The Thrill of Survival is Lü Bu. (3)
Having witnessed the near-divine archery skills of Ju Lokeuana firsthand, facing two archers at once was nothing short of burdensome for him.
"But this is all part of the experience."
Having already committed to stepping into the battlefield as Lü Bu, retreating was not an option.
Thinking that dying wouldn't really be a loss anyway, he threw himself out the back window and sprinted toward one of the directions the arrows had come from.
As he dashed about 100 meters in an instant, sure enough, an arrow came flying at him.
"From the front!"
Without stopping his stride, he threw a punch toward the rapidly approaching arrow.
"Parry!"
After successfully deflecting a knight's crude spear once, his confidence grew.
Now, even the oncoming arrows weren't difficult to handle.
As the back of his hand briefly grazed the side of the arrow, its trajectory was thrown off significantly, and it veered away.
Three more arrows followed, but none managed to touch Seowoon. After that, the barrage stopped entirely.
"They're close."
He couldn't sense a presence, but instinct told him the enemy wasn't far.
A tense standoff formed between Seowoon and the invisible enemies.
They were trying to find any opening to shoot an arrow through, while Seowoon, on high alert, extended his senses to avoid showing even the slightest gap.
Unlike the arrows that came first, one archer was firing particularly irritating shots—enough to stand out.
He was sure that if he didn't deal with that one here and now, it would be a constant threat later. A bead of sweat formed and rolled off his chin as he kept his concentration razor-sharp.
—Shwaaang!
An arrow tore through the air, flying fiercely toward him.
Seowoon, his expression unchanged and fully focused, simply leaned back slightly and avoided the arrow.
Even as it passed right before his eyes, his gaze didn't waver.
"Arrows flying in from a distance like this aren't the real threat."
The truly dangerous arrows were from the one hidden nearby—whose presence was oddly unnerving, even if unexplainable.
Even as arrows flew from different directions during the tense standoff, they posed little threat to Seowoon in his heightened state of focus.
He had grown so accustomed to them that he could dodge them with minimal movement.
"This will never end at this rate."
Killing players and looting—both were critical tasks for Seowoon.
Players provided vitality, and looting gave him items.
Wasn't there even a saying that the best kind of loot was looting humans?
But the timing was bad.
Right now, while everyone else was still adjusting, this was Seowoon's golden time.
"Tch!"
Clicking his tongue, he suppressed his presence and started running back—only for three arrows to come flying at his back.
He twisted his body to avoid them, but one arrow grazed his side, and blood sprayed into the air.
"Definitely can't underestimate them."
Clutching his torn side, he darted into an alley where houses were clustered closely together, and the arrows ceased.
"Haah."
Looking down at his bleeding side, a sigh escaped his lips.
At the same time, Seowoon drew upon his internal energy, launching his body upward from the alley and sprinting across the rooftops.
Then—three more arrows came flying toward his back.
The first of them struck Seowoon squarely in the back of the head.
At that exact moment, another Seowoon leapt toward the faint trace of a presence—and the one struck in the head vanished like a mirage.
The instant he thought he saw a shimmer in the shadow next to a three-story house, Seowoon's fist moved fast.
"Spatial Strike!"
Thwack.
With a heavy impact sound, the figure slipped into the shadows, but all that could be seen was a bloodstain on the floor.
"I definitely hit him…"
That was as far as the thought went—until he suddenly sensed the opponent's presence sharply and clearly through his intuition, something he hadn't felt before.
Swish! Clang!
He barely rolled out of the way as an arrow shot rapidly overhead and embedded itself in the stone floor.
Reflexively looking up, he saw a figure cloaked in a dark cape reloading another arrow as they twisted mid-air, falling toward him.
Even as they fell, they fired three arrows in rapid succession—an impressive skill that drew nothing but admiration.
But that was it.
Arrows flying in from an unknown direction were certainly a threat—but once the enemy was in plain sight, dodging their shots was entirely manageable.
Besides, seeing the enemy continuously bleeding from the mouth suggested his earlier attack had done substantial damage.
Seowoon twisted his lips into a smirk and charged forward just as the figure landed.
The enemy managed to nock another arrow, but Seowoon, now split into two, showed no fear as both figures closed in.
Swish!
The enemy's expression twisted as the arrow pierced one of the figures, only for it to vanish like smoke. The next instant, a heavy blow landed squarely in his chest.
"Gah!"
With a cry, the enemy collapsed.
Seowoon was about to finish him off when someone else came charging in from behind, loosing arrows, forcing him to retreat.
But Seowoon didn't look frustrated—in fact, his expression was bright.
"Duos are great. Take one down, and the other one shows up."
As the hood of the charging figure flew back, Seowoon's mouth dropped in surprise at the revealed face.
"An elf?!"
He'd encountered mages, knights, even werewolves—so of course there'd be elves—but actually facing one in person was something else.
Long green hair, skin so pale it made even real-world Caucasians look flushed in comparison.
It felt like seeing one of those vampires from Twilighx in real life.
And the ears—sharp and so tall they almost pointed straight up—were exactly how elves were portrayed in stories and movies.
Still momentarily stunned, Seowoon stared at the elf's face, but snapped back to reality as the elf nocked and fired more arrows with deft hands, forcing Seowoon's hands to move just as quickly.
Then, he understood what had been causing that strange sense of dissonance.
"He's slow."
Compared to the arrows of the cloaked figure, this elf's arrows were noticeably slower.
The previous arrows had required intense focus just to dodge, but now he could easily deflect them all without even moving his feet much.
Using them for counter-strike practice, Seowoon deflected every incoming arrow with a smile as he looked at the charging opponent.
With a frown forming on his handsome face, the elf threw his bow aside and drew a slender sword.
"Huh?"
The moment the sword appeared in the elf's hand, a chill ran across Seowoon's entire body.
"Ah, so that's your specialty!"
Shouting as the elf closed the distance, Seowoon launched a burst of energy—but the elf's green eyes gleamed as he cleanly cut through it with his slender sword.
Seowoon narrowed his eyes at the thin, gleaming blade, focusing intently on the elf now charging at him.
"Whew…"
He exhaled deeply, consciously relaxing to keep his body from tensing up with nervous energy.
Spears and arrows, even if you failed to deflect them properly, could still be managed by dodging the sharp tips.
But swords were different.
Even if you avoided the point, a glancing blow from the blade could still slice off a limb.
Heightening his focus, Seowoon deliberately widened his narrow field of vision, keeping the elf's shoulders in sight.
When facing armed opponents with fist technique, the most important thing was reading shoulder movements accurately.
No matter how great a martial art was, it ultimately required the use of hands.
Using hands meant using arms, and using arms meant engaging the shoulder joints.
Of course, all martial arts know this and hide true strikes within feints—but this elf wasn't a martial artist.
Seowoon raised his hands lightly in front of him in a diagonal stance, which the elf seemed to dislike, as he began weaving side to side, his green hair fluttering with his movement.
Seowoon immediately retreated three steps, refocusing on the opponent's movement.
To an outsider, the elf's side-to-side movements while charging might have looked simple, but to Seowoon—whose field of vision had already narrowed—the elf seemed to vanish momentarily.
The elf closed the distance in an instant, twisting right at the last second and stabbing with his sword.
Seowoon twisted left and leaned back to dodge, then quickly backed away with a grimace.
Dodging instead of countering that thin blade had been a mistake.
Once he gave ground in close quarters, the elf's attacks chained together one after another, offering no openings.
"Damn it!"
Like a video game character, the elf unleashed a seamless combo of sword strikes.
Seowoon pushed inner energy into his legs and leapt back—but then the elf's mouth moved, and for a brief second, Seowoon felt as if the elf's face had suddenly grown larger.
"A rush attack?"
The guy who had instantly closed the distance twisted his lips into a sneer and thrust his sword at Seowoon's heart.
He could dodge it—there was nothing stopping him—but if he did, he'd only keep getting pushed back.
"Counter strike!"
With a forceful shout, like a battle cry, he thrust his fist forward.
For a moment, a smirk seemed to flash across the guy's face.
But just as Seowoon's fist narrowly slipped past the blade coming at the shortest range, the rotation from his ankle to his hip, and then from his hip to his waist, carried through his shoulder and into his elbow. The moment that force reached Seowoon's elbow, the elf's pupils trembled in disbelief.
PANG!
With a burst of air, his elbow lightly struck the flat of the sword, and the elf's arm flung wide open.
The counter strike landed squarely on the guy's shoulder, and right after, a flurry of punches slammed into his throat, heart, and solar plexus in quick succession.
"Guh—!"
Having taken a triple strike to the body in an instant, the guy vomited black blood and fell backward.
"Hoo…"
Though the fight had been brief in terms of time, it was intense.
Considering it was a battle against someone who had never learned martial arts yet could still slice through his martial energy with a sword, the fight had ended almost too quickly—and the tension lingered.
As expected, he didn't forget to absorb the life force through the Energy Absorption Gate the moment the corpse vanished.
"Counter strike!"
After absorbing the life force, Seowoon tried replicating the same counter strike in empty air and tilted his head.
'Something feels off.'
The sensation of the counter he had executed in that fleeting moment—when a sharp sword had been flying toward his heart—had been so natural and smooth. Now, trying to replicate it, the move felt subtly misaligned.
After a few more punches into the air, he shook his head and opened the wooden chest.
"This guy's worthless aside from the longsword and bow."
He hadn't expected much from this opponent anyway.
The one Seowoon was truly hoping for wasn't this guy.
"I didn't expect to meet you again so soon—Cloak of Stealth."
The black cloak worn by the man who had been firing those uncanny arrows.
It wasn't the kind of item you could fail to recognize just because someone else was wearing it.
It was a treasure that had saved his life multiple times and helped him reach the Top 2.
His hands quickened as he opened the chest.
[Ding! You have acquired a Damaged Cloak of Stealth.]
"…Huh?"
At the ominous word "damaged," he unfolded the cloak and found a hole the size of a fist right in the center.
[This cloak has lost its function. To repair it, you'll need a craftsman with special skills or a unique scroll.]
"Ah…"
He looked at the hole, punched clean through by his own martial energy, in stunned silence.
"This damn cloak has crap durability. Same thing happened last time."
The cloak had been shredded and rendered useless in an instant by a Blade Storm before.
Gazing down at the cloak with a hint of regret, he shoved it into his subspace storage and rummaged through the rest of the chest.
[Ding! You have acquired a Bow of the Thunderstruck Cotton Tree.]
[Ding! You have acquired a Quiver of Subspace.]
[Ding! You have acquired a Skill Book: Rapid Fire.]
[Ding! You have acquired a Healing Magic Scroll.]
He tore open the scroll first, and the wound on his side began to heal.
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