The clattering echo of black iron plates bouncing across the lting asphalt was the only sound left in the intersection.
Park Jin-woo stood frozen atop the armored personnel carrier, his rare-grade broadsword still crackling with electrical mana data, though the lightning now looked thin and erratic—matching the erratic hamring of his heart. His user interface was a chaotic ss of scrolling calculations, every line of system logic screaming at him that a Level 35 Elite Anomaly with a 90% physical damage reduction modifier could not be dismantled by a human right hand.
"He didn't use an attribute buff," Jin-woo whispered, his knuckles turning white through his platinum gauntlets. "There was no casting ti. No status alteration. He just... he just hit it."
Behind him, the forty corporate hunters had completely abandoned their spell casting formations. The Mages held their staves loosely, their eyes wide as they stared at the tiny, bare-chested teenager who had just turned a nine-foot titan of abyssal steel into a pile of junk.
The remaining five Abyssal Sentinels did not possess human minds, but their internal crimson flas flared with a sudden, violent intensity. The system-generated logic governing their raid paraters recognized a structural anomaly. The human vessel standing before them did not possess a mana signature, yet the kinetic displacent of his previous strike had completely erased one-sixth of their total vanguard matrix.
"GURRR—VRAAA!"
The five iron giants moved simultaneously. They didn't stagger their advance or attempt a tactical pincer movent like the shadow wolves. They were a phalanx. They locked their five remaining ten-foot tower shields together, forming an unbroken, seamless wall of black abyssal steel that advanced across the intersection like an iron wall. Their five heavy halberds rose in unison, the black blades humming with a dark purple mana current that cut the air into screaming vacuum lines.
[Warning: The Vanguard Phalanx has activated 'Absolute Line (B-Rank)'.]
[Physical and Magical defense modifiers are multiplied by 200% when shields are locked.]
[Total Armor Class surpasses the current epoch paraters!]
"He's going to get crushed!" the Helios Mage scread from the rear platform, her fingers flying across her holographic screen as she tried to calculate an escape vector for the squad. "The 200% modifier ans their structural density is higher than a mountain bedrock! Not even a siege spell can pierce that line from the front!"
Min-jae stood three paces from the advancing iron wall, his long, lean arms hanging loose at his sides. His bare feet were planted firmly on the asphalt, his toes curling slightly into the soft, heat-softened tar.
With his Perception sitting at an advanced 35, he didn't look at the massive black shields or the glowing system notifications. He looked through the narrow, milliter-wide gaps where the iron plates overlapped at the hinges. He calibrated the chanical friction of their strides.
"Two hundred percent," Min-jae murmured, his voice carrying that deep, tallic resonance that silenced the wind of the gate. "The World Tree loves multiplying numbers. But if your foundation is hollow, multiplying zero by two hundred still leaves you with nothing but scraps."
He didn't activate his internal energy pool. He didn't drop into a defensive horse stance.
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step'.]
With his Agility at 55, his movent did not resemble a human sprint. To the onlookers, it looked as if the space between Min-jae and the central shield simply compressed, his silhouette appearing directly in front of the middle Sentinel a millisecond before the iron wall could make contact with his chest.
He didn't punch the shield. He extended his right hand, his fingers closed together like a smooth, solid wedge, and drove his bare palm straight into the narrow vertical gap where the central shield t the flanking plate.
Formless Style: Splitting Wedge.
He didn't use True Ki. This was pure, unadulterated structural leverage applied to a geotric flaw.
CRACK-CRUNCH.
The raw 50 points of his Strength, delivered through a single, mathematically perfect point of contact, acted like a hydraulic wedge driven into a frozen engine block. The 200% defensive modifier of the Absolute Line skill violently buckled. The kinetic energy didn't bounce off the abyssal steel; it traveled along the interlocking rivets, shearing the iron bolts cleanly out of their sockets like popcorn kernels popping off a cob.
The central shield was blasted backward, slamming directly into the hollow chest cavity of the middle Sentinel.
"Gah?!"
The crimson fla inside the monster's helm flickered violently as its internal frawork collapsed under the weight of its own defense armor.
Min-jae didn't stop the montum. Using the rebound force of the split, he twisted his torso by forty-five degrees, his left foot driving into the asphalt to lock his [Jade Bone] alignnt into an immovable column. He coiled his right fist back, his skin gleaming with that dense, translucent luster of the perfected [Iron Skin] realm.
Formless Style: Sovereign Rupture.
He delivered a straight, compact right hand into the exposed left flank of the second Sentinel.
BOOM.
The impact was so dense it generated a dull, vibrating wave that shook the glass windows of the armored personnel carriers thirty yards away. The black iron breastplate didn't just dent; it shattered into a dozen jagged shards that tore through the crimson mana flas of the adjacent monsters.
[You have destroyed the second core matrix of the B-Rank Anomaly.]
[The Overmaster System converting entity's high-density tal essence...]
[You have gained 10 points of 'True Ki'.]
The remaining three Sentinels tried to swing their heavy halberds downward in a desperate, short-range lee reflex, but Min-jae was already moving beneath the arc of the steel. He beca a gray distortion in the center of their formation, his hands and elbows moving with a clinical, terrifying precision that completely ignored the system’s combat paraters.
An elbow strike to an iron knee joint. A lateral palm strike to an exposed neck matrix. A sweeping low kick that sheared the heavy iron boots of the last monster cleanly off the asphalt.
CRASH. CLANK. THUD.
Within less than thirty seconds, the entire vanguard phalanx of the B-Rank Calamity Gate was reduced to a quiet, smoking pile of empty black iron plates that lay scattered across the road like refuse outside a junkyard.
[You have completely defeated five Level 35 Abyssal Sentinels.]
[The Overmaster System converting entities' high-density essence...]
[You have gained 50 points of 'True Ki'.]
[Current True Ki: 82 / 100]
[Your internal core engine is approaching the Stage 3: Maximum Saturation threshold.]
[The gold fluid around the Core Seed is beginning to crystalize.]
A profound, suffocating heat blood deep within Min-jae’s solar plexus. The 82 units of liquid True Ki were spinning with such velocity that his chest cavity vibrated with a low, sub-audible hum that sounded like a massive electrical turbine gathering speed under full load. His skin took on a deeper, more permanent jade luster, completely untouched by the black abyssal soot or the lting tar beneath his feet.
He slowly turned his head to look at the military blockade, his golden-ringed pupils flaring with a cold, precise brilliance that made every soldier's hand tremble on their mana-rifles.
Park Jin-woo had dropped his broadsword into the tar, his platinum gauntlets shaking so violently he couldn't even close his fingers to pick it up. He looked at the mountain of scraps, then at the bare-chested teenager who hadn't even used a single unit of magic to erase a B-Rank raid wave.
"You..." Jin-woo wheezed, his voice completely stripped of its corporate arrogance. "What kind of item are you hiding? The system... the system doesn't allow a physical class to have this level of clearance."
Min-jae didn't answer him. He turned his back on the corporate vanguard, his gaze locking onto the massive, crimson do of the Iron Vanguard’s Tomb that was still pulsing violently in the center of the intersection. The black smoke billowing from the vortex was beginning to gather into a single, towering column—signaling that the True Master of the core matrix was preparing to bridge the dinsional layer.
"Stay behind your titanium wall, Young Master," Min-jae said, his voice cutting through the quiet street like a blade. "Because the thing coming out of that hole next isn't going to care about your platinum armor paraters."
User Comments
0 comments from readers