Chapter 55: Rumors (1)

“Ugh, kkk… Huh?!”

With a sharp pain deep in his stomach, Baek Woojin regained consciousness and opened his eyes.

“What, what… Ahh?!”

Hanging from a tree, as soon as Baek Woojin snapped to his senses, the balance he had been barely holding onto crumbled, and he fell from the tree.

“Landing… Kraak!”

If he had been in his normal state, he could have quickly regained his balance and landed safely, even after falling unexpectedly, but the pain spreading throughout his body delayed his reaction.

Crash!

As a result, he landed in a disgraceful position, with his face slamming into the dirt.

But that was only for a moment.

Baek Woojin immediately got up, brushing off the dirt from his face and clothes while looking around to check if anyone had seen him.

Rustle.

“Hmm?”

While brushing off the dirt from his clothes, he felt something crumble near his stomach.

Looking down, he saw that his clothing near the stomach area was burned round and had a large hole, as though hit by a fireball.

His shirt and the vest underneath also had a large, fist-sized hole, and he could see a bruise stained with dark red blood on his chest.

“What is this… Ah!”

Suddenly, the last memory before he lost consciousness flashed through his mind.

“Yang Woobin! When I tried to strike him in the back, he suddenly shone brightly! Did I get hit then? What the hell did he do… Ah, ah! Yaiba! Where’s Yaiba?!”

Thinking of Yang Woobin naturally reminded him of his friend and the person he wanted to help, Yasuri Yaiba.

Baek Woojin quickly turned his head, searching for her.

“There she is. Yaiba!”

Luckily, Yasuri Yaiba was still there, leaning against a half-burned tree.

Although she had her face buried in her knees, she didn’t seem to be in worse condition than when he last saw her.

Baek Woojin, calling her name, was about to run to her but winced in pain from the stab near his stomach.

He carefully walked over, trying not to hurt his chest or ribs.

“Yaiba, are you okay?”

Slowly and cautiously, Baek Woojin approached Yasuri Yaiba, who still had her face buried in her knees, and asked if she was okay.

“H-huh… Huuuh…”

But the only response was a trembling breath.

Yasuri Yaiba, with both arms hanging limply and her body shaking, didn’t look normal at all.

‘What on earth happened?’

Yasuri Yaiba, always expressionless, had secretly aimed for his life from behind.

She was like a well-sharpened knife, a woman who would stop at nothing to achieve her goals.

Yet now, she was trembling, showing vulnerability, despite being so close to her target, with him wounded.

‘Could it be… Yang Woobin?’

Detecting something unsettling in Yasuri Yaiba’s unstable state, Baek Woojin asked her in a serious voice.

“Did Yang Woobin… do something to you?”

The moment his question reached her ears, Yasuri Yaiba began trembling uncontrollably and muttered:

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I’ll be good, I won’t do anything, please, don’t hit me, I can’t… I’m scared, it hurts, I’m scared, please don’t, I don’t want to… please stop…”

“W-what…”

It was a scene that anyone could see was serious.

The expression “the large, thick, copper-colored, terrifying thing” referred to Yang Woobin’s large fist, which had shattered Yasuri Yaiba’s arms, but the expression made Baek Woojin think of something else.

“Ugh…”

At the sight of Yasuri Yaiba completely terrified and panicking, Baek Woojin took off his uniform, leaving only his shirt, and carefully placed it over her.

“Yang Woobin, you trash. What the hell did you do to Yaiba…?!”

He clenched his teeth and began to burn with anger at Yang Woobin, who had caused his friend, Yaiba, to end up like this.

※

It was a tickling sensation.

“Hah, hah, oh, my ear itches. Who… Hoo. Want to hear a story?”

While walking in a state of complete exhaustion, his ear suddenly started itching.

By this point, he had walked far enough to be out of the immediate area, so he plopped down in the middle of the forest path and scratched his ear roughly with his fingers.

“Ugh, I’m sweating so much. My shirt burned right off, so I don’t even have a handkerchief to wipe my sweat with.”

He missed his completely burned shirt and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.

Of course, just wiping it with his arm wasn’t going to help, so he wiped his sweat a few more times with his forearm before giving up and lying flat on the ground.

“Haah… Ah, ugh. I’m going to die.”

It really felt like he was going to die.

His body was completely exhausted, and he had been drenched in sweat for so long that he was starting to show signs of dehydration.

All of this was a consequence of the Sun Delay.

“Just using it for 3 seconds and it’s like this… This is a seriously dangerous characteristic.”

To be exact, it was the aftereffect of the true use of the Sun Delay.

Up until now, the way he had been applying the explosive effects to his attacks was a forced method of using the side effects of the Sun Delay and converting them through Mana Flow.

It wasn’t that the Sun Delay was a good trait; he had just used his skills to make it work.

The true method of using the Sun Delay had two possibilities.

One was, of course, self-destruction.

If used, it would kill both the user and the enemy, and everything within a radius of several dozen kilometers would be destroyed—a kind of asymmetric weapon.

Of course, he would never use self-destruction, and it wasn’t the method he had used to beat Baek Woojin and instill fear in Yasuri Yaiba.

He had used the other option.

“Sun True Body… Well, at least the effect is definite, so that’s good.”

After leaving just a tiny amount of mana in his mana core, he ignited it and used Mana Flow to envelop his heart, suppressing the explosion while burning the enormous efficiency of Sun Delay mana to boost his physical abilities.

It was a doping technique with the highest power, like a reversal of a hero’s tale.

“Sun True Body”.

When it came to basic physical abilities, he was only slightly above the middle rank in Jincheon class, yet with this, he could defeat Baek Woojin, who was ranked 5th in Jincheon class, with a single strike.

“Just using it for 3 seconds is this much; if it goes over 5 seconds, I really will die.”

Of course, the consumption and risk were immense, so the maximum time he could maintain this power was exactly 5 seconds.

If it exceeded 5 seconds, the backlash of the mana would be too much for his body to handle, and it would trigger a massive explosion.

It wasn’t just him; even the little ones or Fuyuno Tsubaki nearby could be caught up in it, so the Sun True Body had to be used as a last resort.

“Being completely wrecked like this is also a problem… The heat won’t go down, so the sweat keeps coming out. At this rate, I might really die from dehydration.”

He had just taken care of the terrorist (real one), overcame the sudden appearance of the protagonist, and successfully completed the mission.

And now, to die from exhaustion and dehydration?

If he died like this, it would definitely be a cause of bitter laughter, but of course, he wasn’t planning on dying so stupidly here.

Before he could die, he had to land a punch on Yang Gajung’s disgusting face and regain his sexual function.

He had a reason to live—to take revenge on Yang Gajung.

As he once again reaffirmed his life’s purpose—revenge on Yang Gajung—he felt a sense of the world turning upside down, and his vision filled with blinding white light.

It was a signal that the one-week survival challenge had ended.

When he returned, he would ask for water first.

He commanded Fuyuno Tsubaki to bring him a cold drink with ice, preparing the request in his throat, then closed his eyes and entrusted himself to the white light of spatial movement.

Paat-!

※

“Huh? This is the training ground, right? Did I return to the original place?”

When his vision returned to clarity after the survival challenge, Jin Sejeong glanced around and realized she was in the training ground she had last seen a week ago.

“Haah…”

While Jin Sejeong confirmed that it was the training ground, Fuyuno Tsubaki finally let out a sigh of relief, thankful to be free from her.

As she looked around for Yang Woobin, Fuyuno Tsubaki overheard some murmurs that were hard to ignore.

“Wow, wow… look at that body.”

“Ugh. His chest muscles are… So sweaty, his bronze skin is even glistening…”

“Wow. His abs are so defined, they could rival chocolate.”

“When he suddenly confessed his promiscuous lifestyle a week ago, I really lost interest… But with a body like that, maybe living like that is natural… gulp.”

Bronzed skin, chest muscles that made people gasp, abs so defined they could rival chocolate, and a body that made his promiscuous lifestyle make sense.

Fuyuno Tsubaki immediately realized who they were talking about when she heard those words.

“Wu, Woobin!”

Turning her body to the direction where Yang Woobin had been, Fuyuno Tsubaki saw him lying on the ground, shirtless, commanding her to bring him water.

“Tsukaki, bring me water. With ice.”

Lying on the ground, he commanded her to bring him water, his upper body fully exposed as he wasn’t wearing a shirt.