A New Weapon
Sunghyun leaped the instant an enemy entered his field of vision.
"Coins!"
He had already tasted what coins could do.
When had he first felt that taste?
The signs had been there from the start.
"Ah… I can move this fast?"
That was the moment he first raised his physique and mana levels. Sunghyun was growing addicted to the sensation of his body strengthening in real time.
It was a drug.
He hadn't given it much thought, but this rate of growth couldn't last forever. Each monster yielded an average of forty to fifty coins, and already every level-up was devouring twenty of them. Reaching level 30—physique and mana combined—required four hundred coins. Roughly ten monsters. Then that cost doubled. Twenty. Forty. Eighty. A hundred and sixty. It would never end.
Of course, as he grew stronger, the coins each kill paid out would rise as well. Sunghyun actually liked that.
The stronger I get, the stronger the enemies I can fight.
Through tigers, rabbits, wolves, and monkeys, Sunghyun had come to understand something.
"I love fighting."
The dopamine and endorphins that combat released were what drove him. That heat rising through his skull—that sensation drove him wild. Without the disposable rest spaces, he would have become a lunatic who lived for slaughter alone.
"Ah, that soy sauce marinated crab was delicious."
A slaughter-obsessed madman had become a soy-sauce-crab-obsessed madman. The difference was more symbolic than it looked. Purposeful killing was a hundred times better than killing for pure, aimless pleasure.
Anyway.
In the forest where Sunghyun currently hunted, the monsters he'd seen the day before were nowhere to be found. Nothing stronger than him appeared—just wolves, or creatures of roughly the same caliber with minor variations.
"So I wasn't just being paranoid last night."
After swinging a blade through the forest like a man possessed, his account already held 700C. Subtracting the 50C for a rest space left him with 650C to spend.
"650C, huh?"
Hunting had already pushed his physique to 21 and his mana to 22. Perhaps because mana leaned on his senses, its experience filled faster than his physique. Having massacred monsters lately and felt the need for a proper weapon, Sunghyun immediately purchased the one-handed sword he had eyed earlier.
A blade that climbed to D-rank on durability alone. It will not break under ordinary use.
"Do it."
Ziiing—.
A one-handed sword materialized in front of him.
Thud!
It dropped straight to the ground. The edge was so keen that the blade sank into the soil with almost no resistance.
Shhhk—.
Sunghyun pulled it free at once and checked its condition. The blade, forged in a muted black sheen, caught the light with a vivid gleam. Both edges shone razor-sharp, and down the center ran a clean pattern that looked like water rippling. The grip he closed his hand around was wrapped in dark leather—comfortable, yet it transmitted the weapon's weight with perfect clarity.
The moment he held it, Sunghyun knew.
Every fang he had been using until now was garbage.
He tossed them to the ground without a second thought.
Clack! Clack!
The fangs landed pitifully in the dirt. Sunghyun didn't spare them so much as a glance. He simply swung the sword.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Listening to the blade cut the air, he let out a sound of pure admiration.
"Ah! This is a sword!"
Thwack!
He kicked the discarded fangs even farther away.
"Perfect. Time for a field test."
For now, he decided not to spend any coins on stats. He approached the strongest-looking monster in sight.
Rock Bear(90C)
Of everything he had faced so far, this one came closest to the tiger. Its entire body was sheathed in stone. When he had first seen it, he had written it off as something his fangs could never kill.
But with this sword—
The strategy changed. That thing was going to be carved apart by his new blade. Sunghyun was certain of it.
And he was right.
Clang—
He charged the Rock Bear and seized the initiative. With every strike, chips of stone sheared away from its armored hide.
"Hahahaha! This is what gear does for you! What's that? You're a monster so you don't get equipment? Sorry, can't hear the words of a gearless loser!"
He was excited—talking too much. But he was in a fight now. He needed to settle down.
Sunghyun drew a long breath.
"Hoooooo—"
And let it out.
"Haaaaaah."
His presence shifted. The faintly unhinged look in his eyes was gone, replaced by something calm and sunk deep. The eyes that appeared automatically the moment Sunghyun entered a real fight. Those eyes made the bear take him seriously.
The bear remembered how a human's attack had cut through its stone. The body it had always believed invincible was not invincible today. It roared, trying to shake off the fear.
"GRRAAAAAAH!"
But Sunghyun knew. Beasts roared when they were afraid. So he curled the corner of his mouth and licked his lips—the same way he once had with a wolf.
"You're scared of me, aren't you?"
Animals knew, by instinct, whether something was predator or prey. The man in front of it was a predator—one that had no business existing in this zone.
The Rock Bear before Sunghyun was the strongest monster in the Forest of Beginnings. That was exactly why it was so rattled. Creatures this powerful weren't supposed to cross into this area.
The bear was half right and half wrong. Sunghyun had been weak enough to belong in this forest—he had simply grown past it.
And so the Rock Bear could not stop his sword.
Slash—. Slash—.
First went the arm it raised to block. Stone-plated flesh parted under Sunghyun's strikes. The sword alone wasn't the problem. When his Taegeuk fused with the blade, the synergy became absurd. Taegeuk, which embraced all things—deflecting every attack the enemy threw while ensuring every one of Sunghyun's own landed. Always. Without fail.
And that wasn't all. Whenever the Rock Bear lunged, Sunghyun was already gone from that spot, as if he had known the strike was coming. No matter how many times it attacked, the same thing happened. It was enough to drive anything mad.
"Hahaha."
The bear found Sunghyun's laughter bone-chilling—like the voice of the reaper that had dragged it into this world. And that reaper was delivering a death sentence.
"Your turn's over, bear."
Sunghyun passed judgment. The bear bared its fangs, determined to fight to the last. The sight pleased him.
"Gotta love how the monsters here don't give up easy."
His blade met the bear's teeth. The sword slipped between them like water through a current.
The result—
Slash—.
The bear's mouth was cut clean through. Its head split in two—upper jaw and lower.
Thud.
The Rock Bear's massive body crashed to the ground. True to its name, the creature was stone through and through; no blood flowed.
"Weird."
Sunghyun rolled the head around, examining it. Even the eyes that had once shone had gone dull as ordinary pebbles. There was no evidence it had ever been alive—as if it had been stone from the beginning.
"Looks like this forest doesn't have anything fun left."
Sunghyun decided to move on to the next zone—the place he had once fled from. He set his feet in motion again.
Trait:Investment [EX](Lv. 1, 0%)
Physique:21(67%)
Mana:22(45%)
Skills:Coin Market [EX](Lv. 1, 72%), Fire [F](Lv. 5, 32%)
Account Balance:500C
Natsume, who had been loaded onto a carriage while unconscious, came to his senses in a grassland he didn't recognize.
"Where am I?"
As he pushed himself upright, the coachman sitting ahead of him jumped in surprise.
"Good heavens! Who are you? How long have you been back there?"
Natsume nearly answered with his usual snarl—then remembered his situation. The knight commander's words surfaced in his mind.
Natsume bit his lower lip. The commander's voice still cut deep into his chest. He couldn't live like that anymore. There was no need to.
He was no longer Natsume. Holding that thought, he decided to be reborn.
He introduced himself to the coachman as the person he had just become.
"My name is… Nato. Would you happen to know where this carriage is headed? I woke up and found myself here."
Of all the names that could have come to mind, it was Nato. And if anyone who knew the old Natsume saw him now, they would faint on the spot.
Natsume using polite speech?
But even in this situation, he wasn't stupid enough to keep spitting out casual rudeness. Perhaps the coachman liked the attitude, because he answered kindly.
"Looks like you came from the royal palace. We haven't stopped once since then, you see."
That was true—Natsume had been loaded on at the kingdom. For a moment he fretted over whether the coachman knew he had been summoned alongside the Hero, but of course not. The man was an ordinary driver.
"At any rate, young man, we're bound for the Beast Kingdom. Ever been there?"
The Beast Kingdom. Just hearing the name conjured images of cat ears.
Natsume—no, Nato—shifted seats. The coachman made room so he could sit alongside him.
"No, I haven't. Could you tell me about it…?"
"Hahaha, of course. Nice to have some company on the road. Now then, the Beast Kingdom, you say…"
And so Nato left the kingdom behind, bound for the distant Beast Kingdom.
This event would become the single greatest turning point of his life.