Kallen drew in a breath.
The air felt strangely light.
A moonless night.
A night emptied of even the moon’s presence.
Perhaps because of that emptiness,
his “Acceleration” moved more smoothly.
The power flowing beneath his skin
felt as though it were being pulled forward once more.
‘Faster than usual.’
Before that thought could become confidence,
an unknown fear brushed his throat first.
Kallen tightened his grip on his sword.
His knuckles hardened white.
All around him was silent.
Even the breathing of his comrades behind him sounded thin, as if coming from far away.
Miryeong’s signal.
Bido’s rigid hand.
Rangnan’s gaze.
Everyone was watching him.
Kallen looked at Roan.
Atop the rock.
His head hung low,
and his long blade drooped from his waist to the ground.
Even the strip of cloth around his neck merely fluttered loosely in the wind.
He was full of openings.
And yet,
those openings
looked more like a trap.
Kallen cut off that thought.
‘Now.’
He pushed “Acceleration” even deeper.
The world slowed as though it had stopped.
The sound of the valley water grew thick,
and the wind followed a beat late.
Roan’s body was still.
Over that stillness,
Kallen alone moved.
His target was the feet.
The lowest point.
The place where he could end it fastest.
Kallen’s sword line drew downward.
A speed no ordinary living thing could evade.
A speed at which one would not even think to evade.
Kallen was certain.
And then—
Kaaang.
Only the sound of his sword striking rock rang out.
Kallen’s eyes widened.
‘What…?’
In that instant,
the world returned to Kallen’s eyes.
The sound of water came back,
the wind found its proper speed,
and his heart pounded once, hard.
Roan was still atop the rock.
Only—
his foot
was no longer there.
A minimal movement.
Truly,
an evasion that seemed to have moved only “that much.”
Before Kallen’s gaze could even catch up,
Roan’s face had lifted ever so slightly.
And those eyes turned toward Kallen.
Precisely.
They met Kallen’s eyes.
At first, those eyes were only dark.
Dazed,
empty,
and indifferent, like someone who had just awakened.
Kallen swallowed his breath.
But that indifference slowly began to take on color.
Gradually.
It reddened.
Very quickly,
and unmistakably.
As if blood had risen from somewhere
and seeped into his pupils.
Kallen tried to step back, then stopped.
He raised his sword again.
This time, it was not certainty.
It was the fact that there was no word to explain this man,
not even “Acceleration,”
that pressed coldly against Kallen’s back.
Roan’s gaze pierced through Kallen.
And that redness
seemed to settle completely into place.
At the very moment Kallen’s body stiffened,
Bido was looking at Roan.
Those reddening eyes.
Just before that redness filled them completely,
Bido felt the sensation of something warping.
Not the air,
but the space between the air.
As if an invisible surface were peeling away in one layer,
as if space itself were about to fold once—
that ominous “beginning.”
Bido did not miss that instant.
Her feet shot out first.
Her body moved ahead of her thoughts.
The thing she had practiced countless times until now.
Not a sword,
but the sensation of drawing out her own “Mirkin.”
Bido pulled it forth as she ran.
And then—
that was the moment.
Kallen felt it.
The feeling of his world suddenly clicking off.
His Acceleration vanished.
The texture of the wind returned,
the sound of water flowed at its proper speed,
and his heart pounded once, loudly.
As if someone had pressed down with a hand
and severed one of his tendons of power.
Kallen’s eyes trembled.
‘My Mirkin…?’
Kallen was not the only one who felt it.
A few felt their throats stiffen as if their breath had been cut off,
and someone’s fingertips groped at empty air.
Tonight was a moonless night.
Normally,
there should have been no sensation of Arkin’s response at all.
And yet—
the moment Bido’s eyes turned red,
Miryeong felt it.
The wind around them.
The dead current revived, ever so faintly.
The tips of her hair stirred,
and the blades of grass took one breath.
Miryeong’s eyes widened very slightly.
‘…Arkin?’
Bido’s “Mirkin”
was reversing the rules of this night.
And everyone saw it.
Roan’s reddening eyes—
in an instant,
emptied out completely.
As if the blood had drained away,
as if the color had been washed clean.
No redness remained.
No heat remained.
What remained there were eyes that held nothing at all.
A void.
Roan stayed as he was.
His body, his posture, his lowered head atop the rock.
Only his eyes—
as though nothing had happened,
were empty.
Within the formation holding its breath,
that “emptiness” sounded all the louder.
And at the heart of that silence,
only Bido’s red eyes held fast to Roan without letting him go.
Kallen did not hesitate.
There was no Acceleration.
But that did not mean he could stop.
Not even for a single instant.
He knew that if he retreated even once,
that would become an “opening.”
Kallen cut his breath short, swallowed it, and stepped forward.
In the place where Acceleration had been severed,
a rougher power remained instead.
He drew up Idrin’s flow to its limit.
Kallen’s sword swung toward Roan.
At that instant—
Roan’s long blade rose in a reverse grip.
The motion was so natural
that it was impossible to tell when he had drawn it.
The blade was as long as Roan was tall.
Kallen’s sword was blocked by that long blade.
But there was no sound.
No sharp ring of steel clashing, no scrape of friction.
Instead, the impact sank straight in.
As if the sword had not struck rock,
but plunged into deep water.
Kallen felt not that he had been “blocked,” but that he had been halted.
A split second.
Roan’s wrist turned ever so slightly,
and the angle of the long blade changed.
This time, not the blade—
but the end of the hilt faced Kallen.
And then,
Thoom.
At the same time as a hollow bass note rang briefly,
the impact hit Kallen.
Kallen’s body was flung back as it was.
His body lifted once into the air,
then he barely caught his balance, scraping the ground with his heels.
He did not fall,
but he had been pushed back farther than he wanted.
Seeing that, Muryeong, who had already been rushing forward, muttered lowly.
“…Dragon weapon.”
Muryeong’s axe descended upon Roan.
Almost simultaneously, Gareun’s iron staff swung toward Roan’s side.
Heavy attacks from different angles.
But Roan’s long blade came in at a slant and stopped them both at once.
And then—
there was no sound of metal.
Neither the axe nor the iron staff.
The impact did not collide and rebound, but sank straight in.
As if their weapons had not struck something,
but had been driven into a deep hole.
Muryeong’s face hardened.
“The hilt—!”
Before he could finish speaking,
Roan’s wrist bent in a bizarre motion.
Not the blade, but the end of the hilt faced Muryeong and Gareun.
Thoom.
After a hollow bass note rang briefly—
Boom.
A heavy impact burst out as though the air itself had collapsed.
It was a weight beyond comparison with Kallen’s sword strike.
Muryeong was shoved back a long way.
His heels dug into the dirt,
and he raised his axe to forcibly withstand the shock.
Gareun’s shoulder also lurched violently.
The arm gripping his iron staff bent numbingly.
Yeonhwa and Taejin were flustered.
Originally, they should have been supporting this fight with their own Mirkin.
But after Bido’s eyes turned red,
their Mirkin would not emerge either.
At their fingertips, nothing could be grasped.
Bido’s Mirkin, which during training could be placed on only one person,
was now spreading, narrow but unmistakable, into the surroundings.
This was a variable.
Rangnan drew in a short breath.
“Vanguard, fall back!”
“Never take the direction of the hilt head-on!”
The moment that command rang out,
Roan’s empty eyes
slowly turned toward Rangnan.
Without even lifting his head from atop the rock,
only with his gaze.
And Roan’s lips moved ever so slightly.
“…Rangnan?”
A single name scratched the night air.
Rangnan’s expression did not change.
But the instant they heard that name,
the entire front line hardened even colder.
Then—
Maho was the first to shoot forward.
“Roan!”
A short, rough cry.
He did not let even that shout drag on.
Maho knew far too well
what happened to his surroundings when he used his power.
So he did not unfold it.
Instead, he compressed it.
Maho’s hand changed as though warping.
Not as if flame were seeping into flesh, but as if flesh itself were becoming flame.
His fingertips lengthened,
the spaces between his fingers split apart,
and the form of claws made of fire—
Flame Claw.
The flames were not large.
They did not spread.
Holding that heat forcibly within his palm,
Maho thrust it toward Roan.
Roan raised his long blade with minimal movement.
As if merely to block.
But Maho’s movement was abnormal.
It was not that his hand went in first
and his body followed late—
his body “twisted” first, changing the angle.
The instant the long blade moved to receive the claws,
Maho’s foot had already entered a different trajectory.
Maho’s foot struck Roan’s waist.
‘It landed.’
But before that thought could even pass—
the tip of the long blade stopped Maho’s foot.
And,
toward the hilt, the end.
It was already aligned.
Thoom.
This time, it was deeper.
Not the sound of metal, but a hollow bass note reverberating through the bones.
And then—
Boom.
The impact pushed away the air itself.
It was far greater than the release that had swallowed Muryeong and Gareun’s blows.
The force carried in Maho’s foot,
and even the angle Roan had intentionally “bent” into being in that instant—
all of it swept over Maho at once.
Just as Maho’s body was about to be flung backward,
through the shock wave,
Aslo’s longsword burrowed in low.
His target was the foot.
Roan’s ankle, and below it.
Aslo cut in without a sound.
Just once, with absolute certainty.
Only then did Roan move his body,
hopping up briefly.
It was truly brief.
The height his feet left the ground was not even the width of a palm.
But even that slightness was enough for the trajectory to veer off.
Aslo’s sword line brushed through empty air,
and the shock wave scattered as if passing beneath Roan.
Roan did not settle back onto the rock.
He landed once, on the tips of his toes, upon a stone by the water’s edge.
His eyes still empty.
Those empty eyes
now swept between Maho and Aslo.
And—
through that gap, Bido was already rushing out.
Red eyes.
The red scales rising beneath her eyes
were vivid even in the moonless night.
Bido did not breathe in.
She cast away her breath and ran.
So her sword would not separate from her body,
so the hand gripping the cord would not waver.
Now only one thing remained.
The distance to reach him.
The tip of Bido’s sword, toward Roan—
was finally lunging in.