Chapter 30: Confession of the Dead (1)

An enraged dragon was powerful.

“Dammit, hyung!”

“Shut up! I need to concentrate!”

It was strong enough to test the brotherly bond between the Shadow Brothers. Edvar and Vincent were covered in sweat as they dodged each black spear that came every second.

‘Dammit…Do dragons have unlimited magic?’

‘This is too much.’

Every time they dodged an attack, they would instinctively look up at the sky. But the number of floating spears wasn't decreasing at all.

Woooooshhh!

Every time a spear was thrown, a new one formed in its place. It was suffocating to watch the enormous wall of black spears approaching them.

‘When will this fucking attack end?’

‘Will it ever end?’

A person could properly run to the end if they saw a finish line, but the Shadow Brothers ran in circles with no end in sight. All they could do was waste their stamina.

‘If our attacks could reach it, we could at least fight it out properly…’

‘Those fucking scales. We can’t even make a dent on them because they’re so hard.’

They ran into a dead end. Just as they started preparing themselves for death… all the color drained from their faces.

“.....!”

“.....!

A fearsome storm was approaching from behind. It made their hairs stand on end.

‘From the back! You’re telling me there’s a new attack pattern?’

‘Shit, is this where we die…?’

Just as they started to accept their fate…

Whoosh!

An arrow carried by the fierce winds pierced through the Nameless Dragon’s eye.

“!!!”

It opened its jaws wide, its painful shriek shaking the air around it.

Wooshhh!

The dragon’s blood spurted like a fountain, raining on the brothers and the earth. They looked at each other, slack-jawed.

‘Was that…’

‘Seo Jun-Ho?’

The Shadow Brothers quickly identified the shooter at the same time that Seo Jun-Ho’s support arrived. The Shadow Brothers also realized why Seo Jun-Ho was doing this.

‘Well, it’ll just be harder for him if we die.’

‘It’s impossible for him to kill it alone.’

Whatever would happen after, the three of them had to work together to fight the Nameless Dragon. They would probably become enemies again after the battle was over, but if they wanted to live, they had to cooperate for now. A new hope burned in the Shadow Brothers’ resigned eyes. They had already given up, but now, they had something to cling to.

“Let’s fall back when the opportunity arises.”

“Of course. Since he’s attacking from that direction, it’s obvious where the Nameless Dragon will turn to.”

They finished their calculations and started to dodge the black spears that were falling again.

***

“I feel sorry for them…..” Seo Jun-Ho muttered dryly, lowering his bow. After he shot the arrow, the Shadow Brothers became lively once again. He had given them hope. And it wasn’t hard to guess what exactly they were hoping for.

“They’re probably waiting for the Nameless Dragon’s aggro to turn to me.”

𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

But that would never happen.

“Look at those hopeful faces, tsk. The lovely rose-colored image you’re seeing… it’s a mirage, not an oasis.” In Seo Jun-Ho’s point of view, there was no need for him to draw the dragon’s aggro onto himself as he attacked. From the start, the Shadow Brothers had made the wrong assumption. Unlike what they were thinking, Seo Jun-Ho was confident that he could defeat the Nameless Dragon on his own.

Still, pulling the Shadow Brothers in made it easier.

‘There’s no need to make it harder than it has to be.’

Seo Jun-Ho raised the Tempest Butterfly again. He was aiming at neither the Nameless Dragon nor the Shadow Brothers, but at the grey sky.

‘The scales really are tough. Most attacks won’t break them. Even powerful attacks would only be able to damage the eye. But if I make a big blow…’

The Nameless Dragon would change its target. An enemy that could threaten its life was more worth fighting than ants who wouldn’t even dare to attack.

“So I have to finish everything in this next attack.” It would be better to finish this sooner or later.

‘A delayed attack.’

Pouring multiple hits into one attack so that it wouldn’t be able to react. It was one of the merits of ranged weapons, unlike melee weapons.

Puuuulll

Seo Jun-Ho aimed the bow at the sky and poured all his focus into his sight. He blocked out all the sounds around him, forcing himself into a trance. It was as if he was the only person left in the world. As the solitude feeling started to wrap around him, he started to make the necessary calculations.

‘Damage area confirmed. Arrow trajectory confirmed. I’ll attack at 0.5-second intervals.’

He finished fine-tuning and glanced up at his hair blowing in the wind. “Wind speed and wind direction…..There’s no need to calculate those.” He stared at the bow as he muttered to himself.

The Tempest Butterfly was only a rare-grade weapon, and there were many bows that were higher in grade than it. But there was a simple reason as to why it had become a national treasure.

‘The ability to create a storm.’

Every arrow that was shot from the Tempest Butterfly carried a storm with it. When they were released, they would create a strong air pressure that would rip through all the winds it met.

‘That’s why the wind speed and direction don’t matter.’

The wind was an age-old enemy for all archers. But once the Tempest Butterfly came into play, its effects on archers disappeared like a ghost.

‘And that’s why it became a national treasure.’

It was also why the fiend Kal Signer was so interested in the rare-grade bow, Tempest Butterfly.

Puuulll

Seo Jun-Ho pulled the bowstring as far as it would go, but absurdly enough, there was nothing nocked on its strings.

‘The Nameless Dragon is a lot bigger than I originally thought, so an arrow won’t work.’

He started to gather his magic, creating an arrow made of darkness on the bow.

Actually, it was too big to be called an arrow.

“Dark spear.” It was a two-meter-long spear with a pointy tip. He didn’t summon it for show.

‘Darkness is a power that corrupts everything.’

A weapon made of darkness would even ignore the effects of defensive magic. That was why people called it Specter’s strongest spear in the past.

Woooooshhhh!

Seo Jun-Ho let go of the bowstring without a second thought. A powerful rush of wind pressure struck him, but he didn’t stumble as he repeated the motion.

Wooosh! Woooooosh! Wooosh!

By the time he shot twenty projectiles, only seven seconds had passed. Each spear had its own trajectory as it shot into the sky.

‘They’re all going in the right direction.’

A skilled archer knew the outcome as soon as they let go of the bowstring. Having perfectly launched his attack, he remembered his next goal.

“I should get going.”

The hunt had finished with this. Now it was time to catch the hunting dogs.

***

‘Seo Jun-Ho, that fucker…’

‘Why isn’t he attacking?’

The Shadow Brothers were starting to panic. After shooting an arrow into the Nameless Dragon’s eye, Seo Jun-Ho stopped attacking.

As they started to wonder what was wrong, a voice came from behind them.

“Why are you playing some barrage game instead of hunting as I told you to?”

It was a voice that shouldn’t be here at this moment. The brothers yelped as they whipped around.

“You crazy…..Why are you here?!”

“Weren’t you supporting us from the back?”

“I did.” Seo Jun-Ho looked up at the sky and jutted his chin. Naturally, they followed his line of sight.

Twenty stars were falling.

‘…Stars? No, wait, they’re spears. Black spears! Is it the Nameless Dragon’s attack?’

‘No, those…..Those are a little different from the dragon’s spears.’

For the first time since the battle started, the spears fell on the Nameless Dragon instead of the Shadow Brothers.

…?

The Nameless Dragon turned at the sound of rushing wind that even the Shadow Brothers could hear from their location.

Stab!

A black spear pierced through the Nameless Dragon’s body. It didn’t even have time to scream as the spears kept coming. They penetrated through all 15 meters of its body from head to tail, pinning it to the ground.

Kiaaaaaaaaahhh!

It let out a cry so loud that nearby rocks went flying. It thrashed its body in pain, but the spears kept it pinned to the ground and didn’t let it move. As the Shadow Brothers looked upon the dragon writhing like a bug, they started to tremble.

‘He defeated the Nameless Dragon so easily? How?! It was so strong!’

‘With such a powerful delayed attack? Wasn’t his main weapon a sword?’

Seo Jun-Ho’s weaponry skills were good enough to make them go pale, and they could see that the spears were also filled with a mysterious power. They quickly realized the situation they were in and waved a white flag.

“Hey, since we fought together, how about we talk it out?”

“You know that we’re just small fries. Spare us and we’ll tell you our meeting point.” It was a pretty good trade and would let Seo Jun-Ho catch bigger fish.

But the look in Seo Jun-ho’s eyes didn’t change. “No. I have no thoughts of letting you go. Fuck off.” He knew that if he let them go, things would only get more difficult for him in the future.

‘Even if they try to escape, the Fiend Association won’t just stand idle.’

They would either use telepath or torture to make the brothers spit out everything that had happened in the Gate.

‘And then the Fiend Association would start to suspect the origin of my powers.’

Killing them would be the most efficient option. Thus, Seo Jun-Ho unsheathed his sword.

“You think we’ll go down without a fight?!” Vincent cursed as he realized that Seo Jun-Ho wasn’t up for peace talks.

Stab!

There was a familiar sound.

‘Huh? This sound…’

It was a sound that he heard often. His favorite sound of a heart being stabbed.

But this time, it was exceptionally loud. As if it was coming from inside his body instead of out.

“...Ah?” Before he knew it, he was on his knees, vomiting blood. He felt excruciating pain in his chest.

A sharp sword was sticking out through his front side.

‘When did…he?’

He couldn’t process what just happened.

“VINCENT! Seo Jun-Ho, you bastard!” Edvar’s enraged shout rang in his ears. Vincent barely managed to turn his head as life started to fade from his eyes.

The last thing he saw before he died was Edvar’s head getting cut off by Seo Jun-Ho’s sword.

Vincent chuckled as the blood dripped from his lips.

‘What kind…of bullshit…’

The fiend Vincent died comfortably and cleanly.

“...Am I getting softer? I sent them off too easily.”

Seo Jun-Ho shook the blood off his sword and looked down coldly at the two corpses before him. Killing people always made him feel icky, but if they were fiends, there was no reason for him to feel that way.

They had probably already taken hundreds of lives themselves, and that number would only multiply if he let them live.

“If there’s an afterlife for the lot of you, you should spend the whole time repenting.”

Kyaooooo!

Seo Jun-Ho slowly walked over to the Nameless Dragon as it thrashed. The overwhelming pain wouldn’t let it gather its magic, even if it was a dragon. In other words, it was defenseless.

As he got closer, its bright red eye stared into him. Seo Jun-Ho didn’t know why, but he felt like it was full of sadness.

“What’s with that look?” Seo Jun-Ho started to feel uneasy, but he still raised his sword.

Ooong!

A black sword aura covered the blade. If the Three Reapers of Gangnam saw this, they would have spat out the orange juice they were drinking.

“Goodbye.”

Seo Jun-Ho got on top of its body and stabbed his sword through its reverse scale. The Nameless Dragon convulsed, and then went still.

[You have cleared the Island of the Forgotten Dragon.]

[You have received Dragon Bones (20kg) as a reward.]

[You have leveled up.]

[You have leveled up.]

[You have leveled up.]

…..

[All stats increased by 5.]

[You have regained 2 magic stats.]

[You have regained 2 stamina stats.]

[You have regained 2 strength stats.]

[The Gate will automatically disappear in 1 hour.]

His level had increased by five as a reward for clearing the Gate, but his level went up six times overall.

‘Hunting other Players gives you EXP too. This is why fiends love PK’

Seo Jun-Ho scanned the island before he moved toward the Shadow Brothers. The surroundings were awfully quiet.

“I can finally test this out.” The C-grade skill he received for killing the Tricker at the Curse of Dawn: Confession of the Dead. It was a peculiar skill that let him read the memories of the dead.

[You have recalled the memories of ‘Vincent’.]

[The confession of the dead has begun.]

A window labeled ‘Memory Projection’ appeared.

1. Player kill/killing