The space inside Park Sung-Hyun’s guard was an absolute vacuum.
For an A-Rank Dragon Knight whose class logic was built on dominating a battlefield through sheer spatial presence and elemental oppression, allowing a physical entity to breach his defensive perimeter by a margin of inches was a terminal tactical failure. Min-jae had bypassed the silver frost domain entirely, his silhouette appearing like an ivory statue materializing from a cloud of fine, vaporized ice dust.
The Guild Master’s single eye widened behind his crimson dragon-scale helm, the internal automated interface flashing a frantic, high-frequency alarm across his retinas.
[CRITICAL COMPRESSION DETECTED!]
[Target has breached the baseline parry radius.]
[Evasion Modifier: 0.00% — Mechanical obstruction imminent.]
"Get back!" Park Sung-Hyun roared, his seasoned combat reflexes overriding his corporate panic.
He didn't attempt to swing the six-foot-long
Glacier’s Tooth
—the massive weapon was useless at this distance. Instead, he dropped his left shoulder, driving his heavy crimson pauldrons forward in a brutal, short-range shield-bash maneuver. The dragon-scale plating hummed with a sudden, violent injection of red vital mana, activating a passive
Kinetic Deflection
modifier rated to repel a charging B-Rank behemoth.
Min-jae didn't adjust his center of gravity. He didn't drop his chin.
His
[Golden Axis]
spun along his spine with a smooth, infinite velocity that completely synchronized his 100 points of Strength and 110 points of Agility into a single geometric vector. He didn't close his right hand into a fist; he kept his palm open, his fingers slightly curved into a rigid, compact claw.
Formless Style: Iron Anvil Grasp.
He drove his bare hand straight forward, his fingers catching the edge of the advancing red dragon-scale shoulder plate cleanly in mid-air.
Tink.
The multi-ton momentum of the Guild Master’s high-tier defensive skill stopped instantly. The
Kinetic Deflection
modifier violently backfired against the unyielding, mineralized surface of Min-jae’s
[Iron Skin]
. The system data fractured—there was no mana footprint recording Min-jae’s input, so the algorithm couldn't calculate a reduction ratio. To the World Tree, his fingers were an absolute, non-negotiable physical vise that refused to be read.
CRACK-CRUNCH.
With a simple, effortless contraction of his 100-strength grip, Min-jae didn't just dent the legendary alloy armor; his bare fingers tore straight through the mythic-grade crimson dragon scales like they were wet cardboard, peeling a ten-inch section of the reinforced plating cleanly off the Guild Master's shoulder matrix.
"Ah—Gah!" Park Sung-Hyun let out a strangled shriek, his balance completely shattered as the raw mechanical leverage of the pull dragged his fourteen-hundred-pound armored frame forward and down.
Before the three hundred elite vanguard hunters in the rear could even initialize a secondary crowd-control spell to protect their master, Min-jae stepped deeper into the gap. His bare left foot drove three inches into the frozen asphalt bedrock, locking his
[Jade Bone]
alignment into an immovable column.
He coiled his right fist back to his hip, the skin over his knuckles gleaming with that dense, translucent ivory luster that marked the absolute perfection of his internal engine.
He didn't use
True Ki
. This was pure, unadulterated physical mass delivered with absolute structural efficiency—the premier offensive logic of a vessel that had outgrown the parameters of the epoch.
Formless Style: Sovereign Rupture.
He delivered a straight, compact right hand into the absolute center of the Guild Master’s heavy crimson breastplate.
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!
The impact didn't generate a flash of magical light or a screen-generated elemental explosion. It generated a pure, terrifying shockwave of displaced atmospheric mass that completely blew the remaining frost off the highway for three blocks around. The sound was a dull, heavy, and completely contained
thud
that traveled entirely through the dragon-scale framework.
The ancient, crimson plate armor didn't shatter outward; the kinetic force traveled inward, converting the high-density mana data of the chest plate into a destructive, vibrating echo that caved the entire breastplate inward by four inches.
Park Sung-Hyun’s eyes rolled back into his head, a torrent of dark, thick vital blood bursting from his mouth-slit as his internal core network collapsed under the weight of his own defense modifiers. The kinetic shockwave lifted his fourteen-hundred-pound body clean off the ground, propelling him fifty yards across the frozen avenue like a stone thrown from a catapult.
CRASH. CLANK. THUD.
The Premier A-Rank Dragon Knight of the peninsula crashed heavily through the reinforced display windows of the Helios headquarters, his legendary armor scraping against the marble floor before his body went entirely limp against the central reception desk.
[You have defeated a Level 46 Dragon Knight (Guild Master Class).]
[The Overmaster System aggressively siphoning the absolute vital core essence...]
[Conversion successful. Purging foreign epoch parameters.]
[You have gained 45 points of 'True Ki'.]
[Current True Ki: 45 / 500]
The three hundred elite vanguard hunters dropped their weapons into the snow. Their staves, bows, and enchanted shields lay forgotten on the ice, their fingers shaking so violently they couldn't even close them to execute a standard retreat command. Their universal interfaces were a synchronized sea of blinking crimson boxes that they could no longer understand.
[WARNING: GUILD MASTER TERMINATED.]
[ALL ALLIANCE DEFENSE BUFFS HAVE BEEN LIQUIDATED.]
[CURRENT SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.00%]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: DISCONNECT FROM THE LOCAL REGISTRY IMMINENTLY.]
Min-jae slowly lowered his right hand, his knuckles completely white, clean, and unmarked by the abyssal drake soot. He stood in the absolute center of the frozen intersection, his bare chest completely still against the cold wind, his golden-ringed pupils locking onto the trembling, pale faces of the remaining corporate hunters.
"Your inheritance is very loud," Min-jae said, his voice a low, solid vibration that seemed to freeze the blood in their veins. "But your foundation was still just built on paper parameters. Go back to your executive boards. Tell them the audit of Gangnam is officially closed."
He turned his back on the ruins of the corporate line, his bare feet moving with a silent, weightless precision as he stepped toward the center of the district where the three B-Rank core matrices had once pulsed. The monopoly was gone, the vanguards were erased, and as Min-jae guided the 45 new units of golden force toward his internal engine, he knew the real masters of the timeline were finally going to find out what happened when a fist decided to write its own laws.