Chapter 89

[Translator – Bob ]

[Proofreader – ilafy ]

Chapter 89

Evening, in the forest that had been built for Gaon…

A beautiful, bright moon was submerged under the surface of the lake.

A complete silence settled over the area. YuSung focused his concentration.

‘…I want to become stronger.’

YuSung was already plenty strong. 

Even in Korea, known internationally for its strong hunters, he was unparalleled among his fellow first-year students. 

But he knew a certain fact: that his sister, HaYoon, had cleared a rank 5 dungeon after becoming the student council president. And that definitely was not her full strength.

[This is all that I can do for now.] HaYoon had said to her father after using her Telekinesis to snap the branch off of a tree when she was five.

[‘This is all’? No! Your Trait is stand-out, even among the Shin-oh family. If such a thing as above S-rank existed, Telekinesis would be it.]

[…Thank you very much, father.]

HaYoon responded to her father rather formally.

But as Shin KangYoon turned around and left, her expression changed.

HaYoon lifted one hand with a blank, emotionless face. YuSung stared at her, dazed.

[…Pfft.]

HaYoon ridiculed the man, then clenched her hand into a fist.

[Snap! Cracracrack!]

At the mere age of five…

HaYoon had managed to destroy a large tree using Telekinesis with just one hand. Its trunk, leaves, roots—everything was squeezed into a sphere.

[How stupid.]

YuSung ran away from where he was so that he wouldn’t be caught by his sister. He was only four years old at the time and didn’t know why he had done so.

And then, the next day…

HaYoon smiled and spoke to YuSung.

[You… saw it, didn’t you?]

Even at five years old, her grin inspired terror. He shook his head.

[I didunt..]

[Liar. But YuSung-ah, it doesn’t matter what you saw… because no one in this world believes in your words… no, my strength.]

HaYoon continued to smile.

YuSung was incredibly scared of it.

[‘Why is noona smiling even though she isn’t happy?’]

Every time he looked at his sister, nothing but questions came up in his head.

Even as a four-year-old, he could tell that there was something different about HaYoon.

[O-okay…]

YuSung sank to the ground as he lost the strength to hold himself up and nodded. As he did so, HaYoon crouched down to look at him straight in the eye.

[You see, YuSung-ah…]

She lifted a finger to her lips, making a ‘ssh’ motion. Again, her mouth twitched up into a smile, even as she failed to experience any joy.

[…I was born to rule over everyone; to reign over the pathetic masses below my level.]

A mind too advanced for someone at five years of age and a monstrously strong Trait—Shin HaYoon was just too odd of an existence.

‘My sister hid her strength, even at five years of age.’

YuSung heard that HaYoon had forfeited the Representative Selections due to her bad condition on that day. 

To him, though, that sounded like a lie. His sister could win in the Selections of whichever country she wanted. However, she never revealed the entirety of her true strength, no matter what.

‘She keeps her cards close to her chest, no matter the occasion… That’s how thorough she is.’

And that HaYoon had designated YuSung as her goal under the condition that she wanted to own him… It may have been due to the Shin-oh family.

‘What she probably wants is…’

—His complete subservience.

To HaYoon, who ruled over Gaon like an empress, YuSung was something like a dissident of hers. No matter how skilled he was, he was worthless to her as long as he did not act as she pleased.

There was no chance of her giving up on him. Therefore, YuSung had no choice but to face her head-to-head. In order to do that, he needed power.

‘If I want to protect something…’

He closed his eyes. 

A chilling breeze blew, passing by his head alongside his various memories. The memory of him being abandoned, training with his master, his first comrades, and the truths he managed to discover through Sumire and EunAh.

The conclusion he reached was clear.

‘I have no choice but to become stronger than my opponent.’

In order to achieve his goal, and in order to protect what was his, Shin YuSung had to become stronger.

His descent from the mountain was the signal to his complete independence. 

He had, simply, belatedly, met the fate that he had avoided at five years old.

‘…In order to free myself from the fetters of the Shin-oh family.’

YuSung slowly drew up mana into his hand. Forming the motions of the Battle God Style, he spread the mana throughout his surroundings in an extremely slow manner.

Fshh!

The beautiful lights forming a scattered trail from his hand looked just like fireflies. 

In the dark cave that was YuSung’s life, the Fist King had handed him a torch to light the path forwards.

Now, it was his turn to make his way into the deep, dark void.

‘In order to keep going forward…’

YuSung stopped moving, stance ready. He had learned the fourth form of the Battle God Style, but he wasn’t just satisfied with that.

Now, he was trying to find a new thread to follow in order to awaken the fifth form.

‘Think… and remember.’

Translator – Bob

How could he become stronger than he currently was? How could he reach the fifth form? But the answers did not come to his mind.

[Hm… listen well, YuSung-ah! You’ll know how to do it when you learn the fifth form. The Battle God Style is a martial arts style created to fit my physique, so from the fifth form and onwards, you’ll have to create your own path that suits your own talents.]

Only then did YuSung realize what Yu WonHak was saying to him. Even the fourth form was a skill that he himself had reinvented.

Yu WonHak’s Battle God Style fourth form was the Aura of Self-Protection, which used the energy within himself to deflect and endure attacks performed on his body. But YuSung used the Black Dragon’s Body Armor, which not only used his body’s energy to defend, but also to attack.

Further guidance was, therefore, unnecessary. It was time for YuSung to go forth on his own, new path, using Yu WonHak’s teachings as well as the experiences he had gone through up to that point as foundation.

‘My own Battle God Style…’

—Was something only he could find.

YuSung thought about his Trait, the thing he had been born with–-iIts was [Heightened Focus], and it was naught but F-rank. 

While living on Martial Spirits’ Mountain, YuSung had used his Trait without even knowing he had. The superhuman concentration that suddenly developed whenever he thought he was at his limit was what let him endure the hard training throughout the years.

‘What would happen if I grafted my Trait onto the Battle God Style?’

YuSung used his Trait with his eyes open. There was no need to consciously distribute his mana anymore. All he had to do was feel that he had to [concentrate]. His thoughts would speed up, and the world would slow down.

‘Something only I can do…’

YuSung kept accelerating his thoughts. Using his concentration, he enhanced his senses to their limits.

Zzt!

In the stillness around him, the first thing that hit YuSung was sound.

Flap! Flap!

To the current him, even the flapping of a butterfly’s wings sounded slow and clear. It was YuSung’s small world. He felt nothing in that space—or perhaps everything.

‘…What is this vibration I feel around me?’

In the slowed-down time bubble he had created, YuSung felt something he had previously never sensed before.

—They were mana particles.

The mana that he had released earlier was jumping around and creating microscopic vibrations in the air.

‘This is…’

His mana-sensitive physique and Heightened Focus which could enhance his senses to a superhuman level. That sensation was something that only YuSung, out of all the people in the world, could experience.

‘The mana is vibrating.’

It was like the flap of the butterfly’s wings. No, it was much more orderly and coordinated than that.

‘Is this… the specific wavelength of my own mana?’

YuSung released mana from the tips of his fingers once again. As he did so, the feeling of mana traveling throughout his body was amplified. The movement of the expelled mana looked slow to him.

…Vmm vmm. Vmm vmm.

And that time, the vibrations felt different than before. It was subtle enough that other hunters would never be able to feel it, but with YuSung’s [Heightened Focus] his senses could figure it out.

‘The vibrations are different depending on how much mana is expelled as well as how it’s expelled!’

A thought suddenly crossed his head—what would happen if he could cause the same shockwave as expelled mana?

Long ago, he remembered hearing about the ‘mana resonance’ phenomenon from Yu WonHak.

[Mana resonance is very rare! It’s something that a hunter might never see during their entire lifetime!]

According to his story, resonance occurred when the shockwave emitted by the mana they expelled matched wavelengths with the mana it faced off against—it was a rare thing for one to see it with their own eyes.

But when it happened, even Association hunters had cause to be greatly surprised.

[It’s common to see mana shot off into some random direction or disappear entirely. This phenomenon can kill you if you don’t pay proper attention to it.]

‘But what if… I can directly control this phenomenon?’

YuSung heightened his senses even further. Again, he expelled the same shockwave of mana from the tips of his hand.

It was a meticulous process, like one a machine would perform.

…Vmm. Vmm. Flash!

The mana YuSung had just expelled began vibrating at the same frequency as the mana already in the air. 

As the particles hit each other, they disappeared as if they had never existed in the first place.

Woosh!!

YuSung began experiencing the flow of time regularly once more.

“Ugh…”

He felt a bit of dizziness from overdoing it with his training, but even as he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, YuSung was replaying what had just happened over and over again in his mind.

‘That was definitely… the mana resonance phenomenon. And I… created it.’

Using his innate senses and his Trait, [Heightened Focus], he had managed to create what was previously known to be a rare event that one would be hard-pressed to see more than once in their entire life.

‘If I can use this in an actual fight…’

Then, just as his master had said, he would be able to create the fifth form of the Battle God Style that belonged solely to him. 

His face showcased the pride he felt, even as he was on the verge of collapse.

‘It’s 10PM. I should head back.’

And right when YuSung was checking the time, someone sent him a message.

Ring!

[すみれ: YuSung-ssi, tomorrow at 9AM! I’ll be there promptly!]

[すみれ: ՛ㅠ︿ㅠ՝… Please wait a little bit, even if you’re hungry.]

[すみれ: ᕕ༼✿•̀︿•́ ༽ᕗ]

YuSung grinned ever so slightly at Sumire’s texts.

‘…So she isn’t nervous when she messages people?’

Perhaps the fulfilled feeling in his heart was due to his successful training session. YuSung was looking forward to the next day.

##no image this chap :saacry: