A World More Real Than Reality
When Namgung Woo came to his senses, he instinctively knew that something had changed. It was far from some vague, baseless hunch. The moment he tried to move his body, he felt the anomaly for himself. 'It's heavy.'
Even though Chukrok Murim was a virtual reality game, the sensation of moving one's body had never perfectly matched reality. There were technical limitations. Even the third-generation VR games that followed the second-generation Chukrok Murim could not completely eliminate the gap from reality. Yet the feeling of Namgung Woo twitching his fingers and curling his toes right now was indistinguishable from the vividness of the real world.
'Did the VR capsule detect an abnormal reaction and trigger an emergency protocol?'
No matter how thoroughly safety had been verified, the act of sending a human consciousness into virtual reality could never completely erase the anxiety that something might go wrong. That was why the basic settings ensured that if any abnormal brainwave patterns were detected in a capsule user, the connection would be immediately terminated, the capsule would open, and an emergency rescue report would be sent.
It was the most reasonable answer he could think of, but the moment he opened his eyes, evidence that refuted it appeared.
'But... this ceiling looks way too familiar.'
It was an old-fashioned wooden ceiling that could never be mistaken for the design of a twenty-second-century hospital or ambulance. Something a modern person would rarely see, yet to Namgung Woo it was intimately familiar. The style was identical to the architecture he had grown sick of seeing in Chukrok Murim.
"A forced event?"
The absentminded mutter received an answer that should not have come.
"What are you talking about?"
"Huh?"
"Are you finally coming to your senses?"
Namgung Woo's half-closed eyes snapped open as he turned toward the voice. A young woman who looked to be barely twenty, with a trace of youthful innocence still on her face, was looking down at him. Her eyes held more discomfort than goodwill or curiosity. The moment he saw his own blurry reflection in those large, clear pupils, Namgung Woo's mind snapped fully awake.
"Wait, where am I..."
"You should consider yourself lucky. If Dang-ah hadn't found you and brought you here, you might have died alone in the streets. You ought to thank the parents who gave you such a decent face."
The words she spat out were quite sharp. In truth, Song Chae-ji was not particularly pleased to see Namgung Woo. Right now, she and Dang-ah were already struggling just to take care of themselves. Still, judging by his appearance, he clearly came from a fairly well-off family and would have survived somehow. Yet in her anxiety, she had spoken more harshly than she intended.
'It's not like I have time to be doing favors for others... Ha, my own cultivation of the mind is still shallow. I should apologize.'
Song Chae-ji inwardly scolded herself for being too hard on him. However, what irritated Namgung Woo was not her condescending tone but the content of her words.
A decent face? That couldn't be right. Namgung Woo's face was, by any objective standard, perfectly average. In the upper-middle-lower scale, he was squarely in the middle. If divided into nine grades, he was middle-middle. If further subdivided into twenty-seven grades, he barely qualified as upper-middle-middle. Yet a woman who looked no older than twenty was openly calling him good-looking?
Unless she was being sarcastic, this was something that would never have happened to him in reality. But if it was his appearance inside Chukrok Murim, then it made sense. No matter how hardcore a player he was—someone who used his real name as his in-game nickname—he had not made his face identical to reality. Everyone harbored at least some desire to be handsome. Namgung Woo had simply indulged that desire a little.
'Then I'm still inside Chukrok Murim... But what is this sense of reality?'
Every piece of external information told him he was still within Chukrok Murim, yet the sensations he actually felt insisted that this was reality. While he struggled to make sense of that dissonance, a young girl who had been hiding behind Song Chae-ji cautiously peeked her head out.
"U-um, Sister. Don't scold him too much..."
"Mmm, Dang-ah. I'm not scolding him. I'm just giving him some advice so he'll be more careful in the future. Besides, we don't even know who this person is. It's right to be cautious. He might be a spy sent by those Black Bear Gang bastards..."
Namgung Woo had no attention to spare for what the two were saying about him. He immediately turned his consciousness inward to examine his own body.
In Chukrok Murim, the game had been designed to implement martial arts as realistically as possible. It allowed players to inspect their bodies through mental meditation and train their internal energy. The meditation he performed every single day sank his consciousness deep despite the surrounding noise.
He felt an overwhelmingly powerful energy sleeping in the lower dantian at his gihae acupoint. It was a domineering true qi like lightning that could split the heavens and shatter the earth. There was no way such energy could exist inside a real human body, so this should have confirmed beyond doubt that he was inside Chukrok Murim. Instead of relief, however, Namgung Woo felt only greater shock.
'What in the world...?'
A sense of reality more real than reality itself. Unlike in Chukrok Murim, where he could only visually confirm something like 'Oh, I've grown this much,' Namgung Woo now perceived the existence of the internal energy in his lower dantian with all six senses. It felt like a coiled thunder dragon.
Of course it did. The heart method he had cultivated for his lower dantian was the Cheonroe Jewang Singong—the Heavenly Thunder Emperor Divine Art. It was modeled after the most domineering lightning power in the world.
This was not a sensation that could be replicated by a mere game. He realized it instinctively. This was the moment Namgung Woo became aware that he was in reality.
Suddenly, an unknown flood of information surged into his brain like a raging current. It was a kind of knowledge—formal and precise bundles of data, far removed from emotional memories.
"Ugh...!"
The sensation was like downloading files into a computer. It brought both alienation and pain. Namgung Woo clutched his head, letting out a short groan stained with agony.
The information did not stop. How to breathe, how to walk, how to move his hands, how to handle internal energy... It was a torrent of knowledge that forced him to consciously understand every action he had previously taken for granted.
Human movement, no matter how delicate, is usually handled unconsciously. If asked to explain exactly how one grabs an object, most people could only say "I just... did." In contrast, a robot requires an incredibly complex process to replicate even a single action. When one considers how much research and trial-and-error went into making robots walk, it becomes clear how arduous it is to codify every human movement into data.
The change occurring inside Namgung Woo's mind was exactly like that—a process of assigning form to actions that had once been perfectly ordinary.
"Khh... Aaaah...!"
Yet even the bizarre terror of having his brain turned inside out was bearable compared to the intense pain radiating from his eyes. If the knowledge being engraved into his brain felt like a branding iron searing his flesh, then his two eyes felt as if someone had forcibly ripped them out and was carving them apart while the nerves were still alive.
The headache and eye pain were so severe that he failed to notice it, but every pain point across his entire body was also sending agony signals toward his brain. Would the symptoms of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome feel like this? The pain of having his perfectly healthy eyes sliced apart was too much. Namgung Woo could no longer hold back his screams.
Startled by his sudden change, Song Chae-ji fumbled in panic and supported him.
"H-hey! Are you okay?"
"Sister... what should we do..."
"We need to call a doctor. Dang-ah, I'll be right back..."
Tap.
As Song Chae-ji tried to let go of him and head outside, Namgung Woo's hand caught her arm. While she was still trying to figure out what that meant in this bewildering situation, his mouth opened.
"There is no need for that."
"A-are you really okay? You're sweating..."
Song Chae-ji examined his face with concern. Cold sweat had formed all over his face and was dripping down steadily. No one would call this a normal state. But Namgung Woo had already regained some composure. He slowly shook his head.
"I'm truly fine. Could you please leave me alone for just a moment?"
For the briefest instant, the thought flashed through Song Chae-ji's mind that he might be faking it to avoid paying them back, but it quickly faded. She was a genuine martial artist who had trained in real martial arts. For a man showing no trace of having learned any martial arts to deceive her eyes would mean he was a master actor capable of discussing who was the greatest under heaven.
'That can't be it.'
Having convinced herself, Song Chae-ji gently removed his hand.
"Alright. Get some rest. Come out when you're feeling better. So-dang, let's go."
"Mm... Sister."
Even as the girl was pulled along by Song Chae-ji's hand, she kept looking back at Namgung Woo with worry. Soon after, the door closed with a thud.
Even after they left, Namgung Woo endured the pain alone. Fortunately, just as he had told Song Chae-ji, the agony gradually subsided as time passed. At this rate, it would surely disappear completely in a little while.
"Huu... huuu..."
Instinctively, Namgung Woo followed the breathing method newly engraved in his mind and took long, deep breaths. His body responded first. Then the coiled thunder dragon stirred and began to slowly swim through his body.
Time passed. The pain had not lasted long—only enough for Song Chae-ji and the girl to become briefly flustered before his consciousness returned. Once the pain that felt like it was searing his mind subsided, an unprecedented clarity took its place. It was so lucid that his earlier worry about aftereffects seemed ridiculous.
Finally, the eye pain—which had far surpassed even the headache—vanished, and Namgung Woo completely regained his senses.
And when he cautiously lifted his eyelids, the world that met his gaze had transformed into an entirely different realm unlike anything he had ever seen.
"Just what..."
The field of vision was overflowing with radiant motes of light. This was the world that Namgung Woo would now see from this moment forward.