It's Common Sense That a Succubus Uses Taekwondo
The Harmony Realm is Harmony because you pick a life-and-death duel every time you get mad.
The Profound Realm is Profound because you have to fight those duels wisely.
The Life and Death Realm is Life and Death because you have to fight carefully so you don't actually kill anyone.
The Nature Realm is Nature because you can't fight in the city—you have to take it outside, into nature.
—A famous joke of the Galactic Martial World.
The Succubus came flying in.
She lifted into the air like a butterfly, then dropped in a straight line like a bee—a double side kick, a charging technique with the raw thrust of a sword-draw art.
—KUNG!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Succubus's double side kick crashed into Gong Ryun's body with a heavy, crushing roar. In that same instant, through contact absorption, Gong Ryun drank her internal energy. It was only a moment, but he pulled in more Qi than his base capacity.
Then his body shot away like a billiard ball smashed by a cue, and he tumbled hard across the ground like a skipped stone. The kick's impact was enormous; he rolled a long way.
Fortunately the construction site was vast, so even after he bounced and rolled there was still room to spare.
The lot was broad and flat—looked like they were planning to put up a secret-manual library or something of the sort.
Mid-roll, Gong Ryun stretched out a hand and scraped the ground to bleed off speed.
Cat-claw gouges scored the hard earth in a long streak, and his body finally stopped being shoved back.
"Hmm… so that's all, is it."
Gong Ryun under the domination of Jami Star—Jami-Gongryun, for short—opened his mouth.
"Succubus. I took you for Nature Realm at best. Seems I was wrong. This boy's body has no talent for eyesight, so he never read your realm."
Among masters, they said, a single clash of blades was enough to know each other's measure.
After only a few exchanges, Jami Star had finished analyzing the Succubus.
There was a reason you always ran reconnaissance before the real game.
The attacks the Succubus had thrown earlier looked simple, but complex technique was melted into them.
Precise force control. The flow of Qi. Movements clean beyond clean.
And above all—the colossal internal energy he had felt while absorbing.
"You've crossed the Wall of the Under-Heaven. Well. If that's so, arrogance would come naturally. On this planet, masters of your caliber can't have been many."
The Succubus Boss's realm.
Earth-leaving Realm.
The stage of leaving the ground—of leaving the planet.
A master who could claim the title of representative for a backwater world.
Among Harmony, Profound, Life and Death, Nature, Earth-leaving, Star-borrowing, and Star-self, it was the fifth.
Harmony Realm: an ordinary adult's level.
Profound Realm: a strong ordinary person, or someone who made a living by fighting. Gong Ryun and the cult leader belonged here.
Life and Death Realm: the entry of true skill. Karina and Bernoulli sat at its extreme. One blow could flatten a building; alone, you could clear a Hydra den.
Nature Realm: the entry of the high masters. Roughly the strength of the cult leader when he had powered up under the conch shell—though he had fallen to poison before he could properly use it. At this level, you could normally face several Life and Death martial artists at once.
From Harmony through Nature, they called it all Under-Heaven.
Meaning you were still under the sky. No matter how hard you fought, the battlefield was still playing on the ground.
Nature Realm, the highest of Under-Heaven, could terrorize a city alone—a living natural disaster that toppled buildings in heaps and set off massive blasts. Even so, it was still an event somewhere under the sky. From a planet's point of view, it never left the scale of a local incident.
So what made Earth-leaving different?
Earth-leaving set its feet in outer space.
Free movement in zero gravity. Survival without breathing.
Those who left the cradle of a planet and achieved Heaven, Earth, and Man alone.
To leave Under-Heaven, paradoxically, you needed Heaven's leave—so they were geniuses who had received Heaven's leave.
The stage before a star, and the chivalrous wanderers who spent their lives seeking the Way to become one.
On a rural planet, martial artists of this realm were scarce. On a backwater among backwaters like this one, even more so—you counted them on one hand. Masters of this level rarely stayed put. They drifted through the galaxy, hunting clues to climb higher.
Earth-leaving masters were called either Comets or Asteroids. If you wandered the galaxy seeking enlightenment, you were a Comet; if you secluded yourself or settled in one place and quietly refined your strength, you were an Asteroid.
The Succubus Boss was the latter. If a local power had ever noticed her realm, he would have asked politely, For what reason does the nameless Asteroid grace this humble countryside?—something close to the honorific "great hero."
And if you answered that question: she was resting on a quiet rural planet for childcare.
She wasn't even from here originally. She was on vacation.
"Well, suuuure~~ I do hide my strength pretty well~~? Even my kid doesn't know my realm~~~"
She was hiding it so she wouldn't spoil the child. Mom was concealing her power.
"If you were only Nature Realm, I could maybe scrape by somehow~~~ What am I supposed to do with this~~~?"
Between the realms of Under-Heaven—Harmony through Nature—and everything after, the gap was literally heaven and earth. There was even a phrase for it: the Wall of the Under-Heaven.
From Earth-leaving onward, people flew around zero-g space with beam sabers without ships and launched meteors by telekinetic force and the like.
Their power was so great that to live among ordinary people in a city, they had to "seal" their strength by special means.
What tension could a master like that feel against a low-level like Profound? Even if a star possessed the body, the flesh itself was still Profound Realm.
"That Sangongdok dantian was pretty startling~ Never thought something like that existed in the world~ Well, if absorption won't work~~ I can just beat you unconscious, right~~~?"
The Succubus lifted a foot. Absorption was her mainstay, but she used footwork plenty too.
She had finished her reconnaissance the same way. After a few hits she could tell—Gong Ryun was absurdly sturdy for his realm. It had been a long time since she'd had a sandbag with such a satisfying feel.
Still, she had to stay careful. Hit him in earnest and he'd burst like a bug. Better to raise the firepower a little at a time.
Force control~ Force control~
Thinking that, she fired a side kick into empty air.
Nine-Tailed Taekkyeon. Taegeuk.
Falcon Launch.
—TUKUNG!!!!!!!!!
The kick had clearly been thrown into nothing, but the impact became formless Qi and shot forward like a projectile.
A long-range projected attack using a kick.
Along the straight line of the shock, the floor split like tofu and a fierce wind pressure rose. The direction: toward Gong Ryun. Speed nearly instant.
Jami-Gongryun thrust a hand toward that projectile.
Form Four — Free-Roaming Waves
An instantaneous defensive barrier.
—PEOEOEOEEONG!!!!!!!!!!!
A Parangjang defense matrix, far larger and harder than an ordinary barrier, collided with the projectile.
"The weakness of Parangjang is that it takes too long to cast. That is because this form begins from the dantian. If you learn the knack of firing internal force straight from the arm instead of the dantian, you can cut the cast time to an extreme."
Jami-Gongryun muttered to himself.
It was not really to himself. Jami Star was teaching Gong Ryun—carving it into his unconscious.
How often did a Profound Realm get to fight Earth-leaving? Even now, Jami Star was using the moment as teaching material.
"Remember this: the weakness of an overwhelming master lies, paradoxically, in that very strength. Because their firepower is too great, they can destroy the surroundings without discrimination, so a master must load technique into every attack—and that consumes surprising concentration. They are also arrogant, and always hold back in their strikes. That is a clear flaw."
"Use environment and circumstance. Use the constraint that the opponent must not kill you. Use the fact that, as a hidden master, she must conceal her identity. Use the terrain of being inside a city. Will she care about onlookers' eyes? Will she worry about property damage? You must keep asking those questions."
"Know the enemy and know yourself. What is the opponent's strength? What favors you? Can your advantage reach the opponent's opening? If you know that, even a mere ant can kill a giant. There is no eternal strong, and no eternal weak."
The Succubus looked incredulous.
"What are you doing right now? A lecture? In this situation~? Wait—do you actually think you can win~?"
He could win. Jami Star sincerely believed it.
Right now Jami Star was riding a sense of omnipotence. He had obtained a perfect body.
And he was growing used to it by the second. In this short span, the flesh already felt as if it had always been his own.
Jami-Gongryun took a stance.
Five twisted cutting strokes.
—SSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Five twisted blade-winds, like glass shattering, draped down from above the Succubus's head.
"Fine~~ It's been a while, and this is fun for me too~~~ Go on—try to last till the end~~~"
In answer, the Boss lifted her leg again.
Outside crescent kick.
She raised the leg and swept it down and out.
The five blade-winds hanging over her head crumpled the instant they met her foot and were shoved aside—like a curtain kicked open.
The formless slashes of Fairy Shattering Blade Claws scattered and dissolved in midair.
And as the Succubus brought the raised leg back to the ground, she linked another motion as naturally as breathing.
True Stomp.
She set the foot down and stamped the earth hard.
A great crack split the construction floor.
Fissures spiderwebbed out at speed, infecting the ground. From the cracks, internal force surged up. The Qi she had poured into the stomp erupted through the fractures like a volcano breaking the surface.
The floor under Gong Ryun was ruined in an instant. The footing went unstable; his balance broke.
Caught full by the fissure's force, his legs locked and would not move.
"Ow, that stings~~~"
Then the Succubus charged.
Double side kick.
A heavier blow than before.
Gong Ryun answered.
Yellow River Palm — a flood of stolen power.
On the foundation of the vast internal force he had stolen by absorption, Gong Ryun shot his palm toward the Succubus.
—KUWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!!!
Internal force roared out as if the lower Yellow River had burst its banks.
The violent wave of Qi seemed to forbid anything from swimming upstream against it.
But there was no need to swim against it.
You could just smash it.
The Succubus twisted her body.
A conversion from the double-side-kick posture into another—midair, and while still flying. Control that changed a form in the middle of a charge.
Aerial spinning kick.
Her body turned. The charge path stayed the same.
Using her spine as the center of mass, the body began to revolve—gorgeous, fluid.
Her nine tails spun with her, like a flower blooming open.
And as internal energy loaded into the spin, it took on the force of a typhoon.
However wide and rough the Yellow River, under a violent storm it was thrashed and torn.
The Succubus ripped through the force of Huanghejang and kept coming.
Even after scattering the whole river, power enough remained—and it drove straight at Gong Ryun.