Speed. Until now, a clone had fallen every few seconds. But Limon suddenly began cutting down two or three a second, sometimes five or six, and Ryu could no longer produce them fast enough. A hundred became ninety, then eighty. Ryu Gang-cheol stared in horror as their numbers kept falling.

[What trick are you pulling?!]

Limon wasn't moving faster. His blows hadn't suddenly grown stronger, nor had he begun cutting down several clones at once. His movements were still so clean they looked almost monotonous, felling just one at a time. Bewildered by how much faster his clones were falling, Ryu raised a scythe to swing.

SLICE

Then Ryu understood. Limon was bringing down his clones before they could even attack. With no time wasted defending or dodging, he could kill them at this terrifying pace.

[How the hell...?!]

Before a scythe could swing. The instant a foot stepped forward. Just as a clone was about to burst through the ceiling and leap down. Limon read each movement with uncanny precision and moved his sword first. The timing was so perfect that Ryu felt as though his clones were rushing forward to have their own throats cut. His face twisted. Limon snapped at him.

"How? You idiot, have you forgotten already? Who was it that gave Wei Ling pointers when she caught your clone?"

Ryu couldn't help remembering that fight. A few offhand remarks over the phone had laid bare every move he made, leaving him helpless against her.

[Things are different now, aren't they?!]

"What's different?"

That had been before Constellation Descent, when his clones had only count-class combat power. Now each was vastly stronger, with duke-class combat power. How could the result possibly be the same? Limon sneered coldly at Ryu's indignant question.

"You may be bigger and faster, but the way you move hasn't changed one bit."

The reason Limon had been able to carve up Ryu like a straw dummy all this time was that, through the corpse he had killed, he had completely discerned Ryu's fighting techniques and patterns of behavior and devised a way to counter them. That counter-formula still worked on him.

Thicker armor? Moving several times faster? The ability to churn out clones? Unfortunately for Ryu, none of it meant a thing against Limon. To know how an opponent thought and moved was to know how to kill him. And Limon, who could express every principle through his sword, could cut down count-class and duke-class foes alike as easily as straw. Whatever form they took, whatever powers they possessed, he needed only to read the path of the sword stroke that would kill them and place his blade there at the right moment.

That was the terror of the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword: a sword art created by the first Sword Master, the Sword Emperor, and perfected by Limon over hundreds of years. Built on the most intricate principles of swordsmanship in the world, it was an art every Sword Master agreed was downright unfair.

"If anything, it was your way of thinking that changed, more than your behavior. You think like a different man, and it took me a while to correct for that discrepancy."

[What's that supposed to mean?]

"You really don't know?"

Limon looked at Ryu with eyes gone black, as if peering into his mind. His gaze traveled over the figure that seemed not merely clad in armor but swallowed by it, flesh and armor fused into one. He spoke coldly.

"You should have run away ages ago. Instead you're throwing yourself at me like you're possessed, risking your life."

[Do I look like a coward who'd run from the likes of you, comrade?]

Perhaps feeling insulted, Ryu flew at him in a fury. Limon split the oncoming clone from crotch to crown and asked bluntly, "Aren't you?"

[...]

Ryu sent more clones to attack but said nothing to the question, delivered as though the answer were obvious. Limon went on languidly. "You're a coward and a cheat. You prey on the weak and avoid the strong. You won't risk so much as a fingernail, so you fight only through your clones."

Having read the principles behind Ryu's fighting style and found a counter to everything he did, Limon knew what he was: a player who was a killer through and through, a sadistic psychopath who treated the weak like toys and made a game of killing them as cruelly as possible. That was why Limon could say with certainty that something about Ryu now was wrong.

[Quit talking nonsense. If I were the coward you say I am, comrade, why would I still be fighting?]

"That's what I'd like to know."

[What?]

"Why aren't you running?"

When the clones at the subsidiaries began vanishing one after another, Ryu had raised his hands in surrender to buy time. By then he must have known instinctively that he couldn't beat Limon. And by the nature Limon had discerned through the principles of his fighting style, Ryu should have turned tail right then. No gamer would stake his life on a game he couldn't clear.

"You were cornered badly enough to take a hostage. Why did you still try to keep me here?"

[Because...!]

Ryu started to answer, then shut his mouth. He had plenty of answers he could give: he hadn't had time to escape, he'd thought he could beat Limon, he'd simply been carrying out his mission. Yet he could settle on none of them. Watching him flounder, Limon asked with a chill in his eyes, "Are you really fighting of your own free will right now?"

[Shut up!]

Limon didn't need to see Ryu's face beneath the armor to know it was horribly contorted. Whether that was because he'd struck a nerve or because Ryu felt some other unease, Limon couldn't tell. He didn't much care. Instead, he said quietly, "Park Hyeon-gun was like you."

[...!]

Ryu gave no answer, but he flinched, too shaken to hide it. Limon had kept provoking him for the sake of this one question, and that was answer enough. "I thought you'd know."

He gave a faint laugh.

Park Hyeon-gun had once been a close aide to the Infinite Monarch, Lee Cheon-gi. To cover up his own corruption, he'd killed Yu Na-gyeong and framed Limon. From the moment Limon learned Park was the one who had laid a trap at the Liberation Brigade's headquarters, he'd suspected the two were connected somehow.

"No wonder you look just like that bastard when you're cornered, offering your body to a constellation as if you're letting bugs eat you alive."

And what sort of connection it was had become obvious.

Ryu's reactions to his questions. A theory Li Qingyu had mentioned. Above all, the way Ryu appeared covered in fine roots despite the armor showing not a single gap. Together, they made one fact clearer than any other evidence.

"So you're a constellation's puppet too."

[Didn't I tell you to shut up!!!]

Was it confusion pushed past its limit? Or the roots writhing all over his body? Ryu's clone charged with a desperate scream. Limon cut it down cleanly and murmured, "Right. There's no need for any more talk between you lot and me."

As though he'd heard all he needed, Limon nodded once, slowly. Then he shot inside the steel giant's reach like lightning and pierced another clone's heart.

"Struggle all you like, you constellation's fucking dog. Let's see how impressive the power you sold even your filthy soul for really is."

[You son of a bitch...!]

Ryu ground his teeth. It wasn't only the humiliation of Limon's insult.

Throughout their conversation, the roots had spread and multiplied frantically, yet fewer than fifty clones remained. Each time Limon's sword cut one down, Ryu felt the pain in its roots and its power dissipating. Above all, there was that chilling look in Limon's eyes. It filled him with uncontrollable dread—and with fury and shame that a mere human could make him feel it.

[Fine! Whether you die or I do, we finish this here, comrade!]

And so the roots abandoned their attempt to focus solely on buying time and poured out a vast amount of power.

RUMBLE

The scattered roots gathered. The divided bodies came together. Dozens of suits of armor merged. The already unstable Black Dragon Construction headquarters finally began to collapse under the strain, but the roots paid it no heed. They concentrated only on drawing their countless strands into one.

When the building came crashing down and the separated roots joined, no paltry three-meter heap of scrap metal remained. In its place towered a magnificent giant over twenty meters tall, its metallic shell linked like armor by writhing roots that served as joints. And the giant kept growing larger.

This was Colony Proliferation, the power of a great star from which Infinite Proliferation could be said to derive.

[Kyahahaha! Look! Look at us! Come on, attack! We are one, and one is all! Think you can win? We're invincible now!]

Perhaps it was because the contractor had been forcibly granted more power than a human body could bear. Or perhaps, to avoid wasting time, the scattered clones had simply been piled together instead of properly fused. Either way, the contractor was more distorted than usual, physically and mentally. Given human frailty, he clearly wouldn't last long.

But the roots didn't care. The fight would be decided soon enough. Even if it took longer, their contractor had already suffered irreparable damage; he would merely be broken a little further. So the roots raised a fist, utterly unconcerned, ready to bring down what remained of the building and crush the human who didn't know his place.

"First transformation armor, and now you even combine. I admire the effort you put into copying those elemental hero squad shows."

[...!]

The roots froze with their fist raised. A voice had sounded from directly above the head of their giant form, more than twenty meters tall, and the murderous edge in it unsettled them.

"Only a moron in a story waits for his enemy to finish transforming and combining when it isn't a duel, dumbass."

[RRAAAAGH!]

The roots finally moved, drawing back their raised fist to strike Limon, who had somehow reached the top of their head. But before the arm could move, Limon drove his upraised sword straight down into the giant's crown. The blade split the hard armor and plunged to the roots beneath, as though he were driving a pillar into a royal castle.

『Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword: Great Art

The Lion's Roar Cleaves Heaven and Earth』

The sword roared. The boundary between heaven and earth shuddered. Split from crown to crotch, the giant's body crumbled into dust.