Urban Vagabond: Reload

I think I was nine when it happened.

I was on the couch with my dad, watching the World Martial Arts Tournament on TV, when something in my chest just... snapped awake. My heart started pounding so hard it felt like the sound was in my ears instead of the TV.

“Whoa...”

To me, that was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life.

The martial artists on that stage didn’t even look human. Every step, every swing, every twist of their bodies felt like real magic, like somebody had taken all those comic book heroes and dropped them into reality.

And right there, somewhere between one breath and the next, I thought:

I wanna be like them.

It was the first time I’d ever felt real, bone-deep longing.

Mom wasn’t into the idea at all, so I went around her. I begged my dad in secret until he finally gave in and bought me a wooden practice sword. From then on, the routine was simple: wake up, grab the sword, swing. Get home from school, throw my bag down, swing again.

Every. Single. Day.

Eventually, of course, Mom found out. She took the sword away and yelled, and that probably should’ve been the end of it.

Except I went on strike.

Three days without touching a single bite of food.

She lasted two and a half.

“...Fine. Do what you want. But don’t you dare regret it later.”

“If you get carried away with this martial artist nonsense, what are we supposed to do...?”

“It’s just a phase. He’ll quit once it stops being fun.”

That’s what they said.

But instead of fading, the feeling in my chest just kept getting stronger.

I didn’t kinda want it. I really wanted to be a martial artist.

I was always first place in PE. I was tall for my age, long arms, long legs, the kind of kid every relative pointed at during holidays and said, “You should do sports” or “You look like a fighter.”

Martial arts felt... obvious.

Reality, on the other hand, didn’t care what I felt.

They said raising a kid into a proper martial artist cost about as much as buying an apartment in Seoul. And my family wasn’t the “buying an apartment” kind of family. We weren’t poor, but “middle class” was already being generous.

Still, my parents spent a long time talking, arguing, worrying—then one day, they took my hand and led me to a martial arts academy.

“To train as a martial artist, a strong frame and a good constitution are essential,” the headmaster said, eyeing me like I was a racehorse. “Your son’s frame is excellent.”

It was such a transparent sales line it was almost funny, but my dad’s lips still twitched in pride.

The man added, more seriously, “However, constitution matters just as much. As you probably know, he can’t get a formal constitution evaluation until he’s nineteen. That part depends heavily on luck.”

To become a martial artist, you had to be born with a body that could absorb and handle qi.

Constitutions were graded from Level 10 to Level 1. The higher the level, the more easily you could gather qi and build internal energy.

Most people were somewhere around Level 7. Below that, your ceiling as a martial artist was pretty much visible from day one.

“Those who become world-famous martial artists are usually Level 3 or higher,” the headmaster said. “Roughly one in a thousand people. Level 1 is one in a hundred thousand. At that point they get divided into things like Yin-Extreme or Yang-Extreme types, but you don’t need to worry about that yet. Also...”

He hesitated, then continued.

“There’s a very small chance of being born with a constitution that can’t form a dantian at all. In that case, internal energy cultivation is impossible. We’re required to tell you this in advance.”

Until your body finished developing—about nineteen years old—training internal energy was banned by international law. Too many kids had died or gotten crippled playing with qi too early.

The headmaster made it clear that no matter what my test result turned out to be later, the academy took no responsibility.

My dad asked anyway, “We did our homework. We know there’s a risk. But statistically, if the frame is strong, isn’t the constitution more likely to be strong too?”

“Statistically, yes,” the headmaster admitted. “But it’s never guaranteed.”

“That’s enough for me.”

Dad nodded, looking strangely relieved. Mom tightened her grip on my hand.

“We’ll enroll him,” she said quietly.

My mom was the practical one.

She knew that even if I didn’t become some legendary grandmaster, just getting registered with the Martial Alliance as an official martial artist would open doors:

Hunters who tracked down anomalies.

Special units who handled dangerous criminals.

Career soldiers with far better treatment than regular officers.

Even if her son never stood on the top of the world, she believed he could at least stand on his own.

My dad, though... Dad was a romantic fool.

“Sir, our son is going to enter the World Martial Arts Tournament someday and win it. Right, Kim Muhyuk?”

“...Yeah.”

“Speak up! My son, future most famous martial artist in the world, can’t be mumbling like that!”

“Stop being ridiculous,” Mom snapped, smacking him on the arm.

They didn’t agree on the exact dream, but they agreed on one thing:

They would try to raise their son as a martial artist.

The academy tuition was insane, but they told me not to worry.

They sold our house and moved into a rental on a jeonse lease. The yearly overseas trips they used to take? Gone. Weekends? Those turned into extra shifts.

“You don’t worry about money,” Dad said. “You just train. I heard a strong frame helps the dantian absorb qi later. And don’t skip the red ginseng—it’s good for you!”

“If you get injured, all that effort goes to waste,” Mom said. “Be careful. Be careful again. Got it?”

“Both of you, seriously, enough nagging...”

...Funny how years later, those voices would become the thing I missed most.

I was twelve then.

They supported me for seven years.

And I didn’t want to waste a single sacrifice.

As soon as school ended, I ran straight to the training hall. I was always among the first to arrive and almost always the last to leave.

“Kim Muhyuk got first in practical exams again?”

“I heard he took gold at the competition too.”

“Damn. Talent monsters really ruin the curve, huh...”

Some people treated everything I achieved like it was just a gift I’d been handed at birth.

They weren’t entirely wrong.

But they also weren’t there when my hands split open and bled from overuse, or when my whole body ached so badly I couldn’t sleep—but I still got up and swung my sword anyway.

Because it made me happy.

I’m going to stand on that stage one day.

I’m going to enter the World Martial Arts Tournament.

What started as a small flicker of admiration had grown into something huge. Training stopped being a hobby and turned into something closer to breathing. If I went one day without swinging my sword, it felt like my chest might crack open.

Then, after my nineteenth birthday, the day finally came.

I went to the hospital for my constitution evaluation.

The result popped up in a cold digital font:

[Incompatible Constitution for Martial Artist Registration]

They told me I was born with a body that simply couldn’t form a dantian.

No dantian, no internal energy.

No internal energy, no martial artist.

No matter how hard I’d trained, no matter how much I wanted it, that path was closed.

I was that microscopic percentage you hear about and think, that’ll never be me.

I cried until my throat burned. I yelled. I swore. I tried to tell myself it had to be a mistake.

Nothing changed.

I stopped going to school. Stopped going to the academy. For months, I basically stopped being a person and just... existed: drifting through the days, hollow.

At some point, while mindlessly browsing martial artist communities online—the same ones I’d always ignored because they felt cringe—I stumbled across something.

A story about a procedure I’d only ever heard mentioned in whispers:

illegal artificial dantian surgery.

The details were vague, shady, and downright terrifying.

Survival rates under fifty percent.

Side effects.

Organ failure.

Death.

But all I saw was a line that said:

Artificial dantian implantation can sometimes allow a person with an incompatible constitution to cultivate internal energy.

It felt like somebody had dropped a rope into the pit I’d been rotting in.

A stupid, dangerous rope.

But still—a rope.

I hadn’t stepped out of my room in months. That day, I kicked the door open and went looking for my parents.

“Mom, Dad. Listen. There’s this surgery where they implant an artificial dantian. It’s expensive, but if you just trust me this once and help me pay for it—”

I didn’t even get to finish my sentence.

For the first time in my life, my father slapped me.

Smack.

I could’ve dodged.

My body moved better than most people’s even when I was half-dead inside.

But I didn’t, because I saw his eyes.

He was crying.

“You—do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!” he shouted, voice breaking. “You think I didn’t look into it? You could die. If something goes wrong, what are we supposed to do? What’s your mother supposed to do? You selfish idiot!”

He grabbed my shoulders and just held on, fingers digging in like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.

Mom clung to my arm, eyes full of tears.

“You’re healthy and strong,” she said. “You can do anything with that body. Anything. Just... don’t throw your life away for this. Please. That’s all I want. That’s your mom’s one wish.”

“...I’m sorry,” I whispered.

That was the moment it finally hit me.

My dream wasn’t the only thing in the room.

They were.

The two people who had sold their house, worked weekends for years, endured worry and exhaustion and stress—all for a future they believed I could have.

Not because I’d stand on a world stage.

But because I’d stand at all.

I hugged them both and made a promise.

“I won’t do anything stupid. I’ll stop. I don’t have to be a martial artist. I’m sorry, Mom. Dad. I’m really, really sorry...”

After that, they quit their weekend jobs.

I let go of the Martial Alliance entrance exam.

Instead, I prepared for college, majoring in sports science.

We started building a different future. A smaller one, maybe, but quiet and stable and real.

For a while, we were... happy.

Then, a few months later, they told me they were going on a short trip to Jeju Island. Their first time traveling alone in seven years.

They never came back.

An accident, they said.

Just like that, my parents were gone.

“...”

All I had left was the rental apartment and their life insurance payout: three hundred million won.

I didn’t have any close friends I trusted enough to open up to. My relatives were the kind of people you kept at arm’s length if you were smart.

So there I was—twenty-ish, dreamless, parentless, motivation at zero—watching my life slowly dissolve.

For more than a year, I lived on the money they’d left me and did nothing that could honestly be called “living.”

Most of my time went into rewatching old World Martial Arts Tournament videos on YouTube and scrolling through martial artist forums like some half-dead lurker.

That’s when I saw him.

On my screen was a well-known martial arts researcher and spell-caster with a personal channel, spraying saliva at the camera as he ranted:

“After years of research, I’ve confirmed a real possibility: if someone with an artificial dantian trains hard enough and reaches a high level, a real dantian may eventually form in their body! The problem is that artificial dantian surgery is illegal, so people are forced into underground clinics. Unlicensed quacks, filthy conditions—of course the success rate is low!”

His name was Dr. Man.

He was arguing—loudly—that artificial dantian procedures should be legalized and supported by governments around the world.

The internet tore him apart. The video was flooded with hate, flagged, and eventually taken down.

But for me, one line burned itself into my brain:

If you implant an artificial dantian... a real one might form later.

That was all it took.

I didn’t think about it for long.

“...It’s not like I had anything else I wanted to do anyway.”

Dr. Man disappeared from public view soon after, but the kind of spell-casters who didn’t mind breaking the law for money?

Those were everywhere.

I pulled the deposit out of my jeonse lease and went shopping for a criminal surgeon—someone with at least a half-decent reputation in the underground.

I found one.

I lay down on that filthy operating table.

And when I opened my eyes again, the world was still there.

Just... half of it.

The man who’d operated on me—my lovely back-alley surgeon—grinned and tapped my lower abdomen.

“The dantian settled nicely,” he said. “Give it a day or two and you’ll feel a heavy ball of energy down there.”

“One of my eyes doesn’t work,” I said flatly.

He shrugged.

“Be grateful it’s just one. You’re better off than the ones who wake up in a coffin.”

He wasn’t wrong.

But that didn’t mean I felt grateful.

With an illegal artificial dantian stitched inside a body that had technically violated international martial laws just by existing, there was no way I could register with the Martial Alliance.

I had two options left:

Join a criminal organization.

Or become a freelance mercenary drifting between jobs.

Money wasn’t really an “option” at that point. Most of what my parents left me had gone into the surgery.

“You need cash, right?” the surgeon said, like we were old friends. “I know a place that’s hiring.”

And just like that, I got my first job.

It was with a private security company that paid obscenely high rates for obscenely dangerous work, often just outside the edge of legality.

In the hours when I wasn’t working or patching myself back together, I trained.

Sword. Footwork. Qi.

Survive, train, repeat.

Time blurred.

I got hurt again and again. There were jobs where I was sure I’d die. But every time, somehow, I was still there the next morning, breathing.

“Hey, Cyclops,” a coworker said to me once, using the nickname I’d accidentally earned along the way. “You hear about that guy Dr. Man? Turns out all his research was bullshit.”

Time really was merciless.

I’d look up and whole years would be gone.

“Please teach me swordsmanship!” some kid begged me once. “I’ll serve you as my master!”

Sometimes I let people get close.

Sometimes I let myself think, Maybe this one will stick around.

Then jobs went sideways, and people didn’t come back.

“It’s your fault!” one woman screamed at me, face streaked with tears. “You said we’d all walk out of there alive!”

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

She also wasn’t entirely right.

“You’ve heard of the Heavenly Demon Cult, yeah?” another colleague said one night over cheap beer. “If you’re smart, you stay away from anything related to them. Things are getting really weird lately.”

I made friends in that world.

And I buried them.

By the time I realized it, there was no one left I could call family, friend, or comrade.

My body was worn out, full of old injuries.

Most of my connections were with people the law would have loved to arrest.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a nickname in the underworld:

The Lone Ghost.

A man who always came back alone, no matter the job, no matter the odds. A survivor, if you wanted to be kind. A bad omen, if you didn’t.

It wasn’t a flattering name.

But it was accurate.

I got used to living that way. To the idea that trusting people was a luxury I couldn’t afford, and worrying about others was something only naive kids did.

Twenty years passed like that.

Twenty years with an artificial dantian lodged in my gut.

The world did what it always does: it changed.

—We interrupt this program with breaking news. The martial-arts religious organization known as the Heavenly Demon Cult has launched simultaneous attacks on governments around the globe. Multiple heads of state, including President ○○○, have been confirmed dead. Unidentified martial artists have blockaded several national parliaments...

One day, the Heavenly Demon Cult decided it deserved to own the world.

Violence, looting, murder—things that used to be rare headlines became background noise. Society unraveled fast.

People screamed. Governments fell. Whole cities choked on chaos.

And me?

Honestly, whether the world ended or not didn’t matter much anymore.

My body was falling apart. I’d burned through most of my lifespan. I could feel death creeping closer every time my heart stuttered or my vision swam.

If the world wanted to go to hell, it could go without me.

There was just one thing that grabbed my attention.

—This is a message to the entire world.

The figure on the screen was someone everyone knew and no one really knew at the same time.

The man who had dominated the World Martial Arts Tournament for twenty years straight and then vanished.

The absolute peak.

The living legend.

The reason nine-year-old Kim Muhyuk had picked up a wooden sword in the first place.

He had been a mystery. A ghost. A god.

Now he was something else:

The revealed master of the Heavenly Demon Cult.

And he was smiling into the camera as he sent out a message to the whole planet.

—If you have a problem with my rule, come. Anyone qualified may challenge me to a duel.

The location he broadcast from was instantly recognizable.

The iconic stage where the finals of the World Martial Arts Tournament had always been held.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

“...The World Martial Arts Tournament,” I whispered.

My chest, which I’d thought had turned into nothing but scar tissue and tired old grief, suddenly felt hot.

In that moment, I made a decision.

Not a plan. Not a dream.

A final goal.

Before I died, just once—

I was going to stand on that stage.