Chapter 306
Bradley’s instinct that he had picked the wrong opponent was accurate.
If he stayed still for about five minutes, his stamina would fully recover—but by then, Seojun would finish praying and rise to his feet.
“Brother? We should practice again, shouldn’t we?”
This was already the third time.
That lunatic was forcing him.
Practice if he didn’t want to die.
“Wait a moment!”
“Yes?”
What was this doing in a history book? It wasn’t as though he were an unemployed layabout with nothing better to do.
“Do you perhaps have a grudge against me? Did I do something wrong to you, like what I did to the Divine Sword?”
Bradley had heard that Kael had raided the Divine Sword’s warehouse and tormented him afterward as well.
He wondered if he had done something wrong, too.
If he had, Bradley was willing to apologize.
Honestly, he was willing to apologize even if he hadn’t.
“What are you talking about, Brother? Aren’t we training diligently so that we can survive the mastermind together?”
Then what was with that damage?
Instead of asking, Bradley stared blankly at the sky, his face filled with deep skepticism.
“……”
They couldn’t communicate. Not since the beginning. Not at all.
Just like those two guys who were always worrying about the nobles’ council.
Ah.
They had known this would happen and had simply dealt with it wisely.
“Get up. Let’s gather our strength and defeat the mastermind together!”
He would probably kill Bradley if he didn’t play along with that insane game.
Damn it.
Still, he couldn’t give up after hearing that the Divine Sword was alive.
“Fine! But in exchange!”
“Oh. You’ve regained your enthusiasm. It’s wonderful to see. What is it?”
“I’ll use my skills.”
“Hmm. Your skills?”
“Yes. Even if I use my skills, it would be impossible for me to kill you anyway, wouldn’t it?”
“How do you know that?”
“Your stamina is high.”
“That’s what I’m asking. How do you know that?”
“You haven’t even managed to hit me once.”
Seojun was sneering.
He was sneering as if asking whether Bradley had ever seen his stamina bar.
‘Ah, damn it. Whether I die or not, I really want to just charge straight into him.’
He was that infuriating, but there was one important thing.
“But in exchange, I’ll give up some of the wager’s price.”
“How?”
“I won’t ask Lord Kael to abandon the quest or commit suicide. I’ll simply ask you to let me go.”
“For the entire quest?”
“Yes. Isn’t that enough?”
“Very well.”
“You didn’t have to think about it at all?”
“Because I’m going to win anyway.”
Seojun sneered again.
His face itself wasn’t actually sneering, but the content of his words was definitely a hundred percent mockery.
“Ha……”
Fine.
Bradley knew the man was skilled with a sword.
But it was also undeniable that a bit of luck had been involved from the beginning.
Bradley tightly clenched his right hand around his sword.
He would no longer have to suffer through six strikes.
And he would survive!
***
Seojun had several obstacles in front of him.
The greatest of them was that he couldn’t kill people.
If he could kill people, this quest would have been far too easy, so the restriction was only reasonable.
The method Seojun had initially considered for overcoming this obstacle was to hunt the Hounds in advance.
But that had been blocked. Technically, he could still do it.
[Hahaha! If you wish, kill them all. But if you do that, you’ll be the one in trouble.]
[Why would you be in trouble? The Hounds remaining there will receive my power and grow stronger once the passage is reinforced. Then they’ll invade Daran. Immediately. Hahaha.]
[The heroes of Daran will be tied down trying to stop those Hounds. Yes, what you threatened them with through Atura will come true.]
[As expected. You noticed right away. Just as you said, the heroes of Daran won’t have any time to spread your identity. The Thieves’ Guild? Before the information posted by Abaran can even spread, my Hounds will destroy the branch. I have to help my collaborator as well.]
In other words, Seojun must not kill the Hounds.
A certain number of Hounds could be captured. But if Seojun captured enough of them to interfere with the other participants, he would be acting against his own interests.
Above all—
[You’ll also have to make sure they can’t find the corpses. Even if you kill them, they can still collect the energy from them. Hahaha! Try stopping that!]
It would only make things more troublesome.
That was why the quest was so difficult.
There was no solution other than a battle of wits.
But it wasn’t entirely bad.
The greater the difficulty, the greater the reward he could obtain.
[The power I possess is not infinite. Even now, I am continually using it to ensure a smooth invasion.]
[Therefore, I must observe and judge whether the power I distribute to you is being used in a worthwhile manner.]
He was deciding whether or not to invest more.
The Fragment’s power was extremely limited compared to that of its main body.
Apparently, granting Seojun abilities consumed quite a substantial amount of power.
In any case, Seojun could tell from their conversation that if he accomplished something difficult, he would naturally receive compensation in return.
‘It probably won’t be much.’
At least for the sake of balance adjustment.
But the AI had never once prevented Seojun from gaining profit itself.
It had merely cut down excessively large profits to a reasonable level.
The points Seojun had already accumulated could be considered enough to destroy the balance.
Thus, the only method left was cruel, horrifying, and painful to him—but something he had no choice but to do.
Tormenting them.
What a word that was, so completely unsuited to Seojun.
Still, what else could he do?
Otherwise, they would become suspicious.
With tears welling up in his eyes, Seojun rose from his kneeling position.
And he accepted the terms of Bradley’s wager.
“Come at me, Brother.”
He would have to torment him for a while longer anyway. It hurt his heart, but the world was a place where one had to do things one disliked.
He had to survive as the mastermind, too.
His opponent had six types of skills in total.
Every time he struck his opponent, the energy imbued in his sword changed color, allowing him to use a different skill each time.
“Was the first skill Swift?”
It was a simple but effective skill that allowed him to move at high speed for an instant.
He used Swift to land the first strike, allowing him to proceed to the next skill.
Each skill had a long cooldown of ten seconds.
However, once he advanced to the next state, he could use that stage’s skill three seconds later. In theory, he was a hero who could use a skill once every three seconds.
So what did that mean?
Ultimately, it meant that if he couldn’t land a hit, he had nothing.
“That’s right. And if I hit you just once!”
His opponent was already running through his hopeful scenarios.
Seojun deliberately looked away from him for a brief moment, pretending to survey his surroundings.
It lasted only an instant.
His eyes moved and returned so quickly that they could barely register the background.
And when Seojun’s vision returned, all he saw was Bradley disappearing after seizing that brief instant and using Swift.
Of course, Seojun had expected this, so his sword blocked Bradley’s attack as he approached from the left, then counterattacked.
Slash!
There weren’t many openings.
But they weren’t invisible, either.
“Hmm. Shall I wait ten seconds for you?”
“……”
“How about we do things this way from now on?”
“What is this?”
“You can use Swift once every ten seconds to attack me, can’t you? I’ll counterattack only at that moment.”
“You’re fast, aren’t you?”
“Why? Are you planning to run away with Swift?”
“……”
Seojun chuckled.
“Why don’t you call for help?”
This was a conversation held while waiting ten seconds.
And his opponent was desperately attacking Seojun.
Seojun had only said he would counterattack at those moments; he hadn’t told Bradley not to attack.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sword strikes were blocked effortlessly.
His sword was stopped midway through its trajectory, before the form could even be completed—and sometimes from the very beginning.
Seojun blocked it freely.
“I called for help! I’ve been calling for help!”
“You don’t seem to be very popular.”
“That’s because of you! You! Why did my teammates become so unreasonable? It’s all because of you! Ah, damn it!”
Pretending to be angry and agitated, Bradley suddenly disappeared from Seojun’s sight again.
Swift.
And Seojun’s body naturally turned toward the direction Bradley was heading.
Clang!
The second attack was a horizontal slash infused with all his strength.
It was blocked by Seojun’s sword, held upright and perpendicular to the ground.
“Why isn’t this working?!”
“You still have plenty of chances, Brother. That makes two strikes.”
***
The greatest suffering was helplessness.
The helplessness of being forced to experience defeat again and again, constantly made aware of the gap in skill.
“What in the world am I supposed to do to escape?”
At last, the question Seojun wanted to hear burst from the lips of the pitiful participant.
It was the seventh time his stamina had recovered.
Bradley had fallen into a state of despair after realizing that no matter what method he used, he could not win the wager.
‘Damn. At this level, I really would’ve lost even if it had been four against one.’
“What do you mean, how do you escape?”
‘I can’t just tell him to kill someone.’
No matter what, he couldn’t show a participant abandoning his own life willingly.
‘A participant like that wouldn’t be accepted by the viewers under any circumstances.’
Bradley did not know that the Divine Sword had already done exactly that, nor that people had thought it was something he could do.
“Then kill me.”
Seojun said it—the words he had wanted to say.
“What?”
“Kill just one person, and I’ll help you escape this nightmare.”
The fact that he never said, I’ll let you go, was enough to send a chill down one’s spine.
‘At this point, even a three-year-old could tell you’re the mastermind.’
This was no mere attempt to fool someone by covering their eyes and pretending everything was fine.
No, and besides—
“……. Why do you want to see me kill someone?”
“I’m simply curious about what choice you’ll make, Brother.”
The explanation was simple enough to understand.
If he tried to comprehend it with ordinary human reasoning, all he could feel was fear.
Even so, he couldn’t kill a companion. There had only been one person who had team-killed someone purely to save himself without gaining any other benefit, and that person had been cursed out horrendously.
It would be better to give up his own life.
Even if abandoning one’s life was unprecedented and could spark controversy over his attitude, it was still better than team-killing.
Bradley spoke.
“Would abandoning the quest not be enough? I’ll go somewhere and live quietly. Quietly. If that’s not allowed……”
Bradley manipulated the quest window.
He clicked, opened the details, and then pressed the Abandon button.
The harvest item in his inventory disappeared.
Seojun watched silently. Bradley was afraid because he didn’t know what he would do.
“Yes. I’ve abandoned the quest. Please let me go now.”
It was a gamble based on the assumption that Seojun would only touch people connected to the quest. In any case, dying and abandoning the quest amounted to the same thing.
Seojun approached and raised his arm.
Bradley flinched, but Seojun merely patted Bradley’s shoulders with both hands.
“Brother. Your faith will be rewarded.”
His face was one of deep satisfaction.
Rather than looking happy to have survived, he looked so pleased that it was unsettling.
***
“So he finally left.”
Sean clicked his tongue after killing all the monsters.
He had discovered that Bradley’s location could no longer be tracked by GPS.
It had been quite some time since the radio went silent. Sean hadn’t been able to mourn him right away because he had been busy killing monsters.
It was a shame. Though their time together had been brief, Sean couldn’t imagine how much Bradley must have suffered.
Every now and then, horrifying transmissions had come through, such as pleas to please spare him, but Sean had no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut and ignore them.
-He did. Do you think he’s dead?
-He might have forced him to abandon the quest, made the radio and all such items disappear, and then killed him.
-What exactly is the image the two of you have of Lord Kael?
“Now there should be three people who share that image. Lord Bradley must have felt it plenty himself.”
Sean began moving toward his next target.
-If he’s still alive.
According to his analysis, the probability that Bradley was dead was fairly high.
“Even so, if the remaining three can just avoid meeting Lord Kael, they should be able to complete the quest…… Oh my.”
How did he know their location?
Thud.
-Lord Sean? Is something wrong? Lord Sean?
-Ah. We’re all dead. We’re all dead!
-Please answer! What is this, are these really the nobles of Daran?
Thinking there might be a monster nearby, Sean glanced to the side—and his eyes met Seojun’s.
Seojun was leaning against a tree and watching him.
Startled, Sean’s legs lost their strength, and he fell over as lightly as a sheet of paper.
It was a little—
Embarrassing.