Excuse Me? You Want Me to Strip...?
The quiet room sat cloaked in stillness.
A man and a woman sat facing each other, their gazes locked. In any conventional romance, the atmosphere would have been electric, brimming with sweet, suffocating tension. But reality was far less merciful.
“I have something important to discuss with you,” she said, her voice dropping into a solemn baritone.
“Why are you striking such a dramatic posture all of a sudden…?”
Crack—!
True to form, her brutal fist slammed into my noggin before she deigned to address the topic at hand.
“Do you recall where I placed your martial prowess?”
“I believe you said I was at the beginner stage of first-rate? That sounds right.”
“To be precise, only your physical frame has reached the threshold of a first-rate martial artist.”
My physical frame? That sounded suspiciously familiar. Having devoured countless web novels preaching that ‘he whose mind, technique, and body fall out of balance shall surely meet an untimely demise!’, I grasped her point without much trouble.
“So you’re saying my technique and mental fortitude are the problems?”
“You deduced that remarkably well. Indeed. You suffer from an absolute deficiency in technique. Thanks to your formidable flesh and exceptional mind, you manage to wield what you’ve learned after a fashion… but none of it can truly be called your own.”
“Profound. How wonderfully profound.”
It was only natural. Barely a month ago back on Earth, I was spending every waking hour scratching my belly and feasting three times a day off lottery winnings. When on earth would I have found the time to polish martial techniques?
With an aloof flick of her wrist, she tossed a bound manual into my lap.
What the hell was this title? How was I even supposed to read these archaic characters?
“Har… Harmonious… Blend? The ‘blend’ part looks right. Is the rest ‘mental cultivation method’?”
“You hail from the Eastern lands, yet you cannot read the script…?”
“I’m illiterate, alright? What does someone like you know about the struggles of an ordinary citizen? Huh?”
Pressing her for answers revealed that the book was titled the Harmonious Blending Cultivation Art. When I asked what on earth that meant, she explained that it was a mongrel of a cultivation method, tossed together like an indiscriminate stew. An eccentric technique designed to circulate both mana and inner qi in tandem.
I eyed Yeong So-so with profound skepticism.
Sensing that another disciplinary fist was already hurtling toward my skull, I hastily flipped the cover open to evade her wrath.
Skill: Harmonious Blending Cultivation Art (F) has been learned.
I had no idea how it worked, but the system forcibly registered the skill the moment my eyes brushed the page. Glancing back at the pages, they remained an indecipherable mess plastered in incomprehensible Hanja.
Ah, great gods of fantasy. All hail! Long live the system!
Knowing that digesting the tome too quickly would invite fatal suspicion, I pretended to pore over the pages with agonizing concentration. But my bluff evidently leaked through; I could feel her burning glare, and a clenched knuckle drifted closer and closer to my forehead.
Panicking, I flailed my arms in surrender.
“I learned it! I really learned it! I don't know how, but the cultivation mantras are spinning inside my head like a whirlwind!”
“There is a limit to the lies I will tolerate. Do you yearn for a beating that desperately…!”
“S-Spare me—!”
Terrified of suffering cranial collapse, I desperately chanted the mnemonic formulas echoing inside my mind. Just as when I had absorbed qi before, a current of inner energy surged into life and coursed along my meridians.
The energy pooled in my lower dantian, scaled upward along my spine to crown my head, swept past my mouth, and descended smoothly back into the dantian. The complete circuit of a microcosmic orbit locked into place.
Immediately, messages flickered before my vision.
Inner Qi +0.01
Inner Qi +0.01
· · ·
Inner Qi +0.01
My inner qi was duplicating itself in real time.
Holy crap. Look at all the time I wasted until now! If I had this from day one, I could have spent the entire month lying flat on my back just circulating qi…
Marveling at the revelation, I settled the circulating energy back into my core and exhaled. When I opened my eyes, a single phrase slipped from her lips.
“…What the absolute fuck.”
Yeong So-so stood frozen in place, looking at me with the exact expression one would wear upon discovering a squirming nest of cockroaches behind the kitchen cupboard.
Dammit, am I being treated like vermin now…?
Snap—!
Before I could muster a defense, she leveled a chilling command at me.
“Strip your clothes. Immediately.”
“Excuse me? What kind of insane bullshit is that…?”
“Refusing to listen to kind words, as always.”
Riiip—!
With an effortless flick of her slender fingers, the fabric of my upper garments tore cleanly down the middle. In the same breath, her soft palm pressed firmly against my lower abdomen.
Then, a torrential surge of her own inner qi forced its way into my pathways, sweeping ruthlessly through my internal organs.
She probed my channels for what felt like an eternity before pulling back.
“Are you finally graduating to outright sexual assault…? As a human being, you truly are the JOAT…”
“………”
“Huh? Why are you posing like that all of a sudden…?”
A sudden chill pierced my spine.
To someone like me who viewed reality through the lens of a video game, instant skill mastery was common sense. But to a native martial artist, mastering a cultivation manual was an arduous endeavor requiring weeks, if not months, of grueling meditation. And yet I had performed the entire circuit in the blink of an eye.
What did that make me in her eyes?
‘An incomprehensible anomaly? Or is she going to mistake me for some monstrous genius born once in a thousand years?’
I had to nip this misunderstanding in the bud. I needed to make her understand that I was far closer to an utter idiot than any prodigy, and that this miracle was a freak coincidence rather than the fruit of innate talent.
Just as I opened my mouth to blurt out the truth—
Thwack—!
Her fingertip darted forward with blinding speed, striking the pressure point on my neck.
Consciousness bled away in an instant.
God damn it… First beating me, then stripping me, and now knocking me out cold…?
Cursing her into the void, I plunged into darkness.
When my eyelids fluttered open, my mouth dropped.
“Huh? What’s this? Why does my body feel so ridiculously light?”
My last memory was having my acupoint struck, yet my limbs felt buoyant enough to float into the sky. What had happened? I didn’t remember putting in any effort.
Realization dawned on me. So-so must have smoothed out my clogged meridians while I was unconscious.
Ah. She wasn’t the Worst of All Time… She was the Greatest of All Time!
Overcome with reverence, I sprang to my feet, kicked the door open, and sprinted toward her private quarters.
“Master, I love you—!”
CRACK—!
Predictably, an iron fist smashed square into my face, and my world plunged right back into pitch blackness.
Among all the seats of the Round Table, she was the sole knight who had set out alone to search for ‘Him’—the Knight of Betrayal.
She combed the continent aimlessly, scouring every corner of the land.
A man with dark hair and dark eyes.
She encountered individuals fitting the description frequently enough. A handful even had the audacity to claim they were the very man she sought. But because virtually all of them were frauds, she broke their limbs until they could no longer crawl.
In truth, most men hailing from the East possessed dark hair and dark eyes. As the days dragged on, locating her commander proved ever more grueling.
It was like searching for a single needle dropped into a vast expanse of desert sand. Yet the thought of surrendering never once crossed her mind.
Having exhausted her provisions and coin, she returned to Avalon to resupply. There, in the grand hall of the Round Table, sat a familiar Half-Blood, muttering softly to himself in isolation.
Finding him an annoyance, she intended to ignore him and go about her business. But words slipped past his lips that made it impossible to walk away.
“I missed you dearly.”
“I shall wait for you, no matter how long it takes.”
“The task you entrusted to me… I shall execute it to the absolute best of my ability.”
Every single instinct she possessed screamed in warning. To dismiss his mutterings as mere lunacy was impossible—every word the Half-Blood uttered pointed toward one person, and one person alone.
Betrayal seized the Half-Blood by the collar, hauling him forward.
“You bastard…! Did you find the Boss?”
“………”
“You did. You found him, yet you didn't breathe a single word of it to the rest of the Round Table.”
Shing—!
From the scabbard at her hip, a massive greatsword tore free into the air. Murderous intent coated the blade like frost; a single slip of the tongue, and she would sever his throat where he stood.
She pressed the blade closer.
“Where is he?”
“………”
“Speak. Speak, damn you—!”
“Tintagel. A small town situated some distance from Tintagel.”
“……”
The bloodlust that would have caused an ordinary man to faint on the spot receded slightly. Even so, the fierce glare in her eyes never softened as she stared him down.
Within the Round Table, Betrayal was treated as an outcast. It was a natural consequence: she had once raised the banner of insurrection against Avalon and failed. Yet He had shown boundless mercy, pardoning her treason and bestowing his deepest favor upon her.
Thus was she granted her epithet: the Sword of Rebellion, Mordred.
It was a name bestowed upon her by the one who was both her commander and her surrogate parent. In spite of that profound bond, the tangled threads of fate had driven her to commit rebellion anyway.
Had a single life been lost during that uprising, she would have faced immediate execution. But because the Kingly Way and He had suppressed the rebellion together, the casualties had been precisely zero. Thus, the sentence of death was never carried out.
Ever since, she had shown not the slightest flicker of defiance, offering instead an absolute, blind devotion. Even so, nearly everyone under Avalon’s banner still regarded her as a heretic.
Mordred spat her words at the Half-Blood with venom.
“Half-Blood. Teleport me to Tintagel.”
“How utterly rude. I am not your personal carriage, you know.”
“Tch…!”
Only now did the fellow finally open his mouth. Sensing that extracting any further cooperation would require payment, Mordred reached into her pouch and tossed him a small, luminous sphere.
A satisfied smile spread across the Half-Blood’s face.
“The deal is struck. I shall send you to Tintagel, so close your eyes and wait a moment.”
“Shut your mouth and cast the spell already.”
“My, you truly never change. Then as now, what an atrocious temper you possess… Had I been in His shoes, I would have thrown you out long ago.”
Crack—!
Merely flaring her internal aura caused the stone floor and nearby furniture to splinter and crack. Undaunted, the Half-Blood chuckled softly, continuing his mocking banter.
“Once you arrive, search the forest for a red-haired man.”
“What nonsense are you babbling now?”
“Take it as you will, but it will be the quickest path for you.”
An inscrutable piece of advice. Yet he was not a man who ever wasted his breath on meaningless words. Mordred etched the counsel deep into her memory.
The brief exchange reached its end.
Whoosh—!
Spatial magic folded the air around her, and in a flash of light, Mordred was vanished from the chamber, cast toward Tintagel.
Left behind in the empty council chamber of the Round Table, the Half-Blood gazed up at the high ceiling. An expression suspended halfway between profound bliss and unbearable sorrow touched his lips.
“May your path ahead be filled only with peace, my Lord…”
With that soft whisper, his very form began to blur and melt away like an unraveling dream. When the light settled, nothing remained in the grand hall.