CHAPTER 162: CROWNLESS KING

There had been no warning.

One moment, Hanuel Lim and his team were standing in a crumbling plaza bathed in gray mist. The next—they weren’t alone.

Four figures emerged across from them, formed from smoke and darkness, but shaped perfectly. Same height. Same builds. Same posture. Even their clothes were mirrored.

Hanuel had seen plenty of tricks since the Collapse. This wasn’t a trick.

This was a mirror.

His own doppelgänger stepped forward, dragging a long shadow behind him that curved unnaturally along the stone. It didn’t carry a weapon. No staff. Just empty hands and a sharp stillness. And when it moved—it did so like it had never needed one.

Hanuel lunged first.

He spun his staff—a clean spiral forward from the high guard—and dropped low, sweeping the legs.

The shadow blurred.

It vanished into its own silhouette, flickered behind him, and drove a heel into his shoulder with no wind-up. Hanuel stumbled forward, caught his footing, and twisted into a mid-range jab that extended through shadow reach—

The clone wasn’t there anymore.

A tendril wrapped his ankle and slammed him backward.

He hit the ground hard.

"Get up," one of his teammates shouted somewhere. A clash rang out—a screech of metal—followed by a grunt of pain. "Hanuel—"

But he was already up.

Spinning.

His pole became a blur of motion—sliding into the inner grip stance, pivoting outward into crescent form. He drove forward, jabbing high then faking low, twisting into a vault over the clone’s head—and for a second, he thought he had it.

The angle was perfect. The clone had no time to block.

But the strike passed through air again.

It didn’t counter.

It just disappeared—melded into the ground—and emerged beside him with a wall of pure black slamming into his ribs.

Hanuel slid.

Coughed.

Spit blood.

It wasn’t just the movements. It was how the shadow anticipated every one of them. Every beat. Every rhythm. Like it didn’t just know what he was going to do—it knew why.

And it never once used a staff.

That’s when it hit him.

The shadow wasn’t imitating his style.

It was fighting the version of him that had stopped learning.

The version that had become too reliant on power.

Too comfortable with augmentation.

Hanuel rolled to his feet, barely catching a blade of darkness with the tail end of his pole. The staff vibrated from the impact. A crack had formed near the base.

Damn it.

He wasn’t going to win this with shadow spikes or clever warps. He wasn’t going to win this by using the System like a crutch.

He planted his heel. Took a breath.

And let the shadows go.

For just a moment, he fought as he had before the System.

No augmentation.

No boost.

Just Genshu.

The flow shifted.

The air felt different—not charged, but clear.

The shadow lunged again, this time with multiple limbs curling out like spears.

Hanuel stepped in—not back.

One-step entry. Elbow tucked. Centerline defense.

His staff snapped upward in a swift vertical arc—Heaven’s Gate Block—just enough to redirect the first strike.

Turn the wrist. Redirect. Pivot right foot.

He spun low, sweeping horizontally—River’s Path Sweep—cutting through the false limb and knocking it aside.

The shadow stumbled.

It shouldn’t have. It hadn’t stumbled all fight.

Hanuel didn’t stop.

Three-beat rotation. High, middle, low.

His body moved in perfect sequence—Thousand Echo Reversal—a technique passed down through his master. The clone raised a shield of shadow—

Hanuel twisted his grip, switched stance, and thrust directly through the smallest gap.

A hollow thump echoed out.

The clone staggered backward.

For the first time—it looked... unbalanced.

Hanuel exhaled sharply and launched forward again.

Lunar Step. Crescent Arc. Inner Flow Pull.

He moved like water over stone. Not pushing. Guiding.

The final move came without force—just intention.

Falcon’s Perch. Spear Brake. Reverse Step.

He struck the base of the shadow’s spine with the butt of the staff, flipped the weapon once, then brought it down diagonally over the shoulder with Whispering End—a finisher no one ever saw twice.

This time—

The shadow cracked.

Not figuratively.

Literally.

Lines of silver split across its form.

It hissed. Twitched. Then shattered into a spiral of smoke.

Hanuel stood still in the clearing silence.

No sound.

No movement.

Just the wind brushing gently against the ash.

Then—

A whisper in the air.

A notification.

[Trial One Complete.]

The message lingered, ghost-like against the scorched battlefield sky. Hanuel didn’t move, barely even breathed. His muscles held the last position of the final strike, still in the stance that ended the clone—knees bent, one hand on the lower third of his staff, the other loosened above it, knuckles tight with strain.

But the words echoed not in sound, but through meaning.

Not just survival. Not just passage.

Recognition.

Something deeper unfurled inside him—an affirmation. Not of his skill, but of his foundation. The path he’d walked for over a decade, with calloused palms and broken toes. Not because the system allowed him to—but because he had to.

Then came the light.

From above, a shaft of brilliant gold carved through the gloom. It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t divine.

It was real.

It spun slowly, descending like a spiral comet.

And in its core—a staff.

It was unlike his old weapon in every possible way. The same shape, the same length—but nothing alike. This one pulsed faintly, not from power, but memory. It looked older than history. Older than war.

Etched along its sides were ridged lines, inscriptions, symbols half-seen and half-censored by the system.

A whisper followed as it hovered inches from his palm:

[Reward Granted:

Legendary Weapon – Ruyi Jingu Bang

Origin: System Access Restricted

Wielder: System Access Restricted

Status: Bound – Crownless King]

The rest faded.

And the golden light with it.

Now.

Stone cracked underfoot.

Dust swirled in the present—not the quiet of trial one, but the roar of battle. The arena around Hanuel was torn in places from their earlier exchange. His pole—snapped in half—lay discarded a few feet away.

And across the field, the brawler moved.

Fast.

Too fast for his size.

The man’s skin had hardened—granular, thick, like compressed stone dust. Veins of red pulsed across his forearms as he pulled back a massive fist, shaped like a battering ram of compacted grit.

He wasn’t going to let Hanuel retrieve anything.

Hanuel’s mind snapped into focus.

He didn’t reach toward the broken staff. He didn’t flinch. Instead—

He called it.

Inventory: open.

There.

Hovering at the top.

The staff shimmered once inside the dimensional space.

His fingers closed into a fist.

"Equip."

A burst of gold flared beneath him.

And the Ruyi Jingu Bang appeared in his hand.

It didn’t crash. It arrived. Clean. Solid. With a metallic hum that felt like thunder rolled tight into a thread.

The opponent didn’t slow.

If anything, he roared louder—expecting hesitation. Expecting a fumble.

Instead—

Hanuel moved.

One step.

And the earth pulsed.

He met the descending punch not by clashing—but by redirecting. The staff extended in a blur, not from the center, but from both ends at once—snapping outward into full length with a sharp thud.

He slid left, twisted low, and spun the staff around his back like a wheel, transferring momentum into a flick up under the opponent’s ribs.

The blow landed.

It didn’t crack stone. It didn’t blast him backward.

But it lifted him.

Deadweight. Seven feet of compressed muscle and rock—lifted clean into the air by a perfect upward arc.

The opponent crashed down hard.

Hanuel didn’t wait.

His stance shifted—fluid. A shadow swirled under his feet. From the pool, a second strike came—faster this time, laced with darkness that snapped at the opponent’s limbs as they moved to recover.

The staff caught bone just beneath the elbow—twisted—and locked.

Hanuel jerked back and stepped with the momentum, dragging the opponent sideways into a pivot and slamming him across the floor in a perfect circular throw.

"Not done," Hanuel murmured.

He pressed forward.

The staff’s length shrank—collapsed in mid-spin—turning from full length to short-form instantly. A flick of his wrist and it extended again—this time with a shadow-tipped strike that chased into the brawler’s ribs just as he tried to harden his skin again.

The brawler finally landed a counter.

His foot surged up—boosted by raw strength and density—and cracked into Hanuel’s side.

The pole fighter grunted—air forced out of his lungs—but rolled with it, letting the blow carry him.

He hit the ground in a controlled slide and immediately pivoted into a kneeling stance, staff resting along his back.

"Ruyi," he whispered.

The weapon responded.

A soft hum.

Then—

It extended behind him in one motion, anchoring to the floor as if it weighed a thousand pounds. The earth cracked beneath it. The opponent charged in, thinking it a mistake—

Only for Hanuel to launch forward, using the embedded staff like a lever.

A full-body spear thrust.

Right to the gut.

It didn’t pierce.

But it winded the brawler.

For the first time in the fight, he stepped back.

Not because of fear.

But because he finally understood.

Hanuel wasn’t just holding a new weapon.

He was becoming something else.

The brawler’s eyes narrowed. Dust swirled around them—thick with tension, laced with kinetic weight. Every footfall echoed louder now, the air between them taut as a drawn bow.

Hanuel didn’t blink.

The pole in his hands pulsed once.

Ruyi Jingu Bang—the impossible staff—didn’t shimmer like enchanted blades or whisper secrets like cursed relics.

It just... waited.

Like it was listening.

Hanuel shifted his grip—reverse-holding it low, stance deep. Genshu form, yes. But under it now flowed something deeper. The shadows around his feet coiled—not like mist, but like intent given shape.

He wasn’t merging his skill with his martial art anymore.

He was forging something new.

A form not taught.

Not passed down.

Born in this moment.

The brawler planted his feet and raised his arms again, his density shifting—stone growing coarser across his back and shoulders. "That stick won’t break me," he said flatly. "Hit me with your best."

Hanuel breathed in once, slow and steady.

Then the air around him changed.

The shadows didn’t rise this time—they dropped. Fell. Like a weight across the arena floor, crashing with spiritual gravity.

The temperature plummeted.

The light dimmed.

And the echo of his voice split the air:

"Gukshi-beop: Final Form."

Heuk-yeom Jangryeong.

(Black Flame Burial Staff)

It began in silence.

Hanuel raised Ruyi Jingu Bang overhead.

And the shadow on the ground didn’t just follow.

It duplicated. Four. Six. Twelve phantom silhouettes mirrored the staff’s arc in all directions—each one pointing at a different angle, as if every potential strike in the world had been cast out across time.

Then—

He stepped.

And they moved.

The first strike came straight—a thrust, not at the brawler’s chest, but into his shadow.

It pierced.

Not with force. But with command.

The brawler flinched—not physically, but internally. His limbs hesitated, as if his body was suddenly unsure what motion belonged to it.

The second strike landed a breath later—this one low, across the knees—and the shadow underneath buckled. Like roots snapping underground.

"W-what—?" the man grunted.

Hanuel said nothing.

He was already in motion.

Each strike of the staff didn’t break flesh—it broke position. The shadow itself flared, burned, was cut, like it were rope or muscle. Every blow fractured not the body—but the idea of standing one’s ground.

And now the phantom staffs attacked too.

Dozens of shadow-projections swept from all angles—echoing Hanuel’s true movements, mimicking his rotation, his weight shifts, his Genshu grip.

It wasn’t an illusion.

It was a collapse.

A flood of shadows made motion.

The brawler lashed out wildly—his arms hardening into jagged slabs, slamming toward Hanuel’s chest.

But the real Hanuel wasn’t there.

Just a shadow-pulse.

A ghost-step.

He reappeared on the other side mid-spin, the staff reducing back to a short form—striking once against the man’s back.

A crack.

This one landed for real.

Not through power.

But because the man’s body had no balance left.

His shadow was shattered.

His footing—useless.

He staggered—just half a step, but in a fight like this?

It was enough.

Hanuel’s final movement came with no flourish. No scream. No burn of system notifications.

He simply set the staff behind his back and thrust it up in one clean upper arc.

A hidden vertical sweep—rising through the man’s core.

The shadow behind him split clean in two.

And with it—

So did his form.

Not physically. But the system registered it all the same.

The brawler’s body flickered. His stance fell apart. His limbs loosened and dropped like anchors cut from the chain.

He crumbled—not dead.

But done.

From above, the Dokkaebi’s voice rang.

[Victory: Hanuel Lim.]

[Arena Cleanup Commencing.]

Jin stared down from the cube, silent. Yujin muttered something low under her breath.

Jisoo just grinned.

"Remind me never to spar him again."

Hanuel stood still, breath slow.

He tapped the base of Ruyi Jingu Bang against the ground once.

Then it vanished.

Back to inventory.

No words.

Just a quiet turn toward the next gate that would carry him away.