Ch.120120. Cyber Joseon

The day after meeting Ju Sunhwa, Amon headed to the training ground they had agreed upon.

Amon arrived two hours early, while Sunhwa arrived thirty minutes before the appointed time.

When she arrived, Sunhwa unconsciously checked her watch upon seeing Amon who had already finished warming up.

Nine in the morning.

And when she heard that Amon had arrived at seven, she stuck out her tongue in amazement at his diligence.

“Why did you come so early? Did you miss me that much?”

Amon silently pointed to a corner of the training ground.

There were Kathy and Sonia, already finished with their sparring and wiping off their sweat.

They stared at Sunhwa with unreadable eyes.

They smiled kindly

But behind those smiles was a clear intention to turn her into a honeycomb if she even playfully flirted with him.

Receiving the razor-sharp jealousy of these women, Sunhwa tensed her cheeks.

“You have two girlfriends?”

“It somehow turned out that way.”

“Are you a player, or is the West just naturally open-minded like that?”

“Even in the open-minded West, my case is unusual.”

“I figured.”

Sunhwa nodded.

It was a moment when her mental image of Amon was being recalibrated.

“But why did you come so early? Did you eat breakfast? You know making excuses about being tired before our match won’t work, right?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve already eaten breakfast, and this is just part of my routine.”

“What time did you wake up?”

“I wake up at 4:30 every day. I need to attend morning prayer at 5.”

“…”

Once again, her image of Amon was adjusted.

The attribute of “devoutness” was added to the skilled Casanova.

Afterward, the two spent more time getting to know each other, and only drew their swords at 9:30.

“You haven’t forgotten that this is a sparring match to check each other’s skills, right?”

Sunhwa reminded him of the purpose of their match.

It was to prevent either of them from using lethal techniques or finishing moves to win.

The two checked each other’s swords once to prepare for any potential accidents.

While confirming that the blades were dulled, she noticed that Amon had an unusually large number of swords.

‘What’s this?’

Does he discard a sword after each swing?

After checking over thirty swords, Amon stored them in his priest’s robe.

For Sunhwa, who was seeing this dimensional storage function for the first time, it was a series of wonders.

“Do all Vatican knights fight wearing priest robes?”

“No. I wear the cassock because I like it.”

Amon desperately waved his hands at the repeated misunderstanding.

Even knights wouldn’t fight in cassocks like this.

It’s not very expandable, and the design isn’t meant for combat in the first place.

But in Amon’s case, he had stubbornly insisted on this attire ever since being assigned the fake identity of a priest.

Of course, there were rational reasons for this insistence, so his colleagues didn’t find it strange.

“You’ll understand why I insist on wearing this outfit once we spar.”

At Amon’s answer, Sunhwa tilted her head but prepared for the match.

And not long after they began, she realized the reason.

‘It’s already hard to track him with my eyes, and his plain clothes make it even harder to follow.’

Amon swung his sword.

Sunhwa dodged it without much difficulty, but what came next was the problem.

The fluttering hem of his robe covered Amon’s opposite shoulder, making it difficult to predict his next move.

She barely avoided a thrust coming from the opposite side of the fluttering cloth.

She created distance between herself and Amon and placed her hand on the handle of her sheathed sword.

In an instant, her scabbard flashed, and Amon unhesitatingly threw the sword in his right hand.

Clang!

The sound of dulled blades colliding echoed in the air.

“Hmm.”

Her secret technique was easily countered.

But she hadn’t played all her cards yet.

Her brain sent a signal to her spine.

The device in her spine detected the signal and accelerated her entire nervous system.

Up to this point, it was an ordinary neural acceleration device.

She approached Amon in an instant, leaving afterimages.

But instead of focusing on her, Amon defended against an attack from behind.

Clang!

The afterimage of her charging toward him disappeared, and suddenly Sunhwa appeared behind him, swinging her sword.

Amon blocked her sword with ease and smiled.

“Good strategy.”

“Have you seen this before?”

“No. This is my first time.”

“Then how did you react?”

“It was a strategy I had imagined before. I’m also familiar with holograms.”

“Tsk.”

While the two were conversing, Sonia, who was watching from a distance, asked Kathy:

“I couldn’t see what happened. How did she do that?”

“Of course you couldn’t see it. It’s an application of optical camouflage and hologram.”

According to Kathy’s explanation, Sunhwa accelerated her nerves and activated two other devices as well.

When she got close to Amon, she turned invisible with optical camouflage and moved behind him.

Meanwhile, the hologram continued charging forward to deceive Amon’s eyes.

But what Sunhwa didn’t know was that Amon’s eyes were tracking her soul.

No matter how much she deceived with real-world images, she couldn’t fool his eyes.

She continued to demonstrate her skills, but all were blocked by Amon’s sword.

Eventually, she showed everything she could in a sparring match, except for the cards she would use in actual combat.

“That’s all I can show you. What do you think?”

“Indeed. With this level, I can take you with us.”

Amon assessed her combat ability as above department head level but below division head level by security office standards.

‘At this age, she’s already this good.’

And purely through enhancements, without Divine Power.

She truly deserved to be called a genius.

Amon finished evaluating her and was about to put away his sword.

However, she wouldn’t let him.

“Isn’t it unfair if only I show my skills?”

“?”

“I need to see yours before I can entrust myself to you.”

It was an expression that could be misunderstood, but Amon didn’t mind and nodded.

“Alright then.”

Though not meant for throwing, Amon tossed his sword, expecting her to block it like before.

Remembering her experience when she was entranced by the blade, she blocked the attack without panicking.

But Amon’s next attack surprised even her.

“The sky?!”

While she was distracted by the thrown sword, Amon had jumped up to the height of her crown.

He was falling vertically toward her.

She quickly recovered from her shock and raised her sword in a defensive stance.

At that moment, Amon stepped on the air and moved out of her line of sight.

This caused the light behind him to shine directly into her eyes.

‘I’ve been tricked!’

Her vision was momentarily blocked.

It was just a brief moment, but in combat, it was fatal.

She instinctively swung her sword forward with blinded eyes, but it cut through empty air.

When she opened her eyes, Amon had silently landed on the ground, kneeling with his sword tip pointed at her throat.

“I think I’ve shown enough, don’t you?”

Looking at Amon’s friendly smile, she let out a wry laugh.

‘I was just an ordinary person after all.’

This is what a true genius looked like.

She had thought he was just someone who relied on physical abilities and talent, but his combat sense was also flawless.

“A perfect defeat.”

At her clean admission, Amon finally withdrew his sword.

“It was an excellent match.”

“It was very informative.”

After confirming each other’s combat abilities, Amon and Sunhwa headed to a bench.

As the two approached the bench, Sonia handed them towels and Kathy offered bottled water.

“Isn’t this expensive?”

Sunhwa, still unaware that Kathy was a director at Megacorp, worried about her wallet.

In contrast, Amon and Sonia drank the water as if it were natural.

Amon even poured water over his head to cool down.

Seeing this, Sunhwa frowned.

“I thought this when you took your brother to an expensive restaurant, but are you rich? Or does the Vatican pay you a lot?”

Amon’s group just smiled silently, withholding their answer.

There were too many people around, and in Chosen where citizen surveillance was the default, they had to be careful with their words.

Feeling a strange sense of exclusion from their silence, Sunhwa began to pack her things.

Suddenly, a scholar approached the group.

The scholar approached with a fan in hand and his hands behind his back.

Stroking his grayish beard, the scholar addressed Amon.

“May this humble one ask if you could spare a moment of your precious time?”

Amon didn’t refuse the scholar’s polite inquiry.

“Please speak.”

“Thank you. First, let me introduce myself. I am this kind of person.”

The scholar pulled out a business card from under his sleeve.

A simple-looking design.

But its contents were anything but simple.

Chosen Universal MOdel-sampling Neuro-infusion education Group

A company specializing in neural-infusion learning through model extraction.

It was a company that monopolized the educational and training USBs, Chosen’s major export business.

Usually called CHUMON for short because the full name was too long.

And the scholar introduced himself as Park Gyuwon, a director of this public corporation.

‘Why does the company name sound familiar?’

Of course, it was natural to recognize the world’s largest neural-infusion learning company, but it felt familiar in a different way.

Amon shook off the unnecessary thoughts and focused on the director before him.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“Your Chosen language is fluent. Perhaps you’ve used our company’s USB… Ahem!”

The director quickly covered up his slip with a cough.

“How rude of me in front of such an esteemed person. Please forget my slip of the tongue.”

Amon, having experienced this reaction countless times, brushed it off lightly and asked again.

“What brings you here?”

“Actually, I unintentionally witnessed your swordsmanship.”

At his words, Amon briefly looked around.

Unlike the West, Chosen lacked the concept of privacy, so the training ground was designed to be easily observable from the side.

‘Even China and Japan are extremely sensitive about martial arts schools.’

It was a design that reflected the court’s determination to prevent any possibility of overwhelming individuals or private armies.

Amon nodded and listened to Gyuwon’s proposal.

“So, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to contract with our company to market your swordsmanship as a product.”

Hearing this proposal, Amon pondered for a moment.

‘Come to think of it, they sell swordsmanship here too.’

As an educational company, they sold not only children’s and other knowledge learning but also other types of knowledge.

Their products even included special forces tactics and swordsmanship.

‘If I sell my swordsmanship to such a company…’

Amon briefly weighed the pros and cons.

Money, which first came to mind, no longer held much significance.

So he set that aside and placed the next concern, information leakage, on the scale.

‘The more widely my swordsmanship becomes known, the more people will be able to counter me.’

The scale in Amon’s mind tipped toward refusal.

But Amon didn’t refuse immediately.

“Which part of my swordsmanship did you find unusual?”

“The method of throwing a sword to distract attention is something I’ve never seen in any swordsmanship. That’s what fascinated me.”

The director was knowledgeable about swords.

Chinese prestigious school swordsmanship, Japanese samurai styles, Western longsword techniques, and so on.

He emphasized that he had never seen Amon’s method in any of these sword arts.

“So I just need to show the throwing and attacking method?”

“Yes. Of course, you don’t need to reveal all your secrets.”

He just wanted to create learning data for the technique of throwing a sword and attacking at the right timing.

At the director’s explanation, Amon started weighing the options again.

Soon, after placing a certain weight on the advantage side, Amon accepted the director’s proposal.

“Then I have a suggestion.”

“What is it?”

“My swordsmanship is quite unstructured. Would you help me refine and formalize it like other official sword styles?”

The director nodded readily at Amon’s proposal.

“Of course we should. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have any product value.”

The negotiation was settled.

Amon and the director shook hands.

Amon smiled contentedly.

‘I’ll teach this to my unit members.’

That was the decisive reason that tipped the scale.