A Day's Blade Is a Day's Blade
“H-Help!!”
The woman who looked like the child’s parents was sprawled on the sidewalk, screaming.
It was a kidnapping right in the heart of Seoul during broad daylight.
“Quick, call the police!”
“That guy... he’s an Awakened kidnapper, isn’t he?”
A masked man clutched the child in one hand and a knife in the other as he fled.
Soon his figure grew hazy and he began to turn transparent along with the boy.
The criminal had an illusion skill.
“What kind of...
I didn’t even finish Cha Seo-rin’s words before I bolted forward.
“Oppa, wait!”
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Cha Seo-rin had spent the entire day trying not to draw attention to herself, so I figured I’d handle it alone.
Plus, the clothes I’d bought at the department store were still in the bag.
“The kidnapper just vanished!”
“When’s the police coming?!”
“Call the guild!”
I pushed through the panicked crowd and focused mana in my eyes.
It was pitifully weak F-rank mana.
But I knew how to use it in infinite ways.
This was more than enough.
‘Where did you go?’
A faint trail of the man’s mana led my way.
The illusion skill had let me see which direction his mana flowed.
I chased that trail at full speed.
After tracking him for a while, we reached a deserted alley.
The clues disappeared inside a small, dimly lit building.
‘As expected, shady creeps hide in places like this.’
I muttered my disappointment and stepped inside.
The interior was surprisingly spacious.
From there, a faint presence echoed from the smallest room at the deepest end.
‘This is it.’
I switched my focus to my ears this time.
Inside, I could hear the child’s faint sobbing and the voices of several men.
“A brat with no dried blood on his head is all dolled up in brand-name clothes.”
“For this much of a kid, even the ‘higher-ups’ should be satisfied.”
This was clearly a solid criminal case.
I kicked the door open without hesitation.
Bang!
Inside lay the bound child, and three massive men.
The moment they saw me, their faces froze.
“What... who the hell is this?”
“How did you know we were here?”
“This brat... he didn’t even use a skill?”
“N-No, I did! H-How did you... track me?”
They muttered among themselves for a moment, then drew knives from their waists.
“We... you actually came straight to our hideout.”
“Idiot. You came alone?”
They looked confident with their blades, or maybe just relying on numbers.
I didn’t care which.
I was simply offering one last chance.
“Don’t give me one. Hand over the kid and get lost.”
I kept it short.
I didn’t want to spill blood over monsters... much less humans.
“What did you say?”
“Awakened? You look more like E or D-rank.”
“Hey, me and my buddy here are C-class! And the boss is B-rank!”
They seemed not to recognize me.
If they had, this messy fight would never have happened.
‘That’s why reputation matters.
I can win before I even draw my weapon.’
“I’m not famous enough yet.”
The three men in front of me had no idea what I was thinking as they closed in with sharp knives.
“You’re no butcher, huh? What are you trying to prove?”
‘No butcher’s knife.’
They were right—I didn’t have one.
I’d just come out for a date with Seo-rin.
But luckily, I had a handful of mana.
“The hand itself is a blade.”
“...What?”
“What are you saying, you crazy bastard?”
I spread my mana along the edge of my right hand.
Thud!
The front man’s neck took the hit.
Crunch!
A clean sound of bones snapping.
His eyes rolled back as foam filled his mouth and he dropped.
“Haa...
Thud!
“What... what did you just do?”
The second man’s skull exploded under my palm strike.
Crack!
“Damn it.”
Only the boss remained.
He looked startled but tried to keep his cool.
He swung his sword down at my head.
I barely dodged by an inch.
Boom!
The blade slammed into the ground where my head had been.
I used the opening to slash his neck with my hand edge.
Thud!
“What the...?”
He looked stronger than I expected.
“Cough... hah... this...
“Pretty sturdy. Not something even B-rank can ignore.”
“F-class... how dare you! I’m built tougher than most A-rankers! Your little hand edge...!”
He still swung wildly.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
But I wasn’t going to take that.
I dodged and calculated the perfect strike.
‘He’s not completely defenseless... I’ll keep slashing with the edge.’
It would work, but it wasn’t my style.
I preferred extreme efficiency.
‘Just end it with the next hit.’
This time I focused mana on the tip of my middle finger.
“Die, you bastard!”
The man charged in frenzy, sensing danger.
I stepped forward first.
Then I sliced his torso diagonally with the mana-charged fingertip.
Slash!
Blood sprayed from the deep gash.
***
Back in the other world, when I was playing hero.
The day I first took little Elysia as my disciple.
The very first thing I taught her was handling a sword with mana.
“You’ve gotten really good at encasing your whole body in mana.”
“Thank you, Master!”
Elysia’s talent with mana, her passion for swordsmanship, and her clear purpose to slay monsters made her strength grow daily.
That day I was explaining the intersection of mana and sword techniques.
“It’s a bit early, but I can show you a more advanced use.”
Elysia’s eyes sparkled as she fixed on my sword-wielding figure.
“The basic way to use mana with sword is encasing your whole body in mana.”
The sword in my hand began to glow with a faint golden light as it drank in my mana.
“If you want explosive power with less mana, do this.”
I gathered the mana inside the sword to the very tip of the blade.
The compressed mana at the edge released a golden flash.
“Oh... amazing!”
“It’s cool, but watch this.”
I kept the same stance and lightly swung the sword.
In front of us was a training dummy made of mithril, famous across the continent for being the toughest metal.
Slash!
It cut clean through, far beyond mithril’s reputation.
“In... incredible!”
Elysia’s eyes were huge as she watched.
Among the kingdom’s top knights, only a few could even touch mithril.
I had cut the training dummy made of it without using much strength at all.
“Try it yourself.”
“Yes!”
Elysia condensed mana at the tip of her sword exactly as I had.
She did the gathering without issue.
The problem came when swinging.
Crash!
The blade snapped instead of cutting the mithril dummy.
“Ah...”
“Because you only encased the tip in mana, if you don’t hit exactly right, the sword gets damaged.”
Focusing mana at the tip increases power, but it also makes the rest of the body vulnerable.
The key is keeping just the right distance so the tip grazes the target.
Too close and the sword breaks. Too far and it misses.
“Practice adjusting the distance. If you do it right, it can become your trump card.”
“Yes!”
Elysia’s eyes shone as she listened and kept swinging.
***
Deep inside the dark building.
The two men lay broken-boned and foaming, while the big man had a massive sword wound across his chest and was bleeding out.
“Ah, the clothes Seo-rin bought. They’re already stained with blood.”
I stood between them, wiping the blood off my hands and clothes, then freed the kidnapped child.
“You okay?”
“Haa...
Even though he’d been beaten badly, he was only four or five years old.
He wasn’t old enough to speak properly.
I immediately called the police from there.
“W-We’ve received a report... ha!”
The officers were already on the way, having received the kidnapping report and searched the area.
“You took down these three men alone?”
“Yes. Even though I’m an Awakened.”
“Oh... is it the Terda Guild?”
“Correct.”
The officers recognized me and their eyes brightened.
“Of course! We saw your strength online. You really pulled this off?”
“I just happened to be there.”
“Still, many people sit on the sidelines... thanks to you we finally caught them.”
“They seem pretty notorious.”
“Pfft, don’t even mention it. They’re members of the Germon organization.”
“Germon?”
The police described it as a notorious criminal syndicate of unlicensed Awakened who gathered to commit all kinds of crimes.
“We have Awakened officers too, chasing them, but their methods are so sneaky it’s hard to get a tail.”
“If we interrogate them, won’t something come out?”
“You’re saying it like it’s easy.”
Even low-level street thugs go insane the moment they fall into police hands.
“Gathering info is already difficult.”
“Still, these were some of the more troublesome low-level guys, and you handled them.”
“I just did my job. And please take the child safely to his parents.”
“Of course!”
The scene was quickly cleared.
The mother hugged her crying child and kept thanking me.
The men I’d caught were still dazed as they were led away by the police.
After things settled, Seo-rin appeared.
“Finally.”
“Did you want to advertise that we had a date? The police were swarming when I hid until you got here.”
She picked up the clothes from the department store and came over.
“You gave me clothes and they got dirty already. Really? You can’t live like this.”
“Sorry.”
Seo-rin reached for the dirty sleeve.
Flash!
A soft light and the stains vanished.
“Oh, you can do that too?”
“It’s a skill. Not just combat-related.”
“...You’ve got everything.”
Seo-rin straightened my clothes and took my hand.
“Let’s get home. I’m tired.”
“...Sorry.”
“Huh? What for?”
“You just ran off without a word.”
She smiled softly at my apology.
“Oppa’s just like he was back then.”
“Back then?”
“Oppa was always like that as a kid. Too kind-hearted—you’d jump in if you saw any trouble.”
I thought that was from my life as a hero, but apparently not.
“I did that?”
“Yeah.”
Seo-rin answered shortly and looked away.
“I liked that kind of oppa.”
A faint blush appeared on Seo-rin’s cheek as she glanced back.
I’d always thought my kindness came from the hero days, but it turned out there was more.