Madness
Tick, tick.
Only the regular drip of water sliding down the stalactites lingered by my ears before scattering into the darkness.
The Demonic Sea Heart Scripture.
In the stillness, I recited the incantation written in that demonic manual.
The evil lacing every line of the formula made it feel as though my mind might sink at any moment into a dark, lightless sea.
The internal art that brought Yiryeong to mind—Clear Lotus Art—reached into the unfathomable darkness and pulled me back. Just like the name she had given me.
The Demonic Sea Heart Scripture was unstable, but Clear Lotus Art was doing more than enough to shield me from demonic energy.
So the impulse I had felt before wasn’t a problem caused by building up inner strength after all.
The trouble was that energy carrying a faint trace of madness was roaming through my body and surging up into my head.
If that was the case, then there was no choice but to avoid using my inner power altogether—but that made no sense. As a stopgap, I would have to narrow the channels leading to Baihui to control the demonic energy before each fight.
Most martial artists spent their whole lives trying to widen their acupoints by even the smallest amount, and here I was trying to close mine instead.
The contradiction made me let out a dry laugh. So this was what it meant to become a demonic man.
The sword swept through the air with a vicious aura.
Crash!
The moment the blade struck the rock, a skin-crawling fracture bloomed and burst outward in all directions.
I was still only at the beginning of my path, but at this level, I could clearly be called first-class.
Over the past few months, the demonic energy that had explosively increased within me had spread everywhere. The masked man’s force, which had once blocked my blood vessels and muscles, had long since been pierced through, judged useless and torn apart.
"Hoo..."
I steadied my breathing and unleashed a sword style altered to suit demonic energy.
Each sword technique had once been my own, using various subtleties like defeat, weight, and swiftness as feints. Then I would weave them together into a flowing sword.
But demonic energy clashed with that flow at every turn. It rose from below and pushed upward, directly defying the natural order of water.
Once I boldly stripped away the troublesome fluidity, there was no longer any path to bind the feints together. In the end, the foundations of my sword style began to shake, and I chose another method: varying several different sword styles within a single core principle.
This was the result.
Amid the surging demonic energy, carrying a domineering, brutal air, a single sword extended with three distinct trajectories.
KWA-KA-KAK.
A brand-new strike—neither of those three—left a long mark across the wall.
As I watched the trace cut across the cave, I found myself wondering whether feints really needed to be feints at all.
It was absurd, but if a feint contained reality, then wouldn’t that be like unleashing several sword styles at once?
The image became clearer and clearer. If I clothed those feints in qi, perhaps it would be possible. It would still be lacking as sword qi, but if I reached Transcendence and could use Sword Gang...
The absurd vision flashed through my mind: countless strands of Sword Gang, no longer mere feints, falling in torrents while each one carried a different sword style.
To think of dozens of different swords being swung at once, all in a single instant. That impossible sight—that was the goal I had to aim for.
While I was lost in thought, something was whipped loose by the sword wind and dropped to the ground.
Tap.
When I looked toward the sound, I saw the martial arts manual the masked man had handed out before.
To complete my sword, I would have to learn countless sword styles and fill in each path one by one. Something this rudimentary was nowhere near enough.
For now there was nothing I could do about it, so I would have to ask for more later. It would be the Demonic Cult, above all others, that most wanted me to grow stronger. They would listen.
When I finished my thoughts and reached out for a dried ration pill, I realized there were almost none left.
Had that much time already passed? I had certainly thought there would be no shortage before the old man and the masked man returned.
It would probably be best to go fetch more while checking on the situation above as well.
The entrance to the cave was in a different mood than I had expected.
All the children had gathered together, watching one another warily around the jar holding the ration pills.
"Lee Hyun, perfect timing."
"I don’t like it, but I can’t deny it, Sister."
The siblings, who had noticed me approaching from a distance, came over and spoke.
"Have the ration pills already run out? What are you all doing here?"
"There’s still a little left. Everyone gathered to secure food. We don’t know when the cave will open again."
She glanced at me for a moment, then added,
"If you’re thinking of taking any from there, don’t. If the balance breaks, everyone will rush at each other and fight until they die."
"Until they die?"
"You made them that way. The people here know it now, too. They’ve seen that if they can’t fight and win, everything gets taken from them. And if they do fight and win, they get everything."
So that meant that until the masked man returned, we’d have to keep living off worms again while guarding the ration pills.
"Then I’ll break the balance."
Danri Yeon let out a long sigh.
"Haah... Are you even listening to me? No matter how strong you are, you can’t beat twenty people. They’re growing stronger, too."
She was right. I was still only at the very beginning of First-class; there was no way I could take on all of them at once.
"What if it were three? Would that be enough?"
"Heh... You really are insane."
"You know we’re going to have to kill them eventually anyway."
"...Then if there are only three left, what happens to me and my little brother? We’re the same, aren’t we? We’ll have to be killed someday, too."
She seemed to be worried about what came after. But I was taking the risk as well.
I couldn’t sense anything from Danri Yeon, and that made her even more suspicious. Behind her, Danri Myeong stood there as well, his huge frame still growing, spilling demonic energy from his body.
I couldn’t be certain of victory against them. Not after clearing out everyone else and being worn down, either.
Even for me, they were opponents I wanted to postpone until as late as possible.
"I promise I won’t touch you until the very end."
"You’d better keep that promise."
"Don’t worry, Sister. I’ll kill him before that happens."
"...If you don’t come after us first, I’ll keep it."
Danri Yeon shook her head as if her thoughts had become tangled, then asked me,
"So when are you planning to do it?"
"Right now."
Nine of them were stationed to the left of the cave entrance.
They were the ones I had taken on. The other eight would be handled by the Danri siblings, so I didn’t need to worry about them.
I approached them with a burst of footwork. It had originally been a martial art devoted to evasion, but altered to suit demonic energy, it had become violently aggressive, carrying the aura of a blow meant to crush and kill.
A faint tremor spread beneath my feet. As an excessive amount of demonic energy gathered in my legs, the air itself began to hum.
BOOM!
The demonic energy I had anchored in my feet flowed along the ground and hurled my body forward with terrifying force.
I saw the expressions of shock on their faces. Had they never imagined something like this would happen?
I had to unleash the strongest strike available to me.
The demonic energy accumulated through the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture answered to my will. As if excited by the blood it hadn’t tasted in a long time, the black-red current raced joyously through my body.
As I poured more and more force into the sword until it was on the verge of exploding, it became harder and harder to control.
Not yet. I had to wait a little longer. Until they wrapped their own energy around their weapons.
Now. As if begging to be released, I swung the sword, which was pulsing wildly in my hand.
Right before impact, when the blades tangled together, something unbelievable happened. Their force flowed into my sword, which was already blackening as it filled with demonic energy.
It was a method I had devised after seeing the old man absorb demonic energy with his hand last time.
Because demonic energy naturally flowed from the scarce to the abundant, my sword grew stronger while theirs weakened.
The blade advanced, carrying an even denser, more concentrated darkness.
KWAAANG!
When the weapons infused with inner power collided, the sound of something bursting echoed out.
Their armaments could not hold out and exploded. Most of their power had been drawn into my blade, leaving only a little behind.
Fragments of iron sprayed everywhere, and a shower of blood burst into the air.
Four fell. Five remained.
As they saw me advancing, my body stained red, they retreated.
Shock. Confusion. And fear.
Finishing them would be far easier than it had been a moment ago.
With each swing of the sword, one life went out.
Like lambs before a wolf, the children were seized by terror and threw down their weapons before running. Even knowing they could not escape me, they still fled.
Fear had stolen their ability to think clearly.
I cut down the throat of the last one left. His leg had been severed by my sword, but he was still trying to crawl away.
I forced the demonic energy that wanted to rampage back down into my dantian and looked around.
Hideously mutilated corpses stretched out in a long line.
Only then did the slaughter I had created truly register before my eyes.
I had definitely narrowed the channels leading to my head to block the demonic energy.
Then did this mean it wasn’t the demonic energy that had taken over me, but that I had done this while still in my right mind?
Why? Why had I tried to kill them? I couldn’t even remember the reason.
I collapsed into the pool of blood and buried my face in my knees.
"Haa..."
The whole world was red. The corpses rolling across the floor no longer looked human.
Paper dolls that bled when cut. That was the only impression they left.
I felt as though I was going mad. And yet I had been the one who had demanded that this be done.
When I felt a light weight on my shoulder and lifted my head, I saw the Danri siblings standing there with faces twisted beyond recognition.
Behind them, the corpses had formed a path. So mangled they were almost impossible to identify.
Now, the only ones left in this vast cave were the three of us.
Danri Yeon opened her mouth in a trembling voice.
"...Is it over now?"
"..."
"Say something... We won’t go hungry anymore, so we did the right thing, didn’t we?"
Hearing that, I remembered.
It was because of the ration pills. Because I didn’t want our food taken from us. That was why we had killed seventeen children.
Had I killed people just for something to eat? The thought made my head feel as though it would split in two.
Through the pounding pain, Yiryeong surfaced in my mind. For some reason, her face was blurred.
That was right. Yiryeong. Because I had killed these people today, I was one step closer to her.
That was why I’d killed them. I had to. I had come too far now to turn back.
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