point on, the final stage begins."

The final stage. At those words, the Hunters' faces turned white. Their bodies were already battered, and their minds had been worn down to the limit.

But Yoo Hye-sung continued as if their circumstances were none of his concern.

"Scenario setting. In the depths of a Gate, you have encountered a villain Awakened who stole precious Mana Stones and brutally murdered his comrades to silence them."

He lifted the huge axe blade and pointed it at us. The sharp edge of the axe held a dark madness that did not reflect even the light of the gray sky.

"I am the villain."

It was not wordplay. Those were the eyes of a villain ready to charge in at any moment and turn the living beings before him into lumps of meat.

"Time limit: five minutes. Survive here without being killed by me. That is your final assignment."

His opponent was Yoo Hye-sung, infamous even among active B-rank Hunters as a battle maniac.

For those who had just Awakened and taken an exam at tutorial level, it was like being told to endure inside a tiger's jaws.

"This is insane! We’re already at our limits!"

"What kind of rule is this! Should you not at least give us time to recover?"

Despair erupted after turning into anger. It was closer to pitiful screaming that wanted to deny the coming death than protest.

But Yoo Hye-sung snorted and adjusted his grip on the axe handle.

"What a load of crap. Do villains check your condition before coming to stab you? Hold your weapons properly instead of whining. That is the only way to extend your lives by even one more second."

Blue Aura began to ripple from his entire body. Some Hunters lost strength in their legs before the overwhelming gap in power and collapsed where they stood.

An overwhelming wall that castrated even the will to fight. It existed right before our eyes.

But then, a dull sound broke the silence.

"......To hell with it. Let us try."

It was Lee Seong-chan. With trembling hands, he gripped his crumpled shields again.

His face was pale with fear, but his eyes alone were shining. It was not a lack of fear, but the courage to suppress that fear and take one step forward.

"It is not like we will actually die, right? After coming all this way, I do not want to tuck my tail and die here!"

THUD!

He planted his shields into the ground and lowered his stance. His rough breathing scattered as white steam. His broad back looked unusually large.

'He passed.'

I murmured quietly inside. Yoo Hye-sung's intention in staging this absurd situation was clear. The purpose of this exam was not to defeat Yoo Hye-sung.

It was asking about the essence of being a Hunter: whether you could hold your place before absolute force and fear, and whether you could raise a shield for your comrades.

Lee Seong-chan answered that question with his actions.

"Yeah, damn it! It is five minutes! We just have to survive somehow for five minutes!"

“Let’s do it! We can’t die here!”

Lee Seong-chan's courage became an ember and spread. The Hunters who had been sitting down staggered to their feet. Eyes filled with spite turned toward Yoo Hye-sung.

"Not bad."

The corners of Yoo Hye-sung's mouth twisted sharply. It was the pleasure of a predator seeing its prey bare its teeth.

"You pass for guts. Then let us see whether your skills match."

PAAT—!

There was no warning. Yoo Hye-sung's body moved faster than the sound of tearing air.

He had not disappeared from sight; he had approached while surpassing the limit of speed the brain could recognize.

"Spread out!"

The moment my shout rang across the parade ground, an explosive shockwave burst out.

KABOOOM!

The place where the Hunters had been gathered just moments ago was gouged out like a massive crater.

Along the trajectory the Battle Axe had passed through, a deep, sharp crevasse had formed in the ground.

"Guh!"

"Aaagh!"

The Hunters who could not withstand the shock were flung in every direction like fallen leaves. I rolled low and let the fragments pass by. Yoo Hye-sung did not stop.

His gaze was already fixed on his next target, Lee Seong-chan. The intent was clear: he would thoroughly trample the bastard who had been the first to grit his teeth and step forward.

"Take this!"

Yoo Hye-sung swung the axe wide horizontally. The trajectory itself was simple. But overwhelming mass and speed filled in that simplicity.

The air was pushed by the axe blade and formed a heavy wall of wind.

"Hraaaaaah!"

Lee Seong-chan roared. He deployed his unique skill, [Aegis's Protection]. Between the shields in both hands, a translucent silver curtain formed.

It was a defensive posture at the highest output of his life, pouring in all the mana he possessed.

BAAAAANG—!

But the result was disastrous. The moment the blade of the enormous Battle Axe touched the barrier, the golden curtain shattered like a window struck by a hammer.

The shields made of steel crumpled like scraps of paper, and the impact was transmitted directly into Lee Seong-chan's body.

"Aaaaagh!"

Lee Seong-chan was launched backward like a cannonball. Only after rolling across the parade ground floor ten times and crashing into a pit of dust did his movement stop.

The arms that had been holding his shields were bent grotesquely and trembling, and dark blood flowed endlessly from the corners of his mouth. It had been a single blow.

A demonstration of overwhelming force that rendered everything a tank possessed meaningless.

Yoo Hye-sung slowly approached the fallen Lee Seong-chan. Then he raised the axe above his head once more. A cold posture that resembled a finishing blow.

"Do not get up. The moment you force your body to rise, you will really die then."

The low warning was like an order. Lee Seong-chan's pupils shrank with fear. The killing intent emitted by the man before him was not a bluff.

That was when it happened.

"Now! Shoot!"

The ranger, who had been watching for an opportunity from the rear, shouted as if screaming. The special arrow he had saved until the end split the air.

FWOOOOSH— BANG!

The arrow exploded above Yoo Hye-sung's head. Dense silver smoke poured down from inside it like a waterfall and instantly covered the entire parade ground. [Fog Shot].

It was a smoke bomb that perfectly cut off vision and disturbed the flow of mana. A tactic that had proven effective in the desperate battle against the Mirror Golem.

'......A bad move.'

I clicked my tongue quietly. The situational judgment was wrong.

Against a monster that depended on sight, it could be fatal, but against a battle-hardened B-rank veteran Hunter, this clumsy vision obstruction only gave him an opportunity.

It merely made it difficult to grasp allies' positions and maximized fear.

"Gaaagh!"

"Where is he! I cannot see! Where is Yoo Hye-sung?!"

My prediction was not wrong. Screams and cries crossed within the fog.

Yoo Hye-sung's form could not be seen, but the tearing sounds of the axe he swung found the Hunters precisely.

An unseen predator was dancing with the fog as its wings.

'He is sensing with Aura.'

He was reading the world not with his eyes, but through the energy touching his skin and the minute flow of mana.

Moving with the flow of air without making a single footstep, he was hunting the imbalance of breath created by the Hunters' fear.

Sssssk.

A cool current of air brushed right beside me. Before instinct could even warn me, I tilted my head back.

The sensation of cold metal grazed the bridge of my nose. A few severed strands of hair scattered into the fog.

"Wow, you dodged that?"

Yoo Hye-sung's voice came from beyond the dense mist. A voice that sounded genuinely pleased.

He was appreciating this situation, and the extreme fear the Hunters felt, as if it were a well-structured play.

My fingertips trembled faintly. But it was not because of fear.

What made my heart pound as if it would burst was the excitement from the boundary between life and death, something I was feeling for the first time in so long.

'I can see.'

The fog was still thick, but everything was clear to my eyes. In the darkness, blue flames were dancing violently.

They were the waves of Aura being emitted from Yoo Hye-sung's body.

It was a realm an ordinary mage could never detect. Because a mage's mana and a swordsman's Aura fundamentally had different frequencies.

But right now, I was neither an ordinary mage nor an ordinary swordsman.

I activated [Synchronization], into which I had poured all fourteen of my skill points.

This was not a simple technique for operating mana.

It was an extremely dangerous synchronization process that forcibly matched the vibration frequency of my nervous system and mana circuit to external Aura waves.

My senses had now gone beyond the category of a mage. They were in the realm of supersense, reacting with extreme sensitivity to the sharp killing intent of Aura and the trembling of air.

'If this were me before my regression, my head would have flown off here.'

As a mage, my mana sensitivity had been vast, but it had limits when it came to reading the condensed killing intent unique to swordsmen.

The old me would have noticed the ambush only after the axe blade had cut through my carotid artery. But now, it was different.

'I can read it. Everything.'

The timing of Yoo Hye-sung's thigh muscles contracting, the interval at which his lungs drew in air, even the faint friction sound of Aura condensing at the edge of the huge axe blade.

Every particle of air in the fog seemed to be disassembled like a still image and pushed into my brain.

'Ten meters to the left. Angle of kicking off the ground, 45 degrees. Approach speed, 17.5 meters per second.'

'Straight-line breakthrough, then horizontal slash.'

He was coming. Without the slightest hesitation, solely to destroy the target that was me.

'Four seconds.'

I adjusted my grip on the sword hilt. Slowing my heartbeat as much as possible, I focused mana into the blade. The calculation ability of the 9th Circle derived the optimal timing.

'Two seconds.'

Killing intent stabbed my skin like needles. Tearing through the fog, the heavy Battle Axe began to draw its trajectory.

'Now.'

Without hesitation, I threw myself into the fog where Yoo Hye-sung was approaching.

WOOOONG—!

I overlaid Aura onto the blade. I matched the frequency of the Aura Yoo Hye-sung was emitting and the vibration frequency of my sword down to the decimal point.

"Trying to kill yourself, brat?"

Together with Yoo Hye-sung's shout, the axe blade infused with deep blue Aura fell vertically toward the crown of my head. Dodging was meaningless.

With that speed and range, the moment I evaded, my body would obviously be split in half by the follow-up strike. Then there was only one method.

'[Breaker]'

KABOOOM—!

Sword and axe locked together. It was not simply the sound of metal striking metal. A roar like an enormous bomb exploding shook the parade ground.

The shockwave spread in concentric circles and tore the dense fog apart in a single breath. The concrete floor beneath my feet cracked like a spiderweb and sank down.

"You... bastard......!"

His axe was blocked by my sword, stopped in midair as if mounted there. This was not a simple contest of strength.

It was a victory of technique: piercing the exact impact point in the instant the axe's center of gravity was loaded and twisting the direction of force in the exact opposite direction.

A miraculous parry created by the precise mana control forged as an archmage and the sword trajectory perfected through tens of thousands of battles.

The ligaments in my wrist screamed. Pain like fire on every joint rushed in. But I faced him without taking a single step back.

"You...... You took that head-on?"

For the first time, confusion mixed into Yoo Hye-sung's voice.

It seemed difficult for him to accept the fact that a brat who was nothing more than a rookie Hunter had perfectly neutralized a full-power blow of his, and by using the principle of force at that.

The fingertips gripping his axe were trembling faintly. I loaded power into my sword and pushed his axe away.

"Will you continue? Or shall we end the exam here, Examiner?"

It was a clear provocation. A single sentence that mercilessly scraped at his pride. I did not want to stop.

I wanted to see more of this man's force, the essence of the warrior hidden beneath it. And I wanted to engrave it into the database of my senses.

In that instant, the confusion vanished from Yoo Hye-sung's face. What filled its place was a hunter's instinct, so cold it was almost frigid.

The light playfulness evaporated, and the heavy killing intent only a true powerhouse could possess froze the parade ground.

"Arrogant bastard. Fine. Let us play to the end."

WOOOOONG—!

The Aura pouring from his Battle Axe rippled grotesquely. The energy, which had been a pale blue, had now turned navy, resembling the color of the deep sea.

The surrounding air cooled rapidly, and frost began to form. He no longer perceived me as an examinee.

'Yes, this is it.'

A thrill traveled up my spine and into my brain. Walking a tightrope with my life as collateral. This overwhelming tension was the greatest teacher I had longed for after my regression.

PAAT—!

Yoo Hye-sung's body vanished as if melting into the fog. Acceleration that could not even be compared to before. It was the realm of high-speed movement that left no afterimage.

His attack was not a simple slash. Up, down, left, right, even from the blind spot behind my back.

A series of axe strikes that seemed to fly in from every direction at once rushed in like a storm. The afterimages of the axe surrounded and struck at me like the teeth of a starving wolf.

Yoo Hye-sung's signature move, "Reaper's Fang," exploded toward me.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Even blocking it was overwhelming. The palm gripping my sword split open and blood sprayed, and my shoulder muscles felt as if they were burning from overload.

But my eyes did not give up. Within that dizzying trajectory of death, I was dissecting the unique breath and rhythm of the human named Yoo Hye-sung.

'I can see the pattern.'

No matter how perfect the martial art may be, as long as a human performs it, a rhythm must exist. The amount of Aura released, the placement of the feet, the angle of retrieving the axe.

All of that information was drawn in my mind as a single musical score through [Synchronization].

Yoo Hye-sung raised his axe high over his head. The finishing strike that would mark the end of the chain.

It was a guillotine that condensed the Aura of his entire body into a single point and crushed the opponent along with the ground.

"End of the line!"

With his shout, the axe fell. An overwhelming pressure of gravity, as if space itself were warping.

It was an absolute will to destroy that could not be defended against or blocked.

But in that split second, I smiled.

KABOOOM—!

The massive axe blade struck the ground. The entire parade ground shook as if an earthquake had hit, and an explosive dust cloud soared high into the sky.

Yoo Hye-sung tightened his grip on the axe as if certain of victory.

However, as the dust cleared, Yoo Hye-sung's eyes were shaking more violently than ever before.

Because I was already no longer there.

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