Heoju and Lee Sungmin easily passed the wall inside the realm of his consciousness.
There was a wall that acted as a barrier of the soul that Lee Sungmin had within his consciousness, and Lee Sungmin and Heoju, who walked in, were accepted without resistance.
Lee Sungmin looked down at his empty hand.
When he was conscious, Lee Sungmin was holding a spear. This was the same type of space as Denir’s trial and yet a different place altogether.
There, Lee Sungmin was free to use his inner strength. In Denir’s space of the trial, he was free to use his strength and use his physical body.
But it was different here. His internal energy could not be accessed here, the same was for Heoju.
He succeeded in creating a spear, but that was all.
No matter how much he tried to bring awareness to his internal energy, his internal energy would not appear.
‘You’re being unreasonable.’ , Lee Sungmin smiled bitterly to himself.
All he could use here was his spear and his spiritual body.
If he didn’t want to die and lose his body here, he had to make this work. The entity’s footsteps which were frantic, stopped.
It stood there and turned its head around to look at Lee Sungmin.
No eyes, no nose, no mouth. It looked like a human being, it had no distinctive features other than it’s skin color, which was a dark red.
Lee Sungmin seemed to hear a deafening, unadulterated roar.
The entity crouched on all fours like a complete beast.
When Lee Sungmin saw it, it was already in front of Lee Sungmin’s body.
The dark hand reached out and tried to break Lee Sungmin’s head like a watermelon.
Lee Sungmin immediately lowered his posture. It was too much to defend that attack now that his internal energy was cut off and he could not draw on any outside power.
A powerful series of fingertips grazed over his head. Lee Sungmin, who lowered his posture, sprung his weight into his calves without hesitating.
There was no explosive acceleration due to lack of internal energy, but even if there was none, this basic maneuvering of his body would be sufficient.
Lee Sungmin, who dug his feet firmly into the ground, thrust the spear in his hands.
Bung!
With a dull sound, the entity was slightly pushed back. The attack was light even though he had stabbed with all his might. The spear blade was obviously sharp, but it couldn’t penetrate the entity’s body at all.
Lee Sungmin never thought he could finish it with one stroke. There was no disappointment to be seen on Lee Sungmin’s face because he didn’t expect much at all.
Wha-ak!
As he rushed towards the retreating body of the monstrous entity, Lee Sungmin unfolded a basic spear technique, The Rana technique.
The thrusting attacks of the spear were shallow thanks to the absence of his internal energy, but he hit precisely at where the heart should be on the entity’s body.
But the entity wasn’t just going to let itself be beaten. It spread its right hand out wide and reached Lee Sungmin’s shoulder.
From the moment the entity’s shoulders moved in accordance to the arm, Lee Sungmin predicted the movement and avoided it.
Considering his physical ability, it was certainly true that the entity was superior to Lee Sungmin in most aspects, but Lee Sungmin was more adapted to the body of a human, and he had several mastered martial art techniques in his arsenal.
Lee Sungmin, who avoided the attack, weaved his body and penetrated at the gap in defense at the entity’s body.
Lee Sungmin wanted to use the Nine Heavenly Spears Techniques move, Lightning Annihilation, but it was impossible to pull off the destructive power of the lightning in the spear without internal energy.
In the end, Lee Sungmin’s only available techniques were the footwork techniques from Baek Sogo and his independent spear moves.
What Lee Sung-min chose this time was Skill Stealing (복사백탐) .
Qua-duck!
The spear that rose from top to bottom hit the chin of the entity. He wanted to penetrate the top of it’s head, but this time again he lacked the power to do so. It was only able to bend its head back a bit in recoil.
It just wasn’t enough to completely make a fatal blow.
Slash, Stab and Thrust. Those three things were the basics to spearmanship. Lee Sungmin slashed with the profound movement that was clearly practiced hundreds of thousands of times.
Then, he swung the spear and hit the side of the entity’s rib cage once again. He knew how he had to attack if he wanted to win here, he had to accumulate damage through several blows locating the weak points. But would he really be able to win by stacking up damage through attacking the weak areas?
Feeling suspicious, Lee Sungmin continued to move and wield his spear spear.
Heoju sat on the sidelines beyond the fight, because if he interfered and defeated the entity then he would be recognized as the owner of the body and he did not want that, respecting Lee Sungmin.
Even if he slowly built up and accumulated damage, it wouldn’t be easy for the entity to fall.
Only when Lee Sungmin’s consciousness over his body overwhelmed the entity’s, would he be able to take back control.
‘It’s impossible for me to help.’, Heoju thought bitterly.
Since it was Lee Sungmin’s own fight, Heoju couldn’t even support him.
‘Huh?’, Heoju’s eyes opened wide as he watched the fight from beyond the wall of consciousness.
Did he see wrong? Heoju sprang to his feet. He approached closer to the barrier to confirm what he saw.
Going to the front of the impenetrable barrier, Heoju looked inside.
Beyond the fight between Lee Sungmin and the entity, someone was sitting in a comfortable position. The face was invisible to Heoju, no matter how hard he tried to focus his vision and get closer.
But Heoju was instinctively feeling that the ‘person’ was smiling.
‘Who are you?’, Heoju mouthed his questions in hope that the person sitting would respond.
They were muttering to themselves, but they lifted their head and turned to face Heoju.
Why couldn’t Lee Sungmin and Heoju feel their presence? When they were only sitting a few steps away. Even if it was an external presence, Why couldn’t Lee Sungmin nor Heoju notice such a blatantly obvious presence?
Heoju opened his mouth to warn Lee Sungmin. He decided to do it.
The world suddenly narrowed thinly. At the end of a straight, single road stood Heoju, and on the other side of the road there was a smiling, relaxed man whose face could not be seen.
He sat in the same lotus position as Heoju had seen earlier. This is the first time he had ever felt……No, it had just been an incredibly long time. Heoju felt incredibly irritated by this feeling by looking in front of him at the man.
His palms were dripping with cold sweat and his back started to aches. Heoju got chills and goosebumps from every nook and cranny in his body.
The man in front of him slowly raised his hand over his knee. Each of the small and simplistic movements was slowly observed by Heoju.
Heoju, whose body was only barely destroyed by several dragons, dozens of priests and ArchBishops, along with hundreds of independent practitioners hadn’t even felt fear when he was sealed.
He was feeling an inexplicable fear though, from the man in front of him. What the hell was this man doing here? Why did such a fearsome and ominous being that exuded fear and presence beyond the gods of Eria, reside here in Lee Sungmin’s consciousness?
The man’s hand was moving ever so slowly in the air as he made the space narrow for just Heoju and himself. Heoju saw the hand move so slowly that it felt close to an eternity.
During that time, Heoju had envisioned something even he had never envisioned before. His Death. Heoju saw himself dying dozens, hundreds and then even thousands of times over in this brief moment.
The one who gave Heoju the image of death with a simple hand movement, that man made Heoju feel the most fear possible with just a single gesture.
The man in front of him raised his index finger, while staying completely silent, and put it over his closed lips.
Shh.
“Huaa! Huaa…. Huuu… Hu..”, Heoju suddenly gasped for breath.
When he came to his senses, Heoju suddenly found himself on the floor completely sprawled like he had just woke up on an abandoned island.
Heoju’s face contorted with confusion. Was it a hallucination? Whatever it was, it had been so dreadful and horrid that it made him grind his teeth in anger at the feeling of weakness and fear he felt.
Heoju also knew that when he was in his prime, alive as the monster who ruled over the south, that nobody could bring down, nobody could match him.
Except for exceptions like the Fairy Queen and the Queen of the Spirits, there was no mortal that could possibly match his strength.
But the man he saw in whatever it may be, a dream, hallucination, or completely real plane inside Lee Sungmin’s consciousness, was in a completely different degree of danger than anything that had ever lived in Eria.
Heoju? The 5 Black Stars of Predator? Yana? Sima Ryunju? No. They were flies in front of that existence.
“You… …What are you……!”, Heoju, who had staggered up to his feet, roared as he suddenly saw that the man was still in front of him in the narrow road of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness.
Heoju, who managed to get up, kicked his feet forward to reach him. The guy who had shushed him earlier, did not move an inch of his body in response.
When Heoju took a step forward, the narrow road suddenly grew in length to an unbelievable degree.
[You’ve only taken one step.], An unknown voice rang in Heoju’s head.
Surprised by the voice, Heoju looked back. He thought he had shot forwards at least a couple meters, but it was only one, single step.
Heoju felt a sense of utter defeat by seeing the clear gap in ability, at the fact the man didn’t even make a gesture.
[Will you come this way?], The voice asked in a clear tone.
Heoju stood absent-mindedly and looked down the path. The length of the narrow road….. warped and wiggled.
‘One step?’
‘Ah.’, Heoju realized something. What was this road and what kind of place was this?
What does that voice mean? What happens over there, where the man was sitting?
“Not yet.”, Heoju, who suddenly felt a bit of enlightenment oh the meaning of the road and the place he was, muttered in a dazed voice.
There was a being sitting down or standing at every few checkpoints along the winding road.
There were those who sat down, and those who stretched out their limbs slowly.
Heoju burst out laughing and pushed back the stretched steps again.
He knew. If he wanted to go forward, He had to go ahead without stopping or turning back.
“I knew it.”, Heoju muttered with a smile.
Shh. The man at the end of the road signaled with a hand gesture once again for Heoju to remain silent at what he had realized, and Heoju nodded his head.
He didn’t understand everything, but he understood that he shouldn’t tell Lee Sungmin about this encounter and things he saw and realized in this space. He shouldn’t even tell anybody else, because this road was something only Lee Sungmin would be able to have access to.
At the sight of Heoju nodding, the road suddenly disappeared. Heoju found himself back at the end of the wall in Lee Sungmin’s consciousness.
He couldn’t see the guy sitting at the end of the road anymore.
Lee Sungmin, who wasn’t aware of anything that had just happened, or what Heoju had seen, was fighting fiercely against the entity with all his might.
At one point during the fight, Lee Sungmin started to feel instinctively that he was faster and stronger than the entity in front of him.
His internal energy was still unavailable, but he could feel himself growing stronger and stronger.
It was evidence that Lee Sungmin was gaining ground over the entity and was no longer being pushed back by the monstrous identity that was in control of his physical body.
Quang!
Lee Sungmin’s spear finally penetrated the entity’s spiritual body. He knew he had to fight stronger and fiercer as time was running out.
Lee Sungmin had to finish things here and now if he wanted any hope at getting his body back. The spear, which was deeply embedded in the entity’s spiritual body, struck through the opposite end of it’s back and shot right through like a needle.
The entity staggered and knelt down. But it didn’t die. Instead, the world of consciousness began to alter itself. The world, which used to be mixed with red and black color, started to turn white.
It was evidence that Lee Sungmin’s consciousness weighed down on the entity and was completely superior at this moment. But… …the entity still didn’t disappear. The being pierced with the spear in its body struggled on the shaft of the spear.
The red and black face distorting its facial features started to turn less blurry, and the face of the entity was revealed.
It’s face was like Lee Sungmin’s, but not exactly the same. It’s face had a devilish aura and bared its teeth in anger at Lee Sungmin as if it were revealing itself to not be human at all.
“See you next time.”, the entity suddenly spoke and left behind the words as it blurred and became foggy, dissipating into the white surroundings.
Lee Sungmin stared at the spear, which was now completely free, as if it had never stabbed anything in the first place.
The external entity within Lee Sungmin had already awakened, and it would not perish. It would just be inside Lee Sungmin’s body waiting for the next opportunity whenever it would present itself.
Waiting up for the day Lee Sungmin would give up his humanity again and try to devour his consciousness entirely.
The white world of consciousness started to disappear. Lee Sungmin looked back at Heoju, who was sitting beyond the barrier. Come to think of it, in the middle of a fight against the entity. He had heard Heoju shouted something.
‘What did you say?’ When Lee Sungmin was about to voice his thoughts and opened his mouth,Heoju, who was sitting lifted himself up.
He slowly ruffled his hair, then lifted his index finger and moved it over the front of his lips.
“Shh.”, Heoju shushed Lee Sungmin.
“……what are you doing?”, Lee Sungmin tilted his head, thinking Heoju was being a stupid rock right now.
“Go away, asshole.”, Heoju burst into a big grin.
—
Envirus knew his end was not far off. The exchange he did for the surge of Great mana had rendered his immobile body, one that could cast enough magic to seal up the two and stop them, but it was temporary.
Envirus saw Aine lying on the ground. He was completely out of energy, after having such a hard task of stopping one of the two.
“You’re a monster…….”, Envirus murmured in a feeble voice.
In the air, Lee Sungmin, who was bound by the silver chains, was drooping.
This was a master spell created by Envirus himself, and was one of the most outstanding of all the spells he could cast.
Usually, Lee Sungmin’s would be destroyed and killed after being caught by the chain like any other being, but Lee Sungmin was still there holding out and fighting back fiercely.
‘But the resistance has decreased. I’m sure you’ve done everything you can at this point…….’ , Envirus thought of Lee Sungmin with a bitter feeling in his heart.
Such a destructive spell that inserted chains to restrict the enemy and inject it with annihilation magic, was doomed to kill the target of the spell no matter what.
“……I’m sorry. Really.”, Envirus once again apologized as he shook his head bitterly.
He raised his hands to finish the spell and finish off Lee Sungmin when suddenly something happened.
The chained body of Lee Sungmin that was drooping over lifelessly, suddenly moved as his head raised up and met his two golden eyes to meet Envirus’.
“What kind of apology…….”
The strangely bent limbs sought out their original angles. The internal energy of Lee Sungmin’s and the yokai power blended itself back together in harmony. Lee Sungmin glanced at the spear lying on the floor not too far away.
‘Come.’ , the sudden command of Lee Sungmin’s consciousness resonated with the spear.
The spear quivered and trembled as if excited and flew up and pierced right through the silver chains Envirus had cast, without Envirus having a chance to even see it or stop it.
“No matter what you decide to do, Why don’t you keep your promise first?”, Lee Sungmin asked with a sarcastic voice through a small cloud of debris of broken silver chains while gripping his familiar spear.
“Don’t you remember? The Dragon Heart.”
Envirus’s face turned pale white.