276. Starvation (3)
Jin Yu-ha suddenly plummeted into the hole.
Behind him, watching until the end, Baek Seol-hee had no time to think. She threw herself in after him.
"......Here. I can't see a thing."
But. She could see her disciple's form as clearly as day.
The magic Rina had placed on her was closer to an Authority than a spell.
She could not speak to him.
Could not touch him.
Could not hand him anything.
But—because it permitted her to "watch," she could see her disciple plainly even in this space where not a single ray of light entered.
She surveyed her surroundings and made her assessment.
"A place that strips away Mana and physical strength completely. Like the state before Awakening."
Rina hadn't blocked her from using her personal belongings, so at least she'd had her phone for indirect communication. Now even that went dead.
Phones ran on Magic Stones too, after all.
While she grasped the peculiarities of this place,
Jin Yu-ha was attempting to escape.
Hop.
Hop.
Her face hardened.
Even putting all his strength into his toes, he couldn't lift himself higher than a handspan above the ground.
The hand gripping the sword couldn't bear its weight and wobbled.
Is that really my disciple's original physical state?
Stripped of his strength and Mana, her disciple's physical ability was far more wretched than she'd imagined.
A boy with no natural gifts—no, weaker even than an ordinary person.
When she'd first met him, Jin Yu-ha's body had already been fully developed.
This sight stirred a strange feeling in Baek Seol-hee.
Does my disciple...... possess a body like that, and yet he grew this strong......?
Thump.
"Tch. For now...... no answers. Heh, I don't know how long this'll last, but I'll play along."
After trying over and over to escape, Jin Yu-ha seemed to conclude there was no other way.
In the end, he gave up on everything, sat down, and began to meditate.
And Baek Seol-hee, too, settled into a corner of the pit and stared blankly at Jin Yu-ha meditating.
As she watched him, Baek Seol-hee had only one thought.
......Exactly what does the Sword Emperor intend to show my disciple with this kind of training?
It was the purpose of this training.
The Sword Emperor, at a glance, looked sloppy, endlessly frivolous, and like a subhuman piece of trash who drooled over other people's disciples.
But Baek Seol-hee, in her heart, acknowledged her.
I hate to agree, but that woman can see the essence of things.
She herself had benefited from the offhand advice the woman had casually tossed her way when she'd visited this place to train.
So this meant that this seemingly meaningless training held the key to solving her disciple's sword's flaws.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
Four days.
And after a week passed,
her disciple seemed to be gradually boiling over with irritation.
Unable to bear the hunger any longer, he screamed at the ceiling at the top of his lungs.
He called out for his people to rescue him,
and he begged, too.
For someone to find him and save him.
Each time, Baek Seol-hee tried to approach him, but she couldn't overcome the cruel barrier.
And so her disciple was dying.
In the grip of extreme hunger.
At the same time, a realization dawned in her mind.
A realization about why the Sword Emperor had imposed this kind of training.
He's gotten too accustomed to death.......
That was it.
Baek Seol-hee had driven Jin Yu-ha to the brink of death countless times.
She'd believed it erased his fear, sharpened his senses, and was the fastest path to growth.
Since she herself had grown strong that way,
she'd never once suspected that this method she'd forced on her disciple was wrong.
But by working backward to understand why the Sword Emperor had imposed this training,
she saw the blind spot in the training she'd been inflicting herself.
Was the Moon Shadow Sword Technique...... a sword that kills people......?
Not just the enemy it faces,
but a sword that kills even the person who swings it.
The Moon Shadow Sword Technique intuitively showed its possibilities.
How to kill the opponent efficiently.
But the wielder's safety was never factored in.
In other words, if the enemy was even slightly stronger,
if it judged the foe unbeatable, it was only natural to retreat.
For nothing mattered more than one's life.
But the Moon Shadow Sword Technique, even in such moments, showed the optimal move.
The move of Mutual Destruction.
Because I made him skip all the pain of the process leading to death......?
She had shoved her disciple into extreme situations where a single misstep meant instant death.
But she had not taught him the pain of the road to death itself.
She had taught him that it all simply ended with one stroke of the sword.
This was something she'd failed to realize because she'd never encountered an enemy stronger than herself after creating the Moon Shadow Sword Technique.
And if she had met such an enemy,
she too would have revealed her move of Mutual Destruction and been gone from this world.
Up until now, Jin Yu-ha had survived through good luck. But what about when he met a stronger enemy?
He would seek out the move that shone brightest among the possibilities and throw himself at it.
And that would drive Jin Yu-ha to his death.
Goosebumps rose across her skin.
"What in the world...... have I been teaching......."
Promising to make him stronger,
vowing to save her disciple from danger.
She had placed a poisoned blade in his hand.
A master who kills her own disciple.
A crushing weight of guilt and sin she couldn't resist began to gnaw at her heart.
"No, even if I'd realized this late...... could I ever teach death this way?"
No.
She couldn't.
Right.
This training method of the Sword Emperor's was certainly
a highly effective way to instill the fear of death.
But it was a method she could never carry out herself.
Just watch her dying disciple and do nothing?
There was no way she could do such a thing.
"......Master, please save me."
Right before her eyes, her disciple was dying, calling her name.
Blindly calling out to her, even though she lacked any right to be called a master.
Having to do nothing and simply watch it happen.
Was this her way of paying for her sins?
In that instant, Baek Seol-hee's face stiffened.
But wait...... does the Sword Emperor even know that my disciple, stripped to an ordinary person, has stamina this abysmal?
No.
She couldn't know.
Even she, who'd always watched him from his side, hadn't expected his stamina to be so rock-bottom.
Even if she'd set the period as safely as she could,
her disciple's stamina might run out faster.
BOOM──!!!
Baek Seol-hee threw her whole body against the barrier blocking her.
But she only went tumbling backward.
"I have to give him this."
She clenched a calorie bar tightly in her hand.
Right before they entered this place, when she'd been walking behind her disciple and exchanging texts, at the exact moment she'd put the calorie bar in her own mouth, her disciple had sent her a message.
An affectionate scolding not to fill her stomach with something like that.
Back then, she'd just found his words so endearing that she'd pocketed the half-eaten calorie bar.
But now, in this moment,
Baek Seol-hee saw the calorie bar clutched in her hand as the only lifeline that could save Jin Yu-ha.
And from that day on, she began to scratch at the barrier with her fingernails.
Desperately.
Screech—
When all her fingernails had been ripped away,
and the skin on her fingertips was completely stripped, blood streaming down, she felt no pain at all.
"Master......."
Because right before her eyes, her disciple was dying, calling out for her.
"Isn't this enough......?"
Screech—
"Haven't they tasted enough suffering......?"
Screech—
"Can't you stop it now......?"
Her eyes, blotched with tears and bloodshot bright red.
Blood from her fiercely bitten lip.
Scratching the barrier with hands slathered in blood, Baek Seol-hee looked exactly like a ghost.
But the voice slipping through her teeth was pitiful.
Screech—
"Stop......."
Screech. Screech. Screech.
"Stop it now. Please, just stop......."
Screech. Screech. Screech. Screech. Screech.
"I was wrong....... I was wrong....... I was foolish. Sword Emperor, I will never interfere again. Take this child as your disciple and teach him. So please......."
The light of life was slowly fading from the eyes of her disciple, lying on the floor.
Baek Seol-hee's movements grew even more desperate.
"Why on earth. Why. Why!!!! If you wanted to punish me, you should punish me for teaching him that damn dogshit swordsmanship!!! Why does my disciple have to pay the price for it?! Whhhhyyyyy!!!!"
Baek Seol-hee cried out with the feeling of coughing up blood.
And in a single moment,
Crack!
A fine fissure appeared on the barrier, which had been utterly unyielding until now.
Baek Seol-hee didn't miss that moment.
She had to deliver it, no matter what.
At least this one thing she possessed.
Without the slightest hesitation, she threw the calorie bar through the gap,
and it crossed the barrier.
Thud.
It landed near her disciple's head.
"......An auditory hallucination?"
Her disciple spat it out powerlessly with a dying voice.
No.
It's not a hallucination.
My disciple.
You have to grab it.
Cold sweat soaked her clenched fist.
Her heart pounded relentlessly,
terrified that Jin Yu-ha might truly make the wrong choice.
By some slim stroke of fortune,
Jin Yu-ha stretched his hand toward the calorie bar.
"......Wh-why in the world is this......?"
And.
Only after she'd taken that sight into her eyes until the very end,
did Baek Seol-hee finally close her eyes and collapse on the spot.
"......Disciple."