O Star Born of Death
Even a star that seems destined to shine forever will one day meet its death.
Because that dying process blazes brighter than any other moment of its life, it can look as if a new star is being born.
To reach death and be given the name of life—that was a paradox. Perhaps our universe is simply so vast that a thing can prove its existence to the world only by burning itself completely away.
The death of a star, flaring for an instant brighter than an entire galaxy, spewing out colossal energy.
A martial art that realized the principle of a gamma-ray burst at the moment of a star’s death.
Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art.
The first among the Heavenly Demon Three Divine Arts, and the martial technique of the greatest firepower left to this world by the founding Heavenly Demon.
A technique that stakes everything on killing a single target—only the one being pointed at with a finger.
If that target is a planet, it becomes a planet-destroying formula; if that target is an individual, it becomes an instant-kill technique.
Confirmed destruction. Impossible to defend against.
“That can’t be!!!!!”
The Succubus Boss let out a strangled cry.
Her usual languid drawl was gone; her voice was stained with grave, burning anger.
“What the hell are you imitating right now!!!!! That is a blasphemy against the Demonic Cult!!!!!!”
Jamiseong answered with a smile.
“Yes. It’s only an imitation. But even an imitation is still an imitation—and some imitations are better than others.”
Since the founding Heavenly Demon, countless geniuses had strained to master the Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art.
Yet even the greatest talents in the galaxy had hit their limits.
It was that difficult, that extreme a martial art.
In the end, as the ages passed, the Demonic Cult created a heavily diluted, reduced-power improved version and trained in that instead.
Or a handful of geniuses forged their own derivative arts simply to mimic it.
Even those weakened and imitative versions remained formidable.
Even diminished, they were still planet-destroying formulas.
Two hundred years ago, the greatest martial artist of his age and the Fourth Heavenly Demon, Cheonbo Majae, had sprayed the improved Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art across the stars and driven the galaxy to the brink of conquest.
The galaxy’s most dreaded disaster—the living star that killed stars, Cheonsalseong—had used a derivative of the Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art to annihilate countless planetary systems.
And the current greatest martial artist in the galaxy, the Star Lord, had received that derivative Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art from Cheonsalseong and used it to fight and defeat the Heavenly Demon.
And here—
Jamiseong Hernesh.
One of the Three Great Non-Human Stars—beings that were not human but “stars”—alongside Cheonsalseong and Mangryangseong.
Head of the Absorption Arts School.
A candidate for Young Cult Master of the Space Heavenly Demon Sect.
As one who coveted the Cult Master’s seat, she too had begun research into the Heavenly Demon Divine Arts.
A derivative reinterpreted through her tentacles and analyzed: a knockoff of the Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art.
She had ground countless fragment-consciousnesses into the work, heaped research upon research, and at the end of it all obtained only the dregs of the original.
Vastly inferior to the true form, and still unfinished.
And yet it knocked on the door of planet-destroying power.
Jamiseong’s exclusive derivative martial art.
Jami Finger Flicking Art
Even that derivative had been scaled back to the absolute extreme—because a human body could not endure the recoil.
An improved version of a derivative art.
A reduced form that did not even reach one hundred-millionth of the original Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art’s firepower.
And still, it had no trouble erasing a city or killing a single Earth-leaving Realm martial artist.
“You!!! What do you think you’re doing!!!!”
The Succubus cried out in horror.
“That’s a martial art of the stars!!! Something a Profound Realm body can’t use!!!”
“No. It is possible. With this divine vessel, it is possible.”
“That technique is a self-destruct art at its core!! There’s no way you can endure it!! With that body, you’ll shatter before you even finish the form!!”
“No. I am certain. Certain that this child can endure it.”
The Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art was a martial art that gave form to a star’s death.
Because its foundation was a technique of self-detonation—pouring everything out—its improved and derivative versions likewise carried brutal side effects.
Anyone unworthy would explode and die from the earliest stage of the form.
But Jamiseong was certain.
She trusted this body.
Jamiseong closed her eyes.
The moment she opened them again—
She activated it.
Millions of years of will-less wandering were poured into this single strike.
The rapture and hunger for a new world were poured into this single strike.
Longing for humanity, and envy of it, were poured into this single strike.
Jami Finger Flicking Art.
The first stage of the form.
Condense all qi.
Gong Ryun’s hand drank in every trace of energy nearby. The great volume of natural qi that had leaked out earlier through the absorption art gathered back again. Not only that—natural energies dwelling in the air and in the earth began to draw in as well, like cosmic dust pulled by gravity.
In a short span, the natural energies in the vicinity were emptied as if into vacuum.
Qi shaped like mist whirled in like a spiral galaxy and converged in an instant upon his right hand. The hand began to pulse with energy.
The second stage of the form.
Compress the qi.
—Kuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…
The air trembled. The ground shuddered.
Internal energy was compressed to the extreme. Then it converged into two points.
Gong Ryun’s raised hand blurred. The compressed internal energy disrupted electromagnetic waves, leaving afterimages.
The Succubus still could not believe Gong Ryun’s body had not burst. Most people died at this stage. Yet Gong Ryun was enduring the process.
No. No—that was impossible. It couldn’t be. He was only delaying his own death. Any moment now that energy-swollen hand would explode and he would be destroyed.
Denying herself, the Succubus watched the beautiful, unreal process unfold.
The third stage of the form.
The energy rotates.
The qi, compressed beyond measure into two points, began to spin in circles.
They pulled at each other, circling round and round. Faster. Still faster.
Every time the two points completed a revolution, the air shook.
Because the force drawing them together was stronger than centrifugal force, collision waited at the end of that rotation.
Yes. They would collide. That moment would complete the form.
“This is the end, Succubus.”
Gong Ryun’s body had not burst.
And so it was Jamiseong’s victory.
A gamble with everything on the line—won.
“Wh…what did you just…!!!”
With a jolt, the Succubus snapped back to herself.
But she could no longer stop this.
Even if she killed Gong Ryun right now, an explosion would still occur.
The Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art was a single-point detonation technique. If the form was interrupted now, the blast that could erase a city would not fire as a focused shot—it would erupt in every direction.
Then the whole city would be finished. And her son was in this city.
The price of daring to deny the miracle before her eyes was a dead end.
“There has to be a way…!”
She could not cut it off mid-form.
She could not dodge it either—it would be fired at near light speed.
She could not block it. The Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art was an indefensible form. No defensive art existed that could answer it.
In the end, the only method left was for the Succubus, with her Earth-leaving Realm body, to take the full brunt of that firepower and endure it.
Then the city would not be blown away.
Yes. That was the only way.
Jamiseong’s eyes seemed to say as much.
And Jamiseong moved to complete the final stage of the form.
The last stage of the form.
Collision of the two compressed points.
The two points drew so close they nearly touched.
I’m going to die.
The moment of impact.
Unless some miraculous variable intervened—
—Wuum.
In that instant, a single thread of golden internal energy flowed in from outside.
Guided by the absorption art that pulled everything in, it headed for Gong Ryun’s hand.
And it wrapped around Gong Ryun’s wrist.
The energy did not get dragged into the absorption art; it lingered near the wrist—control of an unnatural, masterful precision.
The technique of manipulating internal energy from afar.
Telekinesis.
Like Sword Control, it was a technique anyone could use, though weak in power—yet with specialized training, it could be applied in combat.
Of course, that telekinesis could not stop the Jami Finger Flicking Art.
The flow of internal energy unfolding in Gong Ryun’s hand was far too extreme for telekinesis to interfere with.
But the telekinetic energy did something else.
The thing telekinesis was most faithful to by nature.
Moving things.
Gong Ryun’s wrist was lifted upward.
And with the wrist, the arm.
Up. Toward the sky.
Gong Ryun’s arm was raised and pointed at the heavens.
The Finger Flicking Art’s aim turned upward.
“What.”
A hand is an organ that must go where the wrist and arm decide.
However impossibly complex and magnificent the form raging inside Gong Ryun’s hand, if the arm’s position changed, its direction changed with it.
“What the…!”
Even so—
Lifting this crushing mass of energy was possible?
Control and power that extreme?
Ordinary telekinesis could never manage it. Not unless it was the Martial God’s telekinesis…!
A third party…!
Jamiseong instantly sensed that someone else had intervened.
Who in the world—!
She rolled her eyes and caught a figure in the alley beyond the construction site. A form that looked like the Martial God.
…
No. Not the Martial God. Someone who resembled Martial God Namgung Hwe to an uncanny degree—the same light brown hair.
The Martial God’s bloodline. The Namgung Clan.
Why was the Namgung Clan here? How—
And in the gap of that confusion, the Succubus charged. This time she did not miss the timing. In a fraction of an instant she closed on Gong Ryun.
“!!!”
Jamiseong twisted her internal energy and shattered the telekinetic hold.
Then she freed the hand again, trying to re-aim.
But the Boss was already behind Gong Ryun.
Her left hand settled on Gong Ryun’s stomach. Her right hand closed around Gong Ryun’s right wrist.
Gong Ryun’s right hand tried to drop and failed. The Succubus gripped the wrist hard and locked it stretched toward the sky.
With their bodies in contact, the absorption art began draining the Succubus’s internal energy.
It was fine. Take it. Take even more if you want.
With the left hand she had placed over Gong Ryun’s dantian, the Succubus injected internal energy.
Artificial Internal Energy Injection. Exactly the same thing Medilla had done for Gong Ryun. A technique of giving internal energy tailored to the recipient. Where Suseo Magong or poison arts forced vicious energy into a target, Artificial Internal Energy Injection had the giver accept the loss and administer beneficial energy. A martial art of the same principle as Yin-Yang Unification—like chewing food for a sick patient and passing it into their mouth.
The Succubus Boss’s internal energy drained at speed. Take it. Take it all.
Internal energy overflowed through Gong Ryun’s body.
The surplus poured into his hand.
The rotation of the two points accelerated. They drew still closer.
“Forced detonation…!”
Jamiseong read the intent.
By pouring in energy, she was shoving it past the critical threshold to force an early shot.
“If I stop midway, you die!”
If she stopped midway, a wide-area blast would kill them all together.
“Then that body bursts too. You called it a divine vessel, didn’t you? Can you throw that away?”
Jamiseong also could not afford to let Gong Ryun die. Could she cast aside something she clearly prized so much?
She absolutely could not. Better to bide her time for another day. That greed, that desire, that obsession—too dense to end here.
“Succubus!!! Don’t you dare think this is over!!! I will come back for this body—I swear it!!!!!”
Jamiseong raged.
“Just fire already.”
The Succubus, strength steadily failing her, answered.
—Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing…
The period of the vibration coming from Gong Ryun’s hand shortened.
The interval of the two points’ rotation was shrinking. Any moment now.
The Succubus wrapped Gong Ryun’s body in her fluffy tail.
Shock absorption.
With her left hand she performed artificial qi circulation and breathing, reinforcing Gong Ryun’s protective aura as much as she could.
And then—
The final stage of the form.
Collision.
Final Stage — Collision
A slender beam of light fired from his fingertip.
The light rose in a perfect vertical toward the sky—as if a pillar of radiance had been raised.
Like lightning joining heaven and earth.
Like a divine punishment stretched down from the firmament.
Like a dragon rising from the ground.
Beautiful as the first light of creation.
Glorious as the last light of all things.
As if a star were remembering its birth.
As if a star were meeting its death.
A martial art that projected every last scrap of energy, in a single instant, into one slender point.
A bullet of energy particles fired from a finger. A laser beam.
It did not even approach a speck of the original’s power—
And yet it was strong, and beautiful.
The night sky was painted with a star’s final hour.
The pillar of light adorned the heavens higher and higher—a ray stretching without end, piercing the atmosphere, reaching toward outer space.
And along the path of that ray of light stood the city’s transparent hemispherical dome.
—CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!!!!!!
The dome-shaped energy barrier—mechanical machinery realizing the principle of a qi membrane—shattered into pieces.
Cracks spiderwebbed across it like broken glass. Fierce light leaked through the fractures, as if part of the laser beam had slipped inside.
As if tens of thousands of lightning bolts had struck from the sky at once, the city was lit in a single instant.
Like a morning of the apocalypse—sudden, and yet startlingly pretty, dazzlingly bright.
Then the laser beam ended.
A brief casting time of roughly one second.
One point. One instant. Everything poured into that.
And so it was short—and yet a technique that felt like eternity.
> SHIELD DAMAGE ALERT!!!
> SHIELD DAMAGE ALERT!!!
> SHIELD DAMAGE ALERT!!!
> ASTEROID IMPACT ALERT!!!
> ASTEROID IMPACT ALERT!!!
> ASTEROID IMPACT ALERT!!!
> CITY TERROR ALERT!!!
> CITY TERROR ALERT!!!
> CITY TERROR ALERT!!!
Immediately after, faced with a situation not in its data, the city’s various emergency alarms began to blare all at once.
Against the backdrop of that noise rising from every corner of the city, Gong Ryun spent the last of his strength and collapsed.