Just Dipping My Toes In
Just dipping my toes in. If things got even a little dangerous, I’d bolt immediately. I’d already summoned both Napoleon’s Rifle and the Twin Dragon Sword, so I stood fully prepared as I checked my status window.
Special Gate: Myeongnyang
[Entry Condition: Joseon-era Relic]
Entry condition fulfilled.
Would you like to enter?
“Yes.”
Gates normally required you to travel to the exact location where they’d opened before you could step inside. For Myeongnyang, that probably meant diving straight into the whirlpool. But since this was a quest for me, I could enter with nothing more than a simple selection.
Entering special gate: Myeongnyang.
“Urk!”
In an instant the world went pitch black and water rushed into my mouth and nose. The Myeongnyang Gate was an underwater stage, completely flooded on all sides.
Oh shit!
The moment regret and the fear of death hit me, the Twin Dragon Sword hummed and the seawater was forcibly pushed away.
“Cough!”
I spat out the brine still lingering in my mouth.
“Ugh, ptooey ptooey. Thought I was done for.”
Panting, I looked around. The seabed was littered with sunken ship fragments. My feet touched solid ground—this was the ocean floor. The softly glowing Twin Dragon Sword lit up the dark waters around me.
“Now I see why it’s labeled uncleared.”
The second I stepped inside I understood why even the top three guilds and the government had given up on the Myeongnyang Gate. You have to be able to breathe to clear anything. Humans are land creatures. Without gills, we can’t breathe underwater. And this place wasn’t exactly equipped for oxygen tanks, either. The mana pressure was insane. Just like how water pressure increases the deeper you go, the mana pressure here was no joke. An oxygen tank would’ve been crushed the instant it crossed the gate threshold.
High-rankers could endure that kind of pressure to a degree, but only to a degree. Clearing a gate meant fighting your way through hordes of monsters to find the boss room. How were you supposed to do that while holding your breath and fighting mana pressure the whole time? You’d drown from exhaustion long before you ever reached the boss. And if you couldn’t even swim, you wouldn’t get to try at all. That was why the Myeongnyang Gate remained uncleared despite its relatively simple entry condition.
But I didn’t need to hold my breath, and I didn’t need to swim. The Twin Dragon Sword made the seawater part on its own.
“All I have to do is find the boss room.”
Feeling strangely relaxed, I walked across the seabed toward the nearest sunken ship. I had all the time in the world, so I figured I could take it slow. But the Myeongnyang Gate wasn’t nearly as easy as I’d assumed.
Creak—
“……Yeah, I should leave.”
A skeleton wearing Joseon navy armor stared straight at me. The red glow flickering inside its eye sockets sent chills down my spine.
Wraith Bone
B-class
Undead that could not pass on due to lingering grudges from life. Requires multiple B-class or a single A-class hunter to subjugate.
A mere B-class monster, yet it was the equivalent of a mid-boss in a normal B-class gate. Here in Myeongnyang, they were littered everywhere like common trash mobs.
D-class my ass. This place deserved an S at minimum. The moment I realized I’d walked into the wrong gate, I tried to run. Of course the wraith bone wasn’t going to let me.
Creak—
It raised a rusty saber. I watched it warily, body tense. Then—
Creak-creak—
“?”
The wraith bone suddenly began to tremble like a machine with a system error. Then it simply lowered its arm.
“What the…?”
I blinked at the wraith bone that no longer showed any intent to attack. Only then did I notice the Twin Dragon Sword humming in my hand.
Vrrr—
When I lifted the blade, the wraith bone bowed its head deeply toward me, exactly like a soldier saluting a superior officer.
Wait, is this…?
Just to test it, I approached another wraith bone and showed it the Twin Dragon Sword. Sure enough, it bowed as well.
“So this is why it was rated D-class?”
The ships sunk on this seabed were the Joseon and Japanese warships that had gone down during the Battle of Myeongnyang. The dead Joseon sailors, for whatever reason, had become wraith bones and were guarding the wrecks. Naturally, they recognized the Twin Dragon Sword as Yi Sun-sin’s blade and therefore did not attack me.
It felt strangely moving. These wraith bones were the very sailors who had fought alongside me—no, alongside the version of me from that parallel world—during the Battle of Myeongnyang. Even if the world I experienced had been nothing more than a parallel timeline.
“This makes things easy.”
I wandered between the sunken ships, gathering every wraith bone I could find. A full eighty B-class wraith bones lined up behind me like troops on parade. Some even wore general’s armor. I couldn’t tell who they had been in life now that they were only skulls, but their presence was incredibly reassuring.
“Let’s move, General.”
Creak—
The general-class wraith bone took the lead and guided me toward the Japanese warship where the boss waited.
I can’t possibly lose, right?
I didn’t know who the boss was, but with eighty B-class wraith bones at my back, I couldn’t imagine losing a numbers brawl. On the deck of the sunken Japanese ship, wraith bones in Japanese uniforms shuffled about.
Creak!
The moment a Japanese wraith bone spotted me, it charged with its katana raised. I didn’t even need to lift a finger.
Crunch!
The Joseon general’s saber smashed its skull to pieces.
“Whoa, our general’s pretty strong.”
Once one fell, the rest of the Japanese wraith bones on deck rushed in, turning the deck into a chaotic melee. But there were only about ten of them. I had meticulously gathered eighty Joseon wraith bones from the surrounding wrecks. There was no contest.
We cleaned the deck in moments and moved into the ship’s interior. The inside was unnaturally spacious, as if space itself had been warped by mana. In the center of the dark hold stood a wraith bone radiating black energy. It was a pitch-black skeleton dressed in Sengoku-era samurai armor.
Shit, it’s a Black Wraith Bone.
If regular wraith bones were undead that couldn’t pass on because of lingering resentment, Black Wraith Bones were entities fueled by even stronger obsession. An A-class monster. It noticed the aura of the Twin Dragon Sword and turned to look at me.
“……Yi… Sun-sin…!”
I couldn’t understand the Japanese, but it clearly said Yi Sun-sin. The creature leveled its katana at me, and the fight began.
Clang! Clang! Crunch!
Eighty Joseon wraith bones against one Japanese general-class Black Wraith Bone. Hmm, we’re getting pushed back a little? I’d thought numbers would overwhelm it, but an A-class monster really was on another level.
“Kuh…!”
The Black Wraith Bone’s armor shattered, but the number of white wraith bones falling to its blade increased at the same rate. Black mana leaked ominously from the cracks in its broken armor.
This thing is ridiculously strong.
I was starting to worry we might actually lose when—
Undefeated Admiral
Yi Sun-sin never suffered a single defeat in naval combat.
Vrrr—
Blue light spread from the Twin Dragon Sword and sank into the white wraith bones. The Black Wraith Bone, which had been dominating them, began to be pushed back.
“Kuuuugh…!”
“Oh, it’s a buff?”
The white wraith bones moved with far greater agility than before. And they weren’t the only ones who received the buff. The Twin Dragon Sword, which had felt almost too heavy to swing, suddenly became light enough to wield freely.
Should I join the fight?
Even if I did nothing, the Black Wraith Bone looked like it would soon be overwhelmed and purified by the mob of white wraith bones. Its once-imposing armor was in tatters and cracks ran across its skull. One light tap looked like it would be enough to finish it.
But ending it like this wouldn’t be cool at all.
I gathered my courage and raised the Twin Dragon Sword.
“Kuaaaaah!”
Maybe I should wait just a little longer.
The Black Wraith Bone used the last of its strength to push the white wraith bones back. But it was clearly its final struggle. Its power rapidly faded and it began to be driven back again.
Now!
While it was tangled up with the white wraith bones, I circled behind it and swung the Twin Dragon Sword with all my might at the back of its skull.
Crunch!
With a heavy, satisfying impact, the Black Wraith Bone’s skull was deleted from existence.
Shogun Kurushima Michifusa has been defeated!
🎯 Myeongnyang Gate Cleared
🏆 Clear Rank: SSS
The Joseon sailors are beginning to ascend to the afterlife.
The white wraith bones crumbled away, and the souls trapped inside them rose into the water. Each spirit took on the appearance they had possessed in life.
Huh? This guy…
I widened my eyes at the soul that had emerged from the fallen general-class wraith bone.
“Hey, you there! What are you doing? Come help carry the gunpowder!”
He was the general who had forcibly assigned me to the cannon during the Battle of Myeongnyang. And he wasn’t the only familiar face.
“If I can fight alongside the admiral, I will gladly offer this one life!”
The farmer who had thrown down his plow, declaring he would protect the country, and followed Yi Sun-sin all the way from Jinju.
“One more shot! Fire one more shot at that ship!”
The sailor who had urged me to keep firing the cannon.
“Lord Choi, this way please.”
The naval commander who had let me board his reconnaissance vessel…
One by one their faces rose clearly in my memory. The souls who had been trapped on the seabed for six centuries since the Battle of Myeongnyang now wore peaceful expressions as they ascended into the heavens.
Then the gate clear reward list appeared.
“Whoa.”
The rewards were enough to make my eyes go wide. Every single one was an A-class skill. All that effort had been worth it. Of course I couldn’t take all three—I had to pick one.
They were all excellent, but I didn’t hesitate.
It has to be Shadowveil Step.
Great Strength Vajra Fist was obviously a martial arts technique, useless to someone like me who relied on relics. Vacuum Slash was also unnecessary when I already had the Twin Dragon Sword and Napoleon’s Rifle. On the other hand, Shadowveil Step would be incredibly useful. Footwork techniques were perfect for dodging enemy attacks.
Shadowveil Step has been learned.
Shadowveil Step added to skill list.
Appraisal (E)
Shadowveil Step (A)
Connector of Transcendent Beings (EX)
Right after Shadowveil Step was added to the list, an old sword dropped with a clatter.
◈ Appears useful for clearing certain gates.
It was the hwando once used by An Wi, Yi Sun-sin’s right-hand man. A Narrative-grade relic. Unfortunately its durability was almost gone because of how poorly it had been preserved. Even if it helped with certain gates, it looked like nothing more than a weaker version of the Twin Dragon Sword.
“Trash.”
I’d have to sell it. I shoved the sword into my bag, then recorded my nickname on the clear log.
It was the first time in history that the Myeongnyang Gate had been cleared.