The Sword Demon's Duvet Grudge
Once, the Cheongang Geom-ma. Now, Bukgung Seol.
Gazing at the duvet that had always kept her new body warm—a body that could no longer shrug off heat and cold the way it used to—the silver-haired girl with lake-blue eyes sat atop her plush bed, deep in grave contemplation.
I want to unleash a full-power Whirlwind Kick... on this down duvet...!
With a strangled cry, Bukgung Seol drew up her demonic qi and pounced like a beast.
“Urghyaaaaah—!!!”
Whish, wham! Her qi-laden heel kicked off the mattress, and mid-spin in midair the Whirlwind Kick came down clean. With a pop like a bursting balloon, the duvet flapped and went flying.
The instant the thought formed, the action followed. That was the way of the Sapa—those who indulged every desire and strode the dark road to see their ambitions realized! ...That such Sapa qualities were being expended on nothing more than assaulting a blanket was a sad state of affairs, but no matter.
Bukgung Seol was serious. Utterly, absolutely serious.
Not long ago had come the great unicorn-and-bicorn uproar. She was still hardly versed in the common sense of this world, yet one thing she had grasped: those monsters had caused some colossal catastrophe, and she herself—the long-reigning sovereign of the Sapa, Cheongang Geom-ma, Lord of the First Demon Palace of the Cheongang line—had, in the plainest possible terms, merely 'been dragged into it'...!!!
“Ughhhhh...”
Letting out a groan like a hamster that had run its wheel one turn too many, Bukgung Seol sank into recollection.
She had been taken captive by the twin-horned black steeds and their uncanny, grotesque sorcery. Even if her muscles had swollen disgustingly from contact with their demonic qi, being captured by such paltry monsters was humiliation enough—but to be felled by an eerie witchcraft straight out of Murim's Soul-Capturing Art... to sprout horns from her head like those twin-horned beasts, cackle like a witless lunatic, and turn her blade on her friend! On her benefactor and friend, Kim Jinhu, no less—with genuine intent to butcher him! At this rate, never mind being a demon—she scarcely deserved the name of warrior at all!
Worse still...!
“Jinhu. Kim Jinhu, my friend. You, too, have come to receive me—why then do you wear such a face? I welcome you. Truly, I welcome you.”
“Behold. Look upon me. Cast a glance, bear witness, grovel in audience, and despair. For I am the First Among Demons, the sovereign enthroned upon the dark heaven-seat of the Black Forest.”
For a long moment, silence.
“Hrghyaaaaagh—!!!”
A scream that rent the very soul. Face scarlet, Bukgung Seol deployed even her lightfoot art and launched herself into the air. Thud! Thud-thud! Thudududud! The kick art she unleashed with everything she had split in an instant into a fan of afterimages, striking the duvet from every side at once. Barrage after barrage, without once touching the ground—and her unbelievably lofty realm of mastery kept the duvet aloft until the assault finished in flawless form...!
“Ughk, ughhhrghk...”
It had happened exactly as Kim Jinhu had so desperately warned. Truthfully, Bukgung Seol had no idea what precisely 'kicking the blanket' was supposed to mean. Yet somehow, the more that moment replayed in her memory, the more her body moved on instinct, unleashing her kick art upon the duvet of its own accord. It was absolutely, definitively not that the glacially imperious declaration itself embarrassed her.
In that instant, at least... the cold majesty befitting the Lord of the First Demon Palace was magnificent...!
...That she could think so said everything about her sensibilities. Because right after that magnificent declaration, hadn't she been subdued by that bloodshot-eyed scribe brat without managing anything resembling proper resistance? After announcing, with supreme confidence, a line like “Refuse to submit, and only death awaits”, no less...!
“Cheon Yujin... you little wretch...!!!”
A namesake of that cunning Blood Demon—nothing more than a namesake, that brat! But what stung worst of all was not that she had lost to such a trifling child. Bukgung Seol had acknowledged Cheon Yujin's martial arts ever since their very first spar. No—the true horror came moments after her hollow defeat, when the world-swallowing wheel of Forged Blood Art qi swept past. For one instant—only one—Bukgung Seol had felt fear, realm of mastery be damned.
The instinct of a demonic cultivator. That red-eyed scribe brat's internal energy was... a natural-born predator of demonic cultivators... no! It was nothing less than an apex predator enthroned at the very top of the food chain!
“Hah, hah... haaaaah...”
Her breathing quickened and quickened. For now, her own demonic arts could more than hold their own against it. But should that brat's unknowable qi art ever reach its extreme, her ascension-grade demonic cultivation would be reduced to nothing more than an elixir that swelled the brat's power. And from that day forward, no stratagem, no desperate measure, would ever let her so much as graze the hem of that scribe brat's robe... As a supreme demonic cultivator who had attained a martial realm counted among the finest under heaven, Bukgung Seol grasped this truth more viscerally than anyone alive.
Worse still, the speed of that brat's growth was staggering. For some unfathomable reason, a woman who looked astonishingly like him had hurled herself at him, embracing him with a shriek—senseless behavior, all of it—and yet Bukgung Seol's discerning eye had not missed the truth: Cheon Yujin had shattered yet another wall and stepped into a new realm. The moment that thought resurfaced, a cold shiver crawled down her spine.
“Fear... me, afraid?! I, the Cheongang Geom-ma? No... no, this cannot stand!”
Whish—thwack! Screaming like a cornered beast fighting for its life, she drove a Whirlwind Kick down clean into the duvet.
And at that very moment—
“Hey, Bukgung Seol... so, uh... there's something I need to ask... got a minute...?”
Kim Jinhu opened the door and stepped in, the tail of every sentence dissolving into awkward mumbling. He stopped dead, hand still on the doorknob, staring at her in dumbfounded silence.
“I was gonna ask if you had a minute... wait, no, that's... what... what are you doing?”
“N-nothing! Nothing at all!”
“Nothing, my ass... then why exactly are you wearing the duvet? What are you, a sheet of dried seaweed? And why is it ripped?”
And indeed, just as that absurd muttering implied—Bukgung Seol was crouched there, wrapped head to toe in the very duvet she had been punting across the room. She was ashamed of having kicked the gift from her friend so wantonly, and she had no intention of showing him the wreckage her face had become from all that screaming and wailing.
If he sees it... my dignity will never recover...
Half-convinced by her own reasoning, Bukgung Seol tried to burrow deeper into the duvet—
“Dignity... dignity...?”
Then, all at once, the word itself kindled a realization. Bukgung Seol was a demonic cultivator, a warrior of the Sapa. The Sapa clung to only the barest minimum of a warrior's honor and face; beyond that, they knew no means they would not use. And now two natural enemies of her kind—Cheon Yujin and that nameless qi art—had appeared, and her very survival as a practitioner of the demonic path hung in the balance.
This frail body is... far too slow if I rely on training alone. I need another way.
“Jjinhu. I have a favor to ask as well.”
Emerging from the duvet, Bukgung Seol let her long white hair curtain down over her face. She darted to a drawer and fished out the thing she had hidden inside.
A broken horn. Shaped like a unicorn's, yet bearing not a glimmer of sacred radiance. Like a bicorn's, it seethed and writhed with pitch-black demonic qi—the very horn that had sprouted from Cheon Yujin's forehead, severed to serve as a filter against that foul energy. At the time, Cheon Yujin had planted a foot on her face and rocketed skyward, and the broken horn had dropped straight down; unintentional as it was, it had landed precisely in Bukgung Seol's hands.
“Make me... a sword from this.”
“This is... ugh!”
Kim Jinhu had touched it absentmindedly, and instantly had to sheathe his hand in mana to shut out the unpleasant aura closing over him. A broken horn rippling with demonic qi refined by the pristine energy of the Forged Blood Art. So immaculate was that refining that the qi sealed within was actually finer in quality than Bukgung Seol's own Cheongang demonic energy. What Bukgung Seol lacked was not technique, but raw, total power. If this were honed into a blade, then through the mysteries of Divine-Sword Unity she could project a realm rivaling the supreme masters—at least for as long as her fingers held the hilt.
A true master, as they say, does not pick and choose her brush. So leaning wholly upon a peerless weapon did not sit entirely easy with her pride as a warrior. But one way or another, Bukgung Seol was Sapa to the bone—she knew no means she would not use.
“Turn this... into a sword?”
“Yes. Its original owner cast it away like trash, so use it as you please—they will not mind.”
“That's not the problem here...”
A demand out of absolutely nowhere. Kim Jinhu remembered turning down her request for a real sword just days ago and fobbing her off with a bamboo one. For a moment he said nothing—and then he remembered, too, Bukgung Seol drunk on bicorn power, wielding a sword art overwhelming enough to bring the sky crashing down.
“Haah... fine. Whatever. I'll burn every coin and every connection I have to get it made into the best blade money can buy. That's how I got mine, too—sourced the materials myself and ran my legs off to see it forged.”
“Jjinhu...!”
Her lake-blue eyes brimmed over with joy, so bright it seemed starlight might come sparkling out of them at any second. Kim Jinhu scratched the back of his neck and went on in a voice thick with hesitation.
“So... in exchange, there's something I want to ask you, too.”
“......?”
Bukgung Seol blinked up at him, eyes round. Meeting that clear, limpid gaze, Kim Jinhu smiled a bitter smile.
He'd known from the very start that she was no ordinary kid. The Indefinite Gate's rampage—and the child discovered in the wreckage of a collapsed building immediately after. No identity, no Korean, stripped of even the most basic knowledge of how this world worked. And the spine-chilling sword art that child had unleashed.
Since awakening the Iron Blood Sword Art, Kim Jinhu had thrown over a decade into battle and training alike, and he had prided himself on standing at a certain peak as a swordsman. In truth, the only Martial Arts Awakener in the country anyone could call definitively stronger than Kim Jinhu was Unhak Jinin—and even then, he still couldn't say whether what she carried should be called a 'soul'... or a 'memory.' A stranger from Murim, the very wellspring from which martial awakening flowed. He had fought beside Unhak Jinin, been schooled and sparring-grounded by her.
Which means... maybe Seol is the same...
It was because he harbored that strange suspicion—no, that conviction—that he asked.
“Could you... teach me the sword?”
“The sword?”
“Yeah... well... yeah. The sword.”
A request soaked in hesitation. Bukgung Seol. The Cheongang Geom-ma. The Cheongang Geom-ma had never once taken a disciple—for no heir candidate of the Cheongang line had ever been born with talent enough to surpass the Sword Demon. The Heavenly Gang Sword Formula was a secret art transmitted to the Cheongang bloodline and no one else. And yet... Bukgung Seol had inherited the seat of Lord of the First Demon Palace, had lived solely for the burning wishes of her clan, and had been meant to live out every remaining day the same way. A heart frozen like ice. A heart cold as a blade. A heart educated from birth into that very shape, locked in ice all her life. But this was an entirely different world, one where the rules of the Cheongang line no longer bound anyone. And there she had found... the only benefactor of her life. The only friend. It was the first time she had owed anyone her life, and the first time she had ever stood beside an equal. For Bukgung Seol, who had been condemned to live out her days in solitude as the scion of Cheongang, these were bonds the likes of which she had never known. Teaching him the sword—she did not even need to teach him properly. Casual guidance would have been more than enough. The Heavenly Gang Sword Formula was a single-heir transmission, meant to pass only within the family, only down the Cheongang line, but—
“......Very well, Jjinhu! I am scrupulous in all my dealings. Forge me a sword magnificent enough to earn that confidence, and I shall transmit it to you—specially!”
“Huh? Transmit?”
He had no idea what she intended to transmit—and he hadn't meant to ask for anything that grand in the first place. Bewildered, Kim Jinhu fiddled with the end of his ponytail. But regardless of him, Bukgung Seol's fighting spirit was already roaring. She had grown soft in the complacency of this comfortable life... and for a while, she had forgotten. In this world lurked her unforgivable mortal enemy—the vile and treacherous Blood Demon! Cheon Yujin... if she could not so much as handle that scribe brat, how could she ever dream of vengeance upon the Blood Demon, whose martial arts scraped the very heavens? She had remembered her original goal, her true purpose.
What does it matter if I borrow the strength of a weapon? By any means necessary—I will become thoroughly, thoroughly strong!
Never again would there be carelessness. Gritting her teeth, Bukgung Seol swore it. Yes... Cheon Yujin, that monster rat with its impossible qi and impossible growth. Because even at this very moment... that monster would be getting stronger!
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.
Having attained the second tier of the Forged Blood Art—the Pure Blood Realm... even at this very moment, progress continued.
Hidden-Soul Rat-Rampage Secret Form
All fours to the ground, body pressed as low as it would go... swimming across the floor, a swift, elusive stealth art that left behind neither sound nor whisper—Shshshshsh—!
Amyoung Sintou, the greatest thief of Hangzhou. The Liangshang Junzibo's stealth art was the very thing that explained why he had been named the 'Dark Shadow.' True to a thief's movement art, the Junzibo was not merely fast; it harbored a concealed-form technique that hid the body and strangled every trace of presence!
And so, like a rat diving swiftly into its hole, he swam along the floor and slipped away unseen—
“Oppa? Where are you going? The bathroom again?”
“...Eep!”
“How urgent can it be, if you're going there lying down? If you'd just told me, I'd have carried you on my back.”
“N-nooo... it's, um...”
Even the thief's peerless stealth art, built to erase a human presence itself... meant nothing. Not against the eye of this formless barrier, which had marked down his very existence as a set of coordinates...!!!
“Come now, up you get... Oppa.”
“Y-yes ma'am...”
Looking into the jet-black of Se-ah's eyes, somehow... resistance proved simply impossible...!
That's right. Bonjwa was growing even now.
To slip free of his little sister's Demonic Hand... only the lightfoot art and the stealth art were growing...