Chapter 73- Five vs one
A heavy pressure descended over the area.
It struck so suddenly that several of the newly arrived players staggered back and fell.
Knees buckled.
Boots scraped against the earth.
One man dropped into a half-crouch, one hand braced against the ground as if the air itself had turned solid and was forcing him down.
The fires that had ringed the stone where the previous group of eight sat waiting for Leo were flattened in an instant, as though crushed by an invisible palm. Flames that had danced waist-high a moment earlier now lay pressed against the ground, sputtering and struggling for oxygen that no longer seemed willing to feed them.
Smoke coiled sideways instead of rising.
The air thickened.....
Birds that had remained silent through the earlier fights exploded from the surrounding trees in a single panicked wave, flying away.
Wings hammered against leaves.
Cries cutting through the dusk.
Then the forest went quiet again, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath.
Leo stood at the center of the ring of enemies.
His armor gleamed dully under the fading light, the partly filled crimson skull on his chest plate pulsed in sync with his heartbeat.
Each throb of light was like a quiet warning.
He raised his free hand almost casually....
Everyone felt the weight behind the gesture—an invisible pressure that settled on their shoulders and chests further increased, making breathing even harder.
Then...
His hand moved in a downward arc....
A deafening boom tore through the clearing.
The sky cracked as though the end of the world had arrived.
Dark clouds that had gathered without anyone noticing now shuddered under continuous thundering sounds.
Lightning gathered inside them, threads of white-blue arcs knitting themselves into a single colossal spear.
The weapon took shape with deliberate cruelty—long, jagged, humming with power older than the ruins of stones beneath their feet.
Then, it moved....
A sharp crackle.
A high, tearing swisshhhh....
Then before they could register it properly, the spear arrived...
It struck the ground within a second, heavier boom that flattened everything within five hundred meters sounded.
Trees ignited and burned to ash in the same instant. Stone ruins already half-collapsed were reduced to blackened rubble. The earth itself cracked and glassed in places. Shockwaves rolled outward in visible rings of distorted air.
Leo remained untouched. The attack had been his.
Of the thirty players who had surrounded him, only five still stood. The rest were gone—bodies thrown outward or simply erased by the lightning’s fury.
Smoke rose from the charred ground.
The surviving five were battered but alive. Three of them carried the unmistakable presence of epic-rank fighters: Kang Tae-oh, the assassin and two other who had been bad-mouthing him since their arrival; a berserker named Samy; and a swordsman who called himself Breezy Sword.
The remaining two were rare-rank tanks, both of them still upright only because they had burned every defensive trump card they possessed the moment the spear began to form.
All five still had more than thirty percent of their health remaining. All five looked at Leo with murder in their eyes.
Leo let out a low chuckle and raised his hand again, repeating the same casual motion.
"Gungnir’s Descent."
Panic rippled through the survivors.
"He can use that in a row?" the berserker shouted.
Heads snapped upward. Clouds already torn open by the first strike had already began to gather with no signs of pressure or lightning.
But nothing happened.....
Leo did not wait. He teleported.
He reappeared beside the berserker, sword already in motion. The blade slashed toward Samy’s neck, seeking a clean one-hit kill.
Samy managed to twist aside at the last possible instant. The edge still caught him across the chest, carving a deep, glowing line through armor and flesh.
[-1106 DMG]
[Critical Hit]
Not enough. Leo thought
The berserker staggered but stayed on his feet, crimson eyes blazing.
"Bastard," Samy snarled. "Using such cheap tricks."
Breezy Sword laughed, the sound sharp and mocking. "Hahaha—yet you still fell for it."
"You also did," the berserker shot back.
The swordsman clicked his tongue and charged. His attack pattern was strange—angles that should not have existed, timing that refused to match ordinary rhythm.
Leo parried cleanly, blade meeting blade with a sharp ring, yet pain still bloomed across his side. The opponent’s strike still landed on his chest even after blocking.
It was like an invisible attack followed the visible one.
[-90 DMG]
Leo’s eyes widened. He had blocked the strike. The armor should have negated the rest. Yet damage had still landed.
Damn. Without this armor that would have been serious.
"Hey," Leo said, voice tight, "I thought I blocked that."
Breezy Sword only chuckled. "Like hell I’m telling you."
The swordsman pressed the attack without pause.
Leo blocked. He dodged. He twisted and redirected.
Every time, a fraction of the force still slipped through—small cuts, glancing impacts, chips of health bleeding away. Slowly, methodically, the swordsman was wearing him down.
Then..... the hairs on the back of Leo’s neck rose.
Instinct screamed.....
He tried to duck, but the swordsman’s next blow landed first, a precise strike that stole his balance and locked his limbs.
[You have been stunned]
[Movement restricted for 1.5 seconds]
Behind him, Kang Tae-oh had already closed the distance. The assassin knew the armor was epic rank. He went straight for the throat. Cold steel kissed skin. The dagger began to sink.
Half a second of the stun duration remained. Then the moment the stun duration ended, Leo teleported away instantly. The dagger still cut a shallow, burning line across his neck .
[-2822 Damage]
More than half his remaining health vanished in a single instant.
Cold sweat slid down his temple.
That had been too close.
He had no time to recover. The two tanks charged, shields raised like battering rams. Leo jumped backward, boots leaving the ground—only to find the berserker already airborne, crimson axe descending in a vicious arc meant to split him in half.
The boots were still on cooldown. No escape....
He raised his sword and met the axe head-on, angling the blade so the heavy weapon skidded along its length and buried itself in the earth instead of his body.
Impact still jarred every bone. Damage still registered.
Before he could even lift the sword again, Kang Tae-oh and Breezy Sword struck together, both unleashing their strongest remaining skills. Leo activated the Aegis Shield—his armor’s defensive trump card. The translucent barrier flared into existence, caught both attacks, and shattered into glittering fragments.
He was safe. But, one of his most reliable protections was gone.
"Can you guys stop bullying a lone blacksmith?" Leo called, half-laughing, half-breathless.
No one answered. The exchange continued without mercy.
Minutes blurred. Ten minutes, maybe more. Leo’s health dropped steadily. Even with perfect blocks and clean dodges, five coordinated fighters were simply too many. Health hovered near thirty percent. The familiar heat of Blood Frenzy began to wake inside the armor, feeding on the damage he had taken.
I need to take them out one at a time. Quickly.
He still had more than fifty Devil Points stored. If push came to shove, he could survive a few minutes in Devil State. That was the last card, and he intended to keep it last.
Leo coated his blade in Eternal Fire. The metal drank the black-edged flames greedily. Then he began the sequence he knew best.
Forge Strike.
Anvil Drop.
Slash.
He focused everything on one of the tanks, chipping the man’s health down to ten percent. When the opening appeared, Leo teleported directly behind him and drove a full-powered slash between the plates of the tank’s back. Health emptied. The first opponent dropped.
Four remaining.
Leo’s own health sat at twenty percent. The bloody aura around him thickened, feeding the Frenzy. His attacks accelerated. Damage climbed. Strength and agility rose with every lost hit point.
"Hey," Breezy Sword called, voice tight, "is he getting stronger?"
Samy answered through gritted teeth. "Yeah. Feels more like a berserker than any blacksmith I’ve ever met."
Leo kept moving. Even epic armor could not cover every angle when four skilled fighters pressed from all sides. He stopped trying to defend perfectly. He began trading. He surveyed the four, marked the berserker’s health at fifteen percent, and committed.
He dodged what he could and tanked the rest, relying on the armor’s high defense. Blows landed. Health dropped further. In return he poured everything into Samy alone. The berserker’s health fell to eight percent.
"Shit—why is this guy targeting me?!"
Leo’s boots came off cooldown. He teleported straight into the berserker’s guard, drove the burning blade through the man’s neck, and tore it free in a single brutal slash.
[Critical Strike]
[-3000 DMG]
Samy’s health hit zero. Leo’s own health fell below ten percent.
Three left.
A wild smile stretched across Leo’s face.
The expression sent a visible shiver down Kang Tae-oh’s spine.
The Blood Frenzy was fully awake now.....
Below twenty percent the armor had already granted a ten-percent boost to his stats. Below ten percent that bonus compounded. At seven percent the total had climbed past thirty-nine percent, and damage output had tripled. Every basic swing now carried the weight of a finishing move.
He circled the last tank, found the gap in the man’s defense, and finished him with a Rising Forge that erupted from beneath the shield wall. The tank collapsed.
Leo’s health touched three percent.
The final threshold unlocked. Stat boosts stacked higher still—ten plus twenty plus fifteen plus eighteen—while damage output climbed to four times normal. He stood on the edge of death and stopped holding anything back.
[Devilification.]
.....