CHAPTER: Chapter 5
------------------------------------------
Chapter 5.
“Now, hang from the cliff! Until only ten remain, none of you are to think of coming down!”
The children’s faces had already gone pale.
A few of them lost strength in their legs and collapsed to the ground.
Yet with the killing intent of the head instructors pressing against their backs, they still edged toward the lip of the cliff.
At that moment, one child cried out in a trembling voice.
“I… I cannot do this! I do not care about Supreme or anything else, so I will just step down!”
The child’s voice was nearly choked with tears.
Fear and shame were written across his face at once.
The moment he spoke, two or three more children raised their hands and declared that they would give up.
“M-me too!”
“I give up!”
They looked as though fear had paralyzed their reason.
Uncheon clicked his tongue.
‘Tsk. Did they truly think those fiends would let them withdraw so easily? There will surely be a price for it….’
Yet Instructor Jeok Mugwang nodded with surprising ease.
However, a faint sneer brushed his lips.
“Good. Better honest than lacking in courage. Is there anyone else who wishes to give up?”
Mistaking that for leniency, another three or four children raised their hands and stepped forward.
A total of five children gave up and came down.
“Good. As for those who gave up….”
The trace of a smile vanished from the instructor’s lips in an instant.
“…strip them of all qualifications immediately and treat them as Lowest. Send them to the labor camp and make slaves of them!”
“Yes, sir!”
“They are worthless. Drag them away at once!”
The other head instructors waiting nearby seized the children who had given up and dragged them away without mercy.
“I-I will hang from the cliff!”
“Please forgive us!”
The children screamed in belated regret, but it was useless.
“To live as a warrior of this cult means that you must always be prepared to stake your life. I have no need for trash whose grit has already rotted away.”
Jeok Mugwang shook his head as he spoke.
“Remember this well! The moment you set foot inside the Demonic Martial Hall, every single action of yours, even the simple act of breathing, becomes part of your evaluation!”
As the children watched, an image gradually began to take shape in their minds of what kind of people the cult truly desired.
‘So they lay a trap called comfort, then mercilessly weed out those who flee from danger… Only those who dare risk themselves are given a chance. So this is the way of the Demonic Cult.’
If so, then by stepping into this test even while holding the worst possible hand of Severed Meridians, Uncheon might already have proven one of the qualities they wanted.
‘Still, if there is any fortune in this, it is that they are taking them to the labor camp rather than killing them outright….’
Just then, the instructor barked again.
“Now then, twenty-five of you remain. The test begins. Form ranks!”
At the thunderous command, the children’s shoulders twitched.
The sight of their companions being dragged away as slaves only moments before was still vivid in their minds.
There were only two choices.
Be judged Lowest and dragged away as a slave.
Or prove one’s worth as a warrior.
Some of the children swallowed dryly and nodded with grim resolve.
SMACK—.
Some struck themselves across the face, as though trying to conquer their fear.
No matter what else, none of them dared to give up any longer.
“Ugh….”
“If we fall, that is death at the very least….”
Dust crumbled from beneath the feet of the children standing at the cliff’s edge and drifted far, far below.
“Silence! Stop whining and hang!”
In the end, each child clung to the cliff by whatever jagged protrusions he could find.
Uncheon was the first to spring forward and claim a position with his back to the wind.
Finding a crack in the rock deep enough for a stable grip, he drove his hand into it and hung there.
A few of the cadets, and Yuha in particular, saw Uncheon’s swift judgment and action and their eyes lit up.
‘He really is an interesting one.’
Even to the head instructors, Uncheon was beginning to stand out.
And so, quietly, they began to gauge his talent.
Whether he might be of use to the factions to which they belonged.
‘His constitution remains an unknown. Yet there is no hesitation in his actions.’
‘Rather than open battle, he may be suited to assassination or intelligence work, where quick judgment matters more than martial strength….’
Instructor Jeok Mugwang’s eyes gleamed sharply.
‘Does he truly mean to prove the blade he carries within? His bones are poor, but every judgment he makes stands out!’
Jeok Mugwang stroked his chin as he watched Uncheon.
‘If… that brat were to reshape even his bones into demonic bones through the Demonic Bone Rebirth Art…?’
After the twenty-five children had all hung from the cliff, a quarter of an hour passed.
The sharp feel of the rock bit into their fingertips.
Pain tore from their shoulders through their arms, as though their muscles were being ripped apart.
And on top of that, the wind from the valley swept past their ears and tried to shove them away from the cliff.
“Urgh….”
“No… longer….”
Harsh groans began spilling from the children’s mouths, and the sweat gathering on their brows ran down along their jaws before dropping into the abyss below.
It was a test of extremes, one that could only be endured by one’s own strength and mental resilience.
Among them all, Uncheon looked the frailest of the lot, the smallest in build, a sickly scrap of a boy who seemed unable to muster even a proper ounce of strength.
Not only the children of the Demonic Cult, but even the other children hanging there seemed to think he would be the first to fall.
But Uncheon’s thoughts were very different.
‘…Is this not too easy a test for me?’
He had climbed Mount Gonryun day after day while tempering his Lightness Art.
He had mastered the Cloud Dragon Great Eight Forms and earned the epithet Cloud Dragon for it.
And on top of that, he had learned the Cloud Dragon Claw, which honed the sensitivity of the fingertips to the utmost extreme.
When it came to the knack of gripping a cliff, he surpassed every child here.
In the end, hanging from a cliff was less a matter of raw strength than of knowing how to use one’s strength.
‘Those with good constitutions will struggle even to bear the weight of their own bodies. But… my case is different.’
In a cruel irony, his Severed Meridians and his emaciated frame had turned into an advantage.
This flesh-and-bones body of his was, to exaggerate only slightly, as light as a feather.
That meant he could endure with the barest minimum of effort, making him almost perfectly suited for this test.
‘Compared to the training I once endured for the Cloud Dragon Claw, this is little more than a game.’
In his previous life, he could have endured half a day hanging by a single finger.
Another quarter of an hour passed.
The children hanging from the cliff began instinctively turning their heads and watching one another.
They did not even realize that the very act would drain their strength all the faster.
Sweat began to seep between their fingers, and the rocks they clung to trembled.
They could feel their hands starting to slip, little by little.
CRUMBLE—.
Somewhere along the cliff, a section of rock gave way and scattered dust into the air.
One child’s arm slipped free at once.
“Ah… ahhh!”
With that cry, he plummeted downward.
“Aaaaah—!”
His scream echoed through the Demonic Martial Hall.
The rocks and the mist below hid whatever happened next from view.
SPLAT—!
But the dull bursting sound, like a ripe watermelon exploding, seared itself into everyone’s mind.
At the same time, short screams rose from the watching children above.
The moment one child fell so horribly, fear spread through the others hanging there like a plague.
“Hhk… ugh….”
Some burst into tears.
Others strained desperately with trembling arms.
Now, their eyes held nothing but the primal fear of death.
‘…If I fall, I die!’
That single thought echoed through every mind.
Cold sweat poured from their palms like rain.
The fingers clutching the tiny stone protrusions looked ready to slip at any moment.
Several children had already gone pale, as if all feeling had vanished from their arms.
‘So the real test begins now.’
The trap the Demonic Cult bastards had prepared was well made, but it could not deceive Uncheon’s ears.
‘That was not the sound of a person falling….’
The bursting sound from earlier had not been the sound of bones and flesh shattering.
They had likely burst some object on purpose.
But the other children did not seem to have either the composure or the ability to judge that.
‘Cunning bastards… so they are waging a war of nerves.’
They intended to maximize the children’s terror through the first elimination.
The human body was sturdier than most imagined.
Because of that, in most cases, the mind reached its limit before the body did.
And among all things, fear was the greatest enemy.
‘Essence, qi, and spirit are one… and yet the minds of the others are already beginning to unravel….’
When fear devoured the body, breathing grew ragged, muscles tightened, and the heartbeat quickened.
If one lost one’s composure, falling became inevitable.
‘The eliminations will only accelerate from here….’
His expectation was correct.
This time, not far from Uncheon—
“Aaaaagh!”
A second child fell with a scream.
And almost at once, a third followed.
“Aaaah!”
The remaining children began gasping even more harshly.
The fourth and fifth fell not long after.
During the first quarter of an hour, not a single one had fallen.
But in the next fifteen minutes alone, five had plummeted.
‘That leaves twenty.’
More than half still had to fall before the test would end.
‘At this rate, it will take quite a while… the head instructors may decide to pull another trick.’
By now, the children who remained had begun secretly hoping that the ones beside them would fall.
‘Damn it! When is this test going to end!’
‘If the one next to me falls… will that finally bring it closer to the end?’
Seeing through that mentality, one of the head instructors stepped in at the perfect moment.
“Heh… heh, so you have now overcome the fear that you yourselves may fall. Good. You have all endured well enough.”
It sounded like praise.
But the words that followed were the true dagger.
“I will tell you the truth. Even if you fall, you will not die. Every child who fell was caught by the head instructors.”
“……!”
“Heh… heh… You were dragged in from all across the Central Plains. Even if nothing else, you ought to be of some use as slaves.”
The head instructor’s words shook the children’s hearts in an instant.
Those sweet words slipped into the taut tension gripping them.
That was precisely the head instructor’s aim.
‘If I let go, I will not die?’
Rather than the distant and unseen reward ahead, the sweet promise of immediate rest suddenly stood before them.
‘If I will not die from falling…!’
As that thought began circling through their heads, their resolve started to break one by one.
Sure enough, not long after the head instructor spoke, the strength left three children at once and they slipped free.
Unlike the children who had fallen before, they did not even scream.
WHOOSH—.
Something moved through the air below.
It sounded as though a head instructor had caught the cadets.
‘These Demonic Cult bastards… do they simply think it would be wasteful to throw away children with constitutions of this level?’
Whether the head instructor had spoken the truth or not, only the sound of wind slicing below could be heard.
There was no wet bursting sound like a watermelon splitting open.
“Well then, now you are down to half. Only fourteen remain. You have all done well. Even if you give up here, I will at least acknowledge your grit. I promise an appropriate ‘reward.’”
Once again, the head instructor offered a sweet reward.
Quite a few of the children were already at their limits. Some of them looked visibly tempted.
‘The head instructor never said what that reward would be… Judging by everything so far, taking his words at face value would be foolish.’
It was a crafty method.
The head instructor was manipulating children whose mental strength had already reached its limit exactly as he pleased.
And once again, lured by those sweet words promising a reward, three more let go.
Through nothing more than cunning psychological warfare, the head instructor reduced by half the number of children who had endured on the cliff for two full quarters of an hour—in barely half that time.
“Only eleven remain. Are you going to sit there waiting for someone else to fall until you become the losers? Have you already forgotten the question from earlier?”
The head instructor barked, reminding them of someone’s earlier question.
‘It does not matter if we make our competitors fall…!’
Not one of the children failed to understand what the head instructor meant.
The instant those words were spoken, Uncheon felt the air at both his sides change.
It was not mere rivalry.
It was the cold killing intent of beasts driven to the brink.
‘…I see. I must have looked like the easiest target.’
Two dark hands shot toward Uncheon.
One from each side.
0 Comments