Preconceptions (2)
"I should think that goes without saying. It is power simply handed to a man, not something he has forged by his own effort, is it not? Lean upon things such as skills, and a martial artist's ability is bound to wither. Surely you do not mean to deny that?"
Cheon Museong was unbowed.
His vow to serve Jin-soo as his lord had been sincere. Even so, he held that nodding along like a flatterer when the man one served spoke wrongly was the vile habit of treacherous courtiers. A true loyal subject, he believed, must stake his life on honest counsel the moment his lord went astray.
"It is not power simply handed over. It is a rightful reward, earned by slaying monsters or clearing missions. And if a man's ability as a martial artist withers because he leans on skills, I would say that is because the man himself is incompetent."
At Jin-soo's answer, Cheon Museong's brow twitched.
"Incompetent?"
"If a man obtains a famed blade and his skill does not grow, but declines, is that not incompetence?"
"A true craftsman does not pick and choose his tools."
"No. However skilled the craftsman, he cannot forge a famed sword if the iron is poor or the forge is weak. Even if his art reached the heavens and he somehow made a masterpiece from scrap iron and a low flame, give him fine steel and a high furnace and he would forge a better sword still. Is that not only natural?"
Jin-soo's rebuttal set Cheon Museong's brow and the corner of his mouth trembling. He wanted to strike the argument down at once, yet the example was too clean, and he had no answer for it.
Being unable to refute a thing was not the same as accepting it. Cheon Museong was not a man who would change his mind and bend his convictions merely because he had heard a single line he could not answer.
Jin-soo knew that well enough.
"I could tell from the sword you choose to wield. You seem deeply wary of the rewards and items the System grants. Are you afraid that raising your stats with titles and elixirs, gaining new power from class tomes and skill books, and using fine items will cause you to decline as a martial artist?"
The words drove in like a keen dagger and pierced Cheon Museong's heart.
"That I am."
After a brief hesitation, he admitted his unease outright.
"I have seen it happen with my own eyes."
Calmly, he spoke of the decline he had witnessed among martial artists from the Museong Dimension as they climbed the Tower. Men drunk on the power of items. Men whose balance had collapsed beneath stats swollen by rising levels, earned titles, and swallowed elixirs. Men whose swordsmanship had dulled because they leaned on a new class, or on skills.
"How, then, could a martial artist who walks the righteous path do anything but guard himself against the aid of this sorcery called the System? That is why I can neither accept your words, My Lord, nor understand why you would study such arts."
He was not wrong. Before his regression, Jin-soo himself had seen it countless times: people who grew stronger as Players with the System's help, only to grow weaker as martial artists who had once trained in the martial arts.
But the ones in question were often satisfied.
In the end, the martial arts were only one means among many — take up a weapon, wield mana, and kill or subdue an enemy more efficiently. Most who learned them did so not to glimpse the ultimate principle of the art, but simply because they hungered to become strong.
And so most from Museong think it enough to grow stronger as Players, even if they decline as martial artists.
Even among Players from Museong, Cheon Museong was a considerable oddity. Jin-soo understood his stubbornness well enough. But there was one thing the old man did not know.
Not everyone who grows stronger as a Player grows weaker as a martial artist.
They were not many. Yet some had used the System's aid to grow stronger not only as Players, but as martial artists as well.
And not only martial artists. Other callings are the same.
Mages, shamans, alchemists, blacksmiths — they felt the influence of class and skill even more keenly than martial artists. Most let their original craft decay by leaning on class and skill alone, but exceptions certainly existed.
The old man and I were among those exceptions.
Neither Jin-soo nor Cheon Museong had grown drunk on the power the System gave. They had used it instead as a tool, and with it forged martial arts that reached still higher.
"Do you believe my skill has declined because I use good items and skills?"
"Not at this moment, perhaps……. But I believe it may come to that in time."
Cheon Museong laid his heart bare. He did not want a martial artist who had reached so supreme a realm as Jin-soo to sink into sorcery and watch his martial arts decay.
"To speak plainly, I would rather My Lord neither use this sorcery henceforth, nor study it any further."
"Thank you for speaking so freely. But the worry is needless."
At that answer, Cheon Museong bowed his head low.
"If that is My Lord's choice, then I have nothing more to say."
A deep disappointment toward Jin-soo rose in his eyes.
"I am from Earth. Earth has neither the martial arts nor the shamanic arts of the Museong Dimension, nor aura or magic as they exist in the Arius Dimension."
Cheon Museong gave him a puzzled look. He already knew Jin-soo was from Earth; his face asked what of it.
But the words that followed dyed his eyes with shock.
"I encountered and learned skills — what you, Elder Cheon, call sorcery — before I ever touched the martial arts."
"Th-that is true?"
"It is."
"I had assumed, of course, that you brought the sword arts of some renowned house with you from Earth……."
"Earth has martial arts of a sort, but I was an ordinary man. Before I was dragged into the Tower, I had never so much as swung a spear or a wooden sword, let alone a real blade."
"How can that be?"
Jin-soo's words threw Cheon Museong into deep confusion. He knew better than anyone how high a realm Jin-soo had reached as a martial artist, and that made the claim all the harder to believe.
Swordsmanship of a supreme realm, and a wealth of experience that even a lifetime devoted to the martial arts from childhood could scarcely achieve — and all of it built only after he entered the Tower?
"It may be impossible in one's original dimension. In the Tower, there is no such thing as impossible."
"Incompetent, you said. You spoke those words to me because you had lived them yourself."
The stance that had seemed so firm not a drop of blood would fall if one pricked it with a needle began to shift. Jin-soo's claim — that he had accepted the System's power, which Cheon Museong had thought a deadly poison to any martial artist, and still climbed to a supreme realm — was more than enough to shatter the old man's preconceptions.
"The Museong Dimension must have armaments worthy of being called divine weapons and treasured artifacts."
"Of course."
"Some grow stronger after obtaining them. Others decline."
"That is so."
"When a man's martial arts decline, is the fault in the armament called a divine weapon, or in the martial artist who wields it?"
"The fault lies with the martial artist."
"There are elixirs in the Museong Dimension as well, are there not? I imagine you, Elder Cheon, have taken quite a few."
A man of a renowned orthodox sect like Cheon Museong could not possibly have gone without tasting an elixir even once.
If anything, he has taken more of them than ordinary martial artists from Museong.
Jin-soo had heard as much from Cheon Museong himself, before the regression.
"You have the right of it. I have consumed a great many elixirs."
"And after taking them, did your martial arts ever decline, even once?"
At the question, Cheon Museong shook his head. He had gained from elixirs. He had never once lost by them.
"Being wary of the class changes, skills, achievements, elixirs, and items one gains in the Tower is no bad thing. But do not refuse them outright. In the broad view, it is the same act as meeting a fortuitous encounter in the Museong Dimension — claiming a divine weapon, obtaining a past master's martial manual, or swallowing an elixir one was lucky enough to find."
Hearing this, Cheon Museong sank quietly into deep thought.
No different from a fortuitous encounter. Be wary, but do not refuse them outright.
He turned Jin-soo's words over and over.
Have I been frightening myself ahead of the fact?
He tried shifting the angle of his thoughts. What if the Tower was not a place rife with sorcery, but a world overflowing with fortuitous encounters?
Encounters beyond one's measure do often poison a martial artist's growth.
There were plenty who trusted a divine weapon and grew lazy in their training until their skill declined; who learned martial arts beyond their station; who took elixirs and, through a clash of natures or a lack of capacity, fell into qi deviation and destroyed themselves.
Yet while he had lived in the Museong Dimension, he had only thought such people foolish.
Not once had he blamed the encounters themselves — the divine weapons, the martial arts, the elixirs — or shrunk from them.
In the Tower, however, he had laid the fault not on the person, but on items such as class tomes and skill books.
"I shall make the effort."
Having finished his deliberation, Cheon Museong accepted Jin-soo's words at last.
It worked.
A satisfied smile rose at the corner of Jin-soo's mouth.
Easier than before the regression, even.
The preconceptions about the System that Cheon Museong had held when they met in that previous life had been hard as diamond. Now they did not seem quite so.
Because barely half a year has passed since he was dragged into the Tower?
Meeting him on the Tower's 200th floor — still what one could call the lower floors — felt like true good fortune.
"Then let us continue the hunt. The achievements one can earn in this place……."
Jin-soo told him of the achievements that could be obtained only near the 200th Floor Starting City.
"Th-thank you."
Cheon Museong answered with a slightly reluctant face. He had accepted Jin-soo's words, but stepping forward of his own accord still felt awkward.
"Change your weapon to this as well."
Jin-soo drew a sword from his inventory. It was not an absurdly expensive item laden with overwhelming options. Still, its level was higher than the sword Cheon Museong was using, and its options were better.
"I have another sword of my own in reserve, so I must decline."
Cheon Museong produced a sword from his inventory.
It fell far short of Baekcheonsingeom or the Blood-Sucking Sword, but its options and level were of a grade impossible to obtain at the standard of the Tower's 200th floor.
So he did have a better sword.
Just as Jin-soo had expected, the man had deliberately refrained from using the better blade.
"Would you lend me that sword for a moment?"
"Here."
Jin-soo held out his hand, and Cheon Museong passed the sword over without hesitation.
Both longswords. The chance of success should be high. Item Synthesis.
Jin-soo fused the sword Cheon Museong had drawn from his inventory with the one he himself had meant to give.
Item Synthesis
Two longswords fused into one
Light burst forth, and the two blades became one.
"Take it."
Jin-soo handed over the sword, now a synthesized item.
"The options have increased. You have joined the strengths of both items into one?"
"Yes. That's right."
"My Lord is truly a man of many talents. I shall put it to good use."
A flicker of surprise crossed Cheon Museong's face, and he inclined his head slightly in thanks.
If I had my way, I would clad him in accessories and armor as well.
Do that, though, and Cheon Museong might only recoil.
No need to rush.
His resistance to high-performance items had eased. When he judged them necessary, he would equip them of his own accord.
"Do you have any elixirs?"
Elixirs, however, were best taken at once.
"I do."
"You must take them in order, from the weakest effect upward, or you will lose stats. Go on and take them now."
"Taking an elixir throws essence, qi, and spirit ever so slightly out of balance. Does that not trouble you, My Lord?"
Cheon Museong asked as if genuinely curious. He had obtained many elixirs along the way. After trying one out of curiosity, he had never taken another.
If one's physical ability or internal energy rose by leaps, combat power climbed with it, and essence, qi, and spirit grew easier to tune. But the effect of these elixirs was not so great, and so tuning the three became harder still.
For Cheon Museong, who desired perfect control over body, mind, and internal energy, an elixir was a meddler that kept knocking askew a balance he had already set.
"Isn't that all the better? Every time you take an elixir, you get to train at setting right an essence, qi, and spirit that have slipped just a little out of balance."
At Jin-soo's answer, Cheon Museong's face went blank, like a man who had just been struck with a hammer.