## Chapter 111 – 111. The Pursuit
#111. The Pursuit Team
*Ding-*
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***
“Oh, you’re awake?”
My head was dizzy, as if I’d just woken up from anesthesia. Beyond my blurry vision, I met Yoo So-wol’s eyes.
I slowly looked around. No matter how much I looked, this was definitely the room you couldn’t leave without having sex.
“How long was I out?”
“Not that long, I think. When I returned to the room, you were already collapsed, but even considering that, it’s only been about a quarter of an hour.”
Around 15 minutes, definitely not long.
The horny monk seemed to have truly achieved enlightenment in the meantime, nowhere to be found no matter how much I looked.
‘Did he really go this time?’
Just a little bit, but I felt a strange sense of regret. It was odd. It wasn’t like we’d spent enough time together to form any real attachment.
The answer to that question was nearby.
*Whoosh*, I could feel the monk’s energy from the power sleeping in my core. The energy of the Vajra, embracing all things in the world, unbreakable.
Though the time we spent together was very short, in a way, he could be considered my teacher. I even had a slight thought of visiting his grave someday if I had the time.
Of course, I didn’t know if there would even be a tombstone.
‘…My energy is much more stable than before I passed out.’
That wasn’t all. In a corner of my mind, knowledge I’d never seen before was taking root.
They were clearly characters and drawings I was seeing for the first time, but it felt as if I’d seen, read, and repeated them tens of thousands of times over decades.
The Immovable Vajra Art, it was about the Vajra Divine Monk’s martial arts. Although what was available to me now was only a small part of a book that spanned hundreds of pages, I wasn’t too worried.
I was confident that I would eventually know everything. All I needed now was time.
*Clap-*
With a light prayer, golden waves surged.
An intangible energy with a different texture than mana, inner energy. What would Chun Yeo-hwa say if she saw this?
“Brother, this is…”
“…Ah.”
I was so focused on the essence of the Immovable Vajra Art that I’d completely forgotten that I was currently lying with my head on Yoo So-wol’s lap. A million thoughts ran through my head.
Should I try to brush it off and move on? Or should I fuck her senseless on the bed again until she lost her mind? But before long, I realized that neither would be of much use.
“…Yeah. The Immovable Vajra Art. I got it with the Prajna altar in that room.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Yoo So-wol, but when weighing me, whom she’d only met for less than a week, against the sect she’d spent her whole life with, it was obvious which side she would choose.
In the worst case, I might have to run away with Chun Yeo-hwa.
But her reaction was different from what I expected.
“Congratulations!”
“…What?”
“I knew you could get it, Brother.”
I couldn’t see any other emotions on Yoo So-wol’s face. She was purely congratulating me.
She, who had been as happy as when I took her virginity, suddenly wore an expression like the protagonist of a detective manga.
“Don’t you think there were too many people gathered for this investigation, Brother? It’s really rare for the sect’s elders to gather in one place like this. Even our master rarely goes down from the mountain gate, maybe once every ten years?”
“Well… isn’t that because of the rumor that the Vajra Divine Monk stayed here in his final years?”
Yoo So-wol shook her head. When I tried to get up, she grabbed my head and laid it back on her lap.
“Even if it were his tomb, it would be really unusual for the elders to come all the way here just because of a rumor that he stayed here in his final years. Unless it was about the secrets of the Shadowless Godly Thief.”
There’s a Shadowless Godly Thief in this world too?
I got unexpected information.
“It wasn’t just a rumor?”
“Yes, but I don’t think my sect or the Jongnam sect knew. I only happened to overhear the Shaolin sect talking about it. I don’t know how the rumor you know spread, Brother, but the rumor and the truth are a little different. The Shaolin sect said that there was some kind of arrangement left behind by the Vajra Divine Monk somewhere here.”
Yoo So-wol’s gaze turned to my right hand. The golden energy that repels evil, the Vajra energy.
Additionally, I took out the wooden box containing the Prajna altar from my inventory.
“If you mean an arrangement, you mean this?”
“Ah…”
Her eyes glazed over as she looked at the Vajra energy.
“But will it be okay? The Mount Hua sect must have come to this investigation with various interests in mind, and the Immovable Vajra Art is Shaolin’s martial art.”
“It’s okay.”
Yoo So-wol gave me a bright smile and stroked my hair. It felt strange, like being treated by a younger sister.
“An arrangement is something that should eventually return to the person the monk recognized. He must have recognized us, so we were able to come this far.”
“…”
I turned my head away from Yoo So-wol, who was overestimating the Vajra Divine Monk too much. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the Vajra Divine Monk regretted living as a virgin until the end and created a room you couldn’t leave without having sex.
“Thank you.”
“It’s only natural.”
We got up and quickly prepared to leave. I wanted to spend more time together, but time was tight in many ways, as the Mount Hua sect might be looking for her.
Thanks to the stairs that had appeared on the left wall of the room, we were spared the trouble of finding a way up.
We climbed the stairs, following the sunlight coming in through a small gap in the distance.
*Thud-*
At the end of the stairs, I pressed what looked like a switch, and the ceiling opened, allowing us to emerge above ground.
We came out in a small pavilion in a corner of the ancient temple.
Yoo So-wol ran to me and hugged me. She rubbed her face against my chest for a long time before finally letting go.
“I’ll see you later.”
*Kiss*, Yoo So-wol lightly touched my cheek with her lips on tiptoe, then ran out of the pavilion. I watched her go for a moment, then turned toward the entrance.
“First, I need to cast Phantom Shifter again… Huh?”
The moment I carefully raised my magic power, I noticed that the illusion I had created next to Chun Yeo-hwa, the Hallucination magic, had disappeared.
Because I fainted? No, that wasn’t it. The illusion was designed to last for two or three hours even if I fainted.
*Bang!*
I immediately kicked off the floor and leaped forward.
‘…Someone destroyed the illusion.’
At the heart of the illusion is a core of magic power. If that is destroyed, the illusion will disappear before long.
There was no way Chun Yeo-hwa would have done that, so there was only one possibility to consider.
“Shit!”
I was always aware that Chun Yeo-hwa was being pursued by the Heavenly Demon Sect.
But I was relieved by the fact that she was moving with the great forces of the orthodox sects of Mount Hua, Jongnam, and Shaolin, so I thought it would be okay to be apart for a few hours.
I might be paying the price for that complacency now.
Lightning runs through the magic circuit.
[Extreme Speed]
I run like a bolt of lightning.
In the distance, I can see the entrance to the ancient temple. And the acrid smell of blood stimulates my sense of smell on the wind.
*Thump!*
As soon as I landed, I looked around. Familiar faces were rolling around on the floor as corpses. They were the third-generation disciples of each sect.
Fortunately, Chun Yeo-hwa was not among them.
“Cough, hack…!”
I heard a coughing sound from the pile of corpses.
“Hey, wake up!”
The man’s condition was serious. He had lost too much blood, and even his intestines were spilling out.
“…Tsk.”
I took out a bottle of holy water and a health potion from my inventory and fed them to the man. He was the last remaining witness. I had to hear something, even if it was trivial.
Fortunately, the man’s complexion improved.
“Ugh… where am I…”
“What happened here?! Tell me quickly!”
“Y-you are…?”
“There’s no time, tell me quickly!”
“T-that’s…”
The man stammered and rambled, but I was able to get the important keywords of attack, battle, and escape.
Putting it together, a group of assassins suddenly appeared and massacred the third-generation disciples, and Chun Yeo-hwa stepped in and fought them as much as possible, but eventually, she was outnumbered and ran into the forest.
“Which way did she go?”
“T-that way… Please, please avenge us…”
With those words, the man fainted. His condition hadn’t worsened. He had roughly put his intestines back in and taken holy water and a potion together, so if he woke up after a nap, most of his injuries would be healed.
Leaving the man behind, I hurried into the forest.
The speed was faster than anything I had ever done before, but the anxiety filling my head did not subside at all.
I needed to be faster.
I didn’t want to have regrets I couldn’t undo.
I accelerated the lightning element enough to overload the magic circuit, but that alone wasn’t enough to gain a speed that transcended my level.
My desperation was turning into poison. I hadn’t suffered any internal injuries, but my body, exhausted from absorbing the Vajra energy from the horny monk, began to scream.
But I couldn’t stop or slow down.
I squeezed out all my energy and pushed myself to the limit. Then, suddenly, the Vajra energy in my core awakened and enveloped my entire body.
My body felt much lighter. Stepping on the ground and kicking off the branches felt like I had become a completely different person than before.
It wasn’t just about running fast. Rather, it was as if I had broken free from that obsession and my whole body had regained its freedom.
Immovable Vajra Art, Immovable Lightning Body.
It was as if I was running as a golden lightning bolt. It was a strange sensation completely different from ‘Extreme Speed.’
Whatever it was, now was not the time to be picky. I ran through the dense trees, sometimes like the flowing wind, sometimes like a bolt of lightning.
At the same time, I covered the surrounding area with the maximum range of magic detection I could deploy.
I focused on maximizing all my senses so that I wouldn’t miss even the smallest detail. Two minutes, no, maybe one minute had passed. I was able to find a familiar energy.
I immediately changed direction and ran.
No matter what anyone said, this was definitely Chun Yeo-hwa’s energy.
However, the dozens of energies surrounding her further urged my steps.
Just when I thought I was about to run out of breath, I saw Chun Yeo-hwa fighting a group of black-clad people between the trees.
*Clang! Clang!*
At the sound of cold weapons clashing, I stepped on a branch and jumped up into the tree in one leap. I could see the black-clad people pressuring Chun Yeo-hwa in a large clearing.
“…Those bastards.”
As if responding to my heightened emotions, the mana circle spewed out magic power, and the magic circuit heated up.
I weave spells, construct magic circles, and complete the magic.
[Arrow of Flame]
Numerous magic circles fill the sky.
Countless arrows wrapped in flames, generated from at least dozens of magic circles, surge toward the enemies.
The black-clad people, who belatedly noticed the magic, swung their swords to block the arrows, but they couldn’t block them all.
The arrows pierced the enemies’ bodies, regardless of their foreheads, hearts, abdomens, or thighs, but even so, the number of black-clad people remaining was not small.
I took out Gilgamesh from my inventory and descended to the ground.
“Don’t panic! Even if he’s a master who uses strange sorcery, he’s only one person! Deploy the Slaughter Formation!!”
The black-clad people, who had been panicking at the sight of their comrades being burned to death beside them, moved in unison according to the instructions of the man who seemed to be the leader and formed a formation.
‘I can feel a strange flow of energy. Is it a formation that amplifies each other’s energy and compensates for weaknesses?’
But it doesn’t matter. Whether they stick together or scatter, they’re all going to die here anyway. And I had no intention of fighting in the environment the enemy had created.
Just in time, the magic was completed.
“Forming a formation against a mage? Is that a new suicide method?”
A huge magic circle was drawn under the enemies’ feet. Mana condenses, and the surrounding temperature rises sharply.
Even if the enemies were seeing magic for the first time, they couldn’t possibly not know, having seen the fire arrows flying through the air a little while ago.
“…Damn it, immediately cancel the Combined Attack Formation and run away from here!!”
The enemies, feeling uneasy, struggled to get out of their positions, but the energies that had become intertwined while forming the formation could not be easily released.
The enemies spat out blood and barely managed to release their energies and try to escape, but it was already too late.
A huge flame rises and explodes.
[Burn Flare]
*KWA-AAAAANG!!!!*
