This Body Is a Delivery Shuttle…!?
Inside the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons.
Within a quaint, old-fashioned residence.
“Hah! Where am I?”
I shot upright on the plush bed, flustered by the completely unfamiliar surroundings, and shouted as I took in the room.
A voice answered from beside me.
“You’re awake?”
Seonghwa sat in a luxurious antique armchair she had somehow procured, looking entirely too comfortable.
“Where is this?”
“The place I hauled you to—with considerable effort—so I could treat you after you fainted.”
Her answer dragged the memory back: the Absorption Art draining my magi until I blacked out.
My first defeat as Heavenly Demon.
Meeting it head-on hit harder than I expected.
Without thinking, I ground my teeth and let out a bitter, regretful complaint.
“Damn it… I could’ve landed at least one solid hit!”
I had traded blows, so I already knew I couldn’t win. But to think that the all-or-nothing strike I threw after spotting an opening would become the seed of my loss…
“I don’t know about that. From where I stood it looked pretty lacking. More importantly—how’s your body?”
Seonghwa pressed for a quick answer; this was her first time healing anyone and she wanted to know if I was still in one piece.
Now that she mentioned it, despite the absolute thrashing I’d taken, not a single wound remained.
I rolled my shoulders, checking my condition.
“Body seems fine…”
Whether her healing was that good or not, I felt no real pain. My expression, however, was another matter. Or perhaps it was the sight of me forcibly calming the magi that had been thrashing wildly after the bitter taste of defeat.
Watching me, Seonghwa suddenly offered praise.
“Still, that much was more than good enough.”
I got beaten half to death and she’s calling it praise?
“If you’re trying to comfort me, don’t bother.”
“Comfort?”
She let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“I honestly thought the Eleventh wouldn’t even be able to touch the Tenth’s sleeve.”
“…”
“But at the end, the Tenth had to block you himself.”
Thanks to that, she said, she was ready to revise her evaluation of me.
“At this rate, I think you could scrape past the sixth floor somehow.”
“Really?”
“Probably.”
Probably, she says…
I would have preferred a firm answer, but at least her assessment had risen from rock bottom. I figured I should count that as a win. If the sixth floor was this hard, just how strong was the Tenth Heavenly Demon?
Curiosity got the better of me.
“More importantly—is the Tenth Heavenly Demon really the weakest of them all?”
He had been absurdly strong. I’d spent the entire spar getting pummeled and only managed to match him once. And even that ended with me blacking out in spectacular fashion.
Seonghwa looked at me as if I’d said something ridiculous.
“Eleventh, aren’t you asking for a little too much?”
She pointed out that simply crossing blades with the Tenth after less than a week of handling the Heavenly Demon Divine Art was already close to a miracle.
Now that she says it, yeah… that was pretty shameless of me.
It was like working out for a week and then sneering at someone who had trained their whole life.
“You’re right…”
“And being called the weakest Heavenly Demon in history doesn’t mean he lacked talent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mmm. I’ll tell you after you clear the trial.”
Clear the trial…?
“Didn’t I already fail it?”
“Don’t worry. As long as you want it, you’ll be able to use it again and again.”
So even after failing, I could challenge it once more?
“Wait—so I can retry?”
“Of course. I’m standing here as your helper, aren’t I?”
Unlimited retries?
I didn’t hesitate.
“Then put me back in right now!”
I requested a rematch, ready to land a proper hit this time.
“Here.”
The moment she spoke, a message window bloomed in front of my eyes.
Held Points: 22,132
— Trial of the 10th Heavenly Demon (10,000P)
* Upon victory, the following functions will be unlocked.
“What the hell is this?!”
“What do you think? Did you seriously expect it to be free? As Heavenly Demon, you’d better drop that free-loading habit.”
Points?
And ten thousand points per match meant I only had two tries left at most.
“Hold on… did I already spend ten thousand points just now?”
“Obviously.”
Seonghwa widened her eyes as if the question itself was absurd. The rabbit-like face making that expression looked downright crafty.
Looks like an angel, acts like a fox…
“Damn it. Then how do I earn points?”
“Same way you gathered them while lifting that iron lump—by gathering believers.”
“Subscribers?”
“Yes. Believers.”
So points equal subscribers after all.
No wonder the earlier talk of the millions of followers under Mount Heaven had stuck with me. She’d been saying my current subscriber count was too low for the points I needed for training.
“Even so, ten thousand people for a single spar? That’s insane.”
“Don’t worry too much.”
“Why? Is there another way?”
Hope flickered. I stared at her with bright, expectant eyes, wondering if there was a loophole.
“If you fail the same trial multiple times, the cost drops accordingly.”
“…”
“Keep getting beaten long enough and you’ll eventually clear it.”
This little… of all the faces she could wear, she had to pick my ideal type and then have a personality like that.
“You’d turn out the same if you’d been locked up alone for hundreds of years.”
Right. I forgot. In here she could read every thought that crossed my mind.
Still—wasn’t that basically an admission that her personality wasn’t normal?
“Damn it… fine. The trial’s on hold for now.”
“Why? I wouldn’t mind watching you charge in and get flattened right away.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? You want me to waste points?”
“Yep. If you fail, you’ll work that much harder to scrape up more points, won’t you?”
I’d been called crazy plenty of times myself, but there was no winning a war of words against a holy relic that had been marinating for centuries.
Ugh… what a life.
Staying here any longer would only pile on more mental damage, so I asked Seonghwa how to leave the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons.
“Why leave?”
“Because I have to go out and do something. There’s no way I can win in my current state.”
Challenging him again would be like throwing eggs at a boulder.
“Alright, I’ll send you out. But keep this in mind—you can only enter the Hall once a day.”
“Once a day?”
“On the bright side, time flows differently. Spend a whole day in here and less than a minute passes outside.”
It felt less like a blessing and more like being given a whip and then told to take medicine for the welts. My original plan of treating the Hall like free inventory space was clearly dead on arrival.
“Then wouldn’t it be better to just stay in here?”
“So you’re staying?”
“Of course. If time doesn’t pass, training here is the best cost-performance ratio.”
“Mmm… unfortunately you can only remain inside for half a day at most—twelve hours.”
“What? You didn’t mention that a second ago!”
“You didn’t ask.”
Aargh…
I wanted to pinch those lips shut just once. Was this the feeling everyone else got when they dealt with me?
Experiencing the shoe on the other foot for the first time made my blood boil.
But if there was an alpha and a beta in this relationship, I was definitely the beta.
In the end I sighed.
“Fine. I get it. Just send me out already.”
“Alright. Good work, Eleventh Heavenly Demon.”
Before I left she tossed me one last tip.
“Ah—right. Useful advice: keep the Heavenly Demon Divine Art running as much as possible even in daily life.”
“Keep it running? That?”
How was I supposed to maintain the Heavenly Demon Divine Art all the time? How the hell am I supposed to control the output?
She said it so casually I almost mistook it for something simple.
“Yeah. Since you only just started using it, your waste is pretty severe.”
She told me to trust her—she’d watched every single training method used by every Heavenly Demon in history.
When she put it like that, I had no choice but to try at least once.
But Seonghwa wasn’t finished.
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“What now?”
“Next time you come, bring some outside food.”
“Excuse me?”
I must have misheard.
“I’ve been stuck in here for hundreds of years. I’m curious what modern people eat these days.”
“…”
“What’s with that face?”
I was speechless.
“In this life… this body has actually been reduced to a delivery shuttle…”
“What’s a shuttle?”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the clueless question.
“Forget it. I’ll buy something next time. Just send me out already!”
“Tch. Using words only you understand… Fine. Bye-bye—”
Leaving Seonghwa behind as she waved and casually bossed me around, I returned to my studio apartment more drained than I had been after fighting the Tenth.
“Hmm. The Heavenly Demon of this era is interesting.”
Seonghwa—holy maiden and living relic of the Heavenly Demon Cult—mused to herself.
Even if it was called a divine art, the Heavenly Demon Divine Art was fundamentally demonic. After being so thoroughly crushed, she had fully expected the Eleventh to lose control of her magi and go berserk from the rage of defeat, just like every previous Heavenly Demon. Instead, the girl had calmed the thrashing energy inside her body in an instant. Seonghwa had clicked her tongue in private admiration.
Outwardly she had stayed cool, but inside she had been impressed. She had even prepared a sealing art just in case things went wrong. Luckily, the hard work turned out to be unnecessary.
“Well, with hair that color she must be overflowing with self-love. Maybe she’s just generous with herself.”
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art was a martial art of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. As successive Heavenly Demons progressed, their hair color gradually shifted to match their temperament.
Hair that deep peach-blossom pink…
Seonghwa glanced down at her own form and thought: she had become a woman, so of course her tastes ran that way. It was almost certainly affection directed at herself rather than anyone else.
“She’s basically the incarnation of narcissism.”
At the same time, anticipation stirred. This was a type of Heavenly Demon she had never encountered before. That unexpected novelty was… enjoyable. After so many long years of confinement, anything new sparked interest with almost embarrassing ease.
“I hope she comes back soon…”
While the Eleventh had been unconscious, Seonghwa had peeked at the outside world through her. It had been utterly fascinating.
Especially that thing called chicken—roasted fowl—that looked absolutely delicious.
“Please pick something tasty, Eleventh.”
Muttering those words, Seonghwa’s body dissolved into white and black flames and scattered.
Silence settled once more over the empty Hall of Ten Thousand Demons.