First, Learn to Stand
"With a bamboo sword?"
"That's right."
"You could get hurt."
At those words, Yoo Kangmin gave Yoon Seoha a look of pure incredulity. It was a worry he hadn't heard even when one hundred and twenty-seven supreme masters under heaven had surrounded him in the Valley of No Return.
"You don't need to worry about me."
"Still, just in case, maybe some protective gear—"
"What are you, a hobgoblin? You stronger than one of those?"
"Ugh."
At his flat refusal, Yoon Seoha adjusted her grip on the bamboo sword, squeezing it with the same force she was used to putting into her longsword.
"Here I come."
Yoon Seoha stamped hard against the floor.
"Power Strike!"
A faint light bloomed along the bamboo sword. Augmented by the skill, it plunged down toward Kangmin's shoulder. It carried enough force to fell a goblin in a single blow, but to Yoo Kangmin it was little different from a child's swing.
Thock. To give her a taste of the gulf between them first, he stopped the blade with a single finger.
"...!"
Yoon Seoha's eyes went wide. It felt as though a colossal mountain had just come crashing down on her. The skill's power steeped into the bamboo sword evaporated the instant it met Yoo Kangmin's finger.
"That's all?"
"Kgh!"
Yoon Seoha withdrew her bamboo sword. Only a single strike had been blocked, yet her flustered state was plain to see.
She hasn't grown at all.
Yoo Kangmin let out a sigh and stirred up a fragment of that day's memory.
"Remember how it felt fighting the goblins. How did you hold your sword then?"
"Ah."
Only then did Yoon Seoha grasp the problem.
What did I do back then?
Calling that day to mind, she slowly reshaped her stance. She loosened the tension from her body, slid her left foot forward, and lowered her center of gravity.
A flicker of intrigue rose in Yoo Kangmin's eyes. He had done no more than drop a single hint, yet the flaws he'd just pointed out had already been corrected to a fair degree.
Her ability to absorb a lesson passes, at least.
He drew back half a step. The bamboo sword whisked past just shy of his coat hem.
"Hyaah!"
Spurred on by frustration, Yoon Seoha attacked again and again. Not one blow so much as grazed him. Kangmin turned aside every strike with nothing more than a blocking finger or a tilt of the head.
Before long, an exhausted Yoon Seoha ground to a halt, breathing hard.
"Haa... haa..."
"That's enough. You can stop now. I've got the general picture."
"Of what?"
"Why you were always so weak."
Yoon Seoha's expression stiffened. Hadn't he told her, plain as day, at the convenience store that she had talent? Now that he'd actually tested her, had he changed his mind?
"You said I had talent."
"You do."
"Then why—"
Yoo Kangmin plucked the bamboo sword from her hand.
"The habit of leaning on your skill has soaked into your body."
"Is it wrong for a hunter to use skills?"
"Not wrong. But you ought to know who's moving that sword."
"Who's moving it?"
"Exactly. Is it you swinging the sword? Or the skill?"
"..."
Yoon Seoha had no answer for that.
"No one has ever taught you how to hold a sword, have they? They only ever taught you how to use skills."
"That's right."
A hunter's worth was decided by the skills they carried: the skill's grade, its power, its cooldown, its mana cost. The standard by which a hunter's strength was judged began and ended with skills.
And so most of what the awakening academies taught revolved around skills as well. Students did learn to handle weapons, to be fair, but only the barest fundamentals — how to grip the hilt, which way to angle the edge, how not to hurt their own allies. Why bother with more, when the body moved on its own the moment a skill activated?
Someone who had never once held a sword could flay the hide off a hardened monster with a sword-type skill. Someone who had never drawn a bow could strike a target dozens of meters out with an archery-type skill. In a world like that, spending years to master the sword was dismissed as a fool's errand. Skills forcibly corrected their user's every movement, so it was far more efficient to pour that time into one more activation and another tick of proficiency.
[Don't learn the sword. Learn sword skills.]
That was the first piece of common sense drilled into every student at the awakening academies — and it was why kendo, fencing, and the other established martial arts had withered after the Gates opened. Yoon Seoha had never once thought to question it.
"I was taught that since skills move your body for you, there's no need to go learn swordsmanship separately."
"Right. Figured as much."
Nothing about it was new to him. Modern society prized efficiency above all else, didn't it? Hunter development, too, would surely have standardized around whatever method was fastest and most efficient.
Not that any of that is unique to the modern age.
Murim had been exactly the same. The Murim Alliance, the Supremacy Alliance — even the Demonic Cult, for all its fearsome reputation — each had, in the end, been prone to stagnating in its own ways.
"But look here. All well and good — so what do you do when a situation comes where you can't use your skills? How will you fight then?"
"Th-that's..."
She had been exactly like that after using Power Strike at the convenience store. While the skill sat on cooldown, blocking even a goblin's swings had been a struggle. Yet when she'd moved her body as Yoo Kangmin directed, hadn't she cut down goblins without a single skill?
"A skill is a tool, nothing more. What do you think you're doing, handing your body over to a tool?"
"Ah..."
"I put a finely honed masterwork blade in your hand, and instead of learning the sword, you just sit back and wait for the blade to fight on its own. That's what it comes down to."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Give up the sword first."
"What?"
"From today on, you don't touch a sword for a while."
Bewilderment spread across Yoon Seoha's face.
"But I'm a swordswoman?"
"You can't even swing one properly. What swordswoman?"
"..."
"First, you learn how to stand."
"How to... stand?"
"Feet apart."
Yoon Seoha obeyed in a daze. Kangmin nudged the spacing of her feet with the tip of his own.
"Drop your hips."
"Like this?"
"Lower."
Yoon Seoha bent her knees.
"Lower."
"Lower still?"
"Until your hips come down to the height of your knees."
With an uneasy look, she sank lower. When her thighs came level with the floor, Kangmin nodded.
"Good."
"What kind of stance is this supposed to be?"
"Horse stance."
"You're not telling me to just stay like this, are you?"
"Hold out for one sijin."
"One sijin? You mean an hour?"
"No. Two hours."
"Two hours?!"
Kangmin lightly raised the bamboo sword and rapped her thigh.
Whap!
"Ow!"
"Your stance broke."
"Come on, two hours right off the bat is impossible!"
"If you'd rather pay a million won and go home still weak, you're free to quit."
"That's..."
"There is a fine sword inside you."
Yoo Kangmin pressed down on Yoon Seoha's shoulders, lowering her stance again.
"But its scabbard is rotten."
"The scabbard?"
"Your body."
"Wh-wh-what's wrong with my body?!"
Yoon Seoha's face went red.
Yoo Kangmin wore an expression of complete bafflement.
"Why are you turning red?"
"Because you suddenly looked at my body and called it rotten!"
"I meant your skeleton and muscles."
"..."
"What did you take that to mean?"
"I wasn't thinking anything, okay?"
Yoon Seoha raised her voice for no good reason. Yoo Kangmin didn't bother to press the point. With the bamboo sword, he indicated in turn her shoulders, her hips, her thighs.
"Your lower body is underdeveloped compared to your upper. Your ankles and knees are locked stiff, and you don't know how to move your hips."
"My stats are low, so there's nothing I can do about it."
"Low stats are not the reason you can't use your body properly."
"They're not?"
"Because you can't use your body properly, those low stats of yours produce power even more pathetic than they should be."
The fact that she was F-rank could not be changed. But not everyone at F-rank put out the same strength. Yoon Seoha wasn't even using the strength she did have properly.
"If what you have is ten, then until now you've been using three or four at best."
"You're saying I haven't even used half?"
"I'm being generous."
"..."
"So fix your stance first."
Lips jutting in a pout, Yoon Seoha lowered her hips once more.
Five minutes passed.
"Nngh..."
Yoon Seoha's thighs had begun to tremble. By the ten-minute mark, sweat was trickling down her forehead.
"Hips."
Whap! The bamboo sword gave her lower back a light smack.
"Ow!"
"Your back bent."
"I've been holding this stance the whole time — how could it not bend?!"
"If you've got strength left to talk, go lower."
"Devil..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
Gritting her teeth, Yoon Seoha sank back down. It felt as if her thighs were being scorched. Even fighting goblins had never been this brutal.
"How long has it been?"
"Seven minutes."
"You said ten minutes earlier!"
"I'm not counting the time your stance was broken."
"Who does that?!"
"I do."
Only then did Yoon Seoha understand: she had handed a million won to the wrong man. But the transfer had already gone through. If only for the sake of that money, she could not afford to quit.
"Knees track over your toes."
Yoo Kangmin squared up the position of her knees with the bamboo sword.
"Press the floor with your whole sole. No tension in the toes."
"Like this?"
"Your hips are drifting back."
"Ngh."
"Relax the shoulders. And don't hold your breath."
Following his instructions, Yoon Seoha steadied her breathing — a slow inhale through the nose, a long exhale out.
At first she was too busy enduring the pain to notice anything. But as her breathing settled, things began, little by little, to change.
Pressing down through her soles, she felt the weight that had pitched forward spread evenly across both legs. Her swaying upper body slowly found its center again. Her thighs still ached as though they would tear apart, but she no longer felt she would collapse then and there.
Huh?
Yoon Seoha sensed the change in her own body. All she had done was adjust the placement of her feet and her breathing — and yet her stance had become something entirely unlike the one from moments before.
Interest kindled in Yoo Kangmin's eyes as he watched.
Quick.
Tell her once, and she never repeated the same mistake twice. Even with her concentration shredded by pain, she took in each instruction and worked it into her own body.
A talent you'd struggle to find even in Murim.
Yoo Kangmin had crossed paths with every manner of prodigy there was, and measured against them, Yoon Seoha's talent fell short by no great margin.
And yet she's lived her whole life as an F-rank. Her luck must have been utter garbage.
She had almost certainly worked herself half to death. And just as certainly, the results had never matched the effort.
Of course they didn't. Your talent was never in your skills — it's in the martial arts. If you'd learned them properly from the very beginning... would you have made it to the Sword Empress's level, I wonder?
Yoo Kangmin huffed a quiet laugh.
The Sword Empress, hm. Yes. I'll simply teach her the Sword Empress's arts. Fitting, really — the girl does favor the sword.
A flawless blueprint of how to develop Yoon Seoha from here on was already taking shape in his mind. Polish her properly, and she would become a second Sword Empress — and a rock-solid cash cow.
Some thirty minutes later, Yoon Seoha's knees gave a violent shudder.
"Hnngh..."
In the end, one knee dropped to the floorboards with a thump.
"Finished already?"
Yoo Kangmin's voice was utterly indifferent — a tone that said she was welcome to give up.
Hands braced on the floor, Yoon Seoha gulped down ragged breaths. She wanted nothing more than to flop over right where she was.
"No."
Even so, she pushed herself back up. She refused to give up.
At that, Yoo Kangmin asked again.
"Why did you get back up?"
"Because I paid you."
"The million would've gone to waste?"
"That's part of it."
Yoon Seoha bit down hard on her lip.
"I don't want to be thrown away again for being weak."
"..."
"If I can't even endure this much, nothing will ever change. So I'm going to see it through, whatever it takes."
"Oh ho."
Yoo Kangmin regarded her in silence for a long moment.
Talented people were a dime a dozen. But just as numerous were those who trusted their talent alone and shrank from painful training — and every one of them, upon reaching a certain realm, inevitably found themselves walled in. Those who survived to the very end, on the other hand, all shared one simple trait: they stood back up after every fall. That one plain difference, over the span of decades, widened into a gulf as vast as heaven and earth.
So she's more than just talent.
She was more than worth teaching. And her heart was sound, too.
Yoo Kangmin raised the bamboo sword once more.
"We start over from the top."
"What?"
"Your stance broke, didn't it?"
"That's just cruel!"
"Talking back."
Whap!
"Ow!"
Yoon Seoha's shriek rang out through the dojo.