Gravity ×100!
With the points cost slashed so dramatically through negotiation, there was no reason to hesitate.
"Let's do this…!"
The agony that had ruled my body half a day ago might as well have never existed. I immediately paid sixty points and locked in two shichen—four hours.
"A measly double? Nowhere near enough."
I set the gravity to ten times normal.
Inside the training hall, the weight of the air itself became almost too thick to breathe. I sank into a seated stance and forced my breathing under control.
"Hoo…"
The amplified gravity crushed down on my bloodstream, choking the delivery of oxygen. I answered by forcing my internal energy through my veins alone, driving the flow by sheer will.
An ordinary person would never have survived on circulation alone. But this body belonged to the Heavenly Demon.
Tenfold gravity can't even put a scratch on my muscles and joints.
My ragged breathing settled, bit by bit. My flesh began adapting at a startling pace. Sensation by sensation, the smothered awareness of my own body came flooding back.
"That's more like it…"
Tenfold gravity could no longer hold this body down. I rolled my shoulders and shifted in place, testing every joint. Fully adapted.
"I can go higher."
This was still just a warm-up. I adjusted the setting again—and slammed it straight to one hundred times.
100×
A colossal pressure flattened every inch of me.
"Kh…!"
"You going to be all right?" Seonghwa asked, watching from the side with genuine concern. I clenched my teeth.
"Of course I am…!"
Every boy who ever grew up on comics and novels has daydreamed about training under crushing gravity. I have never doubted that for a second. Which meant that, in a way, I was living out a childhood fantasy right now—standing inside a scene I had pictured for years.
"Hup!"
I sheathed my organs in internal energy—the soft tissues most likely to rupture—and slowly rose to my feet, savoring every ounce of load that poured through my frame.
"This is what you call real training…!"
I forced my creaking body into motion and began to run. Every muscle, without exception. One step. Another. Under the iron hand of gravity, the fibers themselves began to writhe.
Heavenly Demon Physique.
In that moment, the legendary EX-rank trait started proving exactly what it was worth. Each strand of muscle twisted like a living snake, reshaping itself to meet an extremity I had never known—and then, at last, it evolved.
Fibers that had once sat loose and slack began to cinch and devour one another, binding tight as the steel cables of a suspension bridge. Bone ground against bone; the volume of my muscle began, counterintuitively, to shrink.
My body had made its choice. Not the soft hypertrophy of bulk, but a denser, more overwhelming power suited to this hellish load. Muscle drawn taut as a bowstring, compressed to its absolute limit.
"Hoo… hoo…"
Light.
At some point, the gravity seemed to stop mattering.
This is a hundred times gravity?
A vitality I had never felt even under normal conditions surged through my limbs. At the same time my mind cleared like a sky after rain. A spirit honed to a razor's edge took command of every cell, and freedom flooded back into a body that gravity had locked stiff.
In this moment, nothing in existence could hold me down.
The intervals between footfalls shortened. My body, as if it had never heard of limits, accelerated further inside a hundredfold gravity. Before long I had outrun the naked eye; the training hall was left with nothing but long afterimages of my passage.
Impossible…!
Seonghwa could not contain her astonishment. Even knowing her counterpart was the Heavenly Demon, watching a body evolve in real time was enough to leave anyone speechless.
She had been quietly proud of how precisely she had measured the Eleventh's talent. Watching that carefully drawn ceiling rise before her eyes was a genuine shock.
Don't tell me… her gift for martial combat never even caught up to her gift for the body itself.
And that was saying something—her combat talent was already elite.
I never imagined she could go this far…
If the Heavenly Demon's nature was to shatter common sense, then this one was, without question, a talent worthy of the title.
As her body evolves, her mastery of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art is surging right alongside it.
That was backwards. Completely backwards. The proper order of things was for the body to catch up to a strengthened martial art—not the reverse. Even Bone Marrow Cleansing only occurred after one had climbed to a higher realm, the flesh forcibly reshaped to suit the art. Yet here the art itself was racing to match a body that had already grown stronger.
This was an open defiance of natural law.
"But that only makes her more like a true Heavenly Demon…"
A Heavenly Demon was one who smashed the path Heaven laid out and carved a road of their own. And so even Seonghwa—who had endured for centuries, perhaps a thousand years—found herself looking forward to what came next.
There had to be a reason the Eleventh Heavenly Demon had been born across eras and spaces. There simply had to be.
When the allotted time expired and the gravity snapped back to normal, I finally broke free of the trance.
"Hah… hah…"
Gasping, I looked around. Four hours had vanished in the blink of an eye. My entire body was soaked, sweat pooling in the hollow of my collarbone and rolling down in streams. I steadied my breathing until the frantic rhythm settled.
"Hoo…"
White steam rose from my skin as if a white-hot iron bar had been plunged into water. When the haze cleared, a transformed body stood revealed.
The muscles I had carefully bulked through training had returned to something nearly identical to the day I first became a woman. And yet I could feel the difference with absolute clarity—the vast gulf of power thrumming through every limb.
"Completely different."
Like steel on the anvil. My body had been hammered under gravity's forge and refined to perfection. Something out of legend—the external art of the Diamond Indestructible Body, maybe?
"If I sparred again right now… how long could I last?"
As I was, I felt confident I could cleanly receive the Tenth Heavenly Demon's attacks. Hell, maybe I could even win.
"What do you think, Seonghwa?"
I asked the woman who had watched my training from start to finish.
"Being generous? Three to seven."
Three fingers pointed my way. Meaning I was the three.
"Three, huh…!"
A smile rose unbidden.
"And my win rate as of yesterday?"
"Why even ask? Zero to a hundred, obviously."
This much growth in a single day.
"Haha—I really am a genius!"
Seonghwa just stared at me while I celebrated.
"What?"
"Nothing. When you see a strange creature, you just can't help watching, you know?"
…What was that. Heavenly Demon Cult-style flirting?
I was so thrown I couldn't get a word out. Seonghwa, utterly unbothered by my silence, went on.
"You really are a curious existence, Eleventh."
Curious? She was the holy relic who had reshaped herself into my ideal type—if anyone looked curious, it was her. Still, hearing it over and over, one detail finally started to grate.
"While we're on the subject—can you stop calling me 'Eleventh'?"
Being addressed by a number never sat right.
"Then what should I call you?"
"Kang Doyeon. Just Doyeon is fine."
The name I would use from now on, decided after talking it over with my parents. Mother had wanted the yeon that meant beauty—a lovely person. I had dug in my heels. I chose the characters meaning one who sees through, to the end, the path they themselves have set. By any measure, no name could suit a Heavenly Demon better.
"…Not bad."
"Right?"
"So, Doyeon. What now?"
"Hmm…"
Training was done, and sparring would have to wait until I had stockpiled more points. Which left one obvious next step.
"I'm heading out first. I'm starving."
My body was screaming for calories to replace everything it had burned. Food first—then straight into Normal difficulty climbs. Hard mode was locked for seven days under the penalty anyway. I needed climb footage, and I needed the points that came with it.
"I'll go rack up a mountain of points. Just wait."
I said it with full confidence. And then—
"Hmm. I'm not sure I trust the word of someone who doesn't keep her promises."
Seonghwa spoke without even looking at me. The sudden about-face left me blinking.
"What did I promise you?"
Nothing came to mind. I dug back through the events of yesterday. Watching me struggle, she sighed.
"Aigoo. I was an idiot for expecting anything."
That was when it clicked. Right before I left the Hall of Ten Thousand Demons—she had said she was curious about modern food.
"Ah. You asked me to bring you something to eat."
Sulking over that? I had staggered in here half-convinced my body was about to explode, for the record.
I have a few things I could say myself…
Still, when someone was sulking, it was smarter to smooth it over fast. Twenty-five years of living with a family that sulked on a hair trigger had taught me that much. You never knew how the backlash would land.
"Fine. Expect something tomorrow."
Twenty-first-century food. Fried chicken, pizza, burgers—the whole MSG-soaked umami arsenal. For someone who had spent her existence eating nothing but bland murim fare, it ought to land like a revelation.
Apparently that was the right answer. She turned back around, playful again.
"Show up empty-handed next time and the discount is gone. Remember that."
Now that was a terrifying threat.
"Ugh, I got it."
I laughed under my breath, raised a hand in a short wave, and headed for the exit.
"I'm off."
Seonghwa waved back, seeing me out.
"All right. Take care."
I stepped through the portal she opened. My vision shifted—and I opened my eyes in my studio apartment.