episode_0023

[Title: How to Make a Companion Demon]

I’m posting a guide for the new ‘Demon Extermination’ mode.

It’s a conditional cheat mode that lets you dominate demons, but the problem is the condition is more troublesome to activate than you’d think.

The explanation is incredibly unhelpful.

It’s a cheat that activates when you face demons as ‘enemies,’ but the criteria are vague.

You need to know something to create a guide, but the modder hasn’t explained it properly and is ignoring all inquiries, so I tested it myself.

(Photo)

As you can see, once you enter a ‘hostile’ state with a demon, the ability activates regardless of the reason.

So, what’s the way to permanently maintain a ‘hostile’ state?

Test results show you just need to maintain a state where the demon’s life is constantly under threat.

For example, create a situation where you can kill them whenever you want.

The demon doesn’t actually need to feel hostile.

It doesn’t matter if they treat you as an ally or a savior.

The key is not the relationship, but simply maintaining a status where the demon cannot escape your grasp.

This way, the system continuously recognizes them as ‘hostile.’

The core is to prevent them from ever escaping.

There are a few methods, but first…

…

…

…

****

Cheongun was disappointed.

She broke too early, much earlier than he expected.

Why did he ask for her name?

Curious about her name? No way.

What good would knowing a demon’s name do anyway?

He just asked.

To royally piss her off.

“Jeok Hwaryeon, huh.”

Fortunately, it was a name he knew.

She was quite a well-known NPC, so he couldn’t possibly not know her.

Actually, something had felt unusual ever since he first saw her.

Her outstanding beauty and splendid appearance meant she held considerable importance.

In that respect, Jeok Hwaryeon seemed like a character painstakingly crafted to target game fanatics like himself.

Cheongun gazed at Jeok Hwaryeon with narrowed eyes.

As if she had many pent-up emotions, Jeok Hwaryeon was panting with a flushed face.

She was even welling up with tears!

Cheongun, uncharacteristically, smiled faintly and asked.

“You’re a demon, right?”

“Can’t you tell by looking?”

“You must have learned demon arts too?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the name of the demon art you learned?”

“Ha! What good would knowing that do you?”

As Cheongun raised his hand to press Jeok Hwaryeon’s demon meridian again, Jeok Hwaryeon gasped in fright and opened her mouth.

“W-wait!”

“Hmm?”

“No, what good would it do you to know what demon art I learned? Are you thinking of learning demon arts yourself now?”

“No way.”

“Then don’t fucking ask!”

Cheongun silently stared at her.

Because suddenly, her attitude displeased him.

“You’ve been using informal speech since earlier, haven’t you?”

“Then should I use formal speech… to someone like you…”

Before she could even finish her sentence.

**Whoosh!** With the sound of something cutting through the air, her face was instantly slammed into the ground.

“Argh!!”

An intense pain, as if her forehead was tearing, shot through her entire body.

Blood gradually spread across the dirt floor.

The moment the scent of blood grew thick, Jeok Hwaryeon realized something was terribly wrong.

But it was already too late.

**Bang! Bang! Bang!**

Cheongun repeatedly slammed her head into the ground.

Jeok Hwaryeon instinctively sensed death from the horrifying onslaught of pain and immediately gathered her internal energy.

But Cheongun was not one to simply watch.

Cheongun placed his palm on her forehead.

Through his palm, a warm energy flowed into her body along her meridians.

Demons fundamentally learn demon arts, and demon arts fundamentally carry yin energy.

Her extreme yin internal energy clashed with Cheongun’s extreme yang internal energy.

Naturally, her internal energy, accumulated through mere basic demon arts, could never overcome Cheongun’s pure internal energy, accumulated through the Heaven and Earth Primordial Energy Cultivation.

The energy she was drawing up within her body was forcibly disrupted, and as a reaction, she **coughed!** and spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Y-you think you’ll be safe after this?”

“Yeah, I think I will be.”

“If I die, the Divine Cult will form a subjugation force.”

“Oh? Even better.”

“……”

This bastard, is he serious?

Looking at his eyes, he seemed serious.

Jeok Hwaryeon instantly sensed her own death.

A sliver of hope vanished.

The fear of death rushed into that empty space.

Regardless.

**Snap! Snap! Snap!**

Cheongun raised his fingers and began pressing her acupoints.

“P-please spare…”

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t kill you. I’ll just destroy your dantian, no more, no less. You know what a dantian is, right?”

Jeok Hwaryeon’s pupils, upon hearing those words, filled with horror.

“Just kill me instead!”

“That’s a bit much. Why would I kill a demon?”

“I’ll get revenge!”

“Yeah, what can you do if your dantian is destroyed?”

Jeok Hwaryeon struggled with all her might, but it was futile.

Whatever he did to her acupoints, her insides churned every time she tried to raise her internal energy, and no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t escape his grasp.

“It’ll sting a little.”

Cheongun placed his palm near her Qihai acupoint.

The moment Cheongun sent his internal energy like this, she would immediately lose her dantian.

Instantly, Jeok Hwaryeon’s eyes reddened.

Ever since she became a demon, she had always lived assuming death.

She had brainwashed herself every moment that she wasn’t afraid of death, but when she actually faced the danger of death, extreme fear washed over her.

Her head **buzzed**, her insides burned as if her stomach were melting, and her legs trembled.

“Ugh…”

Her throat choked up, and tears fell **drip drip**.

Jeok Hwaryeon lost her parents before she was even ten years old.

Warriors from the Orthodox Factions and Demonic Factions had gotten into a dispute and fought, and because they fought recklessly without regard for their surroundings, her parents, who were nearby, died innocently.

Naturally, there was no apology, no compensation.

They left, and Jeok Hwaryeon lost her parents right before her eyes in an instant.

Because she had no power, because she was weak, she didn’t even have a chance to properly argue.

Wandering the streets, she dreamed of revenge.

But how could a girl with nothing possibly get revenge on a martial artist?

For a girl with no strong backing, no master to teach her martial arts, nothing at all, revenge was close to an illusion.

Then somehow she caught the eye of the Divine Cult and learned demon arts, gaining the internal energy she so desired.

She had just taken her first steps towards revenge.

To advance further, to gain the Divine Cult’s favor, and to prove her worth, she volunteered as an errand girl collecting tributes.

And now.

All of that was about to collapse in an instant.

“Hey, are you crying?”

“……”

“You really are crying?”

“……”

Jeok Hwaryeon’s eyes were stained with fear and regret.

This was also Cheongun’s plan.

It wasn’t for nothing that he had diligently broken her spirit for several days.

He patiently tested her until she wouldn’t blurt out things like ‘Hmph! Kill me!’ even in the face of death.

He had thought about it quite a bit.

Even if their dantian was crippled, a demon was still a demon.

There was no hindrance to activating the ability.

So, couldn’t he just cripple all the demons’ dantians?

Not really.

Because the extent to which abilities were amplified was greater when facing strong demons than weak ones. By a lot, in fact.

Therefore, a way to control them without crippling their dantians was needed.

Cheongun stopped what he was doing for a moment and asked her.

“Do you want to live?”

“…….”

Jeok Hwaryeon nodded, tears falling **drip drip**.

Cheongun nodded a couple of times as if satisfied, then took something out from his bosom.

It was a pure white silk cloth.

As he unwrapped the silk, a reddish pill appeared inside.

Bloodworm Gu-Poison.

It was a precious item stored in the elixirs chamber of the Blood Sect’s main headquarters.

“It’s a Gu-poison. And among them, it’s the Bloodworm Gu-Poison.”

Jeok Hwaryeon was momentarily flustered.

Bloodworm Gu-Poison, a name she had heard before.

It was an infamous poison that, if one did not take the antidote once a month, would cause the deep-seated poison in the body to gnaw at one’s internal organs, leading to a horrible death in agony.

Moreover, the Bloodworm Gu-Poison’s antidote preparation method varied slightly with each manufacturing method, making detoxification impossible unless Cheongun personally handed over the antidote.

Thus, Cheongun thought.

Then, the moment she consumed the Gu-Poison, regardless of her feelings, wouldn’t she become his ‘enemy’?

This would create a way to activate the ability while keeping the demon as an ally.

“Eat it.”

“……”

“Not going to eat it? Then there’s nothing I can do. I’ll just destroy your dantian right away…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Jeok Hwaryeon swallowed the Gu-poison **gulp**.

“Do you know what the Bloodworm Gu-Poison is?”

“……I know.”

Cheongun continued.

“I’ll give you the antidote once a month.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Loyalty.”

“……Understood.”

Cheongun shook his head.

“No, loyalty that’s just words is meaningless. Tell me. How did you become a demon?”

Cheongun asked.

Jeok Hwaryeon hesitated, then let out a deep sigh and roughly summarized her life story, rattling it off.

“So, you learned demon arts to get revenge?”

“That’s right.”

This much he already knew.

The answer he would give afterward was already decided.

Cheongun nodded a couple of times, then parted his lips.

“Then I’ll get that revenge for you.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it for you. That revenge. So from now on, you can be considered my person, not the Divine Cult’s.”

“……”

At those words, she was dumbfounded.

Frankly, she was a little surprised, so she was speechless.

“…Are you serious?”

“Why, don’t you trust me?”

Jeok Hwaryeon was speechless.

He somewhat abruptly asked about her story, then suddenly offered to get revenge for her.

While she found the current situation absurd, she also felt relieved to be alive, and above all, she was half-doubtful yet felt a faint sense of expectation about his promise of revenge.

With those complex emotions, Jeok Hwaryeon’s eyes reddened once more, and a single tear fell **plop**.

Cheongun, seeing that, said with a distant expression.

“…It was summer.”

“???”

Jeok Hwaryeon looked at Cheongun as if he were crazy.