The Day the Blood Demon Cried
How long had I been unconscious? My eyelids hung heavy, and not an ounce of strength would answer anywhere in my body. The sense of omnipotence that had once made a single hand feel capable of flattening mountains and turning rivers from their courses was gone without a trace. And yet, faintly, sensation still flickered at my fingertips.
For a practitioner of the demonic arts, the moment one's demonic nature runs rampant means death — unless heaven's fortune truly favors them. Even if one scraped through on luck the likes of which the world had never seen, the least that awaited was a horrific end: a body crippled beyond all use.
Twitch, twitch. My senses were faint as though I were anemic and my mind adrift in fog, but my fingertips were moving. ...I had done it. I had done it!
The gamble of hurling myself into that door-shaped rift at the very brink of death had, in the end, paid off. I had no idea what exactly had happened, but simply not dying on the spot was success enough.
Elation pounded against my chest, and I threw my mouth wide open and loosed my usual wild laughter.
"Fuhahaha... kghk, hng!"
Pain rasped down my throat, and an ugly groan escaped me before I could stop it. Just how long had I been out? My throat felt scraped raw. It didn't hurt all that badly, and yet for some reason my voice sounded... quite different from usual. Well. It had to be my imagination.
A shiver ran through me. Imagination or not, the floor I lay sprawled on was freezing. ...The floor is cold?
Only then did the meaning sink in, and a chill crawled up my spine as if my very blood had frozen. At the peak of my qi cultivation, I had long since reached the realm of Impervious to Cold and Heat. Impervious to Cold and Heat: the state in which one keeps a perfectly clear mind whether buried in a midwinter blizzard or standing under the desert's merciless sun. My martial realm had been such that even a direct strike from the North Sea Ice Palace's White Ice Divine Palm felt like a cool spring breeze. The last time I had felt cold enough to call my body cold was some distant, half-forgotten age.
In other words... to put the conclusion first: I had lost my martial arts.
"Uuuuh..."
The Blood Demon — whose heaven-shaking feats had spread terror through the entire martial world without ever distinguishing the righteous from the wicked — had lost his martial arts! This was dangerous.
Living in the world of murim, I had been forced to pile up countless grudges, not one of them entirely by choice. The Blood Demon Art — an art that, in the beginning, had never had the slightest intention of being "learned" — bore the largest share of the blame, but regardless. My whole body felt impossibly heavy, without so much as a pinch of internal energy to show for it; this did not look like a temporary loss.
A martial artist must always act on the worst-case assumption, and my lost arts were not the only problem. My eyes were too heavy to open, and I couldn't even grasp my own situation — but what if passing through that rift had not meant crossing into another dimension? What if I had merely been flung through space and was still in the murim, with the Divine Monk and the Sword Demon hunting me down even as I lay here powerless?
"Ah."
The Divine Monk. The Sword Demon. The instant those two names surfaced, everything from before I lost consciousness flickered past my eyes like a lantern show at the moment of death.
"Of course, that is not all. Should we not leave behind at least a witness to spread what I am about to show throughout the martial world?"
"I shall knock upon heaven's gate."
"Behold. This is the completed Blood Demon Art."
The lone supreme being under heaven — the strongest in all the world, whose supremacy was never mere arrogance! The historic moment when I would strike down the Divine Monk and the Sword Demon in a single exchange and be reborn as a new transcendent! A moment destined to be debated and retold across the murim for the next several hundred years! And then—
"What... is this..."
Blood erupting from every inch of me, I had dropped like a shot bird. Right before the very eyes of the Divine Monk and the Sword Demon.
"Should we not leave behind at least a witness to spread the tale throughout the martial world?"
"A witness to spread the tale throughout the martial world..."
"A witness to..."
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
Thud! Thud-thud!
Writhing, I hammered my forehead into the floor like a madman. Whatever the floor was made of, it shrieked right back and hurt like hell — but that wasn't the point. Behold! This is the completed Blood Demon Art! The final enlightenment of the Blood Demon Art, presented as a complimentary spectacular fountain show!
"Waaah, ah, aah..."
No matter how, no matter how many times I smashed my head into the floor, the memory refused to fade. Like a carp flopping ashore, I battered and flung my whole body against the ground in a frenzy, and it changed nothing. The strongest under heaven. The name of the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin. For the next several hundred years, in the history of the murim— GWAAAAAAH!
Flop.
Who knew what state my body had been reduced to — my strength drained in a heartbeat, I flopped face-down onto the floor... again. Again?
Bracing a hand against the floor, I barely hauled my trembling body upright. That's right. The heaviness hadn't lifted, but I could move now, however laboriously.
Twitch, twitch. My whole body ached with bruises from my mindless fit, but I had no time to fuss over that. Composure finally recovered, I forced my eyes open to take stock of my surroundings first.
So that was why it had felt so cold: this was not wood. No wonder it had hurt so much. Floors... in the murim, too, there had been floors cut from stone or azure jade rather than timber. But this was unmistakably a different material — a smoothness no craftsman's hands could ever carve into being. In a world where martial arts existed but civilization remained frozen in ancient China, I had never seen anything so modern. More than anything, there was a scent in the air — alcohol, chemicals — that strangely nostalgic smell of the science lab from my childhood. Whether I had returned home I still couldn't say, but at the very least, I was certain I had left the murim behind.
"Haaah..."
At least I could breathe easy on one count: no more worrying about the Alliance's pursuit. Now was the moment to find out for certain whether this place was my homeland — modern Korea — or some entirely different world.
I staggered up — and stopped short. Shards of something like glass were scattered all around me. My body had not a pinch of internal energy and was so run-down I couldn't guess how badly; even shards like these could cut me. I would have to be as careful as possible.
Glass shards, the smell of chemicals, a hard and freezing floor... Enormous test tubes, hollow inside but easily big enough for two or three people. Some strange fluid pooling across the floor. Whether from the rift's passage or not, everything around me was wrecked as if a bomb had landed dead center. Some kind of laboratory... was that what this place was?
Unable to suppress my bewilderment, I picked my way forward on trembling legs — and then, all at once, one relatively intact test tube caught my eye. Inside it, a naked girl who looked about fifteen or sixteen was staring straight at me!
"How dare you! Do you have any idea who Bonjwa is...? Huh?"
I raised both hands, ready to meet an ambush at any moment—
and was about to follow through with a thunderclap of a roar when the girl inside the tube raised both her hands in exactly the same way, her face scrunching up. Like a mirror.
Looking again, the girl behind the glass wore a dopey, slack-jawed expression. Exactly the expression I was wearing at that moment. Jet-black hair, absurdly long and luxuriant, as though it had never once met a pair of scissors. A pair of eyes tinged bloodshot crimson, just as mine had been when I mastered the Blood Demon Art to its extreme. A girl with a cute face that brought to mind my little sister Se-ah — still vivid in my memory despite the long years since. And yet here and there, across her forehead and body, bruises and welts showed faintly blue. In precisely the places where I was feeling pain.
I lowered my hands; the girl lowered hers. I flashed a grin; the girl awkwardly grinned back.
"..."
Squish. Something that had no business being there met my palm.
Empty — and something that should have been there was gone.
"Hii..."
My legs gave out and I crumpled straight down onto the floor. Sitting down had not been the plan. What was happening to me?
And then it came. Plip. Pit-pat. Something warm began sliding down my cheek, and when it reached my lips, it tasted of salt.
"...U, uuh, ngh. Sniff."
Tears? I was crying? Me — the strongest under heaven, lord of Blood Heaven Castle, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin? A terror unlike anything I had felt since mastering the Blood Demon Art to its extreme churned through my skull.
The terror of a body beyond my control! My mind, to be fair, was clinging to the bare minimum of composure. But at the slightest swell of emotion, this body was reacting on its own, twitchy and oversensitive. Merely a little oversized — otherwise exactly like a newborn moving on pure instinct! A newborn...?
"U, hck, hnngh, sniff! D-don't... tell me...!"
I clutched my head at the absurd conjecture. With one foot already in the realm of transcendence, no miracle was too strange to manifest in the flesh. But wishing I didn't have to go back to the army—
that had not meant I wanted a brand-new body forged so that I could never go back physically!
"This is an undiscovered dungeon — there shouldn't be any civilians in here. Who's there?"
I flinched. A young woman's voice — and it was close. I had forgotten that this body could no longer sense so much as a whisper of another presence. I had only been startled a little, yet this body, no different from a newborn's, had slipped my mind's control and was shaking as if an earthquake had struck. Whoever it was didn't matter. Not one bit. They had witnessed Bonjwa at the moment of deepest humiliation.
"I swear, I will not spare you...!"
Hunter Namgung Ye-rin. Outstanding in both skill and looks, with not a single weak point to be found, she was already highly rated as a promising rookie who would lead the next generation. Her awakening ability belonged to the physical enhancement type — simple, and precisely because of that, versatile and especially popular. When she had been searching for a guild to join, every one of them had scrambled to sign her, and she had indeed been treated to the most extravagant hospitality. Of course, she could never presume to compare herself with the 1st-Generation Hunters — those who had awakened when the first Gate opened ten years ago and had fought on ever since— but she had become a top-rated prospect whose evaluations promised that, with steady experience, she would one day stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
Yes, everything was fine right up to that point. Right up to that point.
"Hm? Physical enhancement...?"
"Uh, Namgung... no, wait. Never mind."
"Namgung... Ye-rin! Care to go train? Hm? Not train — practice...?"
"What's this, then? It's a sword... oh, you don't use swords? Ah. I see..."
Days on which a vague wrongness grew thicker around her with every passing season. Namgung Ye-rin finally grasped the truth when a transfer offer arrived from a certain guild.
"Hunter Namgung Ye-rin! You, who have awakened the martial arts of the Namgung Clan, are precisely the talent our Sungmuryeon needs! Please, join us!"
Among the staggering variety of hunter awakening abilities, Martial Arts Awakeners occupied a category all their own. And this scout came from the Sungmuryeon Guild — a guild composed exclusively of martial arts awakeners. The moment Namgung Ye-rin identified the source of the strange wrongness that had clung to her throughout her entire hunter career—
"AHHH!!! How many times do I have to say it — I'm NOT from that Namgung Clan—!!!"
"Y-Ye-min?"
"It's YE-RIN!!!"
Even in the field, carrying out an important mission — the initial reconnaissance of an undiscovered dungeon — she had matured into a splendid hunter entirely capable of erupting into hysterics. Namgung Ye-rin always thought the same thing. If it were her given name, she could simply change it. But what on earth was she supposed to do about the surname her parents had passed down to her?
"I! Hate! Wuxia!"
"R-right? But I really wanted to see your Emperor's Sword Art today..."
"I'm! NOT! from that Namgung Clan! And it's not the Emperor's Sword Art — it's the Emperor's Sword Form!"
"...And how might you know that, Namgung Form?"
"You son of a bitch!"
Having cracked open the skull of a colleague who teased her knowing full well, Namgung Ye-rin turned her attention to the sweep.
"Still, this dungeon is seriously creepy. So annoying."
Every monster they had encountered on the way in had been some grotesquely deformed horror. The dungeon's interior, glimpsed as they passed, looked like the experiment ward of a horror game, and it churned her stomach. There had even been a monster lurking inside a test tube that came bursting out at them. And now, from somewhere, came something like the sound of crying — straight out of a horror game... Crying?
"...Hey. You hear that?"
"Ye-min. I keep telling you, I'm not a martial arts awakener like you, so my ears aren't that—"
A moment later, Namgung Ye-rin was wiping the blood from her colleague's ear onto her protective coat.
Yes — crying. A human being sobbing, nothing like the ghostly wail of a psychic-type monster. And it was very close. The signage was in some otherworldly script she couldn't read, but judging by the context, the sound was coming from the zone that presumably read "Experiment Ward."
"This is an undiscovered dungeon — there shouldn't be any civilians in here. Who's there?"
As a test, Namgung Ye-rin put on a guileless voice. If the target was an intelligent monster specializing in deception and ambush, it was bait — pretending to take the hook so she could counterattack. But no reaction came back, so she left the rear guard to her colleague and advanced with care. And there, she found—
A zone she was certain they were entering for the first time, yet the interior was wrecked as if a storm had torn through it. Shattered test tubes and glittering shards everywhere. And sitting in the middle of it all, a naked girl — a girl who looked, at most, fifteen or sixteen.
A girl discovered inside a dungeon — Namgung Ye-rin tried to steel her guard, but the breath caught in her throat. Blood trickled from the girl's forehead, mingling with the tears streaming down her face. And her body was covered head to toe in bruises and welts of a deep blue — unmistakably the marks of a beating from someone. No, from several someones.
At last the girl screwed her drenched eyes shut and opened her mouth.
"B-Bo... hnn, for sure... hck... s-spare... sniff!"
Half of it was swallowed by sobbing, and Ye-rin couldn't make out the rest — but she was able to commit, without a shred of hesitation. Whatever else happened, this child's protection came first.