006. Constellation Choi Kanghyuk in Training
"Well, I suppose I don't have anything special to do until it's time to sell those stocks, do I?"
"There's about a week left before then, Lord Constellation. So what will you do with the time?"
I set Ping down on my open palm.
"First things first—how about you tell me the differences between me-as-a-Constellation and me-as-a-human?"
"The traits you possessed as a human remain exactly as they were. However, your body is no longer human flesh. You now possess the body of a Constellation."
Back then, even when I'd wanted to dash forward, it had felt like sprinting through mud, as if the whole world were clinging to my body and dragging at every step. But now?
"Somehow I feel like I could do just about anything?"
I wanted to put it to the test, but Ping and I were the only two things floating in this desolate, empty void, which was a shame.
"There's nothing here but you and me. So how do I go about filling the place up?"
"Nothing here, you say? The Core is here as well."
I glanced quickly around me.
"There's nothing, though?"
"I can make it visible for you! Some Constellations hate having their Core floating right before their eyes, so I'd kept it hidden—oops, it slipped my mind. Hehe."
With that, Ping began murmuring something unintelligible under its breath, and a crimson, bead-shaped something began to materialize before my eyes.
The blazing, smoldering Core looked exactly like a miniature sun.
"This is your heart, Lord Constellation—the Core!"
"So the Core is my weakness?"
"No. The Core is you. It's so incredibly hard that it won't break short of the extreme. Of course, if a tremendously powerful Constellation were to attack it, who knows."
At the words won't break short of the extreme, I looked down at the Breaker in my hand.
"You said it would never break, right?"
"Not never—just 'as a rule'! Why do you ask?"
For some reason, Ping's face had gone anxious.
"Bones and muscle only grow tougher under a proper load!"
I'd been wondering whether all I could do was swing the Breaker around an empty void, but it seemed a perfect opportunity had just presented itself.
I poured explosive power into both hands gripping the Breaker, dug my toes in hard to anchor myself to the ground, and channeled that force straight up through my hips and into my arms.
SHREEE—KABOOM—WHAM!
The Breaker ruptured the air itself and slammed into the Core dead-on with a deafening roar.
"You've gone completely insane! GRRRR!"
Foaming at the mouth, Ping came flying at me, but I ignored it and focused on the changes within my own body.
Swinging the Breaker with a body freed of all its limits delivered a rush of coolness that no soda gulped down with food stuck in your throat could ever hope to match. It felt as though soda, not blood, was coursing through my veins.
Even the simple act of swinging put a pleasant pressure of growth on my body, but when I struck the Core, the impact dispersed across my entire frame, and I could sense my durability being forged.
"So this really is different from a human body."
The moment I truly registered my new body, the flames running along my veins began to seep out through my skin.
"AHAHAHA! Ping, are you seeing this? This is the best! I love it!"
"Best? What do you mean, best?! What kind of lunacy is this?! No Constellation in history has ever done something like this!"
"Wrong. From where I'm standing, this is the greatest training there is for me!"
I could feel the trait of toughness applying itself to the Core as well.
"Ping! Can't you make my Breaker heavier and harder?"
"I beg your pardon? You want this brutish thing to be even MORE brutish?"
Perhaps it was the madness radiating off me—flames spewing from every inch of my body as I spoke—but Ping recoiled in horror.
"Brutish? Bru-TISH?! What's wrong with my Breaker! It's a hammer, an axe, and a spear all at once! Where else are you going to find a weapon this versatile?!"
I grabbed Ping with both hands and spun it around and around, and it shrieked in desperation.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! A magnificent weapon! The great and glorious Breaker!"
The instant I let go, Ping wobbled down to the ground in a dizzy haze.
"You should've said so from the start."
It took a little while for Ping to come back to its senses.
"So—is there a way to do it or not?"
"You simply pour divine power into it to turn it into a divine weapon."
"If it takes divine power, shouldn't it be a holy weapon? Why call it a divine weapon?"
"Th-that... the alternative just didn't sound very... tasteful..."
"Ah! ...Actually, I never really wanted to know."
An awkward silence drifted by for a moment.
"So I just channel my divine power into the Breaker?"
"Yes! Yes! But you don't have all that much divine power yet, so it won't become a divine weapon in one go—you'll need to keep at it whenever you find the time."
"Then I can train while feeding divine power into the Breaker. Perfect."
"You're going to keep up THAT brutish training?"
"It suits me just fine. But how do I actually go about infusing divine power?"
"This flame coiling around you at this very moment—that is divine power."
Ping circled around me as it spoke.
"Feel how this flame lies under your command, and try moving it with a calm, settled mind."
Sssss—haaaah—
After a few deep breaths, I could feel the rampaging divine power beginning to settle.
"Huh. This feels different from mana."
"Mana develops alongside your awakened power as you steadily train it."
"Right. Mana has to be tempered steadily along with your awakened power. I never really understood my own trait, so my mana growth lagged behind too."
Ping patted my slumped, self-loathing shoulders with its tiny hands.
"It's okay. It's okay. All of that is water under the bridge now. The Kanghyuk down on Earth is going to grow by leaps and bounds from here on out."
Thinking about my past self stirred up that restless feeling all over again.
"Part of me resents him, honestly—it feels like I'm the only one who had to suffer. Once he's made his fortune off the stocks, he'll finally be able to train in earnest, so I'll just have to drive him even harder."
I wasn't about to be the only one who got the short end of the stick. Fired up by that thought, I burned with purpose.
"Good grief. The person down there IS Kanghyuk, you know. Not some stranger."
"But I can't help feeling cheated when I'm the only one who suffered. Besides, what's wrong with a little hard training?"
Ping let out a small sigh of surrender.
"Save the question of what to do with Kanghyuk for later, and please just practice handling your divine power properly."
At Ping's words, I closed my eyes and tried to feel the flow within my body.
Judging by how flames once surged through me, there has to be something more to it.
Starting from my toes, I tensed and released my muscles step by step, watching for any reaction.
This body truly is on a whole different level.
It was a far cry from my old, injury-riddled frame that used to creak and groan past a certain limit. Back then, the moment I put real force into my hand, pain would come creeping in; now there was a boundless freedom to it, as if I could pour strength in forever.
As I fidgeted around on my own, I felt something hot wriggling in a corner of my body.
Do I need to yank hard on this flame's reins?
The sensation of handling it for the first time was utterly foreign, but I concentrated hard, determined to subdue the flame by sheer force of will.
Listen for once, will you!
But the divine power only grew more violent, flaunting its presence all the louder, refusing to move at my command.
There has to be a method. There has to.
"You mustn't try to subdue it with force. Who on earth uses their own body by subjugating it?"
That single remark from Ping flipped my thinking on its head.
Fire moves toward whatever it can burn.
The moment I abandoned the idea of subduing the divine power and instead handled it as if laying out kindling for it, the flame began to race through my entire body.
So there are paths that run fast and open, and others that clog up and wind around.
Keeping up my observation, I fixed my focus solely on the routes where the divine power flowed fastest and most freely. And sure enough, the power began to sprint along those paths.
"That's exactly it!"
Once I understood the method, everything after came easy. A perfected body, it seemed, hadn't earned the name for nothing—before long, the divine power was circulating along those channels even without my conscious direction.
"Thanks, Ping. That really helped."
"You think that's all I've got?!"
Watching Ping puff itself up with pride, a laugh bubbled out of me.
"All right, all right. Ping is the best! The greatest helper in all the realms!"
"Keep going. MORE!"
Only after several solid minutes of praise—long past the point where I'd wrung out every compliment I had left—was Ping finally satisfied.
"Shall we leave it at this for today?"
"For today?"
"Now then, next I'll teach you about the scale of a Constellation's power."
Ping breezily talked right over my question.
"The scale of my power?"
"You've only just become a Constellation, so your divine power is red."
"It's not that color for everyone?"
"The word 'Constellation' also means being a star itself."
"What do stars have to do with the color red?"
"Red, orange, white, blue-white, blue. Just as a star's color shifts with its temperature, the color of divine power shifts with the magnitude of a Constellation's strength. Did you never study?"
"Sorry. Studying wasn't really my thing. No, wait—why am I apologizing? So what if I wasn't good at studying!"
Ping spoke with such breezy certainty that I'd apologized before I even realized it, but I quickly pulled myself together.
"Your divine power is red because your strength as a Constellation is still weak!"
"I'm sorry for being ignorant, and I'm truly, truly sorry for being weak."
"No need at all! With me, Ping, at your side, you'll become a splendid Constellation in no time!"
Ping completely failed to register my sarcasm. Or maybe it did register it and simply couldn't have cared less.
"So when I get stronger, the color of my divine power changes?"
"Yes! It will shift, little by little."
"Then from here on out, it's training."
With those words, I focused every nerve I had on connecting the channels of divine power winding through my body all the way to the Breaker in my hands.
"Thank goodness this old friend came along with me, instead of me arriving with nothing but my bare body."
"That would be me who brought it along, you know!"
My concentration shattered in an instant.
"You? You brought this?"
"Of course! You were clutching it so preciously. I could tell it was something you treasured dearly. Sneaking it in alongside you was no small feat, I'll have you know! Of course, that's also why there's nothing whatsoever else in your divine realm."
"It's fine. This is all I need! Thank you. I was about to end up doing bare-knuckle punching drills instead."
"Ahem. Kindly engrave the greatness of Ping into your heart once more."
I gave Ping's head a light tap with my fingertip, then turned my focus back to the Breaker. As the moments passed, the divine power flooded into the Breaker like water carving a channel through a dam—smooth and unstoppable.
"Huh? Ping. What's happening to it? Is this okay?"
Blood-red cracks began to spread across every part of the Breaker—the shaft, the hammerhead, the axe blade, the spear tip, all of it.
"It's not about to shatter, is it? It looks ready to fall to pieces!"
"That's because your divine power is red, Lord Constellation. Just give it a moment."
Ping said, clicking its tongue.
VMMM. VMMM.
A short while later, the vibration deepened, and what I'd taken for cracks soaked an even deeper red, spreading out into geometric patterns—shapes like magic circles or forks of lightning, nothing like the flowing curves of Damascus steel.
"The Breaker feels like part of my own body now. Is that how it's supposed to work?"
"The Breaker—now a newly forged divine weapon—has just linked itself to you, Lord Constellation."
"It's a good thing, either way?"
"Yes. Although—your reserve of divine power is just about drained now, so for the time being it will be difficult to hand Kanghyuk anything as a reward."
"That's fine. I can always toss him some empty-promise rewards."
"You really have become utterly shameless, haven't you."
I let Ping's words slide right past me.
"Now then—time for me to get serious too, don't you think?"
As the divine power began flowing through my entire body in earnest, the Breaker started to feel lighter. The instant I absentmindedly thought it would be even better heavier, a crushing weight pressed down on my hands.
"Oh, so THAT'S how it works?"
"What is?"
"The way to make the Breaker heavier and harder—you told me about it earlier."
"If you catch on this fast, what am I supposed to do? There went another chance for me to earn some praise...please forget I said that."
Acting as though I hadn't heard, I flooded both hands with strength and clamped down on the Breaker's shaft hard enough to crush stone.
"Heavier. Harder."
Savoring the weight bearing down on my hands, I began hammering the Core in rapid succession, faster than before.
"AAAGH! What kind of madness IS this?!"
I heard Ping's voice, but the deeper I sank into focus, the more the sounds around me faded away.
WHAM. WHAM. The satisfying resonance of blows against the Core filled the empty space.
"What! Why is the flame's temperature rising?! WHY does this brutish training actually work?!"
Ping's wails, naturally, never reached me. And so, March 17th drew near.