A person with superior skill was called a master.

That applied to me.

As long as my eyes were open, I always held the upper hand in psychological battles.

I steadied my stance. My ideation sank inward, and the power of the Heavenly Demons Body awakened.

Like a bowstring poised to snap, every muscle in my body tensed.

My shoulders, hips, and toes aligned into a single straight line, with my center of gravity precisely balanced on the balls of my feet.

It was the perfect stance for sudden acceleration and directional shifts.

Did my refusal to retreat seem laughable?

His face still held an amused smirk. No shame at all in facing off against a child. He continued to treat this like a game.

"So, a little hunter-in-training is acting tough? You’re blind! What exactly do you think you can do to me? Shouldn’t you be running away, screaming?"

I responded with a simple remark.

If I wanted to draw out his full power, I had to provoke him.

I even wiggled my fingers, making it obvious that I was mocking him.

"You sure talk a lot for a lolicon."

"What?"

"Pathetic. You must be stupid if your academic record is worse than mine. And even at your age, you're still just an F-rank?"

"You blind little brat! Do you think F-rank hunters are worthless?!"

The taunt worked.

The killing intent flared thick in the air.

I could practically taste my own excitement at the opportunity to expand my knowledge.

His center of gravity, the subtle shift of his toes, the tension and release of his muscles, inertia and angular momentum, reactions.

I saw it all.

Every time his foot struck the ground, the coefficient of friction changed.

When he pushed off with his right foot, his balance wavered by two centimeters.

So what, you ask?

His next move followed a predictable equation, the optimal attack angle was already determined.

A punch came flying, Na Han Kwon.

The most fundamental of fundamental martial arts.

I saw through the form, the transitions, and the technique in its entirety.

I knew where the power originated and where it would land.

And in that moment, I couldn’t help but let out my disappointment.

"Mister, this is too easy."

I had only one thing to do. I didn’t even need to dodge.

Just calculate the opening and stand in that exact spot before the attack reached me.

It only took half a step.

Whoosh! Swoosh!

The air split apart.

His flailing arms and legs barely brushed past me… It felt like watching a monkey perform tricks.

It was only now that he stoped underestimating me. His expression stiffened strangely. His protruding lips gaped in shock.

"How the hell are you... How is a first-year—?!"

"I’m just good, I guess?"

I had to push him further, this pitiful display wasn’t what I was hoping to see.

"That’s it? Is that all? Don’t tell me… this is really all you can do?"

"Don’t get cocky. I acknowledge that you didn’t enter the academy on a fluke. But even so, the gap between a mere student and a certified hunter is enormous."

He lunged forward all at once, as if finally getting serious. His eyes were bloodshot. He was revving up properly now.

"Let me show you the strength of a major guild!"

My limbs felt strangely heavy and my shoulders stiffened slightly.

The air itself distorted, and a heat haze formed around me.

The pressure was on a different level. An external gravitational shift.

This was the principle of Heavy Fist.

The closer his punch came in an arc, the stronger the pull became.

‘Wasting such a good martial art.’

His skill level was too low to utilize it properly.

Originally, it was a shockwave technique meant to strike through the air.

The fact that his body was this close when it should be striking from a hundred steps away was frustrating.

And yet, he kept running his mouth, utterly oblivious.

Spit flew in all directions.

"Your fatal flaw is relying on agility. You never had the time to build strength, did you? Blame your parents for having you too late and die."

It was laughable that he assumed I lacked strength.

My body had transformed due to improperly consuming an elixir at a young age.

Wherever ideation flowed, energy followed, and my entire being was brimming with power.

With a flick of my waist, I unleashed my entire body from the force restraining me.

The pressure vanished in an instant, and my body moved freely once more.

I drove my fist upward.

"Kuh-ugh!"

An uppercut. A clean counter.

And I didn’t stop there, I stepped in further.

The movement was as natural as a flowing river.

My strikes continued in a seamless chain.

The combo was so precise that his airborne body refused to drop back down.

Tatatatat!

And then, the moment I had been waiting for arrived.

He finally seemed to get serious, unleashing what he had been holding back.

He raged.

"Enough of your insolence!"

His movements changed.

He began blocking my strikes.

The rebounding force was entirely different from before.

As the battle shifted, Jung Chaemin, watching from afar, had a sudden change in expression.

If one succumbed to the [Source of All Evil], they became a demonized being.

This was slightly different, but there was a reason his body was now emitting a dark crimson aura.

The scent of blood filled the air.

‘Hunwon Gong. He’s not even human anymore.’

A skill that absorbed the opponent’s martial energy and made it one’s own.

The victim had been a demon’s corpse.

The mere concept was horrifying enough, but he had actually acted upon it.

The reason he had coveted my talent.

Instinctively, he had been drawn to me.

To my Heavenly Demon’s Body.

And recently, I had even opened my Upper Dantian.

Where in the world would he find talent like mine?

His corrupted eyes gleamed with greed as he stared at me.

His perception must have been dulled, since he didn’t even realize something was off.

Despite blatantly stealing my Na Han Kwon techniques, he said nothing.

That was the nature of demonic energy.

It couldn't be controlled with a rational mind.

Only I was special.

Swoosh!

My shoulder twisted like a drawn bow as my fist shot forward.

The rotational force flowed from my hips to my shoulders, then to the tips of my arms.

Unlike before, I couldn't afford to hold back.

My pectoral and latissimus dorsi muscles tensed. Even though I could see exactly how his muscles moved, our exchange of strikes remained purely a battle of close-quarters combat.

As my breathing grew slightly heavier—

"Hmph?"

A sudden, explosive strike came at me.

At a distance of a single step, the Hundred Step Divine Fist shot forward in an instant.

Boom!

Even though I barely dodged it, I paid a price.

The sheer power behind the strike was overwhelming.

My toes scraped against the ground, leaving marks as I struggled to keep my footing.

My left elbow stung as it reddened from the impact.

"Wait, was a demonized being hiding here? El! Get away! That’s not someone we can handle!"

Jung Chaemin’s face was filled with worry and confusion.

And it was understandable.

Demonized beings couldn’t function in normal society.

Losing rationality was just the beginning. If they couldn’t consume blood, they wouldn’t even be able to survive.

'For him to have fed on blood and remained hidden in Korea, a place crawling with hunters and surveillance cameras… That means his Buddhist martial arts are exceptionally refined.'

I could sense it.

The presence of Buddhist force.

Though he hadn't mastered a single one of the seventy-two techniques properly, the mnemonic phrases he had desperately learned contained seals meant to suppress his rampant blood energy.

Now, that energy had been fully unleashed, surging wildly.

"Kraaaagh!"

He lunged at me, he knew it instinctively. He couldn't afford to give me even a moment to breathe.

Stormflow Light Step.

I widened the distance, but the technique was too low-ranked.

'He catches up too quickly.'

My arm throbbed. I hadn't yet shaken off the impact.

It wasn’t broken, but I needed time before I could move it again.

Still, I didn’t feel a sense of crisis, because I could tell… something I had been lacking was slowly being filled.

A flash of insight struck me.

'Even a monkey, unable to act from a hundred steps away, will shorten the distance to a single step.'

That was the essence of being a hunter.

The situation was never in your favor.

If you lacked teeth, you used your gums.

If you couldn’t use your hands, you used your feet.

If even a monkey could do it, why couldn’t I?

Time slowed, stretching into an eternity of stillness.

My Upper Dantian was processing every possible scenario.

Calculating, feeding back, then recalculating again.

It felt as if a machine was spinning in my head.

I was drawing upon all my latent potential.

As a result, I reversed the mnemonic structure of his Buddhist techniques.

Ideation surged through my body.

My energy and meridians seamlessly connected.

Following the image I had constructed in my mind, everything converged into one.

The Heavenly Martial Body, and from it, the Heavenly Demon’s Body.

This body could handle it all with ease.

At that moment, a martial art never before seen in this world was born.

My ideation sharpened to a razor’s edge.

It fundamentally changed, deviating from existing martial arts, altering the way it occupied space itself.

My energy fluctuated violently, compressing a hundred steps into a single step.

Even within this simple motion, the extreme adjustments to acceleration, ground pressure, and balance shifts were precise beyond measure.

'A step grounded in demonic energy. Its layers intertwine in perfect harmony, embodying absolute dominance.'

If I had to name it… ‘Sovereign Step’.

But since my title was Death God, It would be Death God’s Sovereign Step.

A single step. Just one step.

Before my sole even touched the ground, the air trembled.

A shockwave from my footwork crushed the space itself.

Step.

And as my stride fully landed—

Boom!

The sheer force exceeded all expectations, caving the earth beneath me.

My enemy was utterly obliterated.