"Being ganged up on is always annoying."
Even though he was just jogging lightly, it felt much faster than when he used to sprint at full speed.
"I'm getting better at using my inner energy."
The sensation of wind brushing past, as if he were riding a motorcycle, was an oddly pleasant feeling of unfamiliarity.
-Ding! The magnetic field is shrinking.
"Huh? What's that sound?"
No sooner had he activated the map than the next magnetic field was already closing in.
"That means the magnetic field cycles are getting shorter. Not good."
Relying on the map, Seoun moved out of the thick dust cloud — only to be met by a rain of arrows flying at him.
The moment the view cleared, arrows came pouring down, forcing Seoun to quickly change direction and tumble roughly across the ground.
-Papapapapak!
At the same time, the strange-looking arrows slammed into the ground.
As the arrows hit and melted away instantly, Seoun scanned the area, trying to locate the enemy.
Not far away, a figure in a brown robe with a deeply pulled hood waved a staff once more.
From his staff, ice arrows glittering with blue light filled the air and rained down toward Seoun.
"There's no dodging this."
Even at a glance, there were far more arrows than before — enough to form a wall and fill the space around him.
Instinctively raising his crossed arms to shield his face, Seoun suddenly felt discomfort and thrust his arms out.
-Papapapat!
In an instant, Seoun punched through only the arrows that posed a real threat, shattering them. He stared, stunned at his own action, unable to believe it.
The strange discomfort as he blocked the incoming projectiles triggered a memory — a martial art technique of Fist surfaced in his mind. His fists had already moved, smashing the ice arrows before he even consciously realized it.
After a moment of surprise, he regained his composure and charged toward the mage who had targeted him.
Now more confident, he sprinted toward another volley of arrows, destroying only the ones he had to with his fists.
His inner strength-packed punches shattered the magic-formed ice arrows with a single blow.
Just as he broke through the rain of arrows and reached the mage, a massive ice arrow, the size of a building column, came flying at him.
Seoun flinched at the sight but reflexively threw his fist forward — it was already too late to retreat.
"Screw it!"
Summoning every ounce of inner power from his core, he concentrated it into his fist and struck forward with all his might.
-CRACK. SHATTER!
With a thunderous sound, the giant arrow split in two, then shattered completely into icy fragments.
But the impact was fierce. Seoun's wrist fractured, and he gasped for breath, unable to move forward any further.
The mage, whose face was hidden beneath the deep hood, curled his lips into a smirk.
That expression was quickly wiped away.
-Gurgle…!
Just as he raised his staff high, the mage suddenly coughed up blood and collapsed to the ground with a thud.
Seoun looked at the crescent-shaped blade that had pierced through the mage's chest, then quickly pulled a healing scroll from his subspace and tore it open.
As the mage crumpled forward, a man stepped out from behind, wiping blood off his blade and locking eyes with Seoun.
Clad in entirely black garments, his face wrapped in cloth, the slender man looked like an assassin straight out of a wuxia movie.
"I caught a bird, but it turns out it had a fish in its beak."
At the man's cryptic words, Seoun rotated his partially healed wrist and glanced up at the sky.
The full moon, briefly visible between the clouds, was slowly being covered again. Seoun opened his mouth.
"We'll have to see whether it was a fish… or a viper the bird had caught."
In that instant, as the man's silhouette blurred with movement, Seoun reacted just as quickly.
Moments later, throwing knives were embedded in the spot where he'd just stood — then a black shadow closed in.
-Clang!
The man swung his crescent blade and leapt back, staring intently at Seoun's arms.
"That's an interesting item. I meant to cut off your arms…"
The man's voice dripped with killing intent as he caressed his sword's edge.
Even though Seoun had wrapped his arms in inner energy for protection, they were still tingling from the impact — this man's strength was no joke.
"He doesn't seem like a martial artist…"
At Seoun's muttering, the man responded.
"That doesn't mean he can't know martial arts. Especially in this place, the boundaries between things are meaningless, aren't they?"
He was right. In this world, the boundaries between each realm were blurred.
There was no reason a magician couldn't learn martial arts, and no reason a martial artist couldn't use magic.
"You're someone specialized in ambushes, huh."
"In our world, we call that an assassin."
Only then did Seoun begin to understand the man to some extent.
Stealthy and fast movements. A fatal ambush that instantly silenced a magician with a single blow. And that dark appearance. If that was the case, then the odds weren't entirely against him.
'Especially when total darkness has swallowed everything, like now!'
Just as Seoun's presence seemed to vanish, the man quickly moved and threw hidden weapons—but they sliced through empty air.
Seoun's presence, now one with the darkness, could no longer be sensed from anywhere.
Only then did the man realize things were not going as planned.
He was torn between two choices.
Even as he moved without pause, the dilemma persisted:
Run? Or fight?
Neither choice was easy.
The young prey he thought he'd easily take out had suddenly become a dangerous opponent, capable of deceiving even his senses.
If he followed what he'd been taught, he should've run without even looking back.
If this were his own world, he would've done exactly that 100 out of 100 times.
But the problem was—this wasn't his world.
A place where a tiger could grow wings and a mere fox could become a tiger in an instant. The existence of items made such things possible.
He didn't know what might come out of the magician's box he had just killed.
Frightened by a mere fox, he might end up giving it the chance to become a tiger. That thought made it hard to turn his back.
-Swish! Clang!
"Tricks like that?"
Hardly had he deflected the flying hidden weapons when the man hurled a dagger in their direction—but no hit was heard.
"You want to fight a stealth battle with me?"
With no reply coming, the man frowned and suppressed his presence.
But Seoun could sense the man's presence clearly.
At first, he had been shocked by the man's sudden appearance and the threat to his life, so he hadn't been able to think clearly. But now he realized: the only impressive things about the man were his silent footwork and brute strength.
That strength, nearly seven times stronger than usual, had overwhelmed him. But that was all.
Judging from the man's simple attack patterns—slashing and throwing daggers—he didn't seem like a particularly formidable opponent.
In fact, he was easier to handle than most magicians.
Though the man tried to hide his presence, it was only due to a learned technique—not because of some superior stealth skill or item effect.
That difference determined the outcome.
Seoun, who had erased his presence using an item, versus the assassin whose presence was completely visible to him—it was like fighting a blind man.
'So this is what "sensing energy" feels like.'
Though not visible to the eye, Seoun could sense the man's location as if he were seeing it. As he adapted to this new sense, he silently approached the man.
Just as the man felt a chill on his back and swung his sword around—
—it was already too late. Seoun's fist had shattered the man's spine.
"Urgh!"
With a final groan, the man's life ended.
If it weren't for the cloak he was wearing, Seoun thought, it would've been him lying on the ground instead. Gripping the cloak tightly, he absorbed the man's life force.
'Survivor!'
-4/100
…..
Jin Seoun → Tamiren (Kill by martial arts)
'Only three left now…'
He hadn't expected to make it this far, but since he had, he might as well aim for the top. Now that he was here, going for TOP 1 didn't seem unreasonable.
He quickly opened the box that had appeared. Several items lay inside—but only one truly caught Seoun's eye.
A single secret manual, now in his hand.
[Ding! You have obtained silent movement technique. Would you like to learn it?]
Muryeong Hwanbo. Even the name alone revealed the true nature behind the man's silent movement technique.
Without hesitation, he pressed the "O" button. The manual crumbled into dust, and the essence of silent movement technique flowed into Seoun's mind.
"Ah!"
Only then did he realize—the man he had killed had barely unlocked half of the technique.
'He didn't have enough internal energy to use it properly.'
Lacking a proper core energy technique, the man had only been able to use for silent movement. But that wasn't the true essence of the manual.
'The real secret is using silent movement technique to confuse your enemy.'
Thinking this, Seoun quickly opened the magician's box.
As expected of a wizard, the chest contained many magical items, but the one that caught his eye first was a spellbook.
[Ding! You have acquired the spellbook Eye of Carmen. Would you like to learn it?]
He pressed the O button again, of course — but this time, it didn't work.
[Ding! This is not a spellbook the current user can learn. Only 5th Circle or higher mages may learn this spellbook.]
[Eye of Carmen casts a mana filter over the eyes, granting detection abilities and vision beyond human limits.
It is a unique spell by the Archmage Carmen, passed down only to a select few mages trained by him.
This spell allows the user to detect the stealth skill of the cloak currently worn by the user.]
Only then did Seoun nod in understanding.
'No wonder they rained arrows on me the moment I stepped outside.'
It had been bothering him for a while.
Until now, whenever he'd used stealth with intent, no player had ever been able to find him — which only made his suspicion stronger.
Seoun packed the minor items into his inventory and started running away from the two chests.
'Three left.'
The players who had confirmed Namsagwang's death were now acting as if the battlefield belonged to them.
Just by listening to the conversation between the archer he'd seen earlier and the man who'd been killed by his hand, it was clear the remaining players had shifted tactics.
'If I could just stay hidden until the end…'
As he was thinking this, a blinding light suddenly lit up the area around him from above.
And it wasn't just one light.
Countless orbs, brighter than flares, lit up the sky and turned the darkness of night into day. Seoun, startled, looked around in panic.
'Damn it!'
He couldn't tell if they were specifically targeting him, but either way, this wasn't good.
His greatest weapon at the moment was the cloak of invisibility — an item that, unless you were a special kind of mage, guaranteed you wouldn't be detected in the dark of night.
But in this situation, that advantage was as good as lost.
Scanning the area and trying to estimate how far he needed to run to escape the light, his gaze caught a man approaching with a bow in hand.
'Goddamn it!'
A curse slipped from his lips.
He instinctively turned to run in the opposite direction — only to see another man, wearing armor and wielding a thin rapier, striding slowly toward him, his long silver hair flowing behind him.
'Shit!'
He turned again, this time in a different direction — only to spot a man in a white robe approaching, raising a staff high above his head.
From the staff burst a bright orb of light that shot into the sky, further illuminating the surroundings.
"Ha! What a crap day this is."
Standing at the center of the triangle these three men were forming, Seoun sighed and muttered.
Whether they heard him or not, the three continued closing the distance — and then, as if on cue, stopped at an equal distance from him.
The first to speak was the archer.
"Sir Escrow. It is an honor to meet you in a place like this, away from the battlefield."
The robed mage gave a small nod in return, acknowledging the greeting.
"You must be Baron Juroquana. Your divine archery skills are well known, even in our Empire."
"In terms of fame, I don't hold a candle to the King of Kraern over there."
At those words, the man with the flowing silver hair brushed it back and finally spoke.
"If this were a battlefield, meeting heroes of this caliber would be enough to make my heart race. I never imagined I'd meet the heir to the name of Escrow."
"O King of Kraern, the honor is mine as well."
Watching the three interact, Seoun brought a hand to his forehead.
It wasn't that he felt left out or annoyed by their politeness.
It was just infuriating to see people showing such etiquette and leisure when they were in a situation where if they didn't kill each other soon, one of them — namely him — was going to die.
He briefly considered taking advantage of their composure for a surprise attack — but not a single one of them looked like an easy target.
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