The Being That Failed to Ascend 4
Shin Gi-woon landed on the ground and slowly backed away. The earth was no longer scorching hot.
Thanks to that, he no longer needed to use his internal energy—but something else was the problem.
The sweltering heat from mere moments ago had vanished without a trace. In its place, a chill like the bitter north wind off the Northern Sea swept through the cave. Shin Gi-woon hastily withdrew the power of the White Fang Spear.
"Shit. Now you're controlling the cold?"
"Kigigik!"
The voice had lost its strength. Perhaps it had overinvested its power into changing forms. This was clearly its final struggle.
It made sense, in a way. This was a creature that should have become a dragon and commanded the weather itself—only to fall short and plummet from the heavens. That it could still manipulate the climate was understandable. He just hated having to accept it with his own body.
Moments ago he had been pouring sweat; now a cold that could freeze a man solid crashed over him. Still, it was better than heat so fierce he could barely breathe.
Never before had he missed his Cold-and-Heat Immunity Physique this badly. But he was not about to give up over something this small.
"Hah!"
Shin Gi-woon reset his stance to match Gangcheol's transformation. The attack pattern might have changed, so he refused to move carelessly.
Gangcheol moved first. It suddenly lifted its head and let out a tremendous roar.
"KRAOOOOOH!!"
Shin Gi-woon narrowed his eyes and glared. There was no way it was roaring just to gauge his fighting spirit.
Something would change because of that roar. The answer revealed itself almost at once.
Crack-crack-crack.
"Ha! A mere yokai trying to imitate a great dragon?"
Chunks of ice and hail materialized out of empty air. It looked as if the creature was straining every nerve to alter the weather. For managing to produce hail, he decided to give it a round of applause.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Excellent. A real dragon would whip up storms or blizzards—but hail?! Just like you, Gangcheol!"
"KRAAAAH!!"
Exactly as expected.
Rage at failing to become a dragon. Pride as a yokai that could still command the weather. By gently poking those raw nerves with a taunt, he had Gangcheol screaming almost with delight.
The problem was that the provocation made Gangcheol start thinking. It began trying to gather the hail into one place.
Judging by the look of it, the plan was to pack the ice into a single mass and hurl it. Whether it clumped the hail, fried it, or boiled it made no difference to him.
"If that's all you've got, I'm going first!"
Shin Gi-woon's form blurred. When he reappeared, he was five jang up in the air. Kicking hard off a layer of air for acceleration, he punched straight through the hail mass and brought his spear down toward Gangcheol's head.
But Gangcheol was no fool.
The instant the spear broke through the ice, the creature leapt skyward. At the same time, enormous wings erupted from its body. Shin Gi-woon clicked his tongue at the sight.
"Hey! Flying is cheating! Even Yonggari doesn't have wings!"
"Grrrrrng!"
Maybe it was his imagination, but thick arrogance now colored the creature's voice.
Perhaps Gangcheol was evolving in real time. The way it fell for the taunt and openly displayed emotion was proof enough.
Could he even keep calling this thing Gangcheol? A winged Gangcheol was something he had never seen or heard of.
No. I've never seen or heard of it—but that doesn't mean it can't exist in this world.
Assuming every tale that crossed over from the peninsula was pure fact was a mistake. Distortion was always possible. And this Gangcheol might simply be special.
Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang. Bodhidharma of Shaolin. The Heavenly Demon of the Demonic Cult.
Did any of them think, in their own time, that later generations would revere them as legends?
No. They were extraordinary, yet never regarded themselves as such. That was simply how true geniuses were.
If this Gangcheol belonged to the same class of genius, then growing wings was entirely possible.
The creature itself would be thrilled. For the one forced to fight something that soared freely through the sky, the situation was nothing but a headache.
"Haa… If only I could free-step through the air, I'd have options."
The secret of void-stepping required at least the Hwagyeong Realm. No matter how clearly his mind remembered the technique, his body was still only First-Class. Even if he died and came back, he could not freely tread the empty sky.
Fortunately, Gangcheol seemed to share the same limitation. It was flying, yet its movements still wobbled and lurched in plain sight.
"You can't control it properly, can you?"
"Kyaaaak!"
"Hahaha!"
That settled it. Gangcheol understood human speech. It had gained both the intelligence to think and the capacity for emotion.
If he left it alone any longer, it might evolve far enough to hold a conversation. He had no interest in that outcome.
Gangcheol was a monster that First-Class fighters were told not even to consider fighting unless they had reached Peak. It was already troublesome enough; letting it evolve further would be pure idiocy.
"Time to end this."
Shin Gi-woon drove the tip of his spear into the ground. Watching him, Gangcheol recalled the strange movement from before.
Capable of learning, it already knew what the human intended. He would use the spear shaft's springiness to launch himself forward at high speed.
It had already prepared a countermeasure. Gangcheol began gathering energy to move the hail.
But it had miscalculated. Shin Gi-woon did not grip the spear and charge the way he had before.
Gangcheol froze. It finally realized that it was not the only one capable of changing attack patterns.
Too late.
"I don't even need to pick up the spear!"
"…!"
In the blink of an eye Shin Gi-woon shot forward. Before Gangcheol could react, he was right in front of its snout.
From the moment the scorching heat vanished, there had been no real reason he had to strike Gangcheol with the White Fang Spear.
Yet from the time Gangcheol was still an imugi, Shin Gi-woon had always faced it with a spear. Now that the creature possessed intelligence, it had never even imagined he might switch tactics.
"Grrrrrng!"
"Too late, you bastard."
Panicked, Gangcheol tried to manipulate the hail—but Shin Gi-woon's fist was already descending toward its skull.
In that hair-trigger instant, whether by chance or fate, their eyes locked.
Gangcheol's gaze was saturated with hatred, yet still carried a thread of regret.
Shin Gi-woon's expression remained calm, yet deep hatred burned inside him.
Alike yet utterly opposite, the two beings understood each other through that brief exchange of glances alone.
But an end still had to be made. In Shin Gi-woon's dictionary, there was no entry for sparing an enemy that had nearly killed him.
"In the next life, I hope you become a dragon."
He never heard a reply. His fist had already smashed into Gangcheol's head.
With the sound of a skull caving in—
BOOOOOOM!
The creature's head exploded, and its icy blood drenched him from head to toe.
At the same time an unspeakable stench spread through the air. He frowned for only a moment, then looked down at the headless corpse with a strange expression.
"…"
Right before the fist landed, Gangcheol had clearly been smiling. For this creature—for Gangcheol, who had fallen into the abyss because it failed to become a dragon—had death been liberation?
"Why make that face at the end… Damn it, this feels filthy."
He should never have met its eyes. Understanding the thing had left a bad taste in his mouth.
Feeling pity for an enemy he had set out to kill? He had survived a place where failing to kill meant dying himself.
Shin Gi-woon could not understand why he felt this way.
He took a moment to steady his breathing and sort through the emotions. Then he used the water formed from the melting cold air to wash every drop of blood from his body.
His dangling left arm had already been fully restored by the vigorous circulation of the Fighting Spirit Divine Art. The instant he settled into a lotus position to circulate his energy and regulate his breath, he realized something.
His body had already grown to the threshold of Peak.
This body grows at an abnormal rate. Already looking at Peak…
Gangcheol was a monster that no human short of Peak was supposed to be able to handle.
If it had been any other First-Class martial artist instead of Shin Gi-woon, they would never have stood a chance.
It sounded like boasting, but it was the truth. The first form had been heat and flame; the second, cold and hail. Anyone who thought facing both at once looked easy was, by definition, not First-Class level.
"Hooo…"
After roughly one shichen of energy circulation and breath regulation, Shin Gi-woon finished.
He should have invested more time recovering his stamina, but the stench rising from Gangcheol's corpse was so overwhelming that one shichen was the absolute limit.
He had at least restored himself to a functional state, so it would have to do.
He rose to his feet—and there, where Gangcheol's corpse had lain, he spotted something gleaming.
"This is…?"
A black stone, perhaps. The small bead shimmering with a lustrous black light looked, to anyone's eyes, like a spiritual elixir.
Yet Shin Gi-woon approached with caution. Something that looked like an elixir could just as easily be poison.
This had appeared as a byproduct of Gangcheol, after all.
"What am I supposed to do with this…"
He hesitated. If he handed it over to the Cult, he could demand a certain reward.
But what if this bead was an elixir that rivaled—or surpassed—Shaolin's Great Return Pill?
That would be an enormous loss.
It had come from Gangcheol's body. Surely it contained more energy than most ordinary elixirs.
"The reason it became Gangcheol in the first place was because a thousand years of cultivation ended in failu—"
That was the moment.
The demonic energy that had been sitting quietly in his dantian suddenly surged.
"Ghk!"
It seized control of his body. Panicked, Shin Gi-woon tried to wrest control back by circulating his internal energy—
Thud.
The demonic energy that had claimed his body simply tossed the bead into his mouth. It slid naturally down his throat.
"Fuck… I'm screwed—kh!"
Thump-thump-thump-thump!
At the same time, Shin Gi-woon's heart began pounding as if it would burst.