Chapter 44. Great Mountain Pressing the Summit
Dong Bong-su's dance only came to its full stop when the morning sun finally rose. That moment coincided exactly with the end of the meeting at the Imperial King Hall. Of course, there was no way for Dong Bong-su himself to know that.
"Hu ...."
Dong Bong-su slowly opened his eyes as he exhaled deeply.
His entire body was drenched in sweat from the violent dance, yet his eyes alone had become deeper and calmer than before.
Not only had his level reached 10 today, but he had also, unexpectedly, come to understand the 'taste' of the sword.
From now on, his thrusts would no longer be mere thrusts, and his slashes would no longer be mere slashes.
The thrusts and slashes unfolding from his hands were finally crossing over from mere sword 'handling' into the realm of sword 'technique'.
But to reach the realms of law or path... wasn't that still unimaginably far away?
Unless he learned properly, reaching that realm would likely take an extremely long time.
"Huuh, huuh."
Even though he continued deep breathing, Dong Bong-su's breath remained rough, refusing to settle easily.
When he was immersed in the dance, he hadn't noticed it, but the moment he snapped out of it, exhaustion surged into his entire body all at once.
'I still can't rest.'
He couldn't rest.
There was still work left to do.
In fact, what he needed to do from now on might be even more important than the sword dance he had performed all night.
The changes brought about by leveling up.
He needed to check those.
Normally, he would have done this the moment he returned to his room, but because he felt compelled to immediately reconstruct yesterday's battle, he had postponed it.
Now that task was mostly finished, it was time to see what kind of changes had arrived with three level-ups.
Click.
As usual, Dong Bong-su opened the status window first.
The stats had increased by a fixed amount, just as always.
This part was no different from usual—exactly the growth corresponding to three levels.
Based on his experience so far, this amount of growth was more than enough to represent the difference between a middle school student and a high school student.
Dong Bong-su knew very well that this difference was by no means small.
Next, he opened the inventory window.
"...…"
There were no changes whatsoever.
Just in case, he examined it carefully once more, but there were no newly granted weapons, gear, or items.
If he had to find something added to the inventory, there was one thing.
That was the corpses of Go San-gong and his squad members.
He had swept up all the remaining body fragments after writing the warning message.
Of course, there was now no way to tell who was Go San-gong and who were the squad members.
Shredded rag-like pieces were inherently difficult to recognize in their original form.
He swept his eyes over the entire inventory one last time.
Even though he had reached level 10, New Murim Online hadn't bestowed any special gift upon him.
It wasn't so much disappointment as it was expectation.
The number 10 wasn't particularly special compared to other numbers, but at the very least, modern Earth was a decimal-based world.
If no major change occurred at intervals of 10, people found it strange.
Money was commonly divided in units of 10, and even age was routinely categorized in tens.
Especially in games like this, developers usually introduced some meaningful change every 10 levels to satisfy player expectations.
But there were always exceptions.
He wasn't disappointed.
He hadn't finished checking all the changes yet.
"Hu-."
Dong Bong-su steadied his rough breathing once more and closed the inventory window.
Click-.
This time, it was the equipment window.
Only then did he discover a unique change that hadn't existed before.
'Hm?'
At the top-right corner of the equipment window, a small round button had appeared.
At the center of the button, the characters "spiritual beast" were clearly engraved.
Beep-.
Without hesitation, Dong Bong-su pressed the button.
Along with a familiar mechanical sound, a strange window opened that looked like a combination of the status window and the equipment window.
Aside from being a fusion of those two windows, there was another difference compared to his own interface.
The character slot, which should have contained the owner of the equipment and stats, was empty.
Even though it was his first time seeing this window and he wasn't particularly familiar with games, Dong Bong-su could easily infer why the character slot was empty.
The reason was simple.
He hadn't recruited a spiritual beast yet.
This was something he could tell without even trying.
True to its name, the owner of this spiritual beast window could only be a spiritual beast.
The problem was that Dong Bong-su had no way of guessing what exactly constituted a spiritual beast.
Was it the common mercenary concept found in typical games, or did it literally refer to animals or objects imbued with spirituality?
That was something he would have to confirm in the future.
Beep-.
After briefly examining the spiritual beast window, he closed it.
No matter how much he looked at it now, there was nothing more he could learn, and there were no spiritual beasts here that he could recruit anyway.
If he were to encounter a spiritual beast that could be acquired or equipped, the system would surely notify him in some way.
There was no need to obsess over it right now.
Outside, daylight had almost fully broken, and he didn't have much time left.
Soon enough, the Namgung Family would be thrown into chaos over what he had done yesterday.
When that happened, he wouldn't have the leisure to calmly inspect windows like the spiritual beast interface here.
He moved on to the next window—the skill window.
Click-.
When he opened the skill window, one new skill had been added.
[Three Talents Sword Art 3rd form Great Mountain Pressing the Summit L1:1
Proficiency: 0%]
A sword art extremely common in the martial world.
Even ordinary people without internal energy can learn it.
Great Mountain Pressing the Summit is an enhanced version of a downward strike.
All action bonuses of this skill are related to the proficiency of related skills and whether sword energy / sword force is invoked.
Current applied level: L1:1 (The player can adjust this skill's level.)
Vertical strike range bonus: 1%
Vertical strike attack power bonus: 1%
Vertical strike casting speed bonus: 0%
True energy consumption per use: 30 JP
It was the 3rd form of the Three Talents Sword Art, following Sweeping the Thousand Armies and Straight Piercing the Yellow Dragon.
Since it was the "three" Talents Sword Art, Great Mountain Pressing the Summit was likely the final form.
'If I had had this Great Mountain Pressing the Summit when I fought Go San-gong, it would've been much easier.'
Because he had mainly used thrusts like Straight Piercing the Yellow Dragon and horizontal slashes like Sweeping the Thousand Armies, his swordplay had inevitably become monotonous.
Now, at least for the basic sword movements, he could receive skill bonuses across the board.
Horizontal slash, vertical strike, thrust.
For all those movements, he now possessed both an active skill (Three Talents Sword Art) and passive skills.
Even so, the active skill Three Talents Sword Art was honestly less of a set of "forms" and more like a reinforced version of basic movements.
In the future, the true foundation of Dong Bong-su's swordsmanship would probably become the Windless Sword Art that had been born earlier when he imitated the Heavenly Wind Sword Art.
If thrusts and slashes were layered with passives on top of Windless Sword Art, and further enhanced by the active Three Talents Sword Art, his sword strikes might even surpass the Heavenly Wind Sword Art that Go San-gong had used.
After examining the now-complete Three Talents Sword Art from every angle following the addition of Great Mountain Pressing the Summit, Dong Bong-su still didn't close the skill window and continued inspecting it more carefully.
He had expected something extraordinary to appear upon reaching level 10, but the changes in the skill window were less impressive than anticipated.
'It can't be helped.'
Beep-.
In the end, he closed the skill window.
To be honest, the changes so far were rather underwhelming for reaching level 10.
What filled that unmet expectation was, unexpectedly, the very next window—one he hadn't anticipated at all.
The quest window.
Click-.
Normally, after this short mechanical sound, a loud 'Critical Error' message window should have appeared.
But.
Strangely enough, this time the error window didn't appear.
The reason the 'Critical Error' window usually appeared was simply because quest NPCs did not exist in New Murim Online.
'Why isn't the error window appearing?'
Dong Bong-su couldn't yet fully understand what was happening.
In his vision, the transparent quest window was still filled with various quests, each marked with a large X.
It wasn't as if nonexistent quest NPCs had suddenly fallen from the sky.
If that were the case, those quests should have all become solvable at once.
The cause clearly lay elsewhere.
After briefly considering several possibilities, only one plausible explanation remained.
To confirm it, he quickly dragged the long scroll bar beside the quests downward.
But the endless sequence of Xs continued.
Patiently, he continued scrolling down.
At last, the scroll bar reached the bottom, and the final quest at the very bottom entered Dong Bong-su's view.
"...!"
Among the countless incomplete quests, there was a single quest at the bottom of the quest window that was not marked with an X.
[1st Job Advancement Quest: Wanderer]
Tester-exclusive class.
Quest completion condition:
Achieve 100 kills of enemies Lv. 10 or higher.
Current quest progress (completed / required): 0 / 100
Originally, Murim Online had three types of first-job classes that users could choose from.
Martial Hero, demonic being, and heretical type.
Depending on which class one chose, one would naturally be assigned to a faction during large-scale group battles similar to sieges in other games—the Orthodox–Demonic–Heretical War.
In short, the first job functioned much like a racial choice in other games.
However, in reality, Murim Online's system had one more class.
Wanderer.
Originally, the wanderer was one of the first-job classes created during Murim Online's development stage.
It was a class designed for players who, even upon reaching level 10, couldn't decide which faction they belonged to.
That was the wanderer.
Later, as Murim Online's development neared completion and its official launch approached, the system was fully structured around the three-faction conflict of orthodox, demonic, and heretical paths.
At that point, the neutral wanderer—neither here nor there—was discarded at launch.
From the game's thematic perspective, the top executives decided that a class belonging to no faction was unnecessary, and that decision was reflected in the game.
However, the development team felt reluctant to completely remove the well-crafted wanderer class.
So, for the interest and enjoyment of testers, they left the wanderer class 'sealed' within the system.
After all, faction alignment had no real meaning for testers, and as long as they could test more efficiently, that was sufficient.
Additionally, if the game were ever expanded in the future, it would be convenient to reuse the already fully tested wanderer class—another calculation on the developers' part.
Thus, after the game was opened to the public, that seal was lifted exclusively for testers.
'Class advancement, huh.'