FVN Chapter 387: Markus (1)
Chapter 387: Markus (1)
After that, the entire time they kept moving.
“......”
Park Dong-jae couldn’t easily shake the afterimage of the boulder Kang-hoo had cleanly split apart. It kept resurfacing like a lingering imprint.
He found himself projecting the situation onto the boulder.
If a rock—far harder than a human body—ended up like that, what would happen to him?
He was certain he wouldn’t last even a few seconds against Kang-hoo.
What was terrifying about White Sun Slash wasn’t just the speed of the flying blade aura—the strike radius was wide, too.
The earlier attack was the same.
Sure, the sniper’s head flying off was expected, but every tree around him had been neatly cut down as well.It was the kind of scene you only saw from professional swordsman hunters—named ones, at that—when they unleashed sword wind or blade aura.Kang-hoo’s skill felt different every time he saw it. Not a normal steady upward curve, but an upward curve closer to a vertical surge.
He’d always envied it.
To become a hunter who grew like that, how much bone-and-flesh-grinding effort would it take?
Could effort alone even do it?
He started thinking it might be inborn talent—an unbridgeable gap he could never close.
‘This is the first time I’ve ever wanted so badly to be a combat class. If only I were an assassin too.’
Because he admired Kang-hoo himself, he also poured limitless expectation and respect onto Kang-hoo’s class.
But if he’d been the same assassin class, he probably wouldn’t have formed this kind of connection with Kang-hoo.
Rather, precisely because he was a buffer, Kang-hoo had a use for him. He could fill what Kang-hoo lacked.
‘As long as hyung keeps looking for me regularly, I don’t need to hang around the Myeongga Guild anymore.’
Even the Myeongga Guild—packed with rising elites—failed to pass Park Dong-jae’s famously picky standards.
The only one who cleared that bar was Kang-hoo. Not once had Kang-hoo ever disappointed him.
From maintaining a ten-meter distance earlier, to instantly improvising when the swamp appeared—everything had been perfect.
“Hold on. Let’s stop, Dong-jae.”
“There’s a barrier?”
“You can feel it, right?”
“Yeah. If I focus, I can feel it.”
About ten steps ahead, an invisible barrier was active.
You could never see it with the naked eye—you had to concentrate on mana flow and catch it as a sense of wrongness.
A barrier didn’t exist for no reason.
Usually, it meant the environment inside and outside were different.
Inside could be pouring rain while outside was perfectly clear. Inside could be howling winds while outside didn’t even have a faint breeze.
That kind of environmental separation was common, and as reasons for a barrier’s existence, it was on the “mild” side.
Since this was a random question-mark zone to begin with, Kang-hoo expected a more extreme reason.
Just then—
Pssst. Psst.
He spotted an insect crawling out from inside a piece of rotten bark on the ground. A beetle.
He casually picked it up and flicked it toward the barrier.
A barrier’s danger peaked at the boundary—crossing it was where its nature revealed itself.
Ssssss—!
The beetle vanished.
As it passed through the barrier, its shell melted away, as if dunked in a strong acid.
But it didn’t melt completely—part of the body that made it across before dissolving dropped limply onto the ground.
The beetle died, but a trace remained. Not total erasure—conditional erasure.
‘There’s definitely something here.’
The more extreme a barrier’s defense mechanism was, the more valuable whatever lay inside became.
It was indirect proof.
Something was there, which was why it didn’t want outsiders entering, and why all these distortions were in place.
“I can probably cross with Shadow Step, but I’m worried about you, Dong-jae. Don’t force it—stay here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at the barrier. If you cross head-on, you’ll die instantly.”
“So all I need is a way to cross, right? Just looking at it, there’s gotta be something interesting in there.”
“What matters isn’t what’s inside. It’s your safety.”
Kang-hoo snapped at Park Dong-jae, who was already practically drooling with anticipation.
There was no way a buffer like Park Dong-jae could neutralize a barrier like that. By class nature, it was difficult.
But then—
Kuuuuuh—!
Park Dong-jae strained with both hands and formed an ivory-colored sphere of unknown origin.
Thunk!
And with both hands still holding it, he shoved it into the barrier.
“......!”
Kang-hoo’s eyes went wide.
He’d never even considered such a brute-force(?) method. If it didn’t work, his hands would melt while still inside.
But what Kang-hoo feared didn’t happen.
The barrier tried to contract, but the ivory sphere clung and held it in place— and Park Dong-jae pulled it apart to both sides, forcing a gap open and slipping through. He’d created a “tear” in the barrier.
“Heh.”
A laugh escaped him.
He scratched the back of his head, thinking he might have underestimated Park Dong-jae too much. The kid had his own way.
When Kang-hoo lightly crossed over with Shadow Step, Park Dong-jae asked with a smug expression—
“Well? Trust me a bit more now?”
“I underestimated you.”
“It’s a tricky little stunt for buffers, honestly. It’s like a condensed mass of skills compressed into one point. I tried it before and it worked?”
“Sounds like you’ve dealt with barriers before.”
“Yeah. When you move around with the Myeongga Guild, you run into environments like this more often than you’d think.”
“You run into barriers often?”
“Yeah. Like, once every three times?”
It was well-known that the Myeongga Guild owned many dungeons.
If those dungeons were full of barriers like this, it meant they also had plenty of hidden secrets.
Thinking that barriers were one of the reasons behind their rapid growth, Kang-hoo found himself nodding. It was a plausible explanation.
Still, he was curious what kinds of secrets they were facing.
A barrier didn’t always contain only grim, dark secrets. Sometimes it could hide something fun, too.
Just then—
-A tasty prey has appeared.
A deep, low voice settled thickly into the air, and the fog that had hung ahead vanished in an instant.
What emerged from within it was— a “monster” with a hulking, muscle-bound body that reminded him of pure brawler hunters like Jeon Jong-du or Ma Jinho.
But black smoke constantly rose off its entire body, and the stench it gave off made it look nothing like a human.
A being called the dead, the departed—an undead-type monster.
Then the monster’s name activated.
【Divine Soldier - Markus】
‘A Divine Soldier is here?’
His brows furrowed at the unexpected appearance. He hadn’t expected to encounter a Divine Soldier like this.
He’d thought he might see one if he used Infernus to go to Hell.
Instead, he ran into a connection to the Demon King in a place he never expected—though it was surely only one among countless Divine Soldiers.
‘The name is pretty on-the-nose.’
Markus meant “hammer” in Latin. So he’d suspected it—and sure enough, Markus was holding a hammer.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say information on Divine Soldiers was practically nonexistent.
So Kang-hoo had no way to gauge whether Markus was strong or weak, or what kind of damage it dealt.
He’d have to probe first to gather any initial data.
“Dong-jae.”
“Yeah?”
“Stay behind me no matter what. Don’t approach Markus. Even if I look like I’m in danger—never.”
“Got it. But what even is a Divine Soldier? Is the monster classification literally just ‘Divine Soldier’?”
“Think about that slowly.”
Kang-hoo slowly sent Park Dong-jae back, then faced Markus head-on in a straight line.
In Markus’s right hand was a brutal hammer, roughly the size of an adult man.
Cataclysm – Darkness suddenly spoke to Kang-hoo.
【A Divine Soldier is a kind of soul.
It is the soul of the dead—compressed by force into a single place, bound together with evil and rage. That becomes its core.
That core can possess someone’s body, seize control, and allow physicalized actions.
Or, without possessing a body, the dead soul can keep growing its yin energy and develop on its own.
More than anything, this space is separate from the dungeon itself, and I cannot tell why it was created.】
‘That startled me. I didn’t expect a full speech.’
【I wanted to resolve your curiosity about Divine Soldiers. That is all I know.】
If even a constellation didn’t know beyond that, then this was outside the Grand Temple’s domain—or something that crossed its boundary.
No one knew whether the Demon King was a former member of the Grand Temple, a castoff, or a hidden insider.
Right now, he needed close coordination with his contracted constellation. Deductions began by sharing clues.
【Illusion Technique】
【Shadow Step】
【Clone Technique】
【Corrupted Summon】
Calling forth illusion, shadow, clones, and even Mumyeong in rapid succession, Kang-hoo sent them all charging at Markus.
Hoo-hoo, do you think tricks will work on me?
With shapes scattering and swarming from all directions, it should have thrown off his gaze—
but Markus didn’t even blink. From where he stood, he swung the hammer horizontally.
Shiiing! Chaaang!
‘Blade aura?’
The moment he saw the energy formed by the hammer extend outward in a saw-blade shape—
【Wall of Integrity】
He raised the wall immediately.
With Park Dong-jae behind him, he had to take that attack at the front.
Thoom!
The blade aura slammed into the Wall of Integrity with a heavy impact.
Ssssss—!
And Kang-hoo’s body was shoved far back on top of that. Under a pressure that felt like it was pressing him down, he had to slide a long way.
The illusion, shadow, clone, and Mumyeong he’d sent ahead all vanished.
Regardless of Mumyeong’s level, that strike likely would have erased them in a single blow even if they’d been higher level.
If it could visibly pin down Kang-hoo even through the Wall of Integrity, the energy up close would be beyond imagination.
Krrk.
He chewed Mad Solarkium.
Park Dong-jae’s buff routine was top-tier, so Kang-hoo intended to trust that maximized combat power and take Markus head-on.
‘If I approach it as a spirit-body concept, there’s a good chance physical and magical attacks won’t work on him at all.’
To cut a spirit, you needed power that touched that domain—dark energy or divine power, for example.
Depending on the case, he might have to fight using only dark-energy skills.
Thorn Hell.
Flame of Annihilation.
Jeokran.
Dark Energy Ignition.
Selfish Trade.
Black Moon Slash.
That was his list of dark-energy skills. As for divine power, he had no combat skills yet—meaning direct strikes weren’t possible.
Tadadadat!
Kang-hoo accelerated and closed in on Markus.
He had no intention of blocking its attacks blindly.
A spirit-body’s attacks could strike the soul, not the flesh.
An out-of-body state might stop being “just in novels.” Soul separation was entirely possible.
-Meet a glorious death at my hands, and become an honorable member of the Divine Soldiers. Wouldn’t that be delightful?
“Bullshit.”
Kang-hoo answered Markus’s worthless words with a short curse and lowered his stance.
Rather than the solid-looking upper body, he aimed for the relatively weaker-looking lower legs.
As an opening attack, it was a decent approach.
But—
Whooom!
This time, the hammer Markus swung didn’t produce blade aura like before. It produced a special, gray-white vibration.
Kaaang!
The vibration shot toward Kang-hoo in a vicious line!
It was clearly a different kind of attack than before.
“Damn it.”
Kang-hoo’s expression twisted.
It was a blow that distorted space itself— meaning it couldn’t be blocked, and had to be dodged no matter what.
Evasion was forced.