Dual System: Ascension of A Nameless Nobody

After both of them cleared their respective floors, they met in the stairwell.

Sol had a victorious, proud smile on his lips as he approached him while bashfully running his fingers through his unkempt, hazel locks.

“Yo, Jeong-Hui!” Sol greeted him as they both met on the mid-section between both floors on the stairwell, “I ran into a giant insect, but I managed to defeat it. Not a biggy. What about you?”

In contrast to Sol’s proud expression, what he wore was a solemn look of lamentation that quickly caused Sol’s own smile to fade as he realized what that look could mean.

“Jeong-Hui? What’s up…?” Sol asked.

He looked up, “Ho-Jun and Junsu…they…”

Before he could finish as his words lingered with hesitation to embed such a reality, Sol began to realize what was being told to him as his eyes widened in disbelief.

“They’re dead,” he finally got out with it.

“No way…” Sol said quietly.

He nodded, clenching his fists as his eyes held fresh sorrow in them, “…I honestly still don’t know what it was exactly that I saw, but it looked like…Ho-Jun was taken over by one of those centipedes.”

“…Taken over…?” Sol repeated in disbelief.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “By the time I found him, he was gone. He wasn’t of mind anymore. He…ate Junsu.”

“Ate him…? What the hell? This is bad, Jeong-Hui,” Sol held his own head, looking at him, “We have to regroup with Yeong-Un! We’ve got to get everybody awake!”

Sol had grabbed him by his shoulders, looking straight at him with urgent fear now, though he was still processing the abhorrent sights he had just witnessed.

“Jeong-Hui…?!”_.

“I know,” he finally responded, looking up at him, “…Go up and find Yeong-Un. Make sure he’s fine, then tell him to wake up everybody on those floors. After that, get Dae-Seong…right now, we need his leadership.”

Sol nodded, gulping, “What about you?”

“I’ll keep checking the lower floors…Korain, Eunji, and Kwang-Jo are on the second floor, and Chang-Ho is on the first…I’ll get them up and figure out if there’s anything else lurking,” he planned as he went, nodding to himself, “Get going! We don’t have time to waste!”

Swallowing his new grief, Sol nodded before sprinting up the stairs, “Stay careful, Jeong-Hui!”

He watched the hazel-haired young man disappear up the staircase before mumbling to himself, “Careful is all you can be in this world.”

Moving down to the second floor, he burst through the door from the stairwell like a football player, bashing through it with his shoulder.

To his surprise, he didn’t need to find Korain or Eunji, seeing the two already in the hall, but they were up for a reason:

Together, the two were combating what looked like a hivemind of centipedes that balled up and intertwined in an abhorrent mess that took a humanoid shape.

The man with long, black-and-white hair roared out before using his claymore to cut off the humanoid amalgamation of centipedes’ arm, but it instantly reformed and forced him to guard against a powerful fist of insectoids.

“Damn! This thing doesn’t stay down!” Korain grunted.

“Cast: Thorn Barrier!” Eunji called.

The spell came just in time to guard Korain from an unexpected extension of the centipeetle-humanoid’s arm that reached for his throat.

It took shape in a wall of mystical, pale-white roots that bore razor-sharp thorns, catching the hivemind of centipedes’ extended arm in it.

“Nice save!” Korain called out.

“Hey!”

He yelled out, running up from behind them, getting their attention now that their enemy was held at bay by the thorn wall.

Korain and Eunji both looked back in surprise.

“Jeong-Hui?” Eunji called out his name.

“Lad!” Korain said in shock.

Meeting up with the two, he caught his breath, seeing that they weren’t exactly in perfect shape, as Korain’s ivory armor had been scratched and dented at various points, and Eunji’s beige skirt was torn at various points, along with her white, overlapping mage robes.

“…I’m guessing I don’t have to catch you both up on the situation?” He said through his breaths.

“Nope…You’ve been through the ringer yourself, huh?” Korain asked, noticing it by the exhausted wear on the young man’s expression.

“Yeah…” He looked at the two for a moment before coming out with it, “…Ho-Jun and Junsu are dead. These things got them.”

He opted not to tell them that Ho-Jun ate Junsu, as it definitely wasn’t the intent of Ho-Jun himself, but the centipede that took control of him.

Eunji’s mouth dropped in disbelief, “…That’s…”

“Shit…Two more? Dammit,” Korain clicked his tongue in frustration.

“…”Two more”…?” He looked at Korain.

As he asked this, the two in front of him fell silent for a moment while the amalgamate centipede continued to try and break through the thorn barrier.

“Kwang-Jo didn’t make it,” Korain told him straight, not beating around the bush.

He could tell it was still fresh for the both of them, as Eunji seemed completely distraught by all of the loss that happened so quickly.

“Oh…I see…” He looked down, squeezing his fists shut.

Another…Why is this happening? He thought.

A moment of silent grief persisted between the three before Korain brought them back into focus with a slap of his hands.

“Alright! Now’s not the time to lament! We’ve got to act now, or we’re all going to become victims of these centipede bastards–!” The Gangcheori executive member told them.

Eunji sniffed, forcing her tears back as she adjusted her round-rimmed glasses with a nod, “R-right!”

“I’m with you,” he said, “…By the way–cutting them doesn’t work.”

“I noticed,” Korain clicked his tongue at the centipede monster.

It was beginning to break through the pale, thorned roots, tearing them apart as the three got ready for a confrontation against the wild, hissing hivemind of insects.

“What do we do, then?” Eunji looked at him.

“Burning them away works, and freezing does as well. I can do both, but…this one looks tougher than the others,” he told them.

Korain nodded, “Yeah. It’s made up of hundreds of those bastards. All balled up. Those exoskeletons are tough, and even tougher when grouped up like that. It won’t be easy to burn ’em all away like that, or freeze them.”

“That’s why it’s going to be a group effort, right?” He said.

Korain put on a wry smile, taking the front, “You read my mind.”

Finally, the human-shaped mess of centipedes tore through the thorns, immediately whipping its extending limbs of many-legged, hard-shelled insects around in an attempt to mutilate and crush them with sheer force.

The wind hissed from the strength of its arm-whips, each time they hit the walls, they cracked from the raw power exhibited.

Korain took to the vanguard, naturally, deflecting the whip-strikes with his claymore as he yelled out, “It goes without saying, but don’t get caught by its strikes! This damn insect packs a punch!”

“I can tell!” He yelled out in response.

Eunji held her mystical staff forward: “Cast: Full-Metal!”

The defensive-augmentation spell cast on the ponytailed warrior multiplied his “constitution” stat as his complexion temporarily resembled gleaming titanium–in other words; his sturdiness was magnified.

It was clear what the plan was without it having to be explicitly said: Korain was allowing its attack to focus on him, and Eunji was supporting him with magic to lessen the burden.

That left him, the swiftness and most nimble, to handle the offensive.

Normally the fast, repeated whip strikes that extended several meters, curving and snapping at blinding speeds would make it impossible to close in, but he just so happened to have the perfect tool to get around it:

Sage Period, activate! Hone my senses! He thought.

It was a double-edged sword, one that came with a heavy risk: Sage Period came with the unavoidable demerit of doubling whatever inflictions he received, but in this case, his reflexes were heightened beyond their normal limits.

I can see it, he thought.

As he watched the humanoid hivemind of centipedes continue to unleash its repeated whip-strikes of its elongated limbs while Korain defended against it, they moved as if they were recorded in slow-motion for his vision.

It required his utmost amplification of his senses, however, as he strained his eyes enough for the veins around his orbular organs to become prominent and protruding.

I’ll end this as swiftly as possible: Hades’ Touch combined with Ripper…That should do the job! He thought.

He launched his assault after ingraining the pattern of the centipede’s whips into his mind, setting off with a series of [Blink Steps] that allowed him to pass through the vicious defense of the monstrous entity’s strikes.

There were over a dozen whips per second, resulting in a repetitive, slamming-and-thumping sound repeating as the centipede-amalgamation relentlessly pelted against Korain’s claymore.

“Ngh…!” Korain gritted his teeth.

Even though he was able to cleanly avoid the whipping limbs, he could still feel the potent, abrasive winds generated by their visceral force, knowing full well the impact those would have on a direct-hit.

First he launched up to the ceiling, then forward onto the right wall, then to the left wall, directly behind the melded horror of centipedes.

“…Wrath of Hades!”

[Spirit: -500. Remaining Spirit: 1200/3600]

All at once, his frost-enchanted daggers were guided into a seamless flow of a dozen slashes, landing at various points of the centipede monster’s wriggling body.

…It worked! He thought.

With so many visceral slashes left at once, the frost of Hades’ Touch quickly spread throughout the insect horror’s form.

As his assault succeeded, he released Sage Period, taking the strain off of his eyes as he blinked.

And during that singular blink, it struck–

“Look out, Jeong-Hui!”