The word ‘umbrella’ came from the Latin ‘umbra,’ which meant ‘shadow.’ Regardless of its origin, the point was that umbrellas weren’t meant to be tools for violence. However, they made surprisingly good weapons.

‘Especially a long umbrella like this one...’

Seo Jun-Ho looked down at the ice umbrella he had stabbed between Rivero’s ribs. Because it had all the functions of a real umbrella, if he just pressed a button, it would open.

Rivero glared at him with bloodlust in his eyes as blood poured out of his mouth. “I…urgh… I’ll kill…”

Pwoosh!

The umbrella opened up from inside his body. However, not a single drop of blood spilled on the ground. Seo Jun-Ho had frozen it completely.

“...!” The fiends turned around a second too late, and the curses died in their mouths. They exchanged glances as they stared at the clear block of ice reflecting sunlight.

‘Did you see that?’

‘...I didn’t think he’d move that fast.’

‘I admit that he’s fast, but he won’t be hard to kill.’ 

As befitting members of the Despair Squadron, the fiends started to prepare their own counterattacks. The first thing they noticed was how Jun-Ho could move through the air.

‘He’s not holding himself up in the air.’

‘When he leaped off of the pillar, he grabbed Rivero’s shoulder.’ 

Seo Jun-Ho himself couldn’t fly, so he used the fiend.

Now that Rivero was dead, what would he do next?

‘He’ll charge forward again, trying to find another one to grab on to.’ 

The fiends waited, eyes flashing red. And just as they had expected, Seo Jun-Ho kicked off of something as he fell toward the sea.

It was Rivero’s frozen corpse. Even as he kicked off of it with his entire body weight, it was sturdy enough as a foothold.

‘He’s coming!’

‘It’s exactly as I thought!’

‘I just need to block him once. Just once’. 

As long as they didn’t fall victim to his ambush, it wouldn’t be hard to throw him into the cold sea.

However, there was just one thing they had overlooked. Seo Jun-Ho’s speed wasn’t something they could handle after seeing it just once.

“Ugh… Ahh!”

One of the fiends looked down to see the end of an umbrella poking out of their chest. It was the perfect surprise attack from behind. They hadn’t even been able to sense Seo Jun-Ho until it was too late.

“Dammit, how is he changing directions so fast?”

“He makes big pieces of ice in the air and kicks off of them. He can control where he goes that way.”

Seo Jun-Ho wasn’t just going to charge at them in a straight line.

“Attack him now! Jeff! Grab onto him!”

“Do it for the Association!”

“You little… What kind of bullshit…” Jeff cursed loudly, but he tightly gripped the folding umbrella poking straight through his chest.

‘I’m not doing this because I want to help them.’ 

He was doing this because he wanted to take Seo Jun-Ho down with him.

However, Seo Jun-Ho wasn’t going to let him.

“Let go of my umbrella.”

Crackle! 

Jeff’s hands froze over. When Seo Jun-Ho gave his umbrella a small tug, his hands broke off.

“A-ahh! M-my hands…!” As they fell off his wrists, not a single drop of blood spilled out.

Crackle! 

Seo Jun-Ho placed a hand on Jeff’s back as he wailed. And in an instant, Jeff became an ice sculpture and fell into the ocean. Seo Jun-Ho stepped off his corpse and shot into the air.

‘They’re more defensive now.’ 

The fiends weren’t carelessly leaving their backs open anymore. They had their backs pressed to each other, ensuring that at least one person could block him.

‘But they’ve made a huge mistake.’ 

He actually didn’t have to grab onto them. In fact, Seo Jun-Ho planned to take advantage of this misunderstanding.

Crackle! 

He made a small block of ice in the air and stepped off of it before flying toward the fiends.

“...”

Their stares were so sharp that he could feel them. The powerful demonic energy they gave off made his skin tingle.

Woosh! 

Seo Jun-Ho stabbed his ice umbrella right into a fiend’s carotid artery.

Clang!

“...?”

However, the sound it made was different—it was no longer the sound of ice hitting flesh.

“Fufu, I got you.” The fiend grinned wide and laughed. Their neck had turned silver under the umbrella.

‘The skin… Is steel?’ 

Moreover, it was tough enough to handle his attack.

“This is it for you.” The fiend kicked Seo Jun-Ho’s abdomen with a steel leg. He quickly blocked it with his umbrella, so he managed to avoid a fatal hit, but Seo Jun-Ho doubled over.

“You can’t fly without wings, after all.”

The ten fiends laughed as they watched Seo Jun-Ho fall toward the ocean.

Woosh! 

The wind blew through him, filling his ears with its scream. Jun-Ho looked down at his hands.

‘My umbrella broke.’ 

It had broken after just one kick. According to what the Frost Queen had said, her ice would not have broken.

‘No matter how far I go, the road ahead always seems long.’ 

He let out a light sigh, and his body stopped in midair. More specifically, he had landed on a block of ice.

‘If I got stronger, this too…’ 

Instead of making large pieces of ice, he would be able to use shards as small as his palm to walk around in midair.

However, before he could do that, he had to make his body as light as a feather. The Frost Queen had given him a lecture on the theory back in the goshiwon, but he had never succeeded in actually doing it.

“Huh, is he gonna use the same method again?”

“It won’t work twice…”

Seo Jun-Ho kicked off of the ice and flew into the air. He deftly created three more pieces of ice and used them as steps to reach the fiends.

‘As I thought, he’s fast.”

‘But he’s definitely slower than before.’

‘Maybe there are constraints to using that incredible speed from before.’ 

Of course, there were limits. Seo Jun-Ho could only maintain a 70% Overclocking output for thirty minutes at most.

‘But being that fast all the time isn’t necessarily a good thing.’

There was a famous saying among Players: there were many who were good at accelerating, but there weren’t many who were good at deaccelerating. Seo Jun-Ho strongly agreed with that saying.

‘If you just keep going fast, fast, fast, your opponent will eventually get used to it.’ 

If one only relied on speed, one’s attacks would eventually become predictable. And since his current opponents were fiends—they would be very good at adapting.

So, Seo Jun-Ho had chosen to slow down.

‘Start with 70% and go down to 20%.’ 

The fiends were carefully studying his every move. Some of them had started to get used to his 70% output.

“We definitely have a chance… No, we can definitely catch him.”

“I suppose the speed from before was just his momentum.”

As the fiends fell into his trap, Seo Jun-Ho stepped off of the third shard of ice. His figure disappeared among them.

“...!”

“80% output.” Though he could currently only maintain it for five minutes at most, it was the highest output he could reach.

In addition, Overclocking didn’t just give him enhanced speed.

‘It improves stamina, strength, and flexibility as well.’ 

Bam! 

Seo Jun-Ho’s fist pummeled a fiend, making them explode like a water balloon. Blood fell from the sky like rain.

The other fiends pulled themselves together as the warm blood covered them.

‘He… Got fast?’

‘How…’

‘How did that bastard do it?’ 

The majority of the fiends were distracted by Seo Jun-Ho, but the quick-witted ones froze. They frantically started to shake off the blood like it was fire.

“Heh, this is why the smart ones are more fun.”

Seo Jun-Ho gestured with his finger.

Crackle! 

The blood on their bodies froze into scarlet icicles. Where blood was on their faces, the ice stabbed through their faces, and where it stained their armors, it pierced through those as well.

Aside from three fiends who had been smart enough to shake the blood off of them, all the other fiends instantly died.

‘I used this technique when I fought the Cinder Fox, too.’ 

However, back then, he had used all his magic power to create one large spike made of ice. Now, he could easily create dozens of icicles.

‘But I still know how limited my power is…’ 

Right now, he could freeze any liquid within eyeshot using the Frost skill, but he couldn’t freeze the blood within someone’s body like what the Frost Queen could do in her prime.

“Hm.” The steel-skinned fiend was among the three remaining survivors. They cracked their knuckles and nodded. “I suppose I’ll have to act as a shield.”

“...You?”

“Nonsense…”

The other two were shocked. They had never seen a fiend who would willingly sacrifice themselves.

“I wouldn’t usually do this either. But like you saw before, his attacks can’t hurt me.” They tapped on their carotid artery as proof. “My skin is a lot tougher than his ice, so I’ll be fine.”

“Wait, but isn’t steel weak to low temperatures?”

“As far as I know, it doesn’t break easily as long as it doesn’t go below negative thirty degrees.”

“Tsk, tsk tsk.” Their fellow fiends were intelligent, but the steel-skinned fiend clicked their tongue. “It looks like steel, but my skin is much stronger than normal steel. Negative thirty degrees is nothing.”

“Makes sense…”

“I’ll restrain his movements, so just make sure to kill him. You can do that much, right?”

“Yeah...” The other two didn’t like their condescending tone, but they nodded along without protest. They knew it wouldn’t be easy to catch Seo Jun-Ho without the steel-skinned fiend’s skill.

‘They’re taking on all the risk anyways.’

‘It’ll be nice if it works, but it’ll be fine if it doesn’t.’ 

The steel-skinned fiend had drunk the blood of an Inozia—a demon race who could harness the wind. The fiend used the wind to fly toward Seo Jun-Ho at an impressive speed.

“Hiyaaa!” They gripped Seo Jun-Ho’s throat and lifted him into the air. “Why, did you think you were the only one who was fast?”

“...” Jun-Ho looked down at the thick hand encircling his throat. His opponent had already become steel from head to toe. “I heard that steel breaks like straw when it’s cold… Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Heh. Sorry, but my body’s not made out of normal steel.”

“I see.” Seo Jun-Ho’s eyes started to glow with a blue light. At the same time, the temperature around them rapidly dropped.

“Heh. This is child’s play.”

The steel hands squeezed harder around Seo Jun-Ho’s neck. It was a contest to see which would happen first: whether Seo Jun-Ho’s neck broke first, or the remaining fiends froze first. The first to chicken out would lose.

“Haaa!” Steel veins popped against the steel face. All of a sudden, the fiend noticed something wrong.

‘This guy… Why does he look like that?’

From the very beginning, Seo Jun-Ho’s face had remained expressionless, like he was just an observer watching from the sidelines.

‘But… I’m crushing your throat.’ 

So why did he look so calm and unbothered?

The fiend’s doubt started to grow. “W-wait.” Their heart started to pound. “Kill him! Right now!” The fiend called to their comrades.

“...”

However, there was no voice saying that they got it or to just hold on for a bit. There was no response at all.

“What are you doing, you idiots…”

The steel-skinned fiend’s face fell as they turned around.

No one was there.

Splash! Splash! 

The sound of something falling into the ocean could be heard.

Seo Jun-Ho spoke, “We’re in the middle of the ocean, but it was raining just a while ago.” There was no better place for him to use his Frost Skill. The two other fiends had instantly died when he pierced them with icicles. “I’ve had my fun, so let’s end it here.”

Seo Jun-Ho raised his hand and pressed down on the steel arm holding him up by his neck.

Crack! 

It broke like a piece of straw. It was like an adult swatting away the hand of a child.

“Ah… Ugh…” The fiend fell back.

It was then that they finally realized. From the very beginning, the man in front of their eyes had considered the eleven members of the Despair Squadron to be nothing but mere playthings.

“D-Don't…” they begged. The fiend would lose their sense of touch every time they used this skill and transformed their skin into steel. This was why they hadn’t noticed how cold it was. “P-Please, don’t do this...” 

A normal human being would have already died at this temperature.

“Bye...” Seo Jun-Ho lightly pushed the fiend’s face.

Crack! 

With the sound of a glowstick breaking, the fiend’s head broke off their shoulders. Seo Jun-Ho quickly caught it.

“I almost lost the chance to read their memories.”

The Fiend Association’s Port Lane mission had completely failed. 

On that day, nearly a hundred fiends lost their lives.