Once outside, Lee Se-a pulled out her phone at once.
[Director Kim Hyeong-seok]
The Director's standing instruction was that anything concerning Black be reported straight to him, chain of command be damned.
Ring, ring.
The dial tone had barely sounded a few times before a bright voice came through.
- Oh, Agent Lee? What's this on a weekend?
Lee Se-a's mouth twitched.
‘Because I'm working on the weekend, sir!’
“Black says he's moving out.”
- Moving out? What do you mean? Where to? He isn't planning to disappear on us, is he?
“No, he says he's moving to quarters in the faculty building.”
- The faculty building? Why go there when he has that big house?
Lee Se-a reported what had happened on the drill grounds that morning.
“It seems he intends to keep those five close by and put them through their paces in earnest.”
- Hmmm.
Why Black wanted to pick out students and teach them was a mystery, but there was no downside for the state.
The problem was......
- We can't leave the man alone in the Academy twenty-four hours a day.
“But we haven't any grounds to stop him when it's what he wants, have we?”
- No. Which is why somebody has to mark him closely at his side, wouldn't you say?
“......!”
Cold sweat ran down Lee Se-a's spine.
Exactly who that "somebody" was, she knew better than anyone.
‘Weekend shifts weren't enough, and now you're telling me not to commute at all?’
- Agent Lee. If we register you as the professor's secretary, they'll provide you a residence attached to the faculty building.
‘D-Director?’
- I'm sorry. I know very well how harsh an assignment this is for a brand-new recruit.
‘If you know, then you shouldn't be doing it!’
- But across the whole task force, you're the only human being who can hold a conversation with Black, aren't you? Hm? Agent Lee. Is the line working properly? Why aren't you answering?
“......I'm listening.”
- Special allowance. I'll add three hundred percent on top of your current salary.
‘Do you think I'm doing this for money?’
The truth was, she knew.
That she was the only one on the task force who could do this job.
And that it was work with a considerable sense of duty to it.
‘I came in knowing it would be this kind of job.’
Work that meant sacrificing for the country.
Compared with the black agents running operations in remote corners of the world with their lives on the line, moving into the Academy was perhaps a complaint from a position of luxury.
Besides, the man she had to watch over was the nation's highest fighting asset, was he not?
Letting out a short sigh, she asked.
“You said you'd give me a good performance review?”
- Of course! Who knows? If a Black task force gets set up later instead of the Special Task Force, who do you suppose will lead it?
“Understood. I'll do it.”
- Thank you. The nation will not forget your sacrifice.
Click.
The call ended.
Lee Se-a looked once more at the firmly shut front door of the safe house.
Sense of duty be damned.
Now that she had actually accepted, the road ahead did look pitch black.
“Haa, the life I lead......”
***
Sunday, before dawn.
On the roof of the Old Hall's drill grounds.
Kang Hyeon sat in the lotus position.
Today too he was pressing down Asura's writhing venom through the Extreme Yang Heart Method, when......
‘Hm?’
A faint sign of someone came from the direction of the drill grounds.
Kang Hyeon slowly opened his eyes.
‘There's still a whole hour until the appointed time.’
Looking to see who it was, he found Seo Hae-in of Class 20.
She checked that there was nobody around, then settled into a corner and began loosening her stiff body with practised ease.
‘A grinder.’
Training before dawn when nobody had told her to?
And yet perpetually last?
‘Interesting.’
His curiosity roused, Kang Hyeon finished circulating his energy and watched her.
Before long she finished stretching and picked up a wooden sword.
Whip! Whish!
A sharp whistle of split air rang out across the silent drill grounds.
‘The basic form of the Clear Wind Sword Art?’
Kang Hyeon, who held every martial art in the world in his head, saw straight through to the root of the art she was performing.
And in the same moment he was certain.
There was a definite connection between the Murim he had gone to and the martial arts books that came out of the dungeons here.
‘The Clear Wind Sword Art, then.’
As a rule, cadets newly admitted to the Academy chose a major.
Once they chose, the professor in charge of that major recommended a heart method and a sword art registered in the Archive.
She had probably been recommended that sword art.
‘Then the professor who recommended it is incompetent.’
Kang Hyeon clicked his tongue inwardly.
The Clear Wind Sword Art was one of the Qingcheng Sect's foundational arts, specialized for lightness and precision, and it was indeed known as an art well suited to women.
But the frame he saw in Seo Hae-in was entirely different from her appearance.
‘The bone structure is different. The bone structure.’
As though she had eaten a great many anchovies as a child, the density of her bones was tremendous despite her slight build.
‘Thick-boned, as the saying goes.’
A build like that favored a domineering sword art, or saber arts outright, rather than a keen, swift sword.
Last place, indeed — if only she had learned the right art.
Add that diligence of hers on top and she would chew up and spit out the better half of the ones here.
Pop.
As he opened a whiskey and watched her train unnoticed, the rest of them began to gather one by one.
Han Tae-ho, Yoon Hyeon-jong, Cha Yu-sik, then Gwak Do-jin.
Seo Hae-in stopped training when the other cadets appeared and waited awkwardly.
Kang Hyeon did not think about what was in each of their hearts as they came here.
They all had their circumstances, and their own wants.
‘Only.’
Was it right to teach these ones?
In truth, the most efficient thing for Kang Hyeon to do right now was to comb the entire world like a man hunting rats and sift out nothing but genuine geniuses.
Take seven who had it all — innate martial frame, constitution, nerve, talent — and bring them in, kidnapping them if necessary, and make them learn the Seven Luminaries Formation.
Only then could he stop the Demon God Asura.
‘Just like those old men.’
The old men would never have given clumsy children like these a second glance in the first place.
And if they had been forced to teach them?
‘Teach, nothing. They'd have just beaten them.’
Kang Hyeon's lips twisted.
He too had begun at thirteen with a beating.
When his bones broke and his organs ruptured and he vomited blood, they crammed a fistful of elixir in his mouth and beat him again.
Being struck became more familiar than breathing, and the point of the process, so they said, was to make him incapable of feeling fear before any attack, or before death itself.
Grind.
His teeth clenched.
Respect for his masters?
He had not a scrap of it.
If anything, thinking of those years still brought the rage up in him.
If abusing a child was acceptable so long as it saved the world, then what about that child's life?
The truth was that even during his travels through the martial world, what Kang Hyeon had envied most were the tender bonds between masters and disciples.
Because it was the thing he did not have.
‘I will not become like those old men.’
Kang Hyeon shut his eyes firmly and opened them again.
Had he not sworn it before?
That this life he would live his own way.
Preparing for Asura mattered, of course.
If this world was blown away, so were the corner of the room he lounged in and the good whiskey.
But just as much — no, more than that — what mattered was looking after himself.
This was a precious life, and he only got the one.
Suppose he did exactly as those old men had, beating seven people like animals and forging them into numb weapons to cast the Seven Luminaries Formation, and saved the world with them.
Even then, would he be happy?
‘No.’
Kang Hyeon shook his head.
That would be nothing but handing down the horrific hell he had suffered to other people who had done nothing to deserve it.
He had no desire to save the world and then spend a lifetime pouring hard liquor into an aching chest.
He had no desire to become like the old monsters he so despised.
‘And.’
Kang Hyeon's gaze went to the crowns of the five heads clustered together on the drill grounds.
‘These ones will be the mirror that proves I am walking a different road from those old men.’
***
Cha Yu-sik was full of anticipation.
He had thought about it all through the previous night.
‘Who is Professor Kang Hyeon?’
A contract professor appointed abruptly after the entrance ceremony was over.
A Bureau parachute, and a man Dean Seo Il-hyeon shielded openly.
And.
One who could crush him — an A-rank-level Hunter — with overwhelming killing intent.
He had searched all night, but nothing came up.
Which meant......
‘He is beyond doubt an S-rank asset the Bureau raised in secret, or hid away for some reason.’
For Cha Yu-sik, with the succession hardening in a direction unfavorable to him, this was a rope lowered from heaven.
‘I have to get stronger.’
If he grew strong enough to defeat his brother, at the very least?
His father would look at him differently, without question.
Cheonrang.
Because he was a man who firmly believed the wolf that led the pack had to be the strongest.
‘What will he teach?’
Presumably nothing ordinary.
If it were, he could never have written "how to get stronger" with such confidence.
A secret manual?
Or some newly pioneered divine art?
Cha Yu-sik's heart beat faster.
A glance around told him he was not the only one harboring such expectations.
The freshman, the perpetual last place, the Mad Dog, the silver spoon.
All of them had the same fluttering feeling — what kind of fated encounter was coming?
And then, after some length of time.
Thump.
Somebody landed on the ground.
It was Kang Hyeon, dishevelled as always.
“......!”
The cadets flinched.
‘Since when was he up there?’
‘There was no sign of him at all.’
‘No, is it even all right to jump down from that height?’
The Old Hall building was five stories.
The height to the roof alone was a good fifteen meters and more.
Even supposing he could jump down...... there should at least have been a puff of dust, and there was nothing.
Rather like seeing a ghost.
“You've all come, then.”
The first to react was Yoon Hyeon-jong.
“Good morning, Professor!”
When a cadet meets a professor, greeting him is the basic courtesy!
At his greeting the other four bobbed their heads too, caught off guard.
“You all arrived early. I'll commend you for not being late.”
Slosh.
Kang Hyeon shook the whiskey bottle in his hand lightly.
“From now on you assemble here on the drill grounds at six every morning.”
“What? Every day?”
The one who objected was Gwak Do-jin.
Because he was always sensitive about class hours.
“Obviously. Did a man who says he wants to get stronger think training once a week would do it?”
“......But cadets' weekdays are normally packed full with major and general courses.”
“You don't attend those classes anyway, do you?”
Gwak Do-jin's eyes widened.
He grasped instinctively that the seemingly indifferent professor had read his student record.
“And whether you come or don't come is no concern of mine. Whether you give up partway and run. All of it is your own freedom. I will not teach you by force.”
Because he had decided not to do as those old men had.
Violence was efficient, but it made a person passive.
So the moment the violence disappeared, they would give up easily.
‘That's what I wanted to do.’
Whereas if it was a road they had chosen themselves?
Then they could endure the pain they met along the way by their own strength.
But when he actually put it that way, the cadets' expressions turned strange.
‘So he means he won't hand over the secret manual easily?’
Thoroughly misunderstanding, Cha Yu-sik called out.
“I'll be here!”
In a resolute voice.
“Even if I have to give up every other major class, I will stand in this spot at six every morning!”
“Oho, will you now?”
“Yes! If it's what it takes to learn your martial art, Professor, I should be prepared for poor grades.”
“Martial art?”
Kang Hyeon's lips twisted.
“What martial art?”
“Sorry?”
“In the state you lot are in, what heart method, what martial art?”
To Kang Hyeon's eye it was like newborns who could not so much as crawl asking to be taught how to run.
Their lower bodies were feeble and their stamina looked weak.
Swing a weapon in that condition and they would tire easily and lose their balance.
Which was to say there was no point in their learning a martial art.
“You lot are starting the groundwork over from scratch.”
Gulp.
Cha Yu-sik's throat bobbed.
Groundwork?
Yes — might there be some secret qi art for laying a foundation?
“All of you, spread your feet wider than shoulder width.”
“......!”
“And bend your knees. Until your thighs are level with the ground. Back straight, eyes front.”
The cadets' expressions turned stranger still.
Was he telling the elites of the National Hunter Academy to do the sort of thing they made you do at a neighborhood martial hall...... a horse stance?
“Men who say they're learning martial arts ought to be able to hold their own bodies up properly, wouldn't you say?”
TL Notes:
Cheonrang, the name of Cha Yu-sik's family guild, is written with characters meaning "heavenly wolf" — which is why his father's conviction that the wolf leading the pack must be the strongest is a statement about the guild itself.