Aliens Are Orthodox Martial Arts... Indeed
"Last stop—the security room."
After photographing everything in the three research labs, the party decided to head for the security room.
It lay below, a chamber at the very bottom of the structure. Gong Ryun and the others descended the steel staircase and came to a halt before a door that looked, at a glance, both heavily fortified and grimly forbidding.
The iron door of the security room was locked tight.
Of course, that meant nothing to them.
KWAANG!!!!!
Brigit planted her foot expertly against the door and, channeling her martial power, blasted the entire panel clean off its hinges. It was the same sort of technique she had used earlier to punch through the ceiling when they first entered the structure.
"Pardon the intrusion, coming throuuugh~~"
Brigit strode right inside.
A door forged a few hundred years ago was no obstacle to them at all.
One of the fastest-growing industries in the galaxy was furniture manufacturing—because it had to survive martial artists. Everyone could control their strength to some degree, of course, but there were always moments when power slipped out unconsciously. A piece that broke every time that happened was furniture unfit for sale. Picture a newlywed couple's bed. How solid, how shock-absorbent, would it need to be? The imagination did the rest.
Personal devices were no different.
In the galactic age, everyone carried a personal device. Models varied, but most were roughly the shape of an oval cylinder, projecting a holographic screen into the air. GPS, internet, camera, video playback, apps of every kind, high-performance sensors, galactic standard time—every cutting-edge technology packed into one machine. And yet shrinking them further had always been a failure.
Held in the hand, they stuck out a little past the palm top and bottom. Reduce the size any more and durability collapsed. In truth, if durability were ignored entirely, the body of a personal device could be made as small as one liked. But something that small became fragile, and the moment a martial artist had a bad day and jammed the power button a little too hard, it shattered into confetti. In the end, more than nine-tenths of a personal device's materials went toward making it structurally tougher—engineered for maximum ergonomics, which here meant "will not be destroyed by a human body."
So this door, built a few centuries ago, might have been sturdy enough in its day. It was not sturdy enough now. Granted, Brigit specialized in pulverizing obstacles, but even allowing for that, by modern standards it was too weak for serious security work. In a galactic martial world where the baseline kept rising, furniture had to evolve to match.
Invent blade-proof glass and martial artists promptly invented emergency anti-blade-proof-glass-smashing techniques. Hardware had never been able to keep pace with software.
Clang-crash!!!
The thoroughly crumpled iron door skidded across the floor in a pitiful heap.
Inside the security room, banks of large monitors and assorted machinery crowded every surface—all of it dead and still. The place was so oppressive it felt less like a security hub and more like a prisoner-surveillance facility.
"Uh… Un-rang. You said important facilities had their own independent power, didn't you?"
"Hmm… the machines don't seem to be working at all. Most peculiar…"
"So what now?"
"We won't be downloading data from the facility computers, I fear. But there is something else."
"Something else?"
"The black box. That one truly carries its own power no matter what."
The three of them ransacked the room and soon found a device tucked into a far corner.
The black box—the final data backup. A genuinely black box, roughly the size of a seat cushion, its surface forged of terrifyingly hard metal, with no visible means of opening it.
Things like this were usually designed to destroy themselves if forced open. A reverse-psychology trap that weaponized martial artists' reputation for brute force. Oh? Trying to open it with strength? Heehee—smash!
"So… how do we download the data?"
"I believe we'll simply have to take the whole thing with us."
"No choice, then."
The black box was embedded in a steel pillar along with a tangle of cables, so thoroughly integrated that it refused to separate.
"What do we do? We'll have to rip it out after all, won't we?"
"This big sis will smash it free!!"
"Absolutely not. Your firepower is so excessive you'd pulverize the black box along with everything else."
"Heh heh. I could gently excavate the pillar with my staff and pry it free. That might serve."
"Ah! If we're going that route, wouldn't a clean cutting technique be better? As it happens, I have a technique for 'cutting'!"
"Krrrrrrr."
"Oh! You little punk, you finally learned some kind of sword art!"
"Better than sword arts. Heh heh."
"Gong Ryun. You aren't seriously thinking of using that, are you? With Brigit right here—must you?"
"Haaah? What? What is it? Why are you talking about something I don't know!"
"Heh. Brigit. Time for a demonstration of the new technique."
"Have some shame! Gong Ryun! That is not something a man does! Where's your sense of embarrassment!!"
"Keeeerrrrrrrrr."
"No, but seriously—what is that sound? Why does it sound like some beast—"
"…"
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Then Gong Ryun felt liquid fall onto the black box.
Trickle.
The liquid ran down the casing and soaked the hand holding it.
An unpleasant sensation. Worse still was how familiar that sticky texture felt.
Gong Ryun slowly looked up. The flashlight of his personal device swept across the ceiling.
Above him: a ventilation duct.
And just inside the mouth of that duct, two reptilian eyes—long, slit, yellow, and luminous—stared down with perfect clarity.
Their gazes met.
And it moved.
It launched from the duct with astonishing speed, dropping and then firing its body like a bullet, streaking through the air along the shortest straight line. Jaws yawned wide, teeth harder than steel bared for the kill.
Keeeerrrrrrrrrk!!!!!
A cry he knew all too well.
Hydra.
A cosmic monster brimming with murderous intent hurtled toward the humans.
The vermin that brought death to civilizations. The planet-devouring species. The End Bringer.
That most vicious of nicknames, that merciless killing machine, had finally scented human blood and come charging in.
And then—
CHEEEEONG!!!!!!!!!!
CRASH-CLANG-CLATTER!!!!!!
It went flying.
Gong Ryun's full-power Parangjang sent the creature bouncing away in an undignified heap.
Full-power wave-palm — a shockwave like the ocean itself, slamming the beast aside.
Of course. Where did some dantian-less animal get off challenging a human?
Keeeerrrak!!!
The creature had barely finished tumbling before it was on its feet again and charging.
Gong Ryun remained utterly unshaken. He raised both hands—not into his usual defensive stance. Instead of guarding, he drank in every detail of the Hydra's movements with both eyes, timing its approach. And the instant it was nearly on top of him—
GRAB!!!!!
He clamped both hands around the Hydra's skull as if cradling it. Lightness skill in his arms did most of the work. Besides, the charge had come without a proper run-up inside the room, so its momentum was weak; even without a defensive posture, Gong Ryun absorbed little shock.
The Hydra, on the other hand, had just had its most vital body part seized—the head that held its brain. Cosmic locusts might lack intelligence, but that did not mean the brain was not a weak point.
Squeeeeeze.
In that grip, Gong Ryun poured strength into both hands.
Joint-locking technique twisted into a crushing palm — dual-handed compression press.
Maximum grip strength. He began crumpling the skull inward the way one would crush a tin can. Dual-handed compression press. The Hydra's head was subjected to unnatural pressure.
Crrrrrk…!
The harder the compression, the fiercer the Hydra's thrashing. But with its only real weapon—its teeth—held useless, all it could do was suffer.
KEEEEE!!! KEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Trickle.
Brain matter began to leak from the Hydra's eyes. Then bloody tears. It was being crushed from the inside out. Moments later—
CRACK!!!!!!!!!!
It burst.
The head shattered like a watermelon, reduced to shreds of flesh and bone fragments.
The Hydra's body went limp. Gong Ryun tossed the carcass onto the floor with a heavy thud.
"Something popping out of nowhere is pretty familiar, actually."
On the steel floor lay the headless corpse of a human-sized giant serpent, its skull exploded into nothing.
Looking at the body, it wasn't especially large—much smaller than the ones he had met in the mine. No wonder it had bounced so easily.
Probably had to stay small to fit through the vents, Gong Ryun guessed.
Once the brief chaos settled, Un-rang spoke.
"Oh ho! Gong Ryun! Such swift, unhesitating response!! Truly impressive! And Parangjang is not easy to fire that quickly, is it?"
"Ah, that. I had a bad feeling, so I was already holding the technique ready—primed to fire at any moment. After working so long in the underground sewers, my instincts in dark places have sharpened. Experience really does matter."
"Oh ho. So monsters came bursting from the ceilings down in the sewers, did they?"
"No. Something scarier."
Something far more dangerous than any monster. His master—an absolute high-level expert he could never hope to defeat—had been waiting there.
As expected, no experience in this world was ever wasted.