Chapter 123

Chapter 123
## Chapter 123

### Chapter Title: Piercing the Bastion’s Barrier

—

Jung O-hoon was lost in a state of intense concentration. Even as the helicopter buffeted against the wind, his focused gaze remained remarkably steady.

I watched him for a few seconds before reaching out and smacking him across the back of the head.

“What was that for?! Why did you strike me?”

Ignoring Jung O-hoon’s indignant shout, I simply gestured with my chin toward the translucent shimmering of the bastion’s protective shield visible on the horizon.

“Keep your eyes on the target. Stop letting your mind wander.”

“I am focusing!”

I didn’t let him off the hook.

“Your entire history up to this moment. The blood, sweat, and tears you’ve invested. The ambitions you hope to realize. The stings of past defeats and the desperate resolve to succeed now.”

Jung O-hoon went silent as I spoke.

“All of that is just noise.”

Emotions like those aren’t going to help you drive that bayonet through the barrier.

They are nothing but obstacles. If you want to ace an examination, don’t waste your energy taping ‘You can do it!’ slogans to your monitor—use that energy to actually study the material.

“If there is space in your mind for anything, let it be ‘I will do this.’ Map out the exact mechanics of how you’ll achieve it. Everything else is irrelevant.”

Jung O-hoon didn’t argue; instead, he began to draw in long, controlled breaths.

“Visualize only the variables of success. The path the projectile must take. The contingencies for when they attempt to knock the bayonet out of the air. Forget about being the best or believing that hard work guarantees a reward.”

Slowly, the mana surging into the bayonet started to find a steady rhythm.

“This… this should be enough.”

I gave a short nod at Jung O-hoon’s assessment and gripped his shoulder firmly.

“Don’t stop. Push through to the very limit. Not until you feel like quitting—until your physical form literally cannot give any more.”

This was the ideal environment for growth. The crushing weight of a high-stakes mission forced a level of absolute immersion, necessitating the mental processing of a thousand different combat simulations.

Beads of perspiration formed on Jung O-hoon’s brow. They pooled in his eyebrows before carving tracks down his face.

“Hoo… hah…”

His grip on the rifle was white-knuckled and trembling. At the muzzle, the bayonet hummed with a low, vibrating frequency, saturated with mana.

“Keep going. It’s still unstable.”

At my command, Jung O-hoon tightened his hold on the weapon even further.

“I feel… like there’s nothing else. Just me, this rifle, and the mark.”

“That’s a nice sentiment. Now drop the poetic act. You can see the rest of the world perfectly fine with your own eyes.”

None of that sensory deprivation talk was real. Regardless of the mental state Jung O-hoon was currently inhabiting, the world remained full of distractions. They just didn’t matter.

I spent a moment silently gauging his internal flow before giving the order.

“Excellent. Release it.”

The bayonet took flight. With a sharp crack, it generated a massive atmospheric wake as it tore through the air toward the bastion’s shield.

The Paradox Flame ignited along its length, trailing behind it like the fiery hair of a falling star.

Glimmering violet beams erupted from the geometric fortress nestled inside the bastion, reaching out like predatory fingers to intercept the bayonet as it crossed the sky.

“…”

Jung O-hoon didn’t utter a sound; his eyes were locked onto the shield. The fortress spat out continuous waves of purple energy.

“Tch.”

In response, the bayonet began to dance. It veered wildly in a zigzag pattern, altering its course multiple times in a split second to close the gap.

It left behind a charred, black trail in the air, spinning and weaving in a breathtaking display of aerial mastery.

It looked theatrical, but there wasn’t a single wasted twitch. Every time the bayonet corkscrewed, the fortress’s defensive beams struck nothing but thin air.

The distance was relatively short. Moving at 3.8 km/s, a direct flight would have concluded in mere seconds.

But a straight line was suicide. It had to navigate through a forest of hundreds of defensive strikes.

“They’re stepping up the pressure.”

To bypass the wall of fire, the bayonet occasionally had to stall or even reverse its momentum, momentarily halting its forward progress.

“This… cursed… arm!”

Jung O-hoon’s teeth were clamped shut, veins bulging at his temples—I couldn’t tell if it was from pure exertion or mounting frustration—as he stared down the bastion.

500 meters remaining.

The space between the bayonet and the shield had shrunk to a fraction of the original distance. Just a little more.

“Ah.”

The thought had barely formed when one of the fortress’s beams finally made a direct hit, resulting in a blinding flash.

It seemed the automated defenses of the fortress had finally outcalculated Jung O-hoon’s manual guidance.

His face fell as the bayonet disintegrated into shards.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. We’re heading back.”

Failure was a part of the job. There was no helping it. Hovering the helicopter any longer was just begging for a counter-attack.

“It isn’t over.”

As I prepared to argue, Jung O-hoon’s body jolted, and he performed an unexpected maneuver.

“You absolute lunatic. Damn, the kid actually has some spine.”

My irritation turned into a grin of approval. The broken pieces of the bayonet were still vibrating with mana, and they were still cloaked in my Paradox Flame.

Those jagged fragments suddenly accelerated, carving intricate, overlapping paths through the sky as they swarmed toward the shield.

“Ha… damn… we actually did it.”

Two of the shards slammed home.

The black fire caught on the massive barrier like a spark hitting dry brush. It started small but quickly began to eat away at the structure, incinerating a massive breach in the defense.

“Well done. Han Sang-ah and I will take it from here. Go back and get some sleep.”

The plan had been a three-person assault, but he was completely spent.

“Don’t you dare lower my cut just because I’m tapping out. Understand?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, you greedy brat.”

Even at the edge of exhaustion, he was worried about the paycheck. I had no clue what he needed the money for, but his tenacity was something else. With that, I stepped out of the open door of the chopper.

“See you later.”

“Right. Let’s move.”

I hit the ground with a resounding thud. Han Sang-ah was already there, her blade unsheathed and ready. Without exchanging a word, we sprinted toward the bastion.

“That black fire.”

“I’m going to keep it fueled until the bastion falls.”

Han Sang-ah gave a silent nod of understanding.

“I suppose that means we won’t have access to it for our own strikes.”

“Not necessarily.”

The Paradox Flame was anchored to the shield, slowly eating away at its integrity. While I couldn’t incinerate multiple conceptual targets simultaneously, maintaining one was manageable.

I summoned the Paradox Flame to coat the head of my spear. It sparked to life readily.

“That’s good to know.”

Han Sang-ah replied briefly, her eyes following the way the dark fire coiled around the weapon.

“Worry about your own performance. You had a rough time back at Cheorwon—if you don’t give it your all here, I’m going to give you hell when we return.”

A swarm of reanimated remains threw themselves at us as we ran. I reached for the crown with my left hand and flooded it with mana.

The artifact emitted a brilliant white radiance, causing the undead to let out a collective wail.

In a flash of movement, heads were severed. Bolts of lightning danced along the edge of her blade, turning the headless torsos into heaps of ash.

“Not bad. I could probably take down thousands like this without breaking a sweat.”

That was Han Sang-ah’s clinical takeaway after her opening move.

“I told you I was ready.”

She offered a subtle nod.

A gargantuan sphere made of stitched-together limbs and torsos came rolling toward us. The faces making up the mass shrieked as they were crushed under the weight of the rolling horror.

“What is this garbage?”

I reached out, caught the momentum of the meatball, and slung it away with a heave. It went flying, crashing into a distant line of charging ghouls.

Spear and sword cut through putrid skin and snapped blackened bone. Waves of fire and electricity cleared the path of the staggering dead.

We cut, we burned, we pierced, and we shocked. Our advance was an unrelenting force of nature.

“The leader is hiding in that direction.”

Despite the chaos, we didn’t succumb to bloodlust. We surveyed the field. We identified the high-priority targets. We anticipated their movements—calculating their strategy against our own.

“Heads up. Watch your flank.”

From the battlements of the fortress, spheres of green sulfurous fire and bolts the size of trees were launched at us. Rather than responding verbally to Han Sang-ah, I swung my spear, swatting one of the massive arrows out of the air.

The projectile stopped instantly in mid-flight, then reversed direction with a thunderous boom.

“At this rate, the two of us might actually be enough to pull this off.”

Han Sang-ah flicked the gore from her sword as she spoke.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not.”

The battlefield was fluid. If we kept our momentum, we would crush them. If the tide turned, we would regroup.

Han Sang-ah vaulted into the air, landing in the center of a pack and burying her sword into the earth. Lightning surged outward, vaporizing the entire group.

“Stop wasting your energy. You can handle them without the fireworks.”

I told her to stop showing off. She adjusted her output accordingly.

“There it is. They’ve certainly rolled out the red carpet for us.”

The massive gates were sealed tight. Scores of siege engines—catapults and ballistae—were aimed directly at the breach. A rain of flaming boulders and poisoned bolts began to descend.

“Hoo.”

As she exhaled, the incoming projectiles began to collide with one another in mid-air. Their paths twisted unnaturally, and they crashed harmlessly into the dirt. That was Han Sang-ah’s contribution. The heads of the bolts were made of iron, after all.

Controlling magnetism was second nature to her by now.

“The gate looks reinforced. Tearing it down might—”

Before she could finish the thought, I unleashed a rapid-fire sequence of spear thrusts against the doors. The wood groaned and splintered under the impact before the entire structure collapsed backward with a heavy screech.

“The gates? Please.”

“They were nothing.”

We stepped over the debris and into the interior.

“Hello, everyone. The guests have arrived.”

The corpses within the fortress began to twitch, their mutilated shapes beginning to reform. Ruptured skin fused back together; shattered limbs snapped back into alignment.

Eyes that were hanging by threads popped back into their sockets.

They were still monstrous, but…

The defenders were receiving some kind of enhancement from the fortress itself. It didn’t change anything.

“Oh, that reminds me. I brought a little something for the occasion.”

The crown in my left hand blazed with even greater intensity—I had doubled the mana input.

A towering armored corpse swinging a heavy flail let out a guttural grunt in my direction.

“What are you looking at, you overgrown pig?”

It bellowed and swung the weapon. The spiked iron ball cut through the air toward my head.

*Thud*—the stone beneath my feet cracked. The iron ball that had connected with my skull simply bounced off and hit the floor.

“Ow. That actually stung a bit.”

There wasn’t a mark on me. My skull wasn’t something that could be cracked by a simple blunt instrument anymore. I grabbed the chain of the fallen weapon and pulled with all my might—the massive undead warrior was jerked off its feet and flew toward me.

“Your turn, pal.”

I drove the iron ball directly into its face. Unfortunately for the corpse, its head wasn’t nearly as durable as mine.

It disintegrated like a piece of fruit under a sledgehammer.