Young Girl, Old Soul
Seven years ago.
Before a crimson fissure that rippled violently in the shape of a colossal gate, a band of figures in the protective coats that marked them as hunters gazed upon it with eyes full of complicated emotion.
The first-generation hunters. The very first awakeners — and among even those, the greatest force of them all, the ones history would come to revere as the heroes of the Gate Crisis.
"Finally... the last one, huh."
Among them, Kim Jinhu, the Martial Arts Awakener of the Iron Blood Sword Art, spoke in a voice that trembled with emotion he could not contain.
"Yeah. The last remaining eruption-type gate. Close this one, and... at the very least, no more civilians getting slaughtered."
Cheon Se-ah, his only classmate and the girl who had run a high school survival camp alongside him since the very beginning, answered him.
Unlike labyrinth-style dungeons or the regional gates that stayed relatively harmless so long as you left them alone, these eruption-type invasion gates tore open anywhere in open sky and vomited forth monsters without pause. After years of unspeakably savage war, the final fruit now sat within arm's reach. Close this one gate, and the peaceful life from before the Crisis would be theirs again —
— so, feeling strangely sentimental, Kim Jinhu looked around at the group and forced a cheerful note into his voice.
"So, once this is wrapped up, what's everybody planning to do with their lives? Me, I'm a middle-school graduate whose only skill is swinging a sword, so I figure I'll just keep on doing this."
"You know how in movies and manga, the guy who says that line at this exact moment always dies."
"Ah, don't jinx it."
"Oh, come on, Kim Chump. Quit whining."
The youngest pair on the team, barely grown into adulthood. The people around them broke into easy laughter at Cheon Se-ah's jab and Kim Jinhu's grumbling.
"Well... I did think about going back to my old line of work, but I'll probably stay in the hunter business for a while yet."
"Oh, sis! If I ever found a guild, wanna join?"
"Absolutely not. I'd sooner go back to my real job."
"Aw, come onnn."
Adjusting her red-framed glasses, the healing-type awakener Rachel Lee — who at that point in time could not have imagined her future husband returning to her as a returnee — said so.
"Me too... I'll probably keep living as a hunter. It's... yeah. It's all I have left."
"Hey... Cheon Se-ah..."
However much she laughed and traded jokes with Kim Jinhu, Cheon Se-ah was a woman who had lost the single most precious thing in her life, surviving on nothing but the leftover scraps of duty and a thirst for revenge. She couldn't hide the hollowness in her eyes as she twisted the corner of her mouth into something like a smile.
"Then I'll..."
"I've thought about founding a guild myself, someday..."
And so, one by one, they laughed and chattered like they hadn't in ages, sharing their hopes for the future.
Then, abruptly, Kim Jinhu turned his gaze toward the one person who hadn't chimed in at all, quietly holding his silence.
"Hey, gramps. What's with all the quiet over there? You got no plans, old man?"
"That's right, elder. I'm especially curious what our elder intends to do."
Even among the first-generation hunters, a group spanning every age bracket, this man was the oldest by a staggering margin — and Kim Jinhu, a Martial Arts Awakener always counted among the top three in the nation, had never once managed so much as to brush the hem of his robes in a spar. Jinhu was a swordsman who fought blade in hand; his opponent came to every match with nothing but bare fists — and yet Jinhu had never won a single bout. Their spars were spars in name only, always closer to guided instruction.
In other words — the strongest Martial Arts Awakener in the country.
"...It seems the building 'this one's' father used to run has come through all this chaos without a scratch."
Unhak Jinin, the Martial Arts Awakener of the Wudang Sect, smiled gently with his hands clasped behind his back.
"So I've decided to carry on that legacy, retire at long last, and try my hand at running a Baduk parlor."
I am Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.
Anything else, however small, could be tossed into the far reaches of memory and forgotten. But no matter how trivial, the objects of my past grudges and my vengeance were burned into my mind, never to be erased.
A few months ago. That very name — the one that had made itself my enemy on the battlefield called Internet Baduk. The very name that dealt Bonjwa a miserable, humiliating defeat through cowardly tricks, and then had the gall to add insult to injury with its filthy little jabs before sauntering off...!!!
Rank four on Bonjwa's kill list.
Unhak Jinin.
How... how could anyone possibly forget the name of that despicable, scheming, unforgivably loathsome mortal nemesis...!!!
And it didn't even end there. Time and again afterward — again and again and again — I hunted down the rooms UnhakJinin had created in the lobby and played match after match...!
I lost. Every. Single. One.
Which is how I ended up being taunted into changing my handle from vSupremeBloodDemonv to PatheticBloodDemon...!!!
And then there was the mentor system. By an accident of fate too cruel to be called coincidence, the name designated as Bonjwa's assigned mentor was, once again, Unhak Jinin.
Very well — let us grant that the name Unhak alone could be chance. But how, in any sane universe, could 'Jinin' — the title of a Daoist master — match as well...!!!
No, forget that. However strange my hometown had become, the fact that a Daoist honorific straight out of the Murim could show up so casually was, in itself, beyond absurd.
While I was still turning the problem over, my little sister Se-ah — as if she had been waiting for exactly this moment — offered a suggestion.
"Oppa! Since your mentor's an elder I know pretty well... how about meeting him ahead of time? Once he knows you're family of mine, he'll take even better care of you."
"M-meet him early? Before it's... even been announced...? Isn't that, like, against the rules?"
"What do you think connections are for? They exist to be used at moments like this."
"Se-ah... you really have lost every last shred of scruple, haven't you..."
Thus persuaded by this idiot middle-school dropout who now seemed fully prepared to cross into actual criminal territory for my convenience, I somehow found myself standing before the residence where 'Unhak Jinin' was said to live.
"Whoaaa..."
A lone three-story building hemmed in by aged, rust-red brick, so old you couldn't begin to guess when it had gone up. Worse, it showed no trace whatsoever of anyone actually living there, which somehow made it look even more derelict. In that half-abandoned ghost of a building, the only window with light behind it was on the second floor.
And the sign. A sign painted with a Baduk board and stones, reading Unhak Baduk Parlor.
"B-baduk..."
The evidence had piled up, piece by piece, until there was nowhere left to run. Would Bonjwa dig up the final, decisive proof that this was beyond all doubt the culprit himself — and claim vengeance for the grudge? Or must Bonjwa play ignorant, and bury the humiliation of PatheticBloodDemon in darkness for all eternity?
After a long, tormented deliberation, I pushed open the parlor's door.
"Ex-cuse meee..."
Ting-a-ling. The moment the bell hanging above the door rang out, clear and bright —
"......!!!"
The Forged Blood Art pulsed, and blood qi roared out through every inch of my body. My senses dilated, the world around me slowing to a crawl, a single fleeting instant stretched thin — and with speed like a lightning bolt, Bonjwa thrust both hands forward, hooked like talons, straight ahead.
Yinglong Pounce
A shadow closing in at blinding speed, utterly without presence, the instant the door swung open — a ghostly ambush. My fingers tangled with the fist the shadow had slipped out soft and fast, and the two of us locked into a fierce exchange, each relentlessly hunting the other's vital points, smothering every hand that sought them before answering in kind.
Thock! Clack-clack-clack! Clack-clack!
Hands collided a dozen times in the space of a few breaths as sharply honed techniques flew back and forth between us.
BANG! BA-BANG!
Every time a fist or palm brimming with condensed power skimmed past, the surrounding air burst apart with a cracking boom.
I had attained the Blood Flame Realm, the first stage of the Forged Blood Art, and my offensive power had soared accordingly. Setting my body's physical limits aside entirely, Dragon Claw Hand unleashed at full Forged Blood Art output had already climbed to a level that could pulp an ordinary human's flesh and shatter bone to gravel.
And yet.
Far from the dull, heavy crunch of grinding bone and flesh beneath my fingertips, I couldn't feel even the faintest rebound.
"Ungh...!"
Shifting Flowers Grafting Trees.
I had struck first — and yet, with both fists tracing soft, unhurried circles, the opponent was pouring the full destructive force of my Dragon Claw Hand away into empty air through that very technique...!
Then — the instant I recognized the art my opponent was wielding, I broke our tangled hands apart and retreated sharply with a Gentleman's Step, putting distance between us.
"Taiji Fist...?"
"Dragon Claw Hand?"
The moment Dragon Claw Hand left the other's lips —
"How..."
Unbidden, I murmured the word in a whisper, every nerve in my body drawn taut. Not because the opponent had deployed Taiji Fist, the signature art of the Wudang Sect, supreme head of all the orthodox sects —
— but because this was a world where only Martial Arts Awakeners existed, a world where the overwhelming majority understood even their own awakened arts as nothing more than a crude, half-learned surface. An eye trained to recognize another's martial art simply could not have developed here. With barely a decade or so of accumulated experience, it was entirely forgivable, entirely understandable.
And yet, for the first time ever, I was facing someone who possessed the discernment to identify an opponent's technique at a single glance...!
Something was different. The opponent circulated power the same way every Martial Arts Awakener I'd ever watched did — and yet something essential about it was unmistakably, fundamentally different.
Yes, and that difference was...
"...?"
No — hold on. It is different, but that different part is, what's it called, that's that thuuuh...!
And so Bonjwa could do nothing but blink, slowly and repeatedly, staring blankly into space.
It was then that the Taiji Fist user lightly shook out their hand as though it stung a little, and spoke up.
"Se-ah, that child was a right spirited young 'un herself, but the little sister's a step beyond. Why, this one's downright monstrous. However did she build up skill like this at her age?"
"Um, hello, so, um..."
"Startled, are we? Can't even string your words together... My apologies — the old man got carried away, barging in like this just to peek at your skills. Reckless of me."
"No, that's not what I—"
"You'd be young Yujin, Se-ah's little cousin? No-bu is Unhak — the one who'll be serving as your mentor from here on out."
Truthfully, I'd had my suspicions from the moment I saw the Taiji Fist — but yes, the one who had ambushed me was indeed Unhak Jinin.
Bonjwa stared hard at the self-proclaimed Unhak Jinin.
"Um, th-the thing is..."
"Hm?"
I could not bear it a second longer. I simply had to point out... that one different thing...!
"Why... are you a girl...?"
That's right. To be sure, she wore modernized martial garb like some old grandfather and spoke in an antique cadence steeped in longing for the Murim. And sure — Cheon Se-ah, that idiot middle-school dropout, had been calling her 'elder' and 'gramps'...!!!
Black hair in a neat braid. A frame barely one head taller than Bonjwa herself. The kind of appearance that would pass for a middle schooler if you called her one, a high schooler if you squinted.
Unhak Jinin... had the face and form of a girl no older than that...!
"Having to explain it fresh to every new child I meet is truly more trouble than it's worth. Quit looking at No-bu with those eyes. No-bu really is an old man — passed his ninety-ninth winter a long, long time ago, I did."
Bonjwa could only regard the self-proclaimed Unhak Jinin with deeply complicated eyes.
This was no Murim where aging masters shed decades overnight and returned to youth; this was a world where a fighter's total martial experience topped out at, generously speaking, ten years. Fine, she wasn't the picture of a little child — but she wore the body of a young girl and claimed to be an adult, an old man no less!
And she insisted on calling herself 'No-bu', too — that first-person pronoun was so overbearingly self-important it nearly wrung a laugh out of me. Obviously, any sane observer would conclude her awakening had scrambled her mind — scrambled her mi—
"...?"
What...? Why is Bonjwa's chest starting to ache...?
"You're a Martial Arts Awakener yourself, Yujin, so you've dreamed of the warrior who is the original of your awakened art, yes? Judging by your skill, I'd wager you've dreamt of him many times over."
Hand pressed to her chest, Unhak Jinin went on with a bitter smile.
"...This one's — Seomun Eunha's — talent being too brilliant for her own good, that was the tragedy. No-bu plunged so deep into No-bu's 'dream' that the girl all but lost her own self entirely."
The moment those words reached my ears —
For some reason —
A cold, crawling shiver swept across my chest.