Chapter 88: Sword Dragon of the Blue Sky (3)

Chapter 88: Sword Dragon of the Blue Sky (3)

Flying.

Everyone born in this world must've dreamed of flying in the infinitely wide expanse at least once.

Only creatures born with wings can fly and move freely in the sky.

I also longed for it when I was young to the point that I could barely remember it.

Of course, after realizing it was a dream that could never come true, I immediately gave up on it.

However—

Currently, I had acquired wings and flew in the skies of Tokyo.

It was a skill I had used once in the waiting room of the Tower, but the feeling of using it outside was completely different.

The flight in the waiting room was just to see if I could really fly.

The only feeling I had at that time was that it was just amazing that a lot of mana was consumed, and I could fly without flapping my wings a lot.

But now, it was different.

Flying in the skies of Tokyo gave me a sense of omnipotence, as if I had truly become the ruler of the sky.

Honestly, if it weren't for the buildings collapsing with the roaring from all over the place, I would've been laughing out loud.

In fact, I felt the corners of my lips slightly rising up.

"Why are you smiling carefreely after bringing a person as you please...!"

At this, Katheryn, hanging on my left arm, said something while getting mad, but I couldn't help it.

She was a challenger who could restrain Namgung Hyuk, who was going rampant without any penalty.

"Smiling was my mistake. I just thought it was amazing to be flying in the sky."

I couldn't leave Katheryn behind when the full-scale fight with Namgung Hyuk would be starting soon.

Because of Namgung Hyuk, who had begun to indiscriminately destroy buildings in Shinjuku ward, I had no time to explain.

Of course, we could've fought Namgung Hyuk after waiting for the collapse, but the goal wasn't just to defeat Namgung Hyuk, but also to protect the city.

That's why I couldn't wait any longer, and I was flying with my wings straight out like this.

Perhaps she noticed that fact. She became quite calm, unlike a while ago, struggling for me to let her go.

"In all honesty... you're insane. You must have a screw loose somewhere. Who in the world would agree to fly without explanation in that situation?"

"Needless to say, the grunting was still there, but I could obviously bear with it."

I responded to Katheryn's words while pouring some more mana into the wings and increasing my speed.

Whiiiish—!

"...I couldn't explain one by one and fly in a situation where the city was being destroyed."

"...I know. I'm just saying, so don't take it seriously."

Katheryn said as though she was fed up, then raised her head and looked at me.

"So, what are you planning to do now?"

"What's the point of asking? We'll go to Namgung hyuk."

"No, not that. I'm asking about the battle plan."

"...?"

"You don't have any? You left everyone else behind and just brought me."

"That's obviously because you're a person who can't be taken out in this battle."

But she frowned frustratingly and then let out a deep sigh.

"Right now, only the two of us came here, and everyone else is still in the helicopter.

"That's right."

"Then you or I will have to create an opening for that monster to activate the power, right?"

"Is that the reason why you asked if I had a battle plan?"

Then Katheryn nodded as if she was tired of me, and I quickly fell into my thoughts.

That's because I wondered if the bare minimum of a battle plan was necessary like she said.

But...

'But there really is no such thing as a battle plan.'

I immediately concluded that there was no such thing as a battle plan, and there was no need for such a thing.

Because—

"You said you can land properly even if you fell from the air, Katheryn."

From the moment we came out of the helicopter, I had already decided on how to unleash the strongest attack on Namgung Hyuk through this flight.

"...?"

"That should be enough. Because there's no need for other battle plans."

"No, honestly. Are you making fun of me...?!"

"How will you be landing?"

"...It's a skill. It's called a leap of purity, and the bearer becomes immune from all fall damage."

"That's a great skill. I guess there's nothing to worry about."

Even when Katheryn was mad, once she was asked a question, she stopped her tantrum and answered.

At that, I lowered my head and gave a bitter smile after looking into her eyes for a moment.

I couldn't help but send her a little bit of pity.

Because she had to land on the ground without anyone's help from now.

"Katheryn."

"...?"

"I'm sorry, but the battle plan has already been set."

Or where you should point the sword to parry the enemy's attack and lead to a counterattack.

He could figure it all out through the sound of the sword.

Genius.

Namgung Hyuk had a talent that can't be stressed enough, even if labeled as a heaven-sent gift.

However, Namgung Hyuk's talent was useless to his father, who thought that only the technique of martial arts was everything.

-I'm not interested in inferior children who can't even follow a specified movement.

At the age of ten, he was branded as an inferior child and regarded as a burden.

-You're carving the path of the sword before even following the specified movement. You're a true genius.

Until he met his grandfather, the former head of the Namgung noble family and called the swordmaster of that time.

From that moment on, from an inferior child who simply couldn't follow a set movement, Namgung Hyuk was raised by his grandfather as a genius of a sword with innate qualities that no one could match.

Namgung Hyuk's grandfather respected him, saying that learning a martial art isn't just about following specific techniques.

No, to be more precise, he respected Namgung Hyuk's talent.

His talent itself, which could only be called violent.

The result was simple.

-Sword Ki at the age of thirteen, huh... Your achievement is higher than when I was young.

Namgung Hyuk reached the level of a Sword Ki Master at the same time a sudden realization overwhelmed him.

It was an achievement that he achieved only three years after he began to learn martial arts properly.

At that instant, for the first time, Namgung Hyuk felt a taste of freedom.

Blue sky.

The fluttering blue Sword Ki resembled the flow of the sky and ran freely.

But even if so, he was only at a level where he could hurt people with Ki.

Namgung Hyuk was greatly disappointed by that fact, but his grandfather soon turned his disappointment into expectation.

-Martial art isn't a path that exists only to kill people, but a path to transcendence.

The sword master showed that Namgung Hyuk's Sword Ki wasn't just for killing people.

Acquiring god-like abilities through endless self-training is what martial arts are.

And he generously informed Namgung Hyuk that the state he had now reached was just the beginning of that path.

Originally, Ki was a law that existed in a world so small that it couldn't be seen with the naked eye.

A small perceptive world.

After condensing the existence of the small world's Ki into the body, which is so small that it can't be observed at all...

And twisting the laws of reality by bringing it to the observable realm called the large perceptive world...

-The starting point of that is Sword Ki.

Twisting the laws of reality so that you could pierce through steel like tofu was the true nature of the Sword Ki.

It was around then—

「The Tower of Trials is selecting the right person from the Murim dimension.」

Namgung Hyuk was summoned to the Tower of Trials that he heard as a rumor.

And he climbed the Tower faster than anyone else and finally made a splendid achievement of climbing up to the 20th floor.

It was an incredible feat accomplished at the age of only seventeen, but...

-I don't know why there are so many boring people in the world.

Namgung Hyuk rather fell into a feeling of boredom because of this, and he didn't climb the Tower and only passed the time.

In the meantime, he realized that an interesting element called 'floor intrusion' existed in the Tower.

Since then, he has been fighting challengers from minor dimensions who won't cause trouble even if he fights them.

In the process, Namgung Hyuk felt that the boredom he began to feel while climbing the Tower was slowly recovering.

He felt like the blood that had cooled after a long time of boiling.

The challengers of a dimension that wasn't even properly registered in the Tower were weak.

However, there were learning opportunities among them, and Namgung Hyuk grew stronger and stronger.

Because of that, Namgung Hyuk didn't even climb the Tower properly and only slaughtered challengers from minor dimensions.

He found out that the felon that killed Baek Sunhak, the elder of the Murim alliance, was a challenger belonging to a minor dimension.

And without hesitation, Namgung Hyuk moved to the small dimension to fight the challenger and caused a bloody slaughter.

But this time, something was odd.

"..."

Namgung Hyuk, who was destroying buildings in Shinjuku-ward of Tokyo, was puking out blood from his mouth.

"Kohough...."

He was quite damaged by the unidentified object that had just fallen from the sky.

His internal organs of the body were quite damaged, and the flow of the Ki flowing through his body was also greatly disturbed.

Still, in the midst of that, Namgung Hyuk kept his eyes open and looked at that something rammed down on the wreckage of the building he was destroying.

What had just fallen from the sky slowly recovered its shape from the shape that wrapped itself in its wings and soon turned into a human.

And—

A man in an old red tailcoat stumbled out of the wreckage of the building.

Soon after, he spat out the blood that had gathered in his mouth and muttered to himself as if he was fed up.

"...I swear, falling from the sky is something you can't do twice."

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