Claw Techniques Are Orthodox Martial Arts
Claw techniques were orthodox martial arts.
Yoseongpagyeongjo — the Crystal-Twisting Mirror-Breaking Claw.
A martial art whose mental image rested on the principle that twisting a material’s crystalline molecular structure would cause it to shatter.
For the record, the “crystal” here was not the winged fairy kind — it meant the disruption of crystalline structure. “Mirror-breaking” meant exactly that: shattering a mirror. Put together, it was the art of shaking molecular crystals until they cracked like glass.
They said the technique had been born from insight gained while watching a mirror break.
Fivefold Crack-Mirror Shatter
Sseeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!
With a motion like raking fingernails down a chalkboard, he swept his hand through empty air. The strike carved a long horizontal path, a slightly warped straight line like a crack spidering across glass.
Along that exact trajectory, five twisted linear blades of claw-qi shot from his artificial nails. Ah — in this case, you could call them claw-qi. A kind of ranged slash. Effective range: about five meters. Beyond that, the firepower dropped off hard. It was a wide-area technique, so a solid chunk of internal energy bled away with each use.
The five claw-qi, shaped like fractures in shattered glass, raked horizontally across the bodies of the charging hydras.
Five one-handspan-deep gashes opened as if drawn by something razor-sharp, and blood erupted at once.
A ranged attack!
Something Gong Ryun had never possessed. Parangjang, honestly, counted as a close-range strike. It was like a shotgun — fire it from far away and the effect collapsed. And usually he used it to blast enemies backward with shockwaves, not to put in real damage.
But these claw techniques could deal damage at range. One-sided beatdowns!
Even as he used them, Gong Ryun felt a delicious, brain-tingling sense of wickedness, the thrill of pure unfairness. Until now he’d had no choice but to trudge right up and grab things with his joint-locking palm. And now he could just stand still and hit enemies far away? Wasn’t this broken? This was a whole new world. He felt like he could never go back.
Still, it was too underhanded to use freely on people. He decided then and there: he’d only use it as punishment on monsters that didn’t deserve a fair fight — or on sinners like unfilial brats!
…Though in truth, Gong Ryun simply didn’t know any better. This barely even counted as a ranged attack. He just hadn’t properly seen real long-range martial arts yet. In the martial world, five meters was still close combat. Techniques that flung sword-qi were common as dirt, charging arts were just as common, and even without those, five meters was a distance you could cover with a light step of footwork.
Of course, to Gong Ryun — who had none of those things — it was still a new world.
Kieeeeeeeek!!!!!
Kirrerrerrerrerrerrrrrk!!!!!
The badly wounded hydras screamed.
But they still had breath left in them.
And with every scrap of strength they had, they kept charging.
Gong Ryun prepared his next move at once.
He spread his thumb, index, and middle fingers, then curled them like a bird’s talons.
He poured internal energy into them and swung.
Falling Eagle Claw — Snake Scraping
Nakeungjo. The Falling Eagle Claw.
A martial art that took the image of a diving hawk’s talons. A fundamental claw technique beloved since ancient times — practically the joint-locking palm of the claw-arts world.
Sseok!!!
Sseok!!!
Sseok!!!
Short, rapid raking claw-qi shot out.
Relatively low internal energy cost, solid single-target firepower, and reliable accuracy. Near-instant cast time meant he could chain the strikes. The only downside was a slightly short range — you had to get close enough.
Gong Ryun aggressively applied lightfoot techniques to his arms and hands, hammering out a rapid series of blows.
The flying claw-qi struck the hydras in vital spots — heads, or places already gashed open.
Four of the five collapsed. They weren’t dead, just incapable of action. But that was enough suppression. He could finish them later.
One hydra, however, refused to fall and kept charging. It must have only grazed the earlier Yoseongpagyeongjo.
Gong Ryun reached toward that last one.
Gut-Piercing Claw — Mole Steals the Liver
Gwanbokjo. The Gut-Piercing Claw.
Of all the claw techniques he had learned, the one that fit Gong Ryun best.
It was a technique that drove the nails into an enemy’s body from the inside. In a single explosive thrust of force, you drove your hand in all the way to the guts.
Sound familiar? That’s right. It was the joint-locking palm.
The joint-locking palm was also a technique for tearing up an enemy’s intestines. (It wasn’t.)
Where the joint-locking palm crushed the belly like a hydraulic press until the hand forced its way inside, Gwanbokjo stabbed in from the fingertips like a vicious blade.
As a bonus, it also hardened the nails and fingertips to razor sharpness.
Puuk!!!!!!!
Kieeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!
Why a mole would steal a liver and eat it, Gong Ryun had no idea. He guessed it came from some old folktale.
Gong Ryun’s hand punched straight through the hydra’s belly. Like plunging a hand into soft mud, his fingers sank into the creature’s gut without resistance.
And after that, the familiar pattern.
He used the joint-locking palm to churn the organs. The hydra’s insides became a slurry.
Kieuuu…
And so the hydra breathed its last.
Gong Ryun had handled all five alone.
Granted, he’d gotten a little excited and burned more internal energy than necessary — but even with what he had left, tanking from here on out shouldn’t be a problem. Fine.
It was a milestone. Hydras of this level were no longer a serious problem for Gong Ryun. Before, when they swarmed him, he’d had to kill them one by one with the joint-locking palm, and it had been an exhausting mess. Now he had wide-area palm techniques, underhanded “ranged” attacks, and even other martial arts that linked with the joint-locking palm.
Of course, soloing a hydra nest was still beyond him. Too many enemies and his internal energy wouldn’t hold.
Well! Problems for later.
Gong Ryun pulled his hand free of the hydra.
Thud!
The hydra’s body flopped onto the ground.
Then Gong Ryun looked back.
Brigit and Un-rang’s reactions were…
“You… you…”
“Heh. Brigit. What do you think?”
“Youuu…”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“You little shit!!!!!”
“?”
“You!!! No way. For real!!! No fucking way this is real!!!”
“Wait, what…?”
“You little shit, you’ve still got a dick, right?! Get over here! I gotta check right now!!! Drop ‘em!!!”
“What! Hey! Hands off my pants!!!”
“Kyaaaaaaah!!! You bastard!!! Drop ‘em right nooooow!!!”
“Cut the crap!! You’re actually gonna tear the pants — let go right now!!!”
After a brief wrestling match, Brigit finally gave up on stripping him and settled for a full-throated tirade instead.
“You!!! What the hell is this look!!!!!”
“…?”
“What the hell happened to make you turn into this!!!!”
“…???”
Then Brigit spun the topic onto Un-rang.
“Un-rang!!!! You were supposed to manage him properly!!!! While I was gone, you should’ve raised him right!!! How the hell did you look after the kid that he ended up like this!!!!”
Un-rang clapped a hand over his mouth and spoke through a tearful quiver.
“I am sorry…! I am sorry, Brigit…! But I did all that I could…! What was I to do when he suddenly became like this one day?”
“‘All that I could,’ my ass!! How hard did you neglect him for the kid to turn out like this!!!”
“Gong Ryun is an adult now!! I cannot stand at his side and watch over him forever!! Must he not choose his own path?!”
“And that was his choice?!!! It’s mortifying, for real!!! What’s going to happen to the kid’s reputation?! What are people going to say?! Are you going to take responsibility if he lives alone his whole life?! At this rate he might never even get to touch a woman’s hand…! Wait a second.”
“?”
“Hmm… Hmmm… If it’s like this, then maybe…”
“Hmm? What did you just say?”
“Uh… nothing. Never mind. …… Well! Everyone’s got their own tastes, right? Gong Ryun, I respect you!”
“Suddenly?”
“That’s what friends do — support each other no matter what, right, Gong Ryun?”
“?????”
There had been some commotion, but it wrapped up warmly enough. That was the good thing about friends, after all.
It probably wouldn’t be a problem. Probably.
And so they set off again down the underground passage.
Hydras greeted them several times along the way, and they cheerfully beat the creatures senseless as they advanced.
The corridor widened a little, but all that meant was adjusting their formation.
Gong Ryun and Brigit tanked up front; Un-rang dealt damage from the rear. With two people on defense, they could cover a much wider area.
Brigit’s protective hard-qi was a touch weaker than Gong Ryun’s, but she had a martial art that generated an internal-energy barrier roughly the size of a person, and she used that to make up the difference. Mid-fight she tried to tempt Gong Ryun — if he wanted the barrier technique, she’d teach him — but Gong Ryun’s expression said he was already tougher bare-bodied, so what was the point?
Once the space opened up, Un-rang switched from thrusting attacks to sweeping ones. Those were actually stronger. Most staff forms were rooted in rotation. The true essence of the staff was the swing. Thrusting was really the spear’s domain. Spears were born to thrust; staffs were born to swing. Un-rang murmured as much in passing.
They kept walking, trading blows with hydras in a lively back-and-forth, until at last—
Gong Ryun’s party found the crowning jewel of hydra-den exploration.
A vast cavern. Black, tar-like mucus on the floor. Eggs half-submerged like they were taking a bath.
They had found the nest.
“Are we actually clearing this ourselves?”
“Having come this far, I see no reason we cannot.”
“Hahaha!!! The hazard bonus is gonna taste so sweet!!!”
Their confidence had punched through the atmosphere. They were having an absolute blast.
Of course.
“Ah — if something too strong shows up, we bail like the wind!”
“But of course. Knowing when to run based on weight class is a time-honored tradition. Even the ancient Art of War says as much.”
They had not forgotten the alpha and omega of mercenary survival: if it looks bad, you run.
Un-rang almost found it absurd for a moment, but this wasn’t bolting mid-life-and-death duel with a person — it was just deciding a pest-control job had gone sideways and pulling out. So he let it slide. Fair enough; dying while swatting bugs would be a pretty raw deal. A man had to live reasonably.
And then—
Grgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgr…
The ground shuddered.
Kirrerrerrerrerrerrerrerrerrerrerrerr!!!!!!
The broodmother burst out. Bigger than the one they’d killed in the mine last time. The secondary heads flanking its main one were sizable — this was no juvenile.
The beast fixed Gong Ryun and his companions with a ferocious glare.
The queen’s endless killing intent toward the intruders filled the underground chamber to the brim.