Chapter 202: Preparing for War Pt. 2
‘I’ve definitely gotten stronger.’
Lee Jun-Kyeong was meditating alone on Mt. Cheonma. The residential area of Yangpyeong, where people were gathered, was extremely noisy as they all got together and were busy preparing for the future. It wasn’t a good place to meditate.
‘But here, it’s overflowing with mana. Is it because of Sangun’s influence?’
It may have been because Mt. Cheonma had been where Sangun had lived, but the mountain had a dense concentration of mana and was a perfect location for Lee Jun-Kyeong to meditate. He could feel himself sinking deep within himself. If he closed his eyes and ceased his thoughts, he could feel it.
Thump.
His dragon heart was an organ that contained an enormous amount of mana, and it was beating slowly. The dragon heart was where the power that he had acquired had accumulated.
‘I’ve become stronger.’
He wasn’t just sitting there praising himself either. He may not have reached level ninety-nine yet, but he had still gotten even stronger. The reason for this sudden increase in strength was clear.
‘It happened after I remembered the forgotten memories while in Muninn’s authority.’
After waking up from that experience, which was almost like waking up from a dream, he was definitely stronger than he had been before. Until now, there had always been a reason for his growth.
He had hunted monsters, leveled up, acquired new weapons, and even learned new skills like the mana stream or Galdr. There had always been a causal law he followed with his growth. But, this time, things were different.
‘Just why?’
He couldn’t figure out what had made him so much stronger.
‘When I stopped Odin and Zeus…’
Moreover, he couldn’t even figure out what part of him had become stronger. The massive amount of mana that the dragon heart pumped through him was the same as before. However, the quality had changed.
‘Why?’
Being strong was a good thing, but not knowing the reason as to why was something he had to be wary of. His worry was simple. The power he held might not even be his.
Lee Jun-Kyeong slowly opened his eyes. He was sitting in the forest of Mt. Cheonma on a desolate night. His surroundings were exceptionally dry. The trees rustled in the dark forest, but there was no wind blowing through the leaves.
He sighed. “My mana.”
It was as if his mana was spontaneously coming out of his body and affecting his surroundings. This was dangerous.
Swish!
In a blink of an eye, Lee Jun-Kyeong rose from his seat and swung Muspel’s Spear. With an eerie cutting sound, the trees around him began to fall.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
“Zeus…?”
Then, between the neatly cut cross-sections of trees, Lee Jun-Kyeong saw a face he wasn’t quite used to seeing just yet. The Hunter had raised a hand and parried the slash Lee Jun-Kyeong had just unleashed.
“I apologize, I didn’t know you were there,” said Lee Jun-Kyeong, thinking that he had almost hurt the Hunter by mistake.
“Whatever. It’s my fault for just appearing out of nowhere.”
Zeus relaxed the atmosphere with his signature shrug. He looked over at Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“You seem to have a lot of worries, though.
“Is that why you’ve come all this way?”
Everyone knew that he would be on Mt. Cheonma, so it wasn’t just by chance that Zeus had come all this way.
“By chance…”
Considering he had come all this way to find him, Lee Jun-Kyeong was a bit suspicious that the Hunter had come to harm him. However, that was soon dissipated by Zeus’ next sarcastic remark, “What, do you have some sort of paranoia about me or something?”
Zeus’ gray hair swayed from the pressure of Lee Jun-Kyeong’s mana as the moonlight illuminated his whole body.
“I think I might be able to help,” said the Hunter.
Lee Jun-Kyeong decided to trust him. This was because of the secrets that the Hunter had told him and because he had even confided in him.
‘If it's about my strength…’
Lee Jun-Kyeong worried it may be dangerous to share. But soon, Zeus’ voice resonated in Lee Jun-Kyeong’s mind.
–What, do you have some sort of paranoia about me or something?
Lee Jun-Kyeong swung Muspel’s Spear again.
Swish!
Clang!
There was a resounding rustling sound. “Then, well, let’s see how much your help is worth,” Lee Jun-Kyeong said to Zeus, getting fully comfortable for combat.
***
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
The mountain roared.
However, neither flames nor lightning appeared, and it was just the mountain that rang out as if it was being buffeted by a typhoon. At its peak, Zeus and Lee Jun-Kyeong looked at each other.
“Whew…you’re quite impressive?”
“Whew…”
As if some disaster had come through the area, their surroundings were completely torn apart, and the mountain seemed almost cleaved apart in some way to form a grotesque landscape of cliffs.
Neither of them had used any mana or skills.
“To think we can do something like this just by wielding a sword and spear. I can understand why people look at us and call us gods,” Zeus said as he put down his sword and looked back at Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“Whew…”
Unlike himself, who was breathing quite heavily, Zeus didn’t seem very tired.
“But, something seems completely different from before? From when you had stopped Odin and me.”
“...”
“To be honest, you’re a complete mess. How did you even get that sort of strength back then?” Zeus said with an expression of sincere wonder.
“Right now, your spearmanship, strength control, even your ability to express your power are all messed up. Have you ever even had any proper training? Well, I mean, flashes of your blows obviously showed that you’ve been trained, but…”
Zeus seemed to think and make his decisions on his own.
“Well…” Lee Jun-Kyeong started.
“Ah, wait a moment,” he interrupted.
Even when Lee Jun-Kyeong tried to talk to him, the Hunter raised his hand to stop him.
“You unlucky little brat.”
“You know, I can hear everything you say.”
Zeus slowly approached Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“I know you don’t fully trust me yet, but can you trust me this once?”
“…?”
Zeus approached slowly, raising his hand while reaching toward Lee Jun-Kyeong’s chest where the heart was. An Apex hunter like Zeus would be able to make his heart stop with a simple touch. However, Lee Jun-Kyeong still allowed him to touch his chest.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
Zeus clearly had made an accurate judgment about his condition. He may even already have a way to fix it too. Zeus’ hand reached Lee Jun-Kyeong’s chest before he knew it.
“Ugh!”
Suddenly, Lee Jun-Kyeong let out a scream that sounded like he may stop breathing at any moment.
“Don’t be a little baby.”
But unlike Zeus’ staunch voice, the pain Lee Jun-Kyeong was feeling was beyond imagination.
“AGHHHH!”
He recognized the pain he was feeling.
“You…!”
Glaring at Zeus, Lee Jun-Kyeong opened his mouth.
“How did you learn mana stream…!”
Zeus had used mana stream, and the pain he was feeling was clearly the pain one would feel when someone else’ mana was flowing into one’s body against their natural flow. In fact, Zeus’ mana was forcibly being injected into his heart.
“Mana stream?”
But more than the pain he was creating, Zeus’ response was even more shocking.
“So you call this a mana stream, huh,” he said while smiling. “Thank you. I didn't even know what it was called.”
“…!”
“It seemed like that ignorant bastard of a human that I had met last time was using this power, so I just tried to see if I could learn it.”
He had just learned the mana stream from watching someone use it? Lee Jun-Kyeong's already widened eyes trembled in disbelief.
‘He’s a genius…’
It was demoralizing.
‘A real genius that no one could dare to follow…!’
Slowly, his flow of mana settled down slowly, and Zeus’ mana mixed into Lee Jun-Kyeong’s, almost as if it had been there from the very beginning.
“Oh ho. So you have this power, too? So this is how it’s supposed to be used. Hmm. I was supposed to help you, but…” Zeus said with a bright smile, “Looks like I’m the one who was helped.”
Lee Jun-Kyeong really wanted to punch him in the face.
***
“It really is strange. Your body clearly shows no signs of any training. What you call the mana stream is obviously a great skill for mana utilization, but the rest of it sucks.”
Zeus was right. Lee Jun-Kyeong had never been taught anything. All he had to do to become a Hunter was participate in a tutorial, and he had never received any training beyond that. “But, the spearmanship and the mana expression that you had shown earlier while sparring definitely had traces of training, but there’s absolutely no signs of that in your body… By chance, have you reached a mental wall or something?”
“...!”
Lee Jun-Kyeong realized something.
‘The forgotten memories.’
He also had been curious about it all. When he had picked up and used a spear and shield and had grown stronger as a Hunter, he had been able to use and make use of things so naturally it was almost eerie.
Unlike Jeong In-Chang, who had to grow through hard work, Lee Jun-Kyeong had naturally been able to make use of any and everything. Now, he realized why.
‘Among the memories I had forgotten, there were memories of Seong-Gu-Hyung training me.’
It wasn’t that he was a natural. He had known how to use a spear and manipulate mana from the very beginning. Although he had come to the past and thought he had finally become a Hunter, that couldn’t have been further from the case.
“I was already a Hunter in the first place…” he murmured.
The problem that had been pushed to the side had raised its head once again. However, at that moment, Zeus began to speak.
“I don’t know what sort of memories you’re reminiscing about, but I don’t intend to wait on you for something like that, so listen carefully,” he said. “Your problem is your rapid growth. Something that had been blocked had suddenly been opened.”
“What are you trying to say?” Lee Jun-Kyeong asked.
“Think about it. What do you think would happen if a person who could run a 100 meter dash in ten seconds suddenly had the power to do it in four?”
“Hmm…”
Something about that example seemed odd to Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“What are you thinking so hard for, you idiot. Of course they’d fall.”
“Pardon?” he asked, startled.
“I said, all of a sudden. If as you run, you suddenly get a whole lot faster, you won’t be able to control that speed because you’re not used to it.”
Zeus smiled and continued, “Your condition is similar to that person in question. You have the potential for much greater power, but you unlocked all of that power all of a sudden. So, you’ve actually regressed in power because you don’t actually know how much power you can really express.”
“...”
“Have you received a title yet?” Zeus asked.
Lee Jun-Kyeong slowly shook his head.
“Tsk. Well, although it may not be something caused by a title, there’s something inside of you right now, and even I don’t know if it was supposed to be there from the beginning.”
There was supposedly something inside of him.
“Meditate again, and take a closer look inside of yourself with that mana stream or whatever. There must have been a change of some kind.”
Finishing what he had to say, Zeus turned around as if he had finished what he had set out to do. At this point, Lee Jun-Kyeong finally asked the question he had been putting off until now, “Why are you helping me?”
He knew the Hunter’s purpose had changed, but that change had nothing to do with him. If Zeus wanted to save people, all he had to do was save them. But Lee Jun-Kyeong couldn’t figure out why the Hunter was helping him.
“I had another dream last night.”
Zeus turned around and spoke to him from there.
“Again…he appeared.”
Lee Jun-Kyeong asked, “Jupiter…you’re talking about your Sponsor, right?”
“Yeah. He came out and told me…” Zeus took a step forward. “He came to praise me for doing well.”
Lee Jun-Kyeong pointed out. “But that’s not an answer to my question. I asked you why you had helped me.”
Zeus laughed. “Hahaha!! Do you really want to know?”
His laughter reverberated through the mountains like thunder.
He continued, “Jupiter said something to me. That if I wanted to change the future that I saw, I needed to find someone and help them.”
“And who would…”
“He told me,” Zeus said, looking straight at Lee Jun-Kyeong.
“He told me to help the strangest and most unusual guy in the world. At first, I thought he was saying to help me in some way.”
He shrugged once again.
“But the strangest and most unusual person I’ve ever seen is you, so...”
Lee Jun-Kyeong gritted his teeth once again as he looked at Zeus’ departing figure.
***
The mana stream.
Lee Jun-Kyeong had been neglecting the training of mana stream for some time now. But there was a reason for that as well.
‘Ugh.’
The speed at which his mana had increased had been too fast. Although he had created a flow that was enough to move a river, his mana had already become a sea. Trying to force it to move meant that he would feel the same pain that Zeus had caused before.
“Ugh!”
That was why he had just been waiting for it to naturally change the flow. However, he had to follow the advice of Zeus.
“Whew…”
He had to follow the flow of the mana stream and give everything up to its current. He allowed even his consciousness to be swept away by the current, following down the current that he himself had created. His consciousness floated down a dark space, and Lee Jun-Kyeong could see it now. There was a change within himself that he had never seen before.
‘A book…’
In the dark space, a book that emitted light was floating in the air. Open in the wind, the book revealed its pages. As the pages tore, they fluttered down like powder and were being absorbed into his giant waterway.
Ripple.
The flow of water that was being illuminated by the light began to surge faster than before.