Chapter 14 - Novice

Dong Bongsu returned to the Danri Family estate and finished his daily routine as though nothing had happened. Outwardly, he was no different from when he had left.

To anyone looking, he was simply Sosam.

A fool, an idiot, a mute who never caught anyone's eye.

That was the Dong Bongsu everyone else saw. No one noticed the change in him, the step forward he had taken.

Far ahead of his eyes, the New Murim Online error box that only he could see was still blinking.

[A Critical Error has... occurred in the MURIM ONLINE system. This should not interfere with gameplay, but... .]

CREEEAK. CLICK.

The door closed, and the stable became his private space once more.

Critical Error.

'A fatal error, huh.'

His very presence here was already a fatal error. How could there be any more errors than that? This one, too, was probably the result of a systemic discrepancy caused by his existence in a place where he did not belong.

He could make a rough guess as to why the error message had appeared.

It was a kind of natural disaster caused by the "forced grafting" of this real world and the virtual reality of MURIM ONLINE.

Dong Bongsu surmised that the problem had lain dormant until leveling up finally brought it to the surface.

And...

His guess was remarkably accurate. Dimensional Realm 111, Dimensional Realm 112, and MURIM ONLINE, the auxiliary dimension that had served as the link between them. The laws of these three dimensional realms had collided upon his level-up, producing a "fatal error."

The Critical Error message would probably appear every time he leveled up. Had the differences between the three dimensional realms been minor, this would never have happened in the first place. But the three were fundamentally different. Naturally, there was no way every aspect of the system could be applied unchanged. In most cases, it would manifest before him in a distorted form.

Dong Bongsu did not understand the precise details that deeply, but his reasoning had come fairly close.

The conclusion was this:

None of those distortions mattered much to him.

All he had to do was keep leveling up and adapt to the newly applied system, New Murim Online. That was how he would survive, and how he would grow stronger.

Dong Bongsu raised his right hand and lightly clicked the X button on the right side of the error box. It disappeared, and a golden light flickered over the various windows that had become available or changed when he reached level 2.

《Inventory, Status Window, Skill Window, Quest Window》

First, he opened the Inventory, which had become quite familiar by now.

A sword, a set of clothes, a pair of leather shoes, and a headscarf he had never seen before lay neatly arranged in a far corner.

He took them out and laid them on the floor one by one.

They all looked shabby, as though made from cheap cloth, but they were impeccably clean. Like brand-new products fresh from a factory.

In fact, these were pieces of basic Equipment that should have been issued the moment Dong Bongsu logged into New Murim Online. A fatal error had delayed their arrival until now. Of course, he neither knew nor cared.

Now that he had them, he would use them. To him, it was that simple.

After briefly examining the objects, Dong Bongsu picked up the sword first without any particular hesitation.

CLICK.

He had merely picked it up, yet he heard a sound like a metal accessory being fastened. At the same time, he felt something strange.

'I feel stronger?'

It was difficult to put into words.

But he distinctly felt the peculiar sensation that his strength, stamina, and agility had increased.

He immediately put all his shabby horse handler's clothes into the Inventory and donned the Equipment laid out before him. Each piece he put on brought another click to his ears, along with the same feeling of growing stronger that he had experienced when picking up the sword.

"Are these Items?"

He could only conclude that all of these were game Items.

Equipment that had spontaneously appeared inside his Inventory.

The feeling that his abilities increased with each piece he equipped.

Mechanical sounds that he could hear, though he could not tell whether they came from inside his head or his ears.

Putting it all together, that feeling of having grown stronger...

'It isn't my imagination.'

Simply putting on 《Equipment》 must have raised his 《Stats》 for real.

CLICK.

He closed the Inventory window. Its golden flashing stopped, perhaps because he had finished checking it. Now that he had equipped the gear, it was time to see how much stronger he had become.

Dong Bongsu immediately opened the status window.

There, too, a dramatic change awaited him.

"Does it finally recognize Equipment?"

Items now appeared in the previously empty Equipment window. Each was displayed exactly as he was wearing it.

[Beginner's Sword], [Beginner's Clothes], [Beginner's Shoes], [Beginner's Headscarf]

First, Dong Bongsu moved his hand as though operating a mouse and hovered over "Beginner's Sword." A translucent window appeared beside it, displaying the sword's description.

[Beginner's Sword]

Attribute: None

Required Class: All

Required Level: 2

Minimum Attack Power: 2

Maximum Attack Power: 5

Damage Boost: ?

Minimum Offensive Mugong: 3

Maximum Offensive Mugong: 8

Martial Arts Damage Boost: ?

Additional Stat Bonuses: None

He checked the remaining Items in the same way, and their descriptions were all similar. The only differences from the sword's description were substitutions such as Defense for Attack Power and Defensive Mugong for Offensive Mugong. Otherwise, the format was identical.

Another thing both types had in common was that their damage or defense boosts were consistently listed as "?".

Dong Bongsu concluded that this was another effect of the Critical Error.

For a moment, he wondered what effects those boosts might have, but he soon dismissed the thought. No matter how much he pondered it, wasn't it something he had no way of knowing for now? There was no need to waste mental energy on it.

What mattered was...

'I've really become stronger.'

That was it.

He resumed examining the changes in the status window. Along with equipping the gear, his stats had undergone a major change.

The base values for Strength, Agility, and Intelligence had all changed from "?" to yellow gauge bars. They were not displayed as Arabic numerals, making their exact values difficult to determine, but this was unquestionably an enormous change. Every gauge had filled slightly, though the amount was barely visible.

With his level-up, the stat gauges had finally begun to activate.

Gauge bars had also appeared for Vitality, Accuracy, Evasion, Attack Power, Defense, Offensive Mugong, Defensive Mugong, Elemental Defense, True Qi/Internal Energy, and the other stats that rose in proportion to increases in level, Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. These, too, lacked precise numerical values.

After checking a few more things, Dong Bongsu closed the status window. Just as with the Inventory, its flashing stopped once he had finished examining it.

CLICK.

Next came the Skill window.

Five Skills had appeared. More precisely, not a single one was an active Skill; they were all passive Skills. The four basic actions that should have been available from the moment he created his game character had been added, along with one unidentified Skill.

He was already familiar with the first four. Although he had only played for a few hours, he did have some experience with MURIM ONLINE.

He immediately checked the descriptions of all five.

[Slash (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]

A technique for swinging a weapon.

Moving a weapon up, down, left, and right to annihilate enemies is one of the most basic attacks.

Current Action Bonus: 0%

[Thrust (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]

A technique for thrusting a weapon.

Moving a weapon back and forth to inflict penetrating wounds on an enemy is one of the most basic attack techniques.

Current Action Bonus: 0%

[Throw (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]

A technique for throwing a weapon.

Throwing sharp or blunt objects at an enemy to inflict injury is a basic attack technique handed down since ancient times.

Current Action Bonus: 0%

[Block (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]

A technique for raising a weapon to block.

Hold a weapon vertically or horizontally to block an enemy's attack.

Current Action Bonus: 0%

These four were the basic actions normally granted to every character upon creation in MURIM ONLINE.

But then there was this.

[Spirit Eye (Tester Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]

Tester-exclusive Skill.

Current Action Bonus: 0%

He had never seen this one before.

There was no particular explanation beyond its being exclusive to testers, so Dong Bongsu had no way of guessing what it did. All he could infer was that it was a Skill unavailable to ordinary gamers.

In principle, everything in MURIM ONLINE—monsters, Items, environments, Skills, and so on—was a component of the server, a complete artificial construct in its own right, endowed with its own artificial intelligence.

Even so, there were a few exceptions.

Testing.

Newly opened servers, newly created dungeons, new monsters, and the like were sometimes crudely put together or unfinished. Before they were released to the public, testers played through them to check for imperfections. Special Skills had been prepared to assist those testers in their testing.

Those were the tester-exclusive Skills.

Now, through some unknown route—probably the Critical Error—one of those Skills had been applied to Dong Bongsu.

Why had a mere player like him been given a tester-exclusive Skill?

There were several reasons, but the most important was, as Dong Bongsu had suspected, the clash between New Murim Online's system and this real Murim. New Murim Online's system possessed highly advanced artificial intelligence of its own, but it was currently badly damaged and tangled. Naturally, almost none of the things that should have existed on the actual MURIM ONLINE servers existed in this Murim. As a result, New Murim Online's system had begun treating everything Dong Bongsu did in play as a new action—in other words, a "test action."

Dong Bongsu knew nothing of this, but it was an extraordinary stroke of luck for him—and would prove a great misfortune for Murim.