Death Forest (1)
The volcanic region was finally nearing its end. Behind me, the colossal volcanic spirit collapsed with a deafening crash after being sliced cleanly in two. Park Jocheol stared at the fallen giant, his face drained of color, and asked me in disbelief.
“Siin… I always knew you were special, but what the hell did you do on the second floor?”
Namgung Cheonho nodded in firm agreement. Even Geumrin, who usually chattered nonstop whenever Cheongrin’s name came up, stayed completely silent this time, simply watching me with wide eyes.
“Well… I’m not sure I understand the question correctly, but all I did on the second floor was train in swordsmanship.”
“Training lets you cut rocks apart with a sword? No—more than that, can someone actually become this strong just from training on the second floor?”
Under the onslaught of his questions, I turned my thoughts back to those days on the second floor once more. The spar with Hwayeong. The martial arts she taught me. But before any of that, I suspected it was the mindset toward the sword I learned from Dang Huiso that had truly shaped the person I had become.
I trained according to his words every single day. Even after completing every mission on the second floor, I circulated my energy and examined my sword whenever I had a spare moment. The same continued after reaching the third floor. Even on the way here, I made it a point to circulate my energy after every battle, so it was only natural that my magic power had grown dense and solid.
“It just… works?”
My answer could only be vague. I still wasn’t sure whether this power came from pushing my stats to their limits or from my own technique. The only way to find out would be to have my stats taken away and fight again.
My half-hearted reply left Park Jocheol looking utterly confused. But the important part was this.
“You’ll understand once you learn it yourself, so don’t worry too much.”
“Learn…? Me?”
Learning would reveal the truth. It was far better to pick up the sword and swing it than to measure yourself beforehand and bet against the possibility. Only after putting in the effort could you discover whether it was something your own tenacity could achieve.
But my words must have sounded like a joke to him.
“Come on, how could I possibly learn something like that? We can’t acquire skills like we did on the second floor anymore.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
This time my head tilted in genuine confusion. Acquire skills? Did he think martial arts worked like an RPG where you simply distributed skill points to gain enlightenment?
But the moment Namgung Cheonho backed up Park Jocheol’s statement from behind us, I realized my thinking hadn’t been wrong.
“I learned skills on the second floor too. The whirlwind technique I used to create wind in the desert—I received it as a reward after clearing a mission… Didn’t you get anything like that, Siin?”
“…No, I didn’t.”
His words left me speechless. Skills were simply the system giving concrete form to techniques I could already perform. The moment I learned the Moonlight Sword Art was when I watched Hwayeong’s sword dance and imitated her. The system may have helped with the stage of understanding swordsmanship, but these were absolutely not techniques one could learn without any thought or effort.
“Cheonho, where exactly did you learn that whirlwind technique?”
“I just did what the immortals told me—drawing water, chopping firewood, rolling around, and catching one monster. Then I learned it.”
“So it just became something you could do?”
“Yes.”
“……”
I had asked out of curiosity, but the answer only made things more complicated. If anything, the feeling that rose in my chest was closer to indignation.
Before ascending to the second floor, I remembered how the Helper Rabbit had supported me, received coin sponsorship on my behalf, and continued looking after me. It was almost as if the rabbit had decided from the beginning exactly where I would go.
Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I ended up in the Murim world…
After reaching the third floor, I had continued observing the others while conducting reconnaissance. No matter how closely I watched, from their clothing to the way they held their swords, it didn’t seem like any of them had learned martial arts. In other words, either no one except me had gone to the Murim world, or the players who had gone there had failed to achieve proper growth before reaching the third floor.
“Jocheol. Cheonho.”
At my call, both men turned toward me.
“Let’s begin with energy circulation and breathing exercises.”
Teaching them swordsmanship suited to each of them. Increasing the overall strength of Earth’s coordinate this way would surely help with the missions that lay ahead.
That’s it! That’s the one! Damn it! I knew I could count on Kim Siin!
The rabbit, still ranked too low to have a personal room, crouched in a corner of the lobby and examined the players of its assigned coordinate one by one. Among them was the most special human of all. Kim Siin, who had drawn considerable interest from the constellations early on and safely reached the third floor, was currently carving his way through Lv.4 monsters. The rabbit barely managed to suppress the cheer threatening to burst out and grinned fiercely.
I was right to put him through that grind!
In truth, when the rabbit had first sent him to the Murim world, it had wondered whether it was doing the right thing. Unlike other worlds, the Murim was a place where one had to personally comprehend martial arts and realize their own realms. It wasn’t a world that simply handed out skills; it was a world that built a rock-solid foundation from the basics and strengthened the person themselves. Because players who couldn’t grow properly there would only waste time instead of progressing, most helpers avoided sending people to that difficult coordinate.
It was a bit of a gamble, but…!
If Kim Siin had died in the Murim world or failed to grow properly, the rabbit had even considered abandoning this entire batch. But look at him now. Kim Siin had become more than strong enough—he had grown into a player who far exceeded the rabbit’s expectations.
— What’s so funny?
The rabbit’s leaking laughter must have drawn attention. One of the helpers who happened to be in the lobby spotted it and spoke up. Turning toward the unpleasant voice, the rabbit saw Echion—the very same helper who had been constantly picking fights with it lately—wearing a nasty smile.
“Oh, it’s nothing…”
“Heh heh. Nothing, my ass. Well, I can’t say I don’t understand. Watching incompetents flail around can be pretty refreshing.”
At Echion’s words, the rabbit nearly frowned in disbelief. For someone holding the position of ‘helper’ in the tower, those were incredibly vulgar things to say.
“Lord Echion, aren’t you going to check on the players in your coordinate?”
The rabbit asked with as much respect as it could manage. Regardless of one’s relationship with the constellations, observing and managing players was a helper’s fundamental duty. Without that, one had no right to call themselves a helper.
But even that courteous question seemed like insolent defiance to Echion.
“Are you trying to lecture me?”
“……”
“You? Someone who can’t even dream of challenging a constellation’s status—someone who doesn’t even come close to its fringes?”
A long vertical slit appeared in Echion’s pupils. The fierce gaze of a predator staring at prey right before the kill. The current rabbit could barely withstand the killing intent radiating from him.
“Oh come on! How could someone like me possibly dare to do that in front of a high-ranker like you, Lord Echion… There’s no way, right? Haha!”
The rabbit forced on its brightest commercial smile and flattered him shamelessly. Apparently satisfied by the display, the sharp vertical slits in Echion’s eyes slowly returned to normal.
“Keep that head bowed like a good little rabbit. It suits you perfectly.”
With those words, Echion turned and headed toward his personal room. A short-lived storm. In the hierarchy of helpers where status was determined by ranking, the rabbit currently had no way to oppose him. The only path to confronting Echion was to raise its ranking significantly in this third-floor competition.
Of course, for a rabbit stuck near the bottom of the rankings, the only way to achieve that was if the players in its coordinate managed to defeat Echion’s monstrous ones.
But is that even possible…?
The rabbit stared at the field where the individual matches were taking place with anxious eyes. There was one player who had been slaughtering everyone in sight. A monster who had already formed a contract with a constellation by the time he cleared the second floor belonged to Echion’s coordinate.
A dark forest gradually came into view. At the entrance, the ground was so soaked with blood from what must have been a massive battle that it hindered every step we took.
“…What happened here?”
Humans, fishmen, beastmen, and various other races. The dead players seemed to have returned to the lobby, but those still breathing were panting heavily with their heads buried in the dirt.
“Glurk…”
“Are you all right?! What on earth happened—”
Geumrin rushed over to a fishman foaming at the mouth with his eyes rolled back, stuttering as he tried to support him. But the man had been pierced through the lung and couldn’t speak. Geumrin looked at him with pity, then turned to me with a face on the verge of tears.
The forms of players who had yet to disappear, slowly becoming corpses, entered my sight.
All struck by the same attack.
Stab wounds and slashes. There were both deep and shallow cuts, but after practicing countless sword techniques in the Murim world, I could tell immediately. This was the work of a single person.
Quick Understanding (C-)
Of course, it was possible that multiple people with the same skill had created this scene. But judging from the current situation, it seemed far more likely that a single individual had barged into a group of players engaged in a power struggle and carried out a massacre.
Then—
“Wait, isn’t this Korean?”
While we examined the bodies, Park Jocheol had been quietly scanning the surroundings. He finally spoke up. The crooked letters looked as if they had been carved into a dry tree with a blade. It was unmistakably Korean.
“What does it say?”
If Korean was written in a place where races from other worlds competed, it could only be a message meant for us. For some reason, after entering the tower, conversation with other races flowed naturally, yet I had never encountered a species that used Korean.
The moment they read the carving, both Park Jocheol’s and Namgung Cheonho’s faces stiffened slightly.
Traveling with a merman named Cheongrin. Entering the forest. — Seo Seyeong, Han Gamin
“Cheongrin?”
At my unintentional murmur, Geumrin’s expression hardened as well.
The forest that the monster responsible for this massacre had entered. One clear reason to go inside had just appeared.