The Seongcheon Yun Clan (4)
Fear was one of humanity’s most primal emotions... No, if one were to be precise, it could not be said to be limited to humans alone.
Fear was the most fundamental crisis-warning mechanism embedded in the instincts of living creatures.
Any life-form incapable of feeling it would long since have been weeded out in this world, where one never knew what might happen, when or where. ‘What is so wrong with striving to understand such fear deeply, savoring and praising it?’ Heresy? Heresy, you say!
If anything, was it not those who shunned and distanced themselves from what could be called its very essence while calling themselves “practitioners” who were the true heretics?
Through a certain incident, he had come face-to-face with a fragment of that truth and attained enlightenment.
After that, he abandoned all the chakra he had been cultivating until then and began walking an entirely new path.
At the time, he had been flourishing in the place to which he belonged, so the process brought all manner of twists and turns, but he paid them no heed.
For he never doubted that trials and suffering were values a practitioner ought naturally to endure.
Thus, a long time passed.
As if rewarded for making the correct choice at a crossroads, he was able to reach a considerably high level even within the realm known as the deep stratum.
Even if one searched the entire world, there would likely not be many who could be declared stronger than he.
Yet at the same time, he could feel it.
A colossal wall stood before him.
As though he had come upon the end of the world itself, he felt despair before that sheer, ten-thousand-fathom cliff he could not even dare imagine crossing. [Ah... this is...!]
And yet, at this very moment.
From beyond the wall he had only been staring at vaguely, a lifeline was descending.
He writhed his body and thrashed in rapture.
Rumble—
—It would have been a lie to say he had held no expectations when he chose to participate in the plan.
If things went well and the world became filled with fear again as it had been decades ago, he had wondered whether there might be some progress in his cultivation.
But who could have known that an opportunity would come to him so quickly, and in such a direct form! [There is a limit even to stupidity. Did you think a mental attack would work on me, who reached the deep stratum through fear...? In any case, I should thank you. Thanks to you, I have obtained the clue needed to cross the wall.]
All manner of thoughts surged into his mind.
Within them, various elements besides “fear” were mixed together, but that was not much of a problem.
Whatever else one might say, he was a being who had reached his realm by delving into negative emotions to their utmost limits.
“Really? I’m glad it seems to suit your palate. Then I won’t have to hold back.”
[...Hm?]
“As it happens, I realized something thanks to you as well. Since the opportunity has come, it wouldn’t be bad to finish its first demonstration while I’m at it.”
[What are you talking about...]
...Yes, that was how it should have been.
However, there were a few facts he had overlooked.
In this world, there existed the phrase “excess is as bad as deficiency,”
and the one he was facing now was not merely a single lower-stratum practitioner.
Immediately after, the surging thoughts multiplied explosively.
Death pain oppression rage madness killing intent sloth...
All manner of negative thoughts crashed in.
At that, his inner world began to creak.
His mind, tempered through all his ascetic ordeals, was by no means weak, but even that had its limits. [Wait...]
Justice faith resolve will courage tolerance compassion...
All manner of positive thoughts whirled in.
Noise arose in the mental landscape he had believed would remain steadfast forever.
Compared to the negative emotions, their purity could not be said to be high, but since they were emotions that did not harmonize well with fear, the burden was unavoidable. [How in the world...!]
Thoughts of completely opposing natures, unable to coexist.
Moreover, the purity of each and every one of them could never be underestimated.
They continued to pour in, as if liquid were being forced down through a funnel jammed into his throat.
On and on.
Endlessly.
Without the slightest loss of momentum. [Kugh, how long is this going to...!]
He had long since surpassed his limits.
He was merely mobilizing every shred of experience he had gained upon reaching the deep stratum, gritting his teeth and somehow enduring it.
But even if he endured, there was no sign the situation would improve. ‘Impossible! This... a mere single lower-stratum practitioner couldn’t possibly contain an abyss like this...!’
That was correct.
The source of the thoughts surging into him now was neither a lower-stratum practitioner nor a single person.
Hans, Heinz II, Heinrich, Harley, and so on...
They were beings who had not merely reached the level of transcendence, but had each sprouted a divinity of their own.
Their thoughts could not even be endured by a Transcendent who had opened the Heavenly Gate, so there was no way someone of mere deep-stratum level could do anything about them.
“Seeing you eat so well makes me feel proud.”
At that moment, the culprit behind this situation murmured calmly.
His composed voice did not match the urgency of the situation on this side.
“There’s still plenty left, so eat to your heart’s content.”
His consciousness slowly began to blur.
By then, he had no choice but to admit it.
What had been approaching from beyond that wall was not a lifeline that would pull him up to the next stage. ‘...I cannot understand.’
It was truly the unknown.
Chakra was a mystery founded upon understanding.
For a practitioner who handled such chakra, being swallowed by something incomprehensible was neither more nor less than terror itself. ‘I see. So this is...’
The fear of the unknown, which could neither be measured nor understood. [Ah... only now, at last, have I...]
This was the ultimate ideal he had so long yearned for and sought. [...come face-to-face with true fear.]
With those words as his last,
his faded consciousness was dragged down beneath the eternal abyss.
***
“Kehuk! Cough, cough!”
Hun, who had been struggling to maintain his composure, furrowed his brow and let out a dry cough.
Clutching his head against the headache caused by excessive use of his ability, he staggered in place and looked ahead.
“...Phew, did I push it a little too far? It’ll be hard to use Thought Rampage for a while.”
Before him stood a single black mummy, unmoving.
Its form, which he had not even been able to properly perceive, had long since returned to the shape it had taken when it first appeared.
No, even before that, he could not sense the slightest trace of life from it. ‘Maybe that’s only natural.’
Its appearance had been such that it was stranger for it to have been alive in the first place.
The powerful chakra that had reached the deep stratum must have been the driving force forcibly prolonging its life.
It was nothing strange for its breath to have ceased the instant its mental world was destroyed and it lost its foundation. ‘Though it didn’t reach transcendence, it’s true that it got right up to the threshold. It should have some research value.’
Now, while no one around him was conscious, was his chance.
Hun glanced around discreetly, then quickly collected the mummy using 「Subspace Storage」.
“He held out better than I expected, so I overdid it a little, but...”
“Thought Rampage” was a sure-kill technique that mobilized both 「Mental Resonance」 and the chakra of communication.
Naturally, there was no way using an ability of such power would come without any cost.
On top of that, he had even used 「Limit Break」 to amplify its output, so the burden on him could only have grown greater.
He would probably need a resting period of a few hours. ‘Still, it was worth it. I gained a lot thanks to that.’
By nature, “communication” was something that connected both ways.
Until now, there had been no one who had endured his mental attacks for long, so it had not been particularly noticeable, but the deep-stratum demonic-path practitioner he had just faced was different. ‘I never thought I’d reach the middle stratum in one go like this. And at this rate... I might be able to reach the upper stratum before too long.’
For instance, it was as if he had hunted high-level prey and leveled up explosively.
Under normal circumstances, Hun should also have suffered adverse effects from the enemy’s mental landscape, enough to struggle more than the experience he gained was worth, but...
At this point, that could not really be called a penalty.
And one more thing. 《The entity has met the conditions and attained enlightenment. Acquiring the skill 「Wheel-Turning Dao」.》
The fact that he had managed to acquire the Yun Family’s secret art, which he had been struggling to learn all this time, midway through the battle was another great gain.
Thanks to this 「Wheel-Turning Dao」, the “communication” that had only been able to draw in one mental landscape at a time had become capable of multiple connections, so there was no need to even mention how greatly it would contribute to increasing his combat power.
“As expected, whether you call it training or whatever else, actual combat is best. Then what’s left now is...”
The moment he muttered that softly to himself,
Crackle—!
Lightning sparks burst up in the front yard of the lodging, which had become a complete mess.
“Mr. Hun! Are you all right?!”
Along with a familiar voice heard through the sparks, Lucette appeared, her entire body wrapped in golden lightning.
She looked a wreck, with dust and blood clinging here and there, just as she had when they had been trapped in Gwirim. ‘Looks like she already had a big fight somewhere.’
Well, that was only natural.
She was one of the Yun Family’s greatest fighting forces.
There was no way she would have done nothing amid this chaos that had turned the entire family upside down.
“This is...”
After arriving at the scene and letting out a sigh of relief upon seeing Hun safe, her expression hardened.
She had sensed the remnants of the dreadful aura still lingering in the space.
Her face coldly stiff, she raised her guard and surveyed her surroundings with a grave expression. ‘To think it’s at this level from the traces left behind alone...?’
As soon as chaos had erupted in the outer castle, she had gone around the orphanages, moving with all her strength to protect even one more place from harm.
Unlike adults with some degree of combat ability, orphanages filled with still-powerless children were effectively the weakest points in the Yun Family’s defenses. ‘This aura, a deep-stratum demonic-path practitioner? And one absolutely not beneath me. But what on earth happened here for it to be...’
so perfectly fine?
With that thought, she swept her gaze around, then quietly turned her eyes toward Hun.
Everyone else had lost consciousness and collapsed, yet he alone stood there proudly.
From that, she soon realized one fact.
Whatever problem had been here had been cleanly dealt with by that man. ‘...There was no need to worry in the first place.’
Thinking about it, he was a powerhouse who had even saved her when she was in danger.
In the middle of this commotion, he would surely possess enough ability to protect himself.
Seeing as no intruder’s corpse remained at the scene, it seemed he had somehow forced the enemy to withdraw, and in the current situation, where even one extra hand was desperately needed, that alone was a significant achievement.
“Our Yun Family has received your help again. We have not even repaid the grace you showed us before, and now I do not know how we should repay this as well...”
“Please don’t worry about it. As a guest-retainer, I merely did what was natural.”
When one’s host’s headquarters fell into danger, stepping forward was a natural duty for a guest-retainer who had been under their care all this time.
All the more so when the intruder had even targeted him directly.
“Even so, we cannot simply let it pass. If you had not driven off a deep-stratum enemy, there is no telling how much greater the damage might have become. I will be sure to report this matter properly as well. Including the fact that you saved me, I’ll have much to think about regarding what reward we should give you.”
“Well, if you’re offering, I won’t go out of my way to refuse.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll do what I can to make sure you’re satisfied. ...Then, since there seems to be no further problem here, I’ll go check elsewhere.”
The time she had spent conversing with him had been nothing more than a brief chance for Lucette to catch her breath.
Now, while the situation had yet to be fully resolved, the longer a powerhouse of her caliber rested, the more uncontrollable the Yun Family’s losses would become.
Crackle—!
After she disappeared with a flash of lightning,
Hun moved the collapsed people into the lobby inside the lodging building and went up to his room.
Guarding the entirety of this needlessly huge lodging would be inefficient, so he intended to bring Ramyu from his room and come down to the lobby.
As befitting an expensive lodging, a barrier that prevented unauthorized outsiders from intruding had been installed separately, but with the outer castle’s barrier already breached, he could not simply trust in that and leave unconscious people unattended in their rooms.
“......!”
The instant he grasped the handle of his room door with that intention,
Swish—!
Hun snapped his head back as a sharp blade of energy sliced the door in two and came right before his nose.
But the sudden attack did not stop there.
Saaek—
Shashashak—!
A storm of invisible blade energy that had begun inside his room swept through the lodging corridor.
Hun naturally dropped his body, tumbling backward to evade the attack.
If he hadn’t acquired the “Wheel-Turning Path,” and if he hadn’t greatly enhanced his physical abilities and senses with chakra raised to the middle layer, he likely wouldn’t even have been able to react.
“Urgh!”
But he had not been able to completely avoid the sudden ambush.
Something grazed one of Hun’s thighs, and bright red blood sprayed into the air.
As he staggered, losing his balance, not only his thigh but his entire body was covered in countless small cuts.
Though he had emerged without a single wound against a deep-layer magic practitioner, he was showing a vulnerability to ambushes like this.
“...Not bad. I meant to slice you apart in one stroke.”
Just then, someone slowly walked out of Hun’s room, trampling over the broken door. A man nearly two meters tall, with tattoos all over his body.
“Anton... What is the meaning of this?”
Anton, an Earthling from Belarus and an upper-layer practitioner, glared at Hun with eyes gleaming with a strange desire.
The faint madness flickering around his eyes made him look, no matter how one viewed it, like an extremely dangerous lunatic.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?”
He lifted the corners of his mouth and spoke boldly.
“I’m taking back what’s mine!”
It was an utterly incomprehensible claim.
But he merely twisted his face and continued his absurd insistence.
“I don’t know why she’s paying attention to you... but when you think about it, the solution is simple.”
Threads, barely visible, slowly unwound from between his fingers.
He looked with satisfaction at his weapon as it vanished as if melting into the air, then glared at Hun again with a grotesque smile.
“You just need to disappear, don’t you?”
A lunatic blinded by a woman, willing to take advantage of the chaos to commit murder.
But Hun, calmly assessing the situation, could tell.
Anton was not in his right mind right now. ‘...Perhaps the traitors who opened a hole in the Yun family’s barrier are in a similar state.’
To investigate that, he first needed to subdue Anton for certain.
For a proper investigation, he couldn’t use Thought Rampage, which would completely crush the mind. ‘Not that I can use it right now in the first place.’
He had to subdue an upper-layer practitioner without his finishing move.
In the past, he would have given up cleanly.
But now, the situation was different.
Now, he had obtained several other weapons that were quite usable.
“Hoo, fine. To be honest, I didn’t like you much either.”
Hun’s eyes turned red.
The blood flowing from the cuts all over his body gathered together, becoming a sharp blade.
Then every wound healed, and the muscles throughout his body began to pump up to their fullest.
“Hah! Then let’s just...”
For some reason, feeling rather cheerful, Hun let out a light, hollow laugh.
And immediately after.
“...play to our hearts’ content!”
The figures, increased to more than a dozen, raced across the walls and ceiling of the corridor and surged straight ahead.