Chapter 125
I mean, didn’t we have a good time?
I can’t believe she just walked in here and asked for a match.
It was so sudden.
“I asked my grandfather, and I said I wanted to duel you, but you wouldn’t let me, so he told me how to do it.”
“How?”
Choi Yeon suddenly changed her expression and furrowed her brow.
“I don’t take orders from someone weaker than me! If you duel me and win, I’ll join your club!”
She then returns to her normal expression.
“Your grandfather said that?”
“Yeah.”
……I wondered whose head the idea came from, but it was Sword Saint.
Apparently, her expression was modeled after Choi Sun-ho’s.
A talent of her caliber would definitely be coveted by any club.
There was no way that a man of Sword Saint stature wouldn’t recognize his granddaughter’s talent, so he might have planned to use this opportunity to have her compete against me to accelerate her growth.
‘That crooked old man…….’
The scary thing about this plan was that it was in my best interest.
With a promotion on the horizon, and a lot more to come, she would be influential just by having her on board.
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
“Should I?”
I had something to test.
My newest acquisition, Billy the Kid’s Shotgun.
Let’s see who has the best weapon.
* * *
It wasn’t too difficult to rent a dueling room.
Ji-hyun was in charge of the training room today.
Ji-hyun, who had been sitting in silence and looking around with a bored expression, smiled brightly as soon as she saw us.
“What’s going on in the training room with our club members and the chief getting along so well?”
Ji-hyun hadn’t even opened her mouth yet, but she looked at me and Choi Yeon’s expressions and giggled.
“Aha~ So that’s what it is, the advisor is having a hard time with her duties, so you’re organizing an event like this. Was today Teacher’s Day?”
“Yes……I just want to use the training center.”
“The training center? Of course. Of course you can use it. How, with all the other kids? Or just you and Choi Yeon?”
“Just me and Choi Yeon. I think the others will be spectators.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I have a taste for watching difficult matches. It’s one-on-one……So you’re preparing for the midterms?”
While muttering that, Ji-hyun manipulated the board.
Jin-woo, who was standing still, asks in surprise.
“Midterms? What does this have to do with midterms?”
Se-ah sighs and shakes her head.
“Didn’t you study before you joined the academy? After the midterms, you’ll be assigned to a class, and your class will depend on your score.”
“Eh?! Is there such a thing, I didn’t know about it!”
“Anyway……Still, if you’re as good as Jin-woo, you’ll be in the top 20, so you shouldn’t worry too much, right?”
As Se-ah said, the kids in the ‘Familia’ had enough skills to make it to the top through mentor classes and other experiences, so there was no need to worry.
The question was who would get the top spot.
This is because you can bomb virtually every other test and still get a score that puts you at the top of the academy.
“……that idiot. Okay, I’ve got the field set up, so we’re good to go once we get in. Will you use training weapons or your own?”
“I’ll use mine, please. Choi Yeon, you don’t mind, do you?”
“Yeah. I brought mine.”
“Okay. Then let’s have a duel using our weapons.”
At the same time, the doors to the duel hall opened.
“By the way, instructor. I have a question for you.”
“Huh? What is it?”
Before entering the training room, I take out a weapon I haven’t registered with the academy yet.
I pull out my Billy the Kid’s shotgun.
“This, I haven’t registered it as a unique weapon with the academy yet, do you mind if I use it?”
I remembered that they allow duplicate registrations, but I’d been busy today and forgotten to do it.
She looked at me with a look of exasperation.
“I see you like old guns, too. Last time you brought a Thompson submachine gun, and now a shotgun that looks like something out of the Wild West?”
“You don’t use guns anyway, do you?”
“It doesn’t matter, because it is a ‘cane’, not a ‘gun’, and what’s the difference between an antique gun like this and an automatic pistol?”
“……This is an artifact.”
“Anyway……I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for today. You can register for the real thing tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
I’m sure she thought it would be more fun anyway, but if it’s good for me, I don’t care.
I walked inside and stood at one end of the arena, facing Choi Yeon.
-Ah. Are you ready?
A voice boomed over the speakers.
I glance out and see Ji-hyun and the other kids looking at me with popcorn that I don’t know where they got it from.
I don’t know why, but whenever I see them with popcorn in duels, I get annoyed.
“Yeah.”
“I’m ready.”
I answer her and turn to look at Choi Yeon in front of me, shotgun in hand.
Unsurprisingly, she’s carrying a new sword, not the broken one I saw in the dungeon.
As if to prove that it’s anything but ordinary, a blue aura swirls around it.
I watch her carefully, bracing myself for the clash that is sure to follow.
The muscles in her legs tensed as if she might lunge at any moment, and her hands clenched with strength.
And then.
-Start.
──Bang!
Like a bullet firing at the same time as the start signal, Choi Yeon charges at me, her sword pointing straight down.
“Since it’s you, I’ll do it right.”
“──Crazy!”
Is it because I’ve been through so many incidents?
I narrowly dodge her charge, rolling to the side as she lunges at me with speed far beyond my expectations.
However, Choi Yeon quickly followed up and attacked next.
With a thud, she slams into the ground.
But
“That’ll hurt if it hits right!”
I waited for this.
Aiming my gun at Choi Yeon, I pulled the trigger of the weapon that I infused with Aura.
──Kwaaaaah!
The barrel of the gun emitted a tremendous sound as a shockwave surged through the air.
The recoil alone was enough to knock me backwards.
However, Choi Yeon reacted to the attack and instantly held out her sword to block it.
But
“Ugh!”
Her body was sent flying backwards as she was knocked into thin air.
“Ha-ha-ha!”
A smile spreads across my face at the unimaginable destructive power.
This is what a gun should be like!
I quickly recover my stance and check on Choi Yeon, who has been knocked backwards.
Her sword is swinging wildly with a chirping sound.
Her body, too, was flailing, her legs shaking.
Most of the aura around her has already vanished, but she’s still standing.
“Impressive.”
In that short amount of time, she had fended off all the Aura with her full concentration.
Judgment, power, control.
If she lacked any of these, she would fall apart.
I thought it would be over with this one blow, but I didn’t think she’d last.
“I was surprised.”
“It wouldn’t have been enough to scare a normal person.”
“No, I was really surprised, because my head is still pounding.”
Maybe that’s why she didn’t fight back right away.
Shaking her head to get over the shock, she crouches low, ready to pounce on me.
“Still, I think I know something.”
“You do?”
A second charge follows.
I pull the trigger on her once more, and Choi Yeon leaps upward, sword raised as if in anticipation.
“Two strikes.”
Her signature move, and one of the techniques of the Sword Saint.
This technique vibrates the aura on her sword, greatly increasing its cutting power, allowing her to cut through the shields of most mages in an instant but it also had a clear downside.
I bend my left elbow to deflect the sword coming at me, and the straight path of the blade is deflected sideways to the floor then I throw another elbow, this time to Choi Yeon’s face.
In response, she sidesteps it by twisting her body backwards in a move that borders on finesse, then kicks out with her foot, knocking the shotgun into the air.
“Dangerous gun removed.”
“Really?”
That was not my one weapon.
I reach out with my right arm and pull out the Tommy from the cube, then point it at her and pull the trigger.
It was a basic technique for weapon swapping using subspace artifacts and a technique I’ve used often when I played the game.
Seeing the Tommy being pulled out of thin air, Choi Yeon rolled backwards, used her aura, and crouched down to reduce the area of impact.
──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / ──! / /
The cheerful sound of a typewriter was heard but once again, the Tommy was unable to penetrate her hardened defenses.
However, with each bullet, her aura continues to be chipped away.
Apparently, she was too focused on her defense to move.
Meanwhile, I leisurely retrieved the shotgun that had been raised in midair.
“You’re going to become a beehive if you stay put.”
I put the Tommy back in the cube and snap the recovered shotgun to blast the remaining aura in the chamber, then slide in a new one to complete the load.
Two shots immediately follow.
-Bang! Bang!
Choi Yeon, who saw the shotgun through the gap in her arm, rolled over and tried to dodge the shots.
“Ugh!”
Some of the scattering shrapnel pierces through her defense.
That’s the shotgun shell.
“Haze.”
Giggle───
The sword ki that she drew while still pointing her sword at the ground scraped the ground at a furious pace, and at the same time, thick smoke began to fill the surroundings.
Smoke, one of the techniques of the Sword Saint.
The artificial smoke was created by rubbing the sword containing aura against the floor, a technique used by melee-oriented swordsmen to get closer to ranged mages.
It was a cumbersome technique that didn’t even work well in color, as the auras were mixed and scattered.
Even at this moment, she showed no emotion of fear, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint her location in this state.
But
“Even with Aura, it’s still an act.”
I’ve had some training in the use of aura so I immediately coat my foot with aura and slam it down hard on the ground.
Thud─────!
My stomp created a huge gust of wind that blew the smoke that was surrounding me towards the outer part of the arena.
This is one of the ways to disrupt smoke.
A stronger force pushes the smoke away.
But even that short time seems to be enough time for the Sword Saint to reach the mage.
I could see Choi Yeon’s figure shooting out from within the pushing smoke.
“Gotcha.”
“Not yet.”
How did I not see her coming?
Using my feet as a medium, I blasted the aura once more.
It was an application that Kwak Chun-sik showed me when I fought the kobolds before.
The arena began to shake, starting at my feet, as if I had detonated dynamite in the ground and Choi Yeon’s attacking motion was disrupted accordingly.
“Boom!”
Choi Yeon’s determination is so deep that she can’t give up, and even as her body loses its balance, she somehow manages to keep her attack in line, even flicking her wrist as she thrusts her sword at me.
But it’s shallow.
I spin my shotgun around and grab the barrel with both hands.
‘Don’t think a shotgun is just for shooting.’
Shotguns also make excellent clubs.
On top of that, the artifacts in this world are incredibly durable.
“──It’s going to hurt even if I block it.”
My arm swung out in a neat semicircle and her body soared upward with a dull thud.
“Home run.”
