๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ญ๐๐ซ ๐๐๐: ๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐๐ค๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฒ๐๐ซ 2
Trembling legs.
A body that swayed and lost its balance.
“. . . . . .!!”
As if he was suffering from a cramp, his hand trembled.
But Min Si-joon’s gaze did not waver.
He stood with blood dripping from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, holding his staff upright.
The reason he was bleeding was none other than.
Mana overload.
It was what happened when he poured out more mana than his output, causing the mana to tear through his mana veins like a violent water pressure and rampage throughout his body.
Min Si-joon did not make this mistake due to lack of experience.
The amount of mana that the Azure Dragon had gathered was so enormous that Min Si-joon had no choice but to pour out more than his capacity.
‘๐๐ง ๐ ๐ค๐ข๐ฏ ๐ซ๐ถ๐ด๐ต ๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ค๐ฌ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ข๐ต๐ต๐ข๐ค๐ฌ.’
Even if the result was a mana backlash, even if his mana veins burst and his organs were shaken.
‘๐’๐ญ๐ญ ๐จ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ถ๐ฑ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐บ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐ข ๐ด๐ฆ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ถ๐จ๐ฉ๐ต.’
If he failed to destroy this powerful strike, not only would the downtown area be destroyed, but Ah-ming, Ah-sul, and Choi Sung-il would be wiped out without leaving a single trace.
During the 3 seconds that Choi Sung-il’s shield bought him, Min Si-joon squeezed every last bit of mana from his dantian and throughout his body and shoved it into his staff.
A searing pain shot through his now-empty dantian, but it didn’t matter.
‘๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ด๐ต๐ข๐ง๐ง ๐ช๐ด ๐ง๐ช๐ฏ๐ช๐ด๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ข๐ด ๐ธ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ.’
Min Si-joon smiled faintly, gripping the staff that was trembling violently.
His best friend who had stayed by his side throughout his career as a Hunter.
With a crack, the magic stone embedded at the end of the staff split open, and all the mana it contained surged and gathered.
The power that was difficult for his now-battered body to handle began to concentrate in one place.
“Keuk!”
Agony surged through him as if someone was severing every nerve ending from his fingertips to his toes with a knife.
His torn mana veins and blood vessels seemed to be screaming.
But Min Si-joon never let go of his staff.
It felt like 0.1 seconds had stretched into half a day.
He gritted his teeth hard enough to shatter his molars from the unbearable pain.
‘๐ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฏ’๐ต ๐จ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ถ๐ฑ. . . ๐ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ฏ’๐ต ๐จ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ถ๐ฑ. . . .’
Chanting the words like a mantra, he focused every ounce of his being on the situation before him.
At that moment, Min Si-joon recalled the face of just one person.
Someone who had always endured this kind of pain and fought for everyone, someone who had lived as if sacrificing himself was a given.
Hyung.
Someone whose existence he could only empathize with when he was in this much pain.
Just because a healer could heal, it didn’t mean that they didn’t feel pain when they got injured.
On the contrary, because he was able to heal his wounds, his fraudulent healing ability always pushed his brother to the front lines, encouraging him to step forward before anyone else.
Of course, it was also true that he had stepped forward of his own volition.
But. . . if he hadn’t had the ability to heal. If that had been the case.
Would his brother still have always fought against the enemy at the forefront?
Would others have been able to comfort themselves by watching his brother fight at the front instead of worrying about him?
To Min Si-joon, his brother’s ‘healing’ seemed more like a curse than a blessing.
If it weren’t for that curse, his brother wouldn’t have pushed himself so hard, and he wouldn’t have had to suffer more pain than others.
Just because he could be healed didn’t mean that the intensity of the pain was any less.
‘๐๐ง. . . ๐ช๐ง ๐ ๐ด๐ถ๐ณ๐ท๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด. . . ๐ค๐ข๐ฏ ๐ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ต๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐จ ๐ญ๐ช๐ฌ๐ฆ ๐๐บ๐ถ๐ฏ๐จ. . . ?’
He felt his consciousness wavering from the excruciating pain that struck him like lightning.
The moment Choi Sung-il’s shield, which had held out to the limits of his capacity, shattered.
The Azure Dragon’s mass of mana poured down on them like a catastrophe.
Min Si-joon concentrated all the mana he had left into one final attack.
ใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ ก!!!
A blinding flash of light engulfed the entire city as the enormous mana and magic power collided.
This was followed by a typhoon and a deafening roar that ravaged the area.
Before a moment of tranquility could settle in.
Min Si-joon coughed up a mouthful of blood.
He had overexerted his abilities, and the rebound was too intense.
“Keuheuk. . . ! Keuheuk. . . !”
Blood soaked his clothes and dripped onto the ground.
His vision was now too blurry.
Min Si-joon wiped away the blood and tears with his sleeve.
In the distance, he caught a glimpse of the Azure Dragon’s form tearing apart.
“I. . . did it. . . .”
He collapsed forward with a faint smile.
The wind blew, and a desolate silence flowed.
Crackle. . . !!
And the Azure Dragon began to regenerate.
Mana particles and ice crystals gathered one by one, forming the Azure Dragon’s body and soon creating the shape of a dragon.
โKreureung. . . .
The Azure Dragon was filled with endless rage.
It was astonished that a mere human had destroyed its attack, which it had concentrated all of its mana into, and it felt relieved that the human had collapsed.
It was very displeased to have felt those emotions of ‘astonishment’ and ‘relief’.
It was a Divine Beast.
In other words, it was a being that humans were supposed to support, offer sacrifices to, and beg to remove their anger and disasters.
And yet, it had been tied down by its inability to defeat just a few humans.
This was a disgrace and a humiliation to its being.
โKweoeooo. . . !
The Azure Dragon looked up at the sky, which was covered with dark clouds, and recalled its past as a god.
Now, it would burn this entire place to the ground as it pleased.
It could see Min Si-joon lying bloody on the ground and the humans who had collapsed from the shockwave.
The Azure Dragon wriggled its body and bared its sharp teeth.
“Keuk. . . !”
“Si-joon. . . Oppa. . . .”
Ah-sul and Ah-ming had barely managed to stay alive thanks to Choi Sung-il’s shield and Min Si-joon’s counterattack.
However, they were helpless against the shockwave created by the collision of mana and magic power.
In the first place, it was a miracle that they had survived the clash of such immense mana.
The Azure Dragon swung its enormous body like a snake and descended to the ground, its eyes gleaming as it looked down at Min Si-joon.
“Ah, no. . . !”
Ah-sul grimaced his face as he flailed his unresponsive limbs.
He was ashamed that he couldn’t run away with Min Si-joon, despite the Blue Dragon’s obvious intentions.
Not only had his body been injured by the shockwave, but his physical body, crushed by the Azure Dragon’s enormous stature, refused to obey him.
Such an enormous stature and mana were a disaster in and of themselves.
The Azure Dragon opened its mouth wide as it looked at Min Si-joon.
There was no nutritional value in a human who was going to die anyway.
But the Azure Dragon felt like it wouldn’t be satisfied until it had chewed Min-joon’s body, from head to toe, bones and all.
“Si-joon. . . Oppa. . . !”
As if to drown out Ah-ming’s cries, the Azure Dragon’s mouth snapped down on Min Si-joon’s upper body.
A thrilling pleasure that only a victor could feel coursed through its body.
And in that instant,
An unknown force sliced through the Azure Dragon’s neck.
โKuwoek!
The Azure Dragon had no choice but to spit Min-joon out.
Of course, its severed neck was quickly restored with mana, but that didn’t mean the damage was zero.
The Azure Dragon turned its head.
“You damned snake bastard. . . .”
A human it had never seen before was glaring at it with an aura of hostility that was second to none.
Zzzthumpโ!
But the aura was so powerful that the ground itself flipped over and buildings buckled and collapsed.
The Azure Dragon realized that this human before it was its most dangerous enemy.
โKreureureung!
Along with the Azure Dragon’s fearsome roar, a freezing cold that could freeze the very air itself shot out towards its opponent.
It planned to strike as soon as it dodged, tearing into it with its fangs.
But the opponent didn’t dodge.
It simply raised the sword it was holding and swung it down with great force.
Kwakakakakakaka!!
A fierce sword energy that cut the cold in half pierced straight through the Azure Dragon.
Its body was crushed.
It used its mana to repair itself.
The Azure Dragon quickly scanned its surroundings with its eyes.
There would be a slight gap before the human could attack again, so it needed to figure out its location within that time.
But.
ใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ กใ ก.
It could only be described as a split second.
They were clearly dozens of meters apart.
Even if it were to charge forward with all its might, it would take 2 seconds for the Azure Dragon to close the distance.
The human had been so far away.
“Damn you, how dare you touch my little brother?”
But now, it was right before its nose.
It had happened so quickly that the Azure Dragon didn’t even have time to prepare a counterattack.
The human pulled its shoulder back and prepared to swing its fist instead of its sword.
A fearsome amount of mana gathered in its fist.
The Azure Dragon realized that it couldn’t avoid this attack.
It was just a punch.
It could take the hit and then fly high into the sky to cast magic.
For some unknown reason, the human’s strength was off the charts, even for a Divine Beast like itself.
Just then, the human’s fist shot out like a ballista.
It only needed to take one hit.
The moment it thought that, the fist grew larger and larger.
‘๐๐ข๐ข๐ข. . . .’
The Divine Beast watched as its own life flashed before its eyes.
Zzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuuuum
A huge storm of mana swept through the area, emitting a long flash of light.
The Azure Dragon’s body exploded into pieces and scattered in all directions.
Siwoo lowered his fist and muttered in a low voice.
“Consider yourself lucky, you son of a b*tch.”
๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท๐ท
Dozens of boulders fell beneath the Black Tortoise’s feet.
It seemed to be a skill that it had manifested.
Han Tae-chi felt the emotion he hated the most resurface.
If someone else died because of his lack of ability.
That unbearable guilt.
Of course, just as a doctor couldn’t save every patient and a soldier couldn’t defeat every enemy.
Hunters couldn’t kill every monster and save every civilian.
However, Han Tae-chi had witnessed countless people leave this world because he was crushed by the guilt of not being able to save others.
Han Tae-chi, who had given up his life as a hunter because he was so afraid of that guilt.
“Ah.”
Time slowed down.
The sounds that reached his ears were muffled.
A pile of rocks fell towards the Red Ear’s head.
Han Tae-chi couldn’t breathe.
He could see the Red Ear’s slender forearm pushing him away.
Why, why did you do that?
He looked at the old man, feeling more sorry than grateful.
Or perhaps, he didn’t know what to do with the guilt that was washing over him.
The Red Ear smiled faintly.
Please don’t.
Curse me, or even tell me that you died because of me.
Han Tae-chi’s expression twisted.
He wasn’t strong enough to live off the sacrifices and deaths of others.
Of course, he didn’t have the confidence to live with their anger either.
But still. . . still, he could endure and accept anger.
If you smile like that, how am I supposed to live with my guilt?
Han Tae-chi clutched his chest.
His heart ached, and the pain spread throughout his body.
He noticed the boulder that was about to crush the Red Ear’s head.
‘๐๐ฉ, ๐’๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ญ๐ฅ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ช๐ต ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ต๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ.’
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
Unconsciously, Han Tae-chi opened his dantian and drew out his mana.
A throbbing sensation spread through his mana veins, sending a cool sensation throughout his body.
He felt a deep sense of exhilaration and a surge of fullness.
He reached out his hand.
As if to grab the Red Ear’s hand.
Or perhaps, to push away the guilt that had been crushing him.
Han Tae-chi manifested a technique that he had never used once in all his years.
Over a thousand letters and symbols formed a circle like a formula, drawn with such precision that everything intersected.
A magic circle formed, a mixture of pure white light and pitch black darkness.
Han Tae-chi opened his lips and activated his skill.
[Othello: Repulsion]
A powerful repulsive force emanated from him, causing the boulder that had reached the Red Ear’s head to fly away.
The Red Ear’s eyes widened in surprise.
Han Tae-chi reached up towards the the Black Tortoise.
“Get lost.”
Thud!!
The Black Tortoise’s massive body began to overturn.
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