The First Blood Cultist
For Namgung Yerin, that day had been, each and every moment of it, a thing of wonder.
A snowfield, blinding white. A blizzard wheeling and swirling without pause. And a girl standing firm in the heart of all that white, gripping a three-foot sword forged from her own blood.
Her ill-fated surname had gotten her mistaken for a Martial Arts Awakener more times than she could count, and so Namgung Yerin had come to genuinely loathe anything with the words martial arts or murim attached to it. And yet — the savage roar of a tiger erupting from the girl's fingertips. The tail of a falling star tracing a lovely arc down the night sky. Seven blood-plum blossoms blooming from a single blade. In one stroke, the girl had subdued Kang Mu-jin, a man whom even Namgung Yerin — a rising star of no small renown — could never have hoped to touch.
Watching that retreating back dwindle beyond the blizzard, Namgung Yerin had thought: So martial arts... can actually be that beautiful, huh.
And then, immediately after — after she had smacked the girl on the crown of the head for raving about turning the world into a lunatic hell where nothing existed but all-in-one school desks. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected to black out on the spot from the knuckle rap that very girl — the girl who had displayed such overwhelming majesty — snapped back purely on reflex. As it happened, she would later learn through Cheon Se-ah that the one who'd thrown the knuckle rap had forgotten all about the person on the receiving end.
It was true that she had gone out of her way to steer clear of the girl ever since — but not, in truth, because she feared the girl's revenge. It was because the heart that had pounded at the glimpse she'd caught of the very summit of that martial art left her far, far too confused.
She hated the Namgung name, and she truly hated the tiresome murim tag that came stuck to it. And yet her own heart had fluttered at the thought, If only I could see even a fragment of that martial art one more time... She found herself a strange creature indeed.
Still — if she could ever work up the courage to meet the girl again, she hoped that then, she might see once more that beautiful arc unfurling from the girl's fingertips.
But.
"Squeak... squeak-squeak!!!"
This was NOT what she'd meant by wanting to see it again...!
The crimson aura blazing up from the girl's entire body did summon the memory of that overwhelming presence. But the great warrior who had shown it — with a distinctly sheepish air, she dissolved the opening stance of the Fierce Tiger Fist and hunched forward ever so slightly, for all the world an ordinary ratman.
Her fellow Aegis Guild members couldn't have suspected her for even an instant. She looked, quite simply, like a ratman — a ratman through and through, if a somewhat intimidating-looking one.
…….
A dull wave of dizziness. At that unspeakably graceless display, Namgung Yerin felt vertigo wash over her.
Seriously? She shows me all of that, right before my eyes, and now she thinks she can still play it off...?
From the tiny frame to the crimson eyes behind the mask, everything was far too identical. And the stance — a stranger might well miss it, but to anyone who knew, it was impossible to mistake.
At first she'd taken it for the heart-seeking Kitty Punch. But how could anyone forget that nightmarish barrage unleashed inside the rampaging gate!
Namgung Yerin could be certain of it: the person playing at being a ratman before her eyes was Cheon Yujin.
"Um, excuse me—"
She had absolutely no idea how the girl had ended up looking like a named ratman, but then, weren't Returnees from other worlds traditionally an eccentric bunch? Even the master of the Aegis Guild was a returnee — a hero from another world — and a few cards short of a full deck himself. In any case, now that she knew it was her, a friendly word would be enough to explain the situation and wrap this whole thing up.
That was what Namgung Yerin thought as she moved to speak — but.
"Squeak, squeeeak—!!!"
The girl had decided to simply bulldoze straight through the situation and bury every question under it. Fwip — and with a ratman's shriek, Cheon Yujin became a single streak of black shadow and tore through the air.
Human form, abandoned. A four-limbed bound, a blur-fast pounce — a sight to strike horror into any heart.
"W-waaAAAH...!"
The instant Namgung Yerin scrambled backward, her teammates — who had noticed that the named ratman was, strangely, fixated on Yerin alone — shifted positions as though they'd been waiting for exactly that and pressed their assault.
Massed mana and weapons wove a closing ring and crashed down onto Cheon Yujin—
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Grrk!"
"My hand—!"
A dull, massive rebound left their weapon hands trembling, and the strikes aimed at her openings — just like before — failed to so much as pierce her clothes, bouncing off in sheer absurdity.
"...Squeak, squeak-squeak."
They had managed, for a moment at least, to halt the charge toward Namgung Yerin. But that was all. They couldn't inflict so much as a scratch.
Left to her own devices, Cheon Yujin's current body couldn't have handled this many veteran hunters to save its life. But the clothes were Cheon Se-ah's gift — starting with built-in climate control and stacking mana barriers and physical wards on top — crafted with everything she had, her worry for her brother's safety having only deepened since the Indefinite Gate incident. The result was a garment so expensive that pooling the price of hundreds of the protective coats hunters wore still couldn't buy it.
Financially and structurally alike, the Cheon Yujin of this moment was, quite literally, wearing an entire building. Until the mana in its circuits ran dry, it amounted to holding an invincible shield at all times.
"Nothing's getting through — not one attack...!"
"What the hell kind of impossible monster is this?!"
If they absolutely had to call it a monster, then "monster of capitalism" would have been the accurate term. The garment's mana circuits were hidden away beneath the black cloak the ratmen had dressed her in — and so, to the Aegis hunters, this named ratman could only appear as something beyond all description.
"Squeak, squeak-squeak."
Behind the black mask, a faint sneer flickered past. The instant the hunters began to bristle, Cheon Yujin sprang away on all fours again, dropping out of the lower edge of their vision in a heartbeat.
She was small to begin with, and crouching low to run on all fours brought her height down until she all but hugged the ground. Combined with her speed, it made her seem to vanish without leaving so much as an afterimage.
Having slipped in through the gaps in their sight, Cheon Yujin's hand shot out — fingers curved like hooks.
"Huh?! A f-fingernail attack...?!"
She had already realized her opponent was that same Cheon Yujin. But wasn't this attack, no matter how you looked at it, just too ratman-like? I mean, even ratmen used weapons — unless they were unarmed, they hardly ever attacked with their nails!
For one heartbeat, Namgung Yerin actually caught herself suspecting this was a real ratman after all. But the moment those hook-curved fingers clamped around her arm, she learned with her whole body how thoroughly she'd misjudged.
It was no scratch. Cheon Yujin's hand slid up her gauntlet like a serpent, coiling and intertwining.
Crack!
With that uncanny sound—
"Ugh...!"
A sharp jolt of pain bit into both arms. And then — the hunters' protective coats triggered their physical damage reduction only above a certain impact threshold, and this never reached it — both arms went loose and hung limp.
"D-dislocated...?!"
"Squeak-squeak-squeak."
Behind the mask, crimson eyes curved into thin crescents. If you lacked the raw strength to punch through a protective coat, you hardly needed to — a joint technique simply went around it.
A supreme joint-grappling art. Properly trained, it does not stop at dislocating a joint — its grip can crush bone to paste outright.
But no matter what, subduing someone with injuries that severe would prick her conscience. By murim standards — where broken bones and opened skin were things you smeared with golden wound salve and moved on from — a dislocation hardly counted as an injury at all...!
Pop. Pop-pop!
"KYAAAAAAAAH...!"
Before long, Namgung Yerin — her legs taken as well, her whole body folded up like a limp tumbler doll — crumpled to the ground.
"Nooo, come onnn...!"
She had wondered, back when she'd been taken down so helplessly by a mere knuckle rap, whether something about the girl was off. She never lost her strength at all — she was a baby who'd been hiding it this whole time...! A word so absurd she couldn't believe she'd thought it herself. The whole thing was too ridiculous to leave her the strength to protest.
Paying no mind to the glare brimming with resentment, Cheon Yujin set about subduing the remaining hunters. Their attacks were utterly useless, and the duty to rescue their captured comrades held them hostage — and in no time at all, a dozen-odd tumbler dolls lay scattered across the dirt.
"Uuugh... what kind of ratman even is this..."
"Just kill us instead...!"
The hunters groaned in agony. Cheon Yujin, for her part, could barely hold down the exhaustion that made her want to flop over on the spot with her tongue lolling out, panting like a dog.
That she'd managed to avoid a fight with the orc riders earlier had been a genuine mercy. The Forged Blood Art's power and her stamina had both been driven right to the brink — she was dizzy enough to sway on her feet, but at any rate, the wall directly in front of her had been cleared. Now, if she could just think of some way to clean up this mess—
"Squeak, squeak-squeak-squeak—!!!"
"Squeeeeeak!!!"
The ratmen came running, wailing at the top of their lungs. They just stood there spectating while everyone fought their hearts out, and the second we won, they got excited again. Excited, huh. Cheon Yujin turned toward them thinking exactly that — but the ratmen weren't excited so much as they were sprinting, pale as corpses. And behind them, a thick wall of dust was boiling up.
"...Eh?"
From within that dust—
"Kik, kikikik!"
"Kieeeeee!"
came the goblins — the very ones she'd seen marching earlier — bounding along in a rush.
"Grrrrrr...!"
Then, doom-doom-doom-doom, the orc riders behind them whipped their wolves into a full-tilt stampede. And last of all—
"KUWOOOOOAR—!!!"
A giant bear that looked awfully familiar from somewhere — most notably for the enormous lump swollen on its forehead. That bear came charging through the dust, its eyes brimming with pure, undiluted hatred.
…….
What is this? A food-chain diorama? Cheon Yujin glared up at the pointlessly sunny sky.
At the very head of the fleeing pack ran the food chain's lowest rung. Even though a catalyst named Cheon Yujin had been handed to them, the ratmen had fled all over again — because instinct was blaring alarm after alarm that to remain in that pandemonium meant certain death.
And that was exactly why she was sick to death of it now. No matter how grandly they rose, they always scurried straight back to being sewer rats.
Cheon Yujin resolved to pop the Aegis hunters' joints back into place and simply leave this place behind. And then—
"Squeak, squeak-squeak...!"
One step. Amid the fleeing ratmen, a single shadow took one step in the opposite direction.
The scarred ratman. The heart of a warrior. A warrior who had once fled backward — and who had now chosen to step forward. Letius.
"Squeak, squeeeak..."
The ratman's instincts howled their warning of death, and his legs trembled like twigs whipped head-on by the wind. Warrior or not, death is a terrifying thing. Just as the recklessness of the young is written off as "surging hot blood," courage meant, quite literally, blood boiling like fire.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The Forged Blood Art — the martial art that made one's own heart the forge, tempering the blood itself. Unlike ordinary internal cultivation that merely stored its qi away, this art grew through the experience of blood surging wild and fierce.
The ember that had ignited deep in Letius's blood leapt to the Forged Blood Art — and the first Blood Cultist, in the truest sense of the word, let loose the cry of his birth.
"...I see. So that's how it is."
Together with the Forged Blood Art, which had begun its ascent into a new realm — the Blood Demon opened its eyes.