Chapter 62 - Into the World

Shifting Shadow spoke calmly, then launched himself toward them without a moment’s hesitation. At that signal, Water Shadow, the pirates, and the Heavenly Demon Castle fighters attacked Tang Wu and the other last survivors as one...

The eighty-seventh victim of the class advancement Quest was the first among them to leap off the cliff.

Soon, more would follow, pinning their hopes on the faintest chance of survival.

The Eighth Law of New Murim Online: When several people kill one person, the experience Dong Bongsu gains is proportional to the damage he inflicted on the deceased. (The effectiveness of the first hit and the last hit requires further study.)

Some are born only after they die.

—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher

WHOOSH!

Dong Bongsu’s sword shot skyward once again. The sound of it cutting through the air was light and crisp.

The result, however, was anything but light. The Beginner’s Sword buried itself in the crown of a wedding guest who had survived to the very end. Already unconscious from the terror of falling, he was converted wholesale into experience.

With that, Dong Bongsu leveled up once more. Brilliant light radiated from his body, briefly illuminating the dark, damp space beneath the cliff.

He quietly watched the light spread. As expected, it did not travel nearly as far as it had at night. It climbed the cliff, only to blend into the sunlight the moment it reached it. A faint afterglow remained, but there was no conceivable way it could pierce the clouds halfway up the mountain and reach the clifftop.

TAP. SHLUK!

Dong Bongsu pulled his sword from the corpse, his gaze fixed on the top of the cliff all the while.

‘There are still more.’

Prey. Good prey that would yield experience. There were still more of them. This opportunity had been hard won. It would hardly do to let it slip away through a moment’s carelessness.

Above all, Tang Wu had yet to jump. Dong Bongsu was waiting for him. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was looking forward to him? A wounded beast driven into a corner would surely leap off the cliff to save its young. Wounded though Tang Wu might be, killing him should bring a tremendous leveling spree.

As he waited, Dong Bongsu’s sword repeatedly cut through the air. The wedding guests who had accelerated to terminal velocity could never dodge his thrown Beginner’s Sword. The tremendous wind pressure made it difficult even to open their eyes, and most had already lost consciousness.

Their terminal velocity combined with the speed of his thrown sword made the relative velocity at impact truly staggering. The resulting force went without saying.

With another light, crisp sound, a man fell to the ground skewered on the sword. Paradoxically, Dong Bongsu’s blade piercing their bodies allowed them to retain intact corpses, at least. Had they struck the ground unimpeded, they would surely have been smashed to pieces. Whether they would remain intact to the very end, however, was another matter. Dong Bongsu still had further plans.

"Ninety-eight."

Dong Bongsu murmured the next number in his count.

Only two more now. Class advancement was within reach.

But a considerable time passed without any more free experience falling from above. Even so, Dong Bongsu stayed where he was.

‘Not yet. Not yet.’

The words he repeated under his breath carried faith in Tang Wu. Not faith in the man himself so much as in his strength and resolve.

Tang Wu would not go down easily against Do Heo-ok. Nor would he simply allow Tang Hwa and Namgung Hye to fall into the man’s hands. That left him only one final move. The same move the others had made all this time.

Dong Bongsu kept waiting. And in the end, his faith was rewarded.

At one point, a faint sound of rushing air reached him, and he caught sight of something plummeting rapidly. It was brown, and the sound of it beating against the air came from the rapidly fluttering hem of a long robe.

A middle-aged man in a long brown robe. There was no need to check.

Their encounter had been brief but intense. It was Tang Wu.

SHING!

Dong Bongsu drew his sword again and took his stance. In that brief moment, Tang Wu descended several dozen more meters. Like the survivors before him, he was falling headfirst, his feet pointing toward the sky.

There were a few differences, however. Tang Wu was not falling alone; he held someone in his arms. Curiously, contrary to Dong Bongsu’s expectations, he carried only one person, not two. Another difference was that, despite the tremendous wind pressure, Tang Wu had his eyes wide open and was staring straight down.

Naturally, their eyes met.

Tang Wu was astonished.

‘Tang Sam!?’

The fierce updraft struck his eyes, making them hurt as though they might burst, but there was nothing wrong with his vision. First, he was shocked to find a survivor. Then he was shocked that the survivor was Tang Sam.

Tang Sam—Dong Bongsu—had already regained his original appearance through leveling up. There was no way Tang Wu could fail to recognize him.

Even in this moment of mortal peril, two words burned themselves into Tang Wu’s mind: how and why.

How are you here?

Why are you gripping your sword like that?

Of course, he would receive no answer.

Instead, Dong Bongsu answered the questions in Tang Wu’s eyes with the Beginner’s Sword. It left his hand and hurtled toward Tang Wu at tremendous speed. Tang Wu did not know it, but all of this was merely unfolding according to a plan already laid.

Startled, Tang Wu hastily tried to unleash a palm strike to knock the incoming sword aside. But his body would not obey. The prolonged battle had all but exhausted his True Qi, and the wounds Shifting Shadow and Water Shadow had inflicted were severe. Moreover, as his body accelerated, his arms were accelerating downward with it. He could not even lower his upward-pointing hands. To execute a palm technique, he needed to draw his elbows as close to his body as possible. Since he could not do that, using a palm technique was impossible from the outset.

Death. It had been inevitable. Tang Wu had abandoned any thought of surviving the moment he leaped off the cliff. He had thrown himself into the air with only the desire to save Tang Hwa. Perhaps sacrificing himself might save his granddaughter. That had been his thought.

But now that plan had gone awry, and an unforeseen danger was upon him. Tang Wu hurriedly twisted his body around as far as he could.

THUNK!

Cold steel plunged into the back of his head.

THUD! SHLUK!

The sword promptly pierced Tang Wu’s head, bursting through the philtrum between his mouth and nose before soaring skyward. At that moment, a final flare of life lit his eyes. At the same time, the force carried by the sword canceled out much of his body’s acceleration.

Tang Wu squeezed out every last scrap of his primal vital qi and launched Tang Hwa high into the air. The palm technique he could not perform with True Qi alone became possible when he poured out his primal vital qi. As a result, Tang Hwa lost most of the speed she had accumulated, while Tang Wu fell toward the ground even faster.

WHOOOOM!

Tang Wu’s body plummeted with monstrous acceleration. He was falling so fast that his body was arriving before the sound could reach the ground where Dong Bongsu stood. Tang Wu had exceeded the speed of sound—a testament to the tremendous primal vital qi he had poured out in his final moment.

Dong Bongsu hastily threw himself aside to avoid Tang Wu’s corpse.

BOOM!

"Grandfather!"

As Tang Wu, impaled on the sword, slammed into the ground, Tang Hwa witnessed the impact clearly from the air and cried out.

At the same moment, the last flare of life faded from Tang Wu’s eyes, and dazzling holy light poured from Dong Bongsu’s body. Ten times, no less. By killing Tang Wu, Dong Bongsu had gained a full ten levels.

Yet he found that puzzling. He had expected killing Tang Wu to earn him far more levels. Ten levels. It was tremendous progress, of course, but it fell short of his expectations.

Tilting his head, he said,

"Too little."

He approached Tang Wu’s shattered corpse and soon understood. Tang Wu, whose body now lay completely pulverized, had already been on the brink of death. All Dong Bongsu had done was deliver the final blow. Even then, it seemed the experience had been split when Tang Wu used his primal vital qi to save Tang Hwa.

"Is this what they call a last hit?"

He did not play games, so he did not know the details, but he thought he had heard it called something like that somewhere. Not that terminology mattered, anyway.

Dong Bongsu was satisfied now. Wasn’t this leveling spree enough for killing a man who had already been dying?

He paid the dead Tang Wu no further attention.

At last, Tang Hwa hit the ground. Thanks to Tang Wu’s sacrifice, she had made it down more or less safely, though the light pouring from Dong Bongsu’s body had prevented her from landing properly.

Dong Bongsu simply stood still and watched her stagger to her feet.

Tang Hwa stood and shook her head hard. She must not have fully recovered from the shock of the fall. The hand she raised to her forehead was stained red with Tang Wu’s blood. Since she had landed in exactly the same spot as him, that was unavoidable.

"Ah! G-Grandfather!?" She sobbed.

The first thing she did upon coming to her senses was gather Tang Wu’s remains into her arms and weep. Then she saw the Beginner’s Sword protruding from his mouth—or at least, the part she believed was his mouth. Startled, she looked up.

Naturally, her eyes met Dong Bongsu’s. He was quietly watching her from about two meters away. He looked so utterly at ease that one might have thought they had been together all along.

But Tang Hwa could not share that composure.

"Y-you! How are you here!?"

An entirely predictable reaction. Tiresome. Naturally, Dong Bongsu could predict her very next response as well.

"Why...? Why!? Why Grandfather?"