*Shing!
The sound of cold steel slicing through the air.
The woman's hand moved in a blur her short blade, still slick with the blood of the two dead players, spinning through the dim light of the cavern aimed directly at the throat of the old man.
Kang Min's body moved on instinct and he swung one of the massive bags of mana shards upward.
*CLANG!
The blade embedded itself deep into the heavy fabric of the bag, stopped by the density of the crystals inside.
As he lowered the bag, the woman was already airborne.
She had closed the gap in a split second.
She threw a high, sharp kick aimed at Min's head.
Min shifted the bag again, using it as a shield.
*THUD!
The force of the impact was surprisingly heavy.
Min's feet skidded against the dusty ground, leaving two shallow trenches as he was pushed back a few inches.
The woman didn't let up.
While her foot was still in contact with the bag, she reached out and snatched the hilt of her short blade, ripping it out of the bag's fabric.
In one fluid motion, she performed a graceful backflip, followed immediately by another, creating a wide distance between herself and Min.
She landed in a crouch, her chest heaving.
"Why did you kill those players?"
Min asked.
Even as he asked, he felt a wave of self-annoyance.
'Why am I even asking her...?'
'I already know the answer....I've seen it a hundred times on the higher floors.'
The woman didn't stop crying.
Tears carved clean lines through the blood on her cheeks. She pointed the short blade at Min, then at the old man, her hand trembling violently.
"P-please... cooperate..."
She stammered, her voice quivering with a mixture of fear and desperation.
'Cooperate to getting our necks sliced?'
'Has she lost it? Unless you're a Dodo bird without any natural sense of danger...
But for someone who has experienced multiple concepts of predators and evolved fear countless times...'
"I have to decline."
His mind raced.
'I have no blades to fight her off...
That's okay.
I have hands!'
He clenched his left fist.
'I'm sure that's enough to deal with her.
I can tell she doesn't have much experience in one-on-one combat.
It's possible the only way she killed those players was by catching them off-guard or ambushing them one by one.
An assassin-type hunter? Maybe.
But her fundamentals are sloppy.'
Min took a deep breath.
"Activate skill [Exchange]!"
[Skill [Exchange Lv.2] cannot be used!]
'What?'
[Resulting to limited skill usage...]
[Skill [Exchange Lv.1] can be used.]
'This really sucks... but I'll have to deal with it later.
Level 1 of Exchange isn't that bad.
Only problem is it gets depleted rather easily if one doesn't have enough MP... especially if used over long distances.'
"I will warn you..."
"...I tend to get carried away in a fight."
He reached into one of the bags he was carrying and grabbed several shards, tucking them between his fingers like throwing stars, and placed one shard firmly in his mouth, clenching it with his teeth.
The woman screamed a high, panicked sound and rushed toward him.
She clutched the short blade in a reverse grip.
'Running with heels, especially on ground like this, is pretty impressive.'
'I'll give her that much.'
Min flicked his wrist.
He threw one of the mana shards at her with the force of a bullet.
The woman was fast.
She brought her blade up, the shard bouncing off the steel with a bright spark.
The shard flew behind her, tumbling through the air.
Kang Min looked down, the mana shard still in his mouth.
He smiled.
In an instant, Kang Min vanished.
The space where he had been standing was suddenly occupied by the mana shard that the woman had just deflected.
It fell to the ground with a tiny clink.
The woman's eyes widened to the size of saucers and didn't even have time to turn around.
Kang Min reappeared instantly in mid-air, right behind her and slightly above. He twisted his body, channeling the momentum of the swap into his leg.
WHAM!
His foot landed squarely against the side of her head. The impact sounded like a baseball bat hitting a wet sack of flour.
The woman went flying. She crashed into the jagged rocky wall of the cavern, her body hitting with enough force to crack the stone, before she slumped down onto the floor.
---
[Exchange] was a skill that had been Min's bread and butter for decades.
At its core, it was a spatial manipulation skill.
It allowed him to switch positions with objects, move objects, and change their orientations instantly.
At Level 0, it was basic [Exchange]. If he held a pen in his hand and targeted a knife on a table, the knife would appear in his hand and the pen would appear on the table.
A simple swap.
At Level 1, it evolved into [Move]. It allowed the user to switch positions with an object.
If he threw a pebble, he could "Move" and instantly be where the pebble was.
---
'That should've knocked her out,' Min thought.
He judged the force based on her visible stats. It was a clean hit.
The woman groaned, her fingers twitching as she gripped her blade again.
With staggering determination, she forced herself to stand up.
Her hair, which had been tied in a neat bun, was now a messy tangle falling over her face.
"Tsk!"
Min clicked his tongue.
The woman lunged again this time, she wasn't just swinging; she was desperate andunleashed a flurry of stabs and slashes.
He threw a shard to her left, then instantly used [Move].
He appeared at her flank and threw a heavy punch.
She parried with the flat of her blade, the metal groaning under Min's strength.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!
Min would throw a shard, blink, strike, and throw another.
Every time she tried to thrust her blade at where he was, he was already somewhere else.
He stayed inside her reach, dodging the edge of the blade by mere millimeters.
*Slice.
The blade caught Min's forearm as he blocked a particularly fast strike.
A thin line of blood appeared, but he used the moment of contact to grab her wrist, pulling her forward into a brutal knee to the stomach.
She gasped, coughing up spittle, but managed to slice at his hand to force him to let go.
Min retreated, throwing two shards into the air simultaneously.
The woman looked up, expecting him to swap with one of them. She lunged at the left shard, her blade piercing it and shattering the crystal into dust.
"Keke!"
Min didn't move at all and had faked using the moment to land lightning-fast three-punch combo to her ribs.
*Crack! Crack! Crack!
The woman staggered back, her breathing ragged.
She was being dismantled.
Min was playing with the spatial coordinates of the room, switching shard positions mid-air to fake her out.
Suddenly, a system window flashed in front of Min's eyes.
[Warning: MP running low.]
[Skill [Exchange Lv.1] cannot be used further.]
'I knew this would happen.'
Level 1 was a mana hog, and his current pool was pathetic.
'And she isn't even worn down yet... to add on, the slices from her blade on my body are starting to sting.'
Despite the pain and the lack of mana, Kang Min smiled.
The old man, watching from the corner, felt a cold sweat run down his cheek.
'Even after all that... he's still standing and manages to smile?'
"Aahh... I see what's going on now."
Kang Min said.
"I should've known that human nature... will always be human nature."
'No wonder those three players were new,' he thought.
"I assume your group or team does this very often."
"No wonder you don't have official potters or a solid standing team to even be a guild.
You're vultures."
The woman gripped her knife, her eyes darting around.
"You get new hires and those desperate for quick money..."
"...And when the raid goes well and all the valuables and rewards are gathered... you kill them. You dispose of the bodies in the dungeon where no one will find them, leaving the three of you to share and split the rewards among yourselves."
Min's eyes narrowed.
'If that's true... then is that girl Woonhee a victim as well in this current raid?
I'm sure they were going to kill me and this old man once we were done mining.
Did the long-hair and the mullet already get the boy and Woonhee?'
"You should have just cooperated."
The woman hissed.
She suddenly reached up and tore off her blood-soaked shirt, leaving her in a black sports bra. She quickly ripped the shirt into strips and began tying them around her forearms like makeshift combat bandages, stabilizing her grip on the blade.
Kang Min picked up another mana shard from the ground and popped it into his mouth.
*CRUNCH!
He ground the crystal between his molars and swallowed the jagged pieces.
'When we first discovered mana shards...'
'...they were great for forging and upgrading weapons.
Later, we found out they could be used in the system shop as currency.'
'As for me while in floor 1... I found out Monsters in the tower replenish their mana and grow by absorbing these mana shards.
I first saw it when a slime swallowed a shard with it's entire form.
It dissolved, and the slime evolved into a Horned Slime right before my eyes.'
Min picked up another shard and ate it.
Then another.
"He's a maniac..."
The old man whispered, his eyes wide with horror.
'Most beings in the tower did the same using these naturally occurring resources.'
'Around the same time, I realized I was trapped in this tower and wasn't leaving anytime soon...'
"So... why not adapt?"
He swallowed the fourth shard.
[Mana +10]
[Mana +10]
[Mana +10]
Kang Min grabbed one of the bags of shards and ripped it open and swung it, throwing all of its contents into the air.
Dozens of glowing blue shards and goblin monster cores rained down toward the woman like falling stars.
Min's eyes began to glow with a soft, predatory blue light.
[Skill [Exchange Lv.1] Activated!]
[Move!]
Min was everywhere as he swapped with a shard in the air, kicked the woman in the back, then swapped with a shard on the floor to sweep her legs.
He swapped with a goblin monster core, appearing right in front of her face to deliver a devastating hook.
He was a blur of blue light and black clothes.
Every time she swung her blade, he swapped with a shard behind her.
Every time she tried to run, he swapped with a shard in her path.
Punch!
Kick!
Elbow!
Her face was swollen, and blood leaked from her nose.
Min was smiling the entire time.
Min finally stopped, standing a few feet away from her.
The woman was barely upright, her breath coming in wet, rattling gasps.
Her blade hung limp in her hand.
"Y-you're not a potter... are you?"
She wheezed.
Kang Min picked up another mana shard.
In a blink, the mana shard in Min's hand swapped positions with the short blade in the woman's hand.
Suddenly, Min was holding the bloody knife.
He threw the blade meters away, deep into the dark tunnel they had come from.
It clattered against the stone and slid out of sight.
The woman stood there, her hands empty.
Her head jerked forward, then snapped back.
"..."
She opened her mouth to say something, her eyes widening as if she had suddenly realized something.
*Cough!
A massive spray of blood erupted from her mouth.
Her knees buckled, and her body fell forward, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
Embedded deep in the back of her skull was a heavy iron axe.
"Fucking bitch... can't do anything right..."
A voice drifted from the darkness of the branching path.
The mullet guy stepped into the light.
He looked bored yet irritated at the same time.
Behind him followed the long-haired man and the eighteen-year-old boy.
The boy was trembling so hard he could barely stand, carrying a massive bag that was filled to the brim.
"This was supposed to be done quietly..."
The mullet guy said, sighing.
"...what a pain in the ass."
He put a hand over his face, looking up at the cavern ceiling for a moment as if praying for patience.
Then, he lowered his hand and looked directly at Kang Min.
He began to smile.
It was a wide, jagged expression, but his eyes were cold and intense, beginning to glow with a soft, flickering orange-yellow light.
"Hey..."
"I told you to quit staring, didn't I?"