At the same time.
Amid the illusions, clones, and shadows that could turn into the real body at any moment, Vincent found the individual that was explosively emitting mana.
On the surface they all looked identical, but by analyzing the flow of mana like this, he could identify the true body.
It was a classic method, but a basic skill that could be missed when the situation turned urgent.
Still, Vincent praised himself for keeping his composure in the chaos and cast a skill at Kang-hoo.
【Extinguishing Blaze】
A fierce, deep-violet flame skill flew in, wrapped around Kang-hoo, and burned everything it touched into roaring fire.
It was like an execution by fire, enough to make him think no one could come out intact.
“Haha! Ah……?”
Vincent’s expression changed as he was about to burst into laughter, confident he had pinpointed Kang-hoo’s true body.
Because the figure of Kang-hoo that Extinguishing Blaze had wrapped vanished without a trace.
It hadn’t disappeared by burning away—it faded naturally. Meaning, it wasn’t the real thing.
In that instant, killing intent from behind made cold sweat run down Vincent’s spine.
He sensed that Kang-hoo had moved to the position of the shadow that had just seemed to pass by him indifferently.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know that Kang-hoo had concealed himself even while exposed to Dark Arrows—burning through every shield he had gained from Unfair Trade to do it.
From the outside, it looked like he’d taken Dark Arrows with no damage at all, so Vincent assumed it had to be an illusion.
If the real body had been hit, he would have groaned in pain or made an evasive motion.
Seeing him slip aside with a blank face, Vincent had thought, that’s obviously an illusion……
But he had been properly fooled.
What he targeted, believing it was the true body, had only been an illusion packed with heavily compressed mana.
“Fuck.”
Vincent spat a curse, sensing his fate after this.
There was no neat escape route when an assassin had taken your back.
Thud! Thud-thud! Thud! Thud!
“Kkeuaaaah!”
A chain of stabbing strikes came in.
The persistence of repeatedly digging into the same wounded spot. Natural for an enemy—yet all the more vicious for it.
With Kang-hoo’s dagger already repeatedly driving into his body, Vincent couldn’t move carelessly to break free.
【Phase Shift】
‘Why the fuck won’t it work?’
Even Phase Shift, a skill meant to reposition over a short distance, was blocked for reasons he couldn’t understand.
He would have been shocked if he knew it was being blocked by Kang-hoo’s constellation ability, but he didn’t have time to figure that out now.
In the end—
【Dark Sphere】
he had no choice but to use the protective skill he had been saving and saving for emergencies.
The reason this skill was forced out was simple: there was no escape without threatening Kang-hoo.
His spatial-movement skill wasn’t casting for unknown reasons, and the dagger could sink in again at any moment.
If Kang-hoo simply dragged the embedded dagger sideways, Vincent’s waist could be split in two.
Since even a moment’s hesitation could lead to a bigger wound, Vincent, pressed for time, responded in desperation.
‘Just what I wanted.’
Kang-hoo cheered inwardly.
Dark Sphere.
A skill where a hedgehog-like dark orb rotated around the caster’s body, continuously protecting them.
It dealt no damage to the caster at all.
But any target close by was constantly raked and sliced by its signature dark thorns,
so if they didn’t retreat, they would take continuous damage and pain—a nasty skill.
Kang-hoo had decided he would use every skill needed in the process of dealing with Vincent.
If he killed him, the payout would be enormous. Stealing three hidden skills was a reward beyond imagination.
So he wouldn’t regret using any ability. Even if it was a one-time core skill that vanished after a single use.
‘As long as I win, it’s profit. And for an assassin with lots of cards to trust, there’s no “after.”’
He predicted the depth of the pain to come and finished bracing himself.
Against an enemy like Vincent, psychological warfare without sacrifice was impossible.
He needed to lose something, too, to make Vincent’s mind spiral.
The board for that had already been set. The one being forced into choices wouldn’t be him—it would be Vincent.
Ka-ga-ga-gak! Ka-gak!
Dark Sphere raked Kang-hoo without rest.
The three-stage, two-stage Protection, and the protective barrier he had raised to buy even a little time were neutralized in an instant.
Among the Dark Spheres rotating from multiple angles, he could at least tilt Wall of Integrity and block one of them.
Even if he couldn’t block all of them, he could block one for sure—so Decay kept stacking steadily even in the meantime.
【Great Decapitation】
Thud!
【Great Decapitation】
Thuuud!
“Kkeuaaaah! You fucking bastard!”
Kang-hoo’s persistence—stubbornly driving Great Decapitation in again and again without caring about the Dark Sphere tearing him apart.
Was he incapable of feeling pain, or could he feel it and ignore it?
With a blank face whose thoughts were unreadable, Kang-hoo stabbed like a machine, looking like a grim reaper.
Vincent had been feared by other hunters, but he had never felt fear himself.
Yet this situation was too confusing, because he couldn’t read Kang-hoo’s thinking at all.
From the parts of Kang-hoo’s body exposed to Dark Sphere, blood and flesh were already spraying in all directions.
Unless he was some kind of masochist who felt pleasure from pain, it was guts that made no sense.
With spatial movement forcibly blocked, Vincent’s only way out was retreating on foot.
But that would expose another opening to Kang-hoo again.
They were too close to even raise a proper defensive wall.
And before that, it was questionable whether he could even withdraw safely, because Kang-hoo’s dagger had already torn up his flank and waist. It was frightening to even look at the wound.
‘Chicken Game.’
Vincent was sure.
Kang-hoo was enduring because he wanted Vincent to panic and retract Dark Sphere first.
Then, of course, he couldn’t give him what he wanted. For whose benefit? Never.
But…… the aftermath of that first ambush—where he had allowed Kang-hoo the opening strike—was swelling like a snowball.
No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire right half of his body was stiffening solid.
Honestly, it was a miracle his organs were still in place after being stabbed that many times.
Because he had steadily raised his toughness and anti-magic stats, they were shining now, in a situation where his flesh was exposed like this.
If those stats were lacking, the dagger would have gone half a palm deeper than it already had. And then he would have died.
“Die……!”
Vincent raised the output of Dark Sphere even higher.
Shwaaaaah!
The rotation speed increased, raking Kang-hoo’s body at twice the speed as before.
It was Vincent’s threat—saying, give up and back off already.
But Kang-hoo remained calm even as he watched his own blood spray.
No matter how Vincent thought about it, it was strange.
Vincent was holding Kang-hoo’s arm that had stabbed into his side, so Kang-hoo couldn’t chain additional skills easily.
And with Dark Sphere constantly tearing at him, even the minimal focus needed to use skills should have been difficult.
From the moment Dark Sphere truly came into play, Kang-hoo was losing far more stamina than Vincent.
Even by rough estimation, he was taking 1.5 times the losses—yet he was too calm.
Was he blinded by attack and unable to calculate objectively? He didn’t seem that emotional.
He was clearly losing, yet he acted more confident. The alien feeling grew. Did he have another card to rely on?
In the end, Vincent had to probe.
“Kraaaagh!”
In the midst of it, Vincent felt Kang-hoo slowly rotating the dagger clockwise.
From the outside it looked like only a slight twist, but the pain inside was beyond imagination.
Vincent clenched his teeth and endured.
Right now, losing focus for even a moment would be the end.
And the thought also came that maybe Kang-hoo truly wasn’t thinking about what came after.
Otherwise he couldn’t be this reckless. Maybe he was hoping Vincent would panic and pull away first.
Before things tangled further—
【Rock Storm】
Vincent siphoned off some of the Dark Energy he was investing into Dark Sphere and raised a Rock Storm.
It was an attack skill that forcibly lifted gravel and stones around them and hammered the target nonstop.
It wasn’t merely stones flying—powered by Dark Energy as propulsion, they came in violently, so unless they were properly blocked, the skill itself would expose the target to serious damage.
If Kang-hoo tried to block Rock Storm, his current near-half-frozen state would naturally break.
But then—
【Petrification】
‘……?’
Something happened that made Vincent doubt his eyes.
In an instant, Kang-hoo’s entire front body turned stone-like—
Tud-dok! Tud-dok! Tud-dududok!
and he received the raging storm of stones and gravel far too easily.
Perhaps because it was stone striking stone, it only produced faint cracks before being neutralized.
In the middle of that, a fairly large rock sharply drove in toward Kang-hoo’s abdomen—
but—
【Carapace Transformation】
it was blocked by Carapace Transformation, which reinforced his entire abdomen far beyond normal. Completely nullified.
And as Kang-hoo even deflected late-arriving stones out of rhythm with Wall of Integrity, Vincent’s gain became zero.
A fucking situation.
Kwaaaaak!
“Kkeuaaaagh! Fuck!”
Kang-hoo, who had held on stubbornly, finally rotated the dagger to a right angle, and Vincent nearly blacked out in that instant.
Thank god he screamed—otherwise he would have rolled his eyes back and passed out from the pain.
And then, as if that weren’t enough—
【Aesthetics of Healing】
Kang-hoo deliberately showed Vincent himself healing right in front of him.
A brag about a zero-grade shoe item.
Seeing Kang-hoo’s wounds rapidly closing as he absorbed earth power, Vincent’s eyes truly rolled back this time.
‘So he really had a card to rely on.’
Panic surged.
If it came to this, he—who had no self-healing mechanism—was unconditionally disadvantaged.
He had wondered what Kang-hoo was trusting to enter a chicken game where he shaved off even more of his own stamina, but the healing just answered everything. The war of attrition so far had simply played out exactly as Kang-hoo wanted.
At this point, it seemed best to go to a raw firepower battle by using the hidden skill Forced Fusion.
They were practically nose-to-nose—if he gathered one proper shot, he could wipe Kang-hoo out without leaving a trace.
【Forced Fusion】
Woooong! Woo-woooong! Woooong!
Vincent began pulling magic skills together at full power.
It didn’t matter which skills he gathered.
He chose only the most destructive ones he could drive into Kang-hoo in this moment.
Mana depletion? Dark Energy depletion?
He didn’t care.
If one shot would clean up the situation, there was no reason to worry about what came next.
Goooooo!
Soon, the skills that had explosively compacted into a single point each radiated their own heat.
They were ready to fly at Kang-hoo at any moment.
At this close distance, the moment he extended his hand slightly forward, an explosion would erupt via Forced Fusion.
“It’s over!”
Vincent thrust his hand out with a confident shout.
If he got caught in the blast, he would surely be injured too—but he was sure he could kill Kang-hoo.
If he took a life and gained a wound he wouldn’t die from, it was a fine trade.
Thinking that, he boldly moved to release the fused mixed-magic sphere—at that instant!
【Decay】
【All skill usage is conditionally sealed.】
【Skills assembled at the stage immediately before casting are nullified.】
“You son of a—”
Vincent’s face turned ashen.
His decisive strike—aimed at the opening—scattered like nothing had happened before it could even begin.
This was a proper collapse.
He was ruined, utterly ruined.
