“Ugh!”
However, Kang Changho’s next attempt failed.
He tried to take advantage of the opening in his opponent’s balance, reaching out to seize the blond man by the hair and follow up with another strike. But before his large hand could even touch a strand, someone stepped in with all his strength and stopped him.
“Wait a minute!”
It was Jung Haseong.
And since the hero was also an S-rank Hunter, simply grabbing Kang Changho’s arm was enough to create tremendous resistance.
“Please stop.”
“Stop?”
Kang Changho’s mouth remained twisted into a smirk.
He let out several loud laughs, as though the request were too absurd to believe, then spoke in an unexpectedly calm voice.
“Hunter Jung Haseong. I think you’re misunderstanding something. You heard everything we said while standing right beside us. Let go for a moment. This isn’t something an outsider should interfere with...”
“Please calm down.”
“Haha. No, forget calming down for a second. I’m the one who got scammed here, you know?”
The black-haired young man looked visibly flustered, but he still refused to release Kang Changho’s arm.
That only made Kang Changho laugh harder.
“You’re really making this difficult. What’s gotten into you? A renowned Hunter who’s supposed to set an example for everyone, openly siding with a piece of trash like this?”
“What did you say?”
“I’m the victim here. The victim. If you’re going to restrain someone, shouldn’t you be stopping the bastard who shamelessly exploited another person instead of me—”
The S-rank Hunter with the Dragon’s Eye lightly struggled against Jung Haseong’s grip as the two exchanged heated words.
And at that moment, someone poured fire into a pot that was already boiling with oil.
“Victim, my ass. Keep saying that loudly enough and people might actually start believing you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Hunter Kim?”
“Oh, this son of a bitch—what, did I ever ask you to follow me around? It’s a damn good thing I voluntarily agreed to the contract halfway through. Otherwise, you were ready to lay all kinds of traps and make me your sacrifice candidate however you pleased. And now you’re pretending to be the victim?”
“Haha.”
“Changho, just because you beat up a reporter doesn’t mean all the other shitty things you’ve done suddenly disappear. Do you think people’s actions can be tallied up with simple addition and subtraction?”
It was the rough manner of speech one might expect from someone under extreme stress and in immediate danger of death.
Despite possessing a mere 15Aw of base magical power, Kim Giryeo had the nerve to continue provoking his opponent.
Jung Haseong, at least outwardly, could only stare in bewilderment at the argument unfolding between two beings who were practically monsters in human form.
“Hey, Hunter Jung. He’s standing over there insulting me with language that vulgar. Do you really think I’m supposed to sit quietly and listen?”
Even so, the hand restraining Kang Changho did not loosen.
“...”
“Judging from everything that’s been said so far... Hunter Kang Changho, there’s an extremely high chance that you possess a skill similar to [Plunder], isn’t there?”
“Go on.”
“In hospitals, organ donations made in exchange for compensation are never approved. That’s simply how society works. No matter what reward is promised, a contract that deals in human life shouldn’t be valid in the first place.”
The number-one-ranked Hunter continued carefully, doing his best to defuse the situation.
“However, it does seem that Hunter Kim broke his promises as well. In my opinion, it would be better if the two of you calmly continued this discussion—ugh!”
Tak.
His words were abruptly cut off by a dull impact.
Kang Changho forcibly tore his arm free from Haseong’s grasp and turned his attention back toward the troublesome swindler.
The enormous amount of innate magic coursing through his S-rank body grew heavier.
More oppressive.
More ominous.
Certainly, this had originally been a sacrifice he had deliberately kept alive in the hope of relieving the monotony of his life.
But who could possibly have imagined that such an unexpected stimulus would emerge from it, like being struck by lightning?
No matter how powerful an S-rank Hunter was, violating the [Knight’s Oath] was supposed to be impossible.
Kang Changho himself had already ‘proved’ that.
Of course, the number of examples was small, and there had been no proper control group. It would be difficult to claim absolute certainty based only on the few experiences he had personally witnessed.
But if one thought about the matter logically...
“It’s strange.”
No matter how much people exaggerated and called S-rank Hunters monsters, in the end, they were merely humans several steps ahead of everyone else.
Evolution was supposed to proceed gradually.
Step by step.
Then what were the odds that, so soon after the emergence of the S-rank category, a mutation capable of surpassing even them—something truly abnormal—would suddenly appear?
“Siren, the Knight’s Oath...”
Kang Changho began quietly listing seemingly unrelated words.
“Even with the Guild Master of the Korean Tower clearly around, you still had the nerve to wander into the A-rank Twin Red Gate... and then there’s [Nameless Cave].”
And then he understood.
Kim Giryeo’s peculiar ability to ignore the Knight’s Oath.
If Kang Changho had truly been as ignorant as one great mage had once accused him of being, perhaps he would have dismissed it.
Perhaps he would simply have assumed that his opponent had been extraordinarily lucky and had Awakened in an unusually superior form.
But Kang Changho knew of scenarios far more plausible than such a flimsy explanation.
“...This isn’t something I should be getting angry about merely because I got stabbed in the back.”
For once, the smile vanished completely from his face.
“Something about all of this is strange. Huh? Kim Giryeo. Even you have to admit this situation is far too strange...”
He muttered rapidly beneath his breath, his low voice carrying an unfamiliar trace of irritation.
Then Kang Changho tried to charge at the troublesome contractor again.
“Calm down!”
Thud!
But Jung Haseong had been watching him carefully and stepped forward first to stop the violence.
It was a poor choice.
What kind of speed did Kang Changho possess?
Most of the time, as a functioning mammal of modern society, he maintained a reasonably civilized demeanor.
But the instant things went even slightly wrong, his true nature inevitably surfaced.
“Ha, anyway...”
The remark was far too flat to sound like a warning.
“I only let you live this long because your abilities were utterly useless...”
And then came an attack so fast that an F-rank body could not even comprehend it.
With a twisted smile, Kang Changho abruptly changed targets and attacked Jung Haseong.
Kim Giryeo’s eyes widened.
He hurriedly reinforced his vision with magic.
Boom!
Inside the field of dynamic vision he had forcibly enhanced, Kim Giryeo saw the two S-ranks exchange a flurry of blows in only a matter of seconds.
Unlike a certain someone, Jung Haseong possessed excellent physical capabilities overall, allowing him to respond safely to Kang Changho’s first attack.
Boom!
The fist flying straight toward his face collided with the blade of the legendary weapon in Haseong’s hand and was deflected aside.
As he had learned during the Beast incident, fighting an intelligent Awakened was nothing like dealing with a low-intelligence dungeon creature.
There was no time to stop and analyze.
Whoosh!
Heat surged.
He had never imagined he would need to use it in a situation like this, but thanks to the training an alien had drilled into him beforehand, Jung Haseong managed to launch a counterattack without exposing a significant opening.
A red flame, its color still somewhat incomplete, burst forth from his hurried ignition.
Yet, viewed from a distance, the sandy beach was instantly swallowed by a dazzling inferno.
It was strange.
Kim Giryeo, watching the battle, stiffened in surprise and shifted his gaze.
“Keugh!”
Kang Changho had broken straight through the flames without so much as a scratch.
Jung Haseong failed to avoid the high kick that came through the wall of fire.
He raised his shoulders and arms in a hurried block, but he could not fully absorb the force.
Sharp pain immediately spread through his jaw and cheekbones.
A dam.
The sea.
Or a truck carrying an enormous load.
When describing Awakened individuals born with vast reserves of innate magical power, such comparisons were not entirely inappropriate.
The heavier and more abundant the energy, the more difficult it inevitably became to control with precision.
Imagine a one-ton truck traveling at high speed and suddenly slamming on the brakes, causing the massive cargo in the back to surge forward.
That alone was enough to understand the danger—and instability—involved.
By Earth’s primitive standards, possessing an overwhelming amount of magical energy was not necessarily an unconditional blessing.
And right here stood a sorcerer whose characteristics were almost the exact opposite of Jung Haseong’s.
Kang Changho.
His Awakening value was slightly below the average for an S-rank.
Yet despite his large, imposing frame, the ability in which he excelled most was, ironically, restraint.
Precision.
According to the latest PIXY test results, his Awakening value was the lowest among South Korea’s S-rank Hunters.
Perhaps that was because the energy within his body was comparatively light.
The quarter-blooded Awakened named Kang Changho appeared almost entirely free from the problems faced by people like Jung Haseong or Brooklyn, who had been born with ‘massive’ talent.
When he activated a skill, hardly any magical power was wasted through the phenomenon commonly called ‘spread.’
If he chose to, he could narrow the effective range of his body-enhancement magic down to the width of a single finger.
And that level of control was innate.
Furthermore, his particular attribute was one of the more common ones among Earthlings.
Body enhancement.
An ability that consumed relatively little magical power compared with many other categories.
Simply put, it was economical.
His total mana capacity was already at an S-rank level, more than sufficient for practical use.
And because the spell system had been refined around his own body, its destructive efficiency was exceptionally high compared with other forms of modern Earth magic.
It was a terrible combination to face.
On paper, Kang Changho was merely a lower-ranked underachiever among S-ranks.
But several fortunate circumstances had perfectly amplified his natural strengths.
And because of that, he had every reason to maintain his arrogance with confidence.
Boom!
The deafening impact sounded nothing like a collision between flesh and bone.
Kang Changho reinforced his entire body to the limit and charged through the comparatively shallow flames produced by the fragile hero.
Then, without hesitation, he attacked again.
His speed was so extreme that even another S-rank could barely follow him.
A shadow flashed.
And before the eye could properly register the movement, the next strike was already approaching.
Boom!
“Jung Haseong!”
Only three or four seconds had passed since the fight began when a desperate shout suddenly rang out from one side of the beach.
“Stop! Get away from him!”
Jung Haseong did not make the amateur mistake of turning his head toward the voice and allowing an attack to slip through.
Instead, he simply accepted Kim Giryeo’s warning and acted on it.
If the man was shouting like that, there had to be a reason.
So Haseong immediately created some distance.
Kang Changho also stopped for an instant, apparently curious about what would be said next.
“I... I can’t help you in a fight against an S-rank.”
“Yes?”
“In my current state, I don’t have the strength for that... This isn’t a two-on-one fight.”
After endless hesitation, Kim Giryeo finally revealed his own weakness.
From Jung Haseong’s perspective, Kim Giryeo was an expert of overwhelming ability, someone capable of teaching him magic.
Naturally, Haseong had assumed that while he fought in front, the blond man behind him would provide support.
But in reality, the person at his back was merely an F-rank Hunter.
Essentially useless in direct combat.
Solidly and undeniably so.
Then shouldn’t this fight be stopped before anything irreversible happened?
“Haseong-ah, I think it would be better if you withdrew. Just leave and call the police...”
Giryeo shouted, desperately trying to stop the fight while considering every possible outcome.
But he neither finished the sentence nor accomplished his intended goal.
“Heuk!”
Kang Changho abruptly changed his mind.
His target shifted.
He charged straight toward Kim Giryeo.
And just before his kick could shatter the final remaining layer of [Protection] around the archmage’s body, the black-haired sorcerer was forced, for the first time, to ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) disregard his mentor’s advice.
Whoosh!
Jung Haseong threw up a fierce wall of flame between the two.
“Then you should be the one to step back and call for support, Hunter Kim Giryeo! Thanks to your help, I can handle an S-rank one-on-one now—”
“Can you?”
At the same moment, the large-bodied Awakened reappeared before him in the blink of an eye.
Suddenly, darkness filled Haseong’s vision.
Kang Changho stretched one hand toward his face as though intending to tear it apart.
Using the instant in which his opponent’s sight was obstructed and his reaction delayed, he immediately launched a kick from the side.
A roundhouse kick.
The rotation of his planted foot poured enormous centrifugal force into the blow.
Even though Jung Haseong blocked it properly, damage still went through.
This was exactly the situation Giryeo had feared.
If the national hero had shown any realistic chance of winning, the archmage would never have recklessly exposed his own weakness.
But reality was exactly as it appeared.
“Ugh?!”
Despite his talent, Jung Haseong was once again driven onto the defensive.
There was one more fatal difference between the two S-rank Hunters.
“—There’s nothing healthier than exercise for relieving stress, right? Actually, I’ve been doing kickboxing for quite a long time. Since my school days...”
“Damn it!”
No matter how much innate strength one possessed, defeating a professionally trained martial artist through raw talent alone was extraordinarily difficult.
Kang Changho was a black belt.
Even before Awakening, he had trained consistently and accumulated considerable combat experience.
His skill had already reached something close to the semi-professional level.
He knew how to move his body to transmit force.
He knew where to strike to inflict pain.
And once all of that combat knowledge was combined with the physical capabilities of an S-rank Awakened, his fighting ability naturally reached an absurd level.
Swish.
This was a fight that should never have happened in the first place.
On Alphari, close-range sorcerers like Kang Changho had once been called professional knights because they fought through the body itself.
But the golden age of close-combat supremacy had not lasted forever.
Eventually, the maximum combat power of professional knights and wizards became nearly equal.
And from that era came a saying from another world.
[10 steps in front of the sword, 50 steps in front of the writing.]
When a wizard and a professional knight fought, if the starting distance between them was less than ten steps, the professional knight would win nine times out of ten.
But if the starting distance exceeded fifty steps, then barring some natural disaster, the scholar’s chances of victory became overwhelmingly high.
“......”
It did not take long for the pyromancer to pay dearly for failing to control the distance.
Kang Changho deliberately released his mana as though he intended to attack Kim Giryeo.
Jung Haseong fell for the feint and shifted his attention.
Kang Changho seized that instant.
Two steps.
That was all he needed to close the gap.
Whoosh.
An ominous rush of wind.
Kang Changho lowered his upper body and drove a blow into Jung Haseong’s exposed torso.
More precisely, he aimed beneath the ribs, where the internal organs were not protected by thick muscle in the same way as the abdomen.
The liver.
A vital target.
Bugh!
The blow landed cleanly.
Jung Haseong could not even draw a proper breath.
He desperately tried to correct his stance, but something was wrong.
No matter how much strength he tried to put into his body, he kept listing helplessly to one side.
“Huh...?”
Pain washed his vision white.
The human liver was closely linked to the autonomic nervous system.
A sufficiently powerful impact could cause the blood vessels to dilate all at once.
His blood pressure plummeted.
His lower body lost strength.
And he collapsed.
“Ugh!”
The outcome was decided in an instant.
While Haseong struggled in confusion against a body that no longer obeyed him, Earth’s genuine cold-blooded fighter did not relax for even a second.
Kang Changho immediately followed with another strike.
This one aimed directly at his opponent’s head.
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