A True Madman (2)
"Th-thank you."
Cheon Museong answered in a trembling voice. Jin-soo's madness sent a thin shiver of fear through him, but he could not refuse the man's goodwill. He knew just as well that a duel staked on one's life was the fastest road by which the martial arts grew.
And the more he turned the matter over, the more Jin-soo's reasoning held. If he meant to raise the level of the Immortality skill, then dying on a regular basis really was the correct answer.
Die often enough, and he would no longer freeze the way he had a moment ago. For as long as the skill held, he could keep a clear head and strike back.
"I knew you would answer that way."
Jin-soo said it with a bright smile.
As expected of the old man.
However badly one might want a skill to level, death was never a thing easily accepted.
But it has to be done.
A skill like Immortality, especially, had to be raised aggressively on the Tower's lower floors, where a man of Cheon Museong's ability would never die a meaningless death.
Originally, this was a growth method I meant to use myself, once I advanced to Undying Knight.
Jin-soo knew perfectly well that it was not a method just anyone could use.
But the old man isn't just anyone.
Cheon Museong was eccentric enough to be called the Weird God. If anyone would agree to the method Jin-soo had devised, it was a man like him.
An ordinary person couldn't bring themselves to use it, even if they knew it was the only way to grow the Immortality skill.
There was the horror and the chill of having to die again and again, and beyond that the fear of squandering the skill's cooldown only to die in vain at the one moment that truly mattered. Only someone who could overcome both could use the method at all.
Jin-soo had already made that resolve. So had Cheon Museong.
"You'll keep using the shield and your tank skills from here on, won't you?"
"Yes. I mean to take this chance and devise a martial art that puts the shield to active use."
Even from Cheon Museong's side, it was no small challenge. Creating a new martial art was a feat possible only for a great grandmaster of the caliber of a sect's founding patriarch.
"That's quite a resolve. I truly hope you succeed."
Jin-soo meant every word.
This never happened before the regression.
The Cheon Museong he had met then had only striven to grow the arts he already practiced—the Musang Sword Art and the Musang Heart Method—into the Muhon Sword Art and the Muhon Heart Method.
He had never once tried to create a new martial art.
And he never tried this hard to make use of his class skills, either.
Before the regression, Cheon Museong had not even attempted to make his class skills his mainstay, or to fuse them with the martial arts he already knew. At first it had been simple aversion to skills. Later, he had judged that it was already too late.
And that judgment wasn't wrong.
The Cheon Museong of before had ignored every skill except his mainstays, the Musang Sword Art and the Musang Heart Method, for far too long. The gap in mastery had grown so wide that fusing those arts with anything else—or even using them alongside other skills—carried far too much risk.
Enough that he decided it was better simply to keep growing the Musang Sword Art and the Musang Heart Method he already knew...
This time, the situation was different. He had met Jin-soo far sooner than he had before the regression.
"I'll help however I can."
"You have my thanks, My Lord."
"Then let's head back."
"Yes."
"Yeah."
Jin-soo's party returned to their lodgings.
The party's routine was rigid as a mold. They rose at dawn, went out to hunt, ate dinner, sparred, sorted their items, and went to bed.
But a life that spun like a squirrel in a wheel did not last long.
"It's time we left."
At Jin-soo's words, Cheon Museong's face brightened.
"Gladly, My Lord."
Slaughtering monsters through the same day, over and over, had grown unbearably dull. He had endured only because achievements were still raising his stats, because leveling his skills still held some interest, and because he had set his mind on experimenting toward a new martial art. Lately, though, the pace of those achievements had slowed sharply, and his drive had fallen with it.
Even if we go to another city, the only thing that changes is the kind of monster we face.
From where Jin-soo stood, it was hard to see why the old man was so pleased.
Well, a change of place does raise the odds of new achievements, and of finding a hidden dungeon.
And repeating the same routine in the same place only made the boredom worse.
A change of scenery alone alters a great deal.
A new environment lifted the mood, and even a familiar daily round could become a fresh stimulus. There was nothing to lose.
"We're leaving today?"
"That's the plan. You didn't leave anything back at the lodgings, did you?"
"Nope."
Shin Sua nodded as she answered. With an inventory, there had never been any reason to leave things behind in the first place.
"Then we eat breakfast and go."
"Yes, My Lord."
"Yeah, got it."
After a solid breakfast, Jin-soo's party left the Starting City. And right around noon that very day, the guild master of Daehan Guild arrived there.
"So this is the place. You're certain?"
Choi Woohyeong, guild master of Daehan Guild on the Tower's 200th Floor, asked with expectation written all over his face.
"Yes, we're certain. But he's out hunting. He isn't at the lodgings right now."
"When does he get back?"
"Around evening. He leaves to hunt early in the morning and returns at dusk. Then he eats, goes into the slums to spar, and sleeps."
"His schedule isn't going to change on us, is it?"
"No, sir. Until now he has moved exactly that way every single day, without exception."
"Then we wait, for now."
Choi Woohyeong settled in with the Starting City officers at the restaurant on the first floor of the lodgings.
One way or another, I have to bring him into Daehan Guild. If not that, then at the very least I need some kind of tie to him.
Choi Woohyeong, guild master of Daehan Guild, was desperate. Daehan Guild, the America Alliance, Phoenix Guild, Yellow Dragon Guild, Ivan Guild, Upendo Guild, Alsani Guild—powers that had strutted about as major guilds all the way up to the 200th floor—had, the instant they arrived on the Tower's 200th Floor, been shoved down into mid-sized guilds beneath the giant guilds from Moosung and Arius.
The mid-sized guilds from Earth couldn't hold their ground at all. They vanished outright.
The problem was that those vanished guilds had been absorbed not by other guilds from Earth, but by the ones from Moosung and Arius. The larger guilds, Daehan among them, had at least managed—barely—to keep an independent foothold. But...
At this rate, it means nothing.
Even before the 200th floor, Daehan Guild had been on the small side among the great guilds. It had held its place only because it possessed so many skilled players, and the moment it reached the 200th floor, everything changed.
Not only new recruits, but capable members already in the guild, began transferring one after another to the guilds from Moosung and Arius.
He could understand it.
Daehan Guild had been stripped of every hunting ground worth having and reduced to a pitiful state, forced to watch the moods of other great guilds at every turn.
The great guilds from Earth had formed an alliance around themselves and managed to hold some territory, but even so they could not stop the drain of talented members.
Keep going like this, and collapse is all that's left.
Even within the alliance of Earth guilds, Daehan was one of the weaker powers. The steady outflow of members had reduced it to a minor force whose very survival was no longer certain.
If we recruit the Blood White Sword Demon, we'll have a real chance to turn this around.
What if the Blood White Sword Demon—the man who had single-handedly brought down Sahyeol Gate, a great guild from Moosung—became part of Daehan Guild?
All the bitterness until now would be over.
He could already see it. Not only the great guilds from Earth, but those from Moosung and Arius as well, watching Daehan's mood and crawling on their bellies.
Buying him with points or items will be impossible.
Daehan Guild's coffers were not that deep.
If he were the type who chased power, I'd hand him my own seat.
He knew almost nothing about the Blood White Sword Demon, and so he had no feel for how to recruit the man.
He is absolutely not a murderer, or a villain.
That much was clear from the way he had stepped forward for Changseong Gate, and from the way he had simply let the Daehan guild member go after catching him tailing them.
He doesn't seem like a pushover, either.
He had toppled Sahyeol Gate and swept away every vagrant in the slums who came at him. That was not a weak heart.
The type who answers goodwill with goodwill, and malice with malice.
With a man like that, it was not as if there were no way forward.
Show him thorough goodwill—real kindness—and he will surely repay it.
And decisively, the fact that they were both Korean was an enormous advantage.
There's a reason people say you turn patriot the moment you leave the country.
If the man heard how hard things were for the Koreans here, his heart might move.
First, talk to him. Learn as much as I can about what kind of man he is.
Choi Woohyeong, guild master of Daehan Guild, turned one simulation after another over in his head, working out how to bring the Blood White Sword Demon in.
But the sun went down, the dinner hour came and went, and Jin-soo never showed himself at the lodgings.
"Why isn't he coming?"
"T-today he must be running a little late. It does happen, very rarely."
At the officers' answer, Choi Woohyeong nodded as if he understood.
Time kept passing.
"We're closed for the evening, sir."
And then the restaurant on the first floor of the lodgings ended its hours. The Blood White Sword Demon still did not appear.
"What is going on?"
"I'll look into it."
The branch head of the Starting City branch hurried over to the innkeeper.
"Among the guests staying here..."
He described Jin-soo's party and asked after their whereabouts.
"Those people checked out this morning."
The Starting City branch head's mouth fell open. He had assumed they were only out hunting. That they might have checked out had never once crossed his mind.
"Er, Guild Master."
"I heard. Innkeeper—do you know where they went?"
"How would I know? They didn't say a word to me."
At the innkeeper's answer, Choi Woohyeong, guild master of Daehan Guild, shot to his feet.
"Find them! Now!"
At Choi Woohyeong's shout, the members of Daehan Guild scrambled into motion.
Did they just change lodgings? Or did they leave the city?
Both were possible.
If they only changed lodgings, we're fortunate, but...
If they had left the Starting City, there would be no way to find the Blood White Sword Demon.
Meanwhile, Jin-soo's party, having left the Starting City in the early morning, was sprinting at full speed toward their next destination. Thanks to their physical ability, Jin-soo and Cheon Museong could outrun a car.
The problem was Shin Sua, the healer. Jin-soo solved it simply enough: he ran with her held in his arms.
This is nice.
A bright smile bloomed at the corners of Shin Sua's mouth where she rested against his chest.
Before, I got hauled along tucked under his arm like a piece of luggage.
Held like a princess, she felt easier in her body and easier in her mind.
I hope we keep going like this.
She was thinking exactly that when Jin-soo stopped.
"A yokai in the likeness of a dragon—how can such a being exist?"
Cheon Museong, just as startled, drew his sword.
What's going on?
What met Shin Sua's eyes when she turned her head was an enormous Bone Dragon, its body pitch-black.
Jin-soo called it.
Near the hunting grounds of the Starting City there had been too many other players watching, so they had run on foot. Once they were far enough out, he had summoned a Bone Dragon that could take to the sky, for the sake of speed.
Cheon Museong, the only one in the party seeing a Bone Dragon for the first time, drew up his mana with a face knotted in tension and excitement, already bracing for a fight.
"My Lord, this seems no ordinary yokai. The beast rides the sky, so for now we should force it to the ground—"
"It's my summon. There's no need to be on edge."
Jin-soo cut him off lightly. Cheon Museong already had sword and shield in hand, poised as if he might charge at any moment.
"What did you just say...?"
"I said it's my summon."
With that, Jin-soo gave a light gesture.
"Kraaaaaaagh!"
Wings beat the air. With a heavy boom, the Bone Dragon's massive body came down out of the sky and landed.
"Krrrrrng!"
Then it lowered its head before Jin-soo.
He stroked the bridge of its snout, as if to praise it.
"Come on. Let's get on."
With a light tap of his foot, still holding Shin Sua, he sprang up, stepped across the Bone Dragon's head and neck, and settled onto its back.
"..."
Watching him, Cheon Museong's mouth fell open.