Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Episode 20
We decided to talk over brunch at a nearby cafe.
Park Kang-chan was fairly well known, so I could see customers and staff at the cafe sneaking glances at him.
"As you know, Coach, hunters can only use a tiny fraction of the abilities they gain in the Tower."
"I know."
That was true.
Hunters could use the mana and Skills they gained in the Dimensional Tower in the real world.
Only a tiny, pitiful amount.
The top Dimensional Tower rankers were currently climbing floors in the fifties, and ten of them stood out as especially powerful.
Those ten were known by the somewhat childish name Platinum Ten Stars.
They were certainly superhuman, far stronger than ordinary people...... but they weren't invincible.
For example, Titan Man, one of the rankers representing America, was known to shrug off ordinary rifle rounds.
Wow! Bullets don't work on him! Isn't that insane!? you might think.
But that didn't mean he could withstand an anti-materiel rifle or heavy-machine-gun fire.
Even something like a suicide drone could kill him.
Maybe that was why social order still held together.
If hunters could use one hundred percent of their Tower abilities in reality, the world's political order would have been overturned long ago.
If an absolute superhuman decided to become a dictator, who could stop them? That was the point.
Anyway.
Titan Man was certainly superhuman, but even lower-ranked hunters were more than an ordinary person could handle barehanded.
Park Kang-chan, sitting in front of me, was no exception.
He was one of Korea's representative rankers, and as far as I knew, he was currently climbing Floor 51 with his team.
His class was the oddly named Avatar of the Wild, and he fought barehanded as both a damage dealer and a tank.
That was why he attended my martial arts school...... though honestly, his skill had barely improved after reaching a certain point.
Watching him throw nothing but telegraphed punches all the time...... ugh.
Still, because he belonged to such a powerful close-combat class, Park Kang-chan was unquestionably stronger than an ordinary person.
He was at least two or three times stronger than a professional fighter who trained diligently and consistently.
His stamina, strength, durability, and the rest were all superior to about that degree.
He still wasn't bulletproof like Titan Man, of course.
But at that level, very few ordinary people could beat him.
The weight-class difference was just too great.
A few years earlier, a man that strong had swaggered around like a thug, picking fights and beating people up.
Then he met me, I taught him a proper lesson, and he became a decent person.
Mm-hmm. It was a relief that he had turned over a new leaf.
"But you beat the hell out of me so easily back then. That was all because of martial arts, right? Martial arts you already knew, separate from this awakening."
"Hmm...... hardly takes a genius to figure that out. You're right, Kang-chan. I already knew martial arts."
"I knew it...... well, it was too obvious. There's no way I would have lost otherwise......."
"I wouldn't be so sure. Even among ordinary people, there are probably a few who could beat you. You fight far too predictably, Kang-chan."
My external-arts training had also made my physical abilities better than Park Kang-chan's, but more importantly, he relied far too much on brute force.
Training under me had improved him somewhat. Back in the day, even the way he threw a punch had been clumsy.
At least he had a certain wild edge to him.
But that only went so far.
A real grappling master would've broken his bones.
"There you go again. I can hold my own anywhere, you know!"
"That's what you say. So, did you really come here this early just to ask me that?"
He could have asked something like this at our next lesson, so why come all the way here?
"Couldn't you have just asked that at the next lesson?"
At my words, Park Kang-chan hesitated for a moment.
Then he set down the fork he was holding.
His expression turned strangely solemn.
That expression.
It was exactly the expression he wore before entering the Tower.
What now? What kind of trouble was he about to cause......? The thought had barely crossed my mind when—
Scrape.
Park Kang-chan pushed his chair back and stood.
And then.
Thud!
He dropped to his knees on the cafe floor.
Then he bent forward until his forehead touched the floor.
"Master! Please accept me as your disciple! As a formal disciple!"
......What?
Hey, you crazy bastard!
This is a cafe! A brunch cafe!
What the hell are you doing right now!
I screamed internally, but somehow kept my face impassive.
A former Martial God couldn't let something like this rattle him.
Indeed.
But regardless of my internal shock, people all around us were already staring.
Murmur, murmur.
"What's that?"
"Isn't that Hunter Park Kang-chan?"
"But why is he prostrating on the floor?"
"Is it filming? A hidden camera prank?"
Even one of the staff had frozen with a tray in hand, staring at us.
Ah, seriously.
This big dark-skinned bastard was embarrassing me in public.......
"Kang-chan. Get up first."
"Use informal speech with me, Master! I, Park Kang-chan, truly want to become your disciple!"
This guy really wouldn't stop.
And why was his voice so damn loud?
Did the Avatar of the Wild give him wild lung capacity too?
"Hmm."
I deliberately spoke slowly, putting weight behind each word.
The damage was done.
Since things had come this far, I might as well commit to the bit.
"In the martial world, one does not lightly form the bond of master and disciple. As the saying goes, 'do not transmit the art to the unworthy.'"
"Do not transmit the art to the unworthy?"
"It means you don't teach someone of poor character. Martial arts are like a blade. You don't just hand a blade to anyone."
Of course, what I taught was only external arts without internal energy, so it wasn't quite that grand...... except I couldn't exactly say that either.
Even if the trainee could still die to a bullet, the training could make someone superhuman by ordinary standards.
Damn hard, difficult, and painful though it was.
With that in mind, I decided that if I was going to play the part, I might as well see it through.
So I put on a solemn expression.
It wasn't actually difficult.
In my previous life, I'd carried myself like this most of the time.
Park Kang-chan's eyes shone even brighter at my words.
"I've got good character! I became a decent person after meeting you, Coach! Seriously!"
"That is merely your claim."
"I'm telling you, it's true!"
Well.
It wasn't wrong.
Thinking back to the thug Park Kang-chan used to be, he had definitely become a decent person.
He still threw telegraphed punches all the time, but he wasn't a bad person at heart.
Even back when he acted like a thug, he hadn't gone around bullying people so much as picking fights because he loved fighting and wanted to show off.
Still, a master-disciple relationship in the martial world was a formal thing. Accepting him too easily wouldn't look right either.
Hmm.
But if I rejected him here, he looked ready to stay on the cafe floor forever.
"Very well. Kang-chan."
I switched to the informal speech a master would use with a disciple.
Park Kang-chan's face lit up.
"Do you truly wish to become my disciple?"
"Yes! Master!"
"But let me make one thing clear. Whether I take you as a direct disciple remains to be seen."
"Huh?"
"For now, you'll be a lay disciple. I'll teach you for a while, see what you're made of, and then decide whether to make you a direct disciple. Understood?"
A direct disciple.
In other words, a true successor who inherited the master's mantle.
Even in the martial world of my previous life, one didn't take a direct disciple lightly.
A lay disciple, by contrast, was an outer disciple who could learn martial arts but would not receive the sect's true transmission.
Not that I had some grand true transmission to pass on to Park Kang-chan.
But if I was going to do the bit, I had to do it properly.
"Thank you, Master! Then this disciple will perform the ninefold prostration......."
"That's enough."
I raised a hand to stop Park Kang-chan from pressing his head to the floor again.
"Ninefold prostration, my ass. That's an incorrect ritual you only see in wuxia novels."
"Huh? It's incorrect?"
"Right. Who bows nine times? Writers made that up because it looked cool. The real martial world doesn't do that."
"Then...... how many bows should I do?"
"You don't have to bow at all, idiot. Just get up. Everyone's watching."
"Ah."
Only then did Park Kang-chan look around.
He seemed to realize only now that every gaze in the cafe was fixed on us.
"......Sorry, Coach."
"I thought it was 'Master'."
"I'm sorry, Master......!"
Park Kang-chan rose sheepishly.
A grown man had just prostrated himself on the floor and now stood there not knowing what to do with himself.
Who would believe this was one of Korea's top rankers?
And so.
And so, in the middle of a cafe with everyone watching, I accepted Park Kang-chan as a lay disciple.
I'd taken disciples in my previous life too.
But taking one in such an embarrassing way?
That was a first.
* * *
Accepting Park Kang-chan as a disciple didn't mean I could immediately teach him martial arts.
Even though all I could pass on in this world were external arts—and only a limited selection at that—it still required considerable preparation.
These techniques weren't anything exceptional by my standards, though.
To put it bluntly, some of the top-tier external arts I'd collected in my previous life could turn a person into something on Superman's level.
There were techniques ranging from making the body virtually indestructible to regenerating severed limbs.
But those couldn't be trained in this world.
Those top-tier external arts were external arts in name only. You had to cultivate internal energy alongside them.
In other words.
The external arts I could train in this life were limited to techniques that could be combined with medicinal treatments.
So preparation was needed.
I had to make medicine.
So I started planning to convert some DP into cash......
then changed my mind. Why not just go mining in the Dimensional Tower?