Eternity
Agency Headquarters, front courtyard.
Yeon So-hyeon’s side.
Temporary field command.
“We’ve captured those who attempted to flee through the secret passages under surveillance…!”
“Combat results report coming in from Detachment Four…!”
The temporary field command was a whirlwind of motion. Agency martial artists who had not fallen to corruption raced frantically in every direction, and the air rang with their voices and the clatter of their heavy armor.
In stark contrast to that frantic scene, a middle-aged man sat lounging against a wall in one corner. No one so much as shot him a dirty look for idling amid the chaos—because everyone knew exactly who he was.
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom.
“Yaaawn.”
As if his sprawling posture weren’t enough, he even yawned. At last one of the Agency’s commanding officers, Myeong, approached and spoke.
“…Senior Tal-myeong-gwi-geom, temporary though this may be—are you not the commander of the Special Task Force?”
“You’re doing fine.”
Myeong blinked at the non sequitur.
“Pardon?”
“I’ve been watching you work. You’re handling it well. Hard to believe you’re usually a field man.”
Agency Command Officer Myeong—the very man who had first alerted Yeon So-hyeon to the Agency’s corruption—gave a bitter smile.
“…Is that so? Under ordinary circumstances I would take it as an honor.”
He lifted his mask. The face of a man in his thirties was etched with exhaustion.
“Right now, it isn’t only me. Everyone—my brothers, my organization—is simply doing everything in our power to clean up the mess we made.”
His tone turned bleak as he continued.
“…Fortunately, those who evacuated during the enemy’s surprise assault are rejoining us, and the number of defectors is rising. We’re managing to bring things under control somehow.”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom gave a slow nod.
“I see.”
He understood the hearts of the Agency martial artists sprinting every which way, mouths reeking of bile beneath that crushing heavy armor.
“A fine sense of responsibility.”
Myeong pressed him again.
“And you, Senior Tal-myeong-gwi-geom—”
“Drop the damn ‘Senior.’”
“Is it really all right for you to just sit here like this?”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom waved a hand as if the whole subject bored him.
“The squad leaders of every unit are handling things just fine on their own. Is there some kind of problem?”
“No, it isn’t that. It’s that as commander—”
“Everyone else hates taking the top seat, so I just put on the armband. That’s all.” He grumbled under his breath. “I can’t stand tedious posts myself.”
Myeong looked thoroughly fed up.
“Still, no matter how you put it—”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom simply turned his back and stretched out full length, as if the conversation itself were a nuisance.
“The Special Task Force is crawling with men who’ve held every kind of post and smashed through every kind of mess. If I start throwing my weight around just because I’m wearing the armband, I’ll only get in the way of the people on the ground.”
For all his lazy manner, his words came out measured and clear, almost as if he were explaining a lesson.
“The right person in the right place. A commander should act like a commander. All I need to do is hold my post and answer requests the moment they come in.”
“Ah…!”
Myeong could not help a soft sound of admiration. The words made Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s conduct snap into perfect sense.
“Command Officer, sir! Report!”
An Agency martial artist burst in at a run.
“Word just came in—the noise from inside the Headquarters has stopped!”
Myeong’s brow twitched.
“…Understood. Maintain surveillance.”
Once the man had dashed out again, Myeong spoke in a heavy voice.
“If the outer watch can no longer hear the noise…”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom’s light reply cut across his grim tone.
“It means every fight within earshot is finished.”
He yawned once more and went on.
“Looks like they’ve gone all the way inside now.”
“Inside… then all that remains is the Headquarters command room…”
Myeong lifted a trembling gaze toward the main building of the Agency Headquarters. The fortress-like compound had always felt reassuring. Now the sight of it was nothing short of terrifying.
“…Wouldn’t it be better to send support even now?”
“Support?”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom snorted a laugh, and Myeong hurried to add:
“You told us yourself that the First Young Master entered in person.”
Worry filled his voice.
“I’ve heard the rumors of his martial prowess, and I know the Sword Venerable is with him as well. But still…”
He trailed off. Even a Sword Venerable who had once defined an era was now far too old—and no matter how formidable the First Young Master’s skill, he was still far too young.
“Not only I, but every martial artist of the Agency is worried—”
“Pfft—!”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom could hold it in no longer. Laughter exploded out of him.
“Pwahahahahaha!”
“Senior…?”
At his full-throated roar, startled looks poured in from every side—not only from Command Officer Myeong.
“Puhiihihihi…!”
Tal-myeong-gwi-geom laughed so hard he toppled over backward onto the ground and still could not stop.
Agency Headquarters main building, command room.
A sticky silence ruled the space. Everyone still remaining in the command room held positions that made them core personnel of the Agency—yet not a single one of them opened their mouth, as if by unspoken agreement.
Anxious eyes wandered the empty air, lacking even the courage to meet one another’s gaze. People started to speak and shut their mouths again, and with every aborted attempt the silence grew heavier.
“Damn it!”
Bang!
Unable to bear the atmosphere any longer, the Deputy Director slammed his fist down on the table and roared.
“Just when the hell is a report coming in?!”
His face had gone deathly pale as he spat fire.
“How long has it been since the sounds of battle stopped…! Did we hold them? Have the enemies withdrawn?!”
He pounded his own chest in frustration.
“The enemy was two men at most, weren’t they?! Why is there still no word from the scout party we sent to check the defense lines—!”
“Now—!”
The Agency martial artist in charge of contact with the scout party shot to his feet and shouted.
“A transmission report is coming in from the scout party!”
Every eye in the room locked onto him. A thin thread of hope hung from those stares.
As the transmission stretched on, the martial artist’s face turned a darker and darker shade of ashen gray. The Deputy Director’s patience snapped.
“What are they saying? Speak—!”
“Scout results on the defense lines…”
The martial artist’s lips trembled as he forced the words out.
“Multiple critically wounded beyond movement, and the dead… only those found.”
Sharp intakes of breath hissed around the room.
“Collapse of the defense lines on every floor confirmed. The martial artists holding them are, for all practical purposes, annihilated.”
The man delivering the report sank bonelessly into his seat.
“And two individuals believed to be the enemy were sighted.”
He covered his face with both hands.
“…That was the scout party’s final report. The transmission cut off.”
One by one, the people in the command room bowed their heads.
“Th-that’s… impossible…”
The Deputy Director shook his head with a vacant look.
“It can’t be. It simply can’t.”
The situation defied every scrap of common sense he possessed.
“Every defense line broken by only two men! That kind of thing can’t be possible!”
So many of the Agency’s martial artists. Commander-level masters who had crossed the wall.
“…You’re saying they were all annihilated by just two people?”
Had the Supreme Family Head himself returned from lying like a corpse without consciousness? He kept shaking his head with a dazed expression, denying a reality he could not accept.
“I-it’s a lie! A false report! Th-that’s why—form another scout party! Confirm it again—!”
What cut through his rambling was the Agency Director’s voice, spoken through clenched teeth.
“…They’re here!”
Here?
The Deputy Director turned a blank face toward the Director—and in that instant—
KWAANG—!
With a thunderclap of sound as if a blasting charge had detonated, the command room’s thick iron door shattered to pieces.
…
Kwachik—!
Those standing near the entrance never even managed a scream as the shredded fragments of the iron door tore through them and ricocheted in every direction.
“Cough, cough…!”
In the aftermath of something closer to an explosion than a breach in a sealed space, dust filled the command room and stole everyone’s sight.
“Gyaaah…!”
“S-someone, h-help…!”
Coughs and screams from those with little or no internal energy filled the chamber—yet almost no one could properly hear them. The explosion had brought a ringing tinnitus and the agony of ruptured eardrums.
Cheolpeok—, cheolpeok—.
Chunks of bodies torn apart by the pulverized iron door stuck to ceiling and walls, then dropped to the floor.
Jeobeok—, jeobeok—.
Even through that hellscape, the footsteps of two people approaching from beyond the dust-choked haze rang out with perfect clarity.
Warned by the Director, the Deputy Director had barely managed to raise his internal energy. Clutching a spinning head, he forced himself up from where he sat.
“…Remarkable power.”
“It’s a martial art called the Thundering Heaven-Piercing Cannon.”
Two voices reached his ears.
“I took what the previous head of the Yang family used and finished refining it completely.”
“As expected, extraordinary. And perhaps…?”
“As usual, I’ll have the secret manual delivered to your Mugong-hak-gwan through a messenger.”
“You have my thanks.”
Thundering Heaven-Piercing Cannon? The previous head of the Yang family? What on earth were these two talking about?
Still swaying, still not fully in his right mind, the Deputy Director watched as the two figures broke through the thick dust and revealed themselves before him.
One a youth. One an old man.
Yet the old man standing behind the youth as if to attend him did not look like a grandfather and grandson. The relationship was unmistakably one of superior and subordinate.
“And this one?”
“The Deputy Director.”
The First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon’s face—spattered with blood—tilted ever so slightly in the Deputy Director’s vision.
Dark-energy strike — form of the hidden force
Peo-eok.
A shockwave erupted with such force it seemed his abdomen might have burst open on the spot.
“Keeeek…!”
The Deputy Director vomited bile and doubled over like a shrimp—and in that same instant—
Kwaang.
A second fist, without the faintest hint of presence or preparatory motion, shattered his jawbone to powder.
Thud.
With only two punches, the Deputy Director’s eyes rolled white; he lost consciousness and collapsed.
“The Thundering Heaven-Piercing Cannon is an extremely flexible art. One of its traits is that it can be used like this, in the form of a dark-energy strike.”
“Hoh.”
Geam-jon murmured in appreciation and surveyed the room. By the time Yeon So-hyeon finished thrashing the Deputy Director, much of the choking dust had settled. The neutralized lay twitching on the floor.
“It seems my business here is finished.”
As Geam-jon looked around, his gaze even met the Agency Director’s—yet he turned away as if the man simply did not exist.
“Then.”
Large and small wounds covered the old man’s body, and exhaustion past every limit weighed on him—yet his footsteps alone were light.
“I shall take my leave of this place. First Young Master.”
As the old man’s footsteps faded into the distance, the Agency Director swallowed dryly and forced himself to sit upright.
“…All of this is your responsibility, First Young Master.”
He tried to speak with dignity, yet his voice came out hoarse and thin.
“You are the one who ruined this Sword Family! If only you had not secluded yourself back then—!”
“Is that all you have to say?”
A faint smile curved Yeon So-hyeon’s lips as he walked toward him, step by deliberate step.
“I have a great many things I mean to hear from you.”
Then—
“Cough…!”
A sudden gush of blood from the Agency Director’s mouth. Black, dead blood. Yeon So-hyeon’s brow twitched.
“…You took poison?”
Even as black blood poured from his lips, the Director glared at Yeon So-hyeon with eyes wide open.
“I neither repent, nor beg for forgiveness…!”
“Is that so?”
Was it the poison? An uncontrollable chill crawled over him, setting his body shivering. The surroundings had grown far too dark.
“I don’t know what you wanted from me enough to come all this way yourself…!”
As befitting an Agency Director, he had at least enough sense to realize there must have been a reason Yeon So-hyeon had gone to the trouble in person.
“But now you will never hear a single thing from me…!”
“Is that what you think?”
In eyes growing steadily dimmer, the First Young Master’s smile seemed stretched far too wide across his mouth—as if the lips themselves had been torn open.
“But you are wrong.”
Somehow the First Young Master’s voice sounded as if metal itself were boiling.
As the First Young Master’s mouth split wide open, teeth as sharp as a shark’s gleamed along its edge.