Was their manager going to be killed like this?
The Shooting Club members realized the seriousness of the situation and raised their bows and guns.
Loren was the actual threat, so they focused on him. They were determined to defeat him, heedless of the fact that he was a National Treasure candidate from another country.
However, all the club members suddenly stiffened when they heard what the other boy had said.
“What did that bastard just say?”
They stared, stunned, at the boy standing in front of their unconscious manager.
Kang Jae-Hyeok.
A handful of students recognized him, which made his words seem even more absurd. Kang Jae-Hyeok was a first-year student who was only level 10 during his re-examination.
He wasn’t the manager of another major club. He wasn’t qualified to declare arrogantly that he would dominate the Shooting Club.
In the first place, he wasn’t in a position to be involved in this fight.
“Is that guy crazy?”
“Ignore him. Focus on the necromancer.”
The members of the Shooting Club decided to ignore Jae-Hyeok and went on the offensive.
Those perched in the audience- and broadcaster seats rained down arrows and bullets, while those on the first floor scattered among the shooting lanes.
The joint attack crashed into Loren like a wave. No matter how hard his bone armor was, it wasn’t invincible, and the members of the Shooting Club all possessed shooting-related Skills. Every second he spent under their combined fire was a great burden.
“I was going to punish all of you anyway,” Loren said as his body blurred.
Loren’s body glided across the ground. The bony blades protruding from the bottoms of his boots acted like skates.
He moved at tremendous speed, zigzagging and jumping into the air to avoid the hellfire of arrows and bullets.
Loren’s glowing eyes left a golden trail of light from the sockets of his helmet. The Shooting Club members got goosebumps. This is a National Treasure candidate!
Bang!
Loren landed inside the stands. A particularly powerful arrow had come from this direction.
He manifested a bone sword and sliced through the spectator seats, exposing the archer behind, then slammed his blade into the archer’s chest.
There was no blood.
Loren had regained his sanity the moment he encountered Kang Jae-Hyeok, so he only struck with the flat of the blade, not the edge.
Nevertheless, the damage was great.
Baaaaaang!
The archer’s body flew more than a hundred meters.
Every piece of equipment and weapon rack in his path was smashed into a cloud of debris. Before the debris fell to the ground, the archer slammed into the far wall, convulsed briefly, and lost consciousness.
......
A similar scene happened repeatedly after that.
Every time Loren closed in, a member of the Shooting Club was soon sent flying into a wall. The big lights hanging from the high ceiling of the range shook dangerously as if about to fall.
Shit, he’s too fast!
How could they be pushed into such a disadvantageous position by one person? The members of the Shooting Club found it absurd. Then they were filled with anger.
In Lion’s Castle, the power gap between year levels was enormous. The opponent might be a future National Treasure, but their pride wouldn’t allow them to be played by a first-year who hadn’t even taken the major classes.
“It will be hard for you to avoid our attacks from now on.”
The students who belonged to the magic department infused mana into their arrows and bullets. They were using a deteriorated version of the Enchantment Skill that utilized a mana control method learned from Professor Lee So-Yeong.
Their arrows and bullets gained properties such as acceleration, guidance, or explosion. These effects were weak compared to their Skills, but they had excellent synergy since they infused properties that were compatible with their Skills.
Bang bang bang bang baaang!!
"......!"
Loren’s relentless charge faltered for the first time.
The trajectory of the arrows and bullets bent unexpectedly before exploding all around him. A multicolored toxic mist filled the air and also locked him in place. Someone majoring in poisons had imbued toxicity alongside their Trapper Skill.
Loren’s vision shook as a new barrage of firepower rained down on him.
It seems there’s a reason why South Korea managed to hold on between China and Japan, Loren thought as he pulled out poisonous arrows embedded in his chest and side.
Lion’s Castle lived up to its name. It wasn’t hard to imagine the graduates here supporting South Korea.
But so what?
To conquer their group tactics, he just needed to take care of them all at once. With a powerful leap, Loren soared toward the ceiling. As he reached the crest of his jump, the blades protruding from his boots transformed into hooks, which he used to hang upside down from the ceiling’s metal framing.
What the hell... The Shooting Club members were sick of seeing Loren use bones in new ways.
[Bone Flower.]
Suddenly, the shooting range was covered in a field of pure white flowers. It was an illusion created by the hundreds or thousands of skeletal hands emerging from the ground and walls.
No one resisted as the skeletal hands bound everyone in the hall.
The battle was over the moment the Shooting Club members were captivated by that beautiful lie. Originally, those sharp, bony fingers would have torn through their victims and turned the scene into a red flower field. However, Loren had held back and kept the field white.
“You are guilty of touching Do-Jin, so remember your mistakes and reflect on them.”
Crunch!
The bony hands that gripped the wrists and ankles of the Shooting Club members tightened in unison, and screams rang out.
This was the overwhelming power of a National Treasure candidate. A total of forty-three Shooting Club members all collapsed at once.
Loren was looking down coldly at the moaning students with broken limbs when he doubted his ears.
“Wow, you’re this strong without summoning a single undead? You truly live up to your reputation.”
"......?"
Surprisingly, the voice was strangely calm. When Loren turned toward the source, he saw Jae-Hyeok leaning casually against a wall. Fragments of bone were strewn all around him.
“Phew, I was surprised.” The girl standing next to Jae-Hyeok was sweating profusely.
Chae Da-Hee, was it? She was in the same Class as Loren, so her face was familiar. At the moment, she had a frightened squirrel-like expression on her face, but she was the culprit who’d cut down the dozens of bony hands targeting Jae-Hyeok.
“You couldn’t protect Do-Jin, but you managed to survive with the help of your teammates.” Loren jumped down lightly from the ceiling that was tens of meters high and glared at Jae-Hyeok. “In Europe, being an aristocrat means someone who protects, not someone who is protected. I guess it is different in South Korea?”
His disdainful look was full of killing intent. It seemed he hadn’t calmed down even after smashing the shooting range.
Jae-Hyeok said indifferently, “You just want to pick a fight, don’t you?” Loren himself had to know better than anyone else that he was being unreasonable. Jae-Hyeok shrugged. “If it is like that, just fight me.”
“C-calm down! All three of us are here to avenge Senior Do-Jin! We are on the same side!” A distraught Chae Da-Hee tried to intervene, but it was futile.
There was the sound of joints snapping, and Loren’s bone armor changed shape. The armor’s originally bulky size, which focused on defense, turned sleek.
“Today is the same as the first day we met.”
Claaang!
A monster bone shot out from Loren’s wrist and fell into his grip. It was the same bone sword that he’d used to beat up the Shooting team members, and it gave off a subtle blue light that sent shivers down people’s spines.
“However, there is no Do-Jin this time to stop me.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” There was a deep smile on Jae-Hyeok’s face.
His heart was pounding.
There were fourteen students who were considered the best among the freshmen this year. Among them, the only one who could compare to Shinra Kyeong, who was ranked at the top, was the green-haired exchange student in front of him.
Jae-Hyeok wasn’t stupid enough to think he could win against Loren as he was now. Still, he was curious. How far could he go against Austria’s National Treasure candidate?
He wanted to see. He wondered if he deserved to dream of being the strongest. And, I’ll have one more story to tell Father after my vacation.
Kang Jae-Hyeok’s father had been effectively pronounced dead. He was brain dead. But in Jae-Hyeok’s mind, his father was still a living, breathing family member.
Whenever Jae-Hyeok visited, he always shared stories with his father, but so far, his stories had been the same—today he’d swung the sword a few times, or today the porridge made by Butler Hwang had been as tasteless as ever...
Having been trapped in the estate for eight years, Jae-Hyeok hadn’t had much to talk about. And he was too embarrassed to mention the news; all the news connected to the Kang family was negative. The media was so malicious that even the villains in dramas were characters based on the Kang family.
Now the situation had changed. Thanks to entering Lion’s castle, the stories he could tell his father were accumulating day by day.
“You look happy,” Loren said. Jae-Hyeok’s reaction made Loren feel uncomfortable.
Loren was also the son of a duke, so he knew the power of a duke better than anyone and didn’t let the fall of the Kang family lower his caution.
He guessed that the power of Jae-Hyeok’s Bloodline Skill would be great.
However, Jae-Hyeok had only recently awakened. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the gap between them was like heaven and earth when it came to Skill proficiency and player level.
Nevertheless, Kang Jae-Hyeok was smiling as if confident in his victory.
Hmph. There is no benefit in Do-Jin getting close to an ignorant person like him, Loren thought while plotting to crush Jae-Hyeok, only to pause halfway through.
“Unavoidable trials should be enjoyed. Don’t regret it later and fight properly. You will be in trouble if you clumsily attack me.”
“...Hah?”
Did Kang Jae-Hyeok just give him a warning? him? Loren frowned and was about to swing his sword.
“—What a big mess. If the seniors had seen this, we would’ve all been killed.” A strange woman’s voice suddenly came from behind them.
"......!"
Jae-Hyeok and Loren flinched, noticing far too late that a new person had appeared close by.
That person was a tall, long-haired beauty. She glanced at Roh Jun-Yeop’s face, who was unconscious in the corner, and stomped on him.
“I’m sure this bastard must’ve caused an accident again.” The woman kicked Roh Jun-Yeop in the side and sent him flying toward the entrance. Searᴄh the NovelZone.fun website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
She shook her foot as if to remove invisible dirt and then shifted her attention to the two boys. “Are you still not satisfied with this? Then take this bastard and bury him in cement or drown him in the sea, for all I care. I’ve got my hands full cleaning up here before the supervisors arrive.”
Dozens of Shooting Club members entered then, carrying many materials and items. The Shooting Club members seemed to be divided into two factions based on the way the new arrivals didn’t even look at their colleagues suffering from broken limbs.
Loren’s excitement was broken, and he turned to leave with a snort. Meanwhile, Jae-Hyeok stood still and said meaningfully, “If you are going to bury him, you should bury him in the ground soaked with Do-Jin’s blood.”
"......?"
People’s eyes followed Jae-Hyeok as he headed toward the entrance, where the weapon racks were.
Roh Jun-Yeop had finally come to his senses and was slowly getting up.
Jae-Hyeok gestured toward him with his chin. “Get ready and go pick a shooting lane.”
“You... who the hell are you?”
Roh Jun-Yeop grabbed his throbbing head and glared at Jae-Hyeok with killing intent. He had a vague memory of what had happened just before fainting.
“I am Kang Jae-Hyeok.” Jae-Hyeok replied as he stepped toward the weapons rack and pulled out a horn bow, testing it. “I am Baek Do-Jin’s team leader and colleague.”
In Lion’s Castle, the rule for taking over a club was simple: if the club manager was challenged to a competition and lost, he would have to cede control of his club.
Using brute force was useless.
To convince and subjugate the entire club, Jae-Hyeok had to compete with the club manager according to the club's rules.
However, the rules of the competition always benefited the club’s own members because they were the ones who set the rules.
Moreover, the challengers had to pay a huge price if they lost.
Throughout the history of Lion’s Castle, only a handful of people had attempted to take over a club.
“Pick up your gun. Let’s have a shooting competition.”