The Legend of the Past
I had no desire to waste any more time dealing with this man.
I ignored Choe Kanghyuk and tried to walk past him toward home.
"Not interested. Get out of the way."
My short, dry reply seemed to strike his pride dead-on. His face flushed red and purple in an instant. For a man always so self-assured, so used to standing above everyone else, such open contempt was an insult he could not endure.
"You—you bastard dare…! You dare ignore me, Choe Kanghyuk?"
His blue eyes blazed with fury. In the next breath, a storm of powerful mana erupted from his entire body. The oppressive presence of an S-rank Hunter crushed the air around us. The ground beneath our feet trembled faintly, and the leaves of the zelkova tree shivered under the force of his aura.
He clenched his teeth, settled into a stance, and threw a full-powered punch straight at the back of my head.
Whoosh!
His fist tore through the air with a sharp, splitting sound—speed no ordinary human eye could track.
He's strong, no doubt.
Even a typical A-rank Hunter would have failed to react; their head would have burst on the spot. But I did not turn around. There was no need. As if I had eyes in the back of my head, I slowly raised my right hand and extended it behind me. Predicting the path of the incoming fist, I set a single index finger precisely in its way—a natural motion, almost as casual as catching a bug.
Crack!
A dull impact rang out as Choe Kanghyuk's fist slammed into the tip of my finger and stopped dead, as though it had struck an invisible wall of steel. His full-powered S-rank attack had been halted by nothing more than one finger.
Shock flooded his face. His blue eyes trembled wide with disbelief. He gasped, staring back and forth between his fist and the tip of my finger.
"Th-this… this can't be real?! M-my power…! How…!"
His voice shook violently with shock and terror. He simply could not accept that the strength he had always boasted as the strongest in the country had been stopped so effortlessly—by a single finger.
Still without turning, I spoke in a low voice laced with irritation and warning.
"I told you not to interrupt my vacation."
Then I flicked my finger lightly.
Tap.
The motion was tiny, yet the result was enormous. Choe Kanghyuk flew backward with a strangled "Guh!" as if struck by a giant hammer. His body spun several times through the air before crashing wretchedly onto the hood of the silver supercar he had arrived in.
Boom! The reinforced glass and hood—sturdy as they had looked—spiderwebbed with cracks under the impact.
Only then did I slowly turn my head and glance at Choe Kanghyuk groaning in agony atop the car. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth; his whole body trembled with humiliation and pain. Yet deeper than the pain, a primal terror mixed with a pathological hatred was rising in his eyes.
I delivered a cold warning, uninterested in whatever he felt. I had no wish for this nuisance to repeat itself.
"There will be no next time. If you ever show your face in front of me again and pull some pointless stunt, I will erase your very existence from this world. Remember that."
My voice was quiet, but the killing intent within it was unmistakable. Choe Kanghyuk glared at me while gasping for breath, yet he did not dare talk back. Instinct had already taught him that my words were no mere threat—and that the legendary Sword Demon was a being of a dimension he could never hope to approach.
I gave him no further glance and walked away at a leisurely pace, leaving the so-called number-one ranked Hunter of the country sprawled across the cracked hood of his supercar.
Hidden among the branches, a small lens installed in an inconspicuous spot quietly recorded the entire scene—an old CCTV camera set up for village security. That footage would no doubt end up in someone's hands. But it did not matter. Perfect secrets never exist in this world, and I had never intended to hide everything anyway. I simply would not tolerate anyone who disturbed my peace.
If word of this spread, every person who had been testing me would finally understand. Feeling as though I had merely swatted away an annoying fly, I walked the quiet village path once more. The wreckage Choe Kanghyuk had left behind, along with the shattered fragments of his pride, were no longer worth my attention.
With the noise gone, the village entrance reclaimed its original stillness. Wind brushed past my ears; a dog barked in the distance; the familiar scent of earth and grass mingled in the air. The air of my hometown, after ten years, still seeped deep into my lungs and brought a strange sense of calm.
I walked slowly toward home. The house was old yet neatly kept. In the yard, the small flower bed Seoa tended boasted a fresh green vitality. I sat on the edge of the wooden porch and quietly caught my breath. The creaking texture of the floorboards felt both unfamiliar and cozy.
I closed my eyes and looked into the abyss within myself, focusing my consciousness on the source of that overwhelming power I had just felt.
…Ten years ago.
Kang Taejun at twenty.
Hell unfolded before my eyes.
Inside the S-rank Gate Abyss Rift. Screams and wails erupted from every direction. Monsters that had abandoned any human shape poured forth, and the hundreds of Hunters who had entered with me were torn apart helplessly. The stench of blood stabbed my nose, mixed with the nauseating reek of burning flesh. Right beside me, I watched the head of a comrade who had been joking only moments earlier explode. Every drop of blood in my body turned ice-cold. The terror of death burrowed into my skin and froze me to the bone.
I was no exception. The old military sword in my hand felt impossibly heavy; my legs shook so badly I thought I would collapse at any second. I'm going to die like this. A self-mocking thought flickered through me—that breaking off the engagement with Seoa might have been the right choice after all.
Then it happened.
A massive dissonance that seemed ready to swallow the entire world. Amid the unstable mana storm inside the Gate, a bizarre fluctuation twisted and collided. It was no mere physical shockwave. It was a spiritual vibration that seemed to shake the very roots of existence across time and space—the beginning of the phenomenon scholars would later name the Soul World Fluctuation.
That chaotic wave struck the deepest layer of my latent soul, a place even I had never recognized. With a shock that seemed to blank my mind white, fragments of unfamiliar memories poured in as if flowing from a distant past: the roar of battlefields, the clash of blades, the scent of blood and sweat, and… an overwhelming realm of martial mastery.
When I came to my senses, I was no longer the Kang Taejun of before. My body reacted first. The sword in my hand felt utterly natural, as if I had wielded it for hundreds of years. It was still a crude military blade, yet it felt like an extension of my own arm. The monsters before me were no longer objects of terror. Their movements, their vital points, the gaps in their attacks—even their next actions—were predicted and drawn vividly in my mind.
I moved. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say my body moved on its own. As if possessed by the sword, or by some nameless god. With every swing, the monsters' tough hides split like paper, and black blood fountained upward. My swordsmanship was efficient, lethal, and above all, desperate and merciless. It was an instinctive struggle for survival, yet to other eyes it must have looked entirely different.
The handful of comrades who barely survived stared at me with eyes mixed with awe and horror. Their words still linger faintly in my memory.
"…Th-that madman… that's not human."
"A demon… a demon's possessed him…!"
"Sword Demon… a ghost with a sword…"
And so the alias Sword Demon was born. A miracle—or a curse—forged by the special environment of the Gate, the extreme crisis of death, and the phenomenon of the Soul World Fluctuation. That name leaked faintly outside through the intelligence team and, by the time I returned as the sole survivor ten years later, had hardened into legend.
That was the first moment the power of Cheok Jun-gyeong sleeping within me manifested.
Yet what I gained was not merely superhuman physical ability and sword talent. The experiences inside the Gate elevated my senses and perception to an entirely different dimension. I could instinctively detect a hidden enemy's killing intent, the faint flow of mana drifting in the air, the ominous aura of cleverly set traps—even the slightest shift in the wind's direction. Insight and supersensory awareness that seemed to read the information of the entire world. That ability still lived vividly inside me even after I left the Gate.
I slowly opened my eyes. The front-yard scenery I gazed at from the porch felt different from before. The faint life force of the flowers rooted in the soil, the humidity carried on the wind beyond the wall—even Seoa's quiet presence as she did something inside the house at this very moment—all of it registered with perfect clarity.
This ability… still works outside the Gate.
If anything, my senses felt sharper and clearer here in this peaceful place than they had amid the chaos inside the Gate. Detecting the attack from behind and stopping it with a single finger against Choe Kanghyuk had been thanks to this supersense as well.
If I use it well… it could be pretty convenient.
A dry chuckle escaped me. Until now I had treated this power as a tool for survival, or as a burdensome weight. But my thinking had shifted a little. There was no longer any need to suppress or turn away from this strength. I should use it actively—for my peaceful, and slightly more convenient, retired life.
I had no grand goals. Simply to protect the quiet, happy life Seoa and I shared, and to use it now and then for small conveniences. That was the new answer I had found.
Thinking of the first practical use of Cheok Jun-gyeong's power, I rose from my seat.
First… something Seoa likes.
Yesterday she had mentioned it in passing—sweet, bright-red wild strawberries. Somewhere on the nearby mountain they would surely be ripening beautifully.