Episode 161

7.

Up until now, the thing Kim Buja had valued most in combat was safety.

He always prioritized a safe defense. Even when an opening to attack appeared, if the moment required him to defend while attacking, he chose defense unless he could end the fight with that single strike.

He'd had no choice. His level and stats demanded it.

He had been lucky enough to have stats and attack power above his level, which allowed him to at least prioritize defense and still handle his enemies.

The change had started this year.

Although, calling it a "change" was a bit much.

It was just that, in an event where everyone had been put on equal footing, his unique strengths had finally shone through in the form of a one-time power-up.

Either way, this was Kim Buja's true combat style.

The broad strokes hadn't changed.

He had the talent to adapt to any situation and adjust his approach accordingly.

It was just that this particular style fit him so well it had become his signature.

Boom!

Now, he was destructive and reckless.

He didn't fear getting hit. Whenever he had to choose between attack and defense, he weighed the pros and cons and decided to attack.

He simply judged that the gains from hitting the enemy were greater than the losses from taking a hit himself.

This was a completely different pattern from anything Kim Buja had shown before.

Fly was seeing it, too.

And because Fly was watching, Buja made his assault even rougher, even more explosive.

He would make sure no one would ever dare to judge Kim Buja the person—or Kim Buja the player—carelessly or lightly again.

Boom, boom, BOOM!

Every time their swords clashed, shockwaves exploded outward.

The Flame Death Knight, now dismounted from its phantom steed, swung its sword with wild fury, as if determined to pour out every last drop of its rage, but Kim Buja didn't give an inch.

He pushed back instead.

One step. Then another.

It was the kind of violence born from an overwhelming gap in strength and technique.

There was a reason so many players had been reluctant to PvP against Kim Buja, and why they had cheered so loudly the day he was effectively banned from all MOBA-style games.

He knew how to put pressure on his opponent in a fight.

'No matter how strong they are, if I do this, I might actually be able to win. Even if I'm at a disadvantage, I should at least try to find a way to turn it around.'

He gave his opponents no room to even entertain such thoughts.

All they felt was a wall—an overwhelming barrier of sheer power.

In the end, the most important thing was objective stats.

'Twenty minutes left.'

He had time to spare.

Some might think, 'It's already been fifteen minutes,' but Buja had already made his decision.

Twenty minutes was more than enough.

Besides, he wasn't alone.

If he had been, there was no way he would be fighting the Flame Death Knight one-on-one like this.

The Catastrophe legion was strong and smart.

There was no reason for the knightly order, meant to guard their master on the front lines, to just stand around while he fought.

This wasn't some duel arena in a fantasy novel.

If this were going to be a fair one-on-one duel between commanders, the Flame Death Knight would have been roaming the battlefield alone from the very beginning.

The only reason he could fully enjoy the effects of Soul Unleashed was because of the Fly Guild's aggressive support.

That was why, with every second that passed, instead of growing weaker, he only pressed the Flame Death Knight harder and harder.

'Buffs are god-tier.'

All the buffs that should have been poured into Fly were being funneled into him instead.

He finally understood why people in games were so obsessed with buffers and healers.

Support-class skills, when combined for maximum synergy, could inflate a player's capabilities twofold, even threefold.

Crunch!

And thanks to those effects, he finally succeeded in destroying one of the Flame Death Knight's arms.

At that crucial moment, the overlapping "Freeze" effect from his stacked equipment enhancement procs once again made him feel satisfied with the gold he had spent.

"Haah."

Only then did Kim Buja take a breath and stare steadily at the Flame Death Knight.

It was undead, and losing a single arm wasn't a mortal wound for a monster like that, but considering the severed arm had been the one holding its sword, it was still a significant achievement.

Of course, he couldn't give it time to recover.

The more he had the advantage, the more he had to press, driving his sword into every opening. That was Kim Buja's way.

Even so, the reason he watched instead of immediately rushing in was not because he wanted to savor the remaining time.

'Is there no next phase?'

It was because he couldn't predict what would happen next.

The patterns, transformation stages, and power levels the Catastrophe-class monsters had shown so far—

If he let his guard down for even a moment, then no matter how much gold he had burned to power up, even Kim Buja could get blindsided.

He had seen what had happened to the Chinese players and what had almost happened to Fly.

Only a goldfish would get hit after seeing the same trick twice.

His brief pause came from that caution.

Fortunately, there was no hidden phase, no scene where the Flame Death Knight self-destructed in a final explosion.

Instead, the Flame Death Knight silently picked up its sword with its remaining hand.

Then it brought the blade to its chest and raised it upright.

"What the hell is that?"

After raising it, it lowered the tip and pointed it straight at Kim Buja.

He took a step back, wary of this strange, stationary action.

He didn't sense any particular hostility.

If this was supposed to be a wind-up for a surprise attack, it was so suspicious and telegraphed that it only made him more tense, rendering it pointless.

"Hm."

There was no way to interpret it.

No one could "translate" the gestures of a dead, undead monster.

Even so, a video title popped into his head.

'Recognition from a knight, huh.'

He didn't particularly like this kind of cliché fantasy-novel development, but as the current "protagonist" in the spotlight, it made for a good scene.

So he decided to play along.

He raised his own sword, then lowered it.

Two swords and two knights faced each other from a measured distance.

A barren wasteland, scattered with the bodies of countless players and monsters.

Every gaze converged on one point.

At the same time, everyone felt it.

'This is the end.'

'This is the final showdown.'

They all knew.

They knew this kind of setup was cheesy, predictable, and an overused trope.

But for players who lived in dungeons, this was just another part of daily life.

Even if they had the level and stats to crush monsters with overwhelming force, they would still somehow push themselves to the limit and end up fighting monsters that matched their level.

The final moments of a battle where you had poured in everything always looked like this.

This was where the fight would be decided.

Whether you lost your focus or held on to it.

That was how it felt to Fly, the guild members, the Chinese players, and everyone watching.

The realization that they were wrong—that Kim Buja's story was never that simple—dawned on them only when they saw him pull something out with his free hand and start eating it.

"Ah!"

"You've got to be kidding me!"

They wanted to shout something.

"Coward—"

The enemy commander, missing an arm.

As a knight, even if he had become a Death Knight, lost his self, invaded, and now stood on the brink of a crushing defeat, was it really okay to trample on his last bit of chivalry like this?

'Fair and square!'

The players who had been about to shout swallowed their words.

Because they thought it through.

'...Is that really cowardly right now?'

For a player, this was the most natural thing in the world.

At the most critical moment, you played the card you had been saving.

More than anything, if they were going to talk about cowardice, the Flame Death Knight had already gone through three evolutions, stacked all kinds of broken buffs under the guise of an "event," and even created its own domain.

Did a bastard like that, who deserved to die, really merit any respect just for tugging at their heartstrings with a "final duel"?

Kim Buja didn't wait for people to sort through their confusion.

Whoosh!

He vanished in an instant, giving off the same feeling as when the Flame Death Knight had entered Phase 3 and charged at Fly.

Same situation.

Different result.

Fly had Kim Buja.

Slice—!

The Flame Death Knight had no one.

The Flame Death Knight's neck, which had seemed unbreakable, was severed.

[The Source of Disaster has collapsed.]

[The event has ended.]

The origin of the endlessly spreading disaster vanished as if it had never existed.

* * *

8.

—What did I just watch?

—Wow…

—I'm literally speechless.

It wasn't only the players on-site who experienced that shiver, that awe, that sense of wonder.

As is often the case, the event hit third-party observers even harder.

This was one of those times.

From the moment the Fly Guild intervened—or rather, from the shift in the Chinese players' momentum, to the Flame Death Knight's evolutions, and the resulting expansion of the Catastrophe Legion's power—

The growing sense that China might actually fail the second raid hit the people watching as third-party spectators even harder than it did the players on the ground.

Sometimes, what you see and hear from a distance creates a more potent illusion than what you experience firsthand.

What if that Catastrophe Legion, now so monstrously strong, rampaged across Chinese soil as-is?

Hundreds of millions of viewers in China prayed that such a thing would never happen.

And viewers in other countries thought further: what if, after tearing through China, that legion turned its sights on them?

In a world without war, the fear of losing your home, your land, your family was that much greater.

The despair and devastation of losing everything and having to start again from the bottom made them cheer even harder than the players on the field.

So they watched everything.

And because they watched, they couldn't shake off the lingering afterglow.

—Who the hell is Kim Buja?

—There's no way he's actually that level.

—If he blocked something even Fly couldn't react to, doesn't that mean he's at least on the same tier?

What people were most curious about, of course, was how Kim Buja had shown power not just on par with the Flame Death Knight, but enough to personally finish it off.

As they watched the disaster unfold, they began to lay out their thoughts one by one.

And at the same time, they realized something.

—Where's his ceiling?

—Honestly, I thought he had nothing left to show.

—This is real life. How is he overshadowing Fly?

—We have to admit it now. Whatever he did, he completely outshone Fly.

—No, I think Fly just stepped back for him. If you look, he and his guild were just hard-committing to support from the back the whole fight. He could've stepped up anytime.

—Yeah. He definitely could've, but I'm pretty sure he backed off because Kim Buja saved his life.

They slowly realized that even people who weren't Kim Buja's fans—even Fly's fans, who had been jealous of Kim Buja's popularity—were now acknowledging him.

That was how insane the impact he had made this time was.

He had soloed an enemy powerful enough to push back 100,000 Chinese players, creating a scene that would remain etched in people's memories like a shot from a blockbuster film.

—If they make this into a movie, it'll be a smash hit.

—Do we even need editing? I don't know if anyone could direct something better than what we just saw.

—Did you see the Death Knight acknowledging him at the end? Gave me chills. What if he was actually some Sword Master from another dimension?

Endless growth and something beyond imagination.

People could now say it openly, with confidence.

—We probably have to consider that Fly and Kim Buja are on the same level now, don't we…?

* * *

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