A Sword for the Sword Demon
He shook off his deputy, who clung to him begging him not to go — wailing that if Jinhu clocked out right on the dot like this, the man himself was officially guaranteed overtime.
All for the sake of cooking that damn dinner yet again.
Kim Jinhu, home early once more, found himself briefly doubting his own hearing. This, from a man whose hearing had even been enhanced by martial arts.
"…What? You want me to get you a sword?"
Kim Jinhu blinked several times before the protest could even leave his mouth.
"…Seriously? For real? Hey — I'm just gonna assume that was a joke and go back to finishing dinner. That's fine, right?"
He fired off the double-check without pausing his work drizzling oil into the wok, but the girl who'd made the request in the first place — white-haired, blue-eyed —
The Sword Demon, Bukgung Seol.
She swallowed an unconscious gulp of drool at the savory smell of oil rising from the wok, then scrunched up her elegant blue eyes as if to say she had no idea what the problem was.
"Jjinhu……"
She couldn't quite follow why Kim Jinhu had to object so many times, but somehow… that tone of his was really starting to piss her off…!
"Jjinhu…! Even you, Jjinhu — this much I cannot overlook. Jjinhu, would you heap such disgrace upon a fellow swordsman! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Um, given that you're calling me 'Jjinhu' in the first place, I'm pretty sure you're the one who should be feeling shame and embarrassment.
He almost said it out loud. But instead—
"…Ah, yeah. R-right. Sure."
Thanks to his friend Cheon Se-ah's years of drilling it into him, Kim Jinhu knew better than anyone what kind of catastrophe a pointless retort could invite — so he quietly swallowed the comeback and gazed, mournfully, at Bukgung Seol, who was trembling with her tongue stuck out in a childish taunt.
"J-Jjinhu! What is the meaning of that look! Jjinhu! Even one as magnanimous as I can bear this no longer…! Jjinhu!!!"
"And what'll you do if you can't bear it…"
"Wh-what will I do…?"
She bowed her head so low that her white hair spilled down and hid her eyes entirely.
"U-uum… uuuuuhm……"
Whether or not she'd actually thought of what to do, Bukgung Seol sank into deep, agonized deliberation. At last—
Like a warrior on the verge of unleashing a secret art's final technique, she roared with magnificent resolve:
"Th-then… I simply… won't eat the meal you worked so hard on, Jjinhu…!!!"
"Oh, so I don't have to cook? Finally! I get to eat out for the first time in ages!"
"Eh? J-Jjinhu?"
"Seol-ah, watch the house for me, will you? Jjinhu casts off every last fetter and shackle of this world and departs in search of his own happiness…!"
"To refuse a comrade's heartfelt devotion is, itself, a disgrace for a warrior. Retract that reckless statement at once. …You're not actually going out, are you? You're not seriously leaving, Jjinhu? Jjinhuuu…!!!"
The truth was, it hadn't been a joke to tease her — he'd genuinely been a little thrilled at the thought of eating out alone for once.
These days, his cooking skills had improved so much that he half-suspected he was headed for a career change into full-time househusband…
Kim Jinhu had to swallow his grief at the sight of the white-haired, blue-eyed girl whose attitude had flipped so fast she looked one second away from wrapping herself around his leg.
'Well… aside from all that, she really does talk well.'
She was still shaky on exact word order and the finicky little details that trip up even native Koreans, but just how smart was this girl? She'd grown comfortable with spoken Korean and Hangul at a speed that practically defined the word genius.
As her diligent caretaker all this time, Kim Jinhu's chest should have swelled with pride. And yet.
When she texted, she spelled his name out perfectly — Jinhu, every single time — while for some reason, that one short-tongued pronunciation, Jjinhu, alone refused to improve…
"Anyway, no sword. What kind of accident do you take me for, putting a weapon in your hands? And where did this sudden sword thing even come from, honestly."
These days you could hardly walk down the street without running into armed hunters — sometimes even armed civilians. Hunter or not, far more people than you'd expect went about armed for self-defense in this era. Fine, maybe the bar for carrying a blade had dropped thanks to the Gates — dropped way, way too far, frankly. But thinking as the guardian who'd watched over Bukgung Seol all this time, the mere idea of putting a weapon into that little fern-shoot of a palm was enough to make his skin crawl…!
"Jjinhu! Then you shall have to make me understand… why you think so…!!!"
To be fair, Bukgung Seol did have the bare minimum of qualifications for wielding a weapon. Whether she technically counted as an 'Awakener' he honestly couldn't say, but there was no denying she possessed abilities unlike anyone else's. Her physical capabilities had shot up so steeply that calling her body superhuman wouldn't have been an exaggeration. And yet—
"Hueuek—!!!"
"Huek……?!"
"J-Jjinhuuuuu……"
The sight of her tottering around, unable even to manage an ordinary walk.
The sight of her striding along just fine before abruptly slipping and slamming into the floor, wailing.
The sight of her clutching a bruised forehead, face crumpled on the verge of tears.
To put it in gamer terms: her special abilities had pushed her body past its physical limits to a respectable degree, but the control problem remained wholly unsolved — she was like a game character who moved flawlessly until, in a single instant, the camera spun out and the inputs stopped responding.
Having replayed each and every one of those scenes in his head—
Shake, shake.
Feeling a sigh welling up, Kim Jinhu found himself shaking his head — and blue sparks burst violently in Bukgung Seol's eyes.
"—Hal!!!"
A roar packed with the full force of her demonic arts, erupting like a bolt of lightning.
"Jjinhu, you wretch! It seems you are the sort who sheds no tears until he sees the coffin!"
"No, why are you talking like a wuxia novel…"
"Look well upon me with those two eyes, and behold who I am!"
Kim Jinhu shouted in alarm.
"Hey—hey! Bukgung Seol! Are you going to put that down?! What the hell do you think you're—!!!"
Fwip—
She closed the distance with footwork so contorted and uncanny that Kim Jinhu couldn't begin to parse it, her hand reaching out like a phantom's. And there, in Bukgung Seol's grip, was the Chinese cleaver he'd set out to chop the vegetables and meat…!
"I am the inheritor of the Heavenly Gang's single lineage — the successor of Bukgung."
The Cheongang Geom-ma — the Heavenly Gang Sword Demon.
If in pure martial might the Blood Demon was called the finest under heaven, then judged by the blade alone, the Cheongang Geom-ma was second to none.
Light gathered and condensed along the cleaver held in the hand of Murim's strongest swordswoman.
Kuuuuuu—
It was like the darkness of the night sky, quietly enfolding a dazzlingly brilliant star. The moment that sword-qi, blazing an ink-blue, took the shape of one long, straight blade—
Starlight wheeled through her elegant blue eyes, and the Cheongang Geom-ma said, low and quiet:
"This is the sword of the Heavenly Gang."
Seven-Star Firmament Break
Kim Jinhu was stunned.
It was a contradiction.
The sword-shape wrapped around the cleaver traced one path and one path only: a single, straight, linear stroke — draw the shoulder back, step forward, and sweep across, nothing more. And yet beyond that stroke, six forked images of Bukgung Seol stretched out like phantoms, and together with her true body they carved seven starlit sword paths through the air, all at once!
Kim Jinhu himself was a swordsman who had awakened the Iron Blood Sword Art and driven it to its peak through battlefields washed in blood, so he could tell at a glance: these were no flashy illusion blades, no cheap feints to hoodwink an enemy's eyes. They were contradictory strokes — every single one carrying a reality of its own.
'I knew it… Bukgung Seol — this girl isn't some Awakener. She really did come from another world…!'
Eyes stretched wide in disbelief, Kim Jinhu stared at the Cheongang Geom-ma—
'From another world…?'
And then, suddenly, he noticed that the hand which had been loosing those beautiful strokes was empty. A beat later, he found the cleaver — buried clear through the solid ceiling.
"J-Jjinhu……"
Shhhk… tumble, tumble.
CLANG!
"Gwaah—!"
That was how clean her cut had been: the cleaver's blade, still fixed in place, parted from the handle along its natural seam, and the handle slid smoothly free of the ceiling — only for its corner to come down smack on the crown of Bukgung Seol's head.
With her eyes spinning in circles, the white-haired, blue-eyed girl crumpled to the floor, creaking like a busted hunk of scrap metal.
Kim Jinhu thought:
'So the thing that came from another world… was a piece of junk…?'
For someone claiming the grand origins she always bragged about, there were far too many sloppy, pathetic little gaps in the record…
He'd sent her to the Academy, after all — on the theory that she might want to go into hunter work or something similar someday. He'd even kept a vague intention of putting a weapon in her hands one day, if she truly wanted one. But after watching that display, actually giving her a real weapon was clearly premature.
Still, living together had piled up affection the way it always does, and Kim Jinhu had gone hopelessly soft where Bukgung Seol was concerned.
'Well… maybe I'll let her try a bamboo practice sword, at least.'
A bamboo sword — not a wooden one. No matter how he turned it over, a wooden sword seemed bound to cause serious injury in its own special way.
Then, abruptly, a question occurred to him, and he crouched down in front of the fallen Bukgung Seol.
"Hey, Seol-ah. Now that I think of it — why do you suddenly need a sword?"
"Wh-why?! Because a swordsman naturally… needs a sw-sword… obviously…!"
"Lie to me and I'm really walking out to eat alone tonight."
The blue waves in her eyes sloshed and shuddered. On the verge of tears, Bukgung Seol scrambled upright, rubbing her head.
"Th-that's… the truth is…!!!"
A few days earlier. The classroom.
"Sseol, Jjin. Heard you two got lumped into the same mentee group? Huh. Guess that's a thing with Martial Arts Awakeners. Kinda jealous, not gonna lie."
"…Do not call me Sseol."
"Jjin… a-ah, n-no, I take it back…!!!"
Thus spake Namgung Yurin, a strangely forlorn look in her eyes.
And with that, Cheon Yujin and Bukgung Seol — who for who-knows-what reason had been folded so naturally into the same trio — had to grind their teeth.
Stuck with idiotic nicknames like 'Sseol' and 'Jjin,' no less…!
How was this any different from being ranked the same as all the young whippersnappers swarming this place?
The two of them, bound to the same group. Cheon Yujin and Bukgung Seol traded sulky glares.
Granted, each had briefly glimpsed the warriors of the old Murim in the other — but to be made to train shoulder to shoulder with a mere girl like this…
Yujin's resentment ran especially deep. Thanks to Unhak Jinin, she'd gotten her hands on a perfectly suited training ground, which meant she couldn't leave the Academy for a while if she wanted to use it.
Watching the two little ones lock eyes, resentment radiating off them in waves—
"…Oh?"
As if struck by a stroke of genius, a wicked little smile crept across Namgung Yurin's lips.
"You're both Martial Arts Awakeners, and you're both training under the same mentor… so that makes you rivals, doesn't it?"
"R-rivals…?"
Namgung Yurin pressed a finger to her lips and asked in a tone of feigned innocence:
"So if you two threw down… who'd win?"
THUD. KABOOM!
As if hammered by a colossal mallet, a storm of blunt shock swept across the two little faces. A moment later, both opened their mouths at once, smiles swelling with smug pride.
"Why, obviously Bonjwa would—"
"Why, obviously I would—"
Both voices died at once, and a chill silence — the kind that settles on the eve of a storm — sank over the room.
"……What?"
"……Hah?"
For the people of Murim were, as a breed, capable of swallowing any personal attack — except one. The words 'You're garbage at martial arts' alone, they could never, ever swallow.
Namgung Yurin had only meant it as half a joke. She hadn't expected a reaction this volcanic. And then—
Squeak, squeak-squeak…!
Kyiiiiiik……!!!
Behind the two little ones, she got the uncanny sense that apparitions of small animals were overlapping their backs.
'My heart… is swelling with grandeur…!'
She made up her mind on the spot: first order of business was getting her hands on a camera that could capture all of it in the highest definition possible.