The Weird God, Cheon Museong
Cheon Museong, the Weird God.
A Player from the Museong Dimension, he was a man fanatically obsessed with growing stronger. Before the regression he had been one of the masters who taught Jin-soo the sword — and a madman who insisted on calling himself Jin-soo's disciple.
He was also the man who had crossed blades with Jin-soo more times than anyone else in that previous life.
Trust the sparring villain to live up to the name.
Their first meeting before the regression had been an out-of-nowhere challenge to a duel. This time, it seemed, would be no different.
But what is this old man doing here?
Before the regression, Jin-soo had not met Cheon Museong until he reached the Tower's upper floors. No matter how much faster he was climbing now, running into him on a mere Floor 200 made no sense at all.
"Why is there no answer? Do you mean to refuse my challenge?"
Cheon Museong fixed him with eyes glittering with madness.
"No. I'll accept."
Refusing Cheon Museong was meaningless.
He'd just reject the refusal and throw himself at me anyway.
Jin-soo knew how to handle him. Agree to the duel, then name a price.
His mind isn't entirely sound, but he still comes from a prestigious orthodox sect, and he thinks of himself as a knight-errant and an elder of the righteous path.
Honestly, once you knew the method, he was a remarkably easy man to handle.
"In exchange, there are a few things I'd like to ask."
"Hmph. Very well. Ask."
The madness glittering in Cheon Museong's eyes faded.
"When were you brought into the Tower?"
Cheon Museong answered with a perfectly calm face.
"Some half a year ago."
"Half a year?"
"When I arrived at the place called Floor 100, things called skills and stats came into being within me. I confirmed them, hunted the creatures called monsters, and climbed. About a month past, I reached Floor 200. Were it not for you, I would be ascending to Floor 201 even now."
Jin-soo was dumbfounded.
Floor 100 to Floor 200... in only half a year?
And if he had been on the verge of Floor 201, then even in the great cities — Floor 100, Floor 150, Floor 200 — he had lingered barely a month.
So on the floors without a city, he climbed them in a single day.
A truly staggering pace.
If I'd taken my time on a two-day rhythm, he might have stolen the achievement for the fastest arrival at Floor 200.
Fortunately, by holding to a pace of twenty-two hours, twenty-two minutes, and twenty-two seconds, Jin-soo had kept that achievement for himself.
"How did you know I was the Player called the Blood White Sword Demon — and how did you find me?"
"I heard rumors of the affair between Sahyeol Gate and the Blood White Sword Demon, and so I came to the Starting City. There I sought the place in the hunting grounds where the strongest ripple of qi could be felt. And there you were."
A simple method. But not one just anyone could use. It demanded martial power overwhelming enough to roam lethal hunting grounds as casually as a stroll through the neighborhood, blinding speed, and an exceptional sense for mana besides.
"I should like to begin the match before long."
Cheon Museong's patience was reaching its limit.
"Fine. But if I win, I'd like you to grant me one request."
"What?"
At those words, Cheon Museong's face hardened like stone.
"A green whelp smashes one petty sect of unorthodox rabble and fancies the world holds nothing to fear. Do you truly believe you can defeat me?"
"If you're that confident, you need only accept my proposal."
"Good. Should I lose to you, I shall become your servant. In return, should you lose, you shall become mine."
He had overreacted to the provocation.
Before the regression he was a disciple. This time he's been demoted to a servant.
For the record, Jin-soo had won their duel before the regression. Cheon Museong, declaring he would keep his word, had insisted on becoming Jin-soo's disciple. In truth, the one who learned was Jin-soo.
Thanks to power taken from the system — the class Dark Predator, the Heukcheon Demonic Sword, and the rest — Jin-soo had held the advantage in raw force. Strip away stats, skills, and items, however, and in pure strength and in attainment as a martial artist, Cheon Museong stood overwhelmingly higher.
It was thanks to the old man that I could create the Traceless Sword Art and the Traceless Heart Method.
The Traceless Sword Art and Traceless Heart Method, which Jin-soo had crystallized into skills upon reaching Floor 200, were rooted in the Unsurpassed Sword Art and Unsurpassed Heart Method he had learned from Cheon Museong before the regression.
"That one born of Earth should reach the Hwagyeong, the Realm of Transformation, is cause enough for wonder. But today I shall teach you that there is a heaven above heaven."
A pure-white heat haze rose from Cheon Museong's body. He was circulating the Unsurpassed Heart Method, drawing his mana up.
Hwaaaak!
A tremendous wave of mana burst from him and shook the air. At the same time, streams of pure-white sword-force erupted from the longsword in his hand and compressed with blinding speed.
Still doesn't care much about items.
Everything Cheon Museong owned amounted to a single longsword of utterly ordinary appearance.
Just how high is his level?
Cheon Museong was a Player from Museong. The moment he awakened on Floor 100, the martial arts he had learned in the Museong Dimension would have become skills, and his trained flesh and vast internal energy would have turned into stats.
His level, too, would not have begun at 1, as an Earthborn Player's did. Players from Museong started at a level befitting the strength they already held.
A thousand, at the very least. Comfortably past that.
He might even have cleared 1,500 and touched 2,000.
He looks like some rustic old farmer, but that man was one of the strongest beings in the Museong Dimension — a master who had attained the Hyeongyeong, the Profound Realm.
Most Players from Museong were third-rate martial artists, and even a First-Rate was vanishingly rare. Set against that, Cheon Museong's very existence was a kind of irregularity.
Whoosh!
His sword swept toward Jin-soo.
Fast.
His Agility and Mana were certainly far above Jin-soo's.
Kang!
Jin-soo barely turned the blow aside. That was only the beginning.
Kang! Boom! Kwaaaang!
Cheon Museong's all-out assault was so fast and so heavy that even Jin-soo struggled to withstand it. Setting everything else aside, his primary stats — Strength, Agility, Mana — were all higher than Jin-soo's.
Jin-soo's total stats, divine blessing included, stood at roughly the level of a Player in the 1,800s. Other Players, unlike him, could raise their stats through elixirs and titles, and a high-grade class tome granted bonus stats with every level gained. Unlike Jin-soo, whose every stat was identical, they kept their primary stats high and their secondary stats low. Because of that, each of Jin-soo's individual stats was only comparable to the primary stat of a high-ranking Player in the early 1,000s.
And I'm losing to him in stats? How does that make any sense?
His stats had already far transcended the standard of Floor 200. A Player who could overwhelm that Jin-soo in strength and speed was something that should not — could not — exist.
But Jin-soo knew better. The Tower was a place where the irrational and the absurd could erupt anywhere, at any time, and no one would have cause to be surprised.
To other Players, I was that kind of existence.
He swung his two swords with calm precision. He was losing in stats, but he had no intention whatsoever of losing the duel. Had he planned to lose, he would never have staked the match on a condition of victory in the first place.
Stats are only one part of a Player's strength. Not the whole of it.
Of course, they were the most important measure of a Player's power. But Jin-soo had the combat experience he had piled up from before the regression until now, and a swordsmanship to match it.
And above all else...
I know the Unsurpassed Sword Art and the Unsurpassed Heart Method inside and out.
If anything, the realm of the Unsurpassed arts Jin-soo himself could unfold stood higher than what the present Cheon Museong was displaying.
In the end, the Unsurpassed Sword Art and Heart Method are nothing but lesser versions of the Traceless Sword Art and the Traceless Heart Method.
Before the regression, Cheon Museong himself had acknowledged that fact and striven to transform the Unsurpassed arts into the Traceless ones.
He failed, in the end.
Given more time, he might have succeeded.
Will he manage it this time?
They had met far earlier than Jin-soo had expected. It might be possible.
"You whelp! What sorcery is this!"
Cheon Museong roared. His strength and speed were clearly superior, yet he could not seize the advantage, and desperation had set in.
It was only natural. Jin-soo could see exactly which form Cheon Museong would unfold next. Nor was Cheon's failure to take the lead solely because the Unsurpassed Sword Art had been seen through.
As expected. That habit is still there.
Before the regression, Jin-soo had dueled him countless times. Thanks to that, unconscious habits and patterns that even Cheon Museong himself did not know lay stored intact in Jin-soo's mind.
Jin-soo knew him through and through. Cheon Museong, by contrast, knew nothing of Jin-soo's swordsmanship or his skills.
Jin-soo had sealed his class skills and was fighting with pure martial arts alone.
I can win without them. No need to use them.
Had he drawn on the skills of Summoner, Warrior, Assassin, Mage, Healer, Tank, Shaman, and the rest, the duel would already have been over. But to break Cheon Museong completely, martial arts alone were better.
The deadlock began, little by little, to tilt toward Jin-soo.
From the start he had held the advantage in swordsmanship and in the handling of mana. Add to that a complete reading of his opponent's art and habits, and even with inferior primary stats he could not have lost if he tried.
"So it is no sorcery."
The longer the match went on, the more Cheon Museong was forced to acknowledge the boy's skill.
Strength, speed, internal energy — I hold the advantage in all of them. And yet I cannot seize the victory.
In pure swordsmanship alone, the child was several moves above him. His experience was deep, and his vision was wide.
Hardest of all to believe was the way he seemed to foresee every movement and answer it in advance. Even a surprise thrust was turned aside with practiced ease, as if it had been expected all along. The attacks coming back, meanwhile, were each and every one of them troublesome.
The worst were the ones that stabbed into gaps Cheon himself had not known he possessed, with moves nearly impossible to answer.
Had my stats been any lower, I would already have lost.
The only reason he had not been utterly defeated — the only reason he could force himself to hold — was that his stats were higher.
I heard there was a child of some skill, and thought that if he walked the righteous path I would bestow a lesson, and if he were wicked I would set him straight.
The one who needed teaching was himself.
Beautiful.
Cheon Museong had fallen completely under the spell of the sword unfolding before him. It was too perfect — gentle, and yet fierce; solid, and yet flowing. The quintessence of the art he had pursued across an entire lifetime was blooming from Jin-soo's fingertips. Quintessence. The very meaning of the boy's name, made flesh in the sword.
There is no more meaning in continuing this match.
The outcome was already decided. To fight on would only stretch the time he spent enduring. Even so, he did not want to admit defeat.
Concede and withdraw, and he would never again see that beautiful sword. So he swung by sheer inertia, sinking deeper into the art before him, until he slipped without realizing it into a trance.
"Aaaaah!"
Then, as if something had suddenly broken open inside him, he forgot even that Jin-soo was there. Eyes closed, he began to dance a sword dance all by himself, swaying to a rhythm only he could hear.