Chapter 37
The Floor Lord Hall.
Baek Cheon-myeong and Tenzin stood facing each other.
But technically,
there was one more person present.
Me.
Kang Ha-min.
He was watching through Baek Cheon-myeong's eyes.
Something about that conversation is strange.
Tenzin was known as a good person.
That alone was obvious from how he supported Hunters climbing the Tower.
Yet now,
he was releasing killing intent toward Baek Cheon-myeong.
Deaths inside the Floor Lord Hall couldn't really be punished.
They happened inside the Tower.
There were simply too many deaths in the Tower to attach legal punishment to each one.
So dying during a Floor Lord challenge itself wasn't particularly unusual.
But someone like Tenzin was genuinely fighting to kill Baek Cheon-myeong.
Someone ordered him.
Baek Cheon-myeong had already mentioned it.
And if Kang Ha-min had to guess who gave that order...
China.
Kang Ha-min wasn't racist.
But he didn't like China.
China had long abused its enormous territory and population.
And South Korea had suffered from its behavior countless times.
Even now,
it was obvious China constantly watched for chances to pressure Korea.
Not long ago, S Rank Hunter Park Kang-jun also moved to China.
S Rank Hunters had a high chance of becoming Tower Ascendants.
Tower Ascendants couldn't directly interfere with the surface,
so they were treated separately.
But they could still help their countries in another way.
For example,
the more powerful Tower Ascendants a country had,
the stronger something known as the Tower's Blessing became.
[Tower's Blessing]
Many studies were still being conducted on it.
But statistically,
the higher a country's Tower Ascendants climbed,
the higher the Awakening rate and average Hunter Rank in that country became.
This was a world where a nation's Hunters represented national power.
So increasing the strength of Hunters was equal to strengthening the country itself.
That was why every nation desperately tried to produce Tower Ascendants.
S Rank Hunters were especially precious.
If they achieved Tower Ascension,
they had a higher chance of reaching greater floors.
That was why nations supported S Rank Hunters until the very end.
And South Korea had lost one of those S Rank Hunters to China.
Of course Korean citizens had been furious at both China and their own incompetent government.
China really hates seeing South Korea grow stronger.
Baek Cheon-myeong was the same.
If China could persuade him to join them, that would be ideal.
But the Korean government had completely blocked access to his information.
Worse,
Baek Cheon-myeong's name had already spread internationally, including in the United States.
He had grown too important for China to easily interfere with.
So perhaps China had decided,
Get rid of him before he grows any further.
Kang Ha-min sighed.
Now he understood why Shin No-seop had been so worried.
China was too large to be called a small country,
yet too narrow-minded to deserve being called a great nation.
The phrase fit perfectly.
And Tenzin now stood before Baek Cheon-myeong because of China's order.
"I will begin."
Even after accepting an assassination order,
Tenzin remained polite.
Golden energy exploded from his entire body.
The ground cracked like a spiderweb.
The earth sank beneath him.
It felt as though an entire mountain range rested upon his body.
Then he vanished.
His speed was too fast for ordinary eyes to follow.
Tenzin appeared before Baek Cheon-myeong
and threw a punch.
The air tore before the fist even arrived.
Baek Cheon-myeong silently raised his sword.
BOOOOM!
Sword and fist collided.
A violent shockwave exploded in every direction.
Yet Baek Cheon-myeong didn't move even slightly.
He stood as though steel spikes had fixed him to the ground.
Tenzin's eyebrows moved.
"I see. Your records truly weren't achieved through luck."
"Is this really the time to talk?"
Baek Cheon-myeong's sword moved.
It looked like an incredibly slow slash.
But Tenzin's expression immediately changed.
His instincts screamed.
Dangerous.
Tenzin crossed both arms.
CLAAAAANG!
Golden aura shattered.
A long sword wound appeared across Tenzin's arms.
Blood flowed from it.
His eyes widened.
A wooden sword had cut through his Vajra body.
[One Who Broke a Branch of the World Tree widens their eyes.]
[One Who Built a Grave for the Stars tilts their head.]
[One Who Stepped on a God's Shadow frowns.]
Whispers spread among the Demigods.
Tenzin was a Hunter who had reached the 99th Floor.
Even with the Floor Lord restriction,
the experience he had accumulated was completely different from someone who had only reached the Eleventh Floor.
More importantly,
Tenzin's body was famous for its durability even among Tower Ascendants.
His Class was Vajra Wisdom King (金剛明王).
Its passive skill, Vajra,
was a defensive passive even Tower Ascendants respected.
And yet a Hunter who had just reached the Eleventh Floor cut through it?
That made no sense.
"You're strong."
"You only realized that now?"
Baek Cheon-myeong lightly pulled his wooden sword back.
"Go ahead. Try blocking the next one with your bare body too."
His body wasn't truly bare.
It was protected by Vajra.
But Tenzin could already tell.
The next attack would cut him.
He had always believed his Vajra body was nearly immune to physical attacks.
He had never imagined the day would come when it could be cut.
He felt strangely empty.
At the same time,
his fighting spirit slowly began rising.
The nature of a Wisdom King he had buried long ago was awakening.
After all,
Tenzin had also been born a martial artist.
Even before China's order, this is a swordsman I genuinely want to defeat.
Tenzin clenched his fists.
An even greater golden aura exploded from his body.
"That's a little better than before."
Baek Cheon-myeong seemed pleased as well.
Tenzin was burning with determination to defeat him.
Why did Baek Cheon-myeong look happy about that?
Kang Ha-min couldn't understand at all.
BOOOOM!
Tenzin kicked off the ground.
This time,
his charge was so explosive that even his image disappeared.
A fist.
An elbow.
A knee.
A kick.
Dozens of attacks rained down in a single instant.
Baek Cheon-myeong blocked all of them with one wooden sword.
Every time sword and body collided,
the battlefield shook.
Each time Tenzin's fists struck the blade,
golden aura burst outward.
Each time Baek Cheon-myeong's sword brushed Tenzin,
that golden aura was torn apart.
