Chapter 5. Conception
Could it be that I still hadn't logged out?
That question flashed through my mind, but it vanished far faster than it had appeared.
This agonizing pain surging through my whole body?
It was a vividness I could never feel inside a game. If sensations like this could be implemented in-game... Dong Bong-su would never have logged out in the first place. He'd probably still be hunting even now.
He forced his eyes to focus harder to check the hologram letters. With that, the swollen corner of his eye split and blood trickled down. Still, only the pain increased—his vision didn't improve at all.
'Then.'
If my eyesight won't cooperate, I just need to increase the light.
Dong Bong-su turned his gaze toward the window where moonlight poured in. A brilliant full moon came into view and lit his eyes, and the contents of the translucent hologram window stamped a decisive period on this unreal situation.
[The device has malfunctioned abnormally, causing logout to fail. Would you like to attempt disconnection once more? Yes or No]
A device error?
Dong Bong-su was puzzled. This scene that felt so real, the intensely stimulating smell—were all these sensations that tightened around his whole body, sending tingles through it, really just the result of a machine's error?
He couldn't understand it.
I should confirm it.
Dong Bong-su raised his hand without hesitation and thrust it into the hologram.
Beep -.
He saw the 'No' button warp, and the operator's flat, emotionless voice carved itself into his brain.
Vrrrrr.
– You have selected 'No.' Then, we will return you to Murim Online. One, two, three...…
The crackling mechanical noise slammed into Dong Bong-su's head. At the same time, it felt as if his brain were being torn apart, and he slowly began to lose consciousness.
In his fading awareness, the Murim Online operator's emotionless voice rang out.
– Then we wish you a pleasant time with Murim Online...…
***
Machil hadn't been in a good mood these past few days—more precisely, for the last two weeks. In crude terms, it was enough to make him go crazy and start jumping off the walls.
He was already busy enough with armory drudgework, and on top of that he'd been saddled with an annoying chore, so how could he not be?
Even now, he was carrying Sosam's breakfast porridge to the stables.
"Ah, in this big Danri Family, am I the only one who can clean up that bastard's shit? Why do I always have to do this fucking dogshit work?"
Two weeks ago, on the day Sosam went with him to the weapon shop to pick up equipment, Sosam made a mistake and got seriously injured.
Once the job was done, he should've just gone home like a good boy, but no—he wandered around the busy streets in the evening and ended up getting into trouble.
According to something Machil heard from one of the bystanders back then, Sosam suddenly blocked the path of Paeng Do-ryang. Paeng Do-ryang was the bodyguard of Danri Hee, the second daughter of the Danri Family Head. Danri Hee was such a hellion that even the clan lord, Danri Cheon-u, could barely rein her in. If you blocked her bodyguard's way, you ought to count it a miracle Sosam was still alive.
While Sosam was getting beaten to a pulp by Paeng Do-ryang, Machil was at Bongyang Inn, getting an eyeful—no, a mouthful—of that buzzing bitch's naked flesh. He'd vented his pent-up lust and, feeling satisfied, was returning to the clan when he found Sosam collapsed in a pool of blood.
He slung him over his back and carried him back.
When he first dumped him in the stable, Machil thought Sosam was dead. In a moment of panic, Machil had simply left him there and walked out.
But when he went to the stable the next day, Sosam was awake.
That's when Machil thought: This bastard's really stubborn—disgustingly so. To come back to his senses in just one day, in that state.
But for Machil, that turned out to be bad news.
"If that little shit Mabyeonsam had just died, it would've been way better. Fuck."
Because Sosam was clinging to that pathetic life, Machil was stuck taking over his work until the guy fully recovered.
It only took a few days to find a new Horse Stable Hireling. But looking at the state Sosam was in now, it seemed like it would take at least another month before he'd recover.
Worse, that incident had turned Sosam into an idiot. Not only could he not speak, his memory didn't seem intact either. When he woke up sometimes and Machil tried talking to him, Sosam didn't recognize him at all and said nothing. Machil checked, thinking maybe something was wrong with his tongue, but there was nothing abnormal.
Maybe the shock had given him aphasia. Maybe even if he healed up, he'd still be useless.
"Damn it! For me, Lord Machil, to have to wipe the ass of some brain-dead runt!"
Today again, every task Sosam was supposed to do belonged to Machil. And on top of that, the clan had dumped the whole business of treating Sosam on him too.
Stable work is brutal. Machil knew that better than anyone. Until Sosam came here more than ten years ago, Machil himself had been the Horse Stable Hireling.
Walking the horses, cleaning up horse shit, tidying the stable—those were nothing. The hardest job was, from time to time, having to accompany the Danri Family people on outings as a horse attendant.
A horse attendant was, in common slang, "a human footstool." In other words, when the Danri Family people mounted their horses, you had to crouch beneath them and serve as the step.
It was a truly irritating, infuriating chore.
If you got someone decent, fine. But if you went out as the horse attendant of a human piece of trash like Danri Hee—
If you made one mistake that day, your head might roll.
He hadn't been forced to go out as a horse attendant yet, but who knew when he'd be summoned? So even if he hated it, Machil had no choice but to serve Sosam diligently until he recovered.
While Machil grumbled for all these reasons, he arrived at the stables on the far eastern edge of the estate. As he reached for the door, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.
'Should I just kill that bastard?'
Whether Sosam lived or died, no one in the clan would care. If a new Horse Stable Hireling were brought in quickly, it would be far more beneficial to Machil too. Wouldn't that be the best way to escape this suffering?
Machil's reptilian eyes fixed on the stable door, flashing red for an instant before calming down.
"Forget it, forget it."
Killing someone was easy.
Once, when a begging little bastard kept grabbing at his ankle, he'd stomped him to death—so what?
The problem was that the risk was too high. If he got caught by even one of the clan's warriors, his own neck could end up severed.
"Lucky bastard. Our Mabyeonsam, you fucking shit."
In the end, he decided to endure about a month of discomfort.
Killing a guy like Sosam was easier than snapping an ant's waist—he could do it anytime later.
Creeeak.
When he stepped into the stable, Sosam was sleeping as usual. Wrapped tightly around the chest with filthy twisted rope, he lay there comfortably, resting. The sight made Machil's temper flare again. Here Machil was suffering because of him, and that bastard was sprawled out, sleeping so peacefully.
"Ugh. You moron! Wouldn't it have been better if you'd just died then? Why are you alive for no reason, making things this annoying? Ugh!"
Machil tossed the porridge bowl onto Sosam's chest. The bowl wobbled, and the hot porridge spilled. The dirty rope binding Sosam's chest became even filthier.
Whether it did or not, Machil figured he'd done his part and walked right back out of the stable.
Even though the hot porridge seeped between the ropes and must have burned the wounds beneath, Sosam didn't wake up until Machil left.
Was he asleep so deeply he couldn't feel pain?
No.
Sosam—no, Dong Bong-su—was already awake. The moment Machil left, he quietly raised his upper body.
"Because of that guy, my recovery keeps getting delayed."
The filthy rope was rubbing against the wounds and making them fester.
It was an infection. Like this, the wounds wouldn't close quickly. That's why, whenever he loosened the rope, Machil would come and wrap it back around his chest again. So Dong Bong-su would tie the rope around his chest before Machil arrived, then loosen it again after Machil left.
And it wasn't just that—Machil, in every way, was not a helpful human being to Dong Bong-su. Even just now, he'd made hot porridge spill onto wounds that hadn't fully healed, which would slow the healing even more.
"Has it been two weeks as of today?"
It had already been two weeks since Dong Bong-su woke up here. During that time, he gathered information about this place. He still couldn't fully understand Chinese, and since Machil was his only source, he couldn't know everything precisely.
The first thing he learned was that he had become someone else, and that name was Sosam—or Mabyeonsam. Not because he understood the language, but because Machil kept calling him that.
Second, though the people here used Chinese and Chinese characters, he realized this place wasn't China.
Martial arts.
Techniques that were only possible in imagination, in movies, in novels.
Over the last two weeks, Dong Bong-su witnessed martial arts breathing, living, vividly real in this world.
Every morning he would wake to the thunderous sounds of warriors doing something at the training ground far beyond the stables. At first he didn't know what it was, but later he peeked through a hole in the door and was shocked.
He was a man whose emotions rarely wavered. Even so, what stunned Dong Bong-su was the martial arts of this world.
People flying through the air, moving so fast your eyes could barely track them, swords and sabers cutting with disciplined precision—like a live-action version of Murim Online. If so, then those techniques too must be martial arts.
Lastly, he learned that he hadn't been able to "log out" completely. No—more precisely, he had logged out, but certain parts of the game system were still being applied.
Even now, far off in his field of view, tiny letters floated.
"Murim Online."
No—murim.
Real murim.
Heh.
Heheheh.
A world where martial arts truly exist!
And I can't escape it?
Dong Bong-su laughed from the bottom of his heart for the first time in his life.
In his head, irrepressible laughter burst out without pause.
Because it felt so good.
The ultimate hunting ground he'd always dreamed of—maybe even a battlefield.
And he had suddenly crash-landed into it.
murim.
A world of iron-blood where there is neither blood nor tears.
Hehehehehehahahahaha!
A place with no dreams, no hope.
What a rapturous world this was.
For a long while, Dong Bong-su laughed.
Inside, inside—so no one would ever know.
And so, without anyone in the Central Plains realizing it, an unprecedented demon was being conceived in a shabby stable.