The Seed of Origins

Law is order, and the Outer Realm is chaos. At least, that's how it breaks down once you assign the two their attributes. Order is, quite literally, order—the law of the world, and at the same time the very fabric that composes it.

The Primal Chaos and the Four Elements. Yin and Yang and the Five ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Elements. And the Seven Luminaries and the Eight Trigrams. List out the finer branches and the varieties are truly endless, but nearly all of them spread their roots from the properties named above.

And then there was the energy of Defying Heaven. It was a power that belonged to the domain of law, and yet something about it drew far closer to the power of the Outer Realm. Peculiar, isn't it? Heaven-Defying energy stood inside order and inside the Outer Realm all at once. If I had to put a name to it, I'd call it a power that lived in the intersection between the two.

If the Starlight Mana Seo Gayeon possessed held the mana of Affirmation—a power that was order among orders—then I carried its exact opposite. The power that negates all things. Defying Heaven negates everything: special abilities, magic, martial arts—even the power of chaos and the demonic qi that had crossed over from the Outer Realm. But a single law was exempt from that negation. Mystery.

Because Mystery was tied to the system that composed this world. Heaven-Defying energy does not negate Mystery. And Mystery was widely regarded as the closest thing to Primordial Force in this entire world—for Mystery had begun at the very beginning, and so had the system.

Cheongyeon had judged this power to be endlessly fascinating. The Emperor had shown an enormous interest in it. And I, too, had never seen it as merely a force that nullified mana. Which was exactly the problem.

I pulled up my status window.

My talents were deformed—lopsided in the extreme. That was because I didn't use mana at all; I was specialized, body and soul, in spiritual power. In murim terms, spiritual power was the force tied to the upper dantian. Acting purely on its own, it was barely enough to lift a single pebble, yet the moment it fused with another power, it unleashed something truly monstrous. It was also the power I burned through fastest in the Bottomless Pit. And beyond all that, it was the bare minimum requirement for stepping into the Upper Rank.

Which was exactly why it gave me a headache. To put it another way, everything connected to spiritual power was either absurdly expensive or came saddled with ridiculous penalties.

And even that wasn't as much as it sounded. Ex-rank was a fever dream. Bottom line, the only things I could buy were S- grades—items docked below a full S because of the penalties bolted onto them. Physical-lineage talents were mostly useless to me, since Black God Martial Arts had already reforged my flesh into a Heavenly Body, one that grew stronger with every breath and accelerated its own growth the harder I trained it. What I actually needed to choose from, then, were talents that massively expanded my Will, or something geared toward defense.

My defense really is flimsy, I'll admit. I'd felt that much when I fought those students a while back. With several of them attacking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at once, dodging every blow one by one had been a genuine chore. It was manageable for now, but the day a horde of enemies came swarming, I'd want a shield.

...My gamer instincts, true to gamer form, told me to skip the defense tree entirely and stack attack instead.

I let out a sigh and made my picks.

The descriptions were simple. But in Epic World, simple made for the strongest abilities of all—just look at Handiwork, which granted a bonus to every lineage there was.

The moment I chose the two, I felt some mystic power settle into me, and knowledge of how to use them surged up into my head. So that's how it's done. I brought the shield into being with the image of drawing a translucent membrane out of pure Will. Ziiing— with a soft hum, a translucent film materialized in the empty air, and I knocked a fist against it. Thud. Thud. Decently solid, by the feel of it.

I took inventory of my armaments. The Winter Sword was tucked away in Baekhong, and Heukcheon had drunk so deep of my Heaven-Defying energy that she now carried a measure of its nature herself. I summoned the black sword from the black bracelet around my wrist and brought it down with a good deal of force behind it.

Wham! I could see a hairline crack web across the barrier's surface.

Not bad at all. That had been a fairly heavy strike, so at this rate the shield could probably hold up against one or two of an enemy's blows. And it would only grow stronger as my concept stat, Defying Heaven, kept climbing.

I lost myself in testing this and that with the Shield of Spiritual Power, and by the time I came up for air, quite a lot of time had slipped by. Maybe I should get in touch. I switched on my phone.

Opening KakaoTalk, I found messages from girls stacked up from every direction. A closer look showed some were from girls I didn't even know.

Who the hell is Kang Youngji?

I blocked her on the spot, then fired off a text to Kim Ara.

The '1' beside my message vanished the instant it went through. Lucky me. Had she been staring at her screen?

Kim Ara's replies looked thoroughly deflated.

I pocketed my phone, stretched until my spine popped, and headed off to finish my homunculus.

Time galloped past like an arrow off the string. I brewed medicines to deliver to the guild, sold recipes to the Alchemy Guild, and slipped into the Electronic World to give lectures on alchemy. I buried myself in coursework to claw out as high a class rank as I could, drilled the martial arts Heukcheon put me through, and ran test after test on the abilities I'd recently acquired. I taught Seo Gayeon this and that, stomped flat every attempt Hong Yuhwa made to claw her way back up, and headed out to purge demons while Seol Hwaryeon trailed behind me calling me Elder. The days blurred past in a breathless rush.

Somehow I digested all of it and held on to the top seat of my year. Honestly, the talent Skimming (-) deserved the lion's share of the credit for that.

"Are you not driving yourself ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rather too hard of late, Master?"

"That's right! You've barely been sleeping three hours a night lately, you know!"

It's fine. The strain on my body is lighter than you'd think.

And it truly was. The Heavenly Body granted by Black God Martial Arts, and the Black Meditation that endlessly circulated Heaven-Defying energy through my core, saw to that. The Seed of Primordial Force is working even better than I expected. If I ever raised it to S-rank, the efficiency would climb higher still.

I trained my body alongside Kim Seohyun and honed my martial arts with Heukcheon. I studied a fair measure of sorcery under Yeongcheon, too—insurance against any crisis I couldn't foresee. Time spent like that, and before I knew it, Saturday had arrived.

At club, I ribbed Hong Yuhwa—fresh off losing to me in every competition of late—talked business with Erciel, and then set out for the place Kim Ara and I had agreed to meet.

"Hey."

Violet hair spilling all the way down to her waist. Black stockings, and a checkered skirt where red and black crossed over each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other, a tank top underneath, and a black coat draped over the whole ensemble. A model's proportions, and at 175 centimeters, tall for a girl.

It struck me all over again—looking at her like this, she really was stunning.

I did my best to bury the feeling and spoke up. "Hey. You got here fast—been waiting long?"

"No, not really."

With the greetings out of the way, it somehow felt like a couple meeting up for a date.

"Isn't this place a pretty famous hunting ground, though?"

"It is."

Kim Ara glanced around us as she said it. "And swampland's a pain to move through, besides."

"I have faith in our Ara. You'll do just fine, even in a swamp."

"..."

At the words our Ara, a faint flush crept across Kim Ara's face.

The place we'd arrived at was a stretch of wetland where man-eating trees and lizardmen prowled above all else—also a hunting ground for Hunters, people blessed with mana aptitude who had failed to become Heroes.

And the pay there was lousy, too. Clearing an ordinary dungeon even once could net you hundreds of millions of won, but in a hunting ground like this, a full day's toil would barely scrape together a million.

Not that a million won is small money. My sense of money had been thoroughly numbed. Hardly a surprise, with my account balance sitting north of twenty billion won. Come to think of it, I did have some of that to spend—an alchemy workshop, for one thing. Or buying the plot of land for the guild building I planned to establish wouldn't be a bad use either.

Ara and I wandered here and there for a while before I checked the clock on my phone. 10:30. About time it showed up.

The instant the thought formed, mana nearby boiled upward as if it were about to explode. There it is.

Ding—