Chapter 70 - Expedition

Cooldown: 5 minutes

Movement Distance: 4 m

True Qi Cost per Use: 1000 JP

Those were the two active skills. As for the passives:

[Consecutive Slash (Conditional Passive) Lv.2 Proficiency: 60.05%]

Humans tend to grow more frenzied the more blood they see. This tendency is particularly pronounced in Vagabonds, who possess a powerful desire to survive.

Duration: 5 minutes

· Successfully achieving 5 consecutive kills increases all stats by 5%. (Unlocked at Lv.1)

· Successfully achieving 10 consecutive kills increases all stats by 10%. (Unlocked at Lv.2)

※ You must cut down your next enemy before Consecutive Slash expires to maintain your kill count.

[Consecutive Strike (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 17.74%]

Having learned swordsmanship solely through actual combat, without formal moves, a Vagabond's sword strikes are crude but frighteningly unpredictable. Above all, even if their sword fails to hit the enemy, Vagabonds never give up, relentlessly pressing the attack. If one swing cannot cut the enemy down, they will swing twice, three times, or even more than a hundred times to ensure the kill.

Inflicts special status ailments on enemies struck consecutively by the player.

· Landing 2 consecutive strikes inflicts 'Bleeding' on the enemy. Failing to land 2 consecutive strikes knocks the enemy back. (Unlocked at Lv.1)

※ For successive attacks to count as consecutive strikes, each attack must occur within 1 second of the previous one. The effects of the resulting status ailments vary by level.

[Iron Shirt (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 91.45%]

An external qi art that makes the skin extremely tough.

Permanently increases Vitality and Defense.

Vitality / Defense Bonus: 5%

[Survival Instinct (Passive) Lv.2 Proficiency: 0.00%]

To survive in the merciless world of Murim, Vagabonds grit their teeth and fight all the more tenaciously as their circumstances grow more desperate.

When HP falls below a certain threshold, a powerful desire to survive increases all stats except Vitality.

Current HP: 100 / 100 (%)

· When HP falls to 50% or below, all stats increase by 5%. (Unlocked at Lv.1)

· When HP falls to 20% or below, all stats increase by 10%. (Unlocked at Lv.2)

※ Even if HP recovers above the threshold after falling, Survival Instinct remains in effect for 1 minute.

Those were the four passive skills.

Needless to say, acquiring these skills had made Dong Bongsu tremendously stronger.

Like Qinggong, Sword Qi was an active skill he could toggle on and off. The differences were that he could not adjust its level and that it consumed an enormous amount of True Qi. Only after acquiring Sword Qi had he begun running short of JP. Before that, he had always had JP to spare, no matter how freely he used his skills. Yet Sword Qi's effects were outstanding enough to justify its considerable JP consumption. It stacked with Qi Circulation, so coating his sword in Sword Qi while Qi Circulation was active produced an immense increase in Attack Power. Once his other passives and another active skill were stacked on top of that, the increase was so great that even he could not easily gauge how powerful he became.

The Movement Art skill was an entirely different concept from what people here ordinarily called movement arts. Just as its description, 'teleport once,' suggested, it was a kind of evasive skill that let him instantly dodge an enemy's attack in a moment of extreme danger. Perhaps it could be compared to the Blink spell so common in fantasy novels. With a cooldown of five minutes, it could get him out of a life-or-death predicament once every five minutes. As a class-advancement skill, however, it too consumed an enormous amount of JP.

Passive skills such as Consecutive Slash and Consecutive Strike were far more characteristic of a Vagabond than Sword Qi or Movement Art. They were a sort of combo skill, becoming effective as he hunted more enemies or attacked more often. Their effects might not seem like much at first glance, but when they activated while other skills such as Sword Qi were in effect, the additional increase was by no means negligible.

Iron Shirt resembled its counterpart in ordinary martial arts novels: a survival skill that increased Vitality and Defense.

Survival Instinct was another survival skill, but unlike the defensive Iron Shirt, it was offensive. When his HP dropped below a certain threshold, every stat except Vitality increased. Of all his class-advancement skills, it might have suited Dong Bongsu best.

Since he had acquired his class-advancement skills at different times, and each had its own way of increasing proficiency, their levels varied from one to four.

Chewing his food, he reviewed how much those skills had grown. It was easy to see, however, that they had barely changed lately.

'I'm leaving.'

Whether measured in levels or proficiency, this place had clearly lost its appeal as a hunting ground. In particular, the proficiency of Consecutive Slash and Consecutive Strike had not risen at all. He had already seen this coming. Neither skill had activated even once during the last ear hunt. Presumably, they would not activate when the level gap between the player and an NPC exceeded a certain amount.

He was standing still.

The slowdown in his skills' growth, alongside his stalled leveling, clinched it.

Dong Bongsu closed his Skill window and finished his meal. After a quick cleanup, he set out for his usual midnight stroll. This might be his last walk here, but until it actually was, it remained part of his routine.

On the outskirts of Datong stood its sole local attraction, the Ink Bamboo Grove. It was also known as the Ghost-Wailing Grove, for the sound of bamboo leaves rubbing together in the night wind resembled the wailing of ghosts.

Ever since learning of the grove, Dong Bongsu had gone there every night when he was not away on an ear hunt. Carnivorous wild animals often appeared late at night, and the rustling bamboo leaves helped keep people away. The lack of passersby was another way of saying it was an ideal place to train.

His thoughts continued uninterrupted as he headed toward his private training spot deep within the Ghost-Wailing Grove. His faster Qinggong made the wind brushing his face quite sharp, but it was not enough to impede his thinking.

At present, he was considering the iron statue made by the smith at Eight Directions Armory.

'The Weapon Monster finally managed to melt the Beginner's Sword and turn it into an iron statue.'

The Weapon Monster. Dong Bongsu had distinctly called the smith the Weapon Monster.

One of the Three Monsters, the Weapon Monster's precise epithet was the Eight-Technique Weapon Madman. It was said that no one knew his name and that he had mastered eight disciplines. He had earned the epithet particularly because his skill at crafting weapons was said to have reached the realm of the divine.

As the labels 'Monster' and 'Madman' suggested, he was reputed to be bizarre. Still, as one of the Three Monsters, this eccentric master possessed martial arts that let him roam the world as freely as his own front yard. Yet he was as elusive as he was powerful, making him difficult to meet, and little was known about him.

Then how had Dong Bongsu recognized him and come to call him the Weapon Monster?

There was just one reason.

Strength. The smith at Eight Directions Armory was a master powerful enough to trigger Spirit Eye. Dong Bongsu had no other reason for his certainty, nor did he need one.

As was probably true everywhere in such a barbaric age, those who made weapons were weaker than those who used them. And those who wore weapons at their hips but did nothing except talk were usually stronger than those who actually wielded them. Thus, blacksmiths who forged weapons were generally bound to be among the weak. They were making weapons because learning martial arts was difficult for them, and they were in no position to acquire the education that would let them command martial artists.

But exceptions existed everywhere. And exceptions were usually far stronger than the norm.

When Dong Bongsu first came to Datong, there had been several people at least ten levels higher than him. Over the course of a year, however, their numbers had dwindled as they died, left, or were overtaken by his own growing strength. Now, only one master remained powerful enough for Spirit Eye's warning sound to tell him to stay away.

That was the smith at Eight Directions Armory.

There could hardly be many blacksmiths that powerful in the entire world.

Perhaps there was only one. That was Dong Bongsu's assumption.

On that assumption, the smith at Eight Directions Armory was the Weapon Monster, one of the Two Divinities, Three Eccentrics, Five Masters, and Ten Greats. There was ample possibility he was not, but Dong Bongsu guessed that he was. And it hardly mattered if he was wrong. Either way, he had already used the man to resolve two questions about the system of New Murim Online, and would soon receive a useful object as well.

Were the Items the system had given him, such as the Beginner's Sword, truly impossible to break or melt?

The Weapon Monster had answered that question by melting the Beginner's Sword. In the process, another related question had been resolved as well.

Before entrusting the Beginner's Sword to the Weapon Monster, Dong Bongsu had had several people try holding it. The sword came with various stat bonuses, and if those applied to the people here—the NPCs—he could not carelessly let it out of his hands. Although the bonuses from the Beginner's Sword were not especially great, even that much would be enough for it to be hailed as a divine sword or rare treasure in Murim. Having others hold it had been an experiment of sorts, intended to prevent precisely that situation.

The result of the experiment was no. Items were useless to NPCs, who were not players. To them, Items were merely ordinary objects that were a little harder or tougher. Dong Bongsu surmised that this was probably because they had no Equipment window.

And so, fortunately for the people used in his experiment, they had survived. Not one of them had realized how extraordinary the Beginner's Sword was. Had they noticed, every one of them would have died on the spot.