Chapter 44: Mount Tai Pressing Down
Dong Bong-su’s dance finally came to an end only when the morning sun rose. It happened just as the meeting in the Hall of the Emperor concluded.
Of course, Dong Bong-su had no way of knowing that.
“Phew…….”
Taking a deep breath, Dong Bong-su slowly opened his eyes.
His entire body was drenched in sweat from the intense dance, yet his eyes had become deeper and more ordinary than before.
Not only had he reached Level 10 today, but he had also unexpectedly come to understand the “taste” of the sword. From now on, his thrust would no longer be merely a thrust, and his slash would no longer be merely a slash. The thrusts and slashes performed by his hands had finally crossed beyond mere sword-handling and entered the realm of sword-art.
However, to reach the realm of Technique or the Dao…
That was still unimaginably far away.
Unless he found someone to teach him, it would likely take an extremely long time to reach such a realm.
“Hoo… Hoo…”
Even as he continued taking deep breaths, Dong Bong-su’s breathing refused to settle.
He had not noticed while immersed in that state of complete absorption, but now that he had come out of it, exhaustion crashed over his entire body all at once.
I still can’t rest.
He could not rest.
There was still something he had to do.
Perhaps what lay ahead was even more important than the sword dance he had performed throughout the night.
The changes brought by leveling up.
He needed to verify them.
Normally, this would have been the first thing he checked after returning to his room. However, he had felt compelled to reconstruct yesterday’s battle immediately, so he had postponed it.
Now that the reconstruction was more or less complete, it was finally time to see what changes had come from gaining three levels.
Click.
As always, Dong Bong-su opened the Status Window first.
His stats had increased by the usual amount.
There was nothing different this time either. They had risen exactly as much as expected from gaining three levels.
Judging from his experience so far, this amount of growth was more than enough to make the difference between a middle school student and a high school student.
Dong Bong-su knew very well that such a gap was anything but small.
Next, he opened the Inventory Window.
“……”
Nothing had changed.
Just in case, he inspected it carefully once more, but there were no newly granted weapons, equipment, or items.
If there was anything newly added to the inventory, there was only one thing.
The corpses of Go San-gong and his squad members.
After writing the warning message, he had swept up every remaining piece of their bodies into his inventory. Of course, there was now no way to tell which scraps had belonged to Go San-gong and which had belonged to the others.
After all, rags torn into countless shreds no longer retained their original form.
He swept his gaze across the entire inventory one last time.
Although he had reached Level 10, New Murim Online had given him no special reward.
Rather than expecting one, he had simply assumed there would be one.
The number ten itself was no different from any other number, but modern Earth was built upon the decimal system.
If nothing major happened every ten levels, people found it strangely unnatural.
Money was counted in tens, and even age was commonly divided into ten-year intervals.
Especially in games like this, meaningful changes were usually introduced every ten levels to satisfy players’ expectations.
But exceptions always existed.
He was not disappointed.
After all, he had not finished checking everything yet.
“Hoo—.”
Dong Bong-su steadied his ragged breathing once more before closing the Inventory Window.
Click.
Next came the Equipment Window.
There, he finally discovered a unique change that had not existed before.
Hm?
A small, round button had appeared in the upper-right corner of the Equipment Window.
At the center of the button, the words Spirit Companion were clearly engraved.
Beep.
Without hesitation, Dong Bong-su pressed the button.
Accompanied by the familiar mechanical sound, a strange window opened that resembled a fusion of the Status Window and the Equipment Window.
Aside from combining those two windows, however, there was one crucial difference from his own interface.
The character slot, which should have displayed the owner of the equipment and stats was completely empty.
That was the key difference.
Although it was his first time seeing such a window and he was far from familiar with games, Dong Bong-su could easily infer why the character slot was empty.
The reason was simple.
He had not yet recruited a Spirit Companion.
He did not even need to experiment to figure that much out.
True to its name, the owner of this Spirit Companion Window could only be a Spirit Companion.
The real problem was that Dong Bong-su had no idea what exactly qualified as a Spirit Companion.
Did it refer to something like the mercenary systems commonly found in games?
Or did it literally mean spiritually awakened beasts or objects, just as the term itself implied?
That was something he would have to find out later.
Beep.
After examining the Spirit Companion Window for a moment, he closed it.
There was nothing more he could learn from it right now, nor was there any Spirit Companion here worth recruiting.
Most likely, if he ever encountered a Spirit Companion that could be obtained or equipped, the system would notify him in one way or another.
There was no reason to dwell on it now.
Outside, dawn had nearly broken, and he did not have much time left.
Sooner or later, the Namgung Family would be thrown into complete chaos over what he had done yesterday.
When that happened, he certainly would not have the luxury of leisurely examining a Spirit Companion Window.
He moved on to the next menu.
The Skill Window.
Click.
As soon as he opened it, he found that a new skill had been added.
[Three Talents Sword Art (三才劍法) Third Form: Mount Tai Pressing Down (泰山壓頂) Lv.1
Proficiency: 0%]
A sword art so common that it can be learned even by ordinary people without internal energy.
Mount Tai Pressing Down is an enhanced version of a downward slash.
All action bonuses of this skill depend on the proficiency of related skills and whether Sword Energy or Sword Aura is activated.
Current Applied Level: Lv.1 (The player may adjust this skill’s level.)
Vertical Strike Range Bonus: 1%
Vertical Strike Attack Bonus: 1%
Vertical Strike Casting Speed Bonus: 0%
Vital Energy Consumption per Use: 30 JP
Following Sweeping a Thousand Armies and Straight Thrusting Yellow Dragon, this was the Third Form of the Three Talents Sword Art: Mount Tai Pressing Down.
Since it was the Three Talents Sword Art, this was probably its final form.
If I had possessed Mount Tai Pressing Down when fighting Go San-gong, the battle would have been much easier.
Because he had relied mainly on Straight Thrusting Yellow Dragon for thrusts and Sweeping a Thousand Armies for horizontal slashes, his swordplay had inevitably been repetitive.
Now, at least for the fundamental movements of swordsmanship, every action would receive skill bonuses.
Horizontal slash.
Vertical strike.
Thrust.
He now possessed both Active Skills—the Three Talents Sword Art—and Passive Skills covering every one of those movements.
Even so, to be honest, the Active Skill that was the Three Talents Sword Art felt less like an actual martial form and more like an enhanced version of basic movements.
From now on, the true foundation of Dong Bong-su’s swordsmanship would likely become the Windless Sword Art, born from his imitation of the Heavenly Wind Sword Art earlier.
If the passive bonuses for thrusting, slashing, and similar actions, together with the Active Skill effects of the Three Talents Sword Art, were layered onto the Windless Sword Art…
Then perhaps his sword strikes would surpass even the Heavenly Wind Sword Art used by Go San-gong.
After carefully examining the now-complete Three Talents Sword Art with the addition of Mount Tai Pressing Down, Dong Bong-su still did not close the Skill Window.
He scrutinized it even more thoroughly.
He had expected that reaching Level 10 would unlock some extraordinary skill, but the changes in the Skill Window had been rather underwhelming.
It can’t be helped.
Beep.
In the end, he closed the Skill Window.
To be honest, everything he had gained so far felt rather unimpressive for reaching Level 10.
Unexpectedly, it was the very next window, the one he had never anticipated that made up for those disappointing expectations.
The Quest Window.
Click.
Normally, after that brief mechanical sound, the noisy Critical Error message would immediately appear.
But…
This time, strangely enough, no error message appeared.
The Critical Error window had always appeared simply because NPCs required for quests did not exist within New Murim Online.
Why didn’t the error window appear?
Dong Bong-su still had no idea what had happened.
The transparent Quest Window still displayed countless quests marked with giant X symbols.
There was no way quest NPCs that had never existed had suddenly fallen from the sky.
If that had happened, every one of those quests should have become completable all at once.
The cause clearly lay elsewhere.
Dong Bong-su briefly considered several possibilities, but only one seemed plausible.
To confirm it, he quickly dragged the long scrollbar beside the quests downward.
Yet the endless sequence of X marks continued.
Patiently, he kept scrolling.
Finally, the scrollbar reached the bottom.
The very last quest caught his eye.
“……!”
Among the countless unfinished quests, one quest at the very bottom was not marked with an X.
[First Advancement Quest: Wanderer]
Tester-exclusive class.
Quest Completion Requirement: Kill 100 enemies of Level 10 or higher.
Current Progress (Completed / Required): 0 / 100
Originally, Murim Online had three first-tier classes that players could choose from.
Righteous Hero, Demon, and Evil Kind.
Whichever class a player selected naturally determined which faction they would belong to during the great Orthodox–Unorthodox–Demonic faction wars, a form of large-scale group battle similar to castle sieges in other games.
In other words, these first-tier classes essentially served the same purpose as races in other games.
However, Murim Online’s system had actually included one additional class.
Wanderer.
Originally, Wanderer had been one of the first-tier classes created during Murim Online’s development.
It existed for players who reached Level 10 but still could not decide which faction they wished to join.
That was the purpose of the Wanderer class.
However, by the time Murim Online completed development and officially launched, the game’s system had been fully established around the three-way conflict between the Orthodox, Unorthodox, and Demonic factions.
As a result, the Wanderer—a class that belonged to neither side—was discarded before release.
The CEO had insisted that a class unaffiliated with any faction simply did not fit the game’s theme, and that decision was reflected in the final product.
Even so, the development team felt it was wasteful to remove such a well-designed class entirely.
So, for the enjoyment and curiosity of the testers, they left the Wanderer class hidden within the system—sealed away.
After all, the faction system meant nothing to testers.
As long as they could test the game more efficiently, that was enough.
The developers had also calculated that if the game were ever expanded in the future, they could easily reuse the already fully tested Wanderer class.
Thus, after the game was released to the public, that seal remained in place for everyone except the testers.
An advancement…
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