Can Do It
Irregular, jagged carvings dotted the dungeon wall.
They seemed to flow according to some hidden rule.
“Huh.”
Ethan’s chest swelled with a feeling he rarely got in real wuxia stories.
The cell was wider than he’d expected.
The sword scars he stared at looked like the aftermath of a grandmaster slashing a massive boulder mountain with a blade.
“But judging by the depth, these are definitely daggers.”
A Zweihander or battle sword would have turned this whole place into rubble.
They’d have smashed the cell the instant they carved it, and the headmaster would’ve beaten them black and blue.
That was when fog began to seep up from beneath his feet.
“…What now? Fog again?”
The speed of its rise surprised him.
“What the hell is this thing, anyway?”
Ethan felt like he’d suddenly plunged into a swimming pool, submerged in the thick haze.
The fog appeared or vanished according to his line of sight.
Before long he was leaning his head down and studying the scars on the wall.
“What… what the heck…”
On the side of the wall he faced stood a figure.
A real person.
“Strange… it’s so blurry…”
A young man in the old disciple robes, likely a senior.
He kept dragging the dagger across the wall.
It was as if he was reading out the past memories left in the spot.
“Insane… This is dagger technique?!”
Ethan hadn’t even taken the dagger class yet.
He had no idea how powerful it was, and honestly didn’t want to know.
“But why so fast?”
One stroke after another.
At the same time he drew the next dagger in a graceful diagonal line.
The semi-transparent figure in the old robes kept repeating the same motions, tracing every sword scar on the wall.
“This… this is kinda cool.”
If there really was such a thing as a true dagger master, he imagined this was exactly how they’d look.
A chill raced up his spine, sending a strange wave of pleasure through his entire body.
“Shit.”
No. Wait.
There was no way he’d ever feel cool around a dagger.
“Bullshit.”
Ethan flopped onto the floor of the cell.
*
Enduring the sight of that semi-transparent figure didn’t last long.
“I’m dying of curiosity!”
Ethan shot straight up from his spot and stared back into the fog.
The haze vanished, and the semi-transparent disciple kept slashing away at the wall with his dagger.
“What… what exactly is that?”
Ethan darted around the hazy figure like a kid in a game of hide-and-seek.
“Ah.”
He snapped his fingers as if he’d suddenly understood something.
“This… this is a Ghost Record, right?”
Back in the old days he’d played that Nintendo cartridge game called Mario Kart.
If you saved a replay, the first user to save it would watch it back in semi-transparent form, racing the track together.
This was exactly like that—except the semi-transparent figure was dragging a dagger across the wall instead of racing a kart.
The style told him it was definitely one of the senior disciples.
“But I heard those robes disappeared ages ago.”
The design didn’t match any of the webtoons he knew—neither the early stages nor the late ones where the story was still ongoing.
“Then… is this my ancestor or something?”
A spark of realization flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.
“I need to learn this.”
To survive as a dagger master and steal the Imperial Seal.
“There’s a feeling I should start with these scars.”
Clink. Clang.
Unlocking the cuffs was easy.
…
He wished someone would explain why he was even doing this.
“Alright, let’s see.”
The young disciple in the hologram-like Ghost Record kept repeating the same motions, as if the fog was a screen.
Ethan slowly matched his body to the transparent figure.
*
At first it was simple.
Just side-to-side movement and vertical cuts.
Like learning the basic footwork they taught in boxing.
But after a while something started to feel off.
“Huff… huff… Why the hell is swinging just one dagger so hard?”
He held nothing more than a rusted scrap of metal in his hand, yet copying the young disciple’s swing was a nightmare.
“Was it triple speed or something?”
The way the fabric fluttered and the motions flowed smoothly suggested acceleration.
Not quite.
Just… fast.
Fast and precise.
Like card magic, where cards appear from the hand in a dazzling display—except there was only the single dagger moving with such flair.
“If it had been a double dagger I definitely couldn’t have copied it.”
Thankfully, the technique didn’t look that high-level, but…
“Still… this is… huh… wait a second.”
After only ten minutes his whole body was drenched in sweat.
Ethan sat down and watched the flashy series of cuts.
“From the looks of it, it’s closer to a slashing art than a stealing art.”
If he learned this, would he be able to carve a new scar on the wall used in the dagger class?
His own stone wall would be lined with textbooks from the previous dagger masters.
“Ugh… for now, let’s take a break.”
Ethan rolled around until he sank deeper into the fog.
Wooong…
Ethan had no idea that a faint golden aura was flowing from his pocket.
The aura traveled along his body and reached the back of his neck.
“Mm…”
Suddenly a thought crossed his mind.
“I can always use more cards, but if I absorb so many techniques at once… will I even be able to handle them…”
…
A single keyword flashed through his mind like lightning.
“Cards?”
Ethan shot to his feet.
“The golden card that Headmaster Donovan secretly slipped into my pocket while he was ‘giving me a farewell speech.’”
Was it still in there?
He looked down.
The card was now glowing brightly outside his pocket, bathing the entire cell in golden light.
*
The Golden Joker.
A legendary artifact the size of a playing card, solid gold, bearing a black-robed joker on its face.
A one-time item that massively boosted Luck—the one thing every thief needed most.
It was a shame it disappeared after use, but it was one of the few items that could temporarily create an uncontrollable boost of Luck.
In the empire they had classified it as a strategic weapon and banned its circulation from the start.
In the black market its price was insane—enough to buy several houses.
“Why the hell did he just hand it to me?”
Because it didn’t consume Luck, the headmaster could have used it to assassinate someone and simply left it in his back pocket.
“I guess I don’t have to wonder why I was given it.”
“I can’t think of any reason not to use it.”
He was already stuck with the crazy assignment to leave behind dagger scars of master level.
“If I can erase it this way… with hand techniques.”
He used the magic they’d learned in the hand-technique class to conceal the card behind his hand.
Chirirring.
The card vanished and instantly absorbed into the back of his hand.
Golden light burst out like fireworks, racing through his elbow and shoulder before disappearing.
“Kyaaah…!”
It felt exactly like getting your forbidden game console back from your mom during exam week.
The thrill made every muscle in his body tingle.
“…”
Eyes closed and open.
There was the semi-transparent disciple again, tracing the wall with his dagger between waves of fog.
The movements were starting to feel familiar.
“I can see it!”
The legendary dagger path and explosive speed.
Copying that creative body movement would take hours, but the confidence was rising.
“I can do it!”
Ethan bared his bloodshot eyes and began copying the movements while overlapping his body with the Ghost disciple.
*
How long had passed?
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sun was rising.
Ethan was drenched from head to toe.
“Huff… huff… I’m doing a half turn and—”
The inside of his head felt scorched.
“Just a little… just a little more!”
Every brain cell felt tuned to become a dagger master.
His muscles screamed, but the movements were already as refined as a formal agent of the Empire’s intelligence service.
“Vertical cut…”
Then side-to-side movement.
“This… the path is connecting points!”
The thousands of cuts Ethan had already made on the wall were now smoothly linking from one point to the next, as if a constellation had been woven.
Clang!
Because the flame-like speed was too fast, every single point on the wall seemed to flash at the exact same moment.
Clang!
Ethan’s stamina was running out, yet his speed kept increasing.
Clang! Clang!
And then.
Ethan stopped.
“Huff… huff…”
Every star exploded upward like fireworks at once.
A single constellation of sparkling stars.
It slipped into the dark dungeon wall.
Ethan’s eyes bulging red, he clenched his fist.
“I did it!!!”
A shiver ran through him.
His leg muscles were already too exhausted to move, so he was frozen in place.
Yet the moment the movements finished, his body exactly overlapped the semi-transparent disciple’s form.
From the very first strike with the dagger to the final recovery of the weapon after tearing the wall with vertical cuts—
He had perfectly copied every single motion.
Swish.
The shape faded away.
Whoosh.
The fog rushed into his view as if being sucked in.
“What…”
The smoke instantly wrapped around his body.
*
Ethan felt as if his consciousness was being pulled into the distant night sky.
Eyes closed and open.
“Where am I?”
He had arrived in a place he knew nothing about.
A vast temple enveloped in green light.
He was dwarfed by colossal pillars that looked straight out of Greek or Roman mythology.
A thousand-li cliff separated Ethan from the temple.
A fierce wind rushed through the broken pillars at his feet.
“This place…”
At that moment a benevolent voice echoed in his mind.
—One who has gained access to the world’s secrets, ahaya.
—You are qualified to step foot in this temple.
The ground trembled.
“Hmph.”
As if inviting him over.
Huge stone bricks rose from beneath the cliff, and in the blink of an eye the broken bridge was rebuilt.
Grind!
When Ethan snapped back to his senses, he was standing cleanly on the bridge before the temple.
[VESPERA]
“Ves… pera…”
It was written in ancient imperial script.
For some reason Ethan could read it.
A blue-gray fog lay flat across the floor like dry ice.
Dong.
Green footprints appeared one after another, stepping into the temple.
“…Let’s follow them.”
Ethan walked inside the temple, cradling the pleasant feeling in his heart.