The Tutorial
~ Tutorial ~
"Hmm. You're right—without internal qi, it is rather inconvenient."
The reactions were more intense than I had expected. For what was nothing more than a trifling display of skill, hardly worth mentioning... Viewed another way, I supposed it meant these people's standards were low enough to be astonished by it.
"Three."
"I shall take three questions. Naturally, you understand I will entertain nothing that oversteps its bounds."
Were these not the sort of people who would plunge in headfirst regardless of the danger, given such an opportunity...? Even granting that their number fell short of twenty, the response was far duller than I had anticipated.
Hm. Or should I say it was a mercy that it was not outright indifference? Which would simply mean that my standing, as of this moment, amounted to precisely this much.
"My next broadcast, I see. Hm. Next, you say..."
"Three. I shall return when three of you have proven yourselves."
"What is there to grumble about? however common the flock, there is ever a lone swan among the geese. Surely even among you there must be some with talent? And the means to prove it besides, in more abundance than you could spend."
"You are grown to a fine age, are you not? However trivial a few strokes of text may be, to spew such things from your mouths—have you no shame?"
"So. No further questions, I take it?"
I had just located the button to end the broadcast when a single question rose up in the chat.
"A tutorial... there exists a thing called a tutorial, separate from all this?"
So a tutorial existed. How remarkably considerate, for a world calling itself Murim. But I supposed this was not a remark I was in any position to make—having received such aid from the very start.
"I shall see for myself."
Looking around, there was nothing to be seen but a single scarecrow and a dense stretch of forest. But from what they were saying, wooden dummies clearly existed as well. And not merely one of them—ten in all.
"Oh. Is that so?"
At the viewer's report, I stopped scanning my surroundings and swallowed a brief wave of embarrassment. The game was so true to reality that one might momentarily forget this was a game at all. Moreover, less than a day had passed since my return to the modern world—by my reckoning, it was this place that felt real, and the modern age that felt like the game.
"'Veteran leaderboard content'?"
"So that counts as a fast record, does it?"
Not knowing the details, I had no way of telling whether that was a swift record or merely an average person's. A world number one, surely—would they not have to be skilled?
If they were that difficult, might they prove reasonably challenging even for me? I was mulling this over when I made the mistake of reading a viewer's message.
"If you cannot use internal qi against them... does that not simply mean they are weak...?"
And here I had been looking forward to seeing how strong a combat automaton might be, built by a company capable of rendering internal qi itself.
"Tutorial. So I simply do this?"
The moment I spoke the words aloud to my viewers, I felt a shift in the space surrounding me. I turned to look—and there were scarecrows I had never seen before. An entirely new landscape.
They were of a different make from the scarecrow I had glimpsed before stepping into this formation presumed to be the tutorial.
They do not look any weaker, at least.
If anything, they seemed cleaner, more orderly in their construction. And beyond the scarecrows, wooden dummies stood with their joints set at precise angles, gazing at the scarecrows. Dummies of the fist. Of the spear. Of the sword, of the bow, of hidden weapons.
So this is not to be a cheerful mood, then.
The wooden dummies brought to mind the very first dummy I had crossed blades with in the Hidden Secret Valley of Eunbigok. Not all who dwelt in Eunbigok met a good end, after all.
Well—there was that old woman who shrieked at me not to kill people who were perfectly healthy, was there not? Surely she was living a long and prosperous life.
"It is nothing. Worry yourselves not."
To think I had failed to govern my expression so poorly that even a rank novice could read it. Reflecting on this, I gathered my focus back onto the space around me.
"This is rather like a formation."
"Ho... so they have implemented formations as well."
The strange sensation that came with stepping into a true formation was absent, but the principle could not be so very different.
"Then I need only cut down the scarecrows now, yes?"
"I see. But does this tutorial not provide weapons?"
"Then I choose the sword. A chance has come to show you why I was named the Sword God. You may look forward to it as you please."
As I spoke, the ground seemed to register my choice of the sword, and a single wooden sword rose up from the earth. I took it in my right hand, lifted it, gave it a practice swing—the balance was fairly respectable.
"This would pass for mid-grade, I'd say."
"I begin."
Huu. One deep, drawn breath was enough. To fell every scarecrow here would demand no more time than that.
My opponents were scarecrows. No special artistry was required. Simply run, plant the right foot upon the earth, swing the sword from above to below, and cut—hard.
That was all it took.
"One."
I watched the scarecrow split from shoulder to hip, and riding the recoil of the swing, let my body turn with the blade in one continuous rotation.
The step that followed, my body now squared to the front, was light as breath.
"Two."
There was no force gathered in the sword that needed releasing, and so the blade that flew out with my lunging body rose from below—crossing the path of the cut before it, cleaving the scarecrow in two once more.
"Three."
A step, and another rotation. In a world that could not move, the way to move faster and fell more enemies was rotation. Acceleration, and rotation. The power carried in the sword did not diminish. Neither did its speed.
The unbroken arc of the blade sheared through each scarecrow's waist precisely as it was drawn.
"Four."
The sword stretched out sideways; I wrenched it upward and brought it down in a rending slash. My body whirled as if hurled into the spin, the world of my vision wheeling past. Turning, and turning again—what it traced was the piercing sword.
"Seven."
Three remaining, was it? However barren my internal qi, what could fail to break before a swordsmanship that had touched the heavens?
Seondap, the Immortal Step—it did not rise high. Forward, and forward again. Yuun, the Flowing Cloud—pierce through the myriad phenomena. Bihyang, the sword that does not turn aside.
"Hoo... that was rather refreshing, actually. However long it has been since I swung a sword with everything I had, even if these empty lungs of mine burst in the doing."
In Murim, where internal qi had flowed, even a listlessly swung sword had cleft stone. Swung with full strength, it would have carved apart mountains, seas, and sky. With internal qi gone, there were unexpected benefits to be found—I was in good spirits for it. At the very least, my body would no longer itch and squirm, unable to bear itself.
"That was swordsmanship not unworthy of the eye, I'd say. Let us hear your verdict."
But when the waiting had run its course, no new messages surfaced in the chat.
"Hm. Have we been cut off, then? In that case, today's broadcast ends here. The unfinished tutorial nags at me, but what meaning is there in doing it alone, without all of you?"
Yes—education is not a thing one can undertake alone.
"Bear it in mind: three. When three of you have proven your study, I shall return."
I pressed the broadcast-end button tucked into the corner of the chat window, and a prompt appeared asking whether I truly wished to end it.
"Yes."
The chat window—its last message a full three minutes old—faded away, and a notification rose to announce that the broadcast had ended.
"It will take at least a week, I should think."
And if so—what, then, would be a good way to spend that week? The unanswered question drifted in the empty air.