A New Layer of Strength
It was an astonishing experience.
He couldn’t quite put it into words, but if he had to, it felt like being himself and not himself at the same time. As if he were sharing his body with someone else.
Everyone had probably felt something like that at least once. Walking alone down a dark street, sensing someone behind you. The kind of feeling that sent your imagination spiraling through ghosts, muggers, and every other horrible possibility, making you quicken your pace. But when you looked back, there was nothing there.
It wasn’t merely that something was following him. Something unseen was pushing from behind. So he didn’t grow tired, and his steps only sped up.
Yoon Sang-hyuk observed this unfamiliar sensation for a very long time.
Then he reached his conclusion.
The demonic energy that had flowed into his body was not harmful at all. On the contrary, it was helpful. He hadn’t properly tested his strength yet, but he was certain he had grown stronger than before.
Was there still room to become stronger? Is true strength endless?
That was the lesson he had drawn from his duel with Baal.
He had thought there were no more steps left to climb. He had thought he had already reached his limit.
But as if mocking that very thought, another staircase had once again unfurled before him.
Yoon Sang-hyuk let out a small laugh.
Strength had no score, like the exams he had seen in school. Naturally, there was no perfect score either. He had briefly forgotten such an obvious truth. Come to think of it, wasn’t the reason he had come to the Gray Wasteland to grow stronger in the first place?
He had come to grow stronger in preparation for the day he faced Satan. It didn’t matter whether that strength came from acquiring gear, gaining insight, or some other method entirely. Only now did he realize that the thought had been lingering inside him all along.
I can still grow stronger.
Yoon Sang-hyuk opened his eyes.
The muscles around them felt stiff. When he tried to speak, his mouth was parched and rough. He had known he had been freely swimming in the sea of insight for a long time, but he hadn’t expected his body to be in this state.
“...How long was I like this?”
It wasn’t a question meant to be answered, but a voice came back anyway.
“Exactly twenty-eight days.”
“Valender?”
“Yes.”
“I was like this for twenty-eight days?”
“Thanks to you, the others barely even dared breathe.”
When he turned his head, he saw his companions gathered around the container boxes. Yoon Sang-hyuk gave an awkward smile and waved.
“Uh... anyway, sorry.”
However it had happened, his people had effectively been forced into an unexpected punishment because of him for a long stretch of time.
“Congratulations, hyung-nim.”
Ibrahmut said with a broad grin.
“Thanks.”
As a strong being himself, Ibrahmut could tell at a glance that Yoon Sang-hyuk had changed. Of course, he couldn’t know exactly how he had changed. He was strong, yes, but Yoon Sang-hyuk stood in a realm beyond comparison.
“Congratulations.”
Starting with Zephyr, the members of the Ariane clan all offered their congratulations in turn.
“Thanks, everyone. You must have had it rough because of me, so let’s have a party here for the next two days!”
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s shout, everyone let out cheers of delight.
* * *
Inside the fence made of wagon carts, the group had built a huge bonfire and was celebrating. Yoon Sang-hyuk was drinking with them, laughing along.
They were throwing out one pointless story after another, but for some reason, the whole group kept laughing as though nothing could make them happier.
“Hyung-nim. That...”
“Yeah. The iron club you gave me.”
“But the shape looks strange.”
What was in Yoon Sang-hyuk’s hand could no longer really be called an iron club. Every time he kneaded it in his hand, it kept changing shape little by little.
Suddenly, Ibrahmut shuddered all over.
“Did you see a ghost or something? Why are you acting like that all of a sudden?”
“W-well, that is...”
“This?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk asked as he lifted the iron club.
“I tried countless times to process it after obtaining it. But I failed every single time. No, I couldn’t even dent it a little. And yet...”
He seemed astonished as he watched Yoon Sang-hyuk keep reshaping it with his hands.
“You’re the one doing it.”
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s words, Ibrahmut’s face twisted.
He acknowledged that Yoon Sang-hyuk was strong. But he had thought the gap between them wasn’t so wide. After all, even a paper-thin gap between strong beings could be enormous. Yet now it seemed they weren’t even in the same league.
Ibrahmut was among the strongest in the Demon Realm, but he was also one of its finest craftsmen. It went without saying that there was no one in the Demon Realm better at handling fire than he was.
He had thrown every ability he possessed into trying to work Satan’s iron club. But he had failed every time. He hadn’t even been able to heat it with the power he took pride in, a power hotter than the flames of hell itself.
And now that same iron club was changing shape in Yoon Sang-hyuk’s hands as if it were nothing more than clay.
But Ibrahmut had misunderstood one thing.
Satan’s iron club was no longer what it once had been. After the demonic energy Satan had embedded in it flowed into Yoon Sang-hyuk’s body, it had turned into an ordinary metal rod.
Even if it had become ordinary, that didn’t mean the material itself was cheap. It still possessed a hardness far beyond normal metal. But it was no longer the same club that had resisted every method Ibrahmut knew.
Yoon Sang-hyuk handed the iron rod over to Ibrahmut.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Make something with it.”
“But this...”
“If I tell you to do it, then do it. Do you think I’d ask you to do something impossible?”
Ibrahmut gave a small nod, then focused his power into the hand that held the rod. The surrounding temperature suddenly rose sharply. Crimson flames gathered around Ibrahmut’s hand, and the metal rod glowed red-hot.
“Ooooooh!”
With a strange cry, Ibrahmut sprang to his feet. He pulled a workbench from his subspace storage. Placing the heated rod on the anvil, he immediately got to work.
What was unusual was that he didn’t use a hammer.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Ibrahmut pounded the iron rod with fists as red as the metal itself, striking it without pause. Each blow changed its shape. When the rod widened a little, Ibrahmut folded it in half and struck again.
Curiously, he wasn’t quenching it. The heat of his flames kept the rod scorching red the entire time. In the craft of blacksmithing, reheating and folding metal over and over was basic common sense if one wanted to strengthen it. But Ibrahmut had omitted one of the most important steps.
Yoon Sang-hyuk simply watched, thinking Ibrahmut must have his own reason.
“Hmm.”
He let out an appreciative sound.
The rod, no, the lump of metal that had kept folding and widening began to take shape little by little.
Then Ibrahmut started doing something strange again. He stretched the metal into a long shape, then cut it into segments at regular intervals.
Yoon Sang-hyuk was curious what on earth he was planning, but Ibrahmut’s expression was so serious that he said nothing.
“You’ve grown stronger.”
Just as Yoon Sang-hyuk had been calmly watching the fascinating sight as a kind of drinking companion, Valender von Graus’s voice reached him. At that, Yoon Sang-hyuk gave a quiet nod.
“I can’t even tell how high the new level is.”
“I’m grateful. And sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“You’re supposed to share the good things, but I ended up eating it all myself.”
“Heh. If that’s all you’re sorry for, then it doesn’t matter. And besides, I’ll have to be sorry to you too from now on.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked at Valender von Graus with some surprise.
“You found a reason to grow stronger?”
After gaining insight in the underwater kingdom of Aines, Valender von Graus had fallen into a long period of stagnation. No, to be precise, he had simply stopped training for further growth of his own accord. Just like Yoon Sang-hyuk, Valender von Graus had believed he had already climbed as high as he could.
But now he had found a reason to climb again.
“I’m glad that I’ve become the wall you have to overcome.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m grateful. Keep being the wall I have to surpass. A man who has a goal won’t stop walking. Thanks to you, these legs of mine, which had stopped moving, will start walking again.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled faintly and patted Valender von Graus on the shoulder. He hadn’t intended to, but the thought that he had helped Valender von Graus put him in a better mood.
“It would be nice if you could drink a little at times like this.”
“I can.”
“Huh?”
“I said I can drink.”
“You could drink?”
“I never told you I couldn’t. I just never felt the need for alcohol. Just like you, I can’t taste it, and I can’t get drunk either.”
Thinking about it, just as Valender von Graus said, he had never once explicitly said he couldn’t drink. Yoon Sang-hyuk had simply assumed so, since undead Death Knights generally couldn’t eat or drink.
But Valender von Graus was no ordinary Death Knight. He had already surpassed the strength a Death Knight could possess by an unimaginable margin, and he had also become Yoon Sang-hyuk’s summoned ally.
There was no doubt he had changed in some way that made him different from a normal Death Knight.
“Oh? So that’s how it is?”
“Zephyr.”
“Yes, Sang-hyuk-nim.”
“You have Twilight’s Wail, don’t you?”
“Th-that is...”
Zephyr stammered, looking flustered.
“I know you brought it, so don’t try anything stupid.”
Twilight’s Wail was the most expensive liquor at the tavern Twilight’s Wail, and also its signature drink. The Zephyr brothers, the tavern’s owners, had all come outside. Naturally, they must have brought Twilight’s Curse, the tavern’s treasure.
“I’ll pay you properly, so don’t make that rotten face.”
“N-no, haha. It’s not that I don’t want to give it to you... it’s just that we only have a few bottles left...”
“If the chance comes up, I’ll bring you top-shelf liquor from the Demon King's Castle.”
“Really?”
“When have I ever said something meaningless?”
Zephyr shot to his feet and ran to their wagon, brought back a bottle of Twilight’s Curse, and shouted loudly.
“If possible, please make it the Goddess’s Fall that the Demon King himself likes to drink. That liquor is something you simply can’t get, even if you want to.”
“Fine, I heard you. Now hand over the booze first.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk received Twilight’s Wail from Zephyr, opened it, and poured the glass full before handing it to Valender von Graus.
“Shouldn’t a knight of death be offered a liquor even more lethal than death itself?”
“More lethal than death itself... I like that.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk filled his own glass to the brim and held it out.
“To the great journey of my precious friend Valend, who will rise even higher... cheers!”