It was a vertical drop of about twelve meters. Gripping a struggling Han Geon-joo, Sa-yoon kicked off the ground, clearing the entire distance in a single leap. He shot out of the deep, suffocating pit and into the open air. The oxygen he had been deprived of rushed into him like a tidal wave, filling his lungs with clean, crisp air. Tiny, glittering ice crystals from the shattered debris brushed against his skin, and he broke into a cool smile. He steadied himself by walking on air and gazed down below.

As expected, his predictions were never wrong. The thirty or so men Lee Jaehee had estimated had nearly doubled in number, completely surrounding the collapsed building. They had been staring in bewilderment at the sudden explosion, but now their heads snapped up. The looks on their faces when they spotted Sa-yoon were quite the spectacle.

Confusion, shock, then rage.

Exactly the expressions he had hoped to see.

Fifty-six of them.

As he was calculating the enemy’s exact strength, another being shot up from the hole Sa-yoon had just escaped. A set of lush tails fanned out like wings, and its animal eyes with their vertical pupils narrowed in what looked like glee. Oh. Sa-yoon let out a short sound of admiration, recognizing the creature. It was Shiro, who had grown through repeated battles and finally reached the rank of a three-tailed fox.

Hya-fya-fya-wu!

Seemingly delighted to be free of the underground prison, Shiro wagged its tails wildly in mid-air. The spirit beast, carrying Yen, Gyeongjin, and Jaehee on its back, circled the sky, sparking Sa-yoon’s curiosity.

I don’t think it could fly before.

He clearly remembered having to personally transport it to areas teeming with monsters. Sa-yoon tilted his head, wondering how it had learned, and activated [Eye of the Genius].

<Status Window of Gumiho ‘Shiro’> 

Name: Shiro 

Age: 5 

Race: Gumiho (Currently Three-Tailed Rank) 

Gender: Male 

Rank: A+ (Growth Potential) 

Summoner: Soul is currently bound to Summoner ‘Lee Jaehee.’ 

Skills: Paradise’s Fear (S), Subordination (S), Charm (A), Bite (A), Tail Choke (A), Danger Sense (A), Mimic Divine Step (A), Burrowing (B) 

Current Status: I, Shiro. A promising five-year-old. Almost died underground, but I survived. This fox-life isn’t easy…

“…There’s no way I’m seeing this right.”

He blinked, disbelieving, but the status window didn’t change. Sa-yoon stared at the Gumiho in utter shock. It had gained three new skills just by going up a single rank. And one of them was even an S-rank skill.

How long has it been since I last checked its status?

This was ridiculously steep growth and biased skill generation. Was it even fair for there to be such a huge disparity between humans and summoned beasts? Feeling a familiar pang of injustice, similar to what he felt when looking at Han Geon-joo, Sa-yoon quickly scanned the skill list.

Subordination. A skill that allowed it to enthrall monsters of a lower rank and temporarily bind them to its will. This damn fox had better skills than most people.

Next was Mimic Divine Step. It was literally a skill that imitated the steps of a god, and it seemed to be the reason Shiro could now walk on air.

Burrowing was, well, burrowing, so Sa-yoon didn’t bother looking too closely. He cast an envious glance at Jaehee, who was stroking Shiro’s ears, before readjusting his grip on Geon-joo, who was still dangling from his shoulder.

No need to be jealous. If they had an A+ Class summon, he had an S-Class human totem.

“I have a weird feeling. What were you just thinking?”

Damn, he’s like a ghost.

He couldn’t even see Sa-yoon’s face from his position, yet his intuition was sharp as ever. When Sa-yoon didn’t answer, he pressed again, but Sa-yoon played dumb. He was about to pretend the explosion had damaged his hearing when Geon-joo’s next words made him change his plans. He was asking to be put down.

“You can’t fly.”

“I have my shadows, so it’s fine.”

“…?”

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but seeing is believing. The man draped over his shoulder struggled until he finally managed to get free. He was about to plummet, and Sa-yoon reached out in alarm, but at that moment, a black pillar shot up from below.

“The hell is that now?!”

“Keuk!”

Frantic screams erupted from the ground. Han Geon-joo, however, remained perfectly composed. As he fell, he met the rising black pillar and landed deftly on top of it. Sa-yoon watched, dumbfounded, as the falling man rose back up to his level in a matter of seconds. It was a move that was clearly well-practiced.

“You won’t be able to fight like that.”

“I’ll be fighting on the way down, so it doesn’t really matter. We’re not planning on having an aerial battle, are we?”

“Well, no.”

The reason Sa-yoon had ascended was to present the enemy with a sudden, unexpected situation and to give his own allies a moment to regroup before battle. Aerial combat wasn’t his specialty either. He spun Harris’s Dagger in his hand and checked on his team.

“Can you fight immediately?” he asked the three men riding on Shiro as it drew near. Two nodded, and one shook his head. Since the one who refused was a non-combatant anyway, Sa-yoon ignored his opinion and shifted his body from a standing position to a vertical dive. He then took a mana potion from his inventory, popped the cap with his teeth, and downed it in one gulp.

There was no countdown. No hand signal. But the moment Sa-yoon finished the potion and dropped the empty vial, the five hunters, as if following a pre-established order, plummeted towards the ground in unison.

Time to run wild.

This was the hunt he had been waiting for.

As he fell, Sa-yoon pulled several poison pouches from his inventory.

“Drink an antidote now or put up a defensive skill.”

His low warning was for his allies; the poison pouches were for his enemies. He threw a shuriken at the pouches before they hit the ground. A sharp, tearing sound echoed, and a violet fog spread across the battlefield.

“Wh-what is this?”

“It’s poison!”

“Shit, is that really Kwon Sa-yoon?”

“Did you think there was a fake one?”

Sa-yoon laughed at the panicked cries, activated his stealth skill, and plunged into the fog. When outnumbered, there was no tactic more useful than blinding the enemy.

Ignoring the stinging in his own eyes, Sa-yoon tore through the fog, his dagger flashing. A short blade had the disadvantage of a limited attack range, but in close quarters, it was second to none. He moved like a snake, targeting the necks of the enemies who were disoriented by the poison.

“…!”

An enemy sensed his approach at the last second and gasped, but he was a beat too late. The dagger, which needed no additional poison, severed his artery. Sa-yoon kicked the man’s body away as blood spurted from the wound, and heard a choked cry from in front of him. They must have been clustered together. He clicked his tongue. Any sound would give away his own position.

Swoosh!

Sure enough, a blade came swinging down from above.

Clang!

A metallic shriek rang out. Sa-yoon raised his arm to block the downward strike, then twisted his wrist. The body of his dagger instantly changed direction, parrying the enemy’s blade. Four enemies were rushing him. Pinpointing the two closest, Sa-yoon engaged the one in front.

He dodged the man’s opening attack by stepping to the right, then kicked him in the side, left exposed by the wide swing. The man behind him moved in without pause, but Sa-yoon simply stepped to the left, moving out of his attack range. He then spun in a figure-eight motion, getting behind the opponent who had followed him, and plunged his dagger into his neck.

Thwump!

The tip of Harris’s Dagger pierced a vital spot. At the same time, the man he had kicked in the ribs charged back in to help his ally.

Time to pull back. Without hesitation, Sa-yoon ripped his dagger out. A torrent of blood gushed out. Before it even hit the ground, he threw the still-bleeding man at his attacker. The blade that had been swinging towards him was now buried in another man’s body.

“You son of a bitch!”

As the man who had just stabbed his own ally hesitated, Sa-yoon slipped away. A web of sticky threads shot through the space he had just vacated.

Good thing I moved.

Confirming that the two men from behind had joined the fray, Sa-yoon clicked his tongue and vanished back into the fog. He had spotted a number of executive-level fighters when he’d surveyed them from above. At least five S-Class. Two of them looked familiar.

Executives from Scorpion’s golden age.

There were two enemies whose skills surpassed even Han Geon-joo’s, so he couldn’t move recklessly. If he were alone, it would be a different story, but this time he had allies with him—especially Gyeongjin.

And Han Geon-joo.

Of course, he didn’t think Geon-joo would be defeated easily, but if two high-level opponents attacked him simultaneously, even he wouldn’t be able to hold out. Wanting to avoid even that possibility, Sa-yoon remained completely hidden. All around him, screams, groans, death rattles, and the sounds of clashing weapons echoed through the fog. The battle raged on, even in his momentary absence.

“Argggh!”

From the screams, none of them belonged to his allies yet. A smile touched Sa-yoon’s lips.

This is why they’re worth raising.

Lee Jaehee was an exception, but it was no exaggeration to say that he had practically raised the other three himself.

Satisfied, he waited for an opening. The three enemies he had been observing were now eight, alerted by one of them shouting that Kwon Sa-yoon was present. An S-Class was among them, but he didn’t seem to have noticed Sa-yoon’s presence yet.

I’ll assassinate that one before I go.

Killing him with a surprise attack was far easier than a direct confrontation. This wasn’t the time to enjoy a fight; it was time to wipe Scorpion off the map. Sa-yoon flexed his wrist and kicked off the ground. The S-Class Scorpion, with his keen senses, reacted instantly to the sound of the wind, but reacting to sound was too slow.

When your Agility stat surpasses SS-rank, sound doesn’t accompany you; it follows you.

Sa-yoon appeared beside the man just as he turned towards the sound and struck him with a needle. He blocked a meridian point and stabbed him in the neck. The man, unable to even scream, stared at him in terror. Sa-yoon answered with a smiling-eyed gaze.

He channeled his frost energy into the dagger. The frost didn’t creep in from the outside but spread from within, freezing only the man’s heart solid. His limbs remained unfrozen as his body went rigid and collapsed. It was a pathetically anticlimactic death for an S-Class.

This is why fighting in a group is a disadvantage.

When you have many allies, you let your guard down. But when you have many enemies, every nerve is on high alert, reacting to the slightest stimulus, sound, or signal.

Clang!

Like right now.

Sa-yoon parried an incoming dagger and simultaneously leaped in its direction, switching his weapon to a wire. He pressed a button, and the wire shot forward, embedding itself in an enemy’s body. Leaping onto the thin steel thread, Sa-yoon ran along the path it created and kicked the bleeding man in the face.

“Gak!”

As the man crumpled, the remaining enemies surrounded him. A standoff ensued. The enemy still had numbers, but he had just taken down six of them single-handedly, and his companions had likely dealt with at least two each by now. Time was not on their side. Though they had the numerical advantage, Sa-yoon’s side was overwhelmingly superior in terms of power and skill. Simply dragging out the fight would secure their victory. He was catching his breath, waiting for one of them to break the stalemate, when—

A flash of white teeth tore through the poison fog, and one of the men in the standoff vanished into the mist.

“Wh-what the!”

Even Sa-yoon was momentarily startled. A beast’s cry rang out, and another man disappeared. A brilliant light flashed within the fog. The beast’s form moved as fast as lightning, and Sa-yoon was able to identify the source of the light.

Rai.

Where Divine Artifacts and relics were present, a Divine Beast had appeared to lead the charge.

Sa-yoon, who had fought alongside the massive Fenrir countless times, smiled. He knew exactly what Rai intended.

Well then, I should play along.

While Rai circled counter-clockwise, Sa-yoon began to move clockwise, targeting the confused enemies. When the Fenrir tore one man apart, Sa-yoon would snatch another on the opposite side. Weapons of fire, water, swords, and axes flew through the air, but black shadows intercepted them all, and not a single attack reached him.

When the last remaining man was bisected by Sa-yoon’s hand, the poison fog began to clear. Its effect hadn’t ended; rather, a powerful gust of wind was blowing it away.

More than ten bodies lay scattered around him. As the fog lifted, revealing the carnage, the remaining Scorpion members stared in shock, and the three S-Class executives’ faces flushed with rage. It seemed Yen or Han Geon-joo had taken care of one of them.

“Kwon Sa-yoon!”

An enraged roar echoed through the space. Sa-yoon parried the sword of the man who charged at him without warning.

Zzzzzzing!

A powerful vibration shot up his arm. It looked like a light sword, but its weight was immense. Sa-yoon scowled, using his other hand to help push the blade away.

A familiar face.

It was the man who always stood by Dern’s side, the one who called himself Dern’s right hand. Sa-yoon’s lips twisted into a smirk as he saw the deep scar on the man’s neck. The scar he himself had left was still there.

“Long time no see.”

He offered a pleasant greeting, but his opponent was clearly in no mood for pleasantries. A sword strike was his only reply. Sa-yoon parried it again, a groan escaping his lips. The previous attack must have been a light one, because this time he felt the vibration through his entire body.

Strange.

He was stronger than expected. His current level was high enough to have been a decent match for the Sa-yoon of a year ago. Sa-yoon narrowed his eyes and activated [Eye of the Genius]. And there, he saw an unexpected phrase.

Dragon Body.

The man’s status window listed the Dragon Body privilege and skill.

Come to think of it, he could now see faint, scale-like patterns emerging on the man’s skin. A dry laugh escaped Sa-yoon.

So this was it?

He’d wondered why this shattered remnant of a guild was acting so bold just because they’d acquired a single Divine Artifact. It seemed they had an ace up their sleeve after all. The Dragon Body was undeniably an SS-rank skill. Gaining the body of a dragon, said to be the strongest of all existing monsters, made one incredibly powerful. Sa-yoon had to admit that.

Unfortunately for them, however.

“You should have found out who I had to kill to get my frost powers.”

A sharp smile played on Sa-yoon’s lips. He parried the man’s sword, then concentrated his strength to push him back. He gathered his frost energy in the air, compressing the cold until it formed a single, solid crystal. He sliced it in half with his blade, and a blue light entered his black eyes.

The moment his dark eyes turned azure and began to glow, his round pupils elongated into vertical slits.

“Ah.”

It had been a while. A soft breath escaped him as he changed his weapon.

Harris’s Dagger vanished into his inventory, and a longsword appeared in his hand.

Gram, the Dragon-Slaying Sword.

At the same time, a familiar notification window filled his vision.

<The special effect of the title ‘Mad Dragon Slayer’ has been activated!>

[Mad Dragon Slayer (S)]

To you who single-handedly defeated the Mad Dragon of the Frost Zone, Fafnir of the Severe Cold, we bestow the blessing of the Dragon Slayer.

• All stats increase by 100% when facing draconic foes.
• Upon activation of the special effect, maintain Dragon Body for 10 minutes.

If his opponent was a dragon, then he was a dragon slayer.

“Looks like the scorpion hunt just turned into a dragon hunt.”

Sa-yoon smirked, faced his stunned opponent, and kicked off the ground.