Chapter 224
Chapter 224: Ho-ae and Seok-gyeong (5)
The campfire light lay low across the ground.
Three bonfires. More than half of the twenty new Disciples had already collapsed and fallen asleep. The rest lay with their eyes closed, not stirring.
Dong Bong-soo sat apart from the fire.
The darkness behind him was deep. Moonlight spread thinly across the plain, and stars were scattered far above the mountain ridgeline.
The first place his gaze went was Seok-gyeong.
Lying down, slowly moving his feet.
His lips were twitching faintly—was he murmuring the Formula?
'He's started filling himself up, and now he's picking up speed.'
The load was placed intact at his head. Two people's worth. He hadn't let it go to the end.
It must be something like a habit too inefficient to make sense of.
It looked quite heavy.
But.
When an inefficient behavior repeats itself, it stops being a habit and draws closer to a conviction. A person who moves by conviction is difficult to break.
For him, that's enough.
Dong Bong-soo's gaze shifted.
Ho-ae.
Crouched by the bonfire. Taking turns rubbing the feet of two of the children. The children were already asleep, but Ho-ae's hands didn't stop.
Running for half a day shouting the Formula, individually checking all twenty people, pulling fallen Disciples back to their feet.
And in his spare time, rubbing someone else's feet.
The faint trembling at Ho-ae's fingertips made it plain he was exhausted.
His breathing hadn't steadied yet. Having spent his energy transmitting the Footwork Formula, he would have been unable to properly execute his own Footwork himself, meaning his consumption of stamina and internal energy would have far exceeded that of the Disciples.
This type of person is the most difficult to deal with.
People who move by efficiency are easy to predict. They go in the direction of benefit. People who move by emotion aren't difficult either. You just need to identify what kind of emotion it is.
But.
Someone who tends to others beyond their own limits is unpredictable. Because the motivation is not profit, not emotion—it's something closer to instinct.
Similar to Seok-gyeong, but ever so slightly a different kind.
And……
The reason a person who doesn't stop is dangerous is that the very fact of not stopping infects those around them. The source of infection doesn't know it's a pathogen. That's the core of this type.
People of this kind, given only a trigger, have room to evolve at any time.
Dong Bong-soo rose.
Crunch.
One step. He had intended to approach silently, but deliberately let his footstep sound.
Ho-ae looked up.
"Mister?"
Hm, Kim Rae-won smiled. A mask smiles well by nature.
"Still not asleep?"
"The children's feet are a bit……"
"How are they?"
Ho-ae hesitated. He lowered his head for a moment, then quietly withdrew his hands.
Kim Rae-won sat down across from him.
The firelight fell across half of each of their faces.
"What do you mean?"
"Seems like you're earning your keep well enough."
"I'm not sure yet."
"You're doing well."
"If you say so, I suppose it must be so."
Kim Rae-won lightly ruffled his hair.
"Yes. But."
Ho-ae looked up at him.
"Going forward, you'll need a different kind of resolve too."
"What kind of resolve?"
"Because this is the Martial World."
"In the Martial World…… how do you earn your keep properly?"
Kim Rae-won studied Ho-ae for a moment, then shifted his gaze far into the distance as he spoke.
"You have to kill well."
Even hearing such words, Ho-ae looked unfazed, gazing in the same direction as Kim Rae-won and speaking calmly.
"That…… I've already resolved myself to."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. You said it before, didn't you, Mister?"
"What did I say?"
"Tch. Can't even remember your own words?"
"I'm a fool like that."
"Can a fool be that strong?"
"Fools are strong by nature. That's what makes them fools."
"Then that's nice, being a fool. That."
"……"
"Anyway, back then…… you said that as long as we didn't walk an evil path, whichever path we took would be fine. You did."
"Well, something like that. As long as you're not evil, as long as you don't turn your back on goodness, in a world as wretched as this, you can still be a chivalrous warrior or a hero."
"I don't know anything that grand. I just…… as long as I don't turn my back on the people right here, the family here—that's enough for me."
Dong Bong-soo smiled.
"That too is heroism. You don't need to be a hero to everyone."
"But you also said that back then. You did, Mister."
"What did I say?"
"That if we walked an evil path…… it would be a great experience for you."
"……"
"That the more earnestly you raised us, the more we grew, the greater an experience it would be for you."
"Did I say that?"
"Yes. I thought about it for a long time and couldn't work out what it meant, but it made me resolve myself firmly."
"To what?"
"To not become evil."
"……"
"And along the way, to become a hero too. Heheh."
Kim Rae-won watched Ho-ae laughing with a bright, childlike smile for the first time in a while, and smiled himself.
"Yes. Let's make sure that happens. If……"
"……?"
"If there ever comes a time when you find yourself about to decide to turn evil, make sure you go in with enough resolve to destroy everything in the world. You'd need to become that evil—"
Kim Rae-won smiled even more brightly than Ho-ae. A smile clear as the cloudless sky, without a single speck.
"—to not die."
"Ah, I won't do that."
Kim Rae-won ruffled Ho-ae's hair again.
"You never know with people."
"……"
"Grow strong. Strong enough to turn the whole world into your experience."
A brief silence.
The bonfire crackled. A spark flew up and went out immediately.
Ho-ae bit her lip and then released it.
Ho-ae's heartbeat quickened for a moment and then steadied. Resolve. That was the single word Dong Bong-soo read.
"Yes sir!"
His head slowly rose.
"Good."
Dong Bong-soo stood up. No more words were needed.
Click.
[Guild Quest—Threshold of Growth]
[Progress: 15% → 16%]
[Remaining: 6 Days 15 Hours]
'1%.'
Still a trickle. But from here, things will change faster.
Tomorrow will be twice as fast as today, and the day after that—
***
Day 2.
The pace doubled.
People were dropping one after another, but Ho-ae ran at the front, personally demonstrating the form of Welcome Step, and at the rear, the children pulled fallen Disciples back to their feet relentlessly.
Seok-gyeong carried two people's worth of baggage and held on in the middle of the formation. Even through all of it, the murmuring of the Formula never once stopped.
Two complete dropouts.
The rest survived.
Click.
[Progress: 24%]
Day 3.
Punches and kicks were added to the running.
Before the morning march, Kim Rae-won lined up the formation and gave a brief demonstration.
A single technique.
He threw his left fist into the air. That was all.
"Strike like this. While running."
On those few words, twenty people began punching the air while running.
Striking while running was harder than breathing while running. The moment the fist extended, the breath cut off, and when the breath cut off, the Footwork collapsed.
Ho-ae translated instantly.
"Strike on the exhale! At the very moment the energy passes through the Sea of Energy, plant your left foot on the ground at the same time!"
Connecting the exhale, the step, and the strike into one. A structure that layers the fist atop the cycle of Welcome Step.
'He connected on his own something I never taught.'
Dong Bong-soo's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Ho-ae had figured out on the spot, without so much as a single stumble in his Footwork, that the exhale timing in the Welcome Step Formula was precisely the optimal timing for a strike.
The sapling was properly planted.
However, it had strayed slightly outside the predicted direction and fractionally exceeded the predicted speed.
This isn't something I've ever enjoyed before…… yet it was unexpectedly an interesting variable.
Click.
[Progress: 45%]
Day 4, afternoon.
Instead of a horizon, a lake came into view.
Rainbow Lake.
Once a place called Bandit Lake. A lawless zone that had once been crawling with forty-six strongholds of mountain bandits, water bandits, and horse bandits.
Now it was empty.
For the obvious reason that they had been swept clean.
'About half a day ahead of schedule, is it?'
The result of the Disciples' growth rate pulling the march speed up. Those who three days ago would have collapsed after running properly for a single full hour could now hold on for two or three. The cycle of Welcome Step had fundamentally reshaped their stamina efficiency.
One of the empty strongholds on the northern shore of Rainbow Lake was claimed as a base. The walls were intact and the roof still held. The previous owner must have been a diligent bandit.
The lake was vast. The sunset shattered across the surface of the water and lived up to its name. Rainbow—color scattering, just as the name said.
The Disciples stared blankly at the lake. Their legs had been running for three and a half days straight—there could have been no room for enjoying scenery. And yet their eyes stopped.
"From here, things change."
Kim Rae-won stood at the front of the formation.
"Until now, we've run. Starting tomorrow, we fight."
A ripple of tension spread through the Disciples.
Ho-ae nodded silently without a word. Seok-gyeong set down his load and tested the grip of his fist.
***
From Day 5, the density of training changed qualitatively.
Immediately after waking: full-speed Welcome Step sprint. A course circling Rainbow Lake. Thirty miles.
Morning: basic punches and kicks. A thousand punches, a thousand kicks. Linked with the breathing of Welcome Step.
Afternoon: sparring. Paired in twos, striking and taking hits in turn. Ho-ae took on the Disciples who had no partner, and Seok-gyeong was matched against a Disciple smaller than himself—and lost every time. A natural result, given he had no martial foundation.
But Seok-gyeong learned by getting hit. An attack he'd taken once, he half-dodged the second time, and countered it by the third.
He appeared to have left the porter stage behind now.
'A beast.'
Fitting.
Dong Bong-soo watched the sparring and made note. A learning curve not captured by system numbers. Seok-gyeong's body was the type whose cells remembered what had been hit once.
Night. The Super True Energy Field caught a faint ripple from somewhere far to the north. The lingering trace of energy. Blurred, direction and scale both indistinct.
Whether it's a wind or something else—that much couldn't be told yet.
Day 6.
Eom Bi-ryeong moved.
The woman who until now had merely sat in the shade of trees with her eyes closed suddenly appeared in the sparring grounds and stood before Ho-ae.
At that instant, the air of the sparring grounds changed. Before the sounds of the Disciples exchanging punches had even settled, the presence carried in a single step pressed down on the entire space.
"Want to go a round with me?"
Ho-ae looked up.
Eom Bi-ryeong. Trigram Leader of Formation Tower. A Peak master.
"……Yes."
The result was naturally Ho-ae's utter defeat. In the first exchange, he was sent flying three times.
But Eom Bi-ryeong called for a fourth.
Then a fifth.
It was only after Ho-ae had been sent flying ten times that Eom Bi-ryeong sheathed her blade.
"Not bad."
She left those words behind and walked away.
Myo Jin-heo watched that scene from behind his folded fan. The tip of the closed fan was trembling faintly.
'They've begun to be drawn in.'
Dong Bong-soo's lips curved upward. The calculation of drawing them in simply by showing had hit the mark.
Click.
[Progress: 85%]
Day 7.
The final day.
During the morning sprint, Seok-gyeong ran without his load for the first time. The kid Ho had insisted on carrying it in his place. Seok-gyeong refused, but Ho had already shouldered it by the time he turned around.
Seok-gyeong's feet without the load were different.
The form of his Footwork was rough, but the flow was alive. As a result of repeating the Welcome Step Formula for seven days, a trickle of mosquito-eye-sized internal energy had finally, barely, begun to flow along the path intention had carved.
He had carried a load. He had run. He had taken hits. That was all three, yet after seven days had passed, something other than a load had begun to be carried.
'Where intention goes first, energy will eventually follow.'
The seed planted seven days ago had sprouted.
Morning sparring.
All sixteen of the twenty—the four complete dropouts aside—participated in full. The arc of the fist carried the breathing of Welcome Step, and the timing of the kicks was set to the rhythm of the Formula.
They had become entirely different people from seven days ago.
Click.
[Progress: 97%]
'By afternoon it's over.'
Two full hours of remaining time.
Quest completion was in sight.
But……
The Super True Energy Field reacted.
Northern shore direction of Rainbow Lake. 600 to 700 meters away.
People.
And……
'In the hundreds.'
They weren't walking. They were being pulled along. The irregular vibration unique to those moving not on their own will but against it.
'Many injured. Internal energy in disarray…… and on top of that.'
Dong Bong-soo's eyes narrowed.
Mixed within the quality of the energy was a grain that felt familiar.
A white, clear, yet sharp energy.
'Vast Heaven Energy, perhaps.'
An energy completely of the same nature as the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect he had crossed blades with before was being detected.
And not the elite kind—more like shattered fragments. The energy was uneven and ragged. An estimate of two to three hundred people.
Quite a number of guests had found their way here without an invitation.
Dong Bong-soo stood up.
Just then a wind blew in and swept his hair toward the north.
At the same moment, his lips—unbeknownst to anyone, to no one in all the world—gave the faintest upward twitch.
"So it's begun."
Slightly sooner than expected, but.
When it comes to predictions like these, being wrong is always the more enjoyable outcome.
The sooner a lavish party hour starts, the better.