Chapter 120: Leash 3
Chapter 120: Leash 3
Back in my old life, there was a saying that conjured images of relentless, brutal violence.
Beating someone like a dog on the hottest day of summer—
But watching the scene unfolding before me, an unbidden thought surfaced.
Not even a dog on the hottest day of summer gets beaten like this.
Hell, beat a dog like that on the hottest day of summer, and you wouldn't have any meat left to eat—just a smear of blood.
From beyond the transparent veil blocking my view, past that wall, came the sound of kicks landing—heavy, hollow thuds, like someone punting a soccer ball.
Listening to that noise alone, you'd never guess it was the sound of a human being beaten. The violence in it was too absolute.
"Kiya, kyaeng!"
"Now, now, my disciple. Still baring your teeth, are you?"
Dust rose past the stone wall, which had to be over two meters high.
At the top edge of that wall, a bloodied hand clawed its way up for a moment, then was dragged back down, fingers scraping.
All the while letting out a death rattle, like a horror movie victim being pulled into the dark.
"The fact that you've endured this long shows your basic conditioning was solid. So why, then...?"
A musing murmur, almost sorrowful—
yet layered underneath it was the sound of someone being beaten bloody,
and the dissonance made it feel grotesque—unsettling in a way that crawled under the skin.
The violence that had begun against the sunset backdrop continued until the moon hung bright and high.
Gazing up at a night sky with that bright moon and the sound of pained moaning behind me, I found myself back at the Academy before I knew it.
"And how fares it today?"
The Sword That Severs the Yoke looked down at me with open concern.
Kim Ha-eun was rolling up the mat I'd been lying on.
Lee Ha-rin dusted the dirt off my clothes and helped me to my feet.
And there—bound quietly on the ground like livestock being led to slaughter—the female disciple.
'Ah. So that's why she's been so docile.'
Her features were still refined, her build slender, her movements gentle—
but having seen and heard that appallingly overwhelming violence, I couldn't shake a sense of wrongness about her.
"I have confirmed my disciple has indeed succumbed to Qi Deviation, but the precise cause is still—"
The notion of breaking a disciple who had lost her reason through sheer violence,
and that archaic, period-drama way of speaking—she was a rigid Constellation, all right.
Still, her rigidity didn't feel like the high-handedness of an old tyrant set in her ways, so perhaps that was a mercy.
How terrible would it be if someone whose personal combat power rivaled a space fleet turned into a petty tyrant?
While my mind wandered, The Sword That Severs the Yoke stepped back, apparently misreading my briefly frozen expression.
"Ahem. My apologies. I was so overjoyed to hear of progress that I let decorum slip and behaved discourteously toward you."
That small frame, and yet she could beat a person like that.
Every time I saw The Sword That Severs the Yoke, that was all I could think about.
And so the fifth day passed. The sixth day began.
The gemstones alone that had been poured onto the ground by now—had the budget of a fair-sized small company been dumped into this?
A convenience-store part-timer worrying about a conglomerate's grandson, I know. But what could I do?
Right in front of me, the powdered gemstone scattered across the training ground floor had to have easily surpassed a hundred kilograms by now.
To my commoner sensibilities from 21st-century Earth, it was a terrifying sight beyond imagination.
For six days straight, they'd been grinding gemstones into a magic circle and offering up precious beasts as burnt sacrifices,
and at one point The Sword That Severs the Yoke had briefly stepped away to resupply—
but the ritual schedule proceeded without any significant trouble.
"I entrust my disciple to your care."
The Sword That Severs the Yoke called out loudly from outside the magic circle, and my two Incarnations, by now practiced hands, continued the ritual.
I blinked, and what I saw before me was still the mansion, still blocked off by stone walls and a transparent barrier.
Again the helicopter came, left, came back, left, returned—
'Come to think of it, this keeps repeating too.'
The female disciple, bound with belts and ropes, gets beaten like a dog beyond the wall.
Coming back at sunset and beating a person until the moon hangs high in the sky—
At this point, maybe it ought to be considered not violence, but technique. Artistry, even.
"Hoo. Whatever am I to do—"
And with that lament from The Sword That Severs the Yoke, a story began that I hadn't witnessed on the fifth day.
The sixth day opened simply, but with impact.
The Sword That Severs the Yoke walked in through the front gate, trudging steadily, clutching the nape of her disciple, whose whole body was mottled black and blue with bruises.
Looking at the female disciple, bruised from her eyelids to her fingertips to the tips of her toes,
you could almost wonder if she'd been beaten with a paintbrush rather than a scabbard.
Her long black hair was so matted with dirt it was hard to even recall her rather pretty face.
"Hoo. Stay quiet, now."
She tossed the limp disciple onto the wooden deck like a sack of rice,
then leaped from the spot, stepping off the wall, off the rooftop, and vanished beyond the clouds.
It was the Void Step I'd seen earlier when she went to procure burnt-offering materials.
But given the circumstances, my gaze didn't linger on the woman whose sleeves fluttered as she trod upon the clouds.
It went instead to the female disciple lying on the wooden deck, motionless, making only faint sounds of pain.
'She's in a state of Qi Deviation. This is a good chance to observe.'
Perhaps because this was the body that the world's greatest swordmaster had praised so highly—
barely a few dozen minutes had passed, and the angry bruises had already faded.
The pain and exhaustion clearly hadn't gone anywhere; she still couldn't move a muscle.
But past the dirt-stained clothes, pale skin was beginning to show again.
The sounds of violence earlier had been so brutal—there was no way it had been a pretense.
I drew closer, quietly, and laid a hand on her back.
Just as I could read emotions through magic power and glimpse surface thoughts when eyes met,
I sought to use her as a medium here—to read what had happened, what she was thinking.
Like recalling a famous scene from a film you saw long ago,
fragmentary memories began to flow into my head.
Her memory was filled, entirely, with The Sword That Severs the Yoke.
It was the gaze of an aspiring idol staring at a global star.
Admiration, yearning, reverence—chaotically jumbled together to a dizzying degree.
'Wow. What is this?'
The first thing I saw was the moment the female disciple first met The Sword That Severs the Yoke.
The girl, swinging a bamboo sword in her middle school gymnasium,
and The Sword That Severs the Yoke, who had Descented directly to the school to see her.
To demonstrate her worth, The Sword That Severs the Yoke
snatched the bamboo sword and swung it at the sky, carving the clouds—that was their first meeting.
Every memory that followed was more of the same: scenes that looked like the CG from a well-made film.
'Is she a swordmaster or a mage? No wonder people feel religious devotion...'
Just before a ship capsized in a triangular wave,
a woman stepped onto black storm clouds, rode a lightning bolt down, and swung her sword.
With that, the wave and the black clouds split apart; the sea grew calm and the sky cleared.
Just before a landslide triggered by torrential rain sent tons of earth crashing toward an elementary school,
the woman with fluttering sleeves swept both hands, carving deep into the ridgeline—
and the shockwave hurled the onrushing mass of earth away from the school, into an empty hillside clearing instead.
Situations that could only be called miracles, impossible for a human body to enact.
Fishermen offered deep bows and pledged their finest catch, setting out drink-laden tables.
From the elementary school, children led by their teachers sent crookedly written thank-you letters.
But where the light is strongest, the shadows deepen.
I could feel the girl's feelings shifting, little by little, every time a miracle repeated.
If I had to compare it—a handkerchief dropped onto muddy water...
No. That doesn't quite capture it.
Like toilet paper in a bathroom during a hot shower.
Infinitesimally, but unmistakably, soaking through.
Invisibly to the eye, but unmistakably damp to the touch.
It wasn't envy or jealousy.
What I sensed was a heavy, knotted sense of pressure.
The female disciple, who had been crying out mindlessly, quietly opened her mouth.
"How... how am I supposed to keep up with that—"
"You keep telling me I have talent, that I have talent, and encouraging me—but do you really think I can do that?"
"Sure, I'm better than other people, but..."
"Can I really do this?"
The Sword That Severs the Yoke was incredible.
So incredible that it was the problem.
A woman who could cut typhoons with a single sword, cut tidal waves, cut landslides—
telling a middle school girl holding a bamboo sword, "You can do it too!"
'Who would believe that?'
No matter how extraordinarily talented the soul, at the end of the day, the mind was still that of a middle school girl. A high school girl.
A weak thought creeping in when you're struggling and exhausted—that's simply human.
Whether her Qi Deviation was intense because her innate quality was exceptional,
or whether it was because her personality had always been timid—I couldn't tell.
There was only one thing I could tell for certain.
'Isn't this just a self-esteem problem?'
The Sword That Severs the Yoke was outstanding at cutting things with a blade,
but utterly inept at teaching young people.
To be honest, I didn't know much about swordsmanship, or martial arts, or secret transmissions, or Qi Deviation.
The world I'd lived in was a peaceful daily life of holding pens instead of swords and preparing for entrance exams.
Before the nuclear war, anyway.
But I did know a little about raising athletes, or artists, or trainees and apprentices.
When you're training young people, you match them against opponents they can beat—for conditioning, for confidence.
As I saw it, this female disciple's mental state
was roughly equivalent to a fighting game newbie starting the game and getting absolutely destroyed by veterans for ten matches straight,
and then watching a highlight montage of the expert who just beat the hell out of them.
Speaking from experience, here.
After getting beaten like a dog, unable to even scratch five percent of their health bar,
and then hearing: "You have talent—practice a bit and your rank will shoot right up"?
Who would believe that?
You press buttons frantically, following some combo you found online,
and every single one gets blocked, countered—you lose miserably, beaten like a dog—
and someone says: "Oh, you can pull off combos? You have talent"?
Does that make you fall in love with the game?
Even if you win once or twice against another newbie who has also played zero matches,
deep inside you're still thinking, This game is fucking impossible. Where would confidence come from?
"It's so hard..."
"Can I really do this?"
"Kendo was just a hobby..."
"Maybe I should've just said no. But what excuse could I have used?"
As she murmured to herself, the female disciple's body
crumbled apart softly, like sand scattering.
The uncanny sight startled me for a moment—my body flinched—
but I recalled right away that this space was an ambiguous realm between dream and memory.
The setting moon rose again and slid backward.
The sunset returned; time wound in reverse—night to evening, evening to day.
Again. The female disciple, restored to a healthy state.
In the yard, swinging her sword, holding the horse stance, devoting herself to training.
With no one around, she'd stripped off her sweat-soaked upper garment, and watching her exercise with her chest swaying freely was a genuinely pleasant sight.
But The Sword That Severs the Yoke was nowhere to be found in the mansion.