Hoshin-ganggi: True (1)
The soldiers, including Arisha, held their breath as they stared at me. No one spoke. No one dared move. It was only natural. I had been nothing but a pile of bloodied rags, barely recognizable as human, and now I stood before them completely restored. The troops’ stunned reactions were understandable. This was a miracle far beyond anything Seo Hayun’s healing magic could accomplish. Of all those present, Arisha seemed the most shaken.
“You… you…?”
She was the first to break the silence. I spoke to her again, voice steady.
“Retreat at once. I’ll buy you time.”
“What are you talking about!” Arisha cried, visibly startled. The question carried a storm of emotions—shock, fear, disbelief. How could I possibly stall that towering embodiment of violence alone?
But there was no time for explanations.
“Go!”
“Ugh…!?”
My second shout made her voice tremble. Even now she hesitated, torn. Yet on the battlefield, hesitation was always poison.
Shhk!
The Orc Warrior swung its halberd. I spun instantly and pulled Arisha into my arms. The moment I kicked off the ground and leapt, the halberd crashed down where we had stood.
Kwaaaaang!
A deafening roar and shockwave erupted in every direction. If battlefield-shaking thunder could take physical form, this weapon would be it.
The desperate leap left me off-balance. The landing failed.
“Kuh…”
I shielded her head and body with my arms as we tumbled across the dirt.
“You!”
It was Garan’s voice. He was sprinting toward us from afar, face pale with alarm.
“The captain!”
“Understood!”
Garan immediately took Arisha from my arms and helped her to her feet.
“You…”
Now standing, Arisha stared at me with a complicated expression. Beads of sweat clung to her forehead. She opened her mouth, closed it again, swallowing whatever words had risen. Her trembling gaze swept across the battlefield—soldiers collapsed and bleeding, others staggering just to remain upright. Too many lives rested on her shoulders.
Finally she clenched her teeth and balled her fists. I knew she had made her decision.
The soldiers turned in surprise. The order itself was unchanged, yet its meaning now carried the weight of abandoning the man who had declared he would stay behind to buy them time. The woman who had fought desperately to prevent a single casualty had chosen to make that sacrifice.
Arisha and the troops under her command moved with urgent purpose. No one disobeyed. They had known from the start that victory was impossible; they had already been preparing to withdraw.
I felt their eyes on my back.
“Damn… it…!”
Familiar voices. A few of the senior scouts I had operated with. Then, for a single moment, one voice reached me clearly.
“…Don’t die.”
It wasn’t infused with mana—just a quiet whisper. Yet Arisha’s words rang in my ears without mistake.
The sounds of their presence faded into the distance.
Shhk!
The orcs gave chase. Countless soldiers carried the wounded on their backs and fled the field. The ground shook beneath the stampede of countless orc feet. Screams and roars filled the air with chaos.
In that brutal, blood-soaked battlefield, only two beings remained, staring at each other.
Shhk.
The massive orc standing directly before me looked down. Its enormous halberd rested across one shoulder. It did nothing. It simply watched me. As if answering my own steady gaze.
We stared at each other like that for several seconds. The presence of the retreating soldiers and the orcs pursuing them gradually disappeared. Once only the Orc Warrior and I remained, the battlefield that had been filled with screams and roars fell into absolute silence.
I read its behavior and made a quick deduction.
“You waited for me.”
It was completely different from when it had tried to attack Arisha and the soldiers. From the moment I intervened, its eyes had been fixed solely on me. The way it had commanded the other orcs to overwhelm the subjugation force was gone. It was as if it had been waiting for every distraction to be cleared away, anticipating only our fight.
That demeanor reminded me of…
“…a warrior.”
It evoked the image of a valiant fighter eagerly awaiting battle. This creature could not communicate. It had lost its intellect and acted on pure instinct—a beast of destruction that would bring ruin to the world. I had no intention of feeling respect for such a monster. And yet, right now, I could sense it. The actions it had shown. The expression on its face as it looked at me. Every small detail told me the being before me was more than a mere monster.
That was why I finally understood.
“So that’s it. You…”
You want a fight to the death with me.
It wasn’t what I wanted. But if the enemy before me desired it, what choice did I have? The question rose in my mind. Yet apart from that doubt, I gripped my broken sword tightly and settled into a stance. No clear answer came. My body simply moved as my heart directed.
I still didn’t know the identity of the pleased voice echoing through my head. I simply held the conviction that this was the right path.
Heavenly Fate surged at my fingertips. My body, healed and reinforced by Hoshin-ganggi, gradually grew hot. The sword in my hand was already broken, only a jagged fragment of the blade remaining.
Shhk.
The orc still showed no reaction. It simply watched me, the corners of its mouth curling upward. All I could hear was its beast-like breathing, heavy snorts, and the powerful thud of its heartbeat.
The Orc Warrior and I moved at the same time. It struck first. Its massive foot tore into the earth as it charged, releasing a thunderous boom.
Kwaang!
The halberd came slashing down diagonally from the left. I ducked, letting the blade pass at an angle, then closed the distance and thrust my broken sword at its wrist.
Thud!
But the one who took the hit was me. Using the recoil from its own swing, the orc drove its opposite fist into my ribs.
“Grk!”
My body flew backward and slammed into a boulder.
“Cough…!”
Blood mixed with the cough that burst from my throat. Several ribs had probably broken again.
“You… bastard…!”
It was different. This wasn’t the wild, instinctive fighting of raw power. It used the flow of recoil after each strike, calculated my movements, and responded with precise combat technique. My instincts screamed. Move now. Or you die.
As if to prove it, a massive shadow fell over me while I was still rolling on the ground.
Shhk!
The Orc Warrior swung its halberd again, lips peeled back in a grin. The weapon’s path was straight and clean. Even though the attack was born from absurd brute strength, dodging it wasn’t difficult. The problem would come after.
Kwaaaaang!
The ground exploded where the halberd struck. Shards of rock sprayed outward. Before I could regain my footing from the shockwave, the next attack came. The orc’s fist flew straight at my chest.
“Kuh…!”
There wasn’t enough distance to dodge. Swinging the broken sword would be too slow. With no other option, I threw my own punch.
Thud!
Our fists collided. The one that shattered was mine. No matter how much Hoshin-ganggi reinforced it, I couldn’t overcome the orc’s terrifying muscle density and durability. The moment of impact pulverized bone and tore muscle and flesh. Yet I endured. The instant Heavenly Fate restored my crushed fist, wrist, and arm, I forced Hoshin-ganggi over the damage like a steel clamp.
“Damn it…!”
The gap I felt once again filled me with nausea. The insurmountable divide between human and monster. The innate limits of life and existence. I had searched for ways to surpass those limits and close that gap. The Hoshin-ganggi I created was one of the results. Human bones, muscle, and skin were neither as solid, elastic, nor thick as an orc’s. So I had conceived a method to transform my body with metal-like properties. But if it only narrowed the gap without overcoming it, what was the point?
As I ground my teeth at that bitter reality, the Orc Warrior exhaled a vigorous snort and swung its halberd again. The blade, swirling with dense magical power, hurtled toward my face. The thick mana wrapped around it proved this was no ordinary strike. The explosive physical force that had shattered the ground originated from that power. This was not an orcish technique. It was an inherent function of the weapon itself—an enchanted magical armament engraved with Enchant magic.
‘Wrap mana around the weapon…’
The memory flashed through me.
[The thing you named Hoshin-ganggi. I looked up the etymology.]
[‘Ganggi’ refers to mana given a clear, visible physical form. ‘Hosin’ obviously means protecting the body. Then…]
[If the goal is simply to increase your body’s durability and defense, there should be another way besides the risk of hardening your own flesh like metal, right?]
Arisha’s voice echoed in my mind like lightning. At the same time, the massive amount of mana coiled around the halberd filled my vision again.
‘A powerful energy that protects the body.’
Did it have to be my own flesh? During that forced lesson, I had been unable to refute her point. Nor had I found the correct answer. It had been the best solution I could manage at the time. That was why the class had ended after only theoretical instruction and new formulas.
But now—
A new possibility, a new method, a clue to a new Hoshin-ganggi, rose in my mind.
At that exact moment, the halberd the Orc Warrior brought down reached right before my forehead. Yet I surrendered myself to the flow of consciousness as if possessed. As though time had stopped and logic had come undone, only my thoughts moved freely, flowing like water.
‘I wrap Heavenly Fate around me.’
It wasn’t about injecting Heavenly Fate into the formula near my chest to manifest magic. It wasn’t about hardening skin and flesh into solid metal. It was like putting on clothes—wrapping my entire body with the life energy that flowed from my heart. Like donning a garment, yet forming a hard, unbreakable barrier against external shocks. It would be clothing that expressed who I was, a vast curtain that shielded me from the world.
I swung my fist toward the halberd now inches from my face. Not even the question ‘Can I block it?’ arose. Though it was a test, I held the absolute conviction that it would not fail. A certainty I could not explain in words. If I had to name it, it was pure instinct. The intense intuition that my crude, incomplete Hoshin-ganggi had finally reached completion.
At last, my fist and the Orc Warrior’s halberd collided head-on.
Kwaaaaang!