Grandfather's Rebirth
"Sleep."
A soft hush settled over the room.
In the small hours of the morning, Do-ha slipped quietly into his grandfather's room and cast the Sleep spell, sinking Baek Chul into a deep, dreamless rest.
The old man's body went slack. The moment he was fully under, Do-ha uncorked the bottle of Mi-ta-seong-su.
He had brought it up from the underground in a plastic bottle; once back on Earth, he had transferred it into a ceramic vessel.
Just one drop…
Two drops by accident, and the surging energy would run wild enough to put his grandfather's life in danger.
A single bead fell.
"Perfect."
The instant that drop of Mi-ta-seong-su touched Baek Chul's lips, Do-ha sealed the bottle and set both hands on his grandfather's stomach and forehead.
A low, crackling current of power began to flow.
"Canteas. Put up a shield around us."
"Okay."
Leaning against the wall, Canteas nodded and spread his magic.
"And while I'm doing Jin-gi-do-in, impurities are going to start coming out of Grandfather's body."
"Ah—got it."
Canteas understood at once. The moment he saw waste seeping free, he would cast Clean.
Now—focus.
Do-ha closed his eyes and began to master the tremendous yin energy coursing through Baek Chul's body. The cold was so fierce that frost formed not only on Do-ha's hands but across the air around his grandfather as well.
…His body is in worse shape than I thought.
After reading Baek Chul's condition, Do-ha let out a long breath.
His grandfather had never been truly healthy—not since his late twenties, if one was precise. Born with the frame of a born strongman, Baek Chul had still suffered a catastrophic accident. Construction materials had come crashing down toward Do-ha's grandmother and father as they passed a worksite; Baek Chul had sprinted in and shoved them clear. He had come within a breath of death's door for it.
Three iron rebars through the abdomen, one through the knee—saving Grandmother and Dad.
After that, his stamina had only declined. His steel-hard constitution had somehow pulled him through, but he had never recovered the body he once had.
Time to give it back.
Power surged. Specks of light began to glitter and rise around Baek Chul's body.
"What the—?!"
Canteas, arms folded, nearly jumped out of his skin.
He's running Jin-gi-do-in and casting Great Heal at the same time??
Either one alone was hard enough. Jin-gi-do-in demanded ferocious concentration: you had to govern the patient's energy channels and blood vessels while monitoring your own body at the same time. And on top of that, he was weaving in a sixth-circle spell like Great Heal? Without two brains, it was nearly impossible.
"Does this guy actually have two brains?"
The old wounds…
While Canteas muttered nonsense, Do-ha poured sweat into his work. He drove the energy flowing through Baek Chul's body straight into the places that had been injured decades ago—not to heal them, but to break them. He was deliberately reopening the damage.
The hospital did a decent job, but it was never perfect.
So he inflicted internal injuries on purpose, then restored them with Great Heal. Steel only grows harder the more you strike it. Flesh is the same. Tear a body and mend it, over and over, and it grows. Muscle works on that principle.
Good. The old injuries are fully healed. Now move the energy into the organs.
Do-ha drew a deep breath and set the power in motion once more.
A soft clatter of dishes.
"Did you both sleep well?"
"You're up?"
Do-ha and Canteas, already at breakfast, greeted Baek Chul as he stepped out of his room.
"You should have woken me. I would have cooked."
"Come on, Grandfather—I'm not a little kid. I'm not going to drag you out of bed just to make me breakfast."
"You little rascal. No matter how many decades pass, you'll always be a child to me."
Baek Chul ruffled Do-ha's hair, then reached for the glasses resting on the table. He needed to wash up and get to work.
He put them on—and frowned.
"Hm?"
The world through the lenses was a blur. He tilted his head and took them off.
"What is this? Why is everything so foggy with the glasses on? I had the prescription filled less than a year ago. Has my eyesight gotten worse, or—what—what is this?!"
Squinting into the mirror, Baek Chul saw a man with black hair staring back—and nearly fell over. It wasn't only the hair. The sagging skin had firmness again. Every age spot was gone. Yesterday he had looked every bit of seventy; today, at the oldest, he looked like a man in his early-to-mid forties.
"Wh… what on earth is going on?! Am I… dreaming?"
He pinched his own cheek in the glass. Skin that used to hang loose sprang back with real elasticity.
"Do… Do-ha, what happened to me?!"
"Grandfather. We need to talk."
"Talk?"
Seeing the seriousness on Do-ha's face, Baek Chul forced his shock down and took a seat at the table. Was this connected to the change in his appearance?
"Grandfather."
"Go on. Tell me."
"Would you be interested in learning martial arts?"
"Martial arts…?"
For the better part of an hour, Do-ha told him what had happened—not the whole truth, but a carefully stitched version of it.
"So… your Awakening ability was martial arts all along?"
"Yes."
"And I changed like this because an elixir put me through Hwangol-taltae—a full body reconstruction?"
"Yes."
Baek Chul had read plenty of wuxia novels in his youth, so he understood the words. Understanding them, however, did nothing to clear the daze.
"But why are you telling me to learn martial arts?"
"Because you have a dantian now, Grandfather."
"I do?"
Baek Chul pressed a hand to his solar plexus. The dantian actually sat below the navel, but he was nowhere near sensing it yet.
"As I recall, martial arts only reach true mastery if you start as a child…"
"That's true enough—but Hwangol-taltae put your body into the ideal state for learning."
Hey, Do-ha.
What?
Canteas sent a telepathic whisper.
Planning to drag your grandfather into the war too?
It made no sense. This was the same man who fretted endlessly over his grandfather getting hurt or falling ill—and now he wanted to teach him martial arts? Was it preparation for the coming fights with the Demon God Cult?
No. Even if Grandfather starts training now, putting him into real combat would be a stretch.
Then why teach him?
For Rejuvenation—Ban-ro-hwan-dong.
In the small hours, Do-ha had gotten greedy. He hadn't wanted mere decades of youth—he had wanted to roll the clock all the way back to boyhood. But that had been impossible no matter what he tried. Hwangol-taltae could be forced with a skilled practitioner and a fine elixir. True Rejuvenation, though, required the subject himself to learn martial arts and know how to draw energy from the dantian.
Ordinarily it takes enlightenment… but if I can just recover my old realm, I can force it. He still has to be able to circulate internal energy from his own dantian, though.
That was why he was asking his grandfather to train.
"Hmm. This is all rather sudden."
"Just think of it as exercise for your health."
If Do-ha admitted he wanted Rejuvenation, his grandfather would refuse on the spot. I don't need that much. You're pushing yourself too hard—and on and on. So Do-ha dressed it up.
"Take your time thinking it over. You've got a dantian now either way. Learning martial arts would be good for self-defense, too."
Do-ha turned his head and stepped back. His grandfather was sharp; keep pressing and he would see through it immediately.
"All right. I'll give it some thought."
"Yes."
"Heh. Live long enough and you really do see everything… Remarkable."
Baek Chul looked into the mirror and laughed, low and warm. He had felt the world shifting ever since elves, dwarves, and monsters first appeared—but living through something he had only ever read about as a boy still left him dazed and half-unbelieving.
A month after the connection to Belhart opened, the world had changed a great deal.
The elves and dwarves, shaken hardest of all, crossed over into Belhart. In their original dimensions they had possessed almost nothing that could be called history—yet Belhart held entire elven world-trees and the dwarven kingdom of Artlein. So the two races from other dimensions began migrating across and joining their own kind. Crossing over did not sever every tie. Their homes had changed; their workplaces had not. Dwarves and elves still reported to Earth for work as before.
After that, Dimerof and Emilton came to Earth and met the presidents of every nation. The heads of state gathered at the Hunter Association in Korea, and the Association President spent the entire day without a single meal, soaked through with sweat from head to toe.
Do-ha tapped at his phone, reading the news, and snorted.
China's still losing its mind.
Once Dimerof had met the presidents and laid out what Belhart was—the four continents, their differences, everything—China had immediately started insisting that every scrap of history on the Eastern Continent belonged to them. The Chinese premier had nearly died on the spot for it. Emilton had exploded: this was a completely unrelated dimension—what nonsense was he spouting? China was still flooding the press with articles claiming the Eastern Continent of Belhart was originally their history and their land.
I heard the Cheonwaecheon in China are furious that she threatened their premier…
Whatever those people tried, they would never lay a finger on Emilton. Dimerof stood at her side.
And Je-u is there too. If that guy finds out…
He didn't even want to imagine it. Je-u's nature was gentle, but once his temper truly broke, even Do-ha struggled to rein him in. Decades ago, when the Blood Cult and the Demon God Cult had joined hands and wiped out a village, Namgung Je-u's eyes had rolled white with rage—and five mountains had been erased while Do-ha tried to stop him.
That kind of steel is exactly why he sits as Leader of the Martial Alliance…
If Namgung Je-u saw what China was doing now, he would not let it pass quietly.
"Has Dimerof started diplomacy with the other countries?"
"No. I told him not to yet."
"Korea either?"
"Yeah."
Dimerof would judge for himself and handle things well enough in time. For the moment, Korea was no exception—it sat under the same hold as every other nation.
I'll make good use of that later.
Do-ha's mouth curved in a thin, wicked smile, and he chuckled under his breath. Canteas watched him and shook his head.
"You're cooking up something shady again…"
"You're right. I was thinking about how to work you even harder."
"Why me?! I'm already miserable enough stuck outside my real body—"
In that instant—
A colossal force roared into being and began to crush the space around them. More precisely, it was aimed at Do-ha. If power of that scale detonated here, no one nearby would be able to draw breath.
"Huh? This energy—don't tell me…"
"Haa…"
The familiar pressure hit, and Do-ha's face went hard. Why was this aura standing on his doorstep?
He swallowed, pulled on his shoes, and stepped outside.
"Of course it was you."
Do-ha scratched his head as he came out of the villa—and met the eyes of the man glaring at him.
"Baek Do-ha. You son of a b—"
Namgung Je-u stood there, face dark with fury.