The Seongcheon Yun Clan (5)
Hun was both the youngest of all the avatars and a pure human, one who had been born without the use of any medium whatsoever.
In truth, that was only natural, since he had been created to be used as all-purpose administrative personnel rather than for combat... though somehow, he now found himself fighting on the front lines like this. ‘On top of that, his potential for future growth has now reached a level that can no longer be ignored.’ And that was all thanks to the “Chakra of Communication” he had acquired.
A supernatural ability that allowed him to draw upon the mental images of other avatars and borrow fragments of the abilities each individual possessed.
It was no different from the seniors who had grown through all manner of trials and tribulations now living as one within Hun’s heart. ‘Well, in reality, they are one to begin with.’ Of course, that did not mean he could copy every ability perfectly.
The fact that his unique skill, 「Avatar」, had turned into an ordinary clone technique could be considered part of that.
But when one considered that most of the targets were max-level characters who had each reached the pinnacle in their respective positions, a minor copy was absolutely not something to be looked down on.
And if one also took into account that, thanks to 「Wheel-Turning Dao」, he could now manifest the powers of multiple individuals at the same time...
Shiiik—! Shaak—!
Once again, a storm of sharp energy raged from the front.
A tempest of destruction surged toward him as though to swallow the entire corridor, where space was limited. ‘So something of this level...!’ As if confronting it head-on, one Hun sprang forward.
In one hand, he tightly gripped a longsword forged from his own blood.
The sword of the Hun at the forefront swung again and again at a speed beyond sight, cutting and splitting the storm apart.
“What?!”
A glowing crimson trajectory beautifully embroidered the air.
It was not a blade swung merely according to instinct.
It was the refined sword strike of a martial artist who, through chakra, had come to embody the concept of “martial arts,” along with the combat experience accumulated through numerous avatars.
With his lacking physical abilities strengthened to the extreme as well, its power was more than enough to stand against the storm.
“Pointless petty tricks!”
But the opponent before him was not so easy to deal with either.
Anton, who had maintained a leisurely attitude until then, furrowed his brow and waved his hand violently. In an instant, the sharp energy doubled in volume and savagely shredded the Hun who had stepped forward.
Fssshk.
—In the end, all the Hun who vanished into smoke had managed to do was create the slightest opening.
However, the important thing was that a crack had formed, if only once.
Several more bodies burrowed into the gap that had appeared in the storm, and the hole gradually grew wider.
“Ha! A clone technique, is it? No matter how many times I kill them, they keep popping out. You’re no different from cockroaches. A perfect ability for a wretched bastard like you!”
After destroying a few more clones that had inched closer to him, Anton twisted his madness-filled eyes and roared harshly.
In truth, he had still not revealed his full strength.
If he made one wrong move and the lodging building collapsed, he himself could be injured as well. ‘But now, I don’t care about anything else. I’ll make sure to finish you off first!’ As the development continued differently from what he had expected, the last remaining thread of his reason snapped, and he raised his chakra to its fullest.
The chakras he had opened were the upper-layer “Severance” and the middle-layer “Thread.” ‘Die!’ At the sweep of his hand, which contained his full power, several straight lines appeared throughout the entire corridor.
Craaaack.
—Unlike before, it was a swift strike delivered without even the sound of air being cut.
The clones that had taken defensive stances were all sliced into pieces and scattered before they could react.
Along with the crimson longswords in their hands.
Rumble, crumble.
—Fragments of the broken building fell onto the corridor floor.
Hun, who had barely avoided the attack by instinctively throwing himself flat to the ground, let out a breath as stone dust pelted his face.
Now, he was the only one left in the corridor. ‘To think the blood swords I made with so much effort were cut like tofu...’ He could tell with certainty.
If he had not suddenly felt an ominous sensation and thrown himself to the floor, that attack would have split him in half as well. ‘This is no joke. If I’d been even a little late, I would’ve died a violent death. So this is what an upper-layer practitioner is.’ Fortunately, this lodging was apparently no ordinary building, and it did not collapse in a single move.
Anton himself also seemed to have paid some degree of attention to that.
However, there was no doubt that the attack just now had damaged the building’s durability.
If the fight grew any more intense, Ramyu, as well as the people moved to the building lobby, would be in danger. ‘I can’t let that happen. I’ll end this as quickly as possible.’ Hun sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing sharply.
Looking at him, Anton raised one hand and twisted his lips in a sneer.
“You’re the only one left now. I should have done this from the start. As expected, vermin like you are...”
Anton, who had been letting out that mocking laugh, stopped speaking.
Then, with a stiff expression, he hurriedly turned and swung his hand behind him.
“How dare you!”
Skak!
A clone was split in half the moment it sprang out of his shadow.
But that was not the only one that had secretly approached amid the chaos.
Three clones leapt out from the shadows of the ceiling, walls, and floor, rushing toward him.
“Hun-Style Ninjutsu Secret Art.”
“As if!”
Anton crossed both arms and clenched his outstretched hands tightly.
As if pulling on something caught around his fingers.
Immediately afterward, the invisible threads spread around him contracted all at once, grinding up every clone within range like a blender.
“Kihit! Not bad. But this is as far as you go.”
The clones were caught in the attack and turned to smoke.
But what happened afterward was different from before.
Instead of dispersing and disappearing right away, the crimson smoke lingered around Anton, and for an instant, a thick scent of blood bloomed from it.
“......!”
“Blood Art
— Blood Explosion.”
Hun’s low words reached Anton’s ears as the corners of his eyes twitched.
No sooner had those words ended than—
Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwang—!
Rumble—!
The blood mist surrounding Anton set off a chain of explosions all at once.
It was a pinpoint explosion whose directionality had been set inward, in order to minimize the shock delivered to the building.
Drrrrr.
—Perhaps thanks to that effort, the vibration felt infinitely faint compared to the scale of the explosion.
Hun let out a low sigh and rubbed his temples. ‘Ugh, anemia... I can’t use this carelessly.’ The clones he summoned were literally clones, and thus had no blood.
In other words, all the blood used until now had been his own... ‘Well, it’s an ability meant for vampires in the first place. If I hadn’t strengthened my body and increased my regeneration ability as well, I wouldn’t even have been able to attempt it.’ The same applied to “death.”
If he really had to use it, he could, but as a human, Hun could not help worrying about the side effects that would arise when borrowing the power of the Immortal King Hans. ‘In the end, the best option is to use only abilities with minimal side effects...’ But, as always.
Nothing in the world ever flowed only as one wished.
“Grrr—
You... you insect-like bastard, how dare you—!”
A voice full of rage flowed out from the center of the explosion.
His figure appeared beyond the slowly fading blast smoke.
Anton’s once-arrogant attitude was nowhere to be found; he was now in a miserable state, bleeding from various places.
It seemed he had somehow absorbed the impact by wrapping himself in threads woven from chakra just before being engulfed by the explosion, but judging by the way he staggered here and there, he had apparently not had enough time to block it perfectly.
“I won’t let you get away with this! I’ll tear you to pieces and kill you!”
With a furious roar, he thrust one arm out, and invisible threads extended from it.
However, the tips of his fingers were pointing in the exact opposite direction from where Hun stood...
“Kheheh! I didn’t want to use this method, but I have no choice! You brought this on yourself!”
That was the room where Ramyu lay.
Hun had set up a sacred barrier, but considering that bastard’s destructive power, it likely would not mean much.
Whether he intended to take her hostage or harm her outright, Hun had to move immediately if he wanted to respond in any way.
“Whew.”
But Hun simply took a light breath and closed his eyes where he stood.
There was no need to react to that.
The move he had been attempting ever since the battle began had just finished.
“...What? Where did she go?”
Right on cue, Anton’s eyes widened in confusion.
His hand kept stirring through the air as though trying to grab something, but there would be nothing there for him to catch now.
“Hun-Style Ninjutsu Secret Art.”
The low voice rang out once more.
At that, Anton’s gaze turned forward again.
He watched Hun’s every movement with eyes wide open, as if wondering what trick he was trying to pull this time, ready to react the moment anything strange occurred...
But this time, even that reaction was exactly what Hun wanted.
Hun’s closed eyes snapped open.
Then, looking straight into his opponent’s eyes, he continued.
“Art of Domination
— Demonic Eye.”
Giiiiing—
“Kuhup?!”
A pair of inverted eyes, with obsidian-black sclera and ruby-red pupils that shone within them.
Thick blood vessels bulged around his eyes, and bloody tears began to trickle down little by little.
“Wh... at... is... this...”
Anton’s body, creaking like a broken toy, came to an abrupt halt.
Even then, his gaze remained nailed to those inverted eyes streaming bloody tears, unable to move away for even a moment.
Wrapped in a strange magic, not only his body but even the chakra within him froze rigidly.
“N-no.”
Anton barely forced out a single word with his stiffening tongue.
He had already suffered considerable damage from the battle until now.
On top of that, he was facing the Demon King’s Demonic Eye head-on, one that had dug into the blind spot of his psyche. ‘Of course, there’s still a chance he could overcome it with mental strength.’ But there was no need for him to win a contest of willpower against Hun, who was supported by various abilities such as 「Great Mind」.
Given the nature of the ability, once someone was above a certain level, they should be able to break free from this Demonic Eye.
However, even taking that into account, Anton did not possess such an ability. ‘In other words, it’s checkmate.’ Of course, this Demonic Eye was also a heavy burden on Hun.
In the process of borrowing its power, it had degraded, making its limits clear; its casting time had grown longer, and many restrictions had been placed on it, such as needing to meet the target’s eyes directly. But no matter what anyone said, these were the eyes of the Demon King passed down through generations.
Even so, the reason he had deliberately chosen this method was... ‘Now, show me.’ The objective he had aimed for ever since deciding to subdue Anton.
It was to investigate the suspicious aspects of this incident. ‘The secret hidden inside you.’ Through Anton’s bloodshot eyes, subdued by the Demonic Eye, the power of 「Telepathy」 burrowed into his mind.***
Kwa-rung—!
A bolt of lightning fell from the sky and struck the earth.
The essence of destruction descended at a speed humans could not perceive, cleanly purifying everything it touched.
“Eek! Ain’t that dangerous?”
But it failed to burn the target it had aimed for, merely leaving scorch marks on the innocent ground before disappearing.
At something that had already repeated several times, Rusette, floating in midair and breathing roughly, frowned again.
“Human Butcher. Do you have any intention of fighting properly?”
“Hm? But... can’t be helped, can it? I’m a poor match against you, missy. Me, well... I prefer an opponent I can trade blows with, y’know.”
At her words, packed tight with suppressed anger, the shabby-looking man scratched at his beard and smacked his lips.
From his speech, his dull expression, his murky eyes, and the filthy bandit-like beard that had grown out, he looked utterly unreliable at first glance. But Rusette did not let her guard down in the slightest.
Because despite how he looked, that “Human Butcher” was a deep-layer practitioner of the demonic path, equal to her.
“So, how about we switch opponents? Or why don’t you go catch the others? I’ll just withdraw like this!”
“Do you think I would believe that?”
“Ugh... I been waitin’ so long for today...! I barely got to kill anyone, and now I’ve come up empty-handed.”
As he grumbled, he swung a large rectangular cleaver through the air.
The knife, the sort one might see in a butcher’s shop, was twice as large and thick as the commonly known item.
Taking a deep breath, Rusette checked the safe distance once more and focused with a hardened expression.
In a fight against that man, she could not let her guard down for even a single moment.
Otherwise, in the blink of an eye, she would be turned into a lump of meat by the blade of the human butcher who had opened the middle-layer chakra of “Slaughter” and the deep-layer chakra of “Murder.”‘How on earth did this many demonic cultivators get into the Yun clan….’How many enemies had she dealt with so far?
And yet, despite not only her but every fighting force other than those guarding the inner compound doing their utmost, the chaos showed no sign of abating.
Of course, she already knew the answer.
No matter how they had shattered space to cross over, there had to be limits.
They must have been waiting as close to the Yun clan as possible, then crossed only through the points where the barrier had been neutralized by some method.‘Just before this broke out, a large number of people responded from the inside. On top of that, the one who brought down the counterintelligence network and coordinated the operation is someone fairly high up.’An internal traitor.
And not just any traitor, but signs of betrayal from a key figure at the administrator level.
For her, whose loyalty to the clan ran deep, it was something she could only take gravely.
“Huh? What’s this! It’s over already?”
At that moment, the human butcher, who had been glancing around furtively, widened his eyes and tilted his head.
“No way! What kinda nonsense is this! I only just got my throat wet!”
The man began grumbling as if he had received some message.
Then his gaze met Lucette’s head-on as she looked down at him from midair.
“…Sheesh, this is all because of that fox. Had to go and draw a vicious one like her.”
Then he let out a sigh and scratched his head vigorously.
It seemed a retreat order had been given.
Of course, having not the slightest intention of letting him go, she glared and once again drew up her lightning—
“……!”
Crackle!
For an instant, her body, which had been suspended in the air, shot sideways with a burst of sparks as if pulled by something.
It was an emergency evasion using magnetism with the metal structures placed throughout the Yun clan.
However….
Pshht.
—Lucette frowned as she looked at the blood seeping from the scratch on her arm.
Even though she had reacted immediately and it had not even grazed her, such a wound had appeared.
She could not even imagine what state she would have been in if her reaction had been a moment late.
“Well now, ain’t that a shame~ I thought it might work this time.”
As if he had never appeared behind her and swung his blade, the man, now having put a good distance between them, smacked his lips in regret.
Ruuumble!
—Behind him, that broken space from before was gaping wide, letting out a thunderous roar.
“Well, there’ll be plenty of chances from now on! Guess I’ll have to be satisfied with this much for today.”
Shrugging, the human butcher pushed his body beyond the space.
Wearing a meaningful smile, he waved at Lucette.
“Then I’ll be seein’ you next time, Lightning Tiger missy. Look forward to it—I’ll make sure to slice you up nice and pretty next time.”
“You…!”
Her lightning, filled with rage, struck the rift in the air head-on, but that destructive energy did not reach the one who had already vanished beyond space.
“…Hoo.”
Biting her lip hard, she steadied her breath and forced her gaze elsewhere.
Rather than worry about what had already passed, reducing the number of enemies still remaining by even one was far more productive.
Her body, wreathed in lightning, vanished from the spot.
Crackle!
It was the moment the massive midnight assault on the Seongcheon Yun clan by demonic cultivators came to an end.