He was the sort who would not put up with a shabby provocation.
But Heo Jin-ho grew calmer at that provocation instead.
'What in the world is that man?'
To Heo Jin-ho he was a strange human, the first he had met in all his life.
Cha Geon-mu had no fear in him.
Nor was he the type of day-old puppy that does not know to fear a tiger.
He genuinely believed that Heo Jin-ho posed no threat at all.
As though he had something to be confident about.
'What is it?'
At the end of thinking with no answer, irritation came crowding in.
"You're that desperate not to die of old age?"
"Even so, handing the fish to a cat would be a joke, wouldn't it?"
Geon-mu wore a serious expression as he stared.
"Coming from a murder-fiend bastard desperate to kill someone."
"......."
At Geon-mu's words, Heo Jin-ho laughed hollowly.
It was exactly as he said.
From the moment he met Geon-mu, Heo Jin-ho had meant to kill him.
A reason?
There was no such thing.
Heo Jin-ho did not look for reasons to kill people.
It was something like a natural bodily function.
As a person breathes, as a fish lives in water,
it was simply a matter of course.
"You've got a good nose."
"It couldn't be otherwise. I've already seen more than a truckload of bastards like you."
Having struggled to stand at the summit of the Asura Realm, Geon-mu knew it well.
That humans with reasonless malice were as plentiful as a mountain heap.
And that a human of Heo Jin-ho's sort amounted to nothing more than a doormat for someone else anyway.
"Then it seems the talking is over......."
Heo Jin-ho scratched his head and made a show of looking elsewhere.
He set one foot forward.
No sooner had the foot touched the ground than his body vanished.
SHIK—!
With a single gust of wind he closed the distance to right in front of Geon-mu.
He had come in the blink of an eye.
"Die."
SHING—!
A flash of moonlight pierced Geon-mu's body.
It should have.
"Ugh?!"
But the flash did not appear.
The reason was simple.
His technique had not activated in the first place.
His right hand, laid on the scabbard, was oddly heavy.
The sword would not draw, as though some impurity had gotten into the scabbard and caught on it.
It was an alien snagging Heo Jin-ho had never experienced.
"How......?"
Heo Jin-ho lowered his head to look.
He saw a sneaker pressing firmly down on the end of the hilt.
"What are you doing?"
The owner of that foot was Geon-mu.
Staying like this would only get him cut down.
Heo Jin-ho instinctively opened up distance.
'When did he do that?'
While Heo Jin-ho was in confusion, Geon-mu spoke.
"The Five Steps in an Instant of the Crescent Moon Demon Sword, and then the Crescent Moon Slash? You use interesting techniques."
"!!"
Heo Jin-ho was astounded.
Not only had he blocked the attack, he had accurately identified his technique.
Most people could not even grasp Heo Jin-ho's technique.
Any human who ever comprehended the Crescent Moon Slash had already become a corpse.
"No."
Geon-mu shook his head.
"That seems to be something imitating the Crescent Moon Slash."
"This is the Crescent Moon Slash."
At Heo Jin-ho's objection, Geon-mu let out a short laugh.
"I'll say this with certainty. That is not the Crescent Moon Slash."
"......What did you say?"
"The Crescent Moon Slash is not slow and clumsy like yours. If the Crescent Moon Demon Sword had seen this sight itself, it was poor enough that it would have taken your head off."
CRUNCH.
What Cha Geon-mu had done was a simple provocation.
The usual Heo Jin-ho would not have taken that provocation and would have simply fought on.
But the reason he could not help falling for it, unlike usual, was the message that had appeared before him.
[<Crescent Moon Demon Sword> agrees strongly with those words.]
His own Patron Star, the Crescent Moon Demon Sword, had agreed with Cha Geon-mu.
It was a cold-blooded thing without a speck of affection for its contractor to begin with, but this was also the first time it had agreed with anything anyone else said.
'Do you think I am lacking as well? Even though not one enemy I have met has ever survived the sight of me?'
[<Crescent Moon Demon Sword> stares at you.]
It was a message that seemed to say, look at the situation right now.
He had walked this far cutting down enemies beyond counting, and yet here he was, blocked.
A hundred victories are all lost in a single defeat.
Even while Heo Jin-ho was reeling, Geon-mu's words continued.
"Speed, precision, none of it comes anywhere near the master of that swordsmanship, and you have the confidence to introduce it as the Crescent Moon Slash? You have no shame."
"Shut...... up......."
Veins stood out on Heo Jin-ho's head.
Amid the thick killing intent, Geon-mu only dug leisurely at his ear.
"That swordsmanship is meant to be used while feeling stillness, so what good is it to be so shaken that the disorder is visible?"
"Shut up!!"
Five Steps in an Instant.
Heo Jin-ho's figure vanished.
The place he appeared was to the left.
And then Five Steps in an Instant again.
He closed on Geon-mu once more from the front.
'There won't be the same result as before!'
His Crescent Moon Slash was perfect.
So without doubting it, he set out to use the draw-cut art, the Crescent Moon Slash, once more.
At the instant Heo Jin-ho's hand went back to his waist, he saw Geon-mu standing directly before his eyes.
"Do you know the weakness of the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts?"
CRACK—!
Geon-mu's left fist flew in and lodged in Heo Jin-ho's face.
It went in clean from the front, and Heo Jin-ho's body rolled.
"Kuh...... kuhaak......."
His brain spun inside his skull, and his vision surged like waves.
Heo Jin-ho's cheekbone caved in and blood ran from his nose.
"If you can't draw the sword, it's an assassination art that amounts to nothing."
"Gguuh...... Shut up!"
Heo Jin-ho's head was in turmoil.
'How does this bastard know the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts? Is he someone I know? Or is he one of the targets I failed to finish?'
Whatever question he threw at it, the answer was no.
He had no point of contact at all with this man Cha Geon-mu; seeing him in the parking lot today was the whole of it.
"Let me teach you something."
Geon-mu woke the dragon inside his body.
[<Phantom Speed Dragon> stirs.]
A white aura wrapped around Geon-mu's body in a spiral.
Geon-mu took one step forward, the way Heo Jin-ho had.
In that instant, Cha Geon-mu's face filled Heo Jin-ho's field of vision.
It was similar to the technique Heo Jin-ho used.
But it closed a distance Heo Jin-ho could not reach, all at once.
"How......"
"This is called Seven Steps in an Instant."
CRACK—!
His right fist crushed the cheekbone on the other side as well.
Barely catching hold of a half-lost consciousness, he steadied his own body as it rolled like a spinning top.
"Kuh, kuh!"
He spat out the blood pooled in his mouth.
A broken molar rolled out like a piece of gravel.
"Get up. If you stop, I will hit you harder."
Geon-mu's attacks came in a storm.
His foot kicked deep into Heo Jin-ho's stomach.
"Hueugh!"
The air in his lungs all went out, and his stomach acid came back up.
He had to fight.
Before that thought could even form, a fist flew at his face.
CRACK—!
"Ughuurgh! Ugh!"
His head spun ceaselessly, and his body swayed.
Five Steps in an Instant, then the Crescent Moon Slash.
His head was saying that, but his body was struck before it could even move.
'I'm losing.'
It was not a question of whether he was losing but a certainty.
Heo Jin-ho knew the weakness of the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts.
Respond before the sword is drawn.
It could be stated as simply as children squabbling, but it was not easily done.
The speed of the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts was among the very fastest of all swordsmanship.
Since it prized a battle of speed that could strike at an opening, there certainly existed techniques for coping with situations where he would be neutralized.
There was no chance Heo Jin-ho had been lazy about such countermeasures.
And yet this man was seeing through even those countermeasures and toying with him.
For Heo Jin-ho, stripped even of his means of coping, this situation was nothing short of a catastrophe.
"Aaaaargh!!"
Heo Jin-ho drew his sword.
A smoothly curved saber revealed itself softly in the moonlight.
Pale sword qi coiled around his blade.
"Drop dead!!"
The sword qi came flying at Geon-mu.
Geon-mu barely evaded it.
"How dull you are. For the Crescent Moon Demon Sword to abandon the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts."
After evading the sword qi, he closed the distance.
This time a fist struck the solar plexus.
"Kuk!"
The sound of breath stopping.
He barely held onto his senses and got to his feet.
"Resist a little more."
The thrashing was not entirely meaningless.
A little more and he could kill that man.
With that belief he gritted his teeth and threw himself at Geon-mu.
'But why...... can't I reach him?'
It kept being a moment where reaching out would catch him, where swinging the sword would cut him, and yet he could hardly reach at all.
Only then could Heo Jin-ho understand.
This man had no intention of ending it at once.
He was pretending to barely evade, pretending to be reachable, and toying with him.
He was leaving him some thread of hope so he would flail, and then meaning to drop him into deep despair.
'Just like.......'
It was like himself.
It was an exact reproduction of the moments when he had given an opponent a little room and a little hope and toyed with them.
The instant he realized that, Heo Jin-ho collapsed completely.
"Haa....... Haa......."
The will to fight faded from Heo Jin-ho's face and fear settled in.
When he made no attempt to lay a hand on the scabbard, Geon-mu thrust his hands in his pockets and looked down at him.
"Shouldn't you do a bit more?"
"You mean...... to dry me out slowly and kill me...... you think I don't know?"
"So you realize it now, after taking such a beating?"
Geon-mu grinned and crooked a finger.
"Come at me again. Take another twenty hits and I'll send you off comfortably. Hm? I may not look it, but there's one promise I keep beautifully."
Must one fight even knowing it is a fight one cannot win?
Heo Jin-ho had never had such a fight.
Above all, he had been cornered like this only once, and after that no one had ever reduced him to this again.
He did not want to lose.
He would sooner die than lose to Cha Geon-mu, of all people.
"I can't...... go out like this......."
And so he gladly offered up his own life.
Heo Jin-ho stretched his sword up toward the sky.
Had he meant to take his own life, he would have brought the sword to his throat.
At the strange posture, which was not the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts, Geon-mu felt a doubt.
"I offer my life to you."
At Heo Jin-ho's words, dark clouds drew over the sky.
The stars and moon shining in the sky vanished entirely.
A moment later, Geon-mu felt an ominous energy surging up.
"This is......."
Its source was inside Heo Jin-ho's body.
An energy on a wholly different plane from the dankness of when they had met was radiating out.
Not half-formed madness but madness ceaselessly honed and perfected.
[<Crescent Moon Demon Sword> descends into Heo Jin-ho's body!]
A divine descent.
Having already seen one through Kim Cheol-mun, Geon-mu had naturally assumed he would be used to it.
But it was utterly unlike what had descended into Kim Cheol-mun.
If the power given to Kim Cheol-mun had been power he could barely endure, this descent was power that craved victory and nothing else.
"Kekeke......."
A beast-like laugh spilled from Heo Jin-ho's mouth.
No sooner had it reached Geon-mu's ears than his whole body shuddered.
This was a sensation he knew well.
The dank, unpleasant feeling that no human could produce, that could be felt only in the Asura Realm.
"So the Crescent Moon Demon Sword has come in person?"
"Do not, put my name, in that insolent, mouth of yours."
An unnatural voice.
Heo Jin-ho, who had been on his knees, raised his body.
CRUNCH— CRRRUNCH—
He stood unnaturally, to the sound of bones breaking.
Even standing was clumsy, like a marionette strung on cords.
"You broke, the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts, rather well. For a mere, human."
"It was a sword art I couldn't forget if I tried."
"That tone, of knowing, grates on me. Have you, met me, before?"
"Ah, I have. Of course."
It had been when he fell into the Asura Realm in his third reincarnation.
Rather than a battle maniac who crossed blades in a duel, it had been a murder fiend who took satisfaction in slicing flesh.
It was one of the breeds Geon-mu most despised.
Geon-mu drew his sword and leveled it at Heo Jin-ho, or rather at the Crescent Moon Demon Sword.
"Shall we see how much the original has grown?"
"An insolent, creature, this one."
A twisted strangeness could be felt in it, but the voice was calm.
As the mood sank, a chill fit to bring down frost took hold of the stage.
Movement on an entirely different plane from Heo Jin-ho's.
So fast that the backdraft from its running rose several seconds behind it.
WHOOSH!
Geon-mu moved to seal its right hand.
But the blade revealed itself ahead of him.
SHNK—!
A pale blue streak of light passed by Geon-mu's cheek.
The attack had begun even without a full draw.
"Right, this was it."
It was on an entirely different plane from a mere hack at the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts.
Not something you could block by simply sealing the hand, but a true art of assassination.
The Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts were techniques this fast and this nimble.
"Die. Insolent, human!"
The instant the sword came out, three streaks of light radiated.
Sword qi curved like a crescent moon came flying at Geon-mu.
Unlike Heo Jin-ho's sword qi, which he had dodged with ease, these were lethal and precise.
"Where has, that spirit, that seemed to, reach the heavens, gone!?"
"......."
The Crescent Moon Demon Sword shouted in high spirits.
Geon-mu did not get swept up in it and coolly focused on nothing but evading the attacks.
For this fight, that alone was enough.
A little later, the delighted voice grew steadily more impatient.
"Fight, fight me, I said!!"
Geon-mu already knew.
That the one in a hurry was not himself but his opponent.
"Sometimes there is no need to fight and win."
Before long, the Crescent Moon Demon Sword's nimble movements grew sluggish.
Its flesh had begun to break down.
The form called Heo Jin-ho melted and swelled like sugar heated to high heat.
The two legs that had moved like the wind fell to their knees, and the sword gripped so firmly rolled to the ground.
"Damn it, damn it all!! This garbage of a, body!"
The Crescent Moon Demon Sword beat at its own chest and cursed Heo Jin-ho.
Forcing itself onto its knees, it looked up at Geon-mu.
Geon-mu stood with both hands clasped behind his back, looking down at it.
Just before the Crescent Moon Demon Sword's lips lost their strength from sheer indignation, it squeezed out the last of its power and shouted at Geon-mu.
"Cowardly, bastard!!"
CRUMBLE!
Geon-mu's straight punch went through the Crescent Moon Demon Sword's head.
Heo Jin-ho's flesh, splitting and crumbling, became fragments, and even those evaporated and vanished.
Watching the last handful of smoke rise into the sky, Geon-mu muttered.
"Thanks for the game."
Geon-mu looked down at the place where Heo Jin-ho had become ash.
The flesh was gone, but the suit he had worn and his tools remained as they were.
Geon-mu picked up the sword he had used.
[New Moon]
Type: Equipment Item
Grade: A
The sword of a legendary contract killer whom anyone who learns his identity must die.
It broke upon taking its hundredth life, but was restored by the hand of a master craftsman.
When drawing the sword from the scabbard, all damage rises by 100% for 1 second.
You may use the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts more skillfully.
The speed of the Crescent Moon Slash rises by 50%, and it always deals critical damage.
"New Moon, is it."
Geon-mu knew this sword well.
After killing the Crescent Moon Demon Sword and casting it out of the cycle of the Asura Realm, he had used the sword it left behind.
Geon-mu carefully drew the sword.
Its weight and balance, everything, were identical to the New Moon he had used in the Asura Realm.
Since the assassination technique, the Crescent Moon Slash, had been its main art, a draw-specialized option was attached.
'It's specialized for the Crescent Moon Demon Sword Arts, but even setting that aside, it's a sword my hand knows.'
Above all, this <New Moon> had an effect that others did not know about.
Depending on the hundredth target, the sword itself would change.
Whether it would vanish completely, as the name New Moon implied, or become another moon and shine brightly as the True Moon.
"I'll put this to good use."
Geon-mu hung the New Moon at his belt.
He began rummaging around to see whether there was anything else to be had from Heo Jin-ho.
"Hm?"
Inside the ashen remains of the flesh, he caught hold of a small object.
It was an earphone transceiver made to fit snugly into the ear.
Why would Heo Jin-ho be carrying this?
"He loves music...... is one option, but that won't be it."
It would be to converse with someone through this transceiver.
Geon-mu put the earphone in his ear and walked out toward the gate.
KSSSH—
For now, nothing but static could be heard.
-......uh.......
Once he was outside the gate, it would be different.