Despite that, he felt surprisingly confident.
You will get out of this alive.
He wrinkled his nose, clamping his feet onto the floor to ground himself.
Seungho had to pay careful attention or he would miss its blow.
But he already did.
He went flying on his back, the air of his lungs shot out, and a pain so intense gripped his upper body.
Still on the floor, Seungho could feel the breath of this thing on his neck, so close its growling resonated into his ear.
Seungho wanted to cry, but decided to get angry instead. Or else he would succumb right then.
Wait. If no one is intervening to stop this....then it means I still have a chance to defeat this beast.
But how?
The body of the figure brushed the skin on the back of his arm.
Breathing through his teeth, Seungho said:
"That just did it."
He sucked in a breath, and yelled at his enemy. Survival instinct.
"Now I am mad! I hate that! I hate you!"
He hadn't yelled that since he was a child. To his elder sister.
Seungho kicked. Like really kicked. Once, with all his might.
It didn't do anything. The figure easily moved out of the way. Seungho jumped and rolled away. He was shaking, despite the beast inside himself was coming out to hunt this thing.
The figure outmatched him.
His ribs screamed. His thigh throbbed. He was running out of time, out of breath, out of self.
The pain had returned like it had never left his body.
He needed to get away.
He needed to regroup and think of an attack strategy.
That clarity reassured him. Next blow, he would be out of the way. Then attack.
Was this what he had imagined combat would actually be for hunters?
No. This is no time for this. For distracting thoughts.
He thought of the Duke. Of that perfect pivot. Of hyperfocus.
The boiling in his blood tuned to a single note—a hum.
I need to focus. To hyperfocus.
The figure moved. He saw it. Not with his eyes, but with something deeper. A pressure in the dark directed him. He didn't know why, he simply trusted it.
Another blow was about to hit Seungho. He pivoted his foot, an inch, imperceptibly. He propelled his body out of the way.
The figure passed where he'd been standing. Close. Too close. But he was still upright.
He gasped. He'd done it! He'd actually—.
The figure attacked again. Seungho dodged again.
This time he felt it. The rhythm.
The way it moved through darkness like swimming through water.
Seungho wasn't faster. He was earlier.
I am getting the knack of this!
He felt pumped. His body shook. His ribs still ached. But he was still standing.
He was winning.
From an invisible presence with firing eyes, now Seungho could finally see its true shape. A dark figure, no features.
He stared at it. Felt a little disappointed by the banality of the case. He relaxed.
It punched him.
Seungho bent over his stomach. He grinned, feeling his ribs on the verge of cracking. He inhaled deeply, ready and confident.
His skin lightened up into a semi-transparent surface. Bright light, mana, intensifying underneath. The pain had reduced substantially.
He stood like a hunter would. He was learning, he was improving. He knew that much.
"What do you want from me?" Seungho asked calmly.
Then the figure melted. Reformed.
The dark figure molded into one of those angels from the Castle attacking humans, but of a much smaller size. Curiously completely black. Now Seungho was confused.
Where does that come from?!
He had no time to ponder questions. He had to figure out if this thing was going to fight the same way as the dark figure did.
The angel opened its mouth.
Not the monstrous jaw underneath, its real mouth. The gross one biting humans in the documentary.
Its scream hit Seungho like a wall.
For a split second he found himself back on the platform over the ocean. The Castle, his hair tussled. The clarity of his senses.
His ears popped. He clamped his hands over them, but the sound kept coming, drilling through his palms, into his skull.
The vision dissolved.
His teeth vibrated in their sockets. He dropped to his knees. Something warm ran from his nose. Blood.
It tasted like the Han-river. He didn't know how he knew that.
He gasped when he realized the river knew him too.
Then the sound went deeper.
Into his chest. His ribs reverberated. His heart was about to stutter. He could feel his organs shaking, loose inside him, rattling against each other.
He retched. Nothing came up but bile and fear.
And still the sound kept going.
Into his cells. His blood began to boil. He could feel it bubbling up, his own body turning against itself.
Please make it stop!
He was crying. Tears streamed down his face. He didn't care anymore. He just wanted to leave.
He searched inside himself a place where to hide. His place.
And then...
Something answered.
His blood vessels and tissue sutured each tear on their own.
His skin began to change.
His cells grouped into clusters, with precise geometry. Closing in onto each other as if they were ice film forming. Thickening, getting deeper into his body.
The sound still trapped under his hardening skin. Vibrating. Hurting.
Seungho gasped. The pain didn't stop, but the clusters changed it. Pain became something he could carry. Something he could hold.
They weren't armor. They were surrender. His body giving up on fighting and choosing, instead, to endure. To leave the way he knew how.
He didn't feel fear anymore.
He calmed down and looked at his body. His skin lightened into a semi-transparent surface. Bright light, mana, intensifying underneath. The pain was gone.
He felt stable.
He didn't know why. But he was still alive.
Then the angel melted. Reformed.
Now a figure wore a cape with a hood over its face. Carried a gigantic stone hammer. Stood over him like an authority figure ready to exact his sentence.