CLAAANG!

CLAAAANG!

CLAAAANG!

A sword that could contain the greatest blessing of the Three Tiger Kings.

Hyunsoo was immersed in it, his heart surging at the thought that if he could forge that sword well, he might reach the Harmonization Stone.

Then several questions came to him.

What kind of relationship did the three kings originally have?

The single greatest tiger had split itself into three pieces in order to hide itself.

Those who possessed power too great had each built their own kingdoms, misunderstandings and many other things had piled up, and war had broken out.

Hyunsoo only knew that broad outline. He did not know the deeper story between them.

How did the misunderstanding begin?

And why does the North King believe they might be able to reconcile?

Hyunsoo was slowly breaking free from his trance.

“......”

The truth that he was merely forging a sword that could receive the blessings of those three kings, as if chased along by the Four Tiger Sword.

Full Bloom, an incomparably excellent sword, represented the spring that had come at the end of Hyunsoo’s four seasons.

And the most beautiful sword had been written by a father who had never once worked in a forge, making something together with his son.

Stories held great power.

And when one understood them, one could forge a better result, and at the end of that result, draw out an even better outcome.

The order was wrong.

He had intended to make it first, then hear their stories before meeting the West King and the East King.

But this was something he should have heard first.

Of course, there had been the relief that he might actually be able to proceed with the trial of Floor 10.

And the anticipation of having found the Harmonization Stone.

Even so, this was clearly a mistake.

I need to meet the North King.

It happened just as he was waking from his trance.

His senses warned him of danger, and he immediately equipped Overlord’s Armor and Overlord’s Helm.

And what followed was shocking even to himself.

......The damage barely goes in?

He had just obtained the Overlord set on Floor 9.

Of course, it was not that no damage had gone in at all.

It was a figure of speech.

A figure of speech meaning the damage taken was very low compared to the attack received.

He had been struck directly by a full thirty daggers.

[HP falls below 85%.]

“......”

It was such little damage that even he was startled.

There was a reason he could make that comparison.

Hyunsoo was feeling enormous pressure.

The assassins in front of him were absolutely not weak opponents.

Abeo in particular was in the level 480 range, and the other assassins were around level 450.

An assassin group of this level was something difficult to see in the place he had originally lived.

If such a thing existed, it would probably have been under Sword Emperor Bolond.

Through that, Hyunsoo was reminded once more.

The users still could not reach the NPCs.

And just as the users grew, the NPCs of this world grew as well.

Prince Brad and Prince Ben are probably proof of that too. They’ve been growing steadily.

In any case, there was no doubt that the group before him was dangerous.

One only had to look at them even now.

A mere thirty of them had stormed in to kidnap the princess of a kingdom, and no one had noticed.

I would die.

That assumption only applied to before he had climbed this tower.

He had won in the Great Battle of Atlas, and had defeated high rankers, yes, but that had only been because he had taken advantage of their carelessness.

The ones before him were different.

There was no such factor working here.

Of course.

That was a story from before climbing.

As he climbed this tower, Hyunsoo could no longer tell how far he had grown.

The strength he had gained with each floor.

Full Bloom, which led an era.

And the Overlord armor set, something no one else could possess.

I happened to need the exact right subjects to test it on anyway.

Whether Full Bloom, which had worked so well on the monsters in the mob duplication, would also work on high-level NPCs.

And what kind of effects the Overlord’s Armor, which he had obtained for the first time, actually had.

Full Bloom stabbed into the ground.

For a brief moment, the assassins’ eyes were stolen by the sight of a single beautifully blooming Full Bloom.

The result was catastrophic.

FWAAAGH—!

Dozens of blades rose all at once and shot toward all the assassins.

But Abeo and the assassins, seeing those incoming blades, showed instant presence of mind.

They, unusually, had been able to compensate for an assassin’s weakness.

That was their terribly low defense.

Because of that, they should have been slower than ordinary assassins, but they had endured that drawback through brutal training.

And they were also armed with the Undying One set, made through the artisan here, the creator of the Heavenly Cloth.

But—

THUNK!

The instant they were pierced by it, the assassins screamed.

“KRAHAAAAGH!”

The Heavenly Cloth of the Undying One they wore did not activate any effect at all.

Quite literally, all defense had been ignored.

The difference between having all defense and having none at all was the difference between heaven and earth.

They suffered critical damage nearly twice greater than ordinary damage.

And what shocked Abeo was something else.

The man moved in an instant, pulled Full Bloom from the ground, and with a CLACK, all the scattered blades fused back together.

Then he immediately closed in and swung his sword sideways at him.

Abeo dodged it at once, dismissing it as a pitiful movement compared to what had come before.

But that was nothing more than a misunderstanding.

“......”

In the moment he had taken a defensive stance to avoid the strike, that man had already moved with quick steps and had the princess in his arms.

“Waaahhh!”

Looking down at the princess crying in his arms, he pulled out a cloth from his Inventory.

Holding the princess against his chest, he tightly wrapped both her and himself in it.

“You’re going to fight like that?”

......It is a risk.

Fighting while having something to protect—having someone who absolutely had to be kept safe—was the worst possible penalty.

But there was no other way.

Abeo ordered the assassins who had recovered their posture.

“Kill the princess.”

They had planned to kill her after kidnapping her anyway.

Whether she died here or later made no difference.

And from all directions, the assassins began to close in on the princess.

Hyunsoo held the princess with his left arm.

A few assassins stabbed into the gap he could barely cover with one arm.

But Hyunsoo reacted quickly, twisting his body to block them or intercepting them with his arm.

Still, just as before, it was difficult to inflict impact on that armor.

At that moment, one assassin seized an opportunity and stabbed at the princess again, and just as Hyunsoo cleverly blocked it with his arm—

[Overlord]

[It reflects damage back 3x and ignores all defense.]

“......KRAHAAAAGH!”

That assassin clutched his chest, collapsed, and fainted.

The damage had been so overwhelming that he had fallen into a status ailment.

And Hyunsoo felt then that the name of this Overlord skill was fitting.

The Overlord skill and the Overwhelm he possessed were creating synergy.

If they attacked, they themselves might die?

And what was even more absurd was that one of them had already fallen, even though the man still had not taken any special offensive position.

But Abeo ignored it.

“I’ll kill anyone who hesitates.”

Abeo really was that kind of man.

So the assassins, more afraid of dying at an ally’s hands, launched a fierce assault.

Then there was a response.

“Ungh.......”

His HP, restricted because he had to protect the princess, began dropping rapidly.

The problem was that even though thirty assassins were pouring out skills and power on him, the visible rate of HP loss was still lower than they expected.

Even so, before long, his HP fell below 40%.

And then, in that moment—

“Ghost Step.”

The man moved like light and counterattacked.

Holding the princess in his arms, he cut past exactly twenty-nine assassins, including Abeo, like a ghost.

But that was not what Abeo and the assassins found impossible to believe.

Their own spilled blood was showing the bizarre phenomenon of healing him.

The man, who had recovered more than half the wounds on his body in an instant, spoke.

“Infinite Regeneration is no joke.”

In, infinite?

It regenerates infinitely?

How could that make sense?

No, was he lying?

Impossible.

Something like that could not exist.

Then, a special power erupted within Hyunsoo.

[Absolute Sense]

The Overlord’s Absolute Sense, which activated based on chance.

Hearing, sight, touch, smell, and even reflexes.

Hyunsoo was amazed by this power, activating for the first time.

Everything felt slow, and everything was magnified.

But it had one clear drawback.

I’m not used to it.

Because of that, Hyunsoo’s movements actually became clumsier, and openings were exposed.

Cold sweat ran down his back.

It got to the point where he thought it might be better if it did not activate right now.

It felt like wearing a new pair of shoes he was not used to.

And just like that, the assassins hurriedly closed the distance toward the suddenly opened gaps.

This is bad.......

But the power of Absolute Sense was greater than Hyunsoo thought.

Though his movements were clumsy and different from usual, lacking in skill—

His first sense, reflexes, moved, making him avoid an attack and cut someone down in an instant.

FWAAAGH—!

His nose, which he had thought was merely for smelling, sensed the scent of a killer from behind and made him evade.

And touch, the sense he had thought was only what one felt when touching something, let him carry out the finer details of the blade even better, and in an instant let him cut down three assassins.

FWAAAGH—!

“KRAH!”

“U-uaaagh!”

“Ghk!”

Sight, which normally only saw within ninety degrees, saw beyond that and let him avoid blind spots.

And finally, hearing was even more chilling.

The moment they tried to utter the names of their skills, he heard them slowly and clearly.

And Hyunsoo realized what kind of power was about to manifest.

And ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ so what happened was this.

Before a skill could activate—first—

THUNK!

He cut one bastard down and killed him.

And just as another had nearly finished casting—

SHHHHK—!

A head was severed and sent flying in a grotesque scene.

The few seconds in which Absolute Sense was active.

Seeing the results produced amid the instability happening inside those five senses, Hyunsoo was impressed.

Six assassins had died even amidst that instability.

At that moment, Hyunsoo thought this.

What happens if I train this?

The instability was to the point of being like a newborn calf trying to walk.

And even so, it was this strong.

But Abeo was clearly a powerful figure, and his strength lay in creating spellbooks.

He was a man capable of manufacturing spellbooks that others could not make, a mysterious power and trait of his.

Though he had only a few sheets of this special spellbook—

the Spellbook of Seizure.

He had realized it.

Since the man was a blacksmith, his framework was made of artifacts.

With a single page of this Spellbook of Seizure, he could temporarily seize all of his artifacts.

Of course, in the case of users, artifact protection existed.

Even if taken, they returned after one minute.

Even so, Abeo judged that one minute was enough to kill him.

The power activated.

At once, all the armor and weapons the man was wearing were imprisoned inside Abeo’s spellbook.

This was not the concept of a status ailment, but the concept of a spellbook, so even Hyunsoo could not resist it.

It was the same appearance as before, when he had been in that short-sleeved shirt and shorts.

All defense had dropped completely, and on top of that, he had lost the sword that represented him, the sword that gave him “infinite regeneration.”

“Hm, a spellbook like this exists? That’s impressive.”

It was pure admiration.

But Abeo sneered.

He was pretending to be calm, but had he not just lost everything?

The ones charging in also hesitated.

“The experiment’s over.”

“?”

“?”

“?”

An experiment?

It really had been an experiment for Hyunsoo.

How much the Overlord set and Full Bloom, which had not yet reached Transcendence, could restore against enemies this strong.

Its performance had been astonishing.

Once Full Bloom reached Transcendence, and once he grew used to the Overlord set, he could not even imagine the synergy that would occur.

So he switched back to what he was used to.

To begin with, Full Bloom was incomplete.

RUMMMMMBLE—!

The Twin Dragon Sword.

And on top of the Calamity Armor set—

FLAP!

Seeing him instantly throw on the Lord’s Coat, Abeo was flustered.

H-how can this......?

That shock soon spread among the fifteen surviving assassins.

“Twin Dragon Sword.”

Full Bloom was fake.

That was what Abeo thought.

Because the moment the name of that sword, Twin Dragon Sword, was spoken—

CRAAAASH—!

All the daggers the assassins held shattered apart.

“Combo.”

Along with the words inscribed in gold—

“Pull them in, the lord’s command. Sever in Two.”

SHHHHHK—!

All the assassins hemming him in scattered into ashes.

Coughing up blood, Abeo thought:

I thought the North King had failed in the summoning.......

But no.

With this summoning, he had summoned a hero who would truly change the tide of the war.

In a faraway land.

Stories of Hyunsoo were spreading.