Chapter 109 - Dueling Hammer Monster

There had been no warning. He simply vanished from Murim without a trace, just as he had appeared.

One account claimed that one of the Twenty Great Masters under Heaven had sought him out and defeated him. Another rumor said that a major sect's martial force had attacked him en masse and killed him...

All sorts of rumors had circulated at the time, but ultimately nothing was ever established.

And so he was forgotten.

Yet now, ten years later, he had suddenly appeared at the Murim Alliance. Bukgung was hardly a common surname, and if its bearer was a master capable of moving like that...

The odds were very high that this Buk Gunggi was that very man.

“Then that man from earlier... Dong Gwangcheon. Do you think he's his disciple?” Ha Seonhyang asked.

Hwa Yeji immediately shook her head.

“No, I don't think so. Buk Gunggi said...”

["To think you were working as a mere mercenary with that talent. What a shame. What a shame."]

["This fellow lived in the rough, smelly north, so he knows nothing of manners. I hope a lovely young lady such as yourself will forgive him."]

“That's what he said.”

“A mercenary? A vagabond the army pays to hire whenever it needs one? That's what you mean, right?”

“Yes, presumably. It seems this Dong Gwangcheon made his living as a vagabond in the north.”

This time, Ha Seonhyang shook her head at Hwa Yeji's words. She puffed out her cheeks, let the air out, and said,

“Huh? But does that make sense? I saw it clearly too. His Slender Willow Drift was really, really natural. He might even be better at it than I am. How could some mere vagabond possibly do that?”

Her words brought the earlier scene back to Hwa Yeji.

Yes, that was right. What he had performed then had unmistakably been...

“Slender Willow Drift... It was definitely Slender Willow Drift. He should only have seen it once... yet it was textbook.”

“Oh, can you even say he'd seen it once? He just sprang up and suddenly brushed past you, Senior Sister.”

True. It scarcely qualified as seeing it once. He had simply improvised on the spot.

That made it all the more impossible.

“Yes. It makes no sense. No sense at all. And with external martial arts alone, at that.”

“What? External martial arts alone? What do you mean, Senior Sister?”

“The Dueling Hammer fellow said...”

["I'm not looking down on you, brat, but merely passable external martial arts won't be enough to match those fellows over there."]

“That's what he said.”

“How could that... I can't believe it.”

Hard to believe. No other words could adequately express how they felt.

And yet what Dong Gwangcheon had performed was unmistakably the movement technique Slender Willow Drift.

They had never seen, heard of, or even imagined someone executing a movement technique to that level without Internal Energy. All the more so after nothing more than a fleeting glimpse.

That made it even more absurd.

“He probably learned properly from that Bukgung... fellow? Oh, let's call him a great hero. He must have learned from Great Hero Bukgung. Otherwise, something like that couldn't be possible.”

“Well... is that really something one can learn?”

“True. You have a point. Hehe. There's no one like that in the Mount Hua Sect, either.”

Ha Seonhyang grinned lightly, amused by something, but the implications were anything but trivial. Not a single person in the mighty Mount Hua Sect could do that.

Dong Gwangcheon had done it.

An unknown mercenary from the north.

He intrigued her.

As much as that man over there did.

Jong Jihang once again entered Hwa Yeji's field of vision.

She knew nothing about him beyond his name, but the mere fact that he had emerged from the inner compound alongside someone as famous and important as Namgung Hye allowed her to infer a great deal. He was an important guest of the Murim Alliance. Perhaps he was even a guest of its leader, the Taoist Sage of Heaven.

In other words, he was no nameless drifter, as she had initially assumed.

Jong Jihang and Dong Gwangcheon.

These two unknown men were stirring great ripples and fantasies in the heart of a young woman making her first venture into Murim.

“Senior Sister. I'm glad we came down from the mountain this time. Aren't you?”

“Yes. I'm glad we came.”

“Maybe I'll take the opportunity to snag myself a man to bring back to Mount Hua. Hehe.”

Ha Seonhyang pursed her lips as she gazed toward Dong Bongsu and the Weapon Monster.

Hwa Yeji, meanwhile, was looking back and forth between Jong Jihang and Dong Bongsu, without even knowing whether weighing the two against each other was possible.

FLAP!

Before the Weapon Monster descended, Dong Bongsu was already crossing Central Avenue toward the opposite side, where the Guest Pavilion stood. The Weapon Monster swooped down behind him.

A few members of the Murim Defense Corps, stationed throughout the Alliance to watch for suspicious individuals, gave the man dropping from the roof odd looks. But they neither approached nor made any particular move. They had seen the badges pinned to Dong Bongsu's and the Weapon Monster's chests.

Among the countless people who had entered the grounds, only a rare handful wore Murim Alliance badges. Every one of them was a specially invited guest.

Dong Bongsu habitually surveyed his surroundings, noting the positions of every Murim Defense Corps member.

Little things like this mattered to him. In truth, they mattered to everyone living in a jungle like Murim, but few actually did them. Until something happened, there was no way to know whether they would matter.

The Weapon Monster drew alongside him and asked,

“How do you know where I'm going, brat, to go marching off ahead on your own?”

“Isn't it that building over there?”

Resuming his briefly interrupted stride, Dong Bongsu gestured with his chin toward a building at the far end of the opposite corner.

The structure stood against the most secluded corner of the high wall separating the inner and outer compounds.

It scarcely deserved to be called a building. It was so small that, had Dong Bongsu not pointed it out, one might have taken it for an annex of the projecting hall beside it.

The Weapon Monster stopped short.

After a moment's hesitation, he caught up with Dong Bongsu again.

“... You really are uncanny. How did you know?”

“I saw you looking at it closely.”

“I looked at it? Closely, at that? When? Where?”

“On the roof just now.”

The Weapon Monster was dumbfounded.

He must indeed have glanced that way.

After all, he had climbed onto the roof to get there, so he had needed to check its location. But he certainly hadn't studied it closely. He had only given it a passing glance. The one he had scrutinized was not that building, but this brat walking beside him.

Yet the brat had seen that glance, guessed their next destination—no, been certain of it—and set off.

'... Is this brat really human?'

Now he was frightening.

A fellow who inspired both wonder and gooseflesh.

That was how the Weapon Monster saw Dong Bongsu. He was the very image of the ideal human being he had sought and aspired to become. Far... far too perfectly so.

Regardless of what the Weapon Monster thought, Dong Bongsu simply continued walking forward.

The Weapon Monster shook his head vigorously, stared at his back, then caught up again.

“Tell me honestly, brat. Who is your master?”

Dong Bongsu answered with a question without breaking stride.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, isn't it obvious? However I look at it, a fellow like you couldn't simply have dropped out of the sky. Granted, you don't seem to have learned martial arts properly, but everything else about you makes it hard to believe you're a mere mercenary. You must have studied under some renowned master. And surely you inherited that divine-iron sword from that person as well.”

Dong Bongsu abruptly stopped.

Dropped out of the sky. In a sense, that was correct. He had logged out while playing a game and found himself in this body.

It was also true that he had never properly learned martial arts. Although he had reached the point where he could read various secret manuals and imitate their movements, he had never seriously trained in them.

He had also shown them plenty that made it difficult to see him as a mere mercenary. The persona he presented to the Weapon Monster and Eulji Tae contained an element of deliberate performance. Of course, it was reasonably close to his true self.

Finally, the divine iron was a lump of metal made by melting down the [Beginner's Sword].

Something akin to a gift from the New Murim Online System.

'In that sense, I suppose the System is my master.'

What should he call the System in the language of this place?

A literal translation might be an order or an institution, but neither meaning felt quite right.

Then Dong Bongsu turned his head and looked around.

The noisily chattering onlookers, the Chinese-style halls, the lofty sky, and the lunatics.

All were components of this place called New Murim Online.

Yes. The System was this world.

Dong Bongsu faced forward again and resumed walking.

“The world. The world is my master. Unless something extraordinary happens, it will probably remain my master forever.”

The Weapon Monster looked incredulous, then gave a hollow laugh.

“... The world? Hahaha! What are you, some Confucian scholar? What kind of bullshit are you spouting?”

There was no way the Weapon Monster could understand.

Dong Bongsu had analyzed the System and followed the path it laid out, occasionally exploiting its loopholes to grow stronger and survive. But one thing was certain: he had followed the path the System created.

Thus his master was indeed the System—New Murim Online itself.

“I observed the world and strove to understand it better. Then I used what I understood in different ways. As I did so, I gradually began to see the world more clearly.”

Only then did the Weapon Monster realize that Dong Bongsu was not joking. The smile vanished from his lips.

“... Is that truly all?”

Without stopping, Dong Bongsu answered immediately.

“If I had to name another master, it would be humanity.”

“... Now what kind of horseshit is that?”

First bullshit, now horseshit. It was a perfectly natural reaction for the Weapon Monster.

Yet for Dong Bongsu, this too was the truth.

Before coming to this world—back when he had lived in the other one—there had been no one he could call his master. But if he had to name such a thing, it would be humanity: human nature itself.