Chapter 5
The cool dampness of the cave settled over Chaeho's worn leather gloves.
Lee Chaeho lightly tightened and loosened his grip around the hilt of the iron sword in his hand.
It was a familiar weight.
One he had held often enough to build calluses across his palms.
This was an E-rank dungeon located on the outskirts of Seoul.
A shabby cave dungeon that allowed solo entry.
For Chaeho, who wanted to avoid attention and unnecessary suspicion, it was the perfect place.
This should be just right for a warm-up.
Inside the dungeon, stale dirt mixed with the smell of half-dried blood, creating a strange, foul odor.
An ordinary D-rank Hunter would hesitate to enter alone without forming a party.
But Chaeho was different.
He had spent years working as a porter for a C-rank party, constantly observing monsters until it almost felt as if he had eyes in the back of his head.
If it was only one or two E-rank goblins at a time, he could deal with them even without using his skill.
Rustle.
The sound of a small stone rolling echoed from the darkness.
Chaeho stopped walking and raised his sword at an angle.
From beyond the curved passage outside his line of sight, a goblin crawled into view, baring its yellow teeth.
The moment it noticed Chaeho, it let out a piercing shriek and charged.
"Kieeeek!"
A crude dagger stabbed toward Chaeho's thigh.
Chaeho didn't panic.
The moment the goblin's shoulder shifted, he had already read the trajectory.
He lightly knocked his sword downward and deflected the dagger.
Clang!
The goblin's stance collapsed with a dull metallic scrape.
Chaeho didn't miss the opening.
His iron sword traced a smooth arc and cut across the creature's throat.
"Kuh... Keugh..."
Dark red blood splashed across the ground.
The goblin collapsed, twitched several times, and died.
It had been a clean exchange fought purely with physical ability and swordsmanship.
No skill.
The muscles that had stiffened overnight slowly began to loosen.
"Good. My instincts are still sharp."
Chaeho muttered lightly and was about to continue walking.
Then—
Whoosh!
As though the thick smell of blood had been a signal, strange shrieks erupted at the same time from a crack near the ceiling and a blind spot on his right.
"Kiiik!"
"Kyaaaak!"
Two goblins had been hiding in the darkness.
One leaped down from above as if trying to crush him.
The other stayed low, almost crawling across the floor as it aimed for Chaeho's ankle.
It wasn't a simple ambush.
Their timing was deliberately staggered.
Even for a D-rank Hunter, it was a vicious combination attack that would be difficult to dodge if he let his guard down for even an instant.
Two rusty, chipped blades rushed toward his neck and leg.
At that moment—
Chaeho instinctively called upon the sensation he had drilled into himself during yesterday's brutal training.
Now.
He decided to activate the skill for exactly one second.
Thuum.
A cold vibration struck his mind.
The flow of the world stretched to an extreme.
The goblins' piercing screams distorted into strange, low sounds.
Dust falling from the ceiling seemed to hang motionless in the air.
An overwhelming amount of information poured into Chaeho's sharpened vision.
The wrinkles around the nose of the goblin diving from above.
The exact angle of the dagger gripped by the one sweeping low across the ground.
Even the awkward way their centers of gravity leaned.
Idiots.
Chaeho could clearly see where their tangled paths would lead.
At their current angles, the knee of the goblin falling from above would inevitably slam into the shoulder of the lower one.
There was no need to twist his body recklessly.
No need to force himself to move faster than he could.
Chaeho simply stepped back.
Half a step.
Nothing more.
Then he deactivated the skill.
Flash!
The world returned to its normal speed.
The two goblins cutting violently through the air suddenly panicked when their target disappeared from where they expected him to be.
Their blades stabbed only empty space, leaving both of them completely exposed.
"Kiek?"
Just as Chaeho had predicted, the goblin falling from above crashed directly onto the other one.
Crash!
Their paths tangled.
The two monsters rolled clumsily across the floor and lost their balance.
It was a fatal opening.
They couldn't defend themselves.
They could barely even control their own bodies.
Chaeho didn't waste that brief moment.
The foot he had moved half a step backward sprang forward like a coiled spring.
His sword thrust out in a smooth, simple motion.
Stab! Slash!
The tip of the blade pierced the heart of the goblin that had fallen first.
The instant Chaeho pulled the sword free, he sliced across the throat of the other monster as it struggled to rise.
"Ka... aaagh..."
The two goblins sprayed blood and collapsed helplessly.
From beginning to end, there hadn't been a single unnecessary movement.
Chaeho lightly flicked the blood from his sword.
He wasn't even breathing hard.
His eyes shifted toward the translucent status window floating in front of him.
[Remaining Usage Time: 9 seconds]
This is seriously insane.
A dry laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
Exactly one second.
In the training room, he had been desperately dividing those tiny moments just to avoid rubber bullets.
But in actual combat, that one second felt absurdly long.
Long enough to decide whether his enemies lived or died.
With only a single second of Time Slow, he had crushed a staggered two-monster ambush as easily as crumpling paper.
This skill wasn't merely for buying time.
It stripped away the enemy's trajectory.
It let him create a path where they destroyed themselves.
Then it allowed him to place his blade directly into the weakest point.
Understanding that in theory was one thing.
Feeling its power with his own hands while cutting through actual monster flesh was something entirely different.
"At this level, I can go deeper."
A cold light flashed in Chaeho's eyes now that he had gained real confidence.
The deeper he moved into the dungeon, the more rapidly the number of goblins increased.
Eventually, the narrow tunnel opened into a wide clearing where torches had been mounted along the cave walls.
More than ten goblins roaming together turned their heads toward Chaeho at the same time.
"Kiiiiik!"
"Kyaaaak!"
The monsters spotted the intruder and began closing their encirclement from every direction, kicking up dust as they moved.
Rusty weapons came toward him from the front, rear, left, and right.
An ordinary D-rank Hunter would have desperately retreated toward the cave wall to avoid exposing their back.
But Chaeho didn't stop.
Instead, he walked straight into the middle of them.
Thuum.
The instant a spear came flying toward him along the most dangerous trajectory, Chaeho activated the skill.
This time—
0.5 seconds.
The flow of the world slowed until it felt like everything had sunk into thick mud.
The rotation of a stone flying through the air.
The angle of the spear thrusting from the front.
The way a goblin on the left pushed off the ground.
Countless pieces of information poured into Chaeho's mind.
The two on the right are going to collide with each other.
If I clear the left side, the path opens.
Chaeho marked the safe gap untouched by any trajectory.
He twisted his upper body and claimed the blind spot before anyone else could.
Skill release.
Flash!
The world snapped back to full speed.
Chaeho's sword drew a sharp arc.
The goblin's spear cut uselessly through empty air, pulling its center of gravity forward.
Chaeho appeared behind it, kicked precisely into the back of its knee, and dropped it to the ground.
Then he cut through the back of its neck.
"Kiek!"
The moment one goblin fell, a hole opened in the encirclement.
Chaeho slipped through that gap like a ghost.
Thuum. Flash.
Thuum. Flash.
He never kept the skill active for long.
He didn't waste it as though it were some invincible cheat.
He activated it only during those terrifying instants when an irregular attack was about to land.
Only when every escape path seemed blocked.
Only when death came close enough to touch him.
His vision slowed.
He found the opening.
Then he deactivated the skill and counterattacked at the same instant.
Years of observation gained while working as a porter.
The eye he had developed by watching hundreds of battles.
The minimal movement patterns he had drilled into his body until he nearly vomited in the training room.
Once all of that mixed with the smell of blood in real combat, the result became almost unnatural.
Clang! Slash!
"Kyaak!"
"Kiek!"
Every time his sword flashed, goblins dropped like rotten logs.
There were no flashy skill effects in Chaeho's movements.
No explosive power capable of shattering the ground.
But everything he did was frighteningly simple and efficient.
The goblins' attacks missed him by the width of a sheet of paper.
Their blades couldn't even graze his clothes.
Meanwhile, Chaeho's sword always found the most exposed vital point.
It almost looked as if the goblins were willingly offering their necks to the edge of his blade.
"Haaah!"
The last remaining goblin screamed desperately and leaped into the air.
But Chaeho was already standing where it would land.
His sword was raised upward.
Stab!
The blade pierced beneath the goblin's jaw and drove straight through the top of its skull.
The monster's body convulsed once before going limp.
Drip. Drip.
Only the sound of blood running down Chaeho's sword and falling onto the ground filled the silent cave.
"Huu."
Chaeho pulled the blade free, shook the blood from it, and released a long breath.
More than ten goblin corpses lay scattered around him.
In the past, if he had faced this many alone, escaping the encirclement itself would have been difficult.
Finishing without injuries would have been unthinkable.
But now—
There wasn't a single scratch on Chaeho's body.
His breathing hadn't become ragged.
His muscles weren't screaming from exhaustion.
The battle had ended so quickly that sweat had barely begun to form along his back.
The status window appeared again before his eyes.
Because he had divided his skill usage carefully and activated it only during the most dangerous moments, he still had plenty of time remaining despite wiping out an entire cluster of monsters.
Not bad.
The image of the D-rank Hunter who had once hidden behind other people's backs and carried luggage was nowhere to be seen.
This was the moment Chaeho confirmed with his own body just how terrifying the tactics of prediction and positioning he had forged in the training room could become in real combat.
Under the faint torchlight illuminating the dark cave, Chaeho adjusted his grip around the worn sword.
A cold smile slowly spread across his lips.
