The Basics Matter Most
"I fear more the martial artist who has killed ten thousand times with a single technique than the one who kills with ten thousand techniques."
"Haha! Big brothers! How are you!"
"Oh. If it isn't Loro."
"It's been a while."
He was a pretty, youthful-looking young man in a Hawaiian shirt. Brown bobbed hair, round sunglasses perched up on his head like a headband. He was suspiciously pretty—almost unnaturally so—but according to him, he was a guy either way.
They had known his face for a few months now. He was a mercenary so relentlessly sociable that he stuck to them every time they ran into him.
Still a rookie who had only just started mercenary work. He hadn't even graduated high school that long ago. A young man who wanted nothing more than to become a named mercenary as soon as possible and bask in wealth and fame.
"Hahaha! What a coincidence! I was just coming to train myself!"
A practice wooden spear was slung over Loro's shoulder. He must have been practicing martial arts in the training room.
"Have you guys heard the rumor? They're saying there's a fortuitous encounter hidden in Morlaren Canyon! Just like the whole 'opportunity in the cave under the cliff' cliché!"
True to form for a mercenary, he launched straight into information exchange the moment they met.
"Heh heh heh. Now that you mention it, I've heard talk of people organizing something like a specialized exploration team for Morlaren Canyon these days."
"Job listings for Morlaren Canyon exploration gigs have been popping up pretty often on the mercenary app too."
They chatted idly about the rumors. Before long, Loro had pulled a cola from the vending machine and was naturally sitting with them as if he belonged there.
"Oh, by the way, Un-rang hyung! That martial arts recommendation list you gave me last time was seriously helpful!"
"Heh heh heh. Those were basic techniques perfectly suited for beginner mercenaries. I'm glad they helped. Are you practicing them now?"
Being from the orthodox faction, Un-rang knew an absurd number of useful tips, and he was the type to freely share that high-value information with people he knew. The martial arts recommendation list was one of them. Gong Ryun had benefited from it plenty as well. Geumnasu had been one of Un-rang's recommended picks.
And the technique Loro was learning today, after hearing Un-rang's "Basic Techniques Recommended for Rookie Mercenaries" series last time, was none other than…
"Today I'm learning the Hyeol-ma Spear Art!"
"Huh?"
Un-rang looked momentarily flustered.
"The Hyeol-ma Spear Art has such a unique underlying principle that it requires at least some foundation. Don't tell me you've already mastered every basic technique on the list I recommended? Could Loro actually have that kind of monstrous talent?"
"No way!! It was on a crazy discount so I bought it!! I just went for it!!!"
"Wha—!!"
Un-rang clutched the back of his neck.
"You young sentient being! How many times did I tell you to learn the basics first!!"
"But!! I can't resist a flash sale!! How am I supposed to resist a martial art with a name that cool? Hyeol-ma Spear Art! It sounds like something the Heavenly Demon himself would use!"
"What are you even saying!"
Un-rang recoiled in horror. He had gone through the trouble of recommending a whole list, and this little brat had gone and done this!
"Heh heh. Well, if it's on sale, buying it is fine. Un-rang, didn't you buy the Haenam Sect footwork because it happened to go on sale?"
"Gong Ryun…! This is completely different! I had already planned to buy the Haenam Sect footwork, and it just happened to go on sale. That brat Loro saw a sale and impulse-bought it with zero plan and his eyes spinning!"
"Hmm… Is that so? But what's the big deal? Better is better, right? If you learn a high-level martial art, you can get stronger, can't you?"
Loro lit up at Gong Ryun's words.
"Ahh! Gong Ryun hyung! Exactly! The more expensive a martial art is, the better it is, right? I got an expensive one for cheap, so I should just learn this first, yeah? Basic techniques are kinda cheap-looking martial arts, aren't they? Hahaha!!"
Thwack! Un-rang grabbed the back of his neck again.
He was an android, so he shouldn't even get high blood pressure—how was he clutching his neck like that? Did he have a cooler installed in there? Gong Ryun wondered idly.
"Aigoo, my neck. Is that the kind of nonsense you've been thinking, Loro? By that logic, every rich person would just buy expensive martial arts and become a super expert, wouldn't they?"
"Uh… isn't that basically true? Isn't that why the orthodox faction is strong?"
"It is not. Everything has stages. The orthodox faction is strong because they thoroughly and perfectly learn those stages as prior learning from a young age."
But the unrepentant Loro still hadn't gotten the point.
"Ehh… but if Geumnasu fought Jewanggeomhyeong, wouldn't Jewanggeomhyeong win?"
Geumnasu was the poster child for basic martial arts, while Jewanggeomhyeong was a famous expensive technique.
That was when Gong Ryun had a fit.
"What!!! Loro, what kind of talk is that! Do you have any idea how strong Geumnasu is!"
"Ah… aiyu! I just meant hypothetically, hyung."
In that moment, Un-rang's eyes sparkled. He had found the perfect example.
"Hoo… Loro. Listen carefully."
He pointed straight at Gong Ryun.
"This Gong Ryun right here could beat you using nothing but Geumnasu. Not only that—if you lined up every mercenary in this city, he'd still rank somewhere in the upper-middle tier."
"Huh…? Just with Geumnasu and nothing else? How is that even possible?"
"Because Gong Ryun's fundamentals are perfect. That alone puts him far ahead of people who half-heartedly hop from one martial art to another."
The only martial arts Gong Ryun had properly mastered were the galaxy-standard basic mind method that even slaves learned, Honwongong; the basic joint-locking technique Geumnasu; and the Haenam Sect's Parangjang he had learned today. Protective aura was included in Honwongong, for the record. Of course, there were other arts he had merely studied without ever using them properly. Footwork methods, lightness skills, and the like—he had learned them, but his skill hadn't reached a level he could use in real combat.
Even so, Gong Ryun was better than Loro.
"Loro. Learning a messy pile of different martial arts is useless. That's vanity. Push steadily from the basics. Gong Ryun spent nearly three years after becoming a mercenary training almost nothing but Geumnasu."
"Well. Thanks to that, my Geumnasu is ridiculously strong."
"Isn't Geumnasu just a basic self-defense technique? For three years?"
In truth, he had been working so constantly that he hadn't had much time to learn other martial arts. But Geumnasu was such a reliable everyday staple that its firepower alone had been more than enough.
"With Geumnasu, I can kill something like a hydra in a single blow."
"No way! That's impossible!"
Geumnasu was a basic martial art anyone could learn. At one point it had even been distributed as self-defense for women. It was so fundamental that people rarely made it their main technique.
"But you're saying that Geumnasu can one-shot a hydra? Hydras are lizards—do joint locks even work on them…?"
Of course, no one mentioned Gong Ryun's bizarre palm talent. The point of the story was simply that "fundamentals matter most." That lesson alone needed to get across.
And it wasn't just Geumnasu. Gong Ryun's Honwongong was strong as well. Honwongong was called the origin of all martial arts—the most foundational art for learning anything else. A starter package including basic breathing methods for accumulating internal energy in the dantian, protective aura, breathing techniques, qi circulation methods, physical strengthening, and more.
Gong Ryun had used this Honwongong every single day throughout roughly twenty years of slave life. Nothing else—only this. On top of that, his enlightenment talent for martial arts was outstanding, so unlike other slaves who merely used it, Gong Ryun had sought a deeper understanding of Honwongong on his own and reached higher realms because of it.
Back in his hometown, farming all day meant he could only apply it in ways like carrying a few more sacks of grain. But now that he had become a proper martial world figure, people evaluated him as someone with rock-solid fundamentals.
So rookies like Loro—who looked down on the basics and only wanted to rush to the next stage (average for countryside rookie mercenaries)—actually stood at a lower realm than Gong Ryun, who had drilled only basic martial arts with an almost grotesque tenacity.
"There. Do you understand now, Loro? So what should you do from here?"
"Th-then…! Then I…!"
"That's right, Loro. You need to learn the basic techniques fir—"
"Since I already bought it, I'll master the Hyeol-ma Spear Art first real quick and then learn the basics!"
"…??? Have you been listening to a single word this whole time?"
Un-rang's advice had been perfectly sound. But there was no stopping a young man's recklessness!
"Eh… I already bought it, so there's nothing I can do. I went all-in and bought it, so this month's food budget is already on the edge… I can't even buy other basic techniques! Tahaha!"
"Aigoo, this little rascal…"
Un-rang pressed his forehead. Gong Ryun chuckled for no good reason.
Loro was young; he would figure something out one way or another. Both of them thought as much and ultimately had no choice but to let it go. Advice was only useful when the listener willingly chose to listen.
"Kyaa! But seeing you two like this, both of you really give off this sense of experience! Is this what being a named mercenary is like? I definitely want to become named someday too!"
Loro. He was a rookie mercenary who dreamed of becoming a named one. The reason he clung to the two of them was that both of them—being named—were objects of his admiration.
Sparkle sparkle.
Loro's eyes shone.
But Gong Ryun found those sparkling eyes a little burdensome.
"Uh… you… being named isn't anything grand at all. Don't put too many fantasies on it."
"What? Named mercenaries are so cool, though!!"
"It's just a nickname unorthodox bottom-feeders end up sticking on each other while gossiping among themselves. Heh heh heh."
"No way! It's awesome! Yesterday the video of Three-Sword Style taking down the unfilial son spread all over social media among the kids! It's the pure romance of a martial artist!"
Hmm? Wait a second.
The pieces clicked together in Gong Ryun's head.
"Ah! Don't tell me… you impulse-bought the Hyeol-ma Spear Art because you saw Three-Sword Style using Jewanggeomhyeong?"
"Kyaa! Exactly! Unfilial son Jason's martial art couldn't beat the more expensive Jewanggeomhyeong! Pure money-stomp! That feeling of 'high-level martial arts really are better' hit me so hard!"
So that was it?
Un-rang looked at Loro with a sullen expression.
"Ugh. Good heavens. Social media is ruining the children. Amitabha…"
"Un-rang. Is social media that entertaining?"
"Do not even think of starting that, Gong Ryun. You would be better off going to the pachinko parlor."
"Worse than pachinko…? Hmm. Got it."
Gong Ryun resolved never to install a social network app.
When named mercenaries fought a life-or-death duel, it became such a massive spectacle that it could trend like this across an entire region. Especially in the countryside, where there wasn't much else to watch.
That damned "named" status.
Gong Ryun and Un-rang were both skeptical of the whole named-mercenary thing, but Loro's admiration for it showed no sign of breaking.
And since the Gong Ryun and Un-rang sitting right in front of him were themselves named mercenaries, Loro's mouth fired off without rest.
"Aww, but being famous is good, right? And it's cool! Isn't it? 'Shaolin Temple Baldy' hyung!!!"
Shaolin Temple Baldy Un-rang firmly shook his head.
"No. Being a baldy is not cool. And I am not a baldy monk—I am an apostate monk."
"And… that infamous…!! 'San-gong-dok Goe-in'!!!"
"Khack…!"
Gong Ryun sprayed the coffee he had been drinking.
