Eleonor Sky
Eleonor Sky.
She was a figure born in the age of the World Wars.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. A Westerner. A war orphan.
A person with no connection whatsoever to the old Demonic Cult. From the beginning she had pursued her own independent research into martial arts, and only later joined the Heaven-Defiers to become one of their number.
She wanted to kill the God of Martial Arts. The reason was never known, but that was her dream.
After joining the Heaven-Defiers, Eleonor became their leader.
Everyone walked with their eyes fixed on her back.
And Eleonor, for her part, regarded them as family.
Throughout her life she challenged the God of Martial Arts hundreds of times.
Among all the Heaven-Defiers, she alone was strong enough to qualify as his challenger.
She came to him alone and requested a duel to the death.
The God of Martial Arts never refused.
Eleonor poured out everything she had.
She lost.
And she withdrew.
Like a recurring villain who appears every episode only to be vanquished again.
It was practically an annual event.
She challenged him, and lost.
She challenged him, and was shattered.
Of all those countless challenges, not one left so much as a hairline scratch.
She never even reached him.
Not once. She never touched him.
"In the entire history of the martial world, the God of Martial Arts has never suffered meaningful harm."
"Not even once?"
"Not even once. It was as if an impassable wall stood between god and man. Why else do you think they once called him the Eastern Undefeated? Because he had never known defeat."
And still Eleonor did not stop.
She made challenges whose defeat was already written, and simply came back the next time. Broken, battered, bleeding. She studied him and studied him again, failed, and started over, clawing obstinately at an unbreachable wall, trying to punch through.
The process was almost sacred.
Desperate — and sacred because it was desperate.
Like a human crawling toward the sky.
Foolish. Incomprehensible.
People compared her to Icarus flying toward the sun.
In Greek myth, Icarus fashioned wings of wax and bird feathers and took to the sky. But greed carried him too high; the sun melted the wax, and he fell to his death.
That hunger for a realm denied to humankind looked just like Eleonor. Like Icarus, who could not abandon the desire to climb higher and destroyed himself, they believed Eleonor's end would be the same.
Some mocked her reckless challenges. Some raged at her defiance of a god. Some pitied her for a defeat already foretold.
Like a bird dashing its head against a vast cliff face.
Reckless. Meaningless.
But Eleonor did not stop.
Infamy and disgrace meant nothing. She had a goal, and people who believed in her. So she pressed on.
She challenged him hundreds of times.
She challenged him for hundreds of years.
Across that long span, Eleonor kept growing. Every time she challenged him she brought new techniques. Every fight against the God of Martial Arts made her stronger; her martial arts refined themselves. Piece by piece, she found the clues that would raise her realm. Truths of the universe once invisible came into view, and she could forge still more of them into her art.
Eleonor did not stop.
As if solving an impossible puzzle. Still no attack ever landed — and still she knocked, little by little, against the wall.
By then she had come to contest the second seat of the martial world with Killing Saint Cheon Soso.
She had forced her way that far.
The mockery and contempt were gone. People offered respect for her effort. She seemed almost like a monk seeking the Way.
The Heaven-Defiers' power grew. None yet matched Eleonor's talent, but more and more people shared her cause. Still weak — but they had begun to hope. It truly seemed as if the Heaven-Defiers might pull it off.
And Eleonor herself…
came to know one fact with absolute clarity.
She had grown strong enough to see it. A truth that only became visible once her eyes opened to the truths of the universe.
Namgung Hwe…
the God of Martial Arts…
could never be defeated.
No matter what she threw at him. No matter how much time passed and how much she grew. He was not simply the strongest person in the world. Between first and second place lay a gulf immeasurable — greater than this galaxy itself. He stood in a realm absurdly, impossibly far above.
Even the concept of realms did not apply to the God of Martial Arts. His enlightenment already reached beyond. He was only deliberately slowing his pace — so he might walk, if only a little, alongside other humans.
A being who could look upon every truth of the existing universe.
That man did not seem human at all.
That was truly a god.
The truth she finally observed was almost cruel. For a time she despaired of it. She felt fear. She felt crushed that her goal could not be achieved. She felt the pain of having her life itself denied.
Because she was human, not a god.
But because she was human—
Eleonor did not stop.
She kept going. She did not abandon her path. Because she was human, she was reckless. Because she was human, she was stubborn. Because she was human, she clung to the futile.
Even if she could no longer kill the God of Martial Arts. Even if she could never surpass him.
She simply wanted to touch him once. To reach him, even a little. To touch a god. To brush him with a fingertip, if that was all she could manage.
She wanted to prove it.
To prove her life. To prove the conviction she had held. To prove it to the people who watched her back. To prove their lives. To prove their love.
Even for a single moment, even at a single point — that would be enough. If she could only gain the possibility. If she could only obtain proof that a human could touch a god, could reach the heavens.
To live without even that proof was not living. It would be a long death.
So Eleonor chose to live.
As a human.
She decided to make her final challenge against the god.
For a long time Eleonor ceased her challenges, and entered the process of creating a martial art of a kind never before seen — an art that abandoned everything else to serve a single purpose.
At last the research was complete, and Eleonor issued her challenge.
As always, the God of Martial Arts accepted.
The two of them stood facing each other in the void of space.
Eleonor raised a finger.
Like Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Like Adam's hand stretching as if it might touch Yahweh.
Between the God of Martial Arts and Eleonor lay a great distance. The sight itself seemed to embody the unbridgeable gulf between them.
But she reached out.
She stretched her finger — as if by doing so she could truly cross that vast distance and touch him.
And Eleonor prepared her technique.
A martial art different from every art before it — different from the root up.
In the instant before she unleashed it, Eleonor closed her eyes.
For a brief moment she recalled her memories. Her life. The people. All of it was like a single trajectory — like one long technique, begun at birth and ending in death.
Holding that faint life in her mind one last time, Eleonor opened her eyes.
And she used the technique.
She fired a beam.
A slender beam of energy, launched from her fingertip.
Finger Bullet Art.
A martial art that had not even been named yet.
An art that, at a single pointed finger, in a single brief instant, consumed the caster's everything.
It consumed all internal energy. It consumed all remaining lifespan. It burned the entire body as fuel.
An art that took the principle of a supernova explosion as its law — that concentrated a star's death, its energy, into a single point.
A single point.
A single instant.
Everything.
Into this one point, everything was poured. Every insight and every truth she had gained in living was poured into this point. All her sweat and effort and blood was poured into it. The wishes of everyone she loved were in this one point. The hopes of everyone who loved her were in this one point. The conviction she had believed in and the dream she had kept were inside this point. Her grudge against the god and her awe of him were poured into this point. Her hatred and her complicated love for one man were poured into this point.
Every joy and every pain existed upon this point; every regret and every hope existed upon this point; every stubbornness and every delusion existed upon this point. All the years of training and sparring, every hero and every coward she had met, the people who had kindled her conviction and the people who had destroyed it — all of them were melted into this point.
This point was her life, and it was herself.
One point. One instant. Everything.
Namgung Hwe was wounded.
A thin hole opened in his side.
Red blood flowed.
In the long history of the martial world, it was a thing that had never happened before.
He had taken meaningful damage — even if it was only a small wound that failed even to pierce through.
She had reached him.
Surprise filled the God of Martial Arts' face. Truly, sincerely. He was astonished. It was not the look of a man who had simply let his guard down. His eyes wavered. His gaze went to his side, then back to his opponent.
Eleonor's body was collapsing. She had spent everything. Having embodied a star's death, the body that had endured that duty was crumbling — like ash scattering on the wind. Colorless, formless, her body dispersed.
She was smiling. Seeing that she had reached Namgung Hwe, she smiled. There was not a single speck of regret. It was the face of someone who had finally done it.
Soon Eleonor's corpse vanished completely.
The human died, and the god was victorious.
And the human had touched the god.
When a star dies, it detonates its body and shines brighter than at any other moment of its life. So a distant star that was never visible becomes observable only in its death. That is why a star's death bears the name of a nova — a new star.
Before it dies, even its light cannot reach us and we cannot know it exists; only in the moment of dying does it receive the name of birth. A paradox.
Perhaps this universe is simply too vast — so vast that only by burning everything of oneself can one prove one ever existed.
Eleonor met a star's death.
She burned everything she was and made her proof. She proved that the feeble can become vast. She proved that her path — and the path of those who followed her — had not been wrong. She proved the possibility of humanity. She proved the possibility of Yeokcheon.
"A hymn to humanity. That is the essence of the Space Heavenly Demon Sect."
Someday we will reach greatness.
We will reach the god.
Because that has been proven.
One feeble human burned everything she was, and pointed the way forward.