Chapter 33

“Please kill me.”

A young man with disheveled hair, covered in blood and dust, dropped to his knees. His name was Lee Seogwang—the elder brother of the late Lee Seogeun and the Young Sect Leader of the Mount Heng Sword Sect.

“Report. Tell me yourself.”

The cold voice froze everyone inside the tent. Every last one of them was a senior of the Mount Heng Sword Sect, a master who had spent long years roaming the martial world.

Yet even they had to bow their heads before one man.

“Father…”

“That isn’t the answer I want.”

The Blood Wolf Sword, Lee Cheonbaek, did not even turn around. Lee Seogwang forced the words out in a trembling voice.

“There are only twenty-three survivors, including me. We don’t know whether the rest are alive or dead.”

A heavy silence settled over the gathering.

Some two hundred troops had been killed or captured, and they had lost three Peak masters. That alone would have made it difficult to escape punishment, but there was an even greater problem.

“What orders were you given?”

“…To wipe out the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s branch and advance as far as Jeongyang.”

“And after that?”

“To blockade the road and wait for the main force to join us.”

“Why did you push as far as Honju?”

“I received… intelligence.”

“Intelligence?”

“Yes. I was told that Jopil, One Question, One Kill, had pursued Jin Taekyung all the way to Honju and captured him. But…”

“He must have said the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s pursuit party was on his heels and asked you to help him.”

Lee Seogwang lowered his head, and Lee Cheonbaek let out a hollow laugh.

“Who delivered that information?”

“A wandering martial artist under Jopil.”

“Do you still believe it?”

“…No.”

Smack!

Lee Seogwang’s head snapped to the side. Lee Cheonbaek glared down at him, his eyes blazing.

“Be grateful you were born my son.”

In the end, Lee Seogwang was ordered to return to the Mount Heng Sword Sect. Once he withdrew, the matter was settled for the time being.

Now it was time to assess the situation with a cool head.

“What is our current position?”

“We lost two hundred men, but more than half were wandering martial artists we scraped together in a hurry. The damage isn’t as severe as it sounds. The problem is…”

“We lost three Peak masters.”

The thought left a bitter taste in Lee Cheonbaek’s mouth. The Mount Heng Twin Devils had stood beside him for twenty years, and Jopil, whom he had paid a fortune to hire, was dead as well.

A Peak master could change the course of a battle. Somehow, they had to fill the void.

“Gather more. Buy wandering martial artists from the black market, hire mounted bandits—use whatever means necessary.”

“Our expenses are already too high. By now, word of what happened in Honju will have spread, and they’ll try to raise their prices.”

“They aren’t trustworthy men, either. Especially the mounted bandits. Aren’t they human butchers? If we hire people like that, our sect’s reputation will suffer afterward…”

Lee Cheonbaek did not even blink.

“All the better. Hire every last one.”

“Sect Leader!”

“There are no fewer than five hundred men gathered here. We have more than twice their numbers, and we aren’t outmatched in Peak masters either.”

“My son thought the same thing. Then he got utterly crushed in Honju.”

“That was…”

“I don’t care whether they’re human butchers or anything else. Throw everything we have into this. If we lose this war, it won’t be our reputation we lose—it’ll be our lives!”

At Lee Cheonbaek’s thunderous command, the seniors realized there was no point trying to persuade him. But the discussion was not yet over.

“The martial artists’ morale is in shambles.”

“The defeat at Honju is bad enough, but the news that Jin Taekyung killed Jopil, One Question, One Kill, has shaken them.”

Jin Taekyung.

Hearing his enemy’s name made Lee Cheonbaek’s stomach churn.

Are there really people stupid enough to believe such an absurd rumor?

As if it weren’t enough that the pathetic fool Jin Taekyung had poisoned his son, now he had supposedly killed a Peak master as well. The scheme was obvious. Lee Cheonbaek ground his teeth at the Jin Family of Taiyuan’s despicable tactics.

“Root out everyone spreading that nonsense. Don’t let a single one escape!”

Taking a few heads as examples might lower morale even further, but it would keep the army from collapsing. Now was the time to clamp down and press forward.

“Three days. In three days, we march on Taiyuan!”

That was the nature of gratitude and grudges in Murim. The cycle would not end until one side fell.

I’ll take everything from you. Just as you did.

“What an incredible recovery.”

The physician clicked his tongue in amazement. It was my second day since waking up, and overnight, the scabs had fallen away to reveal smooth new skin beneath them.

“In ten years as a physician, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Even to me, the speed of my recovery was astonishing. The flesh melted by the heat of the Flame Divine Palm, the fractured bones, the deep sword wounds—there was no trace of any of them left.

Oh, and the internal injuries too.

Must be the effect of leveling up.

There was only one way to produce a similar result in the real world: the healing magic used by the tiny handful of Hunters known as healers.

Is complete healing too much to ask?

I was a little disappointed, but it was probably for the best. If a single level-up had healed every injury on my body, avoiding suspicion would have been difficult.

Even now, the physician kept glancing at me as though I were a monster.

“Heavens. How strange. This is far too much to attribute to the Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng…”

“Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng?”

I remembered seeing something like that in martial arts novels. Ginseng that had grown for a hundred years, or whatever.

Why is that suddenly coming up?

Seeing my confusion, the physician explained. He was one of the few NPCs who knew I had lost my memory.

“Around this time last year, the Medicine King Hall’s storeroom was robbed.”

Ah. The moment he said it, I knew where this was going.

The stolen medicinals must have included the Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng, and the culprit was obviously…

“The Medicine King Hall Master was absolutely furious.”

The physician gave me an awkward smile.

“After all, it isn’t something you can obtain merely by having money. You stole and consumed an elixir capable of granting twenty years of internal energy in a single dose.”

“Twenty years of internal energy?”

Something clicked. That third reserve of internal energy that had refused to obey me.

So that was it.

At the same time, a pang of regret hit me. When I used the Skill at the last moment, most of the twenty years of internal energy from the Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng had vanished.

It had been a complete disaster caused by the energy running wild instead of obeying my control.

I blew the whole thing like a one-use item.

The physician misread my grimace and hurriedly added, “Of course, Young Master, you must have had some grand purpose in making such a decision.”

Grand purpose, my ass. I probably ate it as a tonic.

The snow ginseng’s internal energy had kept me alive, but it still felt like a terrible waste.

Such a waste I could die.

“You’ve almost completely recovered, so you shouldn’t have any trouble moving around. Then I’ll be on my way.”

The moment the physician hurried out, I opened the System window.

Open Status Window.

Ding.

System

Status Window

Lv. 30 Jin Taekyung

Class: Second Rate Martial Artist

Fame: 410

Titles: 4 (Title effects active)

— Scion of a Prestigious Family (All stats +5, Fame +50)

— Family Shame (All stats −5, Fame −50)

— Novice Trainee (Training speed +10%)

— Gambler (Combat-related stats increased by 10% in a one-on-one fight)

Strength: 115 Stamina: 120

Agility: 116 Intelligence: 15

Charm: 15 Internal Energy: 15 years

Remaining Points: 0

Pride welled up the moment I saw it.

I’ve come a long way.

It felt like only yesterday I’d been shaking in front of a few two-bit bandits. Now I was a master in my own right. My Level had shot up after I took down Jopil, and I’d gained a massive amount of Fame.

That wasn’t all. By absorbing some of the Hundred-Year-Old Snow Ginseng’s remaining energy, I had gained another four years of internal energy. And on top of that…

System

Skill Window

One Annihilation

Grade: Peak

Realm: Second Stage

Restriction: Jin Taekyung

Effect: Consumes Stamina and internal energy to deliver a powerful strike. Depending on the amount used, the user enters a helpless state for a certain period of time.

I had gained a new martial art—or rather, a new Skill.

But it differed greatly from my Skills in the real world.

I can control how much it consumes and how much power it releases.

Thrust with All My Might. The Skill now named One Annihilation couldn’t be used recklessly. It could unleash destructive power several stages above my usual level for an instant, but that single attack consumed all my strength.

No. Maybe the Skill could always be controlled like this.

In the real world, I was an F-rank Hunter. My physical abilities were pathetic, and so was the amount of mana in my body. But here in this game—in Murim—I was different.

Here, I was a martial artist with fifteen years of internal energy and physical abilities superior to NPCs twenty or thirty Levels above me. With a better vessel to contain the power, I could finally use the Skill the way it had always been meant to be used.

I’ve gotten stronger again.

It felt like only yesterday Hyuk Mujin had been wiping the floor with me while I struggled to learn martial arts. Now I had taken down a Peak master.

Outside the window, people chanted my name several times a day.

Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi. Hero of the family. That sort of thing.

A hero.

I never thought I’d hear anyone call me that. I was a two-bit F-rank Hunter whose motto was safety first. The word had never had anything to do with me.

I lay still and fidgeted with my hands. Palms that had once been a young master’s—white and soft—were now packed tight with calluses.

I took down Jopil with these hands.

All told, the people I’d taken down numbered more than a few dozen. Bandits, wandering martial artists, even people rated as First Rate—and I had survived. I’d even taken down a Peak master I thought I could never beat: Jopil, One Question, One Kill.

Something Wipeng had said suddenly came back to me.

The one who survives is strong.

If he was right, then I was undeniably strong. I had survived every enemy I had faced so far, and now people were calling me a hero.

Yeah. If I was being honest…

It doesn’t feel bad.

The real-world me was pitiful.

I ate and slept in a goshiwon¹ room barely ten square meters in size,² the breadwinner responsible for supporting my family. I couldn’t become a hero, and I didn’t want to.

I was just Jin Taekyung, a bottom-rung Hunter who fought every day while praying he would survive.

That was me.

But in this game, I’m different.

I had accomplished many things that F-rank Hunter Jin Taekyung never could. At the very least… I could protect the people who trusted and followed me from their enemies. People acknowledged me. They called me a hero.

Even if everything here was nothing but virtual, even if the people I saw were NPCs, that fact didn’t change.

Thinking that, I suddenly laughed.

This is why games are scary.

Was this what game addiction felt like?

Before I knew it, I had started enjoying life as Jin Taekyung, a martial artist of Murim. This place was a game. It could turn every impossibility into a possibility.

But now it was time to leave.

Back to that place filled with impossibilities—the real world. My family was there. The real me was there.

Check Quest Window.

Ding.

System

Quest

Logout

Now you must make your way through this harsh Murim.

Become stronger and more famous.

For the day that will eventually come…

Grade: Main Quest

Restriction: Jin Taekyung

Objective: Achieve the First Rate realm (Incomplete)
       Achieve Lv. 30 (Complete)
       Achieve Fame 500 (410/500)

Reward: Logout

Logout.

The moment I saw those four glittering characters, my breath caught.

Only two conditions left before I could log out. Time could take care of Fame. The more rumors about me spread, the more it would keep climbing.

The problem lay elsewhere.

“First Rate.”

What did I even need to become First Rate?

If it wasn’t Level, stats, or Fame, then…

Internal energy? Or do I need to raise the realm of my martial arts further?

Just then, a polite voice came from outside the door.

“Young Master. The Lesser Family Head is looking for you.”

“Ah.”

Right. When you don’t know something, the best thing to do is ask.

And in that respect, Peak master Jin Wikyung was the best private tutor I could ask for.