Chapter 60 - What Falls Has Wings

Dozens of crisscrossing sword wounds had utterly mangled his face, and layers of dried blood were caked over them in a gruesome mess. His nose was half severed and hung loose, while his torn ears bled without pause. The peculiar thing was that, despite such terrible injuries, his eyes remained intact.

Strangely devoid of all emotion, they were uncanny eyes whose like could scarcely be found anywhere in the human world. Yet no one noticed.

As soon as he stepped into the clearing atop the cliff, Dong Bongsu headed for the other edge of the precipice, away from Tang Wu and the others. Since the pirates were not approaching them, Tang Wu and the wedding guests merely stood their ground and watched warily, making no move to attack. Dong Bongsu had acted knowing they would do exactly that. Both groups were rats driven into a corner. Fighting among themselves would only hand the cat an easy prize.

Curiously, the pirates who had barely survived naturally followed when Dong Bongsu moved. They knew instinctively that following him was what had allowed them to make it this far. In fact, contrary to what Tang Wu and the other survivors thought, Dong Bongsu had reached the summit without fighting at all, skillfully maintaining his distance between the pursuers and the survivors. By now, every pirate who had stayed beside him understood that.

An updraft rising along the ancient cliff licked across Dong Bongsu's hideously flayed forehead as he peered down. Even that faint brush of wind sent almost unbearable pain tingling through his entire body. Yet not a trace of expression crossed his face. He could endure it because he knew how crucial this moment was.

He had been driven into a seemingly inescapable predicament, but he still had not given up on living. It was not over until it was over. Until the true end came, he would do everything he could.

Dong Bongsu kept looking down the cliff. A sheer vertical rock face, clouds obscuring the mountainside, and a bottom nowhere in sight. Everything spoke of despair, yet his impression was very different from Tang Wu's. Where Tang Wu had looked down and seen hopelessness, Dong Bongsu gazed into the thousand-fathom drop and instead glimpsed a chance of survival.

"Hahahaha!"

As Dong Bongsu's eyes glittered with crystalline clarity at the precipice below, Water Shadow and Shifting Shadow finally arrived. Immaculate despite the fierce battle, Shifting Shadow currently wore the appearance of Paga Hyeol, the Naked Silver Demon—Ash Shadow himself. He let out a great burst of laughter and mocked Tang Wu.

"Hahaha. Great Hero Tang. It seems you ran as hard as you could, yet this is as far as you managed to get?"

"Who are you, you bastard?"

Tang Wu did not know that the man was Do Heo-ok. Even the Heavenly Demon Castle fighters had failed to recognize that he was not Paga Hyeol. Tang Wu could hardly be expected to see through his altered appearance.

Shifting Shadow laughed again.

"You will soon be received by King Yama anyway. What does a trifling matter like that concern you? Hahaha."

"You insolent bastard!"

Tang Wu was enraged by Shifting Shadow's sneering, but he did not act rashly. Fiery as his temper was, he understood their circumstances perfectly well.

Shifting Shadow stretched his lips into a thin smile, then raised his voice again.

"Come out! Hurry out and show yourself, you little rat! Let me see the face of this supposedly remarkable rat!"

His gaze was no longer directed toward Tang Wu and the other survivors. It had turned toward the pirates occupying a different corner of the cliff.

Only then did Dong Bongsu understand why they had taken such an extreme measure—slaughtering their own allies. They were looking for him. Of course they were. The light from his Level Up had thrown the Namgung Clan into an uproar; why would these people be any different? They must have been concerned about it as well. Unable to discover his identity despite repeated encirclements and attacks, they had apparently resorted to this last measure.

The corners of Dong Bongsu's eyes curved slightly. This was fun. He had encountered several interesting things since coming here, but nothing had been as entertaining as this.

A hair's breadth from death. No, an unbroken succession of such moments. It stimulated his interest without limit. And now there was even this thoroughly 'human' tactic that had caught him off guard.

New Murim Online truly was a game made for him alone.

Unnoticed by anyone, Dong Bongsu drew his Beginner's Sword and gripped it tightly.

"You refuse to come out? Then I shall smash that precious skull of yours myself and see who you are afterward."

When no answer came from the pirates, Shifting Shadow stepped forward.

Dong Bongsu had already worked out that he was Do Heo-ok. Just as when the man had assumed Do Heo-ok's appearance, a flaw that was not quite a mistake had been visible to Dong Bongsu alone. Do Heo-ok still did not understand that being too perfect sometimes meant being less than complete.

Nor did he understand that this mountaintop was not an absolute dead end.

SWISH.

At the very moment Shifting Shadow took another step toward the pirates, Dong Bongsu's sword moved without a sound. In an instant, every pirate standing before him, warily watching Shifting Shadow, lost his head. Dong Bongsu stood closest to the precipice, so all the pirates had their backs to him. They had no way to stop him.

THUD-THUD-THUD.

A dozen or so pirate heads struck the summit of Seonjung Mountain.

And at that very instant!

A brilliant flash!

The holy light that had swept through the Namgung Clan estate once before engulfed Seonjung Mountain's summit.

Caught by the sudden flash, Shifting Shadow halted his advance and hurriedly retreated. The light might have carried powerful martial force like that of the Divine Sun Art. He even hastily raised a protective shell of hardened qi, but his efforts were wasted. The flash merely washed gently over him like spring sunshine. He might have thought it a mass of hardened qi, but it was nothing more than the light released as Dong Bongsu leveled up. It could hardly have done otherwise.

Even so, the light was undeniably so intense that he could scarcely keep his eyes open. Shifting Shadow remained on guard, watching the place from which it poured.

The moment the light erupted, Tang Wu also tensed and stepped in front of Tang Hwa. To his eyes, too, the radiance of the Level Up was anything but ordinary. Once he realized that it carried no martial force, however, he merely watched its source. With his senses heightened to their utmost, he carefully lowered Namgung Hye from beneath his arm and set her down behind him. One wrong move could send her over the precipice, but he judged that laying her down as safely as possible was better now than continuing to carry her.

Water Shadow, meanwhile, was so startled by the unforeseen turn of events that she retreated down the path she had climbed. That was how astonishing and sudden Dong Bongsu's light had been.

Still, those three were the only people who managed to respond appropriately. Everyone else had no idea what was happening or what they should do. All the remaining pirates, Heavenly Demon Castle fighters, and survivors knew was that one pirate had suddenly beheaded the others, after which an intense light had inexplicably burst from his body. That alone was what they had witnessed.

An unexpected silence fell over the chaotic summit of Seonjung Mountain. Only the sound of the strong summit wind brushed against their ears. Yet though their mouths were shut, every gaze was fixed on the same spot as if by prior agreement.

On Dong Bongsu, the source of the flash.

An afterglow still spread from where he had stood, but it was no longer enough to obscure their vision entirely. Besides, it was broad daylight, and the sunlight was slowly swallowing the flash.

A short while later, even that afterglow faded away completely.

The light was not the only thing that had vanished.

"He's gone..."

Someone murmured. The words filled the gap in the silence, striking everyone's ears in place of the wind. Everyone who heard them agreed. They could do nothing else.

Dong Bongsu and the pirates he had killed had all disappeared along with the light. Only the empty edge of the cliff remained, filling their vision. Nothing was there anymore. It stood utterly deserted, as though it had been that way from the beginning.

But three of them—Shifting Shadow, Water Shadow, and Tang Wu—had caught a faint glimpse of how Dong Bongsu had vanished. Though the light had been tremendously intense, they had seen a dim shadow moving swiftly within it.

The shadow they saw had unmistakably jumped off the cliff. The strange thing was that the other pirates' corpses had also vanished without a trace. Just as someone had murmured moments before, they had simply... simply disappeared.

For a moment, the three reached different conclusions, but ultimately their thoughts converged. They believed the pirates' bodies had been vaporized without a trace by a powerful art of forceful yang energy. Though the flash had felt gentle where they stood, close to its source it must have been as hot as molten lava—perhaps as hot as standing beside the sun hanging high overhead. They could conceive of no other explanation. A game had no place within the bounds of their common sense.

Even so, one great question remained.

Why had the man jumped off the precipice? With such tremendous internal power, why had he given up so easily without even trying to fight?

The same questions arose in all three minds.

That left Shifting Shadow disappointed, Tang Wu feeling hollow, and Water Shadow relieved. Their emotions differed, but none of them doubted Dong Bongsu's death. No expert could survive a fall down that thousand-fathom precipice. The instant he struck the bottom of that dark abyss, he would die. He had to. That, too, was common sense to them.

And so, though they exchanged no words, once again they reached the same conclusion.