The Pervert I Used to Know
Formerly, the Cheongang Geom-ma. Currently, Bukgung Seol.
The girl with white hair and lake-blue eyes murmured as she watched the twin-horned black horse charging straight at her.
"This time... two horns?"
The unicorn, with its pristine coat and gleaming single horn, was certainly a wondrous creature. But a black horse beat a white one, every time. Even back in his days as the Cheongang Geom-ma, whenever a mount was called for, he had always favored the black ones. And for Bukgung Seol, born of the demon race, the bicorn's silhouette—so reminiscent of her own azure demonic aura—simply pleased her more.
After all, compared to a single horn wrapped in some holy aura...! There was just... something about those wickedly stylish twin horns that made her heart itch with longing...!!!
Bukgung Seol had to cycle her demonic art just to steady the hand that kept twitching with the urge to grab those horns, and claw back her composure.
Even in the middle of a screaming emergency.
True to her long years as a warrior who had crossed every line between life and death, Bukgung Seol was calm.
'Come to think of it, Cheon Yujin... that red-eyed little brat had grown something like horns too, hadn't she?'
She even had the leisure to reminisce.
'Riding that black horse... if I, too, sprouted twin horns from my head and draped myself in a magnificent cape... mm, yes—that would restore the dignity befitting the Lord of the First Demon Palace, the World's Greatest Sword. And the blade would have to be the Hell Sword Demon Blade, dyed jet-black. Without question.'
No—not reminiscence.
She had the leisure to sink into full-blown delusion....
She was a woman of Murim whose sensibilities sat slightly... just very slightly out of alignment with modern people, this Bukgung Seol—for by a Murim native's standards, such attire was merely... a somewhat exotic costume. The concept of embarrassment had simply never been installed in her.
No—exotic undersold it. It was an exotic design of tremendous coolness.
Bukgung Seol was genuinely, dead serious.
She was in the depths of pondering exactly how to divide a captured black horse—no, make it two—between rideable mounts and horn-harvesting stock, when—
RRRRUMBLE—!!!
"KUOOOORGH!"
"Neigh! Whinny!"
Amid a savage crash, the front line crumpled before her eyes.
Around Cheon Yujin, the unicorns had formed a living wall, sealing off the front. They checked the bicorns' charge at the first line—but as the demonic energy spread its infection, the bicorns' numbers began to swamp the unicorn herd instead. And no wall, however solid, could hold against such a difference in numbers; holes were inevitable.
"Tch, you damn horse-brained idiots...!"
Even amid it all—spitting out indignation laced with tears, Cheon Yujin unfurled the full forms of the Taiji Fist at absolute full power to plug every gap, and by some miracle the wall itself held. But a scant few—a mere handful—of bicorns had punched through, and they were stampeding onward, charge upon charge, in sheer frenzy!
"Why are you running without even a glance back?!"
"KUOOOORGH—!!!"
Just as Cheon Yujin had wailed—if only the bicorns had spared even a glance for the wall of unicorns, she could have whipped the battlefield into a sprawling, chaotic melee even amid the infection, buying the people at the rear time to evacuate. But the maddened bicorns, like an awl driving through paper, attempted to break through at a single point and nothing else.
And then—at the very end of that charge—
…………?
A vision: herself tearing the twin horns from a bicorn, setting them atop her head, cape billowing magnificently, bursting into grand, booming laughter.
...That was the delusion Bukgung Seol happened to be lost in.
"...M-me?"
A herd of black horses, crimson eyes glowing with madness, drool streaming in long ropes. The first among them to break through reared a mighty foreleg and lunged.
Bukgung Seol understood at last.
Who the twin-horned black horses swarming toward her had been targeting all along. Their gazes were locked, utterly fixed. Their trajectory never deviated so much as a hair—breaking through along one straight line, and one line only. She shifted her footwork and slipped to the side, but the black horses bent their course and came on after her like the homing needles of the Sacheon Tang Clan.
This was, unmistakably—
for reasons she could not fathom in the slightest—aimed at her, with no room left for excuses...!
"...A blind charge, is it? How utterly beneath me."
And yet—
even so, Bukgung Seol curled her lips in scorn.
True, her cherished Hell Sword Demon Blade had been stolen by that villain Kim Jinhu and forcibly renamed to the shameful "Hell Jinhu Blade." But even swordless, the World's Greatest Sword was still, first and last, a warrior. For a warrior to claim she could not fight without a weapon was nothing more than an excuse.
A swordswoman without a sword?
Did she not still have two hands!
"Hoooh—...!"
The moment she drew a great breath, the demonic energy coursing through Bukgung Seol's eight extraordinary meridians condensed into a single point, and she thrust out both hands, striking for the center of mass.
As though a clear moon were rising through the night sky, above the azure-wavering demonic energy, a frost of ultimate yin began to bloom.
Wmmm... wmmm... wmmm...!!!
The ultimate-yin demonic energy gathered in her twin palm-centers spun the moonlight round and round in the shape of great wheels. And the instant that rotation reached its extreme, moonlight exploded between Bukgung Seol and the black horse.
Twin Wheel Frost Leaves
CRACKLE-CRACK-CRACK!
With an eerie sound like ice freezing solid, the moonlight-drenched rings spun away, leaving whorls of frost scored deep into the surrounding terrain and scattered stones—and the palm force, packed to the brim with demonic energy, ripped through the air and detonated against the black horse's body!
"KUOOOOOOGH...!!!"
The black horse shrieked in agony as the cold-moon twin palms struck home—and in that very instant—
…………?
Bukgung Seol abruptly felt something was off.
Her training in the demonic art had advanced considerably, but her fine control still lagged, leaving her energy sense far duller than it used to be. On top of that, she'd happened to take internal injuries in her recent spar with Cheon Yujin, of all things. Only now—having closed to a range where she could land her twin palms on the black horse—could she finally register the one fact she had somehow failed to notice.
The azure light flickering through those crimson eyes. A light familiar to anyone of the demon race—and a familiar texture of energy besides.
Bukgung Seol blurted out in shock before she could stop herself.
"The Explosion Demon Art...?!"
Worse, the demonic energy reeking off it was such a crude, low-refinement mess that her eyes and nose felt ready to rot. Demonic arts might share a name; demonic energy might share a nature—but the loftier the art, the darker and thicker the abyss refined into its energy. Setting aside the two forbidden arts that stood in a class of their own—the Blood Demon Art and the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—the single-lineage demonic art passed down from Cheongang alone could justly boast itself the finest under heaven.
A crude, impurity-choked lower art like that ought to have bent the knee and submitted to Bukgung Seol's own... and yet—a unicorn's resonance and absorption, so easily swayed by mana or qi, had not changed one bit even in the body of a bicorn.
CRACKLE-CRACK!
The palm force, steeped in pure demonic energy, struck true. And because the blow had channeled internal force rather than raw physical impact, it left the body largely unharmed—while the crude Explosion Demon Art energy was... swapped out, wholesale, for the pure-black energy Bukgung Seol herself had refined.
"Neigh...? Whinny...?"
Even in its frenzy, the black horse found this too absurd, tilting its head. In Murim terms... it amounted to personally feeding her mid-battle opponent an elixir that matched their internal cultivation perfectly—and outranked it, to boot...!
"...Eh?"
Moments later—
KRRK-KRRK-BWOOOMPH!
A grotesque sound rang out, like bones twisting out of shape and a balloon inflating.
"KUOOOOOH...."
Where the palm force had swept over—and above it—
looking like nothing so much as a catastrophically botched protein-and-steroid cycle, the black horse—its bulk and muscle now swollen to two, three times beyond what it had been, vastly larger than before—was letting out a rough bellow...!!!
Truly grotesque muscle.
"No, hold on. No..."
And then—it knocked, lightly, against a black horse running beside it.
"Whinny...? Nicker...?"
"KUOOOH...!!!"
The muscle-horse multiplied. Twice. Three times. Tens of times over.
The iron-blooded demon of Murim, the Cheongang Geom-ma, who had crossed every strait between life and death and banked a lifetime of experience—even for him, this sight was a first since the day he was born.
"Hh... hii... HIIIIEEK...!!!"
Staring blankly at the herd of muscle-horses vaulting up to pounce all at once, he could do nothing but scream.
Seconds before the defensive line gave way—
"It's bad... they broke through!"
Gritting her teeth, Cheon Yujin slammed a black horse into the ground and shouted. Even in this moment, the bicorns' numbers kept swelling. The Lake of Holy Water was a regional-type gate so thick with unicorns it might as well have been a unicorn ranch—but unicorn and bicorn alike, these holy beasts and demonic beasts born of the same root were each, individually, rare creatures. And they wielded superb physical abilities and magic on top of that. In truth, every last one of them—wanting only a little in raw physical force—was strong enough to stand comparison with the field boss Cheon Yujin had once dueled... the Giant Bear!
And that was coming at her as a massive horde, while the unicorns meant to support her in holding the line were being infected in real time.
Cheon Yujin's Forged Blood Art had grown to the very brink of the second tier, letting her wield strength on par with a supreme master at the very peak, even by Murim's standards, if she strained herself a little—but—
"Uuugh...!!!"
even so, this was a hopeless mismatch.
True, the line had been breached and things were dire. But it was fine. The truly desperate, dangerous moment had not yet come.
Cheon Yujin smirked faintly, thinking of a certain girl standing among the students at the rear.
'Well... back there is... Bukgung Seol. That blue-eyed little demon brat.'
A demonic-arts awakener—a swordswoman who had reached a realm where she could stand toe-to-toe with Cheon Yujin, Blood Flame Realm of the Forged Blood Art, complete and all.
A swordswoman of Bukgung Seol's caliber could not only protect herself...!
She had more than enough strength to become a wall guarding the students, exactly as Cheon Yujin was doing now—of that, Yujin was certain.
'An insolent little brat... but if it's Bukgung Seol, she'll handle her share just fine.'
Though it did sting her pride a little.
"...Hmph!"
She scoffed on purpose the moment the thought crossed her mind—but the trust underneath was beyond her control.
In the moments that followed—what transformations those breakthrough bicorns would undergo right before Bukgung Seol's eyes—she could not have imagined in the least. It was a tragic trust, born of blissful ignorance....
That aside, of course—the fact that she was fighting at her very limit hadn't changed one bit, and Cheon Yujin was racking her brain for options—when, right then—
OPPAAA!!! Are you okay?!
"Egh."
With a voice far too familiar—
BWOOOM!!!
a thunderous boom rang out at touchdown, and a cloud of dust swirled up in a dizzying mix.
And then—the shadow dropped from thin air and, in a single bound, flung itself at Cheon Yujin.
FWUMP—JAB!
"KYAAAAH! I'm s-stabbed! Oppa, what the hell is this horn?! If it weren't for my protective coat, it would've punched a hole right through me!"
This hopelessly overdramatic woman...
"C-Cheon Se-ah?! What are you doing here?! A-and..."
...was, of course, her little sister, Cheon Se-ah.
Her sister appearing out of nowhere was already enough to stop her heart. But that wasn't all...!
Though some distance away—when Cheon Se-ah had fallen from the sky, there had been one more shadow, dropped off far away among the bicorns.
With a trembling finger, Cheon Yujin pointed at the shadow that had presumably come here together with Se-ah, and opened her mouth.
"A-and who... who is that pervert...?"
"Oh."
A coat. Sunglasses. And a toddler's bamboo sword hanging at his hip. An outfit far too suspicious to be seen at any tourist spot. If a man dressed like that got anywhere close, even Cheon Yujin would start thinking about calling the police before anything else...!
A suspicious man—and a young one, at that—was with her little sister. Just as killing intent began to flicker across the eyes of Cheon Yujin, who had always doted on her younger siblings a touch too much—
a hollow smile floated up onto Cheon Se-ah's lips.
"Ah, yeah. He's a stranger pervert."
"Eh?"
"I think he might've been a friend until a few minutes ago... but he's a stranger pervert now, so it's fine."
"No, I—"
"Don't worry. He somehow slipped away cleanly today... but the police will catch his tail sooner or later, and he's definitely getting arrested!"
"I-is... that so...."
The distance swallowed the words—but the vibe alone told Kim Jinhu exactly what they were saying.
…………
Plip.
A single tear slid down the line of Kim Jinhu's jaw.