Preconceptions
"Yeah. Come in."
The door shrieked on its hinges. At Jin-soo's leave, Shin Sua pushed it open and stepped into the room.
"Were you sorting items?"
"Yeah."
"You should've called me sooner."
"You looked tired today, Sua. I figured I'd handle it myself."
"I've still got the energy to sort items. So from now on, call me. Every time."
Shin Sua was at his side in a moment, already at work sorting.
"So that old man is going to travel with us from now on, right?"
"That's right."
Jin-soo answered without particular emphasis. He hadn't added a single party member since meeting Shin Sua on the fiftieth floor and bringing her in—but that hadn't been by design.
I simply never met anyone worth adding.
Even the Eight Mad Dogs, who had belonged to the guild he led before the regression, had fallen a little short of his standard.
Leaving those guys to their own devices was the better choice anyway.
Cheon Museong was another matter. A powerhouse who had long since blown past the standard of the Tower's 200th Floor, he was already complete as a martial artist. Left to himself, he'd grow quickly enough. Even so, keeping the man at his side and instructing him would be far more efficient. And that quiet distaste of his—treating items and the System's aid as sorcery—needs correcting. More than anything, growing the Formless Sword Art and the Formless Heart Method into the Martial Soul Sword Art and the Martial Soul Heart Method would be impossible without Jin-soo's help.
"Ah. I see."
At the confirmation that Cheon Museong would be with them from now on, Shin Sua murmured it in a voice gone flat.
"He pulls some pretty outrageous stunts and looks half-mad, but I don't think he's a bad person. Don't worry too much. He's someone who keeps his word. If you go to him with goodwill, he'll answer you in kind."
That Cheon Museong was no villain was something Jin-soo could guarantee. He had spent a long time at the man's side before the regression.
"Okay. I understand."
Shin Sua answered with a faint smile. Jin-soo returned it, then bent once more to the sorting.
The moment his eyes left her, the smile vanished. Expressionless, she set to the work.
That wasn't what I was worried about.
Her thoughts were a knot. She had already been restless, feeling her place in the party shrink by the day, and into that unease had walked Cheon Museong—a powerhouse beyond any ordinary measure. Of course her anxiety only cut deeper.
Everyone who joins from here on will be someone that incredible, won't they? The fear that she was, and would remain, the least necessary person in the party kept turning over and over in her mind. She buried herself harder in the sorting. If even chores like this could be of some small use to Jin-soo, she wanted to do them properly.
The next morning, Jin-soo, Shin Sua, and Cheon Museong gathered in the dining hall on the first floor.
"Did you rest comfortably?"
"I rested well."
"And you, Sua? Sleep well?"
"Yeah. I slept fine."
Once he had greeted her, Jin-soo came straight to the point.
"After breakfast, we head straight for the hunting grounds."
"Yeah. I thought as much, so I got ready early."
Shin Sua's answer was as even as always.
"As you command."
Cheon Museong, however, looked thoroughly bored once the words were out. Hunting monsters seemed to hold no interest for him at all.
He thinks killing monsters—beasts that move on raw instinct—does nothing to make a man stronger. He wasn't wrong. To a martial artist who had reached Cheon Museong's realm, hunting monsters at the level of the Tower's 200th Floor was rote labor, nothing more and nothing less.
And with a level like his, gaining levels by killing monsters would be brutally slow. That's obvious. Cheon Museong hadn't climbed from the hundredth floor to the two-hundredth in half a year for nothing. He must believe the Tower's lower floors have nothing left for him.
But that was wrong.
When your strength outstrips the floor you're standing on, there is an absurd amount to take. Achievements and titles that could be earned only on a given floor of the Tower, for a start—those could be claimed with ease. And that was hardly the end of it. Hidden dungeons and open dungeons could be cleared just as easily, and elixirs, job advancement books, skill books, and equipment raked in by the armful.
The problem is that this old man thinks power taken from achievements, elixirs, job advancement books, skill books, and gear is nothing but cheap sorcery. Even the stats that rose with a level-up, even growing stronger by raising a skill's level—he lumped all of it in with sorcery, and it sat ill with him.
He sees himself as a knight-errant and an elder of some prestigious orthodox sect. To actual orthodox martial artists he was an eccentric freak they would be ashamed to call one of their own, let alone an elder—someone they would sooner hide. Still, that was how he thought of himself. So the power granted by the System, that strange sorcery of unknown nature, doesn't please him. It unsettles him.
Before the regression, correcting that mindset had cost no small amount of time. Because of it, Cheon Museong had missed chance after chance to grow stronger.
This time is different. He had met Jin-soo far earlier than in the life before. And whether he liked it or not, Cheon Museong now served him as lord. I don't have the leisure to wait until he figures it out himself. If he would not understand willingly, then Jin-soo would simply beat the understanding into him until he had no choice.
First: items. The sword Cheon Museong was using was a cheap thing, unworthy of the Tower's 200th Floor. It's not as if he lacks points. There was no way hunting had failed to put higher-level swords with better options into his hands. He's just drunk on the idea that a true master doesn't fuss over his tools. Odds were high he was still carrying a blade beneath his station. He definitely believes a sword with special options would only hinder his growth as a martial artist. So he was almost certainly using one with nothing special on it at all—merely sharp enough, sturdy enough, with a self-repair option tacked on at most.
It was the same before the regression. After meeting Jin-soo in that life, Cheon Museong had changed a great deal. This time, the change would take hold even faster.
Breakfast done, the party made for the hunting grounds.
Sweep up every achievement the hunting grounds near the Starting City have to offer. And while they were at it, find the hidden dungeons and clear them.
"Leo."
"Nyaaaaa!"
The moment Jin-soo called his name, Leo erupted in a fierce, wide-area taunt roar. The ground thundered. It was not long before monsters came pouring in from every side.
"Hmph."
Cheon Museong frowned at the onrushing swarm. Monsters so far beneath him that a single swing would cut them down—hunting such things, he thought, was nothing but a waste of time.
"Hah."
He drew his blade all the same. Meaningless or not, this was what the man he had sworn to serve as lord had decided. For now, he would follow.
Flame Barrier
Flame Storm
Flame Rain
Flame Explosion
Jin-soo cast his fire-attribute magic attack skills. A wall of crimson flame surged up and barred the monsters' path. A storm of fire swept through their ranks, and a rain of flame crashed down upon their heads. Then the fire clinging to their bodies detonated all at once, and the vanguard of the swarm was annihilated where it stood.
What in the world was that?
Cheon Museong's mouth fell open. Sword still drawn, he froze like stone.
It was not because Jin-soo had wiped the monsters out in a breath. Given a little more time, Cheon Museong could have handled beasts of that level with ease himself.
"M-magic attack skills?"
He had taken Jin-soo for a martial artist. Watching him cast magic attack skills shook him badly. And yet what truly stunned him was not that a Player he had known as warrior-class had used mage-class skills he should never have been able to touch.
"A martial artist of such a sublime realm... why would he stoop to sorcery like that..."
He was shaken only by this: that Jin-soo, a martial artist standing in a higher realm than his own, had learned something other than the sword—mere sorcery—and used it with his own hands.
Cheon Museong was a man who had never properly used even his own class skills. Just as he had in the Museong Dimension, he relied solely on the martial arts he had cultivated himself. To him, a skill was a shortcut and sorcery besides, and the very fact that his own arts had been turned into skills left him ill at ease. If the System ever offered him a choice—a chance to undo that conversion—he would take it gladly.
He believed any true martial artist ought to feel the same. And so he looked coldly on the Museong-born martial artists who grew by leaning on the System's power, certain they had sunk into shortcuts and sorcery and been corrupted by them.
Those fallen into the sorcery called skills might reach the Flower Realm, perhaps. The Profound Realm? Impossible. Or so I believed...
Even if someone somehow clawed their way to the Profound Realm, he was convinced they would be nothing but a half-finished thing raised on shortcuts and sorcery. Vast internal energy, overwhelming strength and speed—and none of the subtle harmony between the mysteries of the sword and one's inner qi.
It was not mere prejudice.
Climbing the Tower, Cheon Museong had met countless martial artists from the Museong Dimension. The good he favored with a little teaching; the wicked, with a proper disciplining. He drew no line between the righteous path and the unorthodox. An orthodox disciple who did evil tasted the rod, and an unorthodox disciple who did good received instruction. In the course of it, one thing had appalled him.
Far too many of them had their essence, energy, and spirit thrown out of true. Their swordsmanship was wretched, their control of internal energy a shambles, their mental strength below any acceptable standard. It was not simply that Cheon Museong, an absolute master on another plane entirely, saw them that way. He had met innumerable martial artists in the Museong Dimension as well, and so he knew: set beside a First-Rate from Museong, a First-Rate met inside the Tower was nothing but a half-made imitation.
The higher the realm, the more vicious the gap. Among the First-Rate, the difference was not so severe. But as the realm climbed—the Peak, the Transcendent Peak—it grew extreme. And the one who had reached the Flower Realm had gone clean past the limit. Trusting only in the strength of his body and the sheer volume of his internal energy, the man strutted about calling himself a martial artist of the Flower Realm. To Cheon Museong's eye, swordsmanship, qi control, and mental strength all fell short. Forget the Flower Realm. He didn't even measure up to the Transcendent Peak.
Watching Museong-born martial artists reduced to half-finished things, Cheon Museong's revulsion toward the power the System bestowed only deepened. He guarded himself, and guarded himself again, lest he sink into the sorcery that went by the System's name.
And then, for the first time, an exception stood before his eyes—an irregular by the name of Jin-soo, who wielded the System's sorcerous power without restraint and yet had climbed to a higher realm than Cheon Museong himself, with finer swordsmanship, finer control of internal energy, and a stronger mind.
"Mere sorcery?"
Jin-soo turned on him with the look of a man struck dumb by sheer absurdity.
"I'm only asking to be sure. You don't actually consider skills to be sorcery, do you?"
Those eyes were the eyes of a man looking at a witless infant who could not tell heaven from earth. Cheon Museong ground his teeth and opened his mouth.