After the conversation with Chae Geon-uk.
Go Tae-min fell into deep thought about the identity of the transparent lines filling his field of view.
If the mana Chae Geon-uk spoke of really was an energy that existed, there was a high probability that these strange lines in front of his eyes were its substance.
Go Tae-min went into action at once.
He stretched out a hand desperately and tried to grab and close his fist around a white line swimming through the air, and when that wasn't enough he tried stuffing it into his mouth, and even tried roughly inhaling it through his nose.
But there was no gain at all.
The white lines simply circled the air like ghosts and passed through every one of Go Tae-min's attempts indifferently.
No physical interaction of any kind occurred.
"Seriously, what is this, playing hard to get?"
After several days of persistent attempts, Go Tae-min finally let go of his lingering hopes.
Hanging on a white line he couldn't catch and burning time on it didn't add up.
Instead he headed for a nearby kendo hall, preparing for his upcoming Pro League debut.
Having tried it himself, he found swinging a sword more fun than he'd expected.
But that was exactly as far as it went.
To swing faster and more accurately, he needed proper fundamentals.
However, Go Tae-min, who opened the door of the hall and walked in, had to doubt his own ears.
"1.5 million won a month?"
The manager sitting at the consultation desk nodded as if it were obvious.
"Yes. That's the base tuition. Equipment rental is separate, armor maintenance is separate, and that figure excludes the additional cost of the Nova Arena specialized curriculum."
The world was going mad.
It was because the value of martial arts handling cold steel had exploded as Nova Arena set off a worldwide craze.
Once the modern Colosseum became a symbol of wealth and fame, unprecedented inflation had struck the weapons-education market.
1.5 million won.
To those planning to make Nova Arena their livelihood, it might well be a sum worth investing.
Thinking of the Pro League's fight purses, all the more so.
But Go Tae-min could not bring himself to put a hand to the enrollment form.
Fixed in his head was the image of his mother, who had worked her whole life as a building cleaner and brought home 1.5 million won for a month of breaking her back.
Burning that money, every won of it paid for in her blood and sweat, on a single month's tuition was no different from a sin, for a man who had lived like a weed.
"......I'll come back another time."
"Yes indeed, so call us any time once you've got your thoughts in order. We have a lot of people waiting these days, so the places fill up fast."
The manager put on the relaxed smile peculiar to a salesman selling an expensive item and gave a small nod.
As Go Tae-min turned and walked out of the hall, the sound of training shouts stabbed sharply at his ears.
"Bah, the thieving bastards."
The moment he was outside the building, Go Tae-min folded the promotional pamphlet he had been holding with an audible snap and shoved it into his back pocket.
The thinking being that he could at least use it as a stand for a ramyeon pot later.
"What, does gold dust fall off the point of the blade? 1.5 million won? For that money, how many hamburgers is that?"
In the end the place Go Tae-min headed for was a quiet scrubby hill behind his neighborhood.
When he stood in the clearing where few people came, a cold mountain wind grazed his cheek.
He had never learned swordsmanship formally.
But when it came to the essential nature of the weapon called a sword, Go Tae-min understood it more accurately than anyone.
A sword is nothing more than a lump of iron drawn out long. The most primal tool ever devised for killing an opponent at a distance your hand cannot reach.
Stab first and you live; miss and you die.
The definition of the sword he had learned on a battlefield rather than in a sport was that simple and that vicious.
Go Tae-min took out his smartphone and skimmed roughly through a basic kendo video.
[Swordsmanship begins with grip and footwork. Now, when you take hold of the hilt, hold it softly, as if you were holding an egg......]
"Egg, my ass. You die if it's taken off you, so you grip it tight."
He grumbled, but he studied the shape of the YouTuber's hands on the screen closely.
In his operative days, when he held a knife or a machete, not dropping it and driving it in deep had been the whole of it.
But a sword with long reach was different.
Depending on the angle of the wrist and the slightest difference in grip strength, the trajectory of the point changed completely.
Go Tae-min took hold of the hilt as though copying the YouTuber's motion exactly.
The left hand supporting the end, the right hand light, just below the guard.
Then he lifted his feet in time with the YouTuber's steps.
Shff, tap.
"Ugh, this tugs at the calves more than you'd think."
It was a simple-looking forward-and-back footwork, but keeping his center low and holding the distance steady cost more stamina than he expected.
But he didn't stop.
Partly there was the satisfaction of having saved a fortune of 1.5 million won, but more than that, the corner of his mouth kept twitching at the mere thought of how spectacular his bladework would be later if he carved this thing called fundamentals out properly.
[Next is the vertical cut. Raise the point of the sword above the crown of your head, then drive it down by the shortest route.]
FWISH—!
The sound of air tearing rang out across the silent hill.
Once, ten times, and then a hundred.
"Haa, haa......"
Beads of sweat ran off the point of his chin and fell to the dirt.
[Don't stop your breathing. At the instant you cut down, exhale shortly, take the strength out of your shoulders, and put your body on the weight of the sword.]
Go Tae-min concentrated on the YouTuber's explanation and swung his sword in a trance.
He shook the unnecessary tension out of his shoulders and concentrated on drawing nothing but the shortest straight line.
After swinging like that for a long while, at some point the tip of the sword, which had been shaking as it pleased, began to draw a consistent trajectory.
The sound of air parting grew markedly sharper.
But Go Tae-min was not satisfied.
However much the trajectory had improved, in the end this was no more than shadowboxing.
Whether that precision held when it actually struck an object was the real question.
"......I'll only know if I plant it in something."
To a practical man like him, verification was essential.
Go Tae-min looked around and fetched a thick chunk of wood that had been lying nearby.
Then he stood the chunk on a suitable rock and adjusted his grip.
It was time to confirm whether this product of self-teaching, won by protecting a fortune of 1.5 million won, would work in a real fight too.
"Ssp."
Go Tae-min exhaled shortly and drove his sword straight down at the exact center of the chunk of wood.
SHK— CLANG!
Two scraping sounds burst out almost simultaneously and rang across the quiet hill.
The sense that something had gone wrong traveled up through his wrist before it reached his brain.
A vibration past prickling and into numbness.
Recoil strong enough to set his grip shaking.
"......Huh?"
Go Tae-min made a dazed sound and looked down at his own hand.
He was still gripping the hilt tightly, but the blade that should have been attached above it had been snapped in half.
When he turned his eyes downward, the situation came into view at a glance.
The chunk of wood he had stood on the rock had been cleanly cut in two, as if ruled with a straightedge, and was rolling about on the ground.
The problem was that his skill had improved too much in too short a time. Enough that comparing him with that YouTuber was an insult to him.
As a result, the sword that had split the wood and passed through had failed to overcome its own acceleration and slammed head-on into the hard rock propped underneath.
The blackened fragment that flew into the air fell to the ground with a clink.
Go Tae-min's mouth hung open blankly.
The broken edge glinted forlornly in the moonlight.
"......I'm f**ked."
***
Trudging down off the hill, I headed for my senior's office.
The lights were on even at this hour, which suggested his business was flourishing today as well.
"Hyung, I've ruined my sword. Is there any way to......"
The whining about to burst out of me the moment I opened the door shot straight back down my throat.
There were several other people in the office besides my senior.
Three men in black suits, sitting on the sofa.
Guys who gave off a very bad smell. From their builds and their eyes, they weren't neighborhood thugs.
"......Ah, you had guests."
When I stopped awkwardly, scratching the back of my head, the middle-aged man sitting at the head of the sofa rose slowly from his seat.
He looked me up and down, then nodded smoothly toward my senior.
"Just as they say. It was no exaggeration that you can find an answer even out of a dead man's mouth. I'll see you again before long."
"Not at all. Giving you information worth the money is my job."
"Then let's meet again."
The middle-aged man dipped his head like a gentleman, and then he swept out of the office with the other men in tow.
A strange stillness hung in the office until the sound of dress-shoe heels down the corridor had disappeared entirely.
I couldn't let go of my tension until they were completely out of sight.
'Getting tangled up with guys like that can't lead anywhere good.'
That distinctive blood-smell that comes off men who treat getting blood on their hands as routine.
The senses from my black-operative days were flashing a warning.
"Oh, Tae-min. You've come at a good time."
"No, you looked extremely busy though? And who were those people who just left?"
My senior took off his glasses, set them on the desk and scrubbed a hand down his face.
He looked thoroughly busy, with several monitors up at once and his fingers hammering away.
"I have good news. First off, setting up the Legion is done. The name is Veil. I searched, and there are quite a lot of Legions with the same name. It's such a common name it'll be perfect for hiding your identity."
"Oh, nice. Veil, is it......"
For us, who move hidden in shadow, there could be no name better suited.
My senior tapped the monitor and went on.
"And as for the league, I registered you in the American Pro League, like we talked about before. The Japanese league is small in scale and has few spectators, so the fight purses don't amount to much."
"A man should swim in a big pond, after all."
The fact that the time difference was completely off and I'd have to fight in the small hours did nag at me a little, but it didn't matter.
If the money was good I was willing to get up out of my sleep and swing a blade.
"But there's bad news too."
"What is it? Do they not let you fight in a mask over there?"
"No, an offer came in from NAA."
"Eminem?"
"NAA. Nova Arena's American branch, you idiot."
At my senior's words my face lit up.
"Really? An offer already? That's huge, isn't it?"
But my senior's expression wasn't particularly good.
"The thing is, there's a special condition. It isn't a formal offer, it's an SNF (Short-Notice Fight), which is to say a replacement offer."
"What's that?"
"When a warrior who was originally scheduled drops out because of a sudden injury or personal circumstances, they propose a fill-in to another warrior. The preparation period is hopelessly short compared to the other participants, so the risk is enormous."
Normally, he said, people had about a month of preparation.
But the offer that had come to me was for a mere week later.
In practice it wasn't even enough time to put real effort into conditioning, let alone proper training.
But I welcomed the news instead.
"So it's a replacement offer, what of it. Fighting sooner is better, if anything."
As it happened, I'd just broken my sword on that hill and had an extra place for money to go out, so for me it was a proposal with nothing even to think about.
But despite my breezy answer, my senior's expression still didn't ease.
"And...... it's...... match 4."
"Match 4? Isn't that lower numbering?"
"It is."
At that I frowned.
What.
Don't tell me the fight purse has been cut too?
"This is my guess, but it looks like NAA doesn't think very highly of you."
"Why would NAA not?"
"It was an undefeated promotion out of the Japanese league. And since you're drawing attention worldwide right now, I think they mean to use up a drawing card called the Demon as fast as possible, before the juice runs out. And in a very sensational way, at that."
My senior's voice was heavier than usual.
"The Yanks have a pathological pride about their league being the best in the world. And then some Asian guy nobody's heard of comes up from the Japanese league undefeated? From where they stand, it isn't that you're good; it's that the Japanese league's level is low and you cruised on easy mode."
I folded my arms and stared at the screen.
I had a rough feel for how the situation had come about.
"So what you're saying is, they'll use me, with my bit of name recognition, as the sacrifice to pump up the price of their own league's prospects?"
"Exactly. That's the reason you were placed in match 4. Right before the main match starts, at the timing when the crowd's blood has to be boiling hottest, they want to put on a blazing massacre show. And you're the sacrificial offering in that show."
My senior finished speaking and then quietly checked my expression.
I wiped the trace of a smile off my mouth.
Hm.
Honestly, it didn't feel good.
However much I'd been through every hardship there is, being openly treated as a sacrifice was a blow to the pride.
When I frowned without saying anything, my senior seemed to genuinely think I was angry, and cleared his throat and added one careful line.
"......In exchange, they quoted a fairly strong base rate. I told you the base is normally $10,000 if you go up by undefeated promotion, didn't I?"
"......."
"You start at $20,000. On a win they pay an additional 100% of the base, and your next match fee goes up 30%. The terms aren't bad, are they?"
I unfurled my frown in a single motion and clasped my senior's hand tightly in both of mine.
The grim stillness that had hung in the air a moment ago was nowhere to be found.
"I'll burn this one body to the last!"
"......Huh?"
"Yank pride? I can top theirs right up for them. A sacrifice? Give me the money and I'll do that much artistically. I'm ready to get into the capsule and die for them this very second, you know?"
When I beamed at him so brightly you'd wonder if this was the same guy who had been stone-faced a second earlier, my senior shook his head as if dumbfounded.
"You weren't angry?"
"Come on, hyung. If you get angry in front of money you're not a professional. And I'm a true professional."
"......Still, your pride could be hurt, couldn't it."
"That's a story from when my pride was worth $10,000. At $20,000 with a 100% win bonus, my pride's already on a plane over the Pacific. By now it's probably saying hello in English, isn't it? Hello, money!"
I got up from my seat, humming to myself.
$20,000 is a fortune of fully 30 million won.
And apparently if I win they pay another 30 million won as a win bonus. There was no way I wouldn't be in a good mood.
My senior watched me with eyes that said I was exasperating.
"......You're not going to sell me off too for money later, are you?"