North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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1. The Wolf’s Return

The Northern Sea.
A place where death had frozen solid, becoming earth itself.
The boundary between sky and land blurred into uncertainty. The only thing visible was a white hell. A knife-edged wind—the savage master of this desolate realm—shrieked its dominion across the wasteland.

The Ice Palace.
A colossal fortress carved from ten-thousand-year-old glaciers pierced the murky sky like a needle. The ice ramparts, which should have gleamed transparent under normal circumstances, appeared peculiarly opaque today.
The entire palace wore a vast mantle of mourning.
The funeral of Karani, the Twelfth Palace Master of the Ice Palace.
Seven days into a thirty-day funeral period.
Snow accumulated on the shoulders of the warriors guarding the water gate. Their breath froze instantly into rime, crystallizing on their beards.
Fingertips gripping spears were beginning to lose all sensation.
Beyond the blizzard… a black speck coalesced in the milky haze.
One of the warriors narrowed his eyes.
At first he thought it was a bear—some starving beast lost in the Snow Plain of the Northern Sea. But as the distance closed, the form became increasingly… human. Or rather, too weathered to truly be called human.
The man wore a wolf pelt draped across his shoulders.
The fur was matted and dull, stripped of all oil.
His clothes, torn in countless places and caked with blackened blood, resembled a burial shroud freshly exhumed from a grave.
“Halt.”
The gate captain thrust his spear butt downward, his command sharp.
The man did not stop.
His footfalls made no sound against the snow—ghost-like, a shadow drifting rather than walking, he glided forward.
“By custom, outsiders are forbidden entry during the funeral period! Turn back, or I will cut you down!”
The captain’s shout elicited no response. The man did not even raise his head.
He simply continued forward, unhesitating.
That fearless bearing sent cold sweat down the captain’s spine. His instincts screamed a warning—something was desperately wrong.
The man halted just before the spearhead could touch him.
He lifted his head.
Beneath the wolf-pelt hood, a face emerged.
Young. Perhaps twenty winters old. Pale as white jade, with sharp, precise features.
Yet those eyes… they alone belonged to an old wolf left for decades in the howling wind. Gray irises held the depths of weariness and emptiness, and beneath them, a terrible, suppressed killing intent.
The man raised his hand.
The warriors flinched, thinking an attack imminent. But his hand moved toward his own left chest.
Rip!
He tore open his thick leather garment with brutal force.
……!
In that instant, the captain’s pupils trembled as though the earth itself had quaked.
Strength drained from his spear hand.
His chest.
Where a heart should have been.
That place had been carved out into a grotesque hollow.
A dagger had been driven deep and twisted—a wound so terrible it had scarred beyond any natural healing. The torn flesh had not mended; instead, it blackened and died, locked in eternal stasis by the Northern Sea’s killing cold.
Dead flesh. No—the chest of a corpse.
“That… that is…”
The captain’s lips trembled.
A mark known only in legend.
Every warrior of the Northern Sea knew of it, yet none had ever seen with their own eyes—the stigma of death itself.
The Martial Duel.
The man opened his mouth.
A sound like metal cutting through wind.
“Airak.”
A single word.
Yet its weight was heavier than a thousand pounds of ice.
“What is this commotion!”
Heavy footsteps announced the arrival of an elderly, powerfully-built man.
Ice Palace gatekeeper, Dan Mok Han.
A veteran of ten years who guarded the main entrance, counted among the finest masters.
He frowned as he watched his subordinates awkwardly step aside, about to reprimand them for their slack discipline during the Palace Master’s funeral, when his gaze snagged on the man.
‘……!’
Dan Mok Han held his breath.
A master. A formidable one, at that.
The aura radiating from the man’s entire body was not sharp. Rather, it was heavy… yes, that was it. Heavy. Like standing before a snow-laden mountain on the verge of an avalanche.
Dan Mok Han instinctively dropped into a martial stance.
“I am Dan Mok Han, gatekeeper of the Ice Palace. Our Palace Master’s funeral is currently being conducted, and so….”
“The funeral bier.”
The man cut him short.
Dan Mok Han’s brow twitched. No matter how imposing the presence, this was the Ice Palace.
He spoke with careful but firm resolve.
“State your name and rank first. Such is the law of the Ice Palace.”
The man looked at Dan Mok Han.
His gray eyes blinked slowly.
A gaze utterly devoid of emotion—as if regarding an insect, or a pebble tumbling along the roadside.
“Guide me.”
“Listen here! Are you not hearing me….”
Dan Mok Han raised his voice and stepped forward. In that moment, he drew upon his inner force to project overwhelming pressure.
‘What?’
Dan Mok Han was bewildered.
The man still stood with his arms folded, utterly motionless.
But his throat was cold.
A chill as if the thinnest shard of ice were pressed against his Adam’s apple.
He lowered his gaze. And doubted his own eyes.
A blade.
The edge of a Curved Blade, gleaming with a rust-red tint, was pressed against his throat.
‘When?’
Dan Mok Han’s mind went blank.
The fine hairs on his neck stood on end. His chest felt hollow, as though his heart had stopped.
Gulp.
The sound of swallowing rang out like thunder.
As his throat moved, the blade grazed his skin. A thin thread of blood welled. Sharp pain.
‘Move and you die.’
His legs trembled. His knees nearly buckled.
The man’s shoulders had not moved. His arms remained as they were. And yet the blade was drawn.
It was as if time had been erased.
There was no process. Only result.
‘This… is not human.’
Dan Mok Han felt cold sweat running down his spine.
The blade had not pierced his skin. It had sheared only the fine hairs of his neck before stopping.
Control without a single hair’s breadth of margin for error.
That terrified him more. A demonstration of overwhelming superiority—he could cut his throat whenever he pleased.
“I ask once more.”
The man’s voice burrowed into his ear.
“Where is the funeral bier?”
Dan Mok Han swallowed dryly. As his throat moved, the cold touch of the blade became sharper. Moreover, the man was a Martial Duelist—he had every right to come pay respects at the Ice Palace.
Slowly, very slowly, he raised his hand and pointed deeper into the Ice Palace.
“…The Ice Heart Hall. In the deepest chamber… there.”
Whisper.
The blade was withdrawn.
The sound was so swift it seemed like an illusion to his ears.
The man had already turned away—without even the motion of sheathing the blade.
Dan Mok Han barely stopped himself from collapsing as his legs gave out.
The man’s back, receding into distance.
A worn wolf pelt.
And beneath it, the scar tissue revealed—frozen solid.
A half-forgotten legend flashed through Dan Mok Han’s mind.
‘Could it be… he truly existed? The wolf of the Northern Sea?’

* * *

Within the Ice Palace.
The corridor, carved from natural ice, was vast beyond measure.
Luminescent pearls set into the walls cast a pale blue glow, and the floor lay smooth as a mirror.
Through this resplendent and frigid hallway walked Airak.
Word spread faster than the wind itself.
Warriors of the Ice Palace, dressed in white mourning garments, poured into the corridor—dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, filling the passage completely. Spears and swords filled their hands.
“Stop!”
“Reveal yourself!”
Shouts thundered forward, and with them came killing intent like a crashing wave.
The grief and fury born of losing their Palace Master twisted into hatred for the stranger.
Yet Airak did not slow his pace.
To his eyes, the warriors seemed not to exist.
“Move.”
A quiet word, barely audible.
But the power woven into those syllables was immense.
Crack-crack-crack!
Fine fractures spiderwebbed across the ice beneath his feet.
What emanated from his body was no mere heat. It was absolute terror.
The warning of an apex predator to lesser prey.
The ranks of warriors wavered.
Those whose eyes met Airak’s stumbled backward without so much as a scream. Hands gripping spears trembled violently, legs buckled of their own accord. Eyes that had gazed upon death dozens of times over.
Whoosh.
The crowd parted.
A semicircular void opened before him, Airak at its center, and a path cleared.
He walked through it.
Hundreds of blades pointed at him from both sides, close enough to draw blood with a thrust. Yet no one dared extend an arm. The metallic scent of blood that clung to him and the frozen scar embedded in his chest suppressed their very instincts.
That is something one must not touch.
To touch it is to die.
It was a procession of silence.
Only the sound of Airak’s footsteps echoed through the Ice Palace’s corridors.

The doors of the Ice Heart Hall came into view.
Airak’s stride slowed, barely perceptible.
Thirty years ago, before this very gate, she had swallowed her tears and waved her hand.
‘You have to come. I’ll wait.’
It seemed the warmth of her touch still lingered on his palm.
Airak clenched and unclenched his fist.
Now that hand held nothing at all.

At the end of that passage.
Before the towering ice doors of the Ice Heart Hall.
There stood a woman.
A magnificent silver-white robe, a crown upon her head marking her as Deputy Palace Master, her spine held rigidly erect.
The Deputy Palace Master, Mukara.
The Ice Palace’s second in command—though she had never once regarded herself as such.
To her, the character for “deputy” was an insult.
Thirty years ago, when the previous Palace Master designated Karani as successor… Mukara had laughed.
Not from anger. From certainty.
‘I simply need to wait. Someday that seat will be mine.’
And for thirty years, she had waited. Endured. Prepared. Now, at last, that seat lay vacant. Yet of all times, this very moment—this creature had returned.
She stood with arms crossed, looking down at the approaching Airak. Or rather, attempting to. But as he drew nearer, her pupils began to tremble.
‘…So young?’
Mukara doubted her own intelligence.
A Martial Duel warrior who vanished thirty years ago should have been past fifty, in his middle age, had he survived.
Yet the man before her was a youth.
A body untouched by time.
The Airak Tribe possessed a unique constitution. Bodies hardened through survival in extreme lands, adapted and enduring—their average lifespan was two hundred years. She had heard that those approaching one hundred still bore the face of youth.
But even so, she hadn’t expected it to be this much.
In that moment, a strange emotion twisted through Mukara’s chest.
Shock that the monster she’d thought long dead had returned to life—and an inexplicable jealousy.
The man Karani had yearned for her entire life. A Martial Duel warrior and the current chieftain of the Airak Tribe, Airak.
That he should appear now, in such flawless form, struck at something warped and bitter within her.
‘How dare he.’
Mukara’s expression hardened.
A legend is nothing but a legend. The master of the Ice Palace now was she. She could not allow some relic of the past to strut about.
She stepped forward.
With the authority of the Deputy Palace Master, she tilted her chin upward in brazen defiance.
“Stop.”
Airak’s footsteps ceased.
The distance between him and Mukara was no more than five paces.
Mukara smiled coldly.
“This is the Funeral Bier of the previous Palace Master. If you’ve come to pay respects, observe proper protocol…”
“Move aside.”
Airak resumed walking.
Before her words could even finish.
He didn’t look at Mukara. He brushed past her shoulder and reached for the door latch of the Ice Heart Hall.
Complete dismissal. As though she were invisible.
Mukara’s face flushed crimson.
Hundreds of subordinates were watching. The shame of it turned her vision white.
“I said stop!”
Mukara cried out and blocked his path.
Cold mist gathered in her palm. She looked ready to unleash a strike at any moment.
“I don’t know who you are, but know your place! How dare you cause a disturbance here? Do you understand where you are?”
Her venom echoed through the Ice Heart Hall.
The martial artists held their breath.
Mukara’s momentum was formidable. She clearly had the strength to claim the Deputy Palace Master’s seat. And yet.
Airak turned his head.
For the first time, he looked directly at Mukara.
In that moment, Mukara’s breath caught and stopped.
His eyes.
In those gray irises, she saw a wolf leap forth and tear at her throat—a vision vivid and terrible.
The reek of blood hung in the air.
Not the splendid Ice Palace, but a battlefield where corpses rotted, and she was cast naked upon the ground.
Airak’s lips twisted.
It was not a smile. It was the threat of a beast baring its teeth.
He opened his mouth.
Low. Very low. A predator’s growl.
“The Palace Master was murdered in the Ice Palace.”
Airak’s gaze pinned itself to Mukara’s trembling pupils.
“Yet you incompetents couldn’t identify the killer, and still you live.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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