Chapter – 04
I ran.
Not an all-out sprint, but still at a fairly fast pace.
Immediately the sound of feet on the track multiplied.
It seemed Kang Juhyeok had come to his senses and was chasing after me.
Had we run five laps?
My breath was starting to get heavy, and I sneaked a glance to the side.
The figure that had been behind me had, at some point, drawn closer and was now almost level with me.
Kang Juhyeok still looked like he didn’t understand why we were running, but without complaining he stomped along.
His stamina was ridiculous — not a hint of color change to his face.
He looked like a person taking a leisurely hike up a nearby hill.
By contrast, my face must have been beet-red.
It’s no boast, but I hadn’t exercised for anything other than breathing since graduating high school.
Five laps doubled into ten in no time.
Running without stopping, my breath reached my throat.
I could feel my lungs and heart pounding.
Veins that I normally would never notice throbbed and hummed through my body.
The association’s track wasn’t the size of a typical neighborhood field.
Compared to those, it was easily twice as large.
And we’d run ten laps on that.
The wind no longer felt cool.
It was hot.
On the fourteenth lap.
My legs wobbled and refused to obey properly; only then did the old man come over to us.
A man who looked like he was a hundred and twenty years old but had the endurance of a beast.
Even though he had started running not long ago, he moved with an overflowing calm.
He could run and speak clearly without losing a breath.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m making you run after I said I’d teach you how to handle a sword. I’ll tell you now. Even if it’s hard, make sure you keep this in your ears. It’s obvious stuff. A good sword technique requires physical strength and endurance. A swordsman can’t just swing a few times and collapse from exhaustion. Of course not.”
He looked me over at my flushed face and laughed heartily.
His loud guffaw made me a little embarrassed.
The sword master expounded his theory.
“Swordsmanship literally means the method of using a sword. Have you ever seen builders erect a structure in a snap without plans? Have you seen painters create detailed works without a sketch? You can’t just swing a sword and expect it to be enough. Just as architecture needs blueprints and painting needs an underdrawing, swordplay needs basic ways of swinging — that is, sword techniques.”
“But no matter how beautiful the blueprint or sketch is, what good is it if materials are lacking? How can you paint a watercolor without paint? It’s the same. No matter how good a sword technique you know, if your body can’t keep up, it’s worthless. Now do you understand why you have to run, Kang Juhyeok?”
Hearing the old man’s words, Kang Juhyeok finally dropped the puzzled expression on his face.
At least he seemed to grasp that this running was the foundation for the sword training to follow.
He straightened his neck, shortened his previously wide stride a bit, and breathed in three times without deep inhalation, then let it out in one clean exhale.
Running looked much easier for him now.
As if he’d suddenly realized a smarter, more efficient way to run.
Though you couldn’t see it, a green hologram probably floated in his mind.
Yes. A genius.
That cheated trait had etched a simpler, more efficient method into his body.
When I blinked, the boy who had been shoulder-to-shoulder with me was suddenly ahead.
He hadn’t forced the tempo faster.
I had simply fallen behind.
He snorted in derision.
Like it was ridiculous.
Hmph.
It was the kind of action meant for everyone to hear; no need to say who it was aimed at.
It was a small sound, but it hit my ear clearly.
“…….”
Whoosh. The sound of something catching fire.
What, something’s on fire?
I glanced toward the hot spot and my pride was burning as fuel.
With the last of my strength, I surged forward.
I didn’t want to lose to that guy.
Immature?
Yeah, I’m childish.
.
.
.
“Ughhhhhh!”
Having bile rise from your stomach is not a pleasant experience.
I was so weak my focus blurred.
It felt like pressing my fingers hard enough to leave fingerprints on my glasses.
There was a flurry of slaps across my back.
It was the old man.
“Who told you to be so stubborn and keep running? This will do more harm than good. You’ll ruin your body. Eh.”
“Still… u-ugh…”
Standing beside the old man, Kang Juhyeok looked at me with a pitying expression and clicked his tongue.
Was this payback for the way I’d stared at him at the Da-nan gate?
I no longer had the strength to turn my head, so I ignored him.
He looked like someone who had run the same number of laps but appeared quite relaxed.
Of course, that was compared to me.
He, too, was exhausted — his face flushed and he panted heavily.
The old man nagged for a while.
If you keep acting so proud while holding a sword, you’ll be fit for the afterlife in no time.
Do you think your body is a machine?
The human body is extremely delicate.
If you mess up once, it’s hard to fix the organs.
And so on.
Then he fiddled with his chin with his thumb and forefinger a few times.
Still, he said, you did well.
“…….”
“Thirty laps. Technically twenty-nine, but that’s not something most people could do. Especially you, Lee Woohyun. Honestly, I thought you wouldn’t even make ten laps.”
“Ah. Yes……”
“I didn’t mean to underestimate you. I trusted my eyes more. It’s an intuition I’ve honed over many years, and none of those I’ve taught ever deviated from my predictions. You’re the first.”
“You didn’t teach many people before us, did you?”
“Bah. You’re joking, so you must be feeling better. Then today’s endurance training ends here. I only gave you a taste, so don’t get too complacent.”
With not a drop of sweat, the old man strolled into the association.
Kang Juhyeok dusted his trousers a few times and followed the old man.
I lay flat on my back and stared at the sky that was nothing but clear blue.
The pollution-free ceiling was piercingly clear.
Lying there, I shivered all over from convulsions and yet couldn’t help laughing.
Twenty-nine laps of that enormous track.
In kilometers, it must have been well over twenty.
An amount of exercise an untrained person shouldn’t be able to handle.
Even before being summoned, Kang Juhyeok had kept himself in decent shape, and as an immigrant he also benefited from a trait that assisted him — that made it possible.
A person like me, who had spent all day cooped in a room holding only a pen, could not possibly manage that volume.
Like the sword master said, it would have been lucky to reach even ten laps.
What made it possible was like the genius’s aid for Kang Juhyeok.
Yes, it was tenacity.
An unbending will had kept me from collapsing and pushed me on.
The power to save a world hurtling toward ruin was, paradoxically, exactly what this individual needed at this moment.
I was an extremely ordinary person.
The kind who grimaces and swears if they stub their little toe on the threshold.
But Istalnisia is a world where pain is widespread.
Even more so for immigrants.
You get clipped in a sword fight, a spell goes wrong and your mana backfires and your intestines twist, while dungeon runs leave you impaled by poisoned arrows — that kind of hellish world is everyday life here.
To avoid dying you have to get stronger, and to get stronger you must train.
But a person who has only held a pen all day can’t suddenly start brandishing a sword.
Of course. That’s not a story only about me.
By design, summoners — immigrants — were generally ordinary people.
Numerically, more than half.
The protagonist, Kang Juhyeok, is a normal adult male from Korea, isn’t he?
Having exercised a bit in the past doesn’t make you fit for this world’s fighting.
But you know what.
They were characters I had written.
So I knew.
I had intentionally pared away inner conflicts to satisfy readers’ needs.
They were, for example,
superhumans.
Main characters rarely break; even if they despair, it’s merely material for growth — they overcome it quickly and march forward on two sturdy legs.
Even if comrades fall beside them, even if arms and legs fly off, there are no aftereffects.
I wasn’t like that.
But now I was different.
That was tenacity.
Because it’s an attitude of piercing through adversity.
Suddenly a sharp gaze stabbed me.
Someone near the association building felt like they were staring me down.
I pretended not to notice and then abruptly turned my head to look.
Nobody was there, only a flash of luxurious blonde hair fluttering once in the air.
Oh yeah — she was at the association now.
I breathed into my still-unsettled body from the run and thought.
She was the protagonist of the second episode.
The last princess of a kingdom that had its throne stolen.
The rightful heir of the kingdom Nisessporm.
A woman searching for the owner of a sword.
I didn’t want to hurry things.
The story of a princess of a kingless kingdom growing into a queen still had time.
She was cautious; approaching her rashly could backfire.
When the time came, she would approach the main character, Kang Juhyeok.
I figured my meeting with her didn’t have to happen at Punglim-Hwasan right away.
Thinking that, I eased my aching body and rose to go to where the old man and Kang Juhyeok had gone.
Days of training at the association continued.
At first, for several days it seemed they were focusing on running to build basic stamina, but after about a week the old man brought out smoothly carved wooden practice swords and handed one to each of us.
He grabbed a nearby stick and held it up roughly.
“Attack,” he said.
The rest of his hand was folded behind his back as if to prove how relaxed he was.
I took a deep breath and literally charged.
— Crack!
Pain hit immediately.
Although the stick was crude, the impact felt like my grip was being torn apart.
This old man had no intention of going easy.
“Guh!”
“……?”
The old man looked a little bewildered.
Had I done something wrong?
I tried to study his face, but his words came faster than I could.
“…Not letting go was good, Woohyun. I like that. Yes. A swordsman must never drop the sword no matter what happens. Juhyeok. What are you doing? Attack.”
Tears almost sprang from my eyes from the pain and I recoiled, but Kang Juhyeok leapt in beside me.
He gripped the wooden sword clumsily with both hands and brought it down as if to split the old man’s head.
The sword master easily parried the wooden sword coming at him.
Whoosh — Kang Juhyeok’s practice sword flew in an ugly arc through the air and clattered near me.
The sword master, seeing this,
“Good. That’s how it should be…”
muttered something incomprehensible.
Kang Juhyeok stiffened as if he understood him.
The sword master smoothed his well-kept white beard.
He stuck a twig roughly between his fingers and stared thoughtfully.
I didn’t know how to fight with a sword, but I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I inched forward and charged again.
I was thrown back at once.
Kang Juhyeok and I fell and threw our swords, making a racket, and only after each of our attacks had been blocked three times did the sword master open his mouth again.
“Remember what I show you. Vertical slash. Horizontal slash. Thrust. They are the beginning and the end of the sword. From today you’ll learn these. I’ll watch your stances until nightfall, so swing away.”
Training had begun.
