Book 1-5.2 Fighting the Red Storm Warriors
Haisha could only blink his eyes as he laid there in the shape of a cross. He could not fathom what happened in that instant.
Yulian had instantly moved in towards Haisha and used a strong shoulder tackle to send Haisha flying.
Of course they estimated that Yulian would be stronger than they were, but nobody would have ever guessed that he would be able to overpower Haisha, who was one of the more skilled warriors in Red Storm, with one simple movement.
Yulian spoke as he helped Haisha off the sand.
“The greatsword is a weapon that is extremely strong and has a long reach, however, did I not tell you all to make sure the enemy does not come past the sword’s effective range? And that brief hesitation, I’m guessing you were debating whether to let the swords go?”
Haisha nodded his head yes as he grabbed onto Yulian’s hand to get off the ground. His head was still aching from the shock of falling down into the sand.
“Of course you should have thrown your swords away and attempted a fist fight. Isn’t my weapon a greatsword as well?”
‘There is nobody who can react instantly like that.’ Haisha wanted to say that to Yulian, but as Yulian continued to share what he did wrong, he was unable to do so.
One of the sayings that helped the Red Storm warriors overcome the initial training from hell was ‘If Yulian can do it, so can i.’
“Next.”
As Yulian shouted past Haisha who was deep in thought, the warriors started to look around at each other. They were all concerned about how Haisha was blown away with a single hit.
“Are you all scared? What happened to the confidence you had before? Today, I will show you why I created and taught the Red Storm. I will fiercely show you all. I’ve already been training for seven years; shouldn’t I be at least a little bit different?”
They knew Yulian was goading them, but still, they all got fired up by the insults.
“Me first.”
“Then, me first.”
A couple different warriors came out to the front.
“I will give you the first blow. Come at me.”
At Yulian’s words, the warriors attacked with all their strengths. The result…
Pow.
Flying warriors.
Pow.
Falling warriors.
Ten warriors in a row were attacked not with a sword but fists, shoulder, and head. Yulian’s face was filled with a smile.
The warriors continued to attack with all their might, but the results were the same.
Some of the warriors thought about the others who were countered when attacking with all of their strength and swung their swords focusing on defense. In those situations, Yulian suppressed them by swinging his sword with overwhelming strength.
‘I’m so shocked I can’t even speak.’
Haisha could not believe Yulian’s aggression and magnificence to defeat all the warriors except one within an hour.
“Is this the last?”
Yulian leisurely laughed as he looked at the last remaining warrior, Thrint.
Thrint slowly moved forward while holding tightly onto his greatsword and staring at Yulian.
‘If I use any normal method, I know I am currently no match for Yulian-nim. That was the case for Haisha, and even the case for those chatterboxes Triquel and Shubeon, who are some of the strongest among us. They all were blown away by a single blow. If I attack him thinking of this as training, I will end up just the same.’
“As with the others, I will give you the first blow. If you are hesitant, you will be hit by the sword.”
Yulian said that while looking at the warriors who were still writhing in pain from being hit by the sword. Thrint brought forth all of his fighting spirit to attack.
‘This is a battlefield. We are in an embarrassing situation where the entire Red Storm was decimated by a single person. If I am to die, I will take at least an arm, if not, at least a finger, with me.’
Thrint started to suppress his own thoughts. If your mind is suppressed, your body will follow.
Thrint had trained harder than anybody else because he had a high level of self-esteem and was extremely prideful. Through that, what Thrint had learned was that the mind controls the body.
And the control of his mind, had never given him any disappointment.
“Huuuu~ Huuu~”
Thrint started to take deep breaths as he started to transform.
“Hmm?”
The first person to recognize Thrint’s transformation was Yulian, who started to sensitively respond.
‘Is it murderous aura?’
The moment Yulian was surprised, Thrint lifted his two greatswords and started to stab them towards Yulian.
“What!”
Rather than Thrint’s speed, Yulian was shocked at Thrint’s murderous aura. Yulian swung his body to make the greatswords miss, and turned around to attack Thrint’s shoulder with his elbow.
“Ugh.”
Although Thrint let out a painful yell at the strong impact in his shoulder, he did not let go of his sword and turned his body to swing again at Yulian.
Yulian had expected Thrint to fall down with this one attack. As Thrint attacked again rather than falling, Yulian was not ready and had to use his greatsword to parry the attack.
“Oh!”
As if he was getting strength from the other warriors’ cheers, Thrint started to swing his greatsword quickly and continued to attack Yulian.
He was attacking with the mentality of “If I can’t kill you, I will end up dying.”
To not hurt Thrint, Yulian used his sword to parry each and every one of Thrint’s attacks while using his feet and the face of the sword to take him down. Surprisingly, Thrint continued to attack Yulian, as if saying that type of light attacks will never take me down.
As Thrint’s murderous aura continued to grow, Yulian started to feel like he couldn’t continue like this.
Among the strong Red Storm warriors, Thrint was someone who had caught his eye early on.
He was not focused on accuracy with the sword like Haisha, nor was he fast like Triquel.
That doesn’t mean he was nimble like Shubeon either, but he had the mental persistence, that could overcome everything else.
Thrint was the warrior who was extremely dedicated to training, just as he had been when he first started to train with Chun Myung Hoon.
He knew through Haisha that Thrint did not speak much and was extremely cold, but surprisingly, that led to his fellow warriors developing a trust with him.
‘What type of method should I use? This is not strength he gained from the training. Does he have an extremely strong mind?’
But that was not it. This was overcoming the limits of one’s own body. This would end up being a minus to him in the future. It was as if a baby who had just learned to walk was pretending to run.
“Stop!”
Yulian yelled loudly, but Thrint continued to attack Yulian as if he had not heard him speak.
His eyes were bloodshot and all the muscles in his body were shaking, but he still continued to move like the beginning.
He had lost his rationality and was swinging his sword at Yulian like a Crazy Warrior.
Yulian knew he could not let this continue and strongly parried an attack to get Thrint’s arms to open. In that moment, he rushed in and grabbed Thrint’s collar.
“Come back to your senses Thrint.”
As Thrint tried to struggle out of Yulian’s grasp, Yulian lifted Thrint’s large body up into the air.
“Guh...guuuuuuuh.”
Thrint could not breathe. As he was in pain, he dropped his swords and grabbed onto Yulian’s wrists with both of his hands, but there was no movement on Yulian’s side.
“To make yourself move by tricking yourself does not help at all when it comes to improving your strength. Save that type of mentality for real battles. If you don’t, you will really end up a Crazy Warrior!”
Yulian yelled as he threw Thrint’s body.
Shubeon quickly ran towards Thrint in shock and started to slap him.
“Thrint, Thrint, wake up.”
Thrint’s pupils, which had rolled up, returned to normal.
“Are you okay?”
At Shubeon’s question, Thrint quickly got up and started to look around.
“Thrint, do you not remember what happened?”
As Yulian approached him and asked, Thrint nodded his head yes.
“You managed to trick yourself well in a short amount of time. But next time, do not use that method ever again. Repeating ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ definitely helps, but it does not help you at all to lose your mind to the point you don’t even remember what happened.”
Yulian spoke as if he recognized what type of method Thrint had used. He had also adventured down that path.
“Yulian-nim, I’m sorry.”
As Thrint lowered his head and apologized, Yulian patted his shoulder and spoke towards everybody.
“My master used to often use a phrase called ‘Guayoubulgup’ that I could not understand. He said it meant that being excessive was worse than being insufficient. Your body becomes stronger the more you train, and so does your mental strength. However, if you pass a certain point, it will end up being destroyed. He was telling me to not train past my own limitations.” (TL: No good way of translating, so keeping it as is.)
All of the warriors looked towards Yulian.
“My master knew what my limitations were, but I am currently not at a level where I am able to see other people’s limitations. You must figure that out on your own. They say that your mind controls the body, but if you go past your limitation, it ends up where your body controls your mind. Just like Thrint like now. What I have learned and am teaching you now, all of this is extremely dangerous. We are not only training our body but our mind as well. Compared to other warriors, the danger is at least twice as much.”
“...”
“I’ve already been training like this for seven years. It’s natural for all of you, who have only been training for a year, to not be at my level. Of course, with your current strengths, your average veteran warriors in our tribe would not be able to defeat you. The reason I took you on as your opponent was to warn you to not be egotistic that you are stronger than the other warriors.”
As all of Red Storm was suppressed in just one hour, there were no warriors who objected to this statement. Rather, they were all excited and hopeful that if they continued to work hard, they would one day be at Yulian’s level.
“Always be on your guard. As I mentioned, our training is twice as dangerous as others. Among them, there is a phenomenon known as spontaneous combustion (TL: It’s described as blowing up because the flow of ki is interrupted in your body. I thought spontaneous combustion might be fitting). In our words, you can think of it as becoming a cripple. No matter the situation you must never stop controlling your mind. You must be careful for the rest of your life. Do not forget this.”
“Yes, we understand.”
At the warriors’ response, Yulian nodded his head in approval and continued to speak.
“Great. I’m sure you are all pissed off after losing like this. Let’s have some fun today. Do whatever you have to do to attack me. You can all attack together. However, since it may be dangerous, we will be fighting with only our bodies.”
Hearing Yulian’s words ignited the warriors’ fighting spirits, as they were thinking this was the time to get their revenge.
That night, Pareia’s shamans could not sleep as they treated all of the injured warriors who showed up together. Yulian was also among them, with a bit of damage as well.