Beolmo-se-su
The air around them grew unbearably heavy.
It felt as if gravity had suddenly multiplied several times over. Yoon Sang-hyuk looked back. Valender von Graus led the way, with the rest of the party trailing behind him.
The carriage was nowhere to be seen. As they drew closer to the Abyss of the Void, the demon-beasts that had been pulling it could no longer withstand the crushing pressure of the dark mana and had all died.
Valender von Graus still maintained his composure, but the others were having a difficult time of it. Creatin and Arnin, especially, looked as if even taking another step cost them dearly.
“I’m sorry.”
Sensing Yoon Sang-hyuk’s gaze, Creatin flushed red and lowered his head. When the demon-beasts died, Yoon Sang-hyuk had told Creatin and Arnin to wait there, but the two had insisted on coming all the way to the end with him.
That stubbornness had ultimately turned them into a burden on the party.
“You don’t need to make such a miserable face. I was the one who allowed you to come along, after all. But I suppose I do need to do something about this.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk stopped walking. He pulled a container box from his subspace, then immediately started a campfire. After taking out a chair and setting it near the fire, he motioned them over.
“Haaah.”
The party members let their heavier bodies sag into the chairs.
“Creatin. Arnin.”
“Yes, Sang-hyuk-nim.”
The two answered at once, though their voices were drained and weak in a way they usually were not.
“Do you know why you’re struggling right now?”
“I’m not sure.”
When they had first approached the Abyss of the Void, the two of them had been full of expectation. They had believed that the intensely pure dark energy flowing out from the Abyss of the Void would make them stronger.
At first, things had gone quite well, just as they had hoped. But as time passed, the burden they had to bear grew heavier and heavier compared to what they were gaining.
“It’s because your vessels aren’t yet large enough to hold the pure dark energy in the surrounding area. In the world I came from, there’s an old saying: too much is worse than too little. Excess always causes problems. Desire is the best example. If what you can hold is small but what you want is too great, problems eventually arise.”
“Haaah... we must have gotten carried away. I’m sorry.”
“Like I said, I gave my permission too. Honestly, I was a little curious. I wanted to see what effect the Abyss of the Void’s pure dark energy would have on you. In that sense, I’m partly responsible for the pain you’re in. As payment for that responsibility, I’m going to give you a small help.”
At the word help, both of their eyes lit up. They must have been remembering the story of the Dark Elf brothers who had received Yoon Sang-hyuk’s aid.
“Before I help you, there’s something you need to understand. I can’t guarantee that what I do will have a positive effect on you. In fact, it might harm you with the opposite result. Is that still all right?”
“It’s fine.”
“We don’t mind.”
Creatin and Arnin answered loudly, as if they had been waiting for the question. Their voices were strong again, as though they had never lost their energy at all.
“I’m going to artificially enlarge your vessels. I’ve never tried this before, not once. In other words, you’re my test subjects. If it succeeds, you’ll gain an enormous amount of dark energy that won’t even be comparable to what you can handle now. But if it fails, then the result will be... even I don’t know.”
Ibrahmut, who had been sitting beside him, poked Yoon Sang-hyuk in the side.
“Hyung-nim. Could you enlarge my vessel too?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk gave Ibrahmut a pitying look.
“Do adults really have to shove their way into the children’s games?”
“Just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to play with the kids, does it?”
Crack-crack.
Yoon Sang-hyuk twisted his neck and slowly curled his fingers into a fist, making his joints creak in protest.
“You serious? Want me to play with you for real?”
“H-Haha. No, no. I’ll just play by myself. I really do like playing alone. No, I mean... I’ll play with Valender hyung-nim like I always do. So you don’t need to worry about me, hyung-nim.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked back at Creatin and Arnin. Neither of them seemed inclined to back down.
“Even if the price is extinction?”
Creatin and Arnin nodded with eyes full of unshakable resolve.
“Good. In that case.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk explained what he intended to do.
“If you listen to the rest of the explanation and decide it’s not right for you, you can still back out. As you know, muscle has to be damaged before it can grow. Damaged muscle recovers and becomes stronger. I’m going to apply a similar method to your vessels. It’ll be an intense stimulation, so you can look forward to it.”
The two swallowed hard.
“Since this is my first attempt, I can’t guarantee success. No, more likely than not, your vessels will break. But if you do beat the extremely slim odds and succeed...”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled faintly.
“I promise you this. You’ll have become beings on a completely different level from what you are now.”
Modern readers of martial novels often came across a term called beolmo-se-su. For fans of the genre, it was a phrase that could make the heart race just by seeing it on the page.
It twisted the recipient’s bones and muscles into the ideal form for learning martial arts, burned away all the waste clogging their meridians, and widened those meridians so that qi could move through them more smoothly. On top of that, a practitioner with exceptionally high internal energy would constantly stimulate the dantian, artificially expanding its size. All of that together was called beolmo-se-su.
To perform beolmo-se-su, one needed a practitioner of high internal cultivation and some kind of elixir or spiritual medicine that could protect the recipient’s body during the process and maximize its effects.
What Yoon Sang-hyuk intended to do to Creatin and Arnin was something very similar to that. Yoon Sang-hyuk himself would take the role of the highly cultivated practitioner, while the pure dark energy pouring out of the Abyss of the Void would serve as the medicine required for the great technique.
In theory, it was entirely possible. The only problem was that Yoon Sang-hyuk, the one responsible for carrying out the procedure and occupying the most important position in the process, was doing something like this for the very first time.
“Who’s first?”
“I’ll go first.”
As always, Arnin stepped forward first.
“No matter what happens, no matter how much pain comes at you, do not move. And absolutely do not resist my energy.”
“Yes, I understand.”
After seating Arnin on the ground, Yoon Sang-hyuk stood behind him. He placed a hand on Arnin’s crown and closed his eyes. He could feel the surrounding energies, energies so pure they were almost dark energy itself.
Exhaling slowly, he accepted the energies around him.
Rumble...
At Yoon Sang-hyuk’s will, the surrounding energies began to churn. Then they swirled around him like a vortex. Yoon Sang-hyuk drew in a long breath and accepted the pure dark energy.
Through the hand resting on Arnin’s crown, he transferred the dark energy he had taken into himself.
“Ngh, ah...”
Arnin’s body trembled violently. As he groaned, the nails of the hand resting on his knee dug into his flesh.
“This is only the beginning.”
He gradually increased the amount of energy flowing into Arnin’s body. The more he did, the more violently Arnin shook. Yoon Sang-hyuk observed Arnin’s internal structure through the energy. It was different from the bodies of humans.
But the major organs were easy enough to identify. He stimulated the passages through which Arnin’s energies traveled. The more he stimulated them, the more those passages widened bit by bit.
“Khk!”
In an instant, the dark energy that had been flowing in a single stream split into several paths without warning. Then it pierced into every corner of Arnin’s body.
“Hold it.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk spoke briefly and focused his mind.
For him now, controlling energy was an utterly familiar task. When he had gained enlightenment thanks to Satan’s iron rod, and again in the wake of more recent experiences, the knowledge had remained with him in its entirety.
The dark energy that had accumulated in Arnin’s body, that filthy mass full of impurities, was gradually being replaced by the pure dark energy vomited forth by the Abyss of the Void.
Here it is.
The place where the energies coursing through the whole body gathered.
He had found the equivalent of an aura hall in a human swordsman. Its location was near the solar plexus. While widening the energy passages, Yoon Sang-hyuk also stimulated Arnin’s aura hall. Every time it was struck, Arnin’s body jerked and spasmed.
Crack-crack.
Now that the energy passages had widened to a certain degree, the next step was to alter the flesh itself. Arnin used a sword. Since Yoon Sang-hyuk himself used the sword as his primary weapon, he knew better than anyone what sort of body was ideal for swordsmanship.
Muscles tore apart and reattached. Bones twisted and straightened, joints came loose and then locked back into place. Through that process, Arnin slowly changed.
The length of his arms grew longer than before, and the muscles needed to wield a sword began to develop.
The concentration of dark energy swirling around Yoon Sang-hyuk and Arnin deepened by the moment.
Yoon Sang-hyuk was acting as the conduit linking the Abyss of the Void’s dark energy to Arnin’s body. As the energy passed through Yoon Sang-hyuk’s body, it was transformed into something Arnin could endure.
The energy passages had widened more than twofold compared to before. The passages most often used in swordsmanship had widened by more than three times. If the procedure succeeded, Arnin would go on to experience something entirely different from his former life, a genuine new world.
The energy Yoon Sang-hyuk controlled kept hammering at Arnin’s aura hall. Like repeatedly striking a hard fruit from different angles to soften it, he kept turning the energy, beating it again and again from one direction and then another.
At present, Arnin’s aura hall was filled to the brim with the pure dark energy that had flowed in through the passages. That energy was trying to burst out through the aura hall Yoon Sang-hyuk had weakened by pounding it from within.
As the internal pressure rose and the strength of the outer shell weakened, the aura hall naturally began to expand.
Sweat was streaming down Yoon Sang-hyuk’s forehead as well. He was focusing every ounce of his attention. If he made even the slightest mistake, Arnin would vanish into a handful of blood.
He wanted to give a great gift to Arnin, who had trusted him and entrusted his body to him.
Good.
It was proceeding exactly as planned, exactly as he had expected. The aura hall expanded little by little. Compared to its original size, it was now at least half again as large. He stopped pounding at the aura hall for the moment. Instead, he wrapped the weakened walls of the aura hall in pure dark energy.
One layer, two layers, three layers...
As he kept winding the dark energy around it, the aura hall became sturdy again, as if it had never been thinned in the first place.
Arnin’s breathing, which had been rough and wild like that of a child running through a storm, finally found its rhythm again.
But then, almost at once, Arnin’s face was colored by pain.
“We’re starting again.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk said quietly,
“Gaining special power when you’re nothing is never easy. I know that better than most. I was the same.”
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