Bonjwa Is Not a Heat Pack!
Click, click-click. Late at night, in a laboratory where the only light came from the glow of a monitor, Rachel was clicking her mouse with jittery, irritable fingers.
The screen's light reflected off her glasses, and by the time the face behind them had sunk into visible unease, Rachel let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Not here, not here, not here…. Just as I thought — nothing. I never should have been so obsessed with scrubbing the records clean…."
The Homunculus. An artificial life form. Once, it had been the forbidden research Rachel began for the sake of the husband who had come back to her as a Returnee. On the very eve of its completion, seized by overwhelming regret, she had resolved to turn back — and she had, in truth, been able to. But the guilt had never left her chest, and that lingering stain of sin had become the very engine that drove Rachel today.
Click, click-click-click. She combed through the database yet again, and just as before, not a single trace remained. The papers and research logs she had once registered with the official institutions had been expunged so thoroughly that they left nothing behind at all. And why had forbidden research been able to run through public institutions in the first place? Because that was simply the kind of era it had been. The moment the world connected to other realms, technologies that had never existed came flooding in — an age of chaos where no one could even tell what counted as the problem and what counted as the solution.
When Rachel had registered the homunculus project to secure her research funding, it had gone onto the books under an entirely different name. Slap a suitably noble justification on anything — for the public good, naturally — and it sailed through without a soul asking questions. That was the era. And so the forbidden research was handled, casually and without ceremony, as a perfectly ordinary official project; there had surely been people who knew exactly what it was and chose to play ignorant anyway.
"None of the important material… was in there, but…." Lips pressed into a thin line, Rachel murmured to herself as she drummed her fingers on the mouse. It had been dangerous research, so of course she had never been foolish enough to upload its foundational material to any database. Even the official registration had been for the record only — the papers and logs themselves had been edited just enough to look plausible and nothing more. Which meant that what Rachel was hunting for now was the access record: a log of everyone who had ever opened those registered papers and research journals.
"Haah. I was so obsessed with wiping everything clean that I deleted the viewer records too…." To think that her flawless cleanup would circle back years later as poison. There was no point in chasing the database any further. With a bitter smile, Rachel took her hand off the mouse. Perhaps, among that flood of official research back then, someone had cast covetous eyes on hers by pure chance. Someone might have plucked an idea out of her half-edited papers — or maybe, without Rachel herself ever knowing, her research had been stolen outright through that very channel.
A leap from logic into delusion. Yes — the notion that her forbidden research had come back to life without even its creator's knowledge was nothing more than a leap born of her own anxiety. And yet. At that first health checkup, Cheon Yujin's condition had matched the physical signature of the homunculi she had studied to a startling degree. "Of all the things… why a nosebleed…." She had done her best to keep her voice level as she declared the girl's condition perfectly normal, but the symptoms Cheon Yujin had developed just recently had sunk Rachel into even deeper torment.
The nosebleed itself wasn't the problem. Anyone can get a nosebleed. What mattered was the cause behind the one Cheon Yujin had suffered that day. The girl's condition had returned to normal quickly enough during the hospital stay — but no matter how many times Rachel checked, it had been nothing so ordinary as simple overwork. At that moment, an overload of unknowable origin had been stamped unmistakably across Cheon Yujin's body. As though her mind had transcended the flesh itself and driven it onward, heedless of any limit.
Rachel found herself recalling the official name she had registered in order to disguise the homunculus research.
An age of madness, when anything at all was tacitly permitted, so long as it promised to hold back the Gate incursions. Even if it meant — artificial lives with short lifespans, forced to fight by burning away what little time they had.
Physical hallmarks evocative of artificial-life research. And Cheon Yujin, who carried not a single mana trace — the hallmark of a Returnee. Rachel thought of that innocent face, and of Cheon Se-ah's smile — the first happiness she had recovered since the Gate incident. "All of it… it has to be a coincidence."
Overload. A symptom that had lasted only an instant. There had to be some other cause behind it — one Rachel simply didn't know about. There had to be. As long as there were no inexplicable fevers, no sudden surges in physical ability, nothing of the sort — that would be enough. Rachel Lee clasped her hands together and prayed, with everything she had, that all of this was nothing but her own overwrought imagination.
Hot.My whole body is burning hot.
Wrapped in a heat that seemed bent on consuming me whole, I tore loose one final, dying scream.
"Hah — haaah, haaaah…!!!"
Fwump. This Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin! This Bonjwa's life holds not a single regret…!
"Haaah, hah. Demon Step… one minute…!"
Flat on the floor, fist thrust up at the heavens, my pose — drunk on victory — gleamed more brilliantly than it ever had. Behold! This was the triumph of humankind. Holding the Demon Step for a full minute in this frail little body was nothing short of a miracle forged from sheer effort…!
Except. Except why, then, did everything before my eyes keep going damp and blurry? My vision had fogged over so completely that I could hardly see a thing. "…Sniff." Undoubtedly just sweat rolling down from my forehead — so I yanked a tissue from the box and scrubbed furiously at my eyes.
Demon Step, one minute. The conditioning of recent weeks had helped, but this frail body of mine was not something training alone could ever fix — why, in the very beginning, I used to faceplant the instant I even started the Demon Step. Had I exercised like any ordinary person, I would no doubt still be agonizing over a seven-second record to this very day…! But who was this Bonjwa? The creator and sole owner of the Forged Blood Art. "Hoh."
A full month had passed since I devised the Forged Blood Art and began tempering myself with it. In other words, roughly one month after the Indefinite Gate terror attack, this Bonjwa had at last achieved a perfect entry into the Forged Blood Art. The Entry Realm. The stage at which the blood seethes and the vessels begin to pulse — and, with it, the first command of qi. My blood-qi no longer simply flowed through the body; faint as it was, it had reached the level where I could steer it as I willed. That was what had let me raise my physical abilities high enough to pull off the miracle of a one-minute Demon Step. At long last, I had crossed the bare minimum threshold at which a person could actually style themselves an Awakened…!
"Just you wait, Cheon Se-ah…!" Back straight, shoulders squared, I strode toward the room where Se-ah was still lounging away a lazy sleep-in.
One month. A full, entire month…! The Indefinite Gate terror attack, the lump on my head, the hospital stay. From that day to this, Se-ah had thrown every excuse imaginable in front of me each time I so much as tried to step outside. At first I had tried to be understanding — I was the idiot who'd wandered out alone and gotten into trouble, after all. But now that I had resolved to become a hunter, being locked inside the house for a whole month was flat-out indefensible.
The Forged Blood Art was categorically unlike ordinary breathing cultivation, the kind where you sit cross-legged and slowly build inner power. It was a martial art that grew through experience — through blood that seethed, vessels that pounded, a body that blazed like fire. And above all, if I couldn't leave the house, forget becoming a hunter — I couldn't even register as an Awakened, could I? With my brand-new serial, Lord Blood Demon Goes to the Dungeon, staring down the threat of cancellation, this Bonjwa at last concocted the perfect solution.
If Se-ah barred the door because she feared for this frail little body — then wouldn't everything be resolved the moment she learned that I had reclaimed my martial arts and could now protect myself? True to my station as the Finest Under Heaven, I flung open Se-ah's door without a flicker of hesitation.
"Cheon Se-ah…!"
"Uh… Oppa? Wh-what is it?"
Se-ah stared back, face still heavy with sleep and utterly bewildered. She staggered up off the bed, blinking — and the moment she got a good look at me, her brow furrowed.
"What… were you doing to work up that much sweat? Are you okay?"
Seeing my little sister — whose rare sleep-in I had just wrecked — worry over me nearly weakened my resolve. But I had no intention whatsoever of stopping here. Today, I was not Cheon Se-ah's big brother, Cheon Yujin. Today I was the great Finest Under Heaven who had reclaimed his martial arts — the Blood Demon…!
"Behold, Cheon Se-ah! The true power of this Bonjwa — the very power you refused to believe in all this time…!"
"What……?"
I drove both legs into the floor like the roots of a pillar and gathered my breath. A single action shows what a thousand words never could. I drew forth, at full force, everything my training in the Forged Blood Art had built.
Thump. Thump. Thump. My vessels began to pulse. The Forged Blood Art was a martial art that tempered the blood — and what moves the blood is the heart. And so the art forged the entire body into a single heart, driving blood-qi in ceaseless circulation through every vessel. The whole body became at once a heart and a dantian. Blood, the very emblem of life, drank in yang energy and began to seethe, scorching-hot as a roaring flame. This — this was the full power of the Forged Blood Art that this Bonjwa could now unleash…!
"O-Oppa…!" Shock flooded Se-ah's eyes, and she spoke in a voice stunned half out of its wits.
"Your body… why is it suddenly so warm? Is it a fever…?"
"……Eh?"
"Whoa, hold on. You're seriously so warm. With my hands on you like this, it feels like my bad circulation is getting cured on the spot."
"N-No…! Th-this — let go, let go…!"
"Oppa, quit squirming and hold still. Ahh, you're way too warm — I can't let go…."
This — this was supposed to be the full power of the Forged Blood Art that this Bonjwa could unleash… the full power… that was supposed to be….
"Th-This Bonjwa…." My voice quavered on the edge of tears. "This Bonjwa is not a heat paaack—!!!"
What followed was a heat-packing of truly catastrophic proportions.