The Bottomless Pit That Devours Everything
Kim Seohyun had made up her mind — she would stay ready to run the moment an opening appeared.
A demon whose limbs had been severed, whose body barely functioned at all.
But if that demon was an Upper-Tier being, the story changed — changed quite a lot, in fact.
Middle-Tier and Upper-Tier differed by a single realm, yet the gap in their power was far more than one realm's worth.
Heaven and earth. Maybe not quite that vast, but at the very least, the distance between a mountain peak and the sky.
And yet when ten demons hovering at the bottom edge of Middle-Tier clashed with a being who had only just stepped into Upper-Tier, the Upper-Tier won nine times out of ten.
The Sword Demon, Na Bakcheon.
He was a name everyone knew.
When he reached Upper-Tier, he refused the chance to become a hero, declared that cutting people down felt good, and gave himself over to the demon side — carving down a thousand civilians.
An unquestionably wicked demon, one of the worst.
Which was exactly why Kim Seohyun was looking for an escape route in the window of time when Lee Seoha and Na Bakcheon collided.
Lee Seoha was exceptional.
He shattered every record in academy history, and with each one, his presence grew heavier.
More was hidden about him than was ever made known.
If Na Bakcheon had been a being newly arrived at Upper-Tier, Kim Seohyun would have fought.
But Na Bakcheon stood beyond Upper-Tier, gazing up at the very summit of it.
It had been over ten years since he first rang his epithet across the world.
Frankly, Kim Seohyun was stunned.
Yes, her opponent was dying — but even so, he was fighting that Sword Demon as an equal.
CLAAAANG!
Sword met sword.
The clash became a shockwave that shook everything in every direction.
I flung my eyes wide open.
To not lose track of even a fraction of Na Bakcheon's movements.
I read every single motion through the Star God's Eye.
How Na Bakcheon gripped his sword, how his feet pressed the ground, what movements he chose to take.
I strained my eyes so as not to miss a single thing.
[System: Proficiency of Star God's Eye has increased!]
[System: Proficiency of Black God Martial Art has increased!]
-Absurd. Simply absurd.
Heukcheon murmured something.
But I didn't hear it. Every thread of my concentration was poured into Na Bakcheon.
CLAAANG!
Sword struck sword again. This time, I gave up less ground.
I moved the Reverse Heaven within the black swords.
One swing of Na Bakcheon's blade shattered two of them.
It didn't matter.
Two black swords meant I could bleed off his strength — that was a gain in itself.
I channeled Reverse Heaven into my swordwork and my legs.
Can't lose my balance.
My legs worked furiously beneath me. My single greatest advantage in fighting Na Bakcheon right now was balance.
[System: Proficiency of Black God Martial Art has increased!]
The Black God Martial Art was the discipline of mastering one's own body.
Its ultimate aim: to forge a perfect physique capable of controlling even the individual pulses of one's blood and the movement of one's organs.
Na Bakcheon's eyes narrowed as power gathered in his legs. His arm moved. I tracked it with the Star God's Eye.
The sword's trajectory drew itself in my vision. I evaded before it arrived.
I could dodge by the smallest margins — but that was not the smart way to fight.
Can't let it so much as graze me.
I couldn't afford even a shallow wound.
His talent would multiply every cut I took, steadily grinding my combat strength into the dirt.
I twisted the trajectory of my body.
Black Shadow Step.
A footwork art whose only purpose was pure speed — and right now, it fit perfectly.
[System: Proficiency of Black Shadow Step has greatly increased! A portion of Black Lightning Step (B+) has been awakened!]
-You little rat of a bastard!
"Thank you for the compliment."
My mouth moved on its own.
I didn't even know what I was saying. Every nerve in my body was locked onto Na Bakcheon.
Whuum!
His sword wavered for an instant — then transformed utterly. It seemed he hadn't earned the epithet of Sword Demon for nothing.
His blade was a swift sword that cleaved all things — but the swift sword was not all he mastered.
This time, the heavy sword.
The heavy sword's hallmark was sealing the opponent's path, forcing them into defense whether they willed it or not.
I coiled Reverse Heaven. I reached out my hand. Reverse Heaven crawled up along my fingertips.
"No!"
-Khh.
I felt Kim Seohyun sprinting toward me at full speed.
Na Bakcheon laughed.
So I laughed back.
Black God Martial Art.
Black Scale.
Sssaaaaah─!
A black power that defied the very heavens coiled around my hand.
A scale-like structure of force, wrapped around my hand alone.
The Black Scale — the aspect of the Black God Martial Art that granted its absolute defense.
I thrust out my hand. To inflict a single, crippling wound on Na Bakcheon in one stroke.
KWAAAAAAAANG!
The half-shattered straight sword, struck by the impact, split in half once more.
My hand, sheathed in Black Scale, drove straight for Na Bakcheon's heart.
-Keurgh!
Na Bakcheon vomited blood and was thrown backward by the shockwave.
[System: Proficiency of Black God Martial Art has increased!]
Shame, that.
I withdrew the Black Scale.
Barely two seconds of use, and roughly thirty percent of my Reverse Heaven was gone.
That was how much power Na Bakcheon had forced out of me.
I fixed my gaze on the space ahead of us.
The corners of Na Bakcheon's eyes were trembling.
The expression of a man who had seen something he refused to believe.
I took a single step back. My hand had taken a slight injury.
Is it because the technique isn't complete yet?
Even so, the result more than satisfied me.
The Black God Martial Art worked. Even against an opponent ranks above me.
-You filth! You! I will kill you, no matter what it takes!
Na Bakcheon raised his sword high.
-I'll carve you to ribbons and watch you die!
Unlike the economical movements he'd shown so far, he was preparing something powerful.
But I did not prepare to dodge.
A master of his caliber could rewrite his attack's path at any moment.
[System: Proficiency of Black Lightning Step has reached mastery! A portion of Black Lightning Step has been awakened!]
[System: All of Black Lightning Step (B+) has been awakened! Black Lightning Step (B+) has been added to the Art Registry!]
-That is the virtue of the Black Lightning Step. A footwork art that guarantees evasion, once and once only, against anything — in any form it takes.
I raised Heukcheon and stared ahead.
Na Bakcheon lifted his sword.
Hwaruk!
A flame of black mingled with grey — fire that seemed to shave the sanity right out of anyone who looked at it — coiled around his blade.
The Soul-Annihilating Sword.
Quite naturally, the name of the technique surfaced in my mind.
It wasn't as if I'd only fought Na Bakcheon once or twice before.
A wide-area offensive technique.
If he swung that blade at full strength, it was a mad technique capable of cleaving an entire mountain in two!
Put another way — it meant Na Bakcheon was desperate enough to use it.
I drew my Reverse Heaven upward.
Above all, he was wary of the Black Scale.
And he had been measuring my defensive coverage.
And a technique on the scale of the Soul-Annihilating Sword could not be stopped by Black Scale alone.
The Black Scale boasted absolutely impenetrable defense — but its area was vanishingly small.
The flames roared higher.
Black and grey braided together, a many-hued fire that stretched long along the length of his blade.
The flame alone reached three meters.
Stay calm.
-Stay calm.
Heukcheon said.
I raised Heukcheon. And I charged forward.
-Die where you stand.
It was a sentence passed.
At Na Bakcheon's word, the laws of the world itself trembled. He brought his sword sweeping down — and in that same instant, I slammed every last drop of Reverse Heaven remaining in Heukcheon into the blow.
The flames blazed. The demon sword that severed all things swung down — and it cut through everything, sparing nothing.
The moment it closed on me, I drove Heukcheon into the ground and erupted my Reverse Heaven like a bursting dam.
FWOOOOOOOOM!
Black God Martial Art — .
Secret Art.
Bottomless Pit — .
A black storm of pure negation swallowed everything.
It was a black storm.
A storm of negation, that denied all things.
What... is this.
He didn't know.
Na Bakcheon had never seen a martial art like this. A technique that wielded the power of negation itself?
Demons forged their bodies through the Outer Arts.
They received power from gods that came from beyond, accepted that power, and with it warped the laws of the world.
And when such a demon reached Upper-Tier, they could wield authority polluted by this world.
This boy's power resembled the Outer Arts as well.
But it was different.
Na Bakcheon knew no such power. It denied even the Outer Arts themselves? What law could this boy possibly be governed by?
FWOOOOOM!
Na Bakcheon did not use authority.
He was simply a man who felt ecstasy in cutting people down with a blade, nothing more.
And yet — he used it.
His sword, which severed all things, was swallowed whole by the storm.
The unquenchable flames of negation, the authority that warped all things — devoured by a storm that denied everything.
-What is this?!
And so he screamed.
His authority was vanishing.
That storm had denied everything he was.
The martial arts he had stacked through long years of toil, the flesh he had bought by sacrificing his body and pouring the world's mana into it — and even the epithet he had carved into the world itself.
It swallowed them all.
-What IS this thing?!
It was terror.
He had felt this once before — the first time he had faced one of those outer invaders from beyond the world. A being so mighty, so absolute, that no effort of his could ever stand against it — one against whom he was endlessly, hopelessly outmatched.
He had been a brilliant swordsman.
And that was precisely why he could feel it: this world would someday lose. To them.
That was why he had become a demon.
-Khh.
He twisted his mouth.
He raised his sword. A demon blade that was nothing but a hilt now, its edge worn down to barely three centimeters. And he swung it.
Swish.
The sound of something being split. The black storm of negation only gathered strength.
Swish, swish, swish.
He cut. Cut again. And still the storm swallowed everything.
Like a bottomless pit, it drank in all of it. The sword aura that severed all things was, in the end, devoured by the storm that drank in all things.
And — that was his end.