Chapter 1

I woke to find myself in a cave.

Rock on every side, and for light nothing but a single small oil lamp.

"...Where am I?"

I had definitely fallen asleep at home. I'd been fiddling with my phone the way I always did, and then I'd drifted off. How had this happened?

The thought lasted only a moment.

.

.

.

.

"...What is this."

Floating before my eyes was a status window, the kind I'd only ever seen in webtoons and novels. Had I been possessed? It didn't feel that way. There was no particular sense of wrongness in this body...

Glancing around, I spotted a small spring. I ran to it at once and looked at my reflection.

"...Haha...."

My face had changed. No—in truth, it hadn't changed all that much. I'd simply lost a little weight, and my features had come out a bit more clearly.

"Fuck..... Seriously, this isn't right...."

Just when I'd thought I'd crawled out of that miserable life, it was possession this time. Just when I'd thought I was done with days of driving a knife into people and putting bullets through their heads.

What? Possession? What were they trying to make me do now?

"........"

The status window was speaking to me. It had told me to ask, so I asked.

"Where is this? A world inside a novel?"

"Which novel's world? One I know?"

"...I suppose that's something, at least."

Disciple ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the Greatest Under Heaven was a novel I knew. I'd been reading it right up until I came here, not long ago. Its protagonist was what people called a growth-type power-fantasy lead, so even if I did nothing at all, he would handle everything just fine on his own.

More than that, he was the star of a woman-collecting murim potboiler that sat oddly against its title. Hardship simply did not exist in the protagonist's life, and that was enough to put me at ease. Orthodox sect, unorthodox sect, demonic cult—faction wouldn't matter. He would take nearly every woman as wife or concubine, no doubt about it. Even so, he would keep the murim alive well enough. It would be fine.

"So why did you drag me into this world?"

Disciple of the Greatest Under Heaven didn't even have a bad ending, and there was nothing particularly wrong with it. The setting wasn't that broad, and as far as I remembered there had hardly been any plot holes....

I was turning this over when the window answered.

".....Ha!"

A hollow laugh escaped me. And no wonder.

"...This bastard, that bastard—why does everyone keep doing this to me..."

It had already been a year since blood last stained my hands. Half a year since the phantom pains had stopped. For that one year, I had lived truly happily. There wasn't a part of my body that was whole, but it wasn't so bad I couldn't get by. I had thought I could go on like that until I died. I really had.

"Ha...."

For a moment I bent forward and covered my face with my hands. At the thought of having to stain these hands with blood again, I went still.

And then.

"...Who do I have to kill?"

Driven by the need to survive somehow, I spoke. A window rose before me, labeled Md-list. Several names were written there.

"...Insane."

The word burst out of me aloud, packed with every curse I knew. It couldn't be helped. The ten people on that list were, without question, among the strongest beings in the entire setting. And even where they weren't, they were figures whose influence spread across the whole of the Central Plains.

That wasn't all. Every last one of them was the father of a heroine from Disciple of the Greatest Under Heaven.

This was absurd. They wanted me to kill all of them? I might as well starve to death right here. How was I supposed to kill people like that?

On top of it, this body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had not a scrap of internal energy, and no martial art worth the name. In an age without guns, the most I could manage was some basic knife fighting. And yet what? They wanted me to kill masters standing at the peak of a world where men shattered boulders with their bare hands and flew through the sky?

"Do you actually think that makes any sense?"

"Meaning what."

The moment I said it, something took shape in the air. Two books, and what looked to be a paired set of swords. The blades were just a little short to be called longswords, flattened and triangular, with no handguard at all. And three books. Their titles were written in Chinese characters, but I could read them.

Valley Mountain Sword Art. Nameless Movement Art. Iron Mass Physique Method.

"...Is that all?"

Creak.

The system's windows withdrew, and every oil lamp in the cave lit at once. Their light fell on something—the door, I guessed, that had just groaned open.

"...So in the end, this is the only answer."

I could guess well enough how things had come to this. That damned revelation was trying to drag me down into hell once again. I didn't know why. I had thrashed and struggled time after time, hunting for an answer, and my life had always ended up right back where it started.

I let out a breath as if giving up, rose from where I sat, and followed the lamps. An open door came into view. Beyond it were three more.

Then—

"...They're really going all out."

I had no idea what they wanted from me. What was there to gain from killing the heroines' fathers?

"...Still. I have to do it."

If I wanted to live. I had to live. Live, and live, and live, and live, and live. I had to stay alive until I was a stooped old man, and keep my promise. That was the sole purpose of this life.

...But.

Even if I succeeded in killing every one of them, what came after was the problem. Kill the fathers of as many as ten heroines, and some of them would come to harbor a hunger for revenge against me. As I recalled, about five despised their fathers terribly, and would rather have seen them dead. In the murim, a child hating their father was a common enough thing. Nothing strange about it.

The other five, though, were heroines who would at least seek revenge if their fathers died. They still held some affection for them, or their relationships had been good.

If I kill their fathers.

Naturally, the protagonist—Baek Haseong—would throw his weight behind their revenge. He'd probably be delighted that he had even more ways to seduce them. The problem was that Baek Haseong, protagonist of another world though he was, actually had the power to do it. He was a man who had become the greatest under heaven less than ten years after first learning martial arts. To make an enemy of the protagonist was to make an enemy of the world itself.

To assassinate the heroines' fathers while staying out of the sight of someone like that—

"...First I need to get stronger, and make a plan."

I had to make a plan, and I had to get stronger. I needed to decide what I would do first the moment I left this place, count out the variables of timing, and build the plan one careful step at a time. From what I could see, the Room of Experience—the one with ink and paper—would be more than adequate for laying a plan out. How strong I became would depend on how I worked through the Room of Combat and the Room of Tempering.

But what am I supposed to eat while I train...?

Even if I trained, I'd have to eat while doing it, wouldn't I? Thinking this, I looked around. A single sack sat in a corner. When I checked it, I found the pellets known in murim tales as bigu pills—elixirs that took the place of food.

Water I can just draw from that spring.

I picked up the manual for the Iron Mass Physique Method and went straight into the second room. First, I meant to temper the body. After that, the Valley Mountain Sword Art, and training in combat against others. Last of all, I would enter the third room and pile up knowledge.

"...Then shall I begin."

I'd thought I would never have to do something this insane again. My life, truly... one hard turn after another.

Blaming this life of mine, I set my hands to the iron and began.