A Flower Without Fragrance
"Grrk... krrrgh..."
"That's enough already, huh?! Stay down!"
THWAM!
The gauntlet, driven by the terrifying strength of a physical-enhancement awakener, split the air and slammed dead into the man's torso. With a dull crunch, the Sungmuryeon hunter went rolling across the dirt, limbs bent at angles limbs were never meant to bend. She had finally put down the last of them, those things that had clung to her endlessly, as if pain were a language they had never learned.
"Whew..."
Namgung Yerin flicked the sweat from her brow with a fingertip. To think they could pump up hunters of such mediocre skill like this. Was it some kind of vile black magic? Judging by how hideous they looked now, she had to admit it was a fairly convincing theory.
"...Ah! This is no time for this."
Cheon Yujin. The little girl she had sent running ahead so she wouldn't be taken hostage. This was the outskirts beyond the controlled zone, sure, but no child could be left alone in a situation this dangerous. She had to find her and get her somewhere safe. With a body that had given out from nothing more than a walk under the blazing sun, the girl couldn't have made it far.
"Yujin! Where are you? It's safe now! Come on out!"
She combed the outskirts top to bottom, but there was no sign of Cheon Yujin. Unless the girl had doubled back into the controlled zone, there was no way she had gotten far at that pace...
"...The controlled zone?"
A grim suspicion flashed through Namgung Yerin's mind. Cheon Yujin had suddenly tried to bolt for the gate, as if something had taken hold of her. And when she had told her to run, the girl had torn off in one direction without a heartbeat of hesitation. That had felt wrong too.
"No way...! It can't be."
Her guildmates, the ones she had left calling for support. And the kid, who acted strangely at times, which was exactly why Yerin worried about her all the more. The two faces swept through her head in turn. Nothing was certain. She might simply end up wasting time she didn't have. Maybe the situation had just worked out, and the girl was already far away and perfectly fine.
What was the right call here? Namgung Yerin's brow drew thin.
"...Haah, I don't know! Let's go!"
She was a hunter. An awakener who hunted monsters and stood between civilians and the gates. And so Namgung Yerin chose to trust the hunters who fought beside her. Right, that slacker colleague of hers, the one forever calling her "Namgung hyung" as a joke, would be fine. For all his shameless cheek, when it came to holding a line, that guy was far better at it than she was. This was Aegis, one of the finest guilds in the country, and she knew exactly what her teammates could do. They would hold. Comforting herself with that, Namgung Yerin threw herself toward the Indefinite Gate, where a vivid violet light rippled.
'But why is the route toward the interior so... open?'
The question surfaced as she carved her way toward the gate. Aside from lending a hand once or twice to teammates locked down by rampaging Sungmuryeon hunters, she had met no real resistance at all. It was as if someone had lit one great fire and then simply stepped back to watch it spread on its own, a passivity that sat wrong in her gut. For reasons she couldn't name, the road toward the gate felt less like a battlefield and more like a spiderweb waiting for prey.
And that premonition was not entirely wrong.
"Haah, haah... damn it."
Having sprinted flat-out and reached the Indefinite Gate ahead of everyone else, Namgung Yerin had no choice but to curse. A gate of violet fracture towered over the heart of the city. And standing before it, as if standing guard, was a very tall man. Namgung Yerin was hardly short herself, yet she had to tilt her chin up just to meet his eyes. A protective coat that brought ancient martial dress to mind, and over his shoulder, still in its sheath, a long sword hung by a plum-blossom tassel.
"...Kang Mujin."
The greatest genius of their generation. The future of Sungmuryeon. Kang Mujin, martial arts awakener of the Mount Hua Sect, stood alone before the gate. His face was strikingly handsome and immaculately kept, as if the rumors were true that Sungmuryeon poured everything into caring for him. At first glance he might have passed for an actor with a mild, gentle image; the black hair he grew long for a man was enough to call to mind the hwarang of old, the flower knights famed in the histories for their dazzling beauty. But the eyes were another matter. In those cold, calculating eyes, gleaming as if not a speck of emotion lived in them, a single streak of something out of place flickered.
"Namgung Yerin of Aegis. I had hoped the first to arrive would be Kim Jinhu, the Iron Blood Sword."
"...What?"
For a second, Namgung Yerin almost snapped back, are you insane? She had burned plenty of stamina forcing her way here at full power, and even setting that aside, this was Kang Mujin, an opponent she couldn't confidently bet against even at peak condition. She had meant to stall deliberately and steady her breathing, even a little. His nonsense had startled her so badly that she had very nearly provoked him instead.
Kim Jinhu, the Iron Blood Sword. The man who had awakened the Iron Blood Sword Art in a shelter while still in high school. Who, together with his schoolmate Hunter Cheon Se-ah, had smashed through every famous front of the Cataclysm and become a living legend. A first-generation hunter, always named among the three strongest martial arts awakeners in the nation. As a hunter who admired the first generation herself, and as one of the promising newcomers who had lived forever in the shadow of Kang Mujin, her own generation's genius, Namgung Yerin finally couldn't take it anymore.
"Kang Mujin. What exactly gave you the confidence to pull a stunt this insane? I genuinely cannot understand it."
"..."
"That Iron Blood guildmaster you keep talking about will be here any minute. You really think you can handle him?"
Namgung Yerin went on, letting the sneer show in her voice. "Whatever your goal is, whatever you've been scheming, it's already over for you. You do understand that...?"
Mid-flow, she flinched, and the end of her sentence trailed away. Kang Mujin. What had risen to his lips was a faint smile.
"Finished catching your breath? I'd say I've waited long enough."
He had waited on purpose? Why?
It was the moment she tried to voice the question again.
Shring.
"Sorry, but my goal was achieved some time ago."
The blade slid slowly free. Her own face stared back at her from the wickedly gleaming steel. Kang Mujin closed his eyes. And when he closed his eyes, it was always there.
When his eyes opened, what seethed in the depths of Kang Mujin's pupils was a single, unmistakable flame of madness.
"Because my goal was this fight itself, the fight in which life and death are decided."
A cold shock. Gooseflesh prickled, and something pulled tight along her spine.
"Ngh...!"
What roared up behind Kang Mujin like a rising blaze was a colossal torrent of killing intent. For one instant his frame seemed to swell to many times its size. Had that been nothing more than an illusion? They were of an age. Their careers were nearly identical. There was no way a gap this wide could exist. It couldn't. It must not. And precisely because of that, Namgung Yerin could not forgive herself for having cowered, even if it had lasted only an instant.
"DIEEEE!"
BOOM!
Compressed air detonated, and Namgung Yerin closed the distance in a blink, gauntlet driving forward. Her punch, heavy with crushing weight, split the air, and Kang Mujin's figure wavered, leaving behind a strange afterimage.
BAM! WHAM! BAM-BAM!
The air rang with the violence of blows striking nothing. Namgung Yerin felt as though she were shadowboxing through a training drill. Minimal movement. This was a different order of being from the beast-mad Sungmuryeon hunters she had cut down until now. A shift of the foot's axis, the smallest turn of the head, and the storm of her combination simply poured past him.
"Hnngh...!"
Kang Mujin, who had thrown not a single attack and done nothing but slip her strikes with insulting ease, finally opened his mouth. "You've seen a lot of real combat. No form, no structure, but practical movement."
"Shut up!"
She clenched her massive gauntlet and hammered it down toward the earth.
KRUUUM!
Reinforced muscle split the ground, and jagged stone began to thrust up from the fracture. Martial arts awakeners were, as a rule, superb movers. Through countless sparring matches, Namgung Yerin had learned instinctively that if a physical enhancer wanted to catch one, the first thing to do was chain his feet. And just as she had predicted, the shattered terrain threw Kang Mujin's footwork into disarray.
"Your movements are large."
Her fist shot out, and did not land. It only grazed him, nothing more. The sense that she had shaken him had been an illusion; the missed gauntlet whipped through empty sky with a sonic crack, striking nothing at all.
"Your eyes are on me, but your fist is not aiming at me. You're moving against something bigger than I am. Yes... you've built your style around some enormous monster."
Shff.
The blade caught the blazing sunlight and flared blinding white. "There is no Mu in your fist."
Through the scattering light, buds of mana bloomed in profusion, unfolding into the shape of plum blossoms. One flower. Then another. Seven in all.
"Violence without Mu is nothing more than a flower without fragrance."
Mount Hua's exclusive sword art
Seven Blossoms, Raging Waves
Every single blossom was one swift, glacial stroke of the blade, each hunting her life.
CRUNCH!
The first sword-stroke shattered the gauntlet on her left hand; the second broke the remaining one apart like dropped glass. And through the fabric of Namgung Yerin's protective coat, five petals stained the color of blood bloomed in a crooked row. The beautiful petals bore no fragrance. Only the scent of blood rose from them.
"...Just like my sword."
No internal energy to speak of. Mana, or awakening power, driven by some force no one could properly name, exactly like every half-baked martial arts awakener alive. A bitter smile ghosted across Kang Mujin's lips.
"Agh, aaagh...!"
The searing pain in her belly ripped a scream out of Namgung Yerin; her legs kicked feebly at the ground. An overwhelming gap. People said martial arts awakeners simply had the better matchup against physical enhancers in a human fight, but this gulf was far too wide for that to serve as an excuse. He had even held back. If Kang Mujin had not pulled the force from that final thrust, her body would have come apart in six pieces.
"Haah, haah..."
So this was her limit, then. Was she going to lie here, never rising again, and concede? Kang Mujin looked down at the woman who had once been spoken of as his rival, and disappointment filled his eyes.
And then—
"...Huh?"
Moaning in pain, Namgung Yerin's eyes flew wide, and she stared past Kang Mujin with an expression of pure shock.
"A cheap trick."
The ability to read presence was the hallmark of a martial arts awakener. There was no one behind him. Nothing, at very best, beyond the small stirrings of animals wandering the dead streets. Cornered prey, resorting to one last desperate gambit to make him turn his gaze...
Shshshshshk.
"...?"
Kang Mujin turned, wariness sharpening, and there was no one there. Naturally, he shifted his footing to brace for the attack Namgung Yerin would surely launch while his back was turned. But no ambush came, and Namgung Yerin still wore that blank, stunned expression. More than anything, her gaze was aimed quite a bit too low. Following it, Kang Mujin turned his head back and looked down.
Shshshshk. Tok.
"..."
"..."
Their eyes met. Deep crimson eyes, dark as spilled blood. A girl who had been crawling on all fours like some small animal, hugging the ground as low as she could so that the tall Kang Mujin would not see her. The girl whose eyes had now met his. And then, as if arriving at some great decision, she opened her mouth toward him with a face of utter solemnity.
"...Squeak. Squeak-squeak!"
Silence. A long silence pressed down over the whole scene. Her lips wobbled. The girl's face flushed several shades redder than her blood-colored eyes.
Shshshshshk!
Hiding her crumpling face, the girl shot toward the rift once more with startling speed.
"W-wait...!"
His brain had simply stopped; for a moment the thought of stopping her never came. The instant the girl drew near the Indefinite Gate—
"...!!!"
KRUUUUUM—
A gale burst outward, mana spewing out in violent waves, pouring down a monstrous torrent like a current that had found its channel. The world shuddered, and shards of broken space rained toward the ground like scattered puzzle pieces.
"The gate...!"
Namgung Yerin, still watching in a daze, let out a cry of horror. No technology on earth could say what an Indefinite Gate would become. But the moment of its opening could be measured, and that was what allowed defensive lines to be built at all. The measured opening time had still been far in the future. Which meant—
"The gate's gone berserk...!"
In that moment, a colossal flash of light swallowed her entire field of vision.