Oil, Muscles, and a Saturday Promise
I stared into space for a long while before speaking.
“W-well, it could happen, I guess.”
In my defense, moans were a physiological reaction — an involuntary response. The situation had just been so sudden and so wildly inappropriate that I'd been caught off guard, that was all.
—…….
Heukcheon, however, had her face buried in the mattress, her cheeks flushed crimson.
So a sword spirit can blush, huh.
I dismissed the useless thought and went looking for the oil. It had dawned on me that I needed to work it into a cloth and give the blade proper care if I wanted the sword to feel better.
Then again, if she feels any better than this, wouldn't that be a bad thing?
Like it or not, Heukcheon was someone I'd be stuck with until the very end.
…What was I supposed to do here?
If she'd just been some guy, I could probably have laughed the whole thing off as a joke, but I had no idea how you were meant to handle this kind of moment with a woman.
With a girlfriend, you could just… do it, but….
That option was off the table with Heukcheon. She was a comrade.
I deliberated for a moment, then walked out. Times like these called for a little time alone.
Leaving the Heukcheon Demonic Sword behind, I headed outside.
It was hot out.
The midterm evaluations were well behind us now, and the finals were fast approaching — which meant summer had arrived.
And when summer came, so did the workload. Finals would mark the start of vacation, but that vacation meant agonizing over where to do an internship that doubled as field training, and on top of that, the Tower of Illusions still needed clearing.
And I have to pay a visit to America at some point, too.
I sighed inwardly. It was supposed to be my first real break in ages, and somehow it was shaping up to be busier than the school term itself.
Depressing.
Letting out a gloomy sigh, I headed for the training hall. The others had already claimed their spots and were warming up.
“Oh, Seoha's here.”
“Yeah.”
Kim Seohyun set her dumbbell down on the floor.
Thud.
A heavy, leaden sound. I eyed the weight of the thing. Three hundred kilograms. A mere dumbbell… three hundred kilos. The exact number of my bench press.
My pride took a sudden, devastating hit.
“Upper body again today?” I asked in a deflated voice.
“Let's do legs. You've been hammering your upper body so hard lately that your lower half is falling behind, Seoha.”
“……”
Kim Seohyun said it with a bright, giggling smile. Something about it felt off.
Maybe it was because of that androgynous voice, those androgynous features. Hearing it from Kim Seohyun felt like… being teased by a girl.
Argh, you're a guy. Act like it.
Sighing internally, I followed Kim Seohyun's lead — and mirroring those movements drove my body to the very edge of its limits.
“Whew.”
Catching my breath, I walked over to a quiet corner of the training hall.
Heukshinmu — the Black God Martial Art — was a technique that tempered the body without end. The Heavenly Demon had created many martial arts in her time, but according to Heukcheon, the two she had poured the most painstaking effort into were the Sungsinan and the Heukshinmu.
—Every fight, in the end, comes down to observing your opponent and killing them. Nothing more.
That was her reasoning. My body found its stillness in an instant, the Revolving Heaven energy coursing through every corner of my frame, forging my flesh into something a little harder, a little more resilient.
“Whoa….”
When I opened my eyes, Kim Seohyun was gazing at me with undisguised admiration.
“When I first saw you, you were just… a body. But now….”
“What do you mean, 'just a body.'”
“Hehe, you know — the kind of body an ordinary person has. But now….”
“Now?”
“It's practically art.”
Kim Seohyun said it with a flushed face, swallowing audibly — gulp.
Okay, this is getting….
A chill ran down my spine. Was Kim Seohyun gay?
No, that couldn't be it. I'd seen those eyes spin more than once whenever a well-endowed woman walked by. Probably just had a thing for the human body in general, that's all.
I forced my fist — already cocked to punch Kim Seohyun — to a grinding halt.
“That's no ordinary muscle. Even stimulating every single muscle fiber couldn't easily produce a form like that.”
Saint had come up beside us, marveling at my physique.
“Truly a body forged by the Martial God's own hands. Might you have trained in something like Shaolin's Muscle-Tendon Change Classic?”
“It's not the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic,” Kim Seohyun answered for me.
“Hm? You know of the Classic?”
“Uh — yeah, j-just a little. Only a little.”
Uncharacteristically, Kim Seohyun stumbled over the words.
“Is that so? I should like to speak with you at length sometime. As you know, Murim, with its thousand-year history, has retreated to the world's periphery.”
At Saint's words, Kim Seohyun gave a bitter smile.
I found myself staring at Kim Seohyun. Sky-blue hair, eyes to match. Strikingly androgynous features — an appearance that didn't quite seem human.
A being that had inherited a thousand-year martial lineage while simultaneously studying magic under the greatest archmage alive. In a sense, the true protagonist of this world.
And yet beneath all of it lay a deep, deep darkness. Not to mention an immense weight of responsibility.
The heartland of Murim — the land once called Old China — had been annihilated. Long ago, back when the beings now known as the Seven Evils were still called the Ten Evils, and had turned the world into a hellscape — together with those branded as apostles.
A great and mighty hero had intervened with his companions, belatedly, and stopped them — but by then Murim was hanging on by a thread.
That was why China today was known as the Five Chinas, the country split into five separate states. In my past life, China had been a colossal superpower, but in this one that mantle had passed to Korea.
Its martial arts, however, had been passed down to a single being.
No — 'passed down' isn't even the right word.
The Nine Great Sects and Five Great Clans, the representatives of Murim. The Sama Alliance and the Demonic Cult. When they first banded together against an external enemy, they gathered their martial lineages in one place against the possibility of catastrophe. In the process, one genius fused every existing art into nine ultimate techniques.
That was the power known as the Thousand-Year Martial Lineage of Murim.
And Kim Seohyun had had it forcibly injected into them.
That was far from the only thing that defined Kim Seohyun, either. The Dragon Heart, for instance — unusable for now, its burden too great for their current body.
“…Were you asking me something?”
“No, why?”
“You were staring at me so hard it hurt.”
Kim Seohyun said it as if slightly uncomfortable. Truthfully, the discomfort was all mine — Kim Seohyun had spent the whole time studying my body before finally poking me out of it.
“But seriously, that's incredible. How did you even build something like this?”
Kim Seohyun marveled openly at my physique. Questions about martial arts or magic were all but taboo between us, though, so those curious eyes stayed fixed on my body alone.
“…If you stare that hard, it's a little uncomfortable.”
“Oh! Sorry.”
Only then did Kim Seohyun jolt, face going red.
“……”
I was left with no choice but to spend a long, contemplative while on the question of whether Kim Seohyun was, in fact, gay.
On the way back to the penthouse, I stopped at the door as it hit me.
Heukcheon was in there. Alone. Right now.
It should be fine by now, right?
Kim Seohyun had recommended a blade-care oil and I'd picked some up on the way. I'd even brought it back like a gift — surely that would smooth over whatever awkwardness was still lingering.
I opened the door and stepped inside to find Heukcheon still face-down in the mattress, exactly as I'd left her.
In the spirit of a considerate older brother dealing with a sulky teenage sibling, I set the oil down inside and slipped into my personal training room, where I immediately practiced the Heukcheon Formula I'd only just learned the day before.
One hour of dedicated training later, Heukcheon was still buried face-first in the bed. I showered, then went and released another recipe through the Alchemy Guild. The money was climbing to astronomical figures — so fast that it no longer felt real, more like I was shuffling numbers around for fun.
As I sat there, Heukcheon finally lifted her scarlet face.
—Master.
“Hm?”
—Ahem. Ahem.
A sword spirit, clearing her throat.
—First and foremost, I am your possession. At the same time, you are the one who inherited the legacy of the previous Heavenly Demon, who created me.
“That's right.”
—But on that reason alone, I have been teaching you my martial arts free of charge. Not that I resent it — yet I believe I, too, am owed just compensation.
“Fair enough.”
Honestly, if I put myself in her shoes — sealed inside a sword, no less — Heukcheon's position was perfectly reasonable. Above all, if she didn't feel motivated, how hard could I really expect her to teach?
So I nodded along, affirming everything she said.
—Th-then at the v-very least, once every two days, I'd have you use those hands of yours to… to maintain me. Properly.
Heukcheon demanded it with a flushed face and all the bravado of a general dictating terms.
“…Sure.”
I gave her a long, fish-eyed stare, then nodded.
“Then we're all settled?”
—We are.
“Then I'm turning in. Today's training was rougher than usual, I'm beat.”
I tossed out a goodnight and flopped onto the bed. Consciousness dropped away in an instant, and I was out cold.
“You want to go to a dungeon?”
Wednesday. I'd called Kim Seohyun out, claiming I had business, and now I was laying that business out.
“Yeah. A dungeon.”
“I'm always up for that.”
Kim Seohyun nodded with an easy grin.
“But is just the two of us going to be okay?”
“The two of us is plenty. Neither of us is shackled to a position, are we?”
I was shackled to one, enormously so. The moment a fight stopped being close-quarters, my combat power dropped to roughly a tenth of its full value. But Kim Seohyun believed I was tempering my body alongside my mage track, so I'd stretched the truth a little.
“True enough. So which dungeon?”
“The one out past Suwon.”
“Shall we go together, then?”
“Just bring yourself. I'll handle the rest.”
“…You're sure?”
“Yeah. I've got plenty of potions stockpiled from what I've been brewing here anyway.”
More to the point, I couldn't afford to treat the bus driver roughly.
I was strong. Objectively, I'd grown tremendously strong — but I was weak against sheer numbers, a build specialized for fighting people rather than hordes. Kim Seohyun was the opposite: a martial art that shone even brighter the more enemies there were.
“Then how about Saturday night, this week?”
“Works for me. You've got club activities on Saturdays too, right? Saturday's my day as well, so that's perfect.”
We set the date, and headed down together to grab some food.