Do You Know the Saber?
Sixty years ago, the First Apostle, Cheonsal, appeared.
She went from great house to sect, bent on destroying their hereditary martial arts and ultimate techniques. Her aim was to sever the lineage of humanity's strength, and to weaken them by leaving only incomplete arts to be passed down.
At the time, the Paeng family was moving the manual of the Primal Thunder Saber somewhere safe when they lost part of it — and of all pages, it was the opening chapter, the introduction most vital to calling forth the black-and-white lightning. They later managed an incomplete preservation from memory, but the lightning that trailed the saber grew cloudy and dull, and could no longer cut as it once had.
A truly bitter loss. The loss of a family's secret art meant the weakening of its power, and so the Paeng had spent every year since quietly searching, through hidden channels, for that opening chapter of the Primal Thunder Saber. Then the Bukseon Escort Bureau happened upon something that looked promising, and had the nerve to come to the Paeng with an aggressive bargain. It was the single page Lupin had pocketed the day before — ruined past any hope of restoration.
Why else would the Young Patriarch, Paeng Cheong-ui, have brushed aside every marriage talk that came his way? What mattered most to him was restoring the hereditary art that was as good as a family treasure: the Primal Thunder Saber. And then a woman of the saber appeared before him who could reproduce the primal lightning perfectly. What else was he supposed to think? Even if he meant to ask how she had come by the art, he would have to keep hold of her first and ask afterward.
It was, however, a colossal mistake — Paeng Cheong-ui's heart had simply run ahead of him.
...I went and did it!
Even to his eyes, Lupin was a captivating bride. He had only killed the thought itself, taking her for a flower he dared not reach for. The moment his heart grew urgent, the Paeng clan's native boldness and headlong temper showed themselves at last.
The collateral-branch juniors, robbed of the first move, glared at Paeng Cheong-ui. Paeng Cheongrok wore a look of pure bewilderment — why on earth was his elder brother doing this? Duty as Young Patriarch was telling Cheong-ui to put the mess back together, and he was just calming his racing heart, ready to take the words back, when Lupin gazed off into the distance with a sorrowful face, the rims of her eyes reddening.
"Ah... I suppose this is as far as our bond was meant to go."
For the moment, Paeng Cheong-ui was lucky. He had not been punched over the wall and through the roof tiles. After shaking so many hands at the Rostov party, Lupin was used to a little palm-to-palm contact, and she also had a response manual thoroughly prepared for sudden proposals. Her face didn't even have to be devastating. The sheer appeal of her body was already that great.
Before she found her first treasure chest, back at the restaurant where she worked, a single customer-service smile was enough to send men out of their minds, and they stepped on land mines with impressive dedication. The ones who tried to grab her by force, sneering that she was lowborn, had their necks parted from their bodies and moved on to the next life. She couldn't treat the ones who knelt and proposed politely the same way. Three years into office life, after a fashion, Lupin — forever the underling — had prepared one way to slip free, slippery as an eel. Its name: a fate of parting.
"I'm sorry, but would you withdraw the proposal?"
"Ah. Well. I was about to do just that. That just now was my mistake as well..."
"Thank you. If you had insisted, I would have lost my life tomorrow."
The words were pitiful, but what they actually meant was that if he didn't withdraw, the one dying tomorrow was him. The instant he dug in, it would mean Lupin didn't care if she died. Meanwhile, Paeng Cheong-ui was startled in an entirely different sense.
The curse of the Heavenly Demon, long since extinguished, still remains? What a pitiful thing.
Being refused a proposal was the natural course of things. But a curse, out of nowhere, could only bring to mind the Third Apostle, the Heavenly Demon — the Demon King. Sorrow welling from the depths of the heart, and an appeal that begged him to understand she had no choice but to say it: the perfect persuasive face, distilled from years of office life. The feelings in Lupin's eyes were so desperate that one righteous, stubborn fool swallowed the whole thing.
And just then, one object caught Paeng Cheong-ui's eye.
This ring...
A black band on the ring finger of Lupin's left hand, all but the very symbol of the Heavenly Demon. The thinly cut gem looked like a flower petal, and yet exactly like a bewitching flame.
Has some wicked thing clung to her body? Could it be a curse that forces her to live her whole life as companion to the Heavenly Demon, who has already vanished?
The blood of the Paeng, unable to abide injustice, began to boil. Had they not always claimed the foremost line in the war against the Heavenly Demon — the charge captains themselves? In this moment, even Paeng Cheong-ui threw aside his duties and calculations as Young Patriarch. And so Lupin's thoughtless remark, a Horo Ring whose nature no one could name, and Paeng Cheong-ui's ignorant sincerity met, and produced an enormous ripple.
"I am truly sorry to have caused you such deep worry. As an apology, I swear upon our family's name that we will help you undo the curse upon that ring."
Lupin let out a short laugh, as if to say don't get cocky about things you don't understand.
"Come on. Do you even know what kind of curse it is?"
A very serious answer came back.
"Has that ring not become one with your body? You seem quite troubled, unable to take it off."
Lupin's eyes went perfectly round for the first time in a long while. Paeng Cheong-ui, who had looked like a hot-blooded fool, had just announced the worth of his brain with a single insightful line — cursed objects commonly fused to the body, and Lupin hadn't known even that.
"I made a grave mistake in my shock at seeing the primal lightning, and since you, Hero, have been gracious enough to understand, it is only right that I help you however I can. Yes — while we are on the subject, if anything has built up inside you, let it out now. Honestly, I thought I deserved a slap."
Paeng Cheong-ui thrust his face forward. Lupin did not decline. Manual or not, she had honestly been a little flustered.
SMACK!
A thunderous report, as if a whole hide had been slammed against the floor, rang through the manor. A red mark stood vivid on Paeng Cheong-ui's cheek — the color of a direct hit from some palm art, not a slap. He had braced with his whole body, and still been shoved back a little. Paeng Cheongrok hid his alarm and retreated three steps from Lupin; the collateral kin retreated five.
While Paeng Cheong-ui rubbed his throbbing cheek, Lupin asked, "So. If the proposal was a mistake, what were you actually going to say?"
"Thank you for asking first. In truth, I meant to propose that you enter the Paeng family as an adopted daughter."
"An adopted daughter?"
"Indeed. Outsider or not, you are a saber-wanderer who has perfectly reproduced the primal lightning. If you can overcome the five of us gathered here by strength, you will have every right to it."
Lupin tilted her head. She had lived like family with the younger children at the orphanage, but she had never had adoptive parents of her own.
"If I become an adopted daughter here, what's in it for me..."
If Lupin became the adopted daughter, Paeng Cheongrok would never inherit the Primal Thunder Saber, and he glared with terrible force — but Paeng Cheong-ui lightly ignored him and answered.
"You, too, would come to enjoy the authority of one of the Five Great Families."
Lupin, who didn't understand, shot Klein a look. It meant explain, please. Klein scurried over and whispered at her ear.
"It means that no matter what you do inside Cheonghwa, none of it is your responsibility."
A thoroughly Shrine Maiden reading, worthy of someone from the cult. And as it happened, Lupin loved pleasure without responsibility (?) more than anything in the world.
"Ooh, no way I'm passing on that. Unconditional call."
"Call?"
"It's a word in fashion among young people these days — slang for accepting. In other words, I'll beat all of you and become your adopted daughter."
"Ah, I see! Call! A brisk word. I like it."
"Right?"
Paeng Cheong-ui laughed heartily, never dreaming he had just stepped on an enormous land mine. Liking the laugh, Lupin laughed along — hahaha. Paeng Cheongrok and the collateral kin, unlike the two of them, were in a worsening mood. Didn't it feel as if they had been reduced to extras, with nothing at all to gain?
Unable to endure it, Paeng Cheongrok slammed the table.
"I am truly sorry to break this warm atmosphere. But are you aware, Hero Lupin?"
"Hm? Of what?"
"A spar is a contest fought using formal aura alone. The spirits you pride yourself on will earn you an instant loss by disqualification the moment you call them."
Watching Paeng Cheongrok turn grave, Lupin grinned.
"Of course. I know."
"...Unable to handle formal aura, and yet you seem quite confident?"
Klein reacted to that before Lupin did. Provoking an Apostle of the Calamity Star without a shred of fear? She had no choice but to draw the attention onto herself and stop it.
"This is why you early-to-mid Master brats..."
Paeng Cheongrok and the three from the collateral branch glared at Klein with frightening eyes. Klein half-hid behind Lupin's body as if it were nothing, and went on.
"You haven't felt the aura filling this whole room since earlier, have you?"
Paeng Cheong-ui, the highest attainment among the five, asked back, genuinely startled.
"Surely not. No... that can't be."
All five had at least noticed that the aura in the air today was unusually thick and refreshing. But only Paeng Cheong-ui had realized it grew denser the closer one came to Lupin. The change was considerable, yet natural aura was so familiar to human beings that the difference was hard to feel — no more than the difference between dusty air and the clear air atop a mountain. Who could have thought the one who made that difference was Lupin?
"Hero. Don't tell me... you have been deploying aura this entire time?"
"Huh? Deploying? Deploying what?"
Lupin simply didn't know she was spraying aura like a sprinkler, so Klein, standing beside her, had no choice but to explain in her place.
"Looks like you noticed Lupin's formal aura."
Paeng Cheong-ui moved this way and that, drew a deep breath, and his face hardened with tension. No matter how far he put between them, the concentration of the aura Lupin had released did not change, and he could not help but marvel at its vast quantity.
"That it is clear and pure enough to use for training is beside the point... this amount is..."
Klein, grown triumphant, looked rather excited. More precisely, it was a ploy to dress up Lupin's greatness so it wouldn't look like an Apostle of the Calamity Star and slip it past them — but her rare excitement called to mind the mischievous Klein of her Shrine Maiden days.
"Lupin doesn't just handle informal aura well. She handles formal aura well too. So you think she'd lose to scrubs like you? You should be begging her to hit you softer, and instead you're—"
Lupin's fist came flying from the front. Thock.
"Ghk."
Even with the protection of aura, the impact of that nuclear fist was tremendous. Klein clutched her head and sprawled flat on the floor, arms and legs flung wide. Lupin rubbed the back of her neck and bent slightly at the waist.
"I'm sorry. You offered to help, and she couldn't break her old habit of being rude."
What was the point of getting on the bad side of someone who would clean up after you no matter what you did? More than that, Lupin hadn't been wary of the five from the start. It was a fight she could take at her leisure; there was no need to provoke them.
"Shall we start the spar right away, then?"
