Chapter 2201 - MP 49

Three months ago, the Martial World violently churned.

The epicenter of that ripple was at the westernmost edge, the Superwind Cliff (Cho-pung-a) of Jeok-yang region.

The situation had originated from a single beast. A holy beast said to appear once in a thousand years, the Kirin.

Rumors that it had appeared at the Superwind Cliff spreading through the Martial World was the initial trigger.

It was said that he who tames the Kirin will be followed by the entire world, and he who claims its bones will dye the world in blood.

For anyone pursuing strength within the Martial World, it was a massive opportunity they could not refuse. Furthermore, it was an opportunity that was alive and moving without an owner, and its location was distinct.

Regardless of whether they were righteous, unorthodox, or demonic, everyone's eyes flipped.

Countless martial artists, determined to obtain the Kirin, squeezed and flooded into that narrow entrance. They swarmed in indiscriminately, ranging from third-rate weaklings to absolute masters.

Because of this, Mu-cheong suffered first. The walled city flanking the Superwind Cliff was a granary called the rice basket of Central Plains, but in an instant, it suffered a heavy blow as it burst at the seams with foreign martial artists.

Every single inn was packed to capacity every night, and at the narrow entrance leading into the valley, the flags of the righteous, unorthodox, and demonic factions tangled and fluttered as public order collapsed into pieces. At first, it was only martial artists from Pyeong-nam, but soon, martial artists from Pyeong-seo arrived, and before long, warriors swarmed from every corner of the Central Plains. The crop fields of Jeok-yang, which the Thunderclap Martial Academy had protected for decades, were trampled under their lawless footsteps and the city was plunged into chaos.

This mess was given the name the Great Kirin Melee. It was due to the sheer magnitude of the chaos.

However, following the day of the great battle where entire mountain peaks were erased, no one entered or emerged anymore.

Those who entered had either evaporated along with the Kirin or were annihilated, and for those who remained, there was no longer any reason to enter.

After that, there was only rain, even heavier rain, and a moisture that would erase even death.

When rumors first circulated that the Great Kirin Melee had come to an end so simply, the Martial World was not willing to believe it easily.

There was more than one or two hard-to-believe details, but the first among them was the line-up of those who had entered the valley.

Three absolute masters.

One was the new sect master of the Western Saber Sect. The one who had ascended to that position by defeating all seven candidates in a single day during the Blade Emperor selection duel, the Sky-Cleaving Blade Emperor.

Another was an old Taoist of the Supreme Taoist Palace and a renowned scholar of the Martial World. An absolute master-someone whom few could even remember when his face-and was said to suppress the evil energy of an entire region with a single purple sword-

The Violet Void True Sage.

The last one was a leader of the Destruction Demonic Sect. Someone who was said to cut people upon meeting them and eradicate sects upon encountering them-someone whom rumors of death had followed longer than rumors of being alive. A demon in a human form, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord.

And that wasn't all.

Even the Sect Leader of the Hero Gate-had joined them.

The fact that these four individuals entered the same valley on the same day was an event worthy of the unofficial histories.

But for all four to vanish without a trace? And for the Kirin to disappear that very same day?

The circumstances were utterly suspicious.

And yet...

A few days after the peak collapsed, recovery teams from the Supreme Taoist Palace and the Western Saber Sect entered the valley. They were searching for their missing absolute masters. Though unlikely, they hoped to at least retrieve their bodies if they had fallen.

More importantly, their primary goal was to recover the Kirin's remains, should it have died with them.

They scoured the area around the fallen peaks, searching and digging again and again.

And then, they found them.

The two grandmasters were there.

The Sky-Cleaving Blade Emperor and the Violet Void True Sage. Both had been decapitated, their heads severed from their shoulders. It seemed that neither their decades of secluded cultivation nor their blade techniques, said to split the heavens in two, could prevent their own heads from falling.

The two factions lingered in the area for over a month after recovering the bodies, but they eventually withdrew from the Superwind Cliff, carrying only the remains of the two grandmasters.

There had clearly been a fierce battle. The Kirin's mane, fur, and hoofprints were scattered everywhere, yet its main body was nowhere to be found-as if some ghost had come and devoured it.

The deaths of the two absolute masters were thus confirmed.

But they were the only ones whose deaths were certain.

Afterward, additional recovery teams and countless martial artists scoured every inch of the Superwind Cliff Valley's soil, clinging to the faintest hope. Yet the bodies of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord and the Hero Gate Sect Leader were never found.

They left no corpses behind, nor did they ever walk out on their own.

If they had died, they should have remained buried in the earth like the other two. If they had survived, they should have eventually emerged from the Superwind Cliff. At the very least, some trace of them should have been discovered.

But it was none of the three.

And so, the story grew, layer upon layer, until only rumors bordering on myth remained.

They said the four of them clashed at the Superwind Cliff-three died, and one vanished with the Kirin.

Or that the Kirin devoured all four before ascending to the heavens. Or that they had all torn each other apart in the Kirin's presence, two of them shredded so brutally they were washed away by the Superwind Cliff's rain.

But in the end, with no way to verify any of it, the tales remained mere rumors.

While the area around Mu-cheong and the Superwind Cliff was still thick with such unsettling whispers, the Martial World was seething in its own right.

The war between Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect and Dark Net Rakshasa Path had been dragging on for months, a see-saw of skirmishes. The Clear Wind Sword Sect had slain one of the Eight Rakshasas in Buk-hoe, only for Dark Net Rakshasa Path to swallow two Vast Heaven factions near Han-ju in the meantime.

For both sides, it was a war of attrition where the losses far outweighed the gains.

With the Ten Thousand Poisons Sect and the Joyful Sect beginning to align themselves with Dark Net Rakshasa Path, the once-disorganized factions are showing signs of uniting.

Meanwhile, the Nirvana Mountain did the opposite, sealing its gates. Though the Rakshasa Monks continued their intermittent battles outside, the elite forces had not been seen beyond the mountain's gates for some time. But Half-closing the gate was not a retreat.

It meant that the killing intent leaking outward was condensing inward. They were a beast, coiled and waiting, sharpening their claws for something.

Amidst this chaos, the name of one sect rose and fell in a different tone from the rest.

The Hero Gate of Gang-do, which until recently had been on the fringes of the Central Plains.

It was a newly formed sect. Yet, even though its Sect Leader had been absent for several months, the sect's prestige had only grown. In his absence, the martial artists beneath him had stepped up, tightening their grip on the Gang-do region. The people of Gang-do did not hesitate to call the sect Bul-san, claiming a Living Buddha resided there. The name had recently spread throughout the Martial World.

As it spread, the story grew, each retelling adding new layers. Rumors swirled that the Sect Leader, the Living Buddha Kim Rae-won, was not merely a chivalrous warrior resembling a Buddha, but one of the top ten absolute masters in the Martial World.

At the same time, rumors of a completely different nature also circulated. Some even claimed that far from being a Buddha, he was actually a bloodthirsty demon, closer to an Asura.

And rumors, by their very nature, grow larger the longer their subject is absent.

The fact that Kim Rae-won had participated in the Great Kirin Melee also quietly spread, and combined with the earlier Superwind Cliff ghost story,

The rumors were spiraling out of control, morphing into increasingly bizarre tales.

The Living Buddha departed in search of the Kirin to attain Nirvana.

Asura, alongside his Kirin companion, ascended to the heavens after annihilating all who dared interfere.

Yet the Superwind Cliff, the very epicenter of this entire uproar, had fallen deathly silent after the Great Kirin Melee Incident.

When the prize catch is gone, do the anglers remain? When the prey has vanished from the mountain, why should the hunters linger?

No one dared approach the valley where the Kirin had disappeared. Only the rumors continued to gorge themselves like swine on the empty gorge.

Still, the gaze of the Thunderclap Martial Academy never wavered from that spot.

The two who had not even returned as corpses-their absence kept the Jin Clan Leader's hand from ever leaving the valley. For months, the paper slip tied to the hawk's ankle, destined for Mu-cheong, had been frozen with the same two words:

Moo-yong. (No Appearance)

* * *

On the cliffside at the entrance to the Superwind Cliff Valley.

Four pairs of eyes scanned the Superwind Cliff, braving the torrential rain.

Three were spies of the Thunderclap Martial Academy, and one was not.

Though she exuded a frigid aura, as if coated in a thick layer of frost, her beauty was undeniable and universal-Jin Seon-ah, the Number One Beauty of Jeok-yang. She was the only daughter of Jin Gong, the Master of the Thunderclap Martial Academy and Leader of the Jin Clan.

The rain fell just as it had yesterday. She had brought only three spies. Too many eyes would leave too many traces and draw unnecessary attention, so they moved in a small group. In this kind of investigation, numbers were a liability.

The ground of the Superwind Cliff remained the same color as before, with only the puddles rippling faintly in the rain.

"..."

She had been here for over a month already, continuing her search.

Even if her father had not commanded it, she was determined to commit the full strength of the Thunderclap Martial Academy to this search.

Setting aside the absurd rumors about Buddhas and Asuras, there is a fundamental truth, isn't there?

If they died, a body should have remained. If they lived, they should have come out.

The same must hold true for the World-Eradicating Demon Lord, Kim Rae-won, and the Kirin.

"Unit Commander, after searching this thoroughly, isn't it certain they've completely annihilated one another?"

"No."

Jin Seon-ah replied to her subordinate, continuously using her qi barrier to repel the rain.

"There is no such thing as a complete annihilation."

The valley stretched out beneath her gaze.

Only ruins remained.

A section of the western ridge had been severed completely. The severed face, washed by three months of rain, had crumbled into a muddy mess of various rock colors, and the boulders that had collapsed beneath it filled half the valley.

Even so.

If they had died, their bodies-or at least some remains-should still be here.

"But the rumors say..."

"What? That they were all torn to shreds and washed away by this rain? Is that what you're trying to say?"

"..."

"Sure, a common criminal might meet such an end. But that would never happen to Absolute Masters.

No matter the downpour or the storm, you can never completely erase the traces of an Absolute Master."

This was because Martial Artists possessed an indelible mark known as internal energy. Even if every last hair were swept away, the final traces of their internal energy should have remained. This was especially true for Absolute Masters, not some third-rate rabble. Besides, how could there be no clues to their final moments after a battle of this magnitude?

'It's absurd,' she thought.

The ground was still scarred with fresh gouges where earth had been frantically scraped away.

Among those marks, the spot where the two grandmasters had been retrieved stood out. Jin Seon-ah's steps had circled back, eventually returning to that very place.

After the disciples of the Western Saber Sect and the Supreme Taoist Palace had dug through the dirt to recover their Elder and Sect Leader, only the excavated pits remained, now filled with rainwater. Beneath the surface, the mud still held the mixed-in traces of nameless bodies.

These were the remains of thousands who had swarmed the entrance in their greed for the holy beast, only to be swept away when a single peak collapsed upon them.

Swoosh. Swoosh.

Ignoring the filth, she spent the next few days meticulously scanning the area, her spiritual sense sweeping over every inch of the ground.

"Hmm?"

How many hours had she scanned like that?

The air in the valley changed. No, the energy changed.

The first thing she sensed was heat.

It was an impossible thing. A dry energy expanding beneath the air of a canyon that was wet all four seasons? A heat that would only rise from ground baked under a midsummer blazing sun suddenly brushed through the streaks of rain.

"...Unit Commander?"

"What is this!?"

Ignoring her subordinates' protective stances, Jin Seon-ah focused all her senses and energy on the surrounding area.

A sudden shift in scent also registered. Beneath the smell of wet stone and moss, there was a dry, acrid earthy odor she had never encountered in this valley.

Jin Seon-ah hurriedly dropped to the ground. She felt something beneath her feet.

Just then.

The ground shimmered. At first, she thought it was the rain.

But it wasn't.

A patch of the ground that should have been soaked was turning to sand.

"What... What is this?!"

There is a saying about a bolt from the blue-thunder from a clear sky.

Yet, in the Superwind Cliff area, the exact opposite was happening.

A dry lightning strike invading a sodden sky.

Just as sand and bizarre structures began to shimmer across the drenched valley, in the blink of an eye, the valley floor was filled with people.

Jin Seon-ah couldn't believe her eyes. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw the three spies reacting in the same sequence: rubbing their eyes, glancing at one another, looking back down, and then surveying their surroundings.

And finally, the sound reached their ears.

"...Hey. What the hell is this? Huh?"

"Weren't we just in the Arena? Where the hell are we now?"

"Is it loading? No, why is the loading taking so long?"

"But why is it raining? Was there a raining zone in the mob field?"

"...This is insane. The raindrops are actually cold."

"The ground is a muddy mess. My shoes are covered in dirt."

It wasn't just one or two people. The entire crowd that filled the ground spoke all at once. Their shouts bounced off the cliff, echoing over and over.

Jin Seon-ah had heard of and studied such phenomena. It was a topic that had fascinated her since childhood, a strange occurrence she had vaguely hoped to one day witness or encounter. Recently, she had even heard various accounts directly from her father.

But she had never heard of, read about, or even imagined anything on this scale.

"..."

Naturally, she couldn't understand a single word they said.

It wasn't the language of the Central Plains. It wasn't the language of the lands beyond the Great Wall, nor was it the tongue of any ethnic group she'd heard about from the spies.

Though she couldn't grasp their meaning, she could clearly read their aura.

Urgent, pale with terror, bewildered, and furious...

Tens of thousands of...

"The Descended... Clan!?"

-x-X-x-

They had to retreat.

"....So many of the Descent Clan? How in the world....?"

Figuring out what kind of situation this was wasn't important right now. According to lore, many of the Descent Clan fell into this world possessing bizarre abilities. This was nothing short of a direct crisis.

Her body moved before her mind could think. While the tens of thousands of uninvited guests tangled amongst themselves and caused a massive racket, Jin Seon-ah and the three spies suppressed their presence. Clinging to the collapsed debris, they moved along the cliffside at the entrance of the valley.

No one paid any attention to the four figures scaling the wet rock crevices.

Only after prostrating herself against the cliffside did Jin Seon-ah catch the breath she had been holding. The valley came into view all at once again.

"This is a new map! An unreleased zone has opened up! I'm telling you, we're the very first ones here!"

"New map, my ass. What kind of new map implements a realistic smell of wet fish?"

"Record it, record all of it! This is the shot, it's going to be a massive hit!"

"Hey, this is lag, right? I got disconnected, didn't I? I got disconnected and stuck in a weird place, right?"

"Log out first. Log out..... Wow, seriously, it still won't work? Just how the hell do those Pantheon bastards do their jobs, huh?"

"....No, it's worse than that, the menu is literally half-glitched right now?"

"You idiots..... this isn't a game. There's no way this is a game....."

"Crazy. Fuck. It feels too real, shit..... I think we're seriously fucked, shit."

"Stop talking out of your asses, you bastards. If this isn't GOR, then where the hell is it? Huh? Where is it!"

There were those who sat down utterly stupefied, while beside them, others continuously scanned the surroundings with gleaming eyes. Some were crying, some were laughing, and others pushed at the backs of strangers without even knowing what had occurred.

"What has that guy been saying since a moment ago? What language is that?"

"It must be a global integrated event. Even foreign guys are mixed in there."

"If it were an event, a notice would have popped up. Anyone see a notice?.....None, right?"

"Don't chicken out. If Pantheon laid out a stage of this scale, it means the rewards are insane. First come, first served is the answer."

As he quietly observed the entirely incomprehensible pandemonium, one of the spies crept closer while suppressing his voice.

"Unit Commander. At a rough estimate, they number in the thousands.... no, they exceed ten thousand."

"Ten thousand? No."

Jin Seon-ah's eyes remained fixed on the valley.

"There must be at least thirty thousand."

Three months ago, when thousands had flocked here, she had thought the canyon was bursting at the seams, but those thousands were a mere handful compared to the crowd before her eyes now.

Furthermore, that crowd had not walked in through the entrance.

The very topic that martial historians still debated to this day.

Just how exactly do the Descent Clan enter this side?

Whether it was a formation, a sorcery, or some other special method.

However, from the perspective of martial artists who had no way of knowing what it was, they simply called it this:

An anomaly. A bizarre occurrence.

Right now, that very anomaly had manifested on a massive scale at the Superwind Cliff.

"I can't understand a single word of what they're saying. It's not the language of the Great Yue, nor the Northern regions, nor the Southern Barbarians."

"Ignore that."

Jin Seon-ah cut him off.

"Because it merely serves as proof that they came from another place."

"...If you say another place, where do you mean?"

Descent or Karmic Bonds were a type of taboo in the Martial World, so ordinary martial artists had never even heard of them.

The same went for the spies.

"I don't know either."

In truth, because the records left behind by the Descent Clan circulated in secret, a certain amount of knowledge did remain.

However, because they all came from entirely different places, many historians simply referred to it as 'Foreign Realm (I-to), following the same logic as the term 'anomaly.

"Then... what should we do now, Unit Commander?"

"For now, watch. See how those things act."

And just as she said, it was captured that the overall atmosphere of the large-scale Descent Clan was shifting in a strange direction.

"Ah, you total cowards, seriously. If this isn't a game, what else is it?"

A guy raised his voice from one side of the crowd. Cackling laughter followed immediately behind him.

"I'm telling you, even if you die, you just respawn! If you don't believe me, should I show you a demonstration?"

The man spun someone around next to him. A strange weapon was held in his hand. It was a chunk of iron too thick to be a sword, yet too short to be a saber.

"Hey, put the blade away. Is this a time to mess around?"

"Messing around? He's just going to wake right back up after I lay him down anyway, so what's the big deal?"

He struck down.

There was nothing that could be called hesitation. There was no glaring gaze, nor any killing intent loading into his shoulders. The blade came down as casually as a step taken to run an errand.

Slash.

Blood splattered.

Spurt.

It was simple.

Along with a flesh-tearing sound like cutting into a thick piece of tenderloin, blood shot up like a fountain along the severed surface.

In the eyes of the Descent Clan-no, the users-that scene embedded itself deeply into their pupils as if playing in slow motion.

"..."

The one who was cut collapsed into the mud, and the one who did the cutting didn't even look down at his own fingertips.

Screams erupted from various parts of the Superwind Cliff.

"Aaaah! Blood..... why is the blood splattering like this!?"

"...Why isn't he disappearing?"

"No, shit! Why is he just lying there like that!?"

"I-It's a cinematic effect. They said the censorship limits were lifted recently. That's what it is."

"Cinematic effect, my ass..... Touch him. He's still warm. What kind of game is this, dammit!"

"Hey, snap out of it. Open your eyes, hey.... hey ******, you son of a bitch! Wake the fuck up, goddammit!"

The commotion that began around the unintended murder spread outward to its perimeter.

Rapid change, pandemonium, utter chaos.

Regardless, their shift in demeanor was read perfectly. Even though the language couldn't be understood, it was conveyed seamlessly in real-time that the crowd numbering in the tens of thousands was freezing up over a single dead body.

And it could be roughly deduced that the root cause of that reaction was 'blood and a corpse.

To the eyes of Jin Seon-ah and the spies, there was absolutely nothing new about a person cutting down another person. In the Jianghu, people killed and were killed for far lesser reasons.

What made her expression harden and aroused her interest was, first of all, the face of the man who had cut the person down.

That man had a face that looked as though he didn't even comprehend what he had just done. To think that before killing his opponent just now, he had sliced with a smirk as if cutting a wooden horse, yet after cutting him down, he wore an expression as if he had slaughtered his own only son.

If that was the case...

If you cut a person, they bleed. The entire crowd was weeping and falling into shock over a logic that even a three-year-old child knew. They were shocked because blood flowed, shocked because he collapsed, and shocked because his breath stopped. Furthermore, the fact that they had been playful beforehand, as if such a thing could never happen....

'Does it mean that in your land, people do not bleed when they are cut?'

Does it mean that in your land, they do not die even if their heads are severed?

Just what kind of land is that Foreign Realm?

"That bastard killed someone! If this isn't a game, that's just straight-up murder..."

"Everyone, get away from the guy holding the blade. This place..., it's not a game."

"It is a game! It has to be a game, right!?"

"Shut up. Stop saying such ominous things!"

No... I... thought he would revive... everyone else said so too.

The initial killer retraced his steps awkwardly, pushed back by the gazes surrounding him. The crowd jostled the crowd, and the jostled crowd was pushed back again. Standing thirty thousand strong on the narrow canyon floor, they rotated around one another, crowding together and trampling each other's feet. It was an Asura domain.

Then, at some point.

That Asura domain suddenly quieted down.

Simultaneously with the realization that this situation was reality, everything that had occurred previously flashed through their minds.

The root cause.

Starting from the very center of the crowd deep within the valley, the clamor ceased one by one. As one shut their mouth, the neighbor followed suit, and that silence caught on toward the outside.

"...Hey, inside the valley, that thing is there."

"What is 'that thing?"

"Ah, you know that guy, that guy."

"..Ah, that....bug."

"Huh? Him..... hey, look at that! That looks like a Kirin. It's a Kirin, right?"

"I told you it is! Look at those five-colored scales and that horn! The red arena field boss."

"Why is a field boss here? Don't tell me.... this really is an event map?"

"Event, my ass. Have you already forgotten how many of us got shredded by that thing? And look next to it, holy shit."

Jin Seon-ah's eyes also extended straight past the crowd where the users were looking.

There were five colors.

What had been dim beyond the sheets of rain took on a clear silhouette. A lion's mane. A horn over a six foot long. A massive frame encompassing the body of a horse covered in five-colored scales.

".....The Kirin."

The ferocious beast that had swallowed thousands. The trigger that had gathered the people of the Martial World to this place three months ago, and the holy beast that had vanished along with the absolute masters on that day.

"It was alive...?"

That fact alone was enough to warrant sending out hundreds of messenger falcons. However, instead of getting excited, Jin Seon-ah quietly observed its surroundings further. Because anyone could see that the current situation was far from ordinary.

Tens of thousands of the Descent Clan. This alone would be the greatest anomaly in the history of the Jianghu...

'Someone is there. Next to the Kirin.'

The Kirin was prostrated.

With its four legs folded and its head with the horn lowered deeply. The holy beast said to be born once in a thousand years-the ferocious beast said to bring about the deaths of tens of thousands, if not millions, if handled incorrectly-was lowering its body at the foot of a single human.

It was a man in black clothing.

"...Wait, who is that standing next to the beast?"

"That's.... the black guy. That bug."

"Bug? What bug?"

"The one that didn't even have an ID or a name tag. The unimplemented one who didn't display a level or anything."

"Unimplemented, bullshit. Does that kind of talk even come out of your mouth in this situation, you moron?"

"Don't you know what he did? He erased the administrators, the GMs, in a single blow."

"We got shredded too... for a last hit. So many times I couldn't even count."

"Last hit? Shut your mouth. That thing isn't something to be raided or not."

"Quiet down. Don't make eye contact. Everyone..., just keep your damn mouths shut."

As the murmuring died away, the eyes of the entire crowd converged solely upon that single nameless man. Their faces were deathly pale.

Even without knowing the language, one could tell that those people feared the man far more than the Kirin.

Jin Seon-ah scrutinized the man.

He was far. It was not a distance from which his exact features could be discerned. Although this Superwind Cliff canyon was said to be narrow, its actual scale was large enough to combine several walled cities.

From here to there must be at least twenty li.

However, she could identify that he was entirely in black. Black robes and black hair. No weapon was visible, and he merely stood within the sheets of rain.

'Who is it?'

Kim Rae-won.

That name surfaced naturally in her mind at that moment. The Sect Leader of the Hero Gate, who was said to have swept exclusively through the unorthodox factions while racing a thousand li.

She didn't know the reason.

She merely had a feeling that it would be so.

According to what she heard from her father, the actual Kim Rae-won had also vanished without a trace from the Jianghu for nearly twenty years.

There was no way to confirm it. Because she did not know his face. However, three of the four who had entered the valley were faces fairly well-known in the Jianghu, and as the leader of an information organization, Jin Seon-ah naturally knew them. Only the Sect Leader of the Hero Gate had never had his face made known to the Jianghu. Of course, a past portrait remained, but from what she heard, the man who returned was vastly different from his previous appearance.

'Then, does that mean he became the final claimant of the Kirin?'

Looking at the Kirin prostrated beside him, the legend could not help but resurface in her mind.

He who tames the Kirin will be followed by the entire world. He who claims its flesh will place the world beneath his feet. He who takes its bones will dye the world in blood.

Right then, a certain sound arrived.

Heh....

It was a low sound, half-buried in the noise of the rain.

Heh-heh-heh-heh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Nonetheless, it was a bizarre laugh that seemed capable of spreading across the entire world.

A single laugh echoed within the breathless valley. Without obstruction or hesitation, allowing it to hit the cliffs and reverberate back.

Jin Seon-ah realized late that her body was pressing even lower against the cliffside. It was an action she had never commanded.

Rainwater flowed down the back of her neck. The rain, which she had never once felt to be cold while enduring it for a month, felt freezing only now.

It was a strange thing. She had just witnessed a sight that made her wonder if the heavens collapsing could be any more terrifying.

Neither the bizarre spectacle of tens of thousands surging from empty ground nor anything else sent a shiver down her spine quite like that laugh.

At the end of the laughter, the man's head turned.

"..."

Their eyes met.

The man's gaze traveled up the cliffside and brushed past a spot on the slope-exactly where she lay prostrated.

She was discovered!

Her breath caught. The sensation of the three spies freezing beside her was detected. The habit of first calculating an escape route kicked in, and the answer that there was none returned instantly.

She could instinctively tell that if that man set his mind to it, the four atop this slope were as good as dead.

However, nothing happened.

His gaze did not linger. It brushed past her, brushed past the spies, and soon moved on.

Squelch, squelch.

The man took a step.

Bizarrely, the tens of thousands of the Descent Clan parted down the middle just like that.

No one had ordered it, nor had anyone shouted to clear the path. Following the direction the man headed, the crowd split and retreated on its own. Like water parting at the bow of a ship.

It must be instinct.

A primal fear that humans could not help but experience.

At the place where the man came to a stop, a single figure was standing.

Jin Seon-ah finally recognized them.

Scattered here and there within the crowd, there were those who were not soaked by the rain.

Though the streaks of rain poured down, their clothes and hair remained dry. No, saying they were dry was insufficient. Like a reflection cast on pooled rainwater, their silhouettes shimmered as they stood.

Things that were clearly human, yet made one hesitant to call them human.

How should she put it?

Should she say that the flickering made them look like fireflies in human form?

The surrounding Descent Clan members were slinking away from their sides.

The man stood before that single figure.

And then.

Slash.

She did not see him draw a sword. She did not see the flash of a blade pass, nor did she see his arm move. However, the shimmering figure was suddenly divided into two and collapsed, and the man's hand was already lowered.

And the man merely stood before it.

Then, looking down at the dead thing.

He spat out a single phrase whose meaning could not be fathomed.

"Utterly meaningless," he muttered.

-x-X-x-

"..."

Jin Seon-ah could not take her eyes off the man assumed to be Kim Rae-won.

She had no way of knowing why he had just slain that figure. But one thing was certain: it was by no means out of chewing over a grudge or because it was an enemy he attacked.

Strictly speaking, it was.... a gaze akin to reading a book. The eyes of someone sitting in a study, turning the difficult pages of a book one by one. Among those, what just happened took the form of turning that very first page.

'Is he trying to examine something?"

It was an assumption, but somehow it felt correct. It was because his eyes still bore that same light as he looked upon the other Descent Clan members.

At a glance, he seemed similar to the martial historians or Daoist scholars Jin Seon-ah had met often, but far more devoid of emotion than them-feeling like an observer, and in some aspects, a seeker.

When her thoughts reached that point, her fingertips grew cold.

There were many devilish beings in the Martial World. Naturally, there were countless madmen as well. It was only natural that death was a daily occurrence.

However, a person who slays a human to read them like a book and uses that to forge his own path.

She had never heard of such a person. No, such a person might exist, but not only was it her first time seeing it, it was a appearance far too different from the recent rumors circulating about Kim Rae-won.

The man did not withdraw his eyes from the dead figure, nor from the surrounding Descent Clan members. Clothed in that gaze, he began to move his feet. The Kirin followed behind him. The place he headed toward was deep within the valley, inside where the darkness gathered damply.

Soon, the sheets of rain thinned.

The rock beneath her prostrated elbows had grown lukewarm with body heat before she knew it, and the dusk rose up from the valley floor.

The sound of rain beating against the cliffside also grew sparse. The shrieking that filled the valley had long since subsided. What remained was the low murmurs of tens of thousands. It was a sound like an overturned wet beehive.

Beneath that sound, the crowd was splitting apart.

Jin Seon-ah remained clinging to the cliffside, still watching the scene intently.

And beyond that, assumed to be Kim Rae-won-no, honestly, she was certain. Yes, that man is Kim Rae-won. No matter how she looked at it, he could be no one else.

The other absolute masters were all familiar to her eyes, and her sharp instincts were telling her.

That man is him.

Like that, Kim Rae-won naturally traversed between the crowd that split apart like parting waves, receding deeper inside.

There was no shouting filled with doubt, no crowd blocking his path, and his steps were not rushed in the slightest.

"Press it. Keep pressing it. A hundred times, a thousand times."

"I'm telling you, it won't press..."

"Earlier, someone said the menu glitched half-open. Doesn't that mean it will open eventually?"

"Just once... just let it pop up once, please..."

Naturally, the crowd that had moved far away from Kim Rae-won soon lost interest in him.

Among them, figures pressing, swiping, and tapping at empty air could be seen everywhere. She wondered if they were making gestures to fondle something.

But it was not that. A sense of madness could be felt from the spectacle of hundreds of people obsessively tapping at a similar height at similar times.

'Is it a unique ritual of their own?"

Of course, it was an etiquette Jin Seon-ah had never seen before.

On the other hand, there were factions that sat down entirely.

"A notice will pop up. It definitely will. For an accident of this scale, the compensation will be mind-blowing."

"The developers are coming to rescue us. Would Pantheon just leave an accident of this scale alone? If tens of thousands file a lawsuit, even Pantheon would stumble, no matter how big they are."

"So don't move. You saw that scene earlier, right? The answer is to wait, so don't go messing around and get killed for nothing."

There were also crowds sitting on the wet, bare ground with their knees pulled in. They were neither injured nor exhausted. It was a posture of waiting. Though there was no way to know what they were waiting for, they kept looking up at the sky among themselves. It was not a look of waiting for the rain to stop.

There were also those who crawled in to avoid the rain.

Everywhere in the valley, there were unique structures that had surged up at the same hour as them earlier. Houses with roofs and doors, yet built in the style of no land in the Martial World. A portion of the crowd crawled in there and squeezed their bodies beneath the eaves.

"Hey, let's just stay here for now. If we take any more rain in this situation, we're going to die like this."

"Don't push! It's full, I said it's full!"

Is that bizarre house their den?

As the valley grew darker, a different sound spread.

"...I'm hungry."

"What are you talking about? It's a game."

"Why the hell am I hungry if it's a game!"

That distress caught on far and wide.

".....I've been feeling weird since earlier. I'm thirsty too."

"You saw him die earlier. But now we're even hungry, if this is a game, why the fuck are we hungry?"

"Stop it."

"It means this place is real. Dying... and being hungry..., it's all real."

The number of people clutching their bellies increased everywhere.

The area near the first corpse that had died earlier remained empty all the while.

Then, around the time the dusk fell dimly across the entire Superwind Cliff, a few gathered there.

".....Hey, what about him? Since he died, didn't he log out?"

"What are you talking about?"

"He probably woke up in reality by now. Since his connection here was cut."

"Are you crazy? His breath stopped!"

"That's his body here! His real body should be outside!"

"Where is outside and where is inside?"

"Ah, I don't know. How should I know? It's my first time too."

"Then check it out. See if he woke up or couldn't wake up. Someone go check, please."

"Ah, man, crazy. How the fuck do we check?"

No one could answer.

"No one knows.... What comes after death, no one knows."

A low utterance fell over the silence.

"Since logging out doesn't work, we just have to try dying. Try dying."

As those words fell, the noise died down starting from beside the person who said it. The man who uttered the words drew a blade from his waist. Before anyone could stop him, he brought it to his own neck.

"I'll try it. I'll check for you guys."

"Hey! Are you crazy!? Put it down!"

"Let go of me! Let go! I'm telling you, you wake up if you do this!"

Three or four rushed forward and pinned the man down in the mud. A sharp basic gear dropped hurriedly from his hand. Even while pinned down, the man shrieked savagely, and the side holding him was crying.

Jin Seon-ah atop the cliffside was still watching that scuffle.

Just when she thought an argument was breaking out beside the dead figure, one suddenly placed a blade to his own neck. Those beside him wept and clung to him to snatch the blade away. The one seeking to slit his own neck and those holding on with all their might to stop him were tangled together as one lump atop the mud.

Earlier, they were shocked as if death were not their affair, yet now one tries to die by his own hand and others try to stop him.

Just what is death to those people?

She had roughly heard of it. That for some of the Descent Clan, the death of others becomes the source of their own strength. But isn't that one's own death?

The fallen blade was half-buried in the mud. Over it, the sheets of rain were growing thick again.

It was before that scuffle could even subside.

There were a few who shook off the stopping hands and broke away from the crowd.

Three or four. Pushing each other's backs, they advanced little by little. The place they were heading toward was deep within the valley, the direction Kim Rae-won had headed.

The few who approached arrived before Kim Rae-won, who was examining here and there in the valley, and fell to their knees as if collapsing.

They were begging.

There were those who prostrated so deeply that their faces were fully submerged in the muddy water.

There were also those who pulled something from their chests and held it up with both hands. What it was could not be known because it was far. She could barely tell that it was an item she had never seen before. An item exceptional enough to be considered a treasure of a foreign world even at a glance.

"Do you know the way out of here? You know, right? Please...."

"Save us. If you save us, we'll do anything."

"We'll give you anything. We'll do everything. It's true. Anything at all."

Jin Seon-ah still could not understand their words, yet that posture alone was a universal language.

They were begging.

Moreover, they went and prostrated themselves before the very person they feared the most. That is...

pleading for something even if it meant risking their lives.

The man, Kim Rae-won, did not even spare them a glance and continued examining the surroundings.

Then, he suddenly stopped moving.

His head turned, and his eyes settled over the kneeling figures.

Kim Rae-won's mouth opened toward them.

"Your server is closed."

It was not a high-pitched voice. Yet it crossed over the sound of rain and rose clearly all the way to the cliffside. It was a voice infused with internal energy.

However, that was not the problem.

".... That man...?

Jin Seon-ah almost blurted out a loud exclamation.

'He can communicate with them?'

Unlike the words he spat out earlier, the current words were clearly... the language of the Descent Clan.

Naturally, she did not know the meaning. But that nuance, the pitch, the foreign pronunciation. The sound she had been hearing continuously since earlier.

It was their language that filled the valley.

Those words came from Kim Rae-won's mouth.

The Descent Clan immediately proved that her thoughts were correct. Starting from those closest to the man, they froze one by one. They had understood.

"The server is... closed?"

"Language. He spoke our language just now, right? He did, just now!"

"How the hell do you know that!?"

"What are you... what are you. Are you an admin?"

Kim Rae-won did not answer. The question dropped into the rain alone and grew cold.

"I told you he erased all the admins... ask something worth asking..."

Someone muttered so beside them, and that sound spread farther than the question.

Kim Rae-won carelessly added one more line.

"There is no longer any place for you to return to."

This time, no one asked back.

The ones who were kneeling collapsed where they knelt. Crying erupted again, but the resonance was different from earlier. It was not a sound of weeping while hoping for something, but a sound of having ended the act of hoping itself. It did not take long for that weeping to spread to the outside of the crowd. The number of people sitting down increased.

Jin Seon-ah asked herself while clinging to the cliffside.

Kim Rae-won knows their language?

'Does that mean he originally....!

Her thoughts broke off there.

It was because among the weeping, shrieks, and desperate murmurings of the Descent Clan, movements and voices of an entirely different atmosphere began to burst forth.

"...That bastard knows."

"He must know the way out, too. Since he even knows the server is closed!"

"Grab him. We just have to grab him and make him talk."

"Are you crazy? Didn't you see him? Didn't you see even the GMs getting shredded?"

"Then are we just going to sit here and dry up till we die? Where the hell is an event like this without rewards? If we take that guy down, something will drop."

"Fuck. It's do or die anyway. Do or die."

Weapons were raised again. As one raised theirs, ten raised theirs. The ten quickly increased to a hundred, a thousand, and beyond.

A desperate struggle they had to undertake even while knowing they would die.

As many as ten thousand of the Descent Clan surrounded Kim Rae-won. Unfamiliar metal cast a wet sheen beneath the sheets of rain.

Behind them, short words were exchanged among the crowd that had stepped back.

"Hey, it's Zero. Is he joining too?"

"Zero has to take the lead. He's the server's top player."

"....He's over there, since earlier. He's just standing like that."

"Looks like he's not joining, dammit."

Outside that surrounding circle, there was one standing alone. Without joining or retreating, he merely looked at Kim Rae-won.

Meanwhile, Kim Rae-won-no, Dong Bong-soo-looked around at the Descent Clan-no, the users-stacking layer upon layer around him, and opened his mouth once more.

"There are no respawns. Are you coming knowing that?"

It was neither a growling sound nor a threatening sound. It was a voice asking for a price, a tone that seemed closer to bargaining, perhaps.

Weapons thrust out in unison from the front row. Thousands of users surged forward.

At the exact same time.

Slash.

Dong Bong-soo's sword was drawn. Light was drawn once. That was all.

The necks of the users standing in the front row erupted into the sky all at once, blood spurting up like giant fountains.

Mixing with the rainwater, it created a surreal spectacle.

Along the path the sword passed, the momentum surging inward folded in on itself and collapsed.

A massive silence arrived immediately afterward.

"..."

'Empty' eyes lightly surveyed the area.

A silence consumed by terror, as if the previous chaos had never happened.

This is why humans are ridiculous, terrifying, fascinating, delightful, and beautiful.

They always repeat the same mistakes and always repeat the same failures, but among them, a few will always succeed and grow.

Those who were cut down in one sweep were laying their bodies in the freezing mud of a foreign realm before they could even realize they had been cut.

The back row hesitated.

Over that silence, Dong Bong-soo's voice was laid.

"Don't turn any random place into your grave. Survive. Just as I did."

Held high, the weapons and the postures meant to unleash skills all froze as they were.

"Of course, if you want to die right now, I won't stop you. Because that is the only rule here."

"...."

"Survive. Even if you try to live, most of you will die here. If you dislike that...."

"..."

"Grow strong. Just as I did."

Fatten up, and keep fattening up. So that one day, you will be good enough to harvest.

-x-X-x-

After that, no one dared to attack. They simply couldn't.

Seeing the pool of blood, no one possessed the courage to do so.

Nearly ten thousand people holding weapons froze right in those postures. Unthrust spear tips and half-drawn blades remained suspended in midair.

Jin Seon-ah watched the entire scene from the cliffside.

It was then that the middle of the frozen crowd split wide open like a gaping mouth.

Because Kim Rae-won took a step. Every time he moved, those blocking his path scrambled aside. Raised weapons lowered, and bodies backed away, opening a path out of nowhere. No shouting, no clashing. The man simply walked through the gap, heading deeper into the valley.

The Kirin trotted behind him like a puppy. Comically, its massive body looked almost cute.

Jin Seon-ah couldn't take her eyes off his back until he vanished into the dusk.

Once the man who froze them was gone, the crowd burst into noise again. Soon, all sorts of conspiracy theories and heated arguments erupted as people gathered and scattered.

Jin Seon-ah couldn't understand their words, but their actions were obvious.

One group was arguing, pointing toward the deep valley where the man disappeared before yelling at each other.

Others squatted near the dead, digging through the mud to loot fallen weapons and items.

Some just stared blankly at the sky.

Jin Seon-ah had no idea what they were waiting for. But the expectation from earlier was gone. They had all seen the heads roll.

Soon, the crowd began leaking toward the entrance.

It started with those closest to the valley mouth. One or two tested the waters and slipped out, then the numbers exploded. They weren't running out of anger. They just had no reason to stay, so they naturally moved outside.

A few became tens, tens became hundreds, and soon thousands, then tens of thousands flowed out.

Right below Jin Seon-ah, the valley's only exit was swallowing and draining the massive crowd.

The first place they'll hit is Mu-cheong...

Before she could think through the consequences, a presence stirred below the cliff.

A few who split from the main crowd were feeling around beneath the cliff in search of a place to shelter from the rain. Two of them even began scaling the cliffside. It was less than fifty steps to where the four lay prostrated. A distance so close that any master would notice immediately.

Swoosh.

The three spies silently reached for their sword hilts. Jin Seon-ah raised a hand and pressed them down.

The moment a blade is drawn, it's over. Getting caught here would draw all eyes to this cliff.

To fight the Descent Clan without knowing their full strength?

It was suicide.

She held her men back with glances and hand gestures, quietly probing the aura below.

Fortunately, the two climbing stopped right under the rock ledge below. She felt them huddle in the crevice as rainwater flowed past. They didn't climb any further.

The four pressed themselves tighter against the wet rock.

"Unit Commander."

The spy's voice was dry as bone.

"To headquarters... what should we report?"

A messenger falcon had to be sent. Even now, her father would be staring at the western sky.

The enemy was about to pour over Superwind Cliff and descend upon Mu-cheong city, yet they had no countermeasures. Today, the message had to be swifter and, above all, more accurate than ever before.

But what could she even write?

It was full of things no one would believe.

After a long pause, she remembered a spy's rule: write only what you see. That was how she was trained.

Jin Seon-ah used her internal energy to press characters into the special paper.

Tens of thousands of Descent Clan had emerged at Superwind Cliff. They might enter Mu-cheong city. Prepare.

That was enough. She wrote not a single word about Kim Rae-won-for now.

She folded the paper and tied it to the falcon's leg.

"To Mu-cheong city. Right away."

A spy took the falcon and released it into the dark. Its wet wingbeats were instantly swallowed by the rain.

Even after it vanished, Jin Seon-ah kept her eyes on the valley.

Kim Rae-won was already gone. Dusk had turned to night deep in the valley, where narrowing cliffs held thick darkness. Both the man and the legendary beast were gone without a trace.

Where did he go?

She had no idea. As far as she knew, there was nothing inside that canyon.

But there must be something. A man like that wouldn't go there for no reason.

Rain fell silently over the dark.

* * *

What lay behind him was already a meaningless picture.

It might matter in the distant future, but that was a problem for then.

The sound of tens of thousands leaving Superwind Cliff echoed continuously, but Dong Bong-soo didn't look back. He just kept a brief thought in the back of his mind.

I hope this becomes interesting.

Splish, splash.

Dong Bong-soo simply walked deeper into the valley.

Rain-washed gray cliffs narrowed and stretched upward. He was heading toward the mid-slope where the cliffs met a mountain that seemed to pierce the sky.

It was the single coordinate he had targeted the moment he entered the canyon.

A pin he personally dropped long ago. The place holding records of the Karma Root Clan-the entrance to the The Heavenly Repository of Records.

If there were answers to how many beings like him drifted into this world and died, or answers to the problems of this world and beyond, they would be behind that door.

Snort.

The Kirin walking ahead suddenly stopped.

Its massive frame twisted to look up at a spot on the mountain. White mane bristled down its spine.

The purple glow under its horn flared bright, as if someone cranked the wick. One hoof stepped back, then froze.

Its fierce eyes locked onto that direction.

Dong Bong-soo stopped and followed its gaze.

In the corner of his vision, the pinned coordinate was blinking at closed proximity.

[Unexplored Location - Coordinates Partially Restored]

Splish, splash.

With every step, the coordinate on the mini-map blinked faster. As the distance closed, it flashed as if out of breath.

Higher up the mid-slope, the rain thinned out.

Superwind Cliff was always raining. Unceasing rain beat the valley and licked the cliffs. But this area was different.

Downpours from above hit an invisible line and slid sideways. No rain fell here. Right in the center of an eternal typhoon, an 'eye of the storm' existed where wind and rain couldn't step foot. It certainly wasn't like this when he first arrived earlier.

Once the rain cleared, a scent hit his nose.

Long-soaked moss, dried ink, rotted paper. The three tangled together, flowing out like a heavy mass of energy.

In a valley that smelled only of wet fish, this scent stood alone.

It was familiar.

Familiar, huh. I came to the right place.

Dong Bong-soo had never smelled it before. His 'body' had.

Kim Rae-won. The exact spot where he once walked up and sensed something.

Reaching it, a fragmented piece of Kim Rae-won's blurred memories naturally replayed.

Karma... there are records...

Qualification...

Just let me check...

"...It's no use."

-No.

The memory drifted on the scent and quickly settled down.

The Kim Rae-won back then couldn't open the door.

Of course, it would open this time.

Because it was Dong Bong-soo standing here, not Kim Rae-won.

Crossing the line where the rain slid away, the source of the scent appeared before his eyes.

A cliff. Another cliff atop a cliff.

There was no door. No crack, no scratch from a hand. Just a flat, unremarkable rock face, blackened by ages of rain, towering like any other cliff.

Yet the pin on the restored mini-map was stuck right in the middle of that rock.

The coordinate swore it was here, but there was nothing in front of him.

Dong Bong-soo had never experienced such a mismatch, but it didn't matter.

If it won't open... I'll just make it open.

The Kirin lowered its massive body toward the empty rock. Unlike when it submitted to Dong Bong-soo, it stretched its neck, snorted, and leaned entirely toward the wall. Purple light trembled at the tip of its horn.

"You felt it too, huh? That something's off."

The scent, the beast, and the pin all pointed to one spot. It wasn't empty.

Is it just not showing up on this side yet?

He had seen hidden sights like this plenty of times.

A Daoist mechanism, a array, a worldline difference, or maybe it needed a key like a Spirit Stone.

For now, there was no telling what was behind it.

Dong Bong-soo stared at the rock for a long time, then smirked.

He could feel it.

He faced the rock and spoke.

"I heard there's some kind of test?"

He threw the question into empty air, but his tone was dead certain he'd get an answer.

In that instant, someone stood between the wall and Dong Bong-soo.

There had been no sign of anyone approaching, no hint of a presence manifesting. The figure was humanoid, but its features were lost in shadow, and the edges of its outline were blurred like ink bleeding in water.

Neither [Faith's Eye] nor [Spiritual Eye] reacted.

An unidentified manifestation.

A existence completely unperceived by the System.

"Interesting."

The entity seemed just as interested, scanning Dong Bong-soo carefully. More than scanning, it looked like it was reconfirming what it already knew.

Soon, a sound echoed out. A layered, crowd-like voice, as if dozens spoke through one mouth.

— You are awake.

There was no room for questions. The still air proved it had been watching the chaos outside all along.

Before Dong Bong-soo could pick his next words, the mountain, the surroundings, the entire Superwind Cliff distorted.

The rain outside the eye of the storm-loud just seconds ago-instantly went silent. It didn't stop. It literally went void.

Instead of light, the heavy scent of moss, ink, and rotted paper rushed in. The air sank under the weight of something that had guarded this place for ages.

At the same time,

Rumbleeeeeee.

Part of the cliff receded. Weathered, discolored rock patterns sank downward, revealing a strange layer underneath-like rock, or the texture of leaves. A massive tunnel carved into the cliff, rapidly expanding.

— Enter. O' Screen Holder (151) who possesses sufficient qualification.

The murmuring of tens of thousands below felt miles away in an instant.

Step, step.

Dong Bong-soo walked inside as if it were natural.

No wet squelching or splashing. Just dry, solid footsteps-proof that this was indeed the Heavenly Repository of Records, the Heavenly Secret Academy.

How many miles did he walk?

He did not know.

A massive door had finally appeared before his eyes. A bizarre door where only his path existed like a trail, while the entire surrounding world seemed to be made of this door itself.

The moment he arrived, the door began to open.

There was no thunderous roar. Even as the two massive doors receded inward, the sound was swallowed up.

What flowed out first wasn't light, but air. Air soaked in that ancient scent where time had stopped.

Step, step.

Dong Bong-soo stepped into the massive dark. The Kirin lowered its horn and followed.

The door closed behind them, sewing the world back together. The receded cliff slid back, and the revealed door sank under the rock patterns. The suspended rain resumed its fall, beating against the mud.

A moment later, all that remained on the mountainside was a plain cliff, no different from any other night.

Leaving behind no trace of what had opened, closed, or swallowed the two whole.

-x-X-x-

When the door closed behind me, the breath I'd held finally filled my chest.

The same thing happened when I exhaled. When I took a step, the sound of my footfall lagged behind.

I would have noticed it immediately if I were outside.

I couldn't tell if my body was moving faster than time, or if time was clinging to my body, stretching out.

I had never been in a place like this before-not in any game, nor in reality.

The darkness was the color of ink, yet my eyes didn't feel strained.

Instead of brightening, endless wisps of black smoke, like another kind of darkness, branched out from the black background. Those wisps formed outlines, one by one, of what could have been walls or pillars.

It wasn't because light was shining on them. The darkness was observing its own form and building itself up.

An inescapable scent also permeated all directions.

Damp moss, dry ink, rotted paper.

None of them were new scents, yet fixed at a certain moment, they neither rotted further nor softened.

Such a... stench that seemed to have aged for thousands of years.

Dong Bong-soo felt that it was the "scent of thought and history."

The specific history of humans, where the thoughts of countless people were written in ink, rotted, and were then endlessly overwritten by the thoughts and histories of others.

Pffft. Pffft.

The Kirin that had followed him in snorted repeatedly. The violet light swirling around its horn was swallowed by the darkness, barely extending a few feet.

Yet, thanks to that, the darkness was clearing just a bit more.

'Absolute darkness, yet my vision remains clear.'

Dong Bong-soo scanned the gloom. The space felt both enclosed and open, yet simultaneously open and enclosed. A path seemed to form, leading somewhere as his gaze swept across the void. Just as he was thinking of heading that way, no less.

An intriguing mechanism.

One thing for certain was that from the moment he entered this place, his thoughts also began interacting with this place as history. All his senses were telling him so.

Thud, steeep, thud.

Listening to the sound of footsteps whose rhythm was entangled despite walking at a steady pace, he kept walking inside, deeper inside.

Soon, along the long corridor made of black smoke, countless wooden doors, precisely the height of his stature, lined up, submerged in darkness.

Only a narrow path to step on was opened, extending straight out between both sides.

Every spot he stepped on opened slightly ahead, then sewed itself shut again behind Dong Bong-soo's back as he passed.

It was not martial arts, a formation, a Daoist array, nor a skill or magic.

He couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was.

He could only feel that it was similar to the cosmic space he had experienced just a short while ago.

'Is it a gap where something like a worldline has diverged?'

A place that could not be clearly explained in the language of mathematics and physics.

It was intriguing, but a space Dong Bong-soo could not bring himself to like. For it was a place where neither calculation nor prediction was possible.

His sharpened five senses, his sixth sense, his intuition, his [Spiritual Eye], and his [Faith's Eye] all scanned the surroundings in unison as he moved forward.

Huu, uhuu, huaaa...

Thud... thud... thud...

His steady breaths and footsteps played wildly out of sync within this place.

'As expected, space-time is distorted.'

He had never experienced such a sensation before.

However.

Blink, blink.

Unlike this space, there was a world strictly controlled, reacting exactly as expected. A world serving solely and completely for Dong Bong-soo.

The System remained as steady as ever.

In the corner of his vision, the What is Hero system flickered incessantly, searching for a single coordinate all this time.

Even though it clearly indicated he had arrived, the pin refused to settle down.

The mini-map failed to draw out where this was to the end, while the coordinate spun idly by itself over an empty spot.

It was likely because the inside here was outside the System's grid.

Step, steeep, steeeep.

With every measured step, the doors to his left and right grew more sparse.

And beyond them, another vast space began to vaguely emerge from the gloom.

'Is it a bookshelf, or a library?'

The darkness didn't reveal their forms completely, so I couldn't see what kind of books were stacked with my eyes. Yet I could feel something immense stored deep inside the very weight of the stagnant air said so.

If there were records and accounts of what the heavens had hidden away, they would surely be found around that vicinity.

Right at the moment he was having such thoughts-

Something stood where the space ahead had been empty, appearing without a trace or a sign. It was the same being that had suddenly materialized between the cliff and him outside.

However, it was not the same as before. A single outline shimmered, with multiple shadows overlapping and brushing past its edges. The form scattered into various shapes, then immediately coalesced back into one. Countless somethings stood layered upon each other in a single spot. That, at least, was clear.

Its features were lost in shadow, impossible to discern.

Dong Bong-soo stared directly at the figure. Just as before, neither his [Faith's Eye] nor his [Spiritual Eye] could read anything from it.

And then.

From somewhere, something right before becoming a sound began to cluster and rise.

— Remarkable indeed. To have walked all the way here without a hint of weariness.

A voice, a chorus of many merged into one, gently stirred the stagnant air. It carried a hint of welcome, yet also the tone of a merchant appraising and haggling over a piece of merchandise.

Dong Bong-soo's gaze fixed steadily on the being, a flickering mass of countless overlapping shadows.

"Where is this place?"

— It is a space yet not a space, a time yet not a time, a place like an error of space-time.

"An error of space-time?"

— Indeed. Therefore, do not attempt to measure it. Every scale you have measured with is useless inside here, and no measurement is possible.

Before those words could fully fade, the next sound followed.

— Time does not flow here. The laws of your world do not reach within this threshold. We merely exist open to places throughout the world as an error, and you have simply passed through one of them and entered.

"That means there are laws unique to this place, then."

The shadows flickered, and the voices of many gathered into a single intent.

— Indeed. We do not stand on this side before being summoned. That is one of the laws here.

The end of those words spread into the darkness, splitting into echoes of a different tune.

—The inside here is entirely different from your world. The 'outside' from which you were separated reaches here.

You, and outside.

Dong Bong-soo quietly recited the two words to himself and silently waited for the next words.

Beside him, Kirin let out a low cry; it seemed the creature was also chewing over the meaning of those words. The purple light beneath its horn shook finely.

It was not a cry of guarding against an unfamiliar place.

Soon, the shadow outline examined him for a moment and continued speaking.

— You have already glimpsed that outside. The darkness pooled between worlds. That empty void that appeared to hold nothing.

Dong Bong-soo's eyes narrowed.

The darkness. Was it referring to the place I fell into earlier due to the dimensional rift in the GOR world?

"What is that dark place?"

The answer didn't come right away. But the wait wasn't that long either.

— The gap connecting world to world. The boundary separating dimension from dimension. Beyond that is not yet your concern.

Even though it said beyond his concern, Dong Bong-soo could roughly understand.

It's a place like a tunnel between worlds.

"Then what are you?"

The sound split into several branches again. This time, it didn't gather easily into a single intent.

Countless cries carried in a single mouth barely formed one statement.

— We are those who walked the same path as you and stopped at its end.

The cries of many subsided softly.

— We are those who pooled here, with nowhere left to go. Those who let go of life themselves, those who failed to reach the end. A collective entity where tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of souls are tangled together in one body.

If it felt like a single voice, it became ten thousand, and if it felt like ten thousand, it became one again. A different cry was steeped in every sound, yet all of them pointed toward one place.

Those divergent threads gathered together, finally producing a single name.

— If a name is required, call us this: The Body of Ten Thousand Souls and Ten Thousand Karma....The Karma Root Collective (萬魂萬業體).

Dong Bong-soo twisted one side of his lips into a dry, wry smile.

The Karma Root Collective.

"You mean the Descent Clan who killed and died, gathered and merged, until they became a single mass?"

— ....

All kinds of flickering occurred among the shadows, but in the end, they failed to combine into a single voice.

Though they claimed to walk the same path, they were beings who could never truly share it.

"You're wrong."

There was no rise or fall in Dong Bong-soo's voice.

"You stopped there. I won't."

— Any being possessing a soul has its end. Whether meeting demise as a collective of each world or being sealed away as an anomaly like us...

"A soul, huh. So you're saying even I have one."

Dong Bong-soo knew the answer but he still asked.

— Indeed. Even a mere bystander like you belongs to the raw materials of the world either as a is a spiritual entity or a soul entity.

A fascinating way to put it. Raw materials of the world.

— The total mass of everything in the world is conserved from its beginning to its end. You cannot escape it either. Fulfill your life as a raw materials.

Heh, hehehehe.

What an amusing thought.

"I am human."

— ....

"A dull human who feels that humans are ridiculous, terrifying, amusing, enjoyable, and beautiful."

— Indeed. You are merely a worthless human. You have only reached this point by being more and more insane than all the other worthless souls. Humans are essentially cogs in the world.

"Does that mean human strength cannot surpass the limits of the world, realm, and dimensions?"

—Indeed. Because all total mass must be conserved, it is what is meant for humans.

Human.

In his entire life, Dong Bong-soo had never once properly recognized himself as a human for a single moment.

Just as he said, to him, humans were merely objects of hunting and observation that were ridiculous, terrifying, amusing, enjoyable, and beautiful.

That was why he could commit countless slaughters, and why he could become strong.

However.

He was now certain of one thing.

"Everything is possible."

Though he had many human habits remaining in him, he recognized that one most human trait among them was deeply rooted within him.

"Everything is possible until it is proven impossible. And even that impossibility is only true as of the present. Everything becomes possible eventually."

— It is forbidden.

"What is?"

— The Law of Absolute Conservation forbids it.

"Is that the god of the world?"

— No, nature.

Kukukukukukukuk.

Humanity versus Nature.

Man Vs Wild, huh.

It was a dynamic seen often.

And humanity had always treated that nature same way.

"Good. Then I'll just have to overcome and kill that nature."

That is the sole instinct and law of humanity.

-x-X-x-

'Subdue gods and nature through power and slaughter.'

Silence.

It was dizzying.

Then, a single thread of intent drifted out.

The Karma Root Collective offered no response to Dong Bong-soo's declaration for a moment. Only the shadows flickered for a while.

— Impossible.Humans are nothing more than a fraction of nature. In the end, no matter how desperately a single hair struggles, it cannot shake the body it belongs to.

"I'll know once I try. After all, nature is nothing more than variations of 'eating' and 'being eaten'."

— ....

Even as he spoke, Dong Bong-soo methodically stored every single thread of intent transmitted by the Karma Root Collective, stacking them neatly into his frontal lobe.

The outside, the scattered doors, the will of darkness, the law of total quantity. He placed each concept onto his own scale, weighing their value one by one. He even calculated whether this entity before his eyes was an ally to join hands with, mere data, or prey to be harvested someday.

There was no need to rush an answer. This much was enough for now.

— Naive, stubborn, and even more arrogant. As expected of a Screen Holder worthy of the title.

"You've been calling me a Screen Holder since earlier. How does that qualify me for anything?"

The entity wavered its shadows, spreading outward in all directions as it drew closer. Countless eyes seemed to gather into one, fixing directly on him.

— The stopped and the unstopped. You and we branched from the same root, only to walk in opposite directions.

Shadows overlapped upon one another, flickering.

— We laid down our lives because we had nowhere left to go, but you do not know how to stop. A madman driven by greed, endlessly advancing by killing and killing to swell his own body. In the eyes of Great Nature, you are nothing but a disease, a act of pure madness.

A low resonance supported those words.

— Yet that very disease, that mad stride may be the qualification to open this door. Only those who never stop can stand before us. Others have stood here before, but the door never opened. Not because they failed the test, but because they lacked the vessel to even qualify for it.

Dong Bong-soo listened silently, then looked around and murmured softly.

"You didn't came to test me. You were simply here, and I simply came here."

Something resembling a faint smile mixed into the chorus of weeping. It was neither a scolding nor a welcome, but the tone used toward someone long known.

— Perhaps. Either way, the fact that you came here of your own free will does not change. So there is no need to try so hard to draw a line between us. Now that you have crossed the threshold, you too are one of us, qualified to be here.

Dong Bong-soo cut his response short.

"I hate being lumped together with others. I didn't come here to stop like you guys. I'm just passing through."

The sound fell silent for a long moment.

— Passing through...

The tail of that intent sank low.

— If so, then hurry. The boundaries in all directions are collapsing. The very frame confining us has long since begun to shake. Before long, more will spill into your world.

Spilling in.

Dong Bong-soo chewed over the word. He had no way of knowing what, how, or why things were spilling in. However, for things to spill meant there would be that much more to harvest.

"More, you say."

The end of his softly repeated words trailed off slightly.

"That's not bad news."

— 觀顧臀爆,講銷觀...!

— Ξφθς ςαζψ ώρρξ....

— Жъдгы щшчъ, брвуо гхы...!

— ㄅㄆㄇㄈㄉㄊㄋㄌㄍㄎ....

— ღჭყნ ხშძ ჟჭ...!

— 聶雲鶴 滲馨.....

Until now, the Karma Root Collective had simply received whatever Dong Bong-soo threw and answered what he asked. This time, however, the roles were reversed. At his trailing remark about the news not being bad, the collective did not let it pass, unleashing a barrage of chaotic screams.

Of course, it was an incomprehensible string of characters.

Tens of thousands of shadows flickered wildly again around the edge of its outline. Repeating the cycle of scattering and gathering, this time they coalesced into a single body, pressing their weight toward him.

Dong Bong-soo neither blocked nor dodged it. After all, it wasn't killing intent.

He simply stood facing it, waiting for the next intent.

—Do you know what you are?

It was a question, but not one expecting an answer. In a tone suggesting it didn't matter what Dong Bong-soo replied, it simply read down what it had already seen and judged.

— A thing rooted in karma. A body that feeds on killing. A baby that never grows old. A mass of filth and impurities, burdened with the single-minded obsession to grow stronger.

Those words descended one by one. There was no rebuke, no praise. They simply flowed out, level and steady from somewhere in the middle of that tangled mass, as if measuring something.

Dong Bong-soo just listened quietly.

There was nothing new. Regardless of the tone, it was all a fact he had already acknowledged.

He had once replied that no one asks a nursing baby why it sucks its mother's milk. A baby that never grows old, a body that feeds on killing-these were no different from the truths Dong Bong-soo had harbored alone. This time, he was simply hearing the words he kept inside spoken by someone else.

Dong Bong-soo replied in a low voice.

"Not a single word is wrong. So, does that pose a problem on the path I am walking?"

The question went unanswered. Instead, another statement came.

— You are not the only one.

The resonance at the end of the sentence grew heavy.

— Countless beings like you have crossed over into this world. The vast majority failed to walk their path to the end and were submerged within us.

Even in the voice addressing you now, the portion of such beings is mixed in.

"That means..."

Dong Bong-soo's eyes flashed for a moment.

"Are you asking me to kill you right now?"

— 廳廳廳 轟醫戀戀...!

— Щъгрх! Щъгрх! Щъгрх!

— Ξφθςς άζζψψ ώώ...!

— कठ झदध रढ...!

— ԾՁժխ պըֆթ ղճ....

— ㄓㄜア!メルㄎ!ラメ!

— 獻儿讀ъ...!

Once again, tens of thousands of shadows flickered violently around the outline. Scattering and gathering repeatedly, they coalesced once more into a single shadow spanning dozens of zhang, sweeping over him long and wide.

— If you are planning to swallow us, put that thought away.

— You cannot swallow us, and we cannot accept you. Our realms are different, and what lies within is different.

There was nothing to hide, so Dong Bong-soo didn't bother to feign an expression. He simply looked up at them emotionlessly.

Can I win? No, are they even opponents I can fight in the first place? Are they prey I can gain experience points from?

The questions remained unanswered.

Yet he felt it intuitively. Even as he was now, they were neither something he could swallow in a single bite nor cut down with a single stroke.

— Even if you swallow us, there is nothing to gain. As long as you possess that power and remain divided in two, you will ultimately lie down beside us.

You will eventually lie down beside us....Divided in two...

So they knew something after all.

He wasn't surprised; it simply piqued his curiosity.

"How do you know that?

— Because it is simply the providence of nature. I-we-are errors of nature, but also merely components of that providence. We cannot escape its boundaries, and thus we know.

The providence of nature, huh.

He was curious, but this wasn't a puzzle piece he could force into place right now. It would reveal itself naturally when it meshed with the other pieces someday.

Dong Bong-soo shifted his question to a more urgent matter.

"You said earlier that all directions were collapsing. What exactly is falling apart?"

— The path.

— The gap connecting world to world. The boundary separating dimension from dimension.

Is it saying that tunnel between worlds I experienced before is collapsing?

"What's causing it?"

The collective withdrew its intent for a moment. Before long, however, the will of ten thousand souls transmitted into Dong Bong-soo's mind once more.

— Things from the outside, like us, are gnawing at the seams of the world from the deepest reaches of your heavens.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

The moment those words fell, something stirred deep within the darkness.

It was not just one. The low vibration of countless entities turning in unison echoed through the space.

The darkness was so absolute that the walls were invisible, and the echo circled them from all directions without beginning or end.

Ever since the door opened, every sound inside this Academy had been distorted. Even his own footsteps trailed behind, stretched and blurred, sounding like someone else's. Yet now, the presence of some new space-neither blurred nor stretched-vibrated through the air.

The moment the phrase "thing from the outside was conveyed through intent, the entities crouched deep within responded and turned their bodies.

Why they responded could not be known.

Whether it was simply the providence of nature, as the Karma Root Collective put it, or if there was another reason.

Only one thing was certain: in this darkness, or perhaps connected to this Heavenly Secret Academy, the entity before his eyes was not the only one.

— It is a disaster in the form of a woman. It was a disaster from the moment it crossed over, and now it has grown far larger than it was then.

"A woman? A disaster?"

To Dong Bong-soo's counterquestion, ten thousand sounds converged into a single stream.

— Indeed. And what it devours is not merely this space. It devours yesterday and tomorrow as well.

"A being that devours... even yesterday and tomorrow?"

* * *

Ascending and ascending to the very edge of the sky where there was nowhere higher to climb. There lay a deep abyss to which even the immortals had never given a name.

Snow stopped falling and drifted back up into the sky. Beside it, rain that had yet to arrive fell ahead of its time. The sun retraced its path, rising from where it had set, and stars twinkled in broad daylight. While hail poured down on one side, a gentle spring rain misted the other. Yesterday and tomorrow lost their sequence, flowing tangled together in a single sky.

In the midst of it all, a mountain towered high.

It was made of neither soil nor stone. It was a mountain formed from sacred beasts with crane necks, horned monsters, and immortals in flowing robes, piled high upon one another.

Every single one was coated in frost, withered and dry like an empty shell.

At the very peak of that mountain of corpses, a woman sat slumped.

Her hair was white, her skin so pale it was half-translucent. Resting her chin on one raised knee, she looked down with bored indifference at an immortal sprawled beneath her feet.

"Are immortals merely at this level? As expected, for me..."

The woman raised her head, her gaze sweeping the surroundings. As far as the eye could see, there was not a single living thing.

"It seems you're the only one left."

She sat there like that for a long time. The same day came and went over and over again.

[Kill them. Kill them all.]

"Shut up. It's going to be like that forever anyway."