A Thousand Changes by the River (1)
“Zutmura, you scoundrel!”
“You crazy bastard!”
“A sneak attack? Do you have a death wish?”
Zutmura’s comrades sprang to their feet, outraged by the sudden assault. Without a word, Dalen snapped his fingers.
Crackle!
“Argh!”
A bolt of blue lightning erupted from the axe that had pierced through Zutmura’s body, causing him to scream and rise from where he had feigned death.
‘Playing dead won’t save you.’
Thanks to the hellish power granted by the evil god, Zutmura’s body had surpassed human limits. Even with an axe through his chest, he had managed to cling to life.
But Dalen’s keen senses hadn’t missed the faint heartbeat and breathing. A quick glance at his status window confirmed no experience points had been gained yet.
“Argh! Aaargh…!”
With a final, agonized scream, Zutmura collapsed for real this time. The experience bar in Dalen’s status window ticked up slightly.
“You all must be living in a fantasy. Chasing after an evil god and slaughtering innocents has made you lose touch with reality,” Dalen remarked, looking at Zutmura’s smoldering corpse.
The brutal display seemed to snap the seven remaining guards out of their stupor. They began to draw their weapons, one by one.
Dalen rolled his shoulders and glanced at his status window. The experience from Zutmura’s death was substantial. With the seven remaining foes, he might even level up twice.
“Rapilem—Se Glam!”
When two dark sorcerers opened the gates of hell with their magic, Dalen’s thoughts solidified into certainty.
Thud. Thud.
A creature with the legs of a shaggy goat, a muscular human torso, and a grotesque horned head emerged—a low-ranking demon, but still a decent source of experience.
“I’ll handle this. Focus on opening the gate without alerting the witch,” Dalen instructed, striding forward with his holy sword. Everon, slightly surprised, gave a faint, familiar smile.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been on the front lines, and even longer since I’ve fought alongside someone. I’ll trust you this time.”
A strange power emanated from the transcendent’s body, and Everon vanished into thin air.
The battle had begun.
Thwack—Crash!
Dalen shot forward like an arrow. The first to block his path was a warrior clad in spiked armor.
The warrior’s spiked shield met Dalen’s descending holy sword, sparks flying as the spikes shattered and fell.
Through the helmet’s narrow slit, Dalen glimpsed the warrior’s eyes filled with shock. The warrior stammered, “What… what strength…!”
“Move.”
Dalen advanced.
Crack!
He twisted the holy sword to create an opening, then drove his knee into the warrior’s side.
Sparks flew as the spikes embedded in the warrior’s armor clashed with Dalen’s black iron greaves.
“Ugh…!”
The spiked warrior was sent flying like a cannonball, crashing through the second floor of a building. Dalen propelled himself forward again with a leap skill.
The scenery blurred past him.
His target was the three dark sorcerers in the rear.
In any battle, the first targets should be the enemy’s rear-line magic users and ranged attackers.
Since arriving in this world, this was his first proper multi-opponent battle with both sorcerers and front-line fighters.
But the countless battles he’d fought from behind a monitor had left him with plenty of theoretical knowledge.
And his body’s strength and mental fortitude were more than enough to bring that theory to life.
“That one!”
“He’s targeting the sorcerers! Stop him!”
The enemies, realizing his intent too late, swung their weapons. Dalen ignored them, kicking off the air to accelerate again.
As sword strikes and spells flew past, missing their mark and shattering the surroundings, Dalen was already upon the first dark sorcerer.
“What the…!”
There was no time for idle chatter.
He grabbed the sorcerer’s face and slammed it into the ground with all his might.
Boom!
The impact was so strong it cracked the stone pavement.
The dark sorcerer was knocked out cold, and Dalen drove his fist down once more.
“Hapto Kwon: Iron Strike”
The power resonated from his shoulder blades to his fist.
What erupted wasn’t a blunt punch but a sharp, piercing force akin to a drill.
Thud!
Like a spear imbued with sword energy, a hole was punched clean through the center of the dark sorcerer’s head.
‘That’s two.’
The protective artifact the sorcerer had activated was shredded like paper before the Hapto Kwon’s strike.
Hapto Kwon was a martial art created specifically to counter sorcerers.
Even without a weapon, the essence of a martial artist who dared to challenge the Dark Moon Order head-on was embedded in this art.
A mere protective artifact couldn’t withstand its direct strike.
“Paddler! No!”
The other dark sorcerer, who had been resonating his magic, screamed in despair at his fallen comrade.
In response to his desperate will, the low-ranking demon charged with a roar, and a shadow elf emerged from behind Dalen.
‘Stealth…!’
Perhaps due to the chaos of battle, even Dalen’s keen senses hadn’t detected the ambush.
The shadow elf’s stealth was a bloodline ability, amplified to its peak by the power of their domain.
Swish—!
A poisoned dagger aimed for his back, while the demon’s claws reached for him from the front.
But Dalen remained unfazed.
‘Including the demon, that’s seven.’
He kept a mental tally of his foes, expanding his senses to capture all their movements.
The moment the elf’s presence vanished from his senses, he was already prepared for the ambush from his blind spot.
Whoosh!
Dalen hurled his holy sword at the charging demon, then spun halfway around to deflect the dagger with the back of his hand.
Clang!
A single clash.
The difference in strength was clear.
“Ugh!”
The dagger flew from the elf’s hand, and she staggered, reaching for her waist.
“How can a barbarian wield the martial arts of the Imperial Knights…!”
The shadow elf shouted as she drew a second dagger. Dalen saw no reason to wait.
As she drew her weapon, Dalen lunged with a leap skill, his hand reaching for her throat.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
In a brief moment, the black iron armor clashed with the daggers a dozen times.
He pushed her chest with his shoulder, struck her dagger-wielding hand with a chop, deflected her thrust with his elbow, and shattered her shoulder with a short punch.
The first skill Dalen had acquired upon arriving in this world, the art of armored combat from Dehaman, was already ingrained in his every move.
With strength nearing 40, the special armor crafted by Reberon was more than just protection—it was a weapon.
“Ugh!”
The shadow elf, with several broken bones, barely escaped using her bloodline ability.
She staggered, trying to regain her balance and drink a potion, when a scream pierced her ears.
“Aaaargh!”
It was the dark sorcerer who had been lamenting his comrade’s death.
A hand axe, seemingly thrown by itself, had pierced through his protective spell and lodged in his collarbone.
The sorcerer frantically tried to remove the axe, but it was already spewing flames, consuming him from within.
The demon he had summoned was struggling to withstand the holy power emanating from the sword embedded in its chest.
”…Hah.”
The shadow elf let out a hollow sigh. The sight was enough to momentarily make her forget the pain, even with the regenerative potion coursing through her.
Nine foes, including the demon.
All of them had the power to form domains and carve their own destinies.
Yet before they could even fully unleash their strength, two were dead, and three were injured.
All of this had happened in just 30 seconds since the battle began.
”…How can he be just a warrior who formed a domain a few months ago?”
The warrior who had orchestrated all this stood unscathed, flexing his hand as if disappointed his last strike had missed.
“Everyone, fight with all your might. Think of him not as a mere gold-ranked mercenary, but as a transcendent.”
Rumble.
The spiked armor warrior emerged from the wreckage of the building, speaking with authority.
At his command, the gatekeepers’ eyes grew serious.
“Rapilem. Se Glam.”
The only unscathed dark sorcerer began chanting a spell.
A raspy voice echoed through the air, and suddenly, portals to hell opened all around the street, each one a gaping maw ready to unleash chaos.
From the fiery rifts emerged hellish soldiers, their bodies half-melted, eyes glowing with an eerie blue light.
Following them were two massive monstrosities, grotesque amalgamations of countless corpses, which lumbered forward to encircle Dalen, forming an impenetrable ring.
A low, mournful wail rose from the hellish soldiers. The gatekeepers took strategic positions, slowly tightening the noose around Dalen.
This time, no one was taking any chances.
Each combatant summoned the full extent of their powers, ready to unleash their might at a moment’s notice. The air crackled with energy, distorting the very fabric of magic in the area, creating a cacophony of dissonance.
In the eye of this storm, Dalen lifted his head.
The drizzle that had been falling steadily now turned into a heavier rain, with rivulets forming between the cobblestones and battle scars on the ground becoming small pools.
Despite being surrounded by dozens of hellish soldiers and numerous superhumans, Dalen’s expression remained unchanged.
He had anticipated this outcome from the start, knowing he faced seasoned warriors who had honed their skills through countless battles.
A surprise attack might gain him some advantage, but it wouldn’t be enough to end the fight decisively.
The only path left was a direct clash of power.
And the opening move of this confrontation had been planned long before the battle began.
“Ice Crystal.”
A pristine crystal materialized above his outstretched palm.
This was his unique skill, ‘Ice Crystal,’ honed through countless practices since he inherited it from the corpses of Calcas’s hell.
“Bloom.”
The crystal, like a budding flower, unfurled into dozens of petals, and the temperature around them plummeted.
Crack!
It wasn’t simply about lowering the temperature to create ice.
The very concept of freezing seized the surrounding rain and moisture, with the drop in temperature being merely a consequence.
Reversing the cause and effect of physical laws—this was the impossible made possible through the power of his domain.
Screeches and howls erupted as the ground froze solid, trapping the feet of the hellish soldiers. Nearly half of them were immobilized, their skin frozen stiff.
“Is he a high-level mage?”
“I thought he was a warrior with a domain!”
The gatekeepers’ voices were tinged with disbelief.
They knew well the difference between facing a warrior using magical artifacts and confronting a sorcerer who had mastered spells.
But before they could adjust their tactics, the battle had already moved to the next phase, firmly under Dalen’s control.
“Ice Crystal: Azure Wave.”
With a sharp crack, the flower on his palm twisted its petals.
The petals spun like a vortex, scattering hundreds of ice shards in all directions.
Crash!
The ice shattered, spiraling clockwise, enveloping the entire street in a storm of razor-sharp ice.
“Argh!”
“Hold your ground!”
The storm, infused with magical energy, tore through everything indiscriminately—soldiers and corpse monsters alike were shredded and strewn across the street.
Dalen pressed on.
He raised his empty left hand, forming a seal, and a bolt of lightning crackled into the shape of a massive claw.
“Thunderclap.”
The blue lightning arced through the swirling ice shards.
The hot blood of the monsters and the ice melted by it became perfect conductors.
Crackle!
The amplified lightning struck the surviving monsters and superhumans once more.
Even those with domains couldn’t escape unscathed from the layered assault of spells.
The demon, its regenerative powers sealed by a holy sword, was left in tatters by the storm, and the dark sorcerer, who had taken an axe to the collarbone, lay dead, his body shredded.
The remaining superhumans were similarly battered and bleeding.
Only a few remained relatively unscathed: the warrior clad in a thorny armor of domain power, the dwarf who shattered a rune-engraved gem, and the telekinetic with mismatched eyes.
“Take this, spellcaster!”
As the storm subsided, the dwarf charged with a massive double-headed axe.
Dalen calmly extended his left hand toward the oncoming foe.