Episode 143. Transcendents (5)
Characteristics, skills, stats.
All the factors that gave me, -Hunter Jeong Si-woo-, special powers disappeared when I transcended. They vanished as if they had evaporated, and all the while I trained, I felt like I had gone back to my Academy years when I was powerless.
The factors that enhanced unnatural and explosive power. Now that I lost all of them, I was no different from an ordinary person.
I thought all I had was my tightened muscles, the bones I acquired as I was reborn, and the technique that came from the martial arts knowledge in my head.
Therefore, I had evaluated myself as an ordinary person who was capable of knocking down a few adult men at most.
“Arrghhh!”
But I had been underestimating myself. The two weeks of training were enough to instill martial arts into my new body, and the instinctive blow stretched forward with precision.
I felt no pain in my fist that delivered the impact along a clear-cut trajectory. It meant that my body was much harder than I thought. I had hit him in the face with all my might, but there was no recoil.
-Skin as hard as Orichalcum, the material of Mirage.
The phrase I thought of when I made my new body suddenly passed through my head. No way, really? Did the image I envisioned become imprinted on my body? I couldn’t help but wonder.
“What are you… what are you doing!? You stole… from me, and now this!?”
The Transcendent shouted out loud. And before I could answer, he quickly added in a mumbling voice that was hard to understand.
“You… don’t seem to know because you just transcended……. So, so you’d better get it ri- right. Yeah! I’m gonna teach you a lesson!”
He cried, clutching his nose and pointing his finger at me. I could see that more than ten lines were drawn on his palm.
I couldn’t guess what kind of powers they were just by looking at that. He had more than five times the number of powers than me since I just had two. But I couldn’t imagine myself losing at all.
That was the first thing I learned as a Transcendent. The most important thing was the image. The moment you imagined a certain image in detail and believed in it, it became reality. Of all the Traveler’s teachings, I listened to that part most intently.
“Da… damn it─!”
A line drawn on his palm gave off a faint glow. And the ground trembled. The small grains of sand on the ground swelled up and soon turned into shapes of spears.
It was a power similar to magic. But it was different because it didn’t need any incantations or casting, nor did it need any resources like mana.
The first thought I had when I saw someone else using their power was this:
‘This guy has no creativity whatsoever.’
I didn’t know about other worlds. But I had fought endlessly with monsters and countlessly saw people go through Awakenings to become superhumans and hunters. And to me, the Transcendent’s power was very trivial.
It was merely a combination of elements you could see in games shaped into something. It had no impact.
‘And it’s slow.’
The spears made from sand grains were rising from the ground very slowly. Or, to be exact, my senses were way more acute than I expected.
The air’s vibrations against my skin, the slight gaps between the sand grains that made up the spears, and the tip of the spear that seemed to be constantly rotating due to the Transcendent’s power.
They were not human sensations. They… they were close to monster instincts. I could instantly draw in my mind where the spear would stab and how it would threaten my life. It wasn’t one of the five senses. It was a sixth sense that monsters were born with.
For my inner muscles, I imagined the powerful muscles that make up a monster’s body.
I constantly improved my eyes, ears, nose, and skin that sensed the air.
I still didn’t know exactly how my body evolved.
Crack.
Like a curved bow, I bent my back at an unnatural angle. It was a posture impossible for humans. The sand spears barely missed me. A few of the Transcendents’ faces hardened.
“How the hell did he compose his body?”
“Is he a hero? What kind of life did he live before transcending…?”
“Maybe he’s from an advanced world. If he’s from Moorim or the Valstaya Empire, that would explain…….”
I definitely knew some of the worlds they were talking about. I moved my bent body and glared at the guy staring at me stupidly. Once he saw me, he started to hiccup with a frightened face.
Instead of giving him more attention, I looked down at my body.
‘I’ve become much stronger than I thought. No, stronger doesn’t explain it. My body’s mechanism has completely changed.’
To start, my speed was different. I thought my body had just become lighter, but it wasn’t that. It seemed like I was faster now than when I was the 1st class hunter Jeong Si-woo, wrapped in stats and characteristics.
Also, my skin, which was presumably made of Orichalcum, and my muscles that were seemingly those of monsters, produced a surprisingly explosive force.
My heart skipped a beat. Just a few conceptions and two weeks of training had completely transformed my body.
And while I was lost in those thoughts.
“What are you doing─!”
A loud voice rang from above.
“How dare you cause disruption in the square!? Just because you are a bit talented, do you think you can bully a senior Transcendent and steal their power?”
Fire. That was the only word that could describe his appearance. His head, arms, legs, torso, and facial features were all made of flames. Whenever he spoke, flames flickered, and burning heat smothered the atmosphere.
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