Chapter 4
Whoosh! Swish! Swish! Swish!
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Whip! Swish! Swish! Swish!
Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!
Those sounds definitely weren't coming from my mouth.
My mouth wasn't moving.
They were simply the sounds of a sharp dagger cutting through the air before striking and stabbing a wooden training dummy wrapped in rope.
The rear courtyard of March Pavilion was unnecessarily large.
Even though it belonged to one person, the place looked almost grand.
But because so few people visited, it had always felt strangely lonely.
Today, a martial artist stood in its training ground and repeatedly swung a dagger.
That martial artist was naturally the owner of this place.
Cheon Sowol.
Me.
Go for the wrist first. Then the forearm. If that misses, reverse the blade and strike the collarbone. Move behind him. Kidney. Lung. Duck under the counterattack. Femoral artery.
The movements were short and simple.
But every action was carefully calculated.
Maximum damage with minimum movement.
That was how soldiers used knives.
It was difficult to compare it to the "martial arts" practiced in Murim.
But I also had techniques designed to attack people.
Actually...
That had basically been my profession.
Soldiers were people willing to kill in order to accomplish their objectives.
In the modern world, we had excellent communication tools called guns and explosives.
But there were situations where even those couldn't be used.
Sometimes you had to eliminate someone quietly.
Sometimes you ran out of ammunition.
Occasionally, a firearm malfunctioned.
In those situations...
The only thing left to trust was your body.
Draw the knife on your body.
Stab the enemy's vital point.
If the blade broke, use your hands to break the enemy's neck.
I possessed a special set of skills specifically for situations like that.
It wasn't the flashy "special forces martial arts" people usually imagined.
The kind where someone covered their face in camouflage paint and smashed concrete blocks for the camera.
Those demonstration-style combat systems had already shown their limits.
Even the intelligence units and several special forces organizations had begun abandoning them more than ten years ago.
Instead, modern militaries had adopted far more scientific and practical combat methods.
My main system was Krav Maga.
A modern combat system developed and organized in Israel.
Krav Maga wasn't a single traditional martial art with rigid forms and philosophy.
It existed purely for real combat.
If another martial art had something useful, Krav Maga took it.
Because of that, it included practical movements from boxing, Muay Thai, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo, wrestling, taekwondo, and many other martial arts.
I had separately trained in MMA and several other systems to make better use of those movements.
Even so, Krav Maga had always been the most useful in real combat.
And Krav Maga wasn't limited to empty-hand combat.
Knife fighting.
Exactly what it sounded like.
Fighting with a blade.
That too was included in Krav Maga.
Its close-combat knife techniques were simple, direct, and practical.
Those techniques also borrowed from many different traditions.
Arnis from the Philippines.
Silat from Indonesia.
Sword techniques from medieval Europe and Japan.
Even modern bayonet fighting.
If you put everything together, perhaps "mixed stew" was the best description for Krav Maga.
A very concentrated stew containing only the useful parts.
That explanation might sound complicated.
But there was an easier way to describe it.
The fighting style from the movie The Man from Nowhere.
That was Krav Maga.
Senior Cha Tae-sik... You were incredible.
The character in that movie had supposedly served in the same kind of unit I came from.
Another famous fictional senior was Manager Kim.
Slice!
Snap, snap.
"Hoo."
I had fallen into a state of complete concentration while moving the dagger.
Eventually, the rope wrapped around the wooden dummy snapped apart.
The edge of my dagger had also become damaged.
That was enough for today.
I sheathed the dagger at my waist and stepped away from the training ground.
"You worked hard, Young Master. Please drink some water first."
"Ah. Thanks."
As always, Jin Woon was waiting for me.
For almost an entire month, he had stood there like a stone statue and watched my training every day.
And just like the first time he saw it, Jin Woon gave the same evaluation.
"Truly an impressive Demonic Sword Art."
His first reaction had been:
[So the military forces of the Western Regions practice Demonic Sword Arts.]
Apparently, a modern knife-fighting method that targeted nothing but vital points and tried to kill in a single strike looked like a Demonic Art to a martial artist.
Thanks to that...
I had somehow become the Third Young Master of the Demonic Cult who practiced an extremely appropriate Demonic Sword Art.
"Demonic Sword Art... Sure. Demonic Sword Art sounds good."
"If only you possessed internal energy, it would be perfect. If only I had been able to obtain a spiritual medicine for you... Forgive me."
"What are you apologizing for? Support was cut off because of me. I'll figure something out."
"Have you been circulating your qi every day? Has there been any improvement?"
"Not really. It isn't easy. And I haven't had much time."
Training in the courtyard wasn't the only thing I had been doing.
I had also been practicing cultivation methods in an attempt to build internal energy.
What martial artists called qi circulation.
I practiced day and night, trying to accumulate energy.
But there had been almost no progress.
One month wasn't much time.
But that wasn't the only problem.
Whenever I manage to gather qi...
It scattered inside my body.
It was almost as though some parasite inside me was devouring my internal energy.
"Is the Dark Demon Well really that brutal? To the point that I absolutely need internal energy? Can't I just survive with stubbornness?"
There was nothing I could do about internal energy right now.
Apparently, the Dark Demon Well sometimes distributed internal elixirs to trainees.
If necessary, I would have to recover there.
What bothered me was Jin Woon.
He had watched me train for almost a month.
Yet his worry still hadn't disappeared.
"I do not know the exact details of every stage. However, according to rumors, some people who died inside the Dark Demon Well were killed by other trainees."
"Hmm. So it's something like, 'Kill each other!' Very fitting for the Demonic Cult. Well, I suppose the weak die."
"Yes. If someone truly wanted to kill another person, there could hardly be a better place..."
Jin Woon tried to speak calmly about the rumors surrounding the Dark Demon Well.
But his expression remained troubled.
I had seen that expression many times.
People who spoke like that while carefully avoiding the main point always had something more to say.
"Something else is bothering you, isn't it?"
