"Agh!!"
"Cough!"
A giant wave of snow and dirt swept the players away.
Kim ShiHoon quickly picked up his sword and shouted, "Use the second scroll!" in a hurried scream.
A transparent barrier surrounded the players as they used their second set of scrolls, but it wasn't as effective as the first set.
The protective shield was destroyed, and some players were swept away by the landslide.
Kim ShiHoon turned his face.
"Damn it!"
The second landslide had just hit them.
They'd already used the flame barrier, so the second landslide wounded many more people than the first.
"Doesn't he care that his subordinates are getting wounded?"
Kim ShiHoon bit his lips.
Unlike the first time, it wasn't just the Guardians that were affected.
No, the cultists had suffered more than them.
He saw the cultists being swept away by the falling dirt, stones, and snow.
"AGH!"
"H-help me!!"
Kim ShiHoon watched the cultists being swept away.
His eyes widened when he realized where the landslide was moving.
"There's…"
The landslide was headed straight to where the Guardians and the Hwarang Squad were located—the place where they tended to the wounded and gave orders.
Also…
"Ms. Gaia…!"
Gaia was there as well.
Kim ShiHoon fell into confusion and felt his mind going blank.
- Come back to your senses.
He heard KangWoo's voice at that moment.
It wasn't his real voice, obviously—it was an illusion, or it was him trying to hypnotize himself.
He took a deep breath and calmed down.
'I have to stop it.'
He had to stop the landslide before it reached the camp.
'Even knowing that…'
How could a human stand against a natural disaster?
There was a huge difference between causing a natural disaster and stopping it.
You could easily cause a landslide with an explosion, but stopping one was almost impossible for a human—even if he was someone who had inherited the strength of the Martial God.
"Ugh."
Kim ShiHoon stomped on the ground.
'I have to do it.'
Not being able to do it? Rather than worrying about such things, he needed to move quickly.
'Celestial Dragon's Rush.'
He put more strength in his legs as if he were squeezing the strength from his body and followed the landslide.
'It’s not moving very fast.'
The farther down he went, the less steep the cliff became.
They’d used the second set of scrolls to create a wall that slowed the landslide, making its scale much smaller.
'I can catch it.'
The land fluctuated as if it were a wave.
Kim ShiHoon stomped on the ground and spread both hands.
'Sword Control.'
The weapons of the players that had died fighting rose into the sky, and the dozens of swords served as a sort of bridge for him.
"Ugh…"
He had never controlled so many swords at once before, and it felt like his brain was melting.
The qi inside his body started to fluctuate.
'I have to do it.'
Kim ShiHoon's eyes shone sharply.
If he didn't do it, Gaia would be hit by a landslide.
Tap, tap-!
He stepped on the swords and rushed through the air.
His head started hurting even more, and his vision blurred.
"Ugh, aah!!"
He began thinking about how to use the qi, how to use Sword Control, and the wonders of the movement techniques.
Calm down-
He heard KangWoo's voice again.
He nodded and bit his lips.
Ting-
[The proficiency of 'Celestial Dragon's Psyche Style' has increased!]
A system message appeared, but he ignored it.
He tried to control his breathing as he rushed over the swords.
BOOM-!
'I caught up!'
He saw the bodies of the demons that the wave of dirt and stones had pulped.
'Farther forward!'
He had to get in front of the landslide’s path.
Kim ShiHoon kicked the air.
There was nothing he could step on and the bridge of swords had run out.
'Then….'
He looked down and saw the wave of dirt and stones and stepped down on them.
The huge pressure in the dirt tried to pull him down.
"Haa…"
* * *
He took a deep breath and focused his qi on his legs.
'I have to read it.'
He had to read the flow of the dirt and move accordingly.
He stepped on a place that was a bit more solid.
Running on the wave of dirt was much more dangerous than running on top of water.
Tap-
"Haa, haa," heavy breathing left ShiHoon’s mouth.
Finally, ahead of the landslide, he found a place where the landslide’s path narrowed.
Their rearguard was just past that.
'I have to protect them.'
It didn’t matter how much it cost.
He raised his sword.
Whir-!
The sword began emitting white light, and ShiHoon held the sword in front of him as he prepared himself.
He raised the sword over his head and focused his qi.
Then…
[It seems like you're Kim ShiHoon.]
A demon sitting in a wheelchair appeared in front of him.
Kim ShiHoon's expression distorted.
'Damn.'
The situation wasn't good.
He couldn't focus on the demon that had suddenly disappeared.
[Tsk. You're trying quite hard. Don't you get tired?]
Belphegor, the demon with purple skin that was sitting in a wheelchair, started to laugh out loud.
He yawned.
[Anyway, I heard the Demon King cares a lot about you.]
Belphegor spread his hand, casting out thick demonic energy like a net that covered ShiHoon.
"Ugh!"
Kim ShiHoon gulped.
'Damn it!'
He began feeling anxious.
If he didn't stop the landslide, the Hwarang Squad would get destroyed, but if he blocked it, he would get killed by that demon.
It was the worst possible scenario.
"Hyeong…!"
He closed both eyes.
KangWoo's face came to his mind.
BOOM-!
[Hmm?]
A giant hand appeared and grabbed the net.
Crack. The net of demonic energy was torn away.
"Balrog…?"
[It seems like you're in trouble.]
Balrog smiled.
A thrilling sensation spread through Kim ShiHoon's body.
At that moment, even Balrog's horrifying appearance looked cool.
"Where did that guy…"
[Ah, that disabled guy over there that's sitting on a chair is Belphegor. Despite looking so pathetic, he's an archduke.]
[What? Disabled? You son of a…]
Belphegor frowned.
Balrog patted Kim ShiHoon's shoulders.
[I'll take care of that guy. You do what you have to do.]
"…"
Kim ShiHoon fell into thought.
After a little consideration, he nodded.
"I'll leave it to you, Balrog."
His timing had been messed up by the archduke’s interference.
He needed to go further down to stop the landslide.
Kim ShiHoon turned and rushed down the mountain.
[Okay, then…]
Balrog faced the archduke.
Crack.
The tips of his mouth went up as he clenched his fists.
[Should we begin?]
* * *
"So you're that Demon King."
"Huh?"
He heard a voice from behind while he was waving the light sticks.
KangWoo slowly turned.
He saw someone covered with blood-stained bandages, and the person carried a rusty sword with blood-colored demonic energy swirling around it.
"Ah, you're Bloodseeker?" KangWoo asked while smirking.
The monster covered in blood-stained bandages nodded.
"Yes."
"You're one chilly-looking bastard. Is that rusty sword part of your getup?"
"What?"
"It kind of looks cool. It's as if you were saying, 'I don't rely on weapons'… or something like that. The concept seems cool."
He nodded.
He liked its aesthetic.
"Ha."
The Bloodseker laughed in disbelief.
"You're crazier than they said."
"This is our first time meeting, yet you're saying bullshit like that. You shouldn't call someone you’ve never met before ‘crazy’, You bastard."
KangWoo frowned.
Bloodseeker’s eyes filled with anger.
He readied his rusty sword while laughing in disbelief.
"It seems like it's impossible to talk with you."
"You should say something like that after saying something properly, you bastard. After mumbling nonsense, the only thing you said was ‘yes’, ‘what?’, and ‘ha’. How can you say it's impossible to talk with me when you've only said those things?"
He felt as if it truly were unfair.
The Bloodseker gripped his sword tighter.
'This is the Demon King?'
He couldn't believe it.
Shouldn't the Demon King be someone with a heavier atmosphere?
After meeting scary beings like Belphegor and Satan, he couldn't help but be disappointed.
'He seems no different from the bastards of Hao Bang.'
His way of talking was light, and he also cursed a lot.
Rather than a Demon King, he felt like a gangster.
The Bloodseker looked at KangWoo with disappointed eyes.
"I heard you reached the peak of demons with the body of a human, so I was expecting something great, yet…"
"Ah, yeah. Since you mentioned a human body or whatever, there's something I wanted to ask…" KangWoo crossed his arms. "You're also a human, right?"
There weren't many things he knew about Ernor, but he knew even less about Hwan.
He wasn't even sure if that was a place where humans lived.
'His body seems to be of a human.'
He was covered in bandages, so he couldn't be sure.
The tips of Bloodseeker's mouth went up.
"Yes. To be more precise, I used to be 'human.'"
BOOM. He swung the rusty sword.
"But I'm not anymore. I studied the demonic arts for more than a thousand years to go beyond the limits of a human."
He made a fishy smile.
"There's no way you could even imagine how long of a time that is. A thousand years… Do you even know how much of an effort I made to go beyond the limits of the body?"
From what he'd heard, the Demon King had obtained a power called the Authority of Predation—he'd accepted demonic power without much effort.
Wasn't that too unfair? Compared to him, he'd trained for a very long time to polish his demonic arts.
'That was also the case for archdukes.'
They had huge power since birth without having made any kind of effort.
They were born to become rulers.
How unfair was that?
"There's a limit to the power you can obtain without making any effort. Today, I'm going to show you that."
The Bloodseker summoned up his demonic energy from within.
He'd heard all sorts of warnings while talking with the archdukes, but he couldn't accept it.
'There's no way someone that was born as a human can use demonic energy better than me.'
He'd invested almost a thousand years into learning how to control and regulate his demonic energy.
If he was fighting someone else that had been born as a human, there was no way he'd lose.
—That's what he thought.
"A thousand years?"
KangWoo smirked.
"You shouldn't try to compare things that aren’t even in the same league."
He got up and spread both hands, summoning a sword made of hellfire.
"You aren't prepared yet."
