World-Saving is a Skill

Chapter 99

Chapter 99

After listening to Sa Seung-hee, I spoke.

“You said that the crown was secured five years ago. Yet it still has no owner, which means…”

— At first, for about two years, some Hunters tried for it, but everyone failed. Now no one challenges it. If you grab even the bottom spot on the List of Hope, you get tremendous benefits.

People preferred guaranteed wealth over probabilistic gambling.

So despite its incredible performance, the crown spent five years buried in the Association’s warehouse.

It hurts to think about it, truly. If you secured it and trained enough, Gonsalok might not have been a dream.

“No, wait,”

If the Hunters ranked one through five on the list used that crown and gathered a swarm of Hunters, could they not take a shot at Gonsalok right away?

Forget it, drop it. This was not an era where you could expect anything of other people.

Sa Seung-hee said it would take about a month. That meant roughly that amount of time remained until that tournament similar to the World’s Greatest Martial Arts Meet opened.

“Can I still apply?”

— Applications start tomorrow.

If it was that big a deal, news should have been out months ago, yet as I walked, I looked up at a billboard the size of a front gate and let out an ah.

This was why it was a problem if a person paid no attention to how the world moved. Come to think of it, people who were not into baseball or gaming tournaments just walked right past them.

Once I was interested, the ads on the display finally caught my eye.

“I’m not feeling particularly cheerful.”

While monsters were tearing up the planet, how did we have the leisure to hold a tournament?

It felt like a children’s game. Still, there was no other way. Besides, getting your name onto the List of Hope would help a lot with what came next.

— It is necessary. Anyway, if names went on the List of Hope once and then never changed rank at all, that would be a problem too, you know?

It would turn into iron rice bowls. The authority of that ranking, whatever it was called, would be damaged.

But judging by what they were doing with that crown, I had a feeling the ranking system was not running properly anyway.

After I finished with Sa Seung-hee, I contacted Choi Seung-gi again right away.

— We just met earlier, and you are calling again.

“About the Banshee’s Tear we discussed. I will cut the proportion of gemstones used for the inlay by about half.”

At my words, Choi Seung-gi blurted, huh?

— It is possible like that, sure, but then you will need more clean hits to poison an enemy properly.

“It is fine. Send back to me half of what we planned to use for the inlay, as quickly as possible. I will be in the Association training room.”

There was something I wanted to do with the remaining half. In life, you either crashed or you succeeded.

“The List of Hope, huh.”

I muttered that and scratched my head.

In an extraordinary situation, extraordinary means had to be used. For me, part of that gemstone would be the extraordinary means.

When I returned to the training room and waited a moment, someone sent by Choi Seung-gi arrived.

“Here, this is the item you requested.”

I opened the box and saw a gemstone the size of a thumbnail. I checked it and nodded.

“Please tell Mr. Choi that I appreciate it.”

I finished speaking, took the box, and returned to the training area.

“Friends, I am going to be busy for a day or two.”

Han Sang-ah and Jung Oh-hoon paused their training and looked at me.

“Why, what are you planning to do?”

At Jung Oh-hoon’s question, I tapped the box.

“I am going to eat this.”

He looked at the box, then looked back at me. He already knew roughly what Banshee’s Tear did.

“They say you get poisoned just by touching it. Did your girlfriend dump you or something?”

Even if a girlfriend dumped me, would I really eat this and die?

“Cut the nonsense.”

Han Sang-ah examined the sword in her hand, then sheathed it and spoke.

“If you want to die, there are plenty of other ways.”

“I am not dying. Damn it, it is my body, and it feels silly that I even have to explain it to you, but listen up.”

I was not going to just swallow it. I would coat it with Paradoxical Flame, then consume it. The Paradoxical Flame would burn away the toxin of the gemstone as it entered my stomach.

Paradoxical Flame burned what I wanted and, as a byproduct, exhaled mana. I would take in the mana in the air, then exhale it again, and use that to fortify my meridians.

Jung Oh-hoon spoke after listening.

“If you take in the mana that gushes right from the stomach instead of the mana in the air…”

“The efficiency will be enormous.”

Besides, this was an item made of pure poison. I still did not know how long the Paradoxical Flame would burn, or how much mana it would spit out in the process.

“Can’t you die from that?”

“If I mess up, I will die.”

Fortifying and destroying the meridians were separated by a sheet of paper. If I tried to strengthen them this way and made a mistake, all my meridians would rupture and I would die horribly.

Put simply, the pipes burst because they could not withstand the water pressure. Just like that Hunter Sohwi I fought before.

If I succeeded though, unlike my usual way of growing, I could reap an enormous result in one leap.

“Why are you trying to go that far?”

In answer to Han Sang-ah’s question, I shared my talk with Sa Seung-hee.

“Right, now that you mention it, it is already the season to decide who gets on the list. And the crown.”

Han Sang-ah, who had been listening, asked a question.

“But you said it was the twentieth place. I do not know much, but at your current level, can’t you take on a Hunter ranked twentieth?”

“Just sneaking into the twentieth has no flavor you know.”

You gotta have a big dream in life. I had already decided that I would crush the Great Eight someday, so barely scraping into the twentieth would feel embarrassing.

“Anyway, I think that explains it. Oh, and also, it may take longer than I expected.”

I said goodbye to the two, then stepped into the small room inside the training hall and locked the door.

Then, I opened the box. A shard of Banshee’s Tear gleamed with a wicked light.

“Alright, let’s eat this thing and hopefully not die.”

I picked up the Banshee’s Tear, coated it with Paradoxical Flame, and swallowed it whole.

At first, nothing changed. Then, as the Banshee’s Tear burned under the Paradoxical Flame and exhaled mana, my stomach felt like it turned over.

It was far more toxic than I had imagined.

“Holy, shit…!”

I shut my eyes, clenched my teeth, and forced the mana flooding up from my stomach into my meridians. Pops sounded all through my body. The popping turned to cracking, then a sound like bones snapping rang out.

My meridians screamed. I had no need to store the mana anyway. I flushed that monstrous volume of mana straight out after it ran through my meridians.

A dense tide of mana poured from my nose and mouth.

“…”

I opened my mouth, eyes wide, and began to shake. It hurt too much. I looked at my body and saw that beyond the level of my meridians twitching, the capillaries all over me were bursting.

Blood ran from my ears and nose, and the vessels in my eyes all burst so my vision blazed red. I looked at my limbs, and bruises bloomed everywhere like mold on a loaf of bread.

Good grief, at this rate I’m going to die, seriously!

I was used to pain. My vision whited out, then went black, over and over.

“It is nothing, it is not that great a pain…”

I muttered that as cold sweat poured and I endured. In truth, it was absolutely something. It was absolutely a great pain.

“It was not as if I did not expect this.”

I had expected it, yet knowing did not make the pain vanish. Wow, this really… really hurts too much! I’m gonna go mad!

My sight blurred, and my head turned white bit by bit. As my thoughts slowed, my consciousness floated. When I reached a certain point, time seemed to slow, and my mind carried on thinking without end.

What was the original form before birth?

What form did the self take when stripped of good and evil?

In this moment I let go of suffering. I set down the meaning of good and evil, black and white. I stopped comparing.

It was not that the mind went where I went. Wherever I went, there the mind was. Water did not flow where it wanted. The wind did not blow with intent.

Let it flow and let it move. I did not walk a path, yet when I looked back, a path had been there.

I placed will in a formless mind and swung it as a sword. Without relying on the shaped weapon in my hand, if I sank into myself and carried through on myself, I could cut not flesh but mind.

A drawn bowstring stayed still, then moved. A rolling rock stopped one day. An army flush with morale saw that morale crash in time.

Thus the states of all things reversed at the end. Stillness held motion within. Motion held stillness within.

“…”

Slowly, my body that sat motionless began to float a little. The energy that poured from my nose and mouth gathered above my head.

Feeling that buoyancy, I slapped myself across the cheek at once.

My body, which had been lifting, dropped with a thud to the floor. The energy gathering above my head scattered.

“What are you doing, lying there like that? Are you cultivating the Way or something?”

I had lost it. What was I doing floating in the air? Focus.

Because the pain surpassed imagination, my mind desperately started thinking of something else to escape the pain.

Forget enlightenment bullshit. People who wielded weapons and killed did not have such things.

Using the mana that filled my body to widen and fortify my meridians was not something to be done in the unconscious. It had to happen within my awareness, under my control.

“And also…”

If I sank into the unconscious like before, the pain I was feeling would gradually fade. In other words, it would stabilize. Because it hurt too much, I would unconsciously dull it.

It would be like a renovation that made no noise.

Like putting water on for ramen that never boiled.

If everything stayed stable while I smashed it all down and rebuilt it, that meant I was not doing the job right, or something had gone wrong.

“Until… it all ends!”

This ghastly, boundless pain I felt now must never disappear.

I had to dump every last bit of this crappy static creeping into my head and control the mana from one to ten within consciousness.

Only then could I fully exploit the toxicity inside this Banshee’s Tear or Banshee’s snot or whatever it was, and properly tear out and rebuild my meridians.

Time began to crawl. One second in pain felt like a minute.

Blood ran from my eyes and nose and ears. It hurt so much that tears and snot streamed along with it. Spit drooled from my mouth.

On top of that, my whole body bruised so blue I looked like a Smurf and writhed like I was having a seizure.

“Aaaaargh! Aaaaugh!”

I twisted my body and sprawled on the floor. I writhed like a worm thrown onto a sizzling griddle.

Training and cultivation, if done properly, were ugly.

There was no elegant staging like sitting cross legged, floating into the sky, and forming a crown of smoke over your head or levitating.

If you train elegantly…

“That’s how you die a pathetic death in real combat.”