The Undying Knight (2)
Jin-soo watched Cheon Museong with the look of a man who had expected exactly this. The old master stood with both eyes stretched wide, staring at the message floating before him as if he could not bring himself to believe it.
The Undying Knight isn't a supreme advancement class for nothing.
It depended on the Player, but some ranked that tome even higher than a unique-grade class change. The reason lay in two absurdly overpowered class skills.
The first is Immortality. It came the instant one advanced. For ten seconds, it renders the Player unkillable. Heart run through, body split in two—none of it mattered. For those ten seconds, death simply did not take. The higher the skill level climbed, the longer Immortality lasted, and the shorter its cooldown became.
Raise the Undying Knight's class level, and the second broken skill revealed itself.
Complete Resuscitation.
It made no difference whether the wound was already fatal or a vital part of the body had been erased. The moment it activated, it perfectly restored not only the injuries, but every scrap of spent stamina, mental power, and mana—an outright cheat of a skill. Its performance matched the final evolution of the Ring of Revival Jin-soo carried, which was no different from gaining one more spare life. And its synergy with Immortality was flawless.
Jin-soo possessed an Undying Knight advancement tome of his own. He had never used it lightly, because no blessing capable of raising the class level had appeared yet. Complete Resuscitation could only be obtained once the Undying Knight class hit level 1,000. Until a blessing came along that would let him push a class past that mark, he had no intention of using the tome.
But none of that matters to Old Master Cheon.
For Cheon Museong, advancing to Undying Knight as quickly as possible was pure profit. The class's only real flaw was how easily it turned its bearer into a half-baked hybrid... Even that was no great penalty for him. Class skills would raise his defense, and he could cover his offense with the Formless Sword Art and the Formless Mind Art, neutral skills shared by every warrior-type class.
He might even welcome it.
An ordinary Player would have felt the lack as a weakness. Cheon Museong, who had staked everything on the martial path, would be glad that his class skills barely touched his martial arts. And if anyone could avoid becoming a useless jack-of-all-trades, it was him. He was far more likely to grow into a true all-rounder—offense as high as a damage dealer's, defense as solid as a tank's.
"Immortality... Skills may traffic in uncanny power, but how can they reach a realm so far beyond comprehension...?"
Cheon Museong, for his part, seemed more than a little shaken by the skill's very existence.
Not bad.
Advancing to Undying Knight and gaining Immortality looked to have shattered his fixed notions completely. At this point in time, Old Master Cheon probably thinks of class changes and skills as nothing more than learning a martial art or a sorcery of a different grain.
Nothing was impossible in the Tower.
On the lower floors, one rarely feels the truth of those words. Reach the highest floors, though—or come into an item of a grade that would still hold even there—and the meaning of that saying became impossible to miss.
The Undying Knight is one of the supreme advancement classes at the Tower's very peak. Its class skills, Immortality and Resuscitation, were special to exactly that degree.
"Could you explain the Immortality skill to me?"
"Of course."
Cheon Museong laid out the skill in careful detail. Jin-soo already knew every word of it, but he listened as though he were hearing it for the first time.
"They say nothing is impossible in the Tower. We may yet come face to face with even greater things beyond understanding."
At Jin-soo's words, Cheon Museong's face colored with just the right mix of excitement and tension.
"Would you tell me about the other changes as well, besides the Immortality skill?"
"Yes. First, the stats..."
Cheon Museong went on, covering not only the stats that had risen with his advancement to Undying Knight, but the other class skills he had gained aside from Immortality.
"There doesn't seem to be anything you could call a core skill for raising martial power."
"So it would seem."
A faint smile touched Cheon Museong's lips. Just as Jin-soo had predicted, he looked rather pleased that no skill existed to inflate his martial might.
"But the skill called Immortality is good enough to offset all of that."
"That it is."
It was as good as having gained another spare life. There was no helping it.
"Still, I don't think you should dwell on it too much. Not if you mean to keep from being swallowed by that Immortality skill."
"Of course."
Cheon Museong answered Jin-soo with a firm face.
"That said, enshrining it like some ancestral tablet and never touching it is just as pointless."
Ten seconds was not long, but the ways to turn Immortality to use in battle were endless. Hoard it, and draw on it only in the instant your life hung by a thread?
That would make it little better than a chicken rib.
When the moment actually came, it would be hard to wield properly—and worse, if he did not use it often, he could never raise its level. Raising a skill demanded frequent use, and a deeper grasp of how to understand and apply it.
"Starting today, how about sparring with me for real—hard enough that you have no choice but to activate Immortality?"
Jin-soo tossed the suggestion out lightly.
"Excellent. I am entirely in favor."
Cheon Museong answered with a bright face, like a fish taking the bait.
"Then we'll spar every evening after dinner."
"Thank you. Truly, thank you, My Lord."
Overcome, Cheon Museong bent at the waist before Jin-soo again and again.
A sly smile spread across Jin-soo's face. We'll see if you're still so pleased later, old man.
A fair amount of time had passed since his regression. Unfortunately, Jin-soo had almost no experience of fighting anyone on his level, let alone stronger. Maybe that's why my combat sense feels a little rusty.
Cheon Museong was the strongest Player Jin-soo had met so far. And he's a martial artist who fights with true martial arts. It was a perfect chance not only to knock the rust off his real combat experience, but to put his swordsmanship through a proper inspection.
Anyone else, maybe. The old man, I don't need to go easy on.
Even a spar meant to feel like the real thing lost its worth if you had to keep the other person's safety in mind. You can't very well kill someone in a spar. What kind of realistic bout was it if you could not aim for the vitals? But Cheon Museong had Immortality. Attacks that would have killed anyone else on the spot would not kill him.
It'll help Sua's training, too.
Mending a pierced heart, or setting a severed limb back in place, would do a great deal to raise Shin Sua's skill levels as a healer.
Passing on the Martial Soul Sword Art and the Martial Soul Mind Art will be easier as well.
Evolving a stable, established martial art always carried heavy risk. Put bluntly, one misstep could twist muscle and meridian, or send mana into reverse, or drop a man into qi deviation and kill him.
But there's no need to worry about that anymore.
Die from reversed mana? Die from qi deviation?
Set it right and heal it within ten seconds, and that's the end of it.
With the certainty that he absolutely would not die, and a healer stuck to him like a crew on five-minute standby, there was nothing they could not do.
Old man. From here on, I'll run you until the wails spill out of your mouth.
Memory after memory surfaced of the days before his regression, when he had learned martial arts under Cheon Museong's direction and been drilled half to death. I'll repay the kindness I received then, several times over, with interest.
This was nothing more than returning what Cheon Museong had given him before the regression.
It was absolutely not revenge for old grudges.
The day after he advanced to Undying Knight, Cheon Museong threw himself into the hunt with even greater zeal, bent on achievements and items alike. He also worked to use his changed stats and his newly acquired skills as efficiently as he could.
Jin-soo stepped in just as actively for the sake of that growth.
Clang! Crack!
Leo's wide-area taunt roar dragged in the first monster wave, and they swept it away. In the gap before the second wave arrived, Jin-soo ran a light exchange of forms with Cheon Museong. He had proposed it himself, to show the old master the road by which the Formless Sword Art would change into the Martial Soul Sword Art.
"Grrraaaah!"
"Kyaaaah!"
The monsters came pouring in, and the light exchange ended.
"Hrm."
Regret flickered in Cheon Museong's eyes, and then he charged the monsters. Right now his head held a single thought: clear them as fast as possible, and pick the form drill with Jin-soo back up.
It was only a light exchange of forms.
The time had been very short, and still he had gained a great deal.
As a master instructs a lesser hand, Jin-soo had shown him sword paths that would shore up his weaknesses. That was not all. Watching Jin-soo's sword path, Cheon Museong came to see with perfect clarity the road he himself had to walk.
Truly the best choice I could have made.
If he kept following Jin-soo's teaching, he was certain he would reach the ideal, perfect sword path he had wanted.
Even a brief lesson given through forms alone yields this much. Once we can spar in earnest, using internal energy...
He would receive still more.
Exchanging forms in the gaps of the hunt also helped considerably in settling the essence, energy, and spirit raised by achievements, level-ups, and elixirs.
I wish this hunt were already over.
If Cheon Museong had his way, he would have abandoned the hunt and spent the whole day receiving Jin-soo's instruction alone.
Jin-soo's party kept moving from place to place, and the hunt went on. Along the way they even found a hidden dungeon, cleared it, and received an elixir as the reward.
"Let's head back."
Jin-soo declared the hunt finished, and they turned their steps toward the village.
But where does he mean for us to spar after dinner?
Cheon Museong's head was full of the spar and nothing else—dinner least of all.
Surely he doesn't intend to spar in the city?
The city was vast, so it was not as if there were no space for it. The problem was the aftermath, should Jin-soo and Cheon Museong clash in earnest and bring their mana to bear.
The place where they had first met and collided had been utterly destroyed. If a match like that were fought inside the city, a few shattered buildings would be the least of it. Part of the city itself might be razed.
Does he mean to come back out to the hunting grounds after we eat?
For now, that was the most reasonable choice.
If that's the plan anyway, it would be more reasonable to spar right now.
Cheon Museong turned it over and over, and in the end he could not hold his tongue.
"My Lord, do you intend to return to the hunting grounds after dinner and spar there?"
"No. I'm thinking of borrowing a place inside the city."
"Pardon?"
"Huh?"
At Jin-soo's answer, not only Cheon Museong but Shin Sua looked thrown.
"Jin-soo. Tonight you're only doing form drills again?"
Shin Sua asked, her face full of curiosity. Hearing her, Cheon Museong's expression crumpled like a child's on Christmas morning who had not received the present he was waiting for.
"No. We're doing it properly."
"Then shouldn't we go outside the city?"
"There's a way, so don't worry."
At that, Shin Sua closed her mouth, and Cheon Museong turned a gaze full of curiosity on Jin-soo as well.
"First, let's get inside and eat."
Jin-soo took Shin Sua and Cheon Museong back to their lodgings. After a hearty dinner, he rose from his seat.
"Let's go."
Shin Sua and Cheon Museong stood at his word. The place he led them to was a slum sitting just off the city's busy streets.
Cross a single road and the bustle was right there, but the atmosphere was another world entirely. Deep dark lay where bright light should have been, and half-collapsed buildings and empty lots breathed out a bleak, desolate air.
Criminals and the homeless came here to escape the night dew, accepting the risk of being player-killed. It was the place with the highest crime rate in the city.
"Why'd we come here?"
Shin Sua asked, puzzled.
People were scarce, but not wholly absent. And it sat so close to the busy streets that any real commotion would draw a crowd at once.
"This place is perfect for a spar. It's close to the lodgings, and it's the edge of the slums, so there aren't many people."
"If the two of you spar here, all hell will break loose in no time."
"You're here, so we don't need to worry about that. You said Sanctuary broke level 100."
At Jin-soo's words, Shin Sua's eyes went wide.
Once Sanctuary passed level 100, it had gained stealth and sound-dampening. You could light a fire inside it and eat, or talk as freely as you liked, without drawing monster aggro. Naturally, the effect held for Players as well.
Most decisive of all, Sanctuary did not merely block attacks from outside. It blocked attacks from inside going out.
"Don't tell me you mean to spar inside Sanctuary?"
"That's right."
Shin Sua's mouth fell open.