A New Mission
Blood Demon Pavilion.
This was where we had gone after leaving the rank of trainees behind, and its grandeur was on a completely different level from the bleak cave where I’d started.
Even so, the air inside was filled with a killing intent far sharper than before.
The children who had become official disciples had already split into cliques and formed their own little factions.
To them, Jin Sohee and I, newly arrived, were nothing more than delicious prey.
“So you finally showed up. The ones the Elder’s been spoiling.”
A huge boy pushed through the crowd and strode toward us.
His name was Jang Ho, known as Iron Fist. Among the trainees of our intake, he was one of the strongest by sheer force alone.
Thanks to his rough temper, he’d already crippled several trainees, and the others had given him a nickname of their own.
He’s even bigger than Lee Cheolgang.
Lee Cheolgang had already been enormous for his age, but compared to this guy, he was nothing.
Three or four lackeys stood behind him, just like Lee Cheolgang had once done, each of them wearing the same nasty, smug grin.
Jang Ho blocked my path. With a body at least twice my size standing in front of me, my view was completely cut off.
Jin Sohee shot him a cold glance.
“Jang Ho, stop blocking the way and move. Your filthy breath is stinking up the place.”
I could hear people sucking in their breath all around us.
Jin Sohee was already a standout prodigy in Group 44, one of the top five strongest trainees in this entire generation.
When someone like her picked a fight with Jang Ho, who was also counted among the top five, naturally the onlookers started gathering.
“Jin Sohee. I’ll admit your skill, but covering for a skinny stick like him is ugly to see.
I heard that brat was personally taught martial arts by the Elder? Everyone’s curious just how good someone becomes after learning from the Elder himself.”
Jang Ho reached out, trying to shove my shoulder aside. But Jin Sohee was faster, batting his hand away.
Thwack!
“Don’t touch Wang Saryeong. If you act up one more time, I’ll make sure you can never use that arm again.”
Crimson energy rippled through Jin Sohee’s whole body.
She looked ready to draw her sword at any moment, and Jang Ho only grinned and curled his fist in response.
With the two of them clearly on the verge of fighting, the crowd stirred uneasily.
I lightly tapped Jin Sohee’s shoulder to calm her, then stepped forward.
“You want to see it?”
My voice was low and dry. The lack of emotion in it only made the air around us feel colder.
I looked Jang Ho straight in the eye and let a vicious little smile curl my mouth.
“If that’s your wish, I suppose I should indulge you.”
I drew up the death energy in my dantian.
Just enough...
If I handled him the way I’d handle the chief instructor, Jang Ho would die, and the bystanders would get dragged into it too.
So I had to keep it light. Light enough that he wouldn’t die.
Blood Acceleration.
My heart began pounding like it had exploded to life. Before Jang Ho even had a chance to clench his fist, I was already inside his guard.
He stared at me in shock, eyes flying wide.
I reached out with my right hand.
To everyone else, it would have looked like I’d simply stepped in and thrown a punch.
But in the palm of my hand, the black magic from my previous life had already mingled with death energy.
Hand of the Dead.
Black-violet death energy stained my right hand dark. Since I’d reduced the amount to control the force, all it really did was turn black.
Clang—!
I struck his chest.
“A-Aaaagh!”
The scream tore through the pavilion. The instant my black palm hit his thick chest, the death energy ignored his inner force and left a handprint behind.
Black smoke was already rising from the palm-shaped mark, as if it had been seared into him.
Jang Ho was desperately trying to circulate his qi through the pain.
“How is it? Taste good, the martial arts the Elder taught you?”
I walked toward him.
A bastard who’d relied on his size to swagger around. It might have worked on everyone else until now, but it wouldn’t work on me.
With every step I took, Jang Ho’s face darkened.
“D-Don’t come any closer!”
I ignored him and kept walking, but before I could take another step, I stopped.
“Oh. Whoa. Sorry. I won’t come closer.”
There was a yellow puddle spreading across the floor. Jang Ho had pissed himself.
Leaving him behind, I turned to continue on my way. Now no one dared to make a sound.
I’d put down one of the top five strongest among our intake in a single move, so everyone had already realized who stood at the top.
“You’ve done something interesting.”
The voice came from the second-floor railing. I looked up to see a man in a red robe gazing down at us.
His appearance instantly drained the noise from the hall.
The man in red glanced idly at Jang Ho rolling around on the floor, then spoke in a cool voice.
“The strong prove themselves, and the weak are cast aside. That is the law of the Blood Cult.”
He looked at me with a somewhat satisfied expression and jerked his chin.
“Wang Saryeong, Jin Sohee, and Lee Cheolgang. Come to the office at once.”
From the shadows at the end of the corridor, Lee Cheolgang emerged stiffly, shoulders slumped.
His thugs were nowhere to be seen now, and the swagger he’d once carried had vanished from him entirely.
The three of us followed Vice Pavilion Master Han Gangtae to his office.
From what I gathered, Han Gangtae was the vice pavilion master here at Blood Demon Pavilion, the one who handled the actual administration and disciple management.
He sat down and tossed a stack of documents onto the desk.
“The three of you are assigned to Group 44. Normally, your generation would be going out on real missions from here on, but you’ll be taking a different assignment.”
[Investigation of the Black Valley anomaly.]
The documents said to investigate a place called Black Valley.
“The disciples we sent to the western edge of the sect, to Black Valley, have lost contact.
It’s a place thick with death energy, so even a simple survey should have been enough to come back from. Yet more and more of those sent there aren’t returning.”
He looked straight at me.
“You’ve learned the Death Blood Demon Art and are unaffected by death energy, Wang Saryeong. If you take the lead, you should be able to scout it without any major trouble.”
Lee Cheolgang swallowed dryly and stared down at the documents.
“Um... Vice Pavilion Master.”
“Yes. Ask.”
“Why was I chosen...?”
No one in the room had an answer for a moment.
I didn’t know why Lee Cheolgang had been picked either, and clearly Jin Sohee didn’t know either.
From the instructor’s perspective, it was probably just, “These three are in the same group, so they should work well together.”
That must have been why he’d called Lee Cheolgang too.
Han Gangtae leaned back in his chair, looking at Lee Cheolgang as though his question was ridiculous, and snorted.
“Are you not in the same group?”
“We are, but...”
“The sect’s principle is that groups travel together.
In other words, if Wang Saryeong and Jin Sohee of Group 44 go, then you go as well. Understood?”
“But I’m so insignificant compared to those two...”
“Then you’re not needed.”
Han Gangtae’s expression turned utterly flat. It was the face of someone who would kill anything useless.
Lee Cheolgang could no longer argue.
“I’ll go with them... I’ll be useful somehow...”
He looked on the verge of tears as he finally finished his question.
Han Gangtae then looked back at me and lowered his voice.
“Wang Saryeong, I have high expectations for you. Prove on this mission why you were chosen to inherit the advancement of the Third Blood Demon.
No matter how dense Black Valley’s death energy may be, for someone who handles death energy, it’s no different from home.”
From his desk drawer, he took out a small jade plaque and held it out.
“For any supplies you need during the mission, show this plaque at the supply depot and they’ll issue them to you.
You have ten days. Determine the cause of the anomaly in Black Valley and return within ten days.
If you don’t come back by then, you’ll be considered a failure and processed as dead, so return before that.”
I accepted the jade plaque expressionlessly and tucked it into my robes.
The moment we left the office, Lee Cheolgang let out the breath he’d been holding and sank against the wall, sliding to the floor.
His huge body was visibly trembling.
Until the second selection round, he’d been brimming with confidence. How had he fallen this far?
“...Are you two really all right?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“It’s Black Valley, isn’t it? I heard it’s hell, where corpses walk around and ghosts wail all day.”
Fear was mixed into Lee Cheolgang’s voice.
He hadn’t always been a coward. Back when he was still a trainee, he’d been the kind of arrogant fool who thought the world belonged to him, simply because he was big and strong.
But after meeting monsters outside the ordinary like me, Jin Sohee, and Jang Ho one after another, he’d gradually been forced to realize the bitter truth: he was nothing more than a big, ordinary body.
His shattered pride had made him shrink in on himself, and now he had begun to doubt even his own usefulness.
“Shut up, Lee Cheolgang. People are watching.”
Jin Sohee snapped at him coldly, but even in her eyes there was a flicker of tension.
No matter how much of a genius she was, one of the top five of her generation, she still couldn’t escape the pressure that name Black Valley carried.
I said nothing, only looked out through the corridor window and let Lee Cheolgang’s words turn over in my mind.
It’s hell, where corpses walk around and ghosts wail all day.
I barely managed to keep from smiling.
Corpses walking around, ghosts wailing...
For ordinary martial artists, that would be a forbidden land that drained the life out of them. For me, though, it might just be a land of opportunity.
There was already a Third Blood Demon who handled death energy—so why not a necromancer who handled corpses?
“First let’s go to the supply depot. Lee Cheolgang, you’ll probably have a lot to carry.”
“I’m carrying the...?”
“Then should we carry it for you?”
Lee Cheolgang looked back and forth between Jin Sohee and me. Then he dropped his head and said, “I’ll carry it...”
At my words, he hauled his heavy body upright and headed for the supply depot.
Black Valley reconnaissance mission.
Maybe this was where I’d take the first step toward building a corpse legion.
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