Urban Vagabond: Reload

Episode 37. The Strongest One Here

“Aaaaargh!”

The man with the broken arm rolled across the floor.

His once-glittering gold martial robes were caked in dust, and the hair he’d carefully styled with pomade was a complete mess.

In front of him, Shin Kangheon was roughly scratching at his dyed blond hair.

“I told you it would’ve been better if you’d just taken it off when I asked.”

“You—! You think you’re getting away with this?!”

The Golden Glory Gate martial artist, his voice ragged with rage, screamed at the top of his lungs. The agony of his snapped arm, his fury, and his shame all crashed down at once and blew his rationality away.

Staggering to his feet, he raised his voice, waving his sect’s name like a flag.

“I was going to give you some advice so you could get into Golden Glory Gate, and you dare repay kindness with enmity! Do you think Golden Glory Gate will just let someone like you walk away?!”

“......”

It was true that the man had approached Shin Kangheon with good intentions at first.

He had proudly introduced himself as a Golden Glory Gate martial artist, said this was already his third time taking the exam, and that he could show him the ropes—telling him to just call him “senior” and relax.

Right up until Black-White appeared and told them to take each other’s weapons, the atmosphere between the two had been warm and friendly.

—Ha ha... This is a little awkward. Being told to fight all of a sudden... We might end up as sect brothers, you know. Would be a shame to make things weird.

—Well, can’t be helped. If those are the rules, we’ve gotta have a bout.

—...How about this instead? This time, you as the junior give way first, and next time I’ll be the one to give way.

If he hadn’t made that kind of offer with a face that made his true intentions painfully obvious, Shin Kangheon had fully intended to treat him with respect as a senior in the martial world.

After refusing the Golden Glory Gate disciple’s proposal, Shin Kangheon had simply overwhelmed his opponent with sheer skill, then asked him to take off his gauntlet. But when the guy refused to admit defeat, he’d had no choice but to break his arm and strip it off by force.

“I’ll make you regret this for the rest of your life! You’ll learn just how terrifying it is to make a Golden Glory Gate martial artist your enemy and try to live—!”

“Hey.”

Shin Kangheon strode toward the man who was still screeching. The other flinched and backed away.

Even standing face-to-face, the difference in their height made Kangheon’s gaze feel like he was looking down on him from above.

“Are you seriously trying to threaten me right now? With that level of skill?”

Even among martial artists with big builds, his physicality and looks stood out as truly overwhelming. Add in the confidence that came from real strength and his complete lack of filter.

Shin Kangheon might get called arrogant by others, but as a martial artist he had no intention of bowing his pride.

Not even to someone from one of the Eight Great Sects.

“And I’ve been holding it in for a while now, but how long are you going to keep talking down to me when we’ve just met?”

“You little—”

“You’re still doing it. Guess I didn’t hit you hard enough?”

The way he spoke, sneering with a vicious smile, made the Golden Glory Gate martial artist burn with anger, but his body, sensing danger on an instinctive level, just trembled instead of moving.

A kid who only just turned twenty...

It was embarrassing, but this brat was overwhelmingly stronger than he was, even though he was already in his third year as a Golden Glory Gate disciple.

He’d wondered how impressive these late-bloom prospects the Eight Great Sects were all fixated on really were... but seeing one in person, he realized he was facing a monster far beyond what he’d imagined.

“Why’d you suddenly clam up? You going to keep threatening me, or are you going to apologize? You should at least finish one of those.”

When Shin Kangheon took one more step forward with a smile, the Golden Glory Gate martial artist shuffled back again.

Thankfully, a hand slipped in between the two of them just then.

[Further fighting after a winner has been decided will not be permitted. Winners, proceed in the direction of the red arrows. Losers, proceed in the direction of the blue arrows.]

As Black-White stepped in to mediate, the Golden Glory Gate martial artist immediately hid behind them and then hurried off along the blue arrows.

Watching that retreating back, Shin Kangheon clicked his tongue softly and muttered,

“Golden Glory Gate’s nothing special. I’ll tell my uncle I’m not going there.”

Then he fiddled with the gauntlet he’d taken after breaking the guy’s arm.

It was awkward to hang it at his waist or sling it over his back like a sword or blade, so he hesitated for a moment over what to do with it. In the end, since it was basically just a glove, he decided to try putting it on.

“Oh, not bad.”

Maybe they’d used expensive materials, because it fit his hand like it had been made for him.

The palm section was thin, so there was almost no weirdness when he gripped his blade, and he liked the subtly glossy black surface as well.

Shin Kangheon didn’t realize it, but the gauntlet he’d taken and slipped on was an expensive piece of gear worth over ten million won.

“Guess the weapons they use are pretty good. The guy’s skill, on the other hand, was barely scraping along at second-rate.”

If the man himself had heard that, the blood would have rushed straight to his head. But the Golden Glory Gate martial artist had already fled far away.

[Winners, please follow me.]

Shin Kangheon started strolling after Black-White, who was taking the lead.

Then he spotted a familiar face and walked over.

“Hey. Pi Seunghwa.”

“...Don’t talk to me.”

“You’re Golden Glory Gate, right? Your senior is total trash, you know.”

Pi Seunghwa, who had taken Silver at last year’s sword dance competition, had ended up joining Golden Glory Gate after a lot of agonizing.

Which meant the Golden Glory Gate martial artist whose arm Shin Kangheon had broken was his senior.

Of course, unlike the sect’s golden prospect Pi Seunghwa, that senior was just an ordinary martial artist—and the two of them weren’t particularly close.

Even so, there was no reason for him to be happy that Shin Kangheon had just flattened someone from his own sect.

“If you keep insulting my sect, I’m not going to let it slide either.”

Pi Seunghwa’s gaze went icy cold. The presence rolling off him, far more polished than it had been last summer, made the hairs on Shin Kangheon’s arms stand up in a way he liked.

“Who said your sect itself was trash? Seeing your aura right now, I’m starting to think it might be better than I expected.”

Grinning, Shin Kangheon stuck close to Pi Seunghwa’s side and kept talking.

“You’re the only person here I know. I’m bored, so walk with me and chat.”

“Bored? You’re not even nervous in the middle of an exam?”

Pi Seunghwa gave him a look of utter disbelief, but Shin Kangheon just looked back like he was the one who didn’t get it.

“You’re nervous over a test that only makes you a third-rate martial artist?”

“......”

Strictly speaking, he wasn’t wrong.

Despite the label “third-rate,” every year half of all applicants failed to earn even a third-rate license and had to go home.

But for martial artists like Shin Kangheon and Pi Seunghwa, this was just a step they’d pass through on the way.

“If you can’t even win three times out of a maximum of five chances? At that level, you should go home and use your knife to chop onions.”

“What if you get unlucky and end up against first-rate master-level opponents three times in a row?”

“What are the odds of that? There aren’t even ten people a year who get first-rate licenses.”

Shin Kangheon thought that even though the format of the exam had changed in a drastic way, its essence hadn’t changed at all. If anything, he liked the current style better.

The two of them followed after Black-White, chatting back and forth. As he stared holes into the back of Black-White’s head, Shin Kangheon asked Pi Seunghwa,

“Who do you think is going to take first among people our age?”

Among the late-bloom prospects in their age range, who was the best?

It was a childish question, but one that always sparked heated debate.

And Pi Seunghwa, being a late-bloom prospect who’d only just stepped into the martial world himself, couldn’t help reacting to it.

“...Probably Supreme Pole Sword Gate’s Song Junho or Sun and Moon Gate’s Yang Hayun.”

“Oh, those Level 1 constitution kids?”

Shin Kangheon pictured the two he’d seen at the Martial Alliance entrance.

Song Junho of Supreme Pole Sword Gate—baby face with eyebrows so thick they looked like caterpillars.

Yang Hayun of Sun and Moon Gate—someone who’d looked a little spaced out.

“They both seemed tiny.”

“Everyone looks like that if you use you as the standard.”

By Shin Kangheon’s standards, even Kim Muhyuk, who was somewhere in the high 180s, barely counted as “not short.”

But even by normal standards, those two were on the short side.

“...If you ever run into them, don’t mention their height. Don’t say they’re short, don’t say their legs are stubby—especially with Song Junho, he’s insanely sensitive about that stuff.”

Because of the shared label of late-bloom prospects from the Eight Great Sects, Pi Seunghwa had already met the two he’d just mentioned.

The only two late-bloom prospects this year with Level 1 constitution.

Having seen them with his own eyes, Pi Seunghwa could confidently say those two were the most outstanding among their peers.

“Heh heh. So if I call them runts, they’ll hate it, right?”

“Shouldn’t have told you anything...”

With a sigh, Pi Seunghwa shot back a question of his own.

His expression said he already knew what the answer would be.

“Who do you think is the strongest among us?”

Shin Kangheon jabbed a thumb into his own chest.

“Either me or Kim Muhyuk. Whichever one of us is in better condition today gets first.”

Pi Seunghwa shook his head like he’d known it—and then looked a little surprised.

“Kim Muhyuk? Isn’t his constitution Level 4?”

“Who cares about constitution? Skill matters way more.”

“......”

There had been a time when Pi Seunghwa had thought that way too.

That as long as the gap wasn’t too huge, hard work could close the distance between constitutions.

But after actually meeting late-bloom prospects with Level 1 constitution, he’d realized the truth.

“You still don’t get it. Level 1s are on a completely different level.”

Pi Seunghwa shook his head with a bitter smile.

In the Eight Great Sects, the level of support a late-bloom prospect received after joining depended on their constitution.

Even for him—Golden Glory Gate’s golden prospect with an excellent Level 2 constitution—the sect poured out every kind of elixir for him and even assigned multiple masters to guide his martial arts.

Because of that, his skills had grown to a completely different level compared to a few months ago.

“Why do you think a great sect would invest that much? They only do it when they’re absolutely sure the potential is there.”

Like it or not, the greatest talent a martial artist could have was their innate constitution.

The Eight Great Sects were only willing to spend that kind of money on people who were all but guaranteed to become future masters.

“...Even I get this much support. You can’t even imagine what Level 1s get.”

As he listed off astronomical sums and big-name masters, the nearby applicants who’d been quietly eavesdropping swallowed hard.

Shin Kangheon, however, just listened with clear disinterest, snorted, and brushed it off.

“So your conclusion is you can’t keep up with a Level 1 unless you ever actually fight one?”

“Right now, maybe Kim Muhyuk is better than you or me. But in three years—five at the latest—he’ll definitely hit his limit.”

Pi Seunghwa’s eyes were filled with certainty as he continued.

“And ten years from now, we’ll be living in completely different worlds. No matter how hard he works, that won’t change. That’s what the Sect Master himself told me.”

“......”

Staring straight into those eyes, Shin Kangheon clicked his tongue quietly.

“Yeah, Golden Glory Gate is definitely not for me.”

“...What?”

He thought back to the months of brutal special training he’d gone through with Kim Muhyuk.

Every single day had been hard enough to make him want to throw up, and there were times he’d been tempted to quit.

Even so, the reasons he’d managed to stick it out to the very end—half of it was the drive to beat Kim Muhyuk.

The other half was the joy of feeling himself get stronger day by day.

Not once in that entire process had Shin Kangheon thought about “limits.”

“If what you’re saying is true, then as a Level 3, I’m never beating a Level 1 in my entire life, right?”

“......”

Watching Pi Seunghwa stay silent, Shin Kangheon let out a snort.

If you’d chosen the path of a martial artist, then even if you smashed headfirst into a wall called “your limit,” shouldn’t your first thought be how to break through it?

“If a sect starts by teaching you what your limits are, I don’t need to hear anything else about it.”

Shin Kangheon strode past Pi Seunghwa with long, unhurried steps.

From the other side, another Black-White was leading a group of martial artists toward them.

[Stop.]

[Stop.]

The two groups halted and watched each other warily as the Black-Whites met in the middle, exchanged a few words, and then went back to their respective sides.

[Our numbers line up perfectly with theirs. We will now begin the second event, so everyone, please get ready...]

Before Black-White could finish the sentence, Shin Kangheon, face full of excitement, stepped toward the opposing group and shouted,

“Bring out the strongest guy you’ve got—right now!”

*****

At the same time.

I was also standing across from my opponent, about to start the second event.

“With arms and legs that short, this is going to be a disadvantage for you. Are you sure you want to go against me?”

“You...!”

I’d actually said it because I was trying to be considerate, but judging by the look on his face, it had landed completely wrong.

He looked furious. I had no idea why, so I tilted my head and finished what I’d been saying.

“You can go ask Black-White to switch opponents if you want. The second event is going to be pretty unfair when there’s a big height difference.”

“You bastard—! I’ll make you regret saying that!”

Supreme Pole Sword Gate’s top late-bloom prospect, Song Junho, was flushing bright red as he seethed at me.