Chapter 98
Chapter 98: If Someday I Reach That Level.
The instant he deactivated Stealth, Min-jun lunged forward and slashed at the nearest Cerberus without hesitation.
KEEEEK—!
Yet his blade failed to cut particularly deep.
A fundamental disparity in mass existed between Min-jun and the massive Cerberus; on top of that, delivering the blow in a rush meant he had not poured his complete momentum behind the blade.
That outcome had not caught Min-jun off guard, however.
His primary aim from the start had simply been securing an opportunity to retrieve an artifact stored inside his subspace.
Taken by surprise from an unanticipated angle and at an unforeseen moment, the pack of Cerberuses briefly lost sight of their quarry.
Seizing that split-second lapse, Min-jun summoned his subspace, equipped his aerial artifact without delay, and pulled far away from the monsters on the ground.
AWOOOOOO—!
Refusing to yield, a Cerberus grasped that Min-jun was planning something and unleashed a deep howl to pinpoint the intruder’s coordinates for the pack.
Yet by the time the beast set off its alarm, Min-jun was already soaring through the upper reaches of the air.
Up to this point, the encounter proceeded precisely as he had charted.
‘The true challenge starts here.’
Attacking land targets while suspended in the sky made his primary weapon, a sword, extraordinarily awkward to wield.
He briefly contemplated retrieving another artifact to compensate for the tactical mismatch.
‘I should assess the situation first, then draw one only if things head south.’
Because Rokan provided a dependable safety net, the process of the struggle held far greater value for Min-jun than simply securing a dead Cerberus.
Leaning too heavily on magical tools risked eroding the fundamental purpose of this training session.
Min-jun made up his mind to suppress the beasts using strictly his personal capabilities as long as he could manage.
Meanwhile, as Min-jun continued to gain altitude:
The hounds maintained their coordination, tracking his movement through sustained howls.
Having never conceived that a creature entirely devoid of wings could take to the air, the Cerberuses simply stared upward, utterly bewildered by the sight of Min-jun suspended in the sky.
They failed to comprehend what kind of human could display such erratic, defying maneuvers.
Still, that confusion hardly mattered.
They were far from helpless when it came to intercepting airborne adversaries.
At the same time.
Min-jun gathered his Sword Aura, shifting into an all-out battle posture.
Across the pitch-black, cheerless expanse above where no stars dared to shine, a luminous stream resembling a starlit galaxy scattered downward.
The Cerberuses parried the assault by either agilely slipping away from the slashing arcs or swatting the sword energy aside with razor-edged claws when evasion proved impossible.
“Just as I thought.”
Watching the beasts maintain their footing even after enduring an earnest, wide-range offensive, Min-jun clearly recognized that these hounds were formidable adversaries.
Yet that exchange had merely served as an opening skirmish; ultimately, bringing down the pack required gambling everything on a Dragon Word.
Drawing upon his memories of the prior simulation, Min-jun began releasing bursts of Dragon Fear across the field, intending to prime his spirit before attempting the true phrase.
Though the pressure felt noticeably heavier than when he had first managed to trigger Dragon Fear, it remained insufficient to suppress S-rank entities like these Cerberuses.
Even so, that was of little consequence.
Subduing the Cerberuses through Dragon Fear had never been his genuine intention.
Amidst the swirling Dragon Fear, Min-jun channeled his will into a Dragon Word.
[Stop.]
Failing to command the cadence properly, the invocation misfired and fizzled away.
Spotting that brief misstep, the Cerberuses coordinated their retaliation.
Their arsenal extended beyond nimble footwork and lethal claws.
Together, the hounds unlocked their jaws and unleashed torrents of infernal breath toward the sky.
As searing crimson bursts erupted from their throats, Min-jun contorted midair, evading the blazing streams by a fraction.
He had expected them to answer with such firepower.
‘Their attack distance… extends far beyond what I projected.’
Min-jun had possessed basic awareness of the Cerberus’s breath attack and its destructive potency.
However, he had severely underestimated just how far those flames could travel across open air.
Pulling back to create as much clearance as possible, Min-jun once again calculated his options.
‘Am I truly forced to rely on an artifact?’
Presently, absent an external tool, the only definitive path to victory lay in executing a Dragon Word—yet for Min-jun, that art remained an erratic gamble rather than a reliable certainty.
He weighed whether an alternate solution existed.
Below, the Cerberuses shadowed his flight path relentlessly, refusing to abandon the hunt.
Though incapable of flight, their postures made it evident that the instant he strayed into their perimeter, they would strike without mercy.
‘Why won’t these beasts let up?’
Scanning the hound pack while suspended high above, Min-jun frowned, frustrated by the absence of a viable alternative tactic.
Just then, inspiration struck.
‘What if I execute the technique from the simulation?’
A fresh concept flashed through his thoughts.
During the previous rank simulation, he had neutralized his targets by redirecting the ambient mana saturating the field.
In this instance, the Cerberuses were not discharging raw mana into the sky in such density.
Yet residual magical particles still drifted through the surroundings, leaving room to test the same principle.
And yet.
‘The magical density here is far too thin compared to that trial.’
Weighing the environmental parameters, he deduced that while it might inflict a measure of harm on the hounds, it would fall short of turning the tide of the engagement.
If that was the case:
‘Then I must alter the application.’
What if, rather than mere atmospheric mana, he redirected the very flames spewing from their jaws?
High danger, immense return.
The approach carried obvious perils, yet just as Rokan had assured him, he might suffer gruesome injuries, but he would not perish.
Should he take severe wounds, Rokan would mend him regardless.
“If I pass up this moment, an opportunity to test this will never come again.”
Precisely that.
One of the core motivations for entering an S-rank dungeon under Rokan’s watch was specifically to attempt wild gambits of this nature.
Min-jun stoked his inner energy once more through Dragon Fear, then plummeted directly toward the ground where the Cerberuses waited.
The instant he descended, the beasts identified an opening and released their blistering inferno anew.
Setting his jaw, Min-jun used his Dragon Bone Sword—saturated with the ancient authority of dragons—to bat the cascading fire aside.
A fraction of the stray heat grazed him where he could not deflect it, yet his protective armor absorbed the brunt, leaving him largely unharmed.
Executing the maneuver as envisioned, Min-jun batted aside over eighty percent of the blazing barrage aimed his way using the Dragon Bone Sword.
The redirected flames that had soared upward now reversed course, raining down upon the Cerberus pack like a cluster of falling meteors.
KEEEENG—?
Bewildered yelps began rising from various corners of the pack.
Though the beasts recognized that Min-jun was far from an ordinary human, they had never anticipated an opponent redirecting their own attacks back at them.
Right after that—
FWOOOOSH—!
Flames ignited along the fur of several Cerberuses, spreading rapidly to engulf their massive frames.
KEEEEK—! KEEEEEE—!
Pained howls erupted from the burning hounds, echoing through the desolate expanse.
Under standard circumstances, a Cerberus retained natural tolerance against its own fiery breath, which should have rendered the backlash largely negligible.
Yet a hidden factor explained why they were shrieking in genuine torment.
As Min-jun redirected their breath, the innate power of dragonkind had infused the blaze, magnifying its lethality twofold.
Min-jun had not consciously designed that outcome, nor was he even aware the fusion had occurred.
Whether to attribute the result to raw luck or instinctual mastery was impossible to judge.
Regardless:
Disoriented by Min-jun’s shocking counterstroke, the Cerberuses paused their barrage to regroup, wary of having their flames turned against them once more.
Seizing that shift in momentum, Min-jun dove downward with crushing force.
‘This should settle at least this much.’
Wiping out the entire pack was out of reach, but he could definitively cripple at least a third of their ranks.
Naturally, Min-jun would have to absorb significant retaliation in return.
Even so, Rokan was there to restore him afterward.
Treating the clash as an all-or-nothing wager, he completed his descent and slammed the Dragon Bone Sword violently into the earth.
The moment the steel bit into the ground, a devastating shockwave rippled out, slamming into the surrounding Cerberuses.
Min-jun capitalized on the hounds reeling from the concussive blast, cutting down multiple targets with ferocious slashes.
Creatures classified at A-rank or below would have collapsed instantly, but the S-rank Cerberuses possessed stubborn resilience.
Though torn and stumbling, they glared back at Min-jun with freezing, venomous glints in their eyes.
Min-jun relied on the flight artifact’s mobility to weave through their flashing claws.
The skirmish devolved into a frantic rhythm of evasion, deflection, and desperate strikes, repeating without pause.
Though his opening tactic had shown immense promise, the sheer difference in physical scale steadily pushed Min-jun into a corner.
From the second they stepped into this S-rank Gate, both Min-jun and Rokan had known full well that battling monsters of this tier would inevitably leave Min-jun at a severe disadvantage.
In truth, maintaining his ground for this duration was already a remarkable feat.
An hour had passed since the full clash erupted.
Roughly half the pack lay slaughtered or incapacitated by grievous wounds, while Min-jun had thoroughly drained his stamina; collapsing on the spot would hardly have been surprising.
His attire and skin were caked in a mixture of his own blood and that of the beasts, while raw burns scarred his neck and limbs.
‘I’ve reached my absolute ceiling.’
Min-jun recognized that he had fought with every ounce of willpower he possessed, securing the greatest conceivable outcome under the circumstances.
Yet acknowledging that his physical frame could endure no further, Min-jun lifted his arm, signaling toward Rokan.
“Lord Rokan…!”
Assessing Min-jun’s condition, Rokan instantly realized his charge required intervention, descending beside him in a flash before directing Dragon Fear toward the remaining beasts.
“…!”
Although the Dragon Fear was not aimed toward Min-jun, its sheer, suffocating weight pressed distinctly against his senses.
Under the weight of that solitary release of Dragon Fear, every remaining Cerberus began trembling violently.
[End your own lives.]
Through a singular Dragon Word spoken by Rokan, the surviving Cerberuses turned their fangs upon their own bodies, tearing themselves apart.
It was an utterly gruesome spectacle.
Watching them wail while rending each other’s skulls, their eyes drowned in abject horror, sent shivers through the air.
Min-jun involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut against the horrifying carnage, while Rokan approached, weaving restorative magic over his battered frame.
“Thank… you.”
The speed of the reversal left his mind spinning.
Standing on the verge of losing consciousness just moments earlier, his body had returned to peak condition in a single breath.
Yet the grotesque scene strewn across the terrain imparted an even deeper shock to his psyche.
Min-jun was well aware that an ancient dragon like Rokan held strength beyond mortal comprehension.
Still, comprehending an idea intellectually differed drastically from witnessing it firsthand.
Even granting that the beasts were already battered—annihilating that many S-rank Cerberuses with such effortless brevity defied reality.
‘If the day comes where I can truly master a dragon’s might…!’
He wondered if, upon reaching that pinnacle, he might command authority identical to what Rokan had just displayed.
A fierce thrill surged within Min-jun’s chest.
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