Chapter 158 – Their Identity (Part Nine)

“Hmm… I wasn’t planning on running into you just yet.”

As Il-hyeon approached with his sword drawn, the man in the red mask took a step back and spoke.

His voice wasn’t particularly deep, but it didn’t sound young either.

He seemed to have no intention of fighting; even as Il-hyeon advanced, he showed no killing intent, not even drawing a proper weapon.

But Il-hyeon didn’t wait.

There was no need to wait for an enemy who was already wasting his precious time.

Whoosh!

Il-hyeon’s sword swung fiercely, aiming for the masked man’s neck.

The man in the red mask dodged with surprising agility, but not perfectly. Blood trickled down from a gash on his neck.

The wound was deeper than a mere graze.

Yet the man remained unfazed, raising his hands as he retreated.

“Can we stop here? I’m sorry, but fighting here is completely pointless. Unlike some on my side, I don’t enjoy useless battles.”

“One of us will have to die to get out of here.”

Finding his words absurd, Il-hyeon unleashed a menacing killing intent as he replied.

Though not much time had passed, Il-hyeon’s killing intent was on another level, dominating the surroundings and crushing the atmosphere.

Even the man in the red mask flinched, impressed.

But that was all. The masked man easily brushed off the heavy killing intent, appearing completely unconcerned.

“We’ll be seeing each other again soon anyway, so there’s no need to be so hasty… Yikes!”

Fwoosh!

Flames erupted from the Phoenix, engulfing the spot where the masked man stood. He hastily dodged to the side.

In that moment, with his balance thrown off, Il-hyeon seized the opening and thrust his sword, aiming for the heart.

Stab!

The blade didn’t reach his heart and failed to deliver a fatal blow, but it pierced straight through the man’s hastily raised left palm.

Il-hyeon retreated a step as the man kicked out, but having one hand mangled like that was a significant blow, even for an Awakened.

“Ha, you disrespectful brat. You don’t even listen to what I have to say.”

“What’s his game…”

Il-hyeon muttered under his breath, sensing something was off.

His wounds weren’t healing at all, so it wasn’t a regeneration ability like Seong-won’s, yet he was acting far too composed.

He wasn’t counterattacking at all, and even the protective function of his Defensive Coat was turned off.

His movements were so strange it almost seemed like he was intentionally taking a moderate amount of damage.

“Well, I told you I don’t want to fight you. If you clash with me here, you’ll get seriously hurt. Then you’ll have to stand by and watch as more people die, unable to stop it.”

“Ha…”

At the masked man’s words, Il-hyeon let out a disbelieving laugh.

Putting aside the fact that he was being looked down on, the man spoke as if he knew full well about Il-hyeon’s obsession with preventing casualties.

The brief laugh died, and Il-hyeon’s expression hardened.

For these bastards, who had harmed more people than monsters, to spew such shameless nonsense in front of him… If their goal was to provoke him from the start, he had to admit it had worked flawlessly.

Fwoosh!

Il-hyeon’s figure vanished from where he stood.

Closing the distance at incredible speed, he brought his sword down hard on the man.

Clang! Sccrrrape!

Sword and spear clashed, the impact echoing throughout the room.

Faced with the incredible speed and heavy force of the sword strike, the masked man had no choice but to draw his weapon this time.

‘A spear…’

Il-hyeon stared at the man’s spear, which was imbued with a red aura.

He had seen Awakened who used spears before, but this was the first time he had faced one in combat.

When fighting monsters that wouldn’t die from ordinary wounds, it was crucial to sever limbs or inflict massive cuts, so many Awakened favored the versatile sword.

In contrast, the spear, with its long reach and focus on thrusts, was a weapon favored by those with abilities that could make a single blow fatal—like poison-related powers—even against opponents with tenacious life force.

Swish!

Il-hyeon fluidly dodged the counter-thrusting spear and delivered a spinning kick.

Struck in the abdomen, the man was sent flying backward, but he regained his balance before hitting the ground and landed on his feet.

Of course, Il-hyeon had anticipated as much. While the man was airborne, he had already swung his sword in a wide arc.

Swoosh!

A sharp sword wave shot out from Il-hyeon’s blade, streaking forward at incredible speed and slashing the man in the red mask.

With a long vertical gash across the right side of his torso, the masked man stumbled back, splattering blood on the floor.

An unnaturally large amount of red blood poured from the deep wound, but the attack hadn’t passed clean through his body.

“A sword wave of this caliber out of nowhere… I almost really died there.”

The masked man muttered, touching his wound.

He hadn’t heard anything about Il-hyeon being able to use sword waves, so he had been caught off guard by the sudden attack.

But Il-hyeon’s expression darkened despite landing a critical hit.

For him to take a direct hit from a sword wave without even activating his Defensive Coat and only suffer that much damage couldn’t be explained by mere durability.

He clearly had some related ability, but there was no time to slowly gauge his opponent.

His team members were rushing around, communicating with the analysis team to correct the Leviathan’s course. To get it to maintain altitude and turn south before things got dangerous, Il-hyeon himself needed to quickly deal with this intruder and move to another sensory organ.

Il-hyeon charged, and the man parried. Though the masked man was bleeding profusely and looked to be on the verge of death, the flow of the battle remained unchanged.

Perhaps finding Il-hyeon’s close proximity pressuring, the masked man swung his spear wide to create distance, then leaped back and spoke.

“Time’s up. Let’s stop here. My apologies. I tried my best not to interfere with sites you were involved in, Kang Il-hyeon, but this one was just too big.”

The masked man said his piece and sent a signal through the communicator in his ear.

From the beginning, his plan had been to simply hold Il-hyeon off and then escape.

But despite sending the signal, no response came. The masked man’s mouth, the only part of his face visible, twitched.

Seeing the man’s expression, which suggested something wasn’t going according to plan, Il-hyeon smirked.

“So you had an escape route prepared? Sorry, but they’re all blocked.”

The entire room was sealed off, surrounded by a translucent barrier.

Hyeon-seo’s force field, now capable of completely blocking spatial abilities from both inside and out, as well as all external communication, could trap even the man in the red mask.

“Ah… I didn’t know about that.”

Finding that even his communications were cut off, the man spoke in a troubled voice.

Caught in a completely unexpected situation, the masked man scratched his head once before mustering his full power, an act Il-hyeon could clearly feel.

“I warned you.”

Sizzle!

The vast amount of the masked man’s blood that had pooled on the floor began to rise and shimmer.

About half of the floating blood droplets returned to his body, sealing the gruesome wounds that had been torn open.

Thump!

His body perfectly healed, the man in the red mask slammed his spear down, punching a large hole in the floor.

Though it looked like a floor, it was actually the inside of the giant monster, the Leviathan, so blood naturally gushed out.

Having figured out what kind of ability his opponent possessed and what he was trying to do, Il-hyeon quickly rushed the masked man.

Letting him draw out more blood could turn the situation against him.

But simply charging in and tying up his hands wasn’t enough.

The blood droplets floating in the air shot out like steel pellets, piercing and tearing away at the Leviathan’s flesh.

As a result, a tremendous amount of blood poured out from all directions, enough to begin flooding the floor of the room.

Sizzle!

At the man’s gesture, the fresh blood gathered around them moved in perfect unison, coalescing and scattering to take shape before sweeping toward the waiting Il-hyeon.

“Kugh…!”

Thrown back, Il-hyeon quickly regained his balance and raised his sword.

The tendrils of blood filling the room created a gruesome spectacle, making it difficult for even him to move freely.

While the Phoenix spat flames to beat back the writhing tendrils of blood, Il-hyeon took a core from his pocket.

The A-rank core in his hand shone with its usual brilliant light.

‘I could devour this myself… but that might be a problem for the next S-rank site.’

Crack!

He squeezed his fist, shattering the core, and a massive amount of Ether poured out.

But Il-hyeon left the Ether as it was, not devouring it himself.

Sssss, the white light slowly flowed into his sword.

“What are you spacing out for!”

Less than a second.

It was a fleeting moment, but in a confrontation between high-ranking Awakened like them, it was as good as an eternity.

Yet during that time, Il-hyeon, uncharacteristically, seemed to lose focus in the middle of the fight, and the masked man’s spear pierced straight through his shoulder.

Stab!

“Keuk…!”

Snapping back to his senses, Il-hyeon grimaced and retreated.

An unbelievable amount of red blood gushed from his pierced shoulder.

It was the ability of the man in the red mask, who could control blood, abnormally drawing Il-hyeon’s blood out through the wound.

Of course, Il-hyeon’s monstrous body resisted, trying to prevent such a sudden loss of blood as a survival instinct, but the ability’s power was so strong that several times the normal amount of blood was pouring out.

“Just as I heard, you have talent, but you’re still a novice. Especially to us.”

The masked man spoke as if appraising Il-hyeon.

As more blood leaked out, Il-hyeon’s breathing grew ragged.

“It must be painful to keep holding on like that… I’ll end it now.”

Swish!

As he spoke, the masked man’s form vanished in an instant.

And he reappeared precisely behind Il-hyeon, bringing his spear down.

He had swapped his position with one of the tendrils of blood floating in the air.

No matter how sharp one’s eyes were, without knowing the specifics of his ability, it was impossible to react to him suddenly appearing from behind.

However.

“Guh-heok…?”

The one coughing up blood wasn’t Il-hyeon, but the man in the red mask.

Il-hyeon’s sword, swung even before the man’s form had fully appeared, was piercing straight through his heart.

Seeing the man’s trembling form, Il-hyeon scoffed and brought his face close.

“Your weak spot is the heart, wasn’t it?”

“How… how did you know that…”

The man asked in a trembling voice, barely supporting his limp body as he grabbed Il-hyeon’s arm.

Just as Il-hyeon had said, for him, a man who controlled blood, wounds to almost any part of his body were within an acceptable range. But the heart was a different story.

All records of him, regardless of affiliation, should have been completely erased.

There was no way Kang Il-hyeon could have known about his ability.

In response to the man’s look of utter disbelief, Il-hyeon shrugged and answered.

“You told me yourself. To me, in the future.”