Jang Maldong

Jang Maldong is a veteran Earthling, former leader of Raison D'Être, and the trainer whose pupils include many of Paradise's most accomplished fighters. His decision to guide Seol Jihu brings him out of retirement and turns his old regret—having empowered people who later harmed Paradise—into a renewed attempt to cultivate strength together with judgment and responsibility.

Biography

Raison D'Être and the first retirement

Later accounts place Jang Maldong among Paradise's earliest Earthlings. He remained active there for more than a decade, devoted his career to training others, founded the team that preceded Carpe Diem, and became famous enough for Haramark's king to grant him the title of Master. Yet his profession also became the source of his deepest guilt. Earthlings whom he helped empower participated in revolts and internal conflicts, and he came to believe that his indiscriminate cultivation of strength had contributed to the deaths of Paradisians and to humanity's moral decline. That belief did not erase his care for people; during Haramark's internal conflict, he intervened against Sicilia to spare the wounded Hugo Richard, accepted moral responsibility for the conflict, and promised to take responsibility for the survivor. (Chapters 55, 229–230)

Jang brought Hugo into Raison D'Être alongside Edward Dylan and Chung Chohong. His training was punishing, but his attention extended beyond combat. After recognizing how easily Hugo adapted to his surroundings, Jang visited the orphanage where Hugo had grown up and urged him to create good memories for its children, giving Hugo a purpose that could survive his own death in Paradise. He considered passing his larger dream to Hugo, then refused to impose such a burden on someone who had not chosen it. Convinced that his own efforts had helped ruin Paradise's future, Jang retired and left leadership to Dylan; Raison D'Être subsequently became Carpe Diem. (Chapter 230)

The retirement was genuine but not emotionally complete. Jang continued occasional visits because of a promise to Dylan, while his former students understood that he remained easily attached to the people he trained. His strictness, therefore, was never simple cruelty: he wanted their bodies to remember lessons they could not yet grasp intellectually, and he quietly tried to equip and protect them even while rebuking their indiscipline. His lingering affection for the team left open the possibility that the right person might draw him back. (Chapters 55 and 230)

The disciple who brought him back

On one such visit, Jang discovered Seol Jihu practicing a spear throw incorrectly at Carpe Diem's training ground. He diagnosed the faulty run-up, stance, and transfer of rotational force at a glance, physically guided Seol through the corrected motion, and enabled him to learn Spear Throw almost immediately. Jang initially treated this as a brief favor to a member of Dylan's team. What unsettled his resolve was not Seol's talent alone, but the combination of effort, kindness toward Paradisians, and willingness to risk himself for Paradise that others described. When Muto Arbor mistakenly thanked Jang for raising an excellent disciple, the praise revived a satisfaction in teaching that Jang thought he had lost. (Chapter 55)

Ian Denzel forced Jang to confront the contradiction between his regret and his withdrawal. Jang admitted that he had given people power too easily and feared that Seol might change as earlier pupils had, while Ian argued that this was precisely why the young man needed a guide. Jang then asked Seol why he entered Paradise and heard that he regarded it as a place of belonging rather than merely a source of money or status. After watching him continue to train late into the night, Jang changed into his old training clothes and returned as Carpe Diem's advisor, choosing to place his remaining hopes in a disciple he could teach without abandoning moral oversight. (Chapters 55–56)

At Huge Stone Rocky Mountain, Jang made that commitment concrete. He first exhausted Seol and exposed the gap between spectacular mana output and inadequate close-combat fundamentals, then built a regimen around stamina, bodily durability, sensory awareness, mana efficiency, and independent thought. He allowed Seol to discover answers instead of simply supplying them, adjusted the program when Seol crossed a physical wall, and taught him that a High Ranker should build an individual realm instead of depending entirely on Paradise's system. By the end of five weeks, Jang judged that Seol had earned the chance to enter the Banquet's final stage and began privately reconsidering the needle case he had sworn never to open. (Chapters 56–59)

Seol's survival and conduct at the Banquet confirmed Jang's gamble. When Seol confessed to killing other participants, Jang did not offer automatic absolution; he asked why, accepted the answer that the victims posed an irredeemable threat, and affirmed the decisiveness while reserving judgment until he heard the details. He then stepped back from selecting Carpe Diem's future for him, accepting Seol as team leader and promising himself that he would support the young man's direction so long as he did not stray from it. The relationship had shifted from a trainer repairing technique to an advisor cultivating judgment and authority. (Chapters 68 and 73–75)

Rebuilding Carpe Diem and surviving Arden Valley

As Carpe Diem rebuilt, Jang treated recruitment as an extension of training rather than a hunt for impressive levels. He investigated the proposed transfer of the Yi siblings, warned Seol not to let personal acquaintance replace impartial evaluation, and examined both talent and organizational motives before arranging negotiations. Once the recruits joined, he tailored their instruction to their dispositions: he built Yi Sungjin's refusal to surrender into a specialized defensive foundation, supervised Yi Seol-Ah's growth while recognizing where an experienced Tracker should supplement his own expertise, and drew Phi Sora back into disciplined work despite her resistance. This division of responsibility shows that he did not pretend to possess every specialty; his strength was diagnosing the foundation and finding the right means or teacher to develop it. (Chapters 75–83)

The Parasite offensive ended that training period. Jang recognized that the open mobilization differed from earlier ambushes, ended the mountain regimen immediately, and sent the team out with a warning never to underestimate its enemy. He did not join the front-line defense, consistent with the limits he had placed on his return, but his lessons remained active within Seol: the ability to react before conscious thought and the insistence on stable fundamentals helped his disciple survive opponents whose movements he could barely perceive. Jang's influence on the battle was therefore preparatory rather than a claim to Seol's victories. (Chapters 83–90)

When Seol returned from Arden Valley near death, Jang refused to remain bound by his vow never to use needles again. He recognized that the immediate problem was rampaging energy consuming Seol's life, helped coordinate the attempt to keep him alive until the Federation could bring an Elixeer, and performed acupuncture despite the personal history that had made him reject even lucrative requests for the technique. Seol survived, but Ian's death forced both master and disciple to acknowledge that returning to Earth did not make the loss in Paradise emotionally unreal. Jang concealed much of his own grief, then preserved Ian's record book and later passed it to Seol. (Chapters 94–96 and 124)

After Seol recovered and became a High Ranker, Jang refused to treat rank as proof of completion. He used an unenhanced spar against Phi Sora to expose that Seol still relied too heavily on mana, then directed him toward physical fighters, instant-response exercises, shadow combat, and the difficult problem of understanding an opponent's mana well enough to redirect a technique. He researched Seol's new class abilities instead of offering easy certainty, recommended learning through the system when an ability lay beyond the evidence available to them, and admitted when the Crescent Blade Spear Technique required a grandmaster spearman rather than his own instruction. This willingness to name his limits kept his authority practical rather than absolute. (Chapters 99 and 120–123)

Valhalla and responsibility beyond combat

Jang accompanied Carpe Diem's move into Eva and remained one of the adults willing to challenge both Seol and his supporters. When Seol prepared to destroy Royal Pattaya, Jang warned that Earthlings would regard him as insane, but stepped aside after hearing that Seol considered the action necessary. During the aftermath, he joined the discussion of how to free indebted Paradisian women and pointed out that paying their debts without securing a livelihood would merely reproduce their exploitation. He also questioned Kim Hannah's attempt to control Seol through a staged organizational crisis, then accepted the plan's lesson while insisting that the team leader's authority and trust still mattered. His advice increasingly addressed institutions and consequences, the same dimensions his early training career had neglected. (Chapters 126–130)

Valhalla gave Jang a formal place for that work. He gladly took responsibility for training its growing membership and later became its advisor and official trainer in the Haramark building. During Eun Yuri's Neutral Zone, he identified her background in intensive physical training from posture, flexibility, and resilience, warned all three recruits that his regimen would be voluntary but severe, and adapted his expectations as their choices and temperaments became clear. His work with new Earthlings thus combined consent, careful observation, and the same refusal to waste potential that had defined his best mentorship. (Chapters 133, 136–141, and 161)

His most consequential guidance in this period concerned Seol's life rather than his class. Jang recognized that the disciple's refusal to return to Earth resembled an addiction and asked him to explain the past he was avoiding. He listened until Seol disclosed the damage caused by his gambling, affirmed the man Seol had become in Paradise, and then fiercely rejected the idea that Paradise could serve as an escape from apology and repair. He ordered Seol to face his family and barred him from returning until he had tried sincerely, forcing him to consider their pain rather than decide unilaterally that disappearing would help them. (Chapters 156–158)

Jang followed that confrontation with evidence rather than another lecture. In Hawaii, he showed Seol the specialist hospital where former Earthlings suffered or died after losing their lives in Paradise, including Dylan's severe condition, and explained that death in the other world produced lasting consequences on Earth. He balanced that warning by taking Seol to the surviving Ian, demonstrating that recovery and renewed purpose were also possible. When Seol later returned from years of subjective training in the Path of the Soul, Jang was proud of his achieved harmony but angry that the method had risked breaking his mind; his response showed that progress no longer excused danger simply because the result was extraordinary. (Chapters 159–167)

The Imperial Oath and a teacher's failure

Before the expedition against the Parasites' leadership, Seol contacted Jang because both understood that the operation might be fatal. Jang objected to using the Harmonia Magic Square: introducing its reversed energy after Seol had painstakingly established his foundation could destroy what he had built. Seol outwardly agreed but kept the square and later used it as a final resort. The two ended their call with their customary restraint, and Jang remained behind, unable to prevent the expedition's catastrophe or protect the disciple whose survival had come to embody his renewed hope. That concealed choice and its consequences sharpen the failure Jang later acknowledges at Seol's hospital bed. (Chapters 178, 182–189)

News of Seol's death shattered Jang's composure. Once the immediate revival effort began, he sought Ian's help and proposed using Ian's account of Paradise to reach Seol on Earth. Ian expanded the idea into a heavily revised narrative centered on Seol's own perspective, while Jang gathered the personal accounts and materials needed to make it recognizable. This was a different form of instruction: rather than correcting Seol by force or command, Jang helped reconstruct the meaning of a life that trauma had made him unable to hold. (Chapters 188–189)

At Seol's hospital bed, Jang admitted that he had treated his disciple as the promised spring after Paradise's long winter and had therefore begun waiting for him to solve impossible problems. He recognized that wishing him luck from safety had ignored both the burden he carried and his ordinary human vulnerability. Calling himself a failed teacher, Jang apologized and left Ian's book, Seol's calendar, and the choice of whether to return to Paradise with Seol himself. The decision rejected the very mistake Jang had once feared making with Hugo: he would help, but he would not force another person to inherit his dream. (Chapter 189)

Seol eventually chose to return. Jang welcomed him without claiming credit, directed his thanks toward Ian, and resumed their familiar master-disciple exchange. The reunion did not erase Jang's confession; it marked a more restrained relationship in which his hope for Paradise no longer justified treating the person carrying it as expendable. (Chapters 191–192)

Reconstruction and the Neutral Zone revelation

Jang continued evaluating Valhalla after its members trained for the final campaign, while the strength and judgment he had helped cultivate became part of the coalition's preparation. After the Parasites' defeat, he joined the celebrations and accompanied Seol when the latter restored Dylan and Ian and visited them in Hawaii. On Earth, Kim Hannah installed him as chairman of a legitimate-looking company that gave Seol a believable public job, extending Jang's protective role into the ordinary world rather than leaving it at Paradise's boundary. (Chapters 194–204)

In the latest supplied events, Jang supports Seol's decision to tell his family the truth but counsels patience. When Seol brings his parents into the Neutral Zone, Jang appears in formal dress to welcome them, frames the impossible reality they are seeing, and presents the record of their son's actions. His delight comes from Seol's internal growth and willingness to reconcile, not merely from his martial achievements. The moment completes the work Jang began when he refused to let his disciple use Paradise as a hiding place: he helps connect Seol's two lives instead of asking him to sacrifice one for the other. (Chapter 253)

Appearance and personality

Jang Maldong is a short, elderly Korean man whose wrinkles and white hair make his age unmistakable. He is nevertheless described as well built, with fiery vitality in his eyes that age has not concealed. His usual Paradise attire includes a fedora, a dark or navy suit and coat, and a long wooden walking cane; he changes into training clothes when actively instructing. In later formal settings he wears a tuxedo. (Chapters 55–56, 229, and 253)

He is stern, proud, quick-tempered, and fond of striking unruly pupils with his cane, but former students consistently recognize warmth beneath that severity. He pays close attention to individual motives, waits when someone needs to choose freely, and is unusually courteous toward Paradisians whom other Earthlings dismiss. Sincere gratitude embarrasses and delights him, and outside training he can be convivial, cooking for his pupils, sharing drinks, or laughing at their antics. His sharp moral anger is directed as much toward himself as others: guilt makes him withdraw, while affection and responsibility repeatedly draw him back. (Chapters 55–59, 73, 156, and 230)

Abilities and class

Jang is a High Ranker, but his significance is not measured primarily by direct combat. The supplied corpus calls him Paradise's best trainer and King Maker because of the number and quality of the Earthlings he has developed. It does not establish the exact name of his class, his personal combat style, or a complete set of Status Window abilities, so his demonstrated expertise should not be converted into an invented class profile. (Chapters 55–56 and 59)

Talent diagnosis and individualized training

Jang's signature competence is observation translated into a tailored regimen. He can read posture, movement, breathing, physical history, temperament, and the relationship between mana and the body well enough to identify both present faults and future risk. With Seol, he traced a failed throw to foot placement and rotational transfer, recognized that excessive mana was overloading an underdeveloped body, and used log-dodging, restricted movement, fine-control exercises, sparring, shadow combat, and repetition to connect perception with automatic response. His exercises are not interchangeable ordeals: each is built to expose a specific weakness, and he changes the program once the pupil crosses the intended threshold. (Chapters 55–59 and 121–122)

His method makes the student responsible for turning instruction into understanding. Jang explains the goal and gives enough feedback to prevent blind repetition, but often withholds the final answer so a pupil develops independent judgment. He treats stamina as the foundation of strength, insists that mind, technique, and body must be harmonized, and distinguishes a genuinely self-developed High Ranker from someone who depends only on levels and purchased abilities. Representative results include Seol's improved Spear Throw, Aura, Intuition, mana control, combat foundation, and eventual movement toward Perfect Harmony; other pupils such as Phi Sora, Kazuki Ayase, Agnes, the Yi siblings, and Eun Yuri demonstrate that the approach can be adapted across different aptitudes. (Chapters 55–59, 121, 136, and 164–167)

The regimen has clear conditions and limits. It is intentionally severe and depends on the student's consent, endurance, and willingness to reflect; Jang warns recruits to leave before beginning if they are not prepared. He also recognizes boundaries in his own knowledge, bringing in a Tracker to teach skills outside his specialty and admitting when an advanced spear manual requires a grandmaster. Although he often says that training is a battle, he also treats food, sleep, and recovery as part of training and becomes concerned when a pupil's exertion threatens lasting damage. His latest role applies this method across Valhalla rather than to Seol alone. (Chapters 59, 81–82, 121, 136, 161, and 194)

Mystic Acupuncture

Mystic Acupuncture is a coveted needle technique associated with Jang's reputation as a trainer. The Japan Business Federation attempts to bargain for its use, but Jang refuses and threatens to sever ties if the request is pressed, reflecting his broader regret over granting power without regard for its use. The corpus does not fully explain the technique's power source, activation rules, or ordinary procedure, so its exact mechanics remain unknown. (Chapter 56)

Its demonstrated applications are nevertheless substantial. When Seol lies near death after Arden Valley, Jang opens the needle case he had sworn off and uses acupuncture while Baek Haeju suppresses the patient's rampaging energy; together they preserve him until the Federation arrives with the Elixeer. Needles remain in Seol's arm during recovery, and later narration states that Jang's acupuncture accelerates the growth of Seol's techniques, especially in combination with his transformed physique. It is support rather than an unlimited cure: during the Arden crisis it buys time and stabilizes the patient but still requires Baek Haeju's lifeforce and the Federation's Elixeer to save him. (Chapters 94–95, 121, and 185)

Martial knowledge and field experience

Jang possesses the strength, timing, and technical literacy expected of a veteran High Ranker. He can stop Chohong's raised mace with his cane, physically guide a much younger Warrior's throwing form, and discuss mana circuits, weapon-body unity, technique redirection, class abilities, and the boundary between High and Unique Rankers without pretending to know what he has not reached himself. His experience also includes pathfinding through Huge Stone Rocky Mountain, reading organizational motives, and assessing battlefield danger. The corpus shows these capabilities chiefly through instruction and judgment rather than sustained personal combat, and his latest mastery is expressed through his advisory and training work. (Chapters 55–59, 121, and 229)

He also speaks English and French in addition to Korean, using English during his early guidance of Hugo on Earth and translating between Seol and Ian in Hawaii. These are learned practical skills, not Paradise abilities. (Chapters 159 and 230)

Relationships

• Seol Jihu: Jang returns from retirement to become Seol's master, developing his combat foundation while also confronting his addiction, family estrangement, and tendency to carry impossible burdens. Seol restores Jang's hope in Paradise; Seol's death then forces Jang to value the disciple above that hope. (Chapters 55–59, 156–159, and 188–192)
• Ian Denzel: One of Jang's closest old friends and the person who persuades him that Seol needs a guide. Ian's death deeply affects him, while Ian's Earth-side survival and later work on the autobiographical novel help Jang save Seol after the Imperial Oath expedition. (Chapters 55, 96, 159, and 189)
• Chung Chohong: A long-term pupil and member of both Raison D'Être and Carpe Diem. Their relationship is full of cane blows and insults, but Chohong understands the guilt behind his retirement, and Jang regards her with familial pride beneath his constant criticism. (Chapters 55–56 and 230)
• Hugo Richard: Jang saves Hugo during Haramark's internal conflict, welcomes him into Raison D'Être, trains him, and gives him an Earth-side purpose connected to his childhood orphanage. He considers but refuses to force his dream upon Hugo. (Chapters 229–230)
• Phi Sora: One of Jang's most accomplished pupils and a True High Ranker by his standards. She addresses him as her grandfather, resists and obeys his training in equal measure, and becomes both an assistant in his regimens and a benchmark for Seol's technical growth. (Chapters 76, 83, 121, 134, and 166–167)
• Kazuki Ayase: A former pupil who retains deep respect for Jang despite serving an organization Jang distrusts. Jang refuses the Japan Business Federation's attempt to use Kazuki as leverage for Mystic Acupuncture, but continues to advise and work with him personally. (Chapters 56–59)
• Kim Hannah: A fellow advisor whose strategic methods Jang often scrutinizes. They clash over her attempts to manage Seol, but cooperate in confronting his addiction, building Valhalla, and creating an Earth-side company that gives Seol a credible public role. (Chapters 115–117, 128–129, 156–161, and 204)
• Eun Yuri: Jang evaluates and trains her during the Neutral Zone, recognizing both the physical foundation created by her earlier dance training and the tenacity with which she embraces hardship. (Chapter 136)
• Yi Sungjin and Yi Seol-Ah: Jang develops the siblings after their transfer to Carpe Diem, building Sungjin's defensive potential around perseverance and arranging complementary instruction when Seol-Ah's Tracker specialty exceeds his own expertise. (Chapters 75–83)

Items

The supplied corpus does not associate Jang Maldong with a generated notable item.