Return Of The Volcano

Volcanoes do not disappear.
-Funding detail page-

The northern end of Britain.

The Highlands, home of Highlanders and single malt whisky.

In this region where the bravest Scots had lived, a grand landscape spread out, shaped by volcanic activity, glaciers, and techniques left behind by ancient Kung-Fuists born with superhuman strength.

The Fjord Wound along the western coast, formed after rocks were carved away over long ages by waves and the techniques of ancient masters.

The Great Glen Wound, a great canyon scar spanning sixty-two miles from Fort William in the Highlands’ southwest to Inverness at the northeastern edge, was also a trace left by the transcendent sword strike of an unknown ancient Kung-Fuist.

Legend says.

That someday, when a great hero chosen by heaven appears, he will behold the legacy left by Scotland’s Sword Immortals and gain great enlightenment.

But for a human living with feet planted on the ground, it was not easy to understand the subtle profundity hidden within the Great Glen Wound and the Fjord Wound.

For that reason, there were few who carried on the true transmission of Scottish Ancient Kung-Fu, and even fewer who truly embodied it and made it their own power.

But a Kung-Fuist who was one of those rare success cases.

A man who held the old legacy left in the Highland earth under a lucky star where Time, Environment, and Human Resource became one.

With innate Kung-Fu Talent, effort, and the help of fortuitous encounters.

Would, in the end, obtain it.

The “Heavenly God’s Pen,” that redraws the boundaries between coastline and land.

A colossal power that overturns maps.

3:30 p.m., Glencoe Valley.

Here, where Britain’s only and greatest volcano existed, a scene no ordinary person could imagine was unfolding.

The land’s lifeblood running north-south across Britain, the dragon vein.

As the Vermilion Phoenix’s approach broke the balance of Yin and Yang and raised the density of Yang-Qi, the dragon vein was stimulated and began to thrash.

A supervolcano awakening from a long sleep and unfolding its stance.

Birds taking flight and beasts fleeing, having sensed the omen of a great calamity early.

The few residents living in Glencoe were startled by the sight, but only briefly.

Soon, the clouds warped into strange shapes, and the ground began to tremble.

-Rumble!!!!!!

A massive earthquake that even the Highlanders of the Northern End Clan, who had guarded the Highland land the longest, had never experienced.

Scotland’s earth began unfolding its stance toward every life living upon it.

At the fear reviving across thousands of years, rare spirit beasts hidden throughout Scotland began crawling out of their dens and fleeing to the hills to survive.

In the past, Britain’s dragon vein that once reached Scotland’s far north was cut off by an ancient Kung-Fuist’s sword technique.

Glencoe was located just south of that massive sword scar.

As a result of the dragon vein to the Northern Abyss being forcibly severed by human hands, volcanic activity had stopped long ago, but the immense Earth-Qi that had accumulated while the volcano slept finally awakened and spoke.

At this point, human strength could not seal the volcano and stop the eruption.

A situation where it would be no surprise if Glencoe’s volcano spewed fire and sulfur and turned Scotland into hell at any moment.

The volcano had returned.

What would collapse from this was not only Scotland’s Northern End Clan.

In the worst case, the earthquakes caused by the raging dragon vein would severely affect all of Britain Murim.

If the volcano spewed ash for seven days and nights and blocked the sun.

If earthquakes caused Britain to sink into the middle of the North Sea.

Then the name “The Empire Where the Sun Never Set” would remain in history in a rather ridiculous form.
Britain would never see tomorrow’s sun again, and it would be mocked as a foolish nation that called itself an empire despite having no homeland.

But such a future.

Was something the Knights Of Turntable, who swore to become the Queen’s sword and cleave the national crisis, the Big Wave, could never allow.

Rule, Britannia!

Britannia Rule The Waves.

Twelve top-tier Kung-Fuists gathered under a single slogan.

Among them, the two ‘relatively normal Kung-Fuists’ who had noticed this crisis the earliest headed for Glencoe’s volcanic zone.

“Are you ready, Lunar Society Lord?”

The one asking with a face flushed red from being thoroughly drunk in broad daylight was Scotland’s strongest heavy-sword user and the ex-head of of the Begg Family, who had been tasting whisky at the Royal Lochnagar Distillery, heard a parrot’s message, and ran 140 miles through the night.

A great hero Scots called by the name Grand Highlander with love and respect.

Drunken Heavy Suppressing Sword, John Begg.

“Of course, Grand Highlander.”

And beside him, drawing up an extraordinary aura, was the Evolution Boxer Charles Darwin, who had also run 550 miles on all fours without rest over the last twenty-four hours.

Though they had to face nature rather than humans, these two were masters hard to match across Britain and European Murim alike.

Moreover, Darwin and Begg each had gained enlightenment from the nature of the Galápagos and the Highlands respectively, reaching their current realms, so they were catching the dragon vein’s changes directly through perception.

-Rumble!

As the earth’s tremors intensified, the throbbing grew with them.

No doubt.

The moment of eruption was drawing closer by the second.

“We have no choice but to try, somehow.”

Darwin thought.

Even if the Little Heavenly Demon’s plan succeeded and stopped the Vermilion Phoenix’s landing, if they could not stop the dragon vein’s rampage, those living on Britain’s land would not survive.

“To stop the eruption, we have to keep the Primordial Qi flowing through the dragon vein from reaching the volcano.”
“Do you really need to explain that until my ears hurt to a Highland native? Hic.”

John Begg laughed with a hiccup.

He was drunk, but his mind was crystal clear.

His epithet was Drunken Heavy Suppressing Sword, a name rooted in the Begg Family’s bizarre inherited technique, where intent expanded through intoxication bestowed weight upon the sword.

For him, who drew closer to the essence of Kung-Fu the more he drank, alcohol was no different from an elixir used to hone his blade heavier and sharper.

“Right… you would know what to do.”

Darwin nodded with an awkward face.

Scots remembered the legend passed down since ancient times.

Glencoe’s volcano was born as a result of the northward-flowing dragon vein being severed.

So if they severed it before the dragon vein’s energy could spew to the surface through the volcano, they could prevent the calamity caused by that massive Yang-Qi.

“So in summary, you’re saying we need to reenact an ancient Kung-Fuist’s great feat. It’s time for this hero’s tale to shake Britain once again.”
“Exactly.”

-Hwek!
-Tatat!

Darwin curled his fingers into a claw-technique posture and unfolded his stance, and wild energy surged from his body.

The Galapagos Hawk stance of Evolution Twelve Form Fist.

To unleash a technique that carved heaven and earth, Darwin began gathering power from the bottom of his elixir field.

“Yeah. That’s how you should be. At our age, if you don’t use your strength properly, you’ll turn feeble and die fast.”

Watching that, John Begg burst into a hearty laugh and lifted the massive lump of iron he had set on the ground.

-Koogoong!!

It was a weapon.

A long, heavy, sharp sword.

But its form was far too massive to simply call it a sword.

A greatsword even taller than John, the Begg Family’s ex-head, who stood two heads taller than Darwin.

A blade as thick as an ordinary man’s thigh, it was something even high-realm Kung-Fuists could not lift without expending vast internal energy. Naturally, swinging it was even more impossible.

And yet Begg lifted his distinct weapon with an indifferent expression and was freely swinging it one-handed.

-Boong!
-Boong!

Even among Highlanders who specialized in heavy swordsmanship, none used a weapon of that size.

A bizarre weapon permitted only to John, the Begg Family’s ex-head, even in Scotland.

“…This will be fun.”

Begg’s energy wrapped around the greatsword.

A sword too crude to use Kung-Fu with. Yet the heavy sword energy coating it was vibrating the air.

“It’s a sad thing to wound the land where I was born and raised, but if I think of it as following the path of the old Sword Immortals, it’s not so bad.”

And the next moment.

-Kwaang!

The Begg Family’s secret heavy sword art, unleashed without warning.

At the same time, the hardened qi that flew from Darwin’s right hand split the clouds.

A strike that cut the dragon vein.

Though it could not compare to the ancient Kung-Fuist’s strike that cleaved the Highlands in two.

-Slash!

Down into the depths of Glencoe’s earth, Begg’s sword technique left its claw mark.

-Paaaah!!

The Primordial Qi that had been surging north along the dragon vein burst from the split ground just before reaching the volcano, scattering toward Scotland’s sky.

A pillar of light shooting upward.

Where a translucent, dragon-like shape pierced the clouds and vanished into the sky, a faint rainbow remained.

Several hours later.

The two postmen aboard the Norwich-to-London train laid their exhausted bodies onto the second-class seats.

Robin and Fawcett.

A humble old man who believed he had nothing to boast of beyond long service, and the only man who recognized his true worth.

The two of them each threw their tired bodies into empty seats and took deep breaths.

“…”
“…”

Perhaps because it felt awkward that they had done the exact same thing at the same time like twins without anyone telling them to, a brief silence fell between them.

“…You worked hard.”

Was it hard to bear the strange mood?
Robin, who had stayed silent until now, spoke to Fawcett first.

“If it weren’t for you, I couldn’t have done it.”

Fawcett rolled over and extended his right hand, and Robin clasped it.

And then came a firm handshake.

The whistle signaling departure flowed in through the window.

The Vermilion Phoenix’s threat was gone.

Even after the Vermilion Phoenix returned east, an earthquake did occur, but the tragedy of Britain sinking into the sea did not happen.

All plans were completed.

The tragedy born of human greed vanished without ever bearing fruit.

The spirit beast’s chick returned to its parent.

Now it was their turn to return home, to London.

“You and I should lie low and recuperate at home for a while. My whole body aches so badly I can barely stand it.”
“This will be my first long vacation.”

A lonely laugh echoed through the train carriage.

While the blind man gently kept his eyes closed, Robin leaned against the window and looked outside.

In the western sky, at last, a real sunset was setting.

Not the Vermilion Phoenix that appeared as a sunset from the east, but the familiar sun.

“…It was truly a long day.”
“It really was. Maybe I’m tired. Even just the sunset light makes my eyes sting.”
“…You can see that?”
“I’m joking.”

Tomorrow’s sun, which would shine brightly on Britain again when day broke.