Don't Touch Children in the Martial World

"Sergei was a good comrade," said the robed leader.

"He always delivered the funds."

A courier who secretly moved operating money. That had been his role.

"But he's gone now. Still, he lives on in our hearts."

Well—technically he was still alive. They just couldn't go get him. The hospital isolation ward was a fortress in all but name. So, a sad farewell it was.

"We will never forget his efforts for the people! Now is the time for vengeance!"

The communist jabbed a finger at Gong Ryun.

"I don't know what happened that day to leave Comrade Sergei in that state—but we will capture you, interrogate you, and uncover every last truth! Face the people's tribunal, you bourgeois!"

Gong Ryun answered.

"The guy kept whining for me to sell him Sangongdok, so I told him I didn't have any. Then he tried to kill me, so I hit back. I don't see the problem. That's self-defense, isn't it?"

"You son of a bitch!!! I knew it!! You monopolized the resource and controlled the market!!! For people like us, whose dantians periodically go berserk, Sangongdok is a survival necessity!!! And you used it to drive people to their deaths!!!"

"I already told you I didn't. He tried to mug me in the street."

Whether he said so or not, the other robed communists all flared up the same way and piled on.

"Controlling essential medicine!!! Is that something a human being does?! You're a monster of capital!!!"

"How desperate must he have been to try highway robbery! Capitalism drove him to the cliff's edge! You jackal of the Martial Alliance!"

"There is no mine! There is only ours! That Sangongdok isn't yours—it's the people's!"

Ah. These people… had zero interest in hearing Gong Ryun's explanation.

"Damn. You're the type that plugs your ears and refuses to listen. No matter what I say, you're not going to hear it, are you?"

"Only the Martial God shall judge! Raise your blades, bourgeois!!!!!"

With that cry, the communists all threw off their robes at once.

What was revealed underneath: skin with a faint reddish cast; muscles swollen as if jacked up on steroids from the side effects of Reverse Blood Demonic Art; bulky combat-assist mechanical attachments fitted to arms and legs like armor plating.

And guns.

Assault rifles—the series most favored by the people. Each of them carried one. They looked well-used, customized a little ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in each man's personal style.

"Powder weapons…? For real…?"

Gong Ryun was thrown.

Why would powder weapons even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠come out?

Back on his homeworld, sure—but in this galaxy, those things couldn't kill people, could they…?

Soft steel that bent easily, lead bullets that barely hurt, black powder that wasn't all that powerful—with that combination, you couldn't even punch a hole through a martial artist's body.

As Gong Ryun hesitated, unable to make sense of it, Sowol—who had been hiding behind him—whispered advice.

"Big bro… those aren't chemical weapons…! They're Internal Force Projectors!"

"Internal Force Projectors? What are those?"

"They're not like toys…! Instead of gunpowder, they fire the power of internal energy…! They're what communists use…!"

"…!"

That did not feel good.

Surely getting hit by one of those wasn't the kind of thing that killed you on the spot?

Gong Ryun guessed it probably wasn't. If it had been, everyone would be carrying weapons like that—and the people holding them would be ruling the galaxy. The fact that they weren't meant it at least wasn't instant-death class.

"Hey!!!!! Who's that behind you!!!!! If you don't come out right now, I'll turn you into a beehive!!!!!"

An enemy who had sensed Sowol's presence bellowed.

In the end Sowol dropped his stealth and peeked his head out from behind Gong Ryun.

Gong Ryun nearly had a heart attack. What do you mean, come out for real!

"Hey!! What do you think you're doing!! Get back behind me right now!!"

"Bro…! But they said they'd shoot if I didn't come out…!"

"I'll block it, so get behind me! Turn stealth back on!!"

But the moment the communists confirmed Sowol's appearance, every action—including breathing—stopped cold.

"A kid…?"

Gong Ryun got a bad feeling. These bastards—were they about to try one of the worst immoral acts a human could commit: taking a child hostage?

He gripped Sowol's hand tight and shoved him back, out of the guns' line of fire.

His eyes went wide. There was no telling what they might do. If they used lightfoot and footwork to snatch him in a blur, it would be hard to stop. Gong Ryun readied a palm strike on the spot. Cold sweat ran down his back.

But the enemies' reaction was nothing like what he expected.

"Kyaaaaaaaaaaah!!! Holy shit, it's a kid!!!!!! Everyone, lower your muzzles!!!!!!!"

The leader communist let out a scream like a girl's. His comrades went deathly pale as well.

"You don't touch ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠kids!!! You don't touch kids!!!!!"

"Turn the muzzles away!! If you hit him even by accident, we're all completely fucked!!!"

"I don't want to die!!! I don't want to die!!!"

The remarks were so far outside anything he'd predicted that Gong Ryun was even more thrown. What was this? Some kind of trap?

But every pair of eyes looked genuinely packed with fear.

…Gong Ryun tried a deal first.

"The kid's got nothing to do with this, right? You'll just let him go?"

As if they'd been waiting for exactly those words, they all agreed with violent enthusiasm.

"Yes!! That's it!! The kid has nothing to do with it, right, right!!"

"Let the kid go!!! Let the kid go!!!"

"On three-two-one, you send the kid out!! You must not touch him under any circumstances!!"

The enemies were sitting there saying all the lines this side was supposed to say.

Gong Ryun felt a little uneasy about it, but it was clearly better than the kid getting shot, so he decided to send Sowol off.

"Sowol. Listen carefully. From now on, turn on stealth, sprint full speed toward safety, and get as far from here as you can. Then run home. Got it?"

"B-big bro… what about you…?"

"I'm not dying, so do what I say. Go, now!!"

"I'm scared…"

"Hey! Are you going to keep being difficult? If you leave, I can fight without holding back, can't I? I'm going to wreck every last one of these bastards, so you go—fast. What did I just tell you?"

"Turn on stealth, run, and head home…"

"Right. Go call your mom. Just call your mom for now. Understood?"

"Hic…! Okay…!! Big bro, you have to be okay…!!"

With that, Sowol activated stealth and sprinted away in the opposite direction from the communists. Thanks to the stealth art, his form quickly blurred out of perception range.

Through it all, Gong Ryun kept his eyes locked on the communists, ready to launch martial arts at any second. In case they sprayed gunfire that way and hit the kid as he fled. Or used something like eye force to detect him and take a precision shot. If they did, he meant to attack at once and stop the bullets.

Sure enough, one of them raised his gun—the youngest of the lot, the one who had converted his assault rifle into a sniping setup.

"He could report our presence elsewhere. Shall we deal with him immediately, Captain-Comrade?"

I knew this son of a bitch would try it!! Gong Ryun immediately raised his hand into a martial-arts firing stance.

But faster still, the leader communist's—Captain-Comrade's—fist slammed into the young sniper's face.

"Keup! Captain-Comrade! Why?!"

"Kyaaaah!!! You stupid bastard!!! This is the heart of the martial world!!! It's not the homeland!! Did you forget everything from pre-deployment training!!!"

"B-but it's just one little brat!"

"Bullshit!! You only just got posted, so you don't know yet! Kill a kid in the martial world and that day is the end of you!! The planetary-system armies in this whole sector will mobilize!!! Over one single kid!!! That's the kind of place this is!!!"

"Kh…! What! This world is completely abnormal! Children are supposed to grow up properly by risking their lives in people's labor service at the factories!!"

…?

Gong Ryun's bad feeling deepened another notch.

Had sending the kid away been a mistake after all?

No—common sense said that couldn't be.

…'Common sense'? Ah, wait.

"Captain-Comrade. The child has just left the rifle's effective range."

Another communist comrade wearing mechanical goggles reported that the boy had vanished completely.

Only then did the communists let out a collective sigh of relief.

And slipped straight back into combat mode.

Guns came up to aim.

"Kwahahahaha!!! You stupid bastard!!! You just threw away the last way you could have survived!!!"

Captain-Comrade sneered as if he were delighted.

"In that situation just now, your only survival route was to use the kid as a shield, open a path, and push through!!! That was the only viable scenario!!! We wouldn't have been able to do a thing!! But you threw away the hostage—you idiot!!!"

That was right. Sowol had been Gong Ryun's hostage. Not the enemies'.

In this galaxy's martial world, killing a child was the single most certain, unavoidable, and overwhelmingly effective method of self-destruction. Call it area-of-effect suicide. Not only you, but everyone connected to you, ended up dead or in a state worse than death.

That was how advanced children's rights were in this galaxy—legally, and in social consciousness.

Do you know why cars make that vroom sound? Think about it and it seems strange. In the space age, cars don't run on petroleum. They're all electric. Electric cars have no exhaust noise. And yet cars still make that noise.

There were secondary reasons—preventing animal roadkill, avoiding collisions with pedestrians—but the core reason was children. Because children could die if a car hit them.

Children's senses weren't sharp enough; even a car barely topping a hundred kilometers an hour was hard for them to register. Sometimes they came dashing around a corner and got hit by a vehicle that shot out of nowhere. So the law strictly required cars to make noise on purpose.

Children were too fragile.

They looked like they would break if you poked them.

That was not a metaphor. Children who had not yet fully completed the protective force of Honwongong had durability that was worlds apart from adults'.

Even the light, playful taps adults traded with each other could snap a child's bones.

Cosmic radiation hurt them. Bad air damaged their bronchi. Planetary gravity that was too low or too high crushed their organs.

The role of this city's dome shield was precisely to block those factors: cosmic radiation defense, clean air maintenance, moderate gravity. Adults who had finished learning Honwongong and reached Hwa-gyeong were largely fine, but for children those things were fatal.

In other words, the shield was protection for the citizens—but above all, protection for young children. Without the dome shield, the concept of child-rearing itself could not exist.

This galaxy was martial-arts supremacism.

With martial arts, you could do anything.

That was exactly why a situation in which martial arts themselves could not be used was a source of vast terror.

People who first saw a newborn baby always startled in shock.

Because it was unbelievably weak. Weak enough that you could scarcely believe it was the same species.

A human in its raw essence, with no martial arts at all, was this fragile. Homo sapiens had originally been this weak a species.

So when you first held a newborn, you felt fear.

One wrong twitch of the hand and this baby could die. Apply even the force of moving a single finger wrong, and the baby could break.

Like a soap bubble. Press wrong and it pops. It was terrifying. An anxiety that set your hands and feet trembling.

Go outside and you die. Look at sunlight and you die. Radiation kills you. Wind blown in from outside kills you. Airborne toxins drown you on the spot. Homo sapiens evolved to grow on Terra. Planets that were not Terra were, frankly, not spaces for Homo sapiens at all.

In a world where everyone used martial arts and became powerful humans, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the sole existence with no martial arts whatsoever—the species' "prototype."

Because martial arts were acquired. Martial arts were not transmitted by DNA. You only gained them by obtaining insight and awakening.

A baby was, of course, a blank slate of that acquired development.

Ah. Was I also like this when I was born? Was I this weak a being?

That no one other than themselves—that their own past—had been this alienly fragile creature brought shock to adults.

And so adults cherished newborns to an extreme degree.

That was why you never saw babies on the roadside.

Babies were all gathered in the nursery at the absolute center of the city. There they were managed collectively.

The place that provided the most perfectly safe environment. Safe even if terrorism broke out; survivable even if an asteroid fell on the city. A place where any intruder of any kind could be executed on the spot by law. A space safer than the city hall bunker.

In this martial world, where even ordinary furniture mixed in special materials like ten-thousand-year cold iron so it wouldn't break easily, the easiest things to break were babies. That was why they had to be cherished.

The beings that stirred the greatest compassion.

And children were only a little sturdier than newborns. In truth, they were an extension of babies.

They were not yet complete as martial artists.

In a world like this, harming a child was… madness.

The worst taboo of this galactic martial world: acts of injury against infants and children.

The communists could not afford that.

The communists in front of Gong Ryun were a small infiltration team. Spies, as people commonly called them.

If they killed a child, the military would swarm in, the news would plaster the entire galaxy, public sentiment would turn vicious, the galactic government would launch a large-scale hostile policy against communist spies…

A mad act that would endanger all their compatriots.

But.

Now there was no child.

Which meant—

"Die!!! Bourgeois!!!!!!!"

—trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

Five pairs of hands opened fire with assault rifles.

At Gong Ryun. Concentrated fire.

"Keheok!!!!!"

Caught by the sudden barrage, Gong Ryun took the bullets with his whole body.

"We wrap this up before the little brat can report us!! Speed and finalityyyyy!!!"