Urban Vagabond: Reload

“Fuu...”

On the outside, it didn’t look like Kim Muhyuk had taken a serious hit, but inside, his body was a wreck of internal injuries.

‘You’re really trying my temper.’

He had taken the King of Fists’s signature technique head-on.

Sure, it probably hadn’t been unleashed at full power, but the impact still felt like his body was going to crumble apart.

If he hadn’t protected himself with the Five Elements Divine Art, he would’ve lost consciousness and been flung off the sparring platform.

SCRRRAPE...

The sword that was propping him up—like a cane—dragged along the floor of the sparring platform, making an unpleasant sound.

“Alliance Leader.”

Buying himself a moment to recover, Kim Muhyuk raised an objection about the fairness of the test.

“No matter who you are, Alliance Leader, I don’t think it’s right to change the difficulty of the test based on your mood.”

His words came out with a bit of a bite, his emotions surging.

Maybe they found his protest reasonable, because the VIPs watching nodded.

“That attack just now was...”

“The Alliance Leader went too far.”

“It’s bound to raise fairness concerns.”

The countless people watching the broadcast felt the same.

With the Martial Alliance Leader’s attacks suddenly becoming several times stronger, they vented their frustration like it had happened to them personally.

[Is he doing that on purpose to make him fail??]

[Feels like discrimination since he’s not an Eight Great Sects young talent...]

[Only a few techniques left and he suddenly goes “you have to survive to pass” LOL]

The same people who’d been cursing Kim Muhyuk were now starting to cheer for him.

But Yeo Pilgeuk didn’t care about any of it.

He looked only at Kim Muhyuk and spoke.

“Your eyes got sharper. Did you finally decide to do this properly?”

“......”

That gaze—like it could see straight through him—made Kim Muhyuk flinch.

It was true he wanted to show his strength in front of all those cameras and all those eyes.

But he’d never once had the nerve to take it easy against the Martial Alliance Leader.

“Properly...? I’ve been doing my best from the start.”

“You were darting in and out efficiently—only as much as the test required. Was that your best?”

“......”

An efficient sword style that minimized sword movement and internal energy expenditure.

A practical style he’d refined and developed since his days as a drifter.

But Yeo Pilgeuk was telling him it wasn’t enough.

Feeling like his way of fighting was being denied, Kim Muhyuk swept his messy hair back and snapped irritably,

“Then what—am I supposed to stake my life and cut you down?”

It was an answer with the savage edge of a drifter, like a wolf baring its fangs and growling.

GULP...

As the young talents watching grew even more tense, Yeo Pilgeuk answered with a faint smile.

“That wouldn’t be bad. Or you might find a better method than that.”

Yeo Pilgeuk’s eyes curved like a crescent as he spoke in riddles. In that gaze was warmth toward a younger warrior so far beneath him it felt distant.

But there was no mercy in the King of Fists’s fist as he prepared the ninth technique.

‘What the hell is your problem?’

It didn’t look like he intended to answer Kim Muhyuk’s question.

RRRRRUMBLE...!

With thunder, the Alliance Leader’s fist rose again.

Under the pressure of a supreme expert’s aura crushing his whole body, Kim Muhyuk couldn’t move carelessly.

‘I can’t dodge this.’

Kim Muhyuk clenched his teeth.

There was no way Yeo Pilgeuk hadn’t already grasped his level.

Which meant—he was about to throw that fist because he’d judged Kim Muhyuk could handle it.

‘How do I stop it? Is blocking even the answer? Would it be better to counterattack instead...?’

He spun his mind desperately, searching for an answer.

But none appeared.

Only the suffocating feeling of standing in front of an enormous wall.

And then the Martial Alliance Leader unleashed his ninth technique.

“Golden Ape Meteor Fist Secret Art. Second Form—Meteorfall Dust.”

In that instant, Kim Muhyuk saw an illusion, as if a golden meteor shower were pouring down right in front of him. A surge of stubborn fury rose in his chest.

‘I’m breaking through—no matter what!’

Grinding his teeth, Kim Muhyuk charged straight into the falling meteor shower.

Meteorfall Dust was a technique that sent dozens of fist strikes flooding in all at once. If he didn’t swing his sword without pause, he’d be swept away.

Inside that meteor downpour, Kim Muhyuk swung his sword like a madman.

But he couldn’t block everything.

SLASH!

A fist strike that barely grazed past him tore through muscle and rattled bone.

Blood dripped from the hand gripping his sword, forced to endure the recoil. The leg stepping into footwork felt heavy as a mountain. Every time he swung, his arm screamed.

“Hah. He’s completely in the zone.”

Azure Sky Sword Elder Na Ilcheon tapped a rhythm on his thigh with his palm.

The sight of Kim Muhyuk advancing while swinging his sword as if possessed was enough to make even an old monster of the Korean martial world admire him.

Even as he blocked the Alliance Leader’s onslaught so precariously it made observers uneasy, Kim Muhyuk’s eyes were growing clearer than before.

‘What the Alliance Leader said... I think I understand, vaguely.’

Amid the pouring fist strikes, Kim Muhyuk repeated Yeo Pilgeuk’s words to himself.

—A pinnacle expert means you’ve built your own world through martial power.

I thought he just wanted to run wild on the sparring platform like he’d regained his youth, but thinking about it again, it wasn’t advice I could shrug off.

A pinnacle expert.

In novels and movies, it was often treated like it wasn’t much—but in the martial world, a pinnacle expert meant someone who established and completed their own martial path.

In my last life, the drifter Kim Muhyuk crossed that realm and completed martial arts of his own.

Maybe that was why I’d gotten complacent.

Now I had enough time, enough internal energy—so I assumed it was just another step I could lightly tread past.

But if I simply stepped over that old staircase as-is...

‘Then I won’t go higher. I’ll just walk the same road again.’

Kim Muhyuk hacked through the last of the meteor shower with his sword.

SLAAASH!

And then, the drain hit him. He staggered—and finally dropped to one knee.

“Haa, haa...”

His heart hammered like it was going to explode. The martial robe that had been grazed by those fist strikes was torn into rags.

“Now you look like you’ve finally reached your limit.”

With Kim Muhyuk bowed, gasping for breath, Yeo Pilgeuk walked up and stood over him, asking evenly,

“One last technique remains. Will you take it to the end?”

At the Martial Alliance Leader’s cold tone, people watching the broadcast in anxious tension flared with anger.

Kim Muhyuk had already shown a performance that deserved applause just for not letting go of his sword.

In a situation where anyone could see he’d hit his limit, telling him to take the last technique felt like mockery.

“Hah...”

But in that moment, Kim Muhyuk struggled up and lifted his head.

Contrary to everyone’s expectations, he was smiling—so brightly it looked like he was enjoying himself.

“Of course.”

Kim Muhyuk felt his heart pounding like crazy.

Not because he was out of breath—

but because of the thrill that came with a realization.

‘This was him telling me to look back at the road I’ve walked as a martial artist.’

The sword of Kim Muhyuk—the Lone Ghost.

He’d never intended to tell anyone about it, never intended to take a disciple, so he’d never bothered naming his sword style out loud.

But he did have a name for it in his heart.

‘Solitary Life-and-Death Sword.’

A drifter’s sword learned by crossing life and death alone.

It was built on the realizations he’d clawed out while thrashing for survival.

That was the martial art the Lone Ghost—Kim Muhyuk—had established in his last life.

‘But it’s clothing that doesn’t fit my body anymore.’

Right now, in this moment, Kim Muhyuk realized that to go further, he had to step out of the world of martial power he’d established in his last life.

“If there’s clothing that fits me better... I should change into it.”

Muttering to himself, Kim Muhyuk lifted his trembling arm and leveled his sword at Yeo Pilgeuk.

He would stack one more brick onto the staircase he’d built in his last life.

So he could climb higher.

“...Looks like you gained something. Good. Since it’s the last, I’ll be sincere as well.”

With a calm face, Yeo Pilgeuk nodded once and slowly clenched his fist. Kim Muhyuk staggered back, widening the distance.

RRRRRUMBLE...!

A different level of power filled the Martial Alliance Leader’s final, tenth technique.

The force felt more ferocious than the previous eight and nine combined, and even the sect leaders of the Eight Great Sects looked rattled.

“Alliance Leader! No matter how fired up you are, that’s too much!”

Azure Sky Sword Elder Na Ilcheon—who’d been watching with interest—raised his voice.

The other sect leaders warned him to stop as well.

But Yeo Pilgeuk acted as if he heard nothing.

“Golden Ape Meteor Fist Secret Art.”

Yeo Pilgeuk’s indifferent eyes settled on Kim Muhyuk.

The young talent in front of him looked like he’d collapse from a flick, but his eyes were clearer than they’d been at any point since he stepped onto the sparring platform.

Without thinking, the corners of Yeo Pilgeuk’s mouth lifted.

“Third Form—Golden Dragon Ascends to Heaven—!”

A fist wrapped in monstrous force stormed down in a torrent like a golden dragon.

With his entire focus locked on what was in front of him, everything else in Kim Muhyuk’s vision blurred into haze.

‘Cut.’

Using the Five Elements Divine Art, he dragged out every last drop of internal energy he had left.

Either way, he only had one chance.

Kim Muhyuk’s concentration sharpened to its limit.

“......!”

The power of the Five Elements began to frost over his sword.

Metal.

And then water.

Those two forces flowed along Kim Muhyuk’s blade. The other three energies also surged through his whole body, bolstering his strength.

‘Put it all into one strike.’

The instant the golden dragon reached point-blank range, Kim Muhyuk swung his sword with everything he had.

‘Now!’

The golden dragon and the sword collided.

And at the same time, a crushing pressure poured into Kim Muhyuk’s body. Under that horrific pressure, blood vessels burst in his eyes.

‘Not yet...!’

He could still endure.

Squeezing his lower abdomen to its limit, forcing his wrist to hold even as it felt ready to snap, Kim Muhyuk held on.

And then, the Martial Alliance Leader’s voice rang in his ears.

[What do you want to complete with your martial arts?]

Exchanging ten techniques with the Martial Alliance Leader had been the process of finding that answer.

Muttering the answer he’d found, Kim Muhyuk stepped forward.

“Stand...”

The desire to advance so far as a martial artist that no one could follow.

But he wouldn’t walk it alone like he had in his last life.

He would walk with the countless people following behind him.

My parents. My teacher. And my friends.

I would walk at the very front and lose no one, and in the end become The Strongest in the World.

With that wish poured into it, Kim Muhyuk swung his sword.

“...Alone under heaven.”

The Solitary Life-and-Death Sword—barely holding back the golden dragon—changed.

A lonely, razor-edged sword obsessed with nothing but his own life became a sword both gentle and tough, wishing to be with everyone.

Following the guidance of that changed sword, the golden dragon violently twisted its trajectory—and then shot up toward the sky.

KAKAKAKAKA!

The Martial Alliance Leader’s tenth technique surged upward like a spout, then scattered and vanished in midair.

Kim Muhyuk stood in place, staring blankly at the sight.

Yeo Pilgeuk had come up beside him at some point, watching it as well as he murmured,

“Stand Alone Under Heaven... That’s a fine answer.”

“Were you going easy on me?”

“Hm? I’ve no idea what you mean.”

Yeo Pilgeuk shrugged, playing innocent.

At the end, when he twisted the dragon-spout upward, Kim Muhyuk felt it—like the golden dragon didn’t resist, but accepted.

He’d been prepared to be unable to get up for days if he stopped the tenth technique...

but it didn’t look like it would come to that.

Wobble.

Kim Muhyuk barely caught his swaying balance and let out a low breath.

“I got completely fooled. I’m usually not easy to fool...”

“I didn’t expect your sword to change in the middle, either. You did well.”

Chuckling, the Alliance Leader patted Kim Muhyuk’s shoulder. Wearing a benevolent smile again, he offered congratulations.

“Congratulations on becoming a pinnacle expert.”

“...Thank you.”

Kim Muhyuk answered in a daze. It still didn’t feel real.

And in that moment, cheers erupted from all directions like they’d lift the Martial Alliance into the sky.

WAAAAAAAH!

The roars from the young talents, the invited VIPs, and the people watching the broadcast were so loud they carried all the way to the Martial Alliance itself.

It was a result no one watching could deny.

“No, why are you all going this far...”

The person involved looked around with a bewildered expression—his face broadcast live to the nation.

Even after Kim Muhyuk stepped down from the sparring platform, the cheers and applause for him didn’t stop for a long, long time.