Chapter 117

Chapter 117:

Hikaru released a heavy, prolonged breath.

Shock still gripped his features entirely.

How could she have concealed such an absurdly powerful asset all this time?

The cold terror was still circulating through his body.

The initial fright remained intense, leaving his physical frame trembling unstoppably.

Ascension Breath.

With that solitary ability, every single one of his creatures had been ripped to shreds. Not stopping there, the force had shattered the arena itself, carving out a massive trench.

Gooooooo……!

The cavity plunged down so deeply that it mirrored a bottomless pit opening up right before him, dark and unreadable.

He had never before witnessed devastation on such a grand scale.

It truly befitted the reputation of an S-rank entity.

“Heh, heheh.”

Hikaru’s shoulders began to twitch.

It felt almost comical that he had survived an assault of that magnitude.

Encountering this beast in an unrestricted area would have guaranteed his absolute defeat. However, this was a controlled Player vs Player environment, which placed restrictions on active summons.

Furthermore.

Survival was his.

Deploying Phoenix had been an absolute masterstroke.

Positioned directly in the center of that ruined landscape, perfectly visible and unharmed, was Phoenix’s egg.

Eternal life.

A mere five minutes were needed for the creature to emerge anew with full vitality.

An incredibly overpowered summon!

“……Rachel.”

Hikaru spoke softly.

“……”

Yet, Rachel offered no response.

Her gaze remained wide and unblinking, her entire form paralyzed. Not even a single digit shifted.

The paralyzing venom from the tree spirit had fully locked down her body.

On top of that.

Grrrrr.

The golden dragon, letting out a faint snarl, appeared completely drained of energy.

It was undoubtedly the backlash from using Ascension Breath.

Hikaru tightened his fingers into a fist.

At last!

After all this time!

Was he truly on the verge of defeating Rachel for the first time in a four-year span?

Even if it wasn’t a flawless triumph, and even if Rachel had only deployed a single creature.

A victory remained a victory.

This would mark a historic moment for Japan.

Perhaps, once this tournament concluded, his name would ascend to the absolute peak of the global leaderboards.

“Rachel, you became careless,” Hikaru remarked, filling the time required for Phoenix to regenerate.

“No matter how much faith you have in your abilities, entering this bout with only one summon against me? That is an outright insult. There is a boundary to how much you can trivialize an opponent. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Hah.

Hikaru took a seat right next to Phoenix’s egg, keeping watch as Rachel remained immobilized.

In his mind, the celebration of his triumph had already begun.

“Wh-what?!”

“Are you serious? Is Rachel actually about to suffer a defeat like this?!”

“That can’t be happening!”

The guild members kept their eyes locked on the monitor, their expressions distorted by shock.

— This is completely wild!

— The immortality of Phoenix! Isn’t that an absolute cheat code?!

— And what about that tree spirit slipping past defenses to paralyze the player directly?!

— No, look at it this way. This is a massive blunder. Rachel completely misjudged Japan’s Hikaru! Even if an S-rank is incredibly powerful, how can a single creature match up against five?!

The broadcasting team was losing control, and the real-time stream chat was overflowing with messages.

Rachel remained frozen in place, while Hikaru waited for Phoenix to awaken and deliver the final blow.

The audience observed what appeared to be a turning point in history, their voices rising in excitement.

“However,” Baek Jinwoo said, narrowing his eyes. “Hikaru executed nearly every move flawlessly, right? Yet there’s a tiny one-percent flaw that genuinely bothers me. I wouldn’t have approached it that way.”

“Eh?”

“What do you mean by that?”

The guild members turned their attention toward him.

Baek Jinwoo had stood alone in predicting Hikaru’s path to victory even after the golden dragon had unleashed its devastating energy beam.

Had he noticed an overlooked detail?

“Her vision.”

“What?”

“He isn’t obstructing her field of view. Seriously, that foolish Sugoi-hyung. He has the match entirely locked down, yet he’s just sitting there idly?”

Baek Jinwoo felt a wave of irritation.

A player had two methods to call forth a summon: lifting their hand, or shifting their gaze to navigate the interface window.

There was a specific reason authorities bound a player’s arms and obscured their vision when taking them into custody.

“Regardless of her physical paralysis, her eyes remain completely unobstructed. You can never let down your defenses under those circumstances. Particularly when she hasn’t exhausted her roster of summons yet.”

Had Baek Jinwoo been in that position, he would have dashed toward Rachel the instant the path cleared.

He would have placed both hands firmly over her eyes and maintained that position for the full five minutes.

That strategy would have secured a flawless, undeniable triumph for Hikaru.

“Wait, are you suggesting Rachel is capable of calling another creature while immobilized?” Hong Ari asked, her voice tinged with alarm.

If that held true, the situation was profoundly alarming……

“Keep watching.”

Somehow, Baek Jinwoo could anticipate the exact thoughts running through Rachel’s mind.

If the individual she is truly cautious of isn’t Hikaru, but me.

Then she would absolutely keep a summon held back in reserve.

Because he would have adopted the exact same strategy.

At that precise moment, Rachel was releasing a mental sigh.

I assumed that breath attack would conclude the match, but I was caught completely off guard.

Simultaneously, however, she was already initiating the process to bring forth another entity.

I truly wished to avoid displaying this particular asset.

Yet, alternative options were exhausted.

She had felt so certain she wouldn’t fall to Hikaru that she had registered only two entities for this matchup.

Hah.

Rachel’s secondary, concealed entity!

To be precise, not even Olivia or Veil from the United Kingdom’s national squad were aware of this creature’s existence.

She stood alone across the globe in her knowledge of it, having nurtured it entirely in the shadows.

My intention was to reveal it as an unexpected trump card against JinuGod.

Yet, circumstances had deteriorated to this point.

Suffering a defeat at Hikaru’s hands? That was an unacceptable outcome.

Above all else, she would sooner accept destruction than allow him the honor of advancing to face JinuGod directly.

Swish, swi-swish!

Provided her line of sight remained clear, she could command the status display purely through mental focus.

For some inexplicable reason, Hikaru remained seated near that Phoenix egg, his body quivering.

To her, that display was an absolute blessing.

She navigated to the summoning interface effortlessly.

Click!

She engaged the Y trigger.

Roughly sixty seconds ticked away.

“Hm?”

Hikaru abruptly rose to his feet.

He detected an energy manifesting around Rachel’s form.

It was undeniably the distinctive aura that signaled the arrival of a new entity.

Dammit!

Only in this moment did the weight of his oversight hit him.

I failed to block her vision!

Rachel had displayed only a single entity until now.

That implied he should have anticipated the presence of four additional slots!

It was the most rudimentary principle of engagement!

The energy blast…… that was the cause.

That overwhelming display had completely scrambled—no, that incredible phenomenon had completely paralyzed his capacity to think clearly.

And the overwhelming craving to finally overcome Rachel had caused him to overlook the absolute basics.

I was the one who became complacent.

He attempted to sprint forward, but the opportunity had already vanished.

KRAKOOOOM!

Enveloping the entire arena as it manifested was an enormous, pale predatory cat!

Baekho.

— ROOOOAAARRR!

The sheer force of the sound pinned Hikaru firmly to the spot.

The air was driven from his lungs.

What on earth……

What kind of entity was he looking at?

The reality that a veteran competitor with a decade of experience had never encountered this beast implied……

Kuso……!

It was bound to be an S-rank.

That unbelievable Rachel possessed a pair of S-rank entities.

This went beyond mere absurdity; it was genuinely maddening.

What level of fortune must an individual possess to command two S-ranks?

“THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNFAIR!” Hikaru bellowed, but Baekho was already lunging forward.

Its maw parted immensely.

“H-hey! Hold on! There’s no cause for such haste—!”

CRUNCH!

It clamped down violently on the terrain where Phoenix’s egg rested, devouring it in a single motion.

As if mocking the opponent: How could you presume to best our commander.

“Whoa, what?!” Baek Jinwoo stood up abruptly, startled. “Baekho?”

That entity was unmistakably Baekho.

A creature preserved within Baek Jinwoo’s own recollections.

It must have entered the scene around the third year of Battle of Summoners.

There had been a singular, incredibly fortunate player.

A competitor from Ukraine, if memory served correctly. That individual had utilized a supreme summoning document all at once, beating the mere one-percent odds to secure an S-rank on their very first attempt……

The vast majority of seasoned players likely remained oblivious to it.

The individual had shared a brief conversation with Baek Jinwoo, remarked that possessing an S-rank drained the enjoyment from the game, and abandoned the title shortly thereafter.

The entity pulled during that event was Baekho.

The Azure Dragon of the East.

The Vermilion Bird of the South.

The White Tiger of the West.

The Black Tortoise of the North.

Based on the official records, the Four Sacred Beasts derived from Eastern lore were universally designated as S-rank.

“Why, why, why,” Baek Jinwoo muttered.

“Is something wrong, Guild Master?” the guild members inquired, caught off guard.

“That entity is an S-rank. Baekho. One of the Four Sacred Beasts,” Baek Jinwoo informed them.

“Unbelievable.”

“Are you serious? An entity like that actually exists?”

“So, alongside the golden dragon, she possessed yet another S-rank? Mmm……”

An audible sigh of pure amazement drifted through the group.

Presently, Rachel maintained the pinnacle position on the global leaderboard utilizing nothing more than the golden dragon.

And now, a second S-rank was thrown into the equation?

They had previously categorized her as a monster, but the reality was she was a monster who had been suppressing her maximum capabilities.

An elite hiding immense capability……

This truly crosses the line.

With a solitary action, Rachel had utterly demolished the aspirations of Hikaru and the entire population of Japan.

She had declared to the global audience that the United Kingdom was not merely holding its ground—it was widening the gap significantly.

— Oh, oh no……!

— What kind of creature even IS that?

— No clue. We will likely require a post-match discussion with her to uncover the details.

— What remains undeniable is that even contemporary specialists fail to identify the breed.

Regardless of the specifics, Hikaru had succumbed to Rachel, and the final verdict was set.

The victor of the United Kingdom vs Japan matchup: The United Kingdom!

“WAAAAAHHHHH!”

“YEEAAAAAHHHHH!”

A massive roar of celebration shattered the brief quietness that had enveloped the global audience.

The live stream chat within South Korea was equally frantic.

└ Wow, Rachel truly exists on an entirely different plane.

└ I blame my own lack of insight for entertaining the thought even for a split second that Hikaru could take this.

└ Naturally. Rachel dropping a match to Hikaru would be the actual anomaly. She is the real deal even among the Five Sovereigns.

└ What is the deal with that white tiger though? It appears incredibly menacing.

└ Numerous reports are pointing toward it being an S-rank entity. Nothing is set in stone just yet, right?

└ An additional S-rank?

└ How does someone even manage that?

└ Seriously, that is completely wild. Wasn’t Rachel the sole competitor globally to own an S-rank entity from the start?

└ Yes, by official metrics, that is accurate.

“Ha,” Baek Jinwoo chuckled.

A empty, skeptical laugh escaped him.

She is genuinely out of her mind.

Two S-ranks?

There is outperforming expectations, and then there is whatever this represents.

Who allows a secondary S-rank to land in the hands of someone already harboring one?

This ridiculous world!

An entire system built on sheer luck!

Since when did the principle of the wealthy accumulating more wealth apply to the mechanics of summoning?

Naturally, Baek Jinwoo—having commenced his journey with an EX-rank asset—wasn’t exactly the right person to voice objections. Even so! The situation was matching in its absurdity.

My scenario resembled a unique privilege. Her situation is nothing short of pure, unadulterated fortune.

This development shifted the parameters entirely.

Baek Jinwoo possessed comprehensive knowledge regarding the mechanics of virtually every A-rank and lower summon stored within his mind, but S-ranks? He possessed next to none.

How was he expected to analyze entities that had no presence during the era of Battle of Summoners?

The contrast between engaging a rival whose abilities and operational habits you fully comprehend versus entering a conflict entirely blind, relying purely on split-second reactions, was astronomical.

“Hoo.”

Baek Jinwoo allowed his eyes to drift shut.

Focus.

Alter the perspective.

This turn of events was actually advantageous.

The more formidable the challenger, the more gratifying the sensation when you finally dismantle them.

That had always been his operational philosophy.

“Everyone,” Baek Jinwoo addressed the room, moving his gaze across the assembled faces.

The expression on every single guild member’s face was heavy.

“We have gathered all the insights required from today’s broadcast. Let us redirect our complete energy toward organizing for tomorrow’s engagement with the United States.”

Indeed.

For the moment, the United Kingdom could remain on the back burner.

First, their objective was to thoroughly dismantle America’s Xenos.

“We have pushed our way directly into the semi-final stage. We might as well guarantee our placement in the final round, wouldn’t you all agree?”

Baek Jinwoo’s gaze hardened into an expression that was icy and focused.

With that, he turned on his heel and moved away.

His intent was to evaluate his rune configuration one additional time ahead of the semi-final matchup.