The book swallowed something, and then a scroll popped out and started talking to me.
It's a situation where I should suspect a hallucination.
It's a situation worth panicking over, but that wouldn't help much.
It was the same when I first landed in Lizhou and couldn't even communicate.
Going back further, it was the same growing up in an orphanage as a parentless orphan.
My circumstances have never particularly been kind to me.
By now, any absurd thing is starting to feel almost familiar.
So I calmed my stirring heart with a single deep breath.
For one thing, I hadn't been flung off to yet another world.
A scroll talking to me is the kind of thing that can happen.
Besides, it might be a way to return to the modern world.
I'd already experienced a supernatural phenomenon once.
What if it had shown up again?
It could be a clue for getting back to the modern world.
So I gave it a try.
“You read my memories, didn't you? So you must know where I came from?”
Calmly talking to a scroll is insane.
And the scroll didn't answer.
Instead, the floating text disappeared.
The ink danced again.
I thought we'd end up conversing in writing, but that wasn't it.
A dizzying vertigo hit me again.
And the book began reading me again.
The ink displayed a few words in flowing script.
“Damn it.”
With that blending just now, instructions on how to use this book had been injected into my head too.
It wasn't a conversation.
It was a one-sided notice.
On the scroll…….
[Books]
[Treasures]
[Secrets]
Those words floated there.
I reached out and pressed [Books].
It felt similar to tapping a smartphone.
This was no coincidence.
This book was finding what I was familiar with and providing it. It had dug through my memories and recreated something like a modern interface.
And at the same time, it was picking out and showing me what the current me would want most.
Three listings came up again.
Rare books I'd wanted but couldn't obtain.
A back button…….
Is it right to call this a button?
There was something like that too.
When I pressed [Treasures], there were things like gold or jade that could turn into money right away.
Under [Secrets], three names appeared. The Chairman's name, and those of two high officials of Sichuan.
The contents were probably important secrets they held.
Why is the Chairman here? No, wait, rich people have lots of secrets. Makes sense.
All of it was extremely useful.
Unreasonably favorable to me, even.
“Still, it's not free.”
Each item had a price.
When I looked at the prices, the numbers that had appeared in Chinese characters warped and turned into Arabic numerals.
The unit after them, too, had been the character for points, but it flickered as if with static and became "points" in Hangul.
It seemed to be improving itself for my convenience, and that was exactly right. This was a book that read its owner and adapted to them.
“The way to earn points is…….”
Immediately, the knowledge I'd gained during the blending rose to the surface of my mind.
Put all of creation into the book.
Put any object of this world, anything at all, into the book, and it measures its value and assigns points.
The more precious it is, the more points it gives.
It's what you'd call a "shop."
I just couldn't tell by what principle the buying and selling worked.
It was convenient.
Convenient beyond words.
Naturally, a question came to mind.
“Why?”
A book like this couldn't just exist. That went against the laws of the world.
Then someone must have made it.
Then why would a being capable of making such a strange artifact demand this of me?
And why me?
This time, nothing came to mind.
It felt like I'd been deliberately shut out.
Yet the scroll was still whispering in my ear.
Telling me to use it, since I would need it…….
“Haha…….”
Suddenly, a wave of bitter sorrow welled up.
“If you were going to show up, you could've come sooner…….”
I'd given up long ago.
I'd thought reality was different from novels.
If I hadn't worked myself half to death, I'd have died on the road far from home long ago.
This strange world was that kind of place.
If you're going to give me something, you should've put it in my hand before sending me.
Why on earth does something like a miraculous encounter show up only after I've gone through five years of pure hell?
It's enough to stop up both my breath and my nose.
Still…….
“There was a reason I fell here, wasn't there? Tell me there was.”
It felt like a ray of light was shining into the resentment I'd buried and let fester for the past five years.
Wasn't this clearly the kind of miraculous encounter only a protagonist gets?
Exhilaration swelled in my chest.
Am I the protagonist?
The protagonist of this ill-fated story?
Of course, the book didn't answer.
***
The Hermit Forest was one of the many factions bound together under the name of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
But even among them, there was bound to be a hierarchy.
The seven most powerful and threatening factions were called the Seven Demon Heavenly Pillars.
It meant the seven pillars that held up the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
As one of the Seven Demon Heavenly Pillars, the Hermit Forest was an assassin sect made up entirely of assassins.
It was an ominous name martial artists were loath even to speak for fear of bad luck, and a death that could visit them at any time.
A famous assassin sect is a contradiction if ever there was one.
Which shows just how fearsome the Hermit Forest was.
Despite being this famous, they still carried out their assassinations.
Sa Pae-cheon, Captain of the Hermit Forest's Infiltration Unit, hurriedly sent off a letter.
Faster than a messenger pigeon was a messenger hawk, and among those were hawks that were spirit creatures, imbued with spiritual nature.
It would reach even distant Xinjiang before the day was out.
“What an interesting means of communication you have. No wonder even the Alliance had trouble finding traces of you.”
“Does the Alliance not raise spirit creatures like this too?”
“Spirit messenger hawks are rare.”
The Sword Star Namgung Hyeon-ri was smiling now.
As Captain of the Infiltration Unit, who infiltrated and laid the groundwork, Sa Pae-cheon prided himself on being skilled at reading people's minds, if nothing else.
And reading a Namgung's mind was truly not difficult.
By any measure, the Sword Star was relieved.
And that fact gave tremendous relief to Sa Pae-cheon and his two subordinates as well.
This secret talk had been a gamble for both sides.
A gamble so enormous that if it ended well, nothing else would matter.
In true Namgung fashion, the Sword Star laid out his circumstances.
Even Sa Pae-cheon came to wonder whether the orthodox murim's Sword Star should really be laying out such secret history to the Captain of the Hermit Forest's Infiltration Unit.
But that was precisely why it worked.
The Sword Star had already been driven into a corner.
He didn't have many options left. He had simply made a decision.
It was a truly Namgung-like secret history.
In barely an hour, they reached an amicable agreement.
But the Captain of the Infiltration Unit had no authority to decide on the defection of an Absolute Master of the Sword Star's caliber.
So the Sword Star would stay in Lizhou a few more days and coordinate through an Elder-level figure of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult who would arrive soon.
Sa Pae-cheon decided to be honestly glad the matter had left his hands.
He had spent his whole life in an assassin sect.
If ordered to die, he would die.
But this kind of business…….
Was truly unfamiliar.
“Then I shall await word. I will take my leave now.”
“Do so.”
The mood had become almost convivial.
The Sword Star vanished.
Only then did Sa Pae-cheon, Hong Gu-pae, and the Chairman of Jeong Manor stroke their chests in relief.
Had their martial arts been shallower, they wouldn't have felt this way.
How an Absolute Master like the Sword Star appeared in a martial artist's eyes…….
Ordinary folk would never know.
He made even assassins, whose trade was death, think of their own deaths and the terror of it.
That is what an Absolute Master is.
***
Whether the book answers doesn't matter.
My guess is that this book isn't a being with a personality.
To put it in modern terms, it merely performs programmed functions.
Then how it's used depends entirely on me.
There's so much I can get my hands on.
The items for sale are limited for now, but I already knew there were functions to expand or refresh them.
Even that requires points.
So what now?
Getting inside the Chairman's fence was definitely a big achievement.
But why was the Chairman's name listed under [Secrets]?
I should check on those closest to me first.
Something might go wrong on my path to success.
It was true I was grateful to the Chairman, but I didn't want to shove my life into a storm again.
I want to reach office as safely as possible.
So I needed to gather points.
When I wanted to check my points history, such an entry appeared.
Spirit Beast Blood (Unidentified), Trace Amount +2,225 points
Ink, Small Amount +5 points
Paperweight +10 points
Total: 2,240 points
This was really puzzling.
So the blood I wiped off wasn't even human?
Spirit beast?
Do things like that exist here?
I'd only left Lizhou in Sichuan once. For the examination.
I'd landed here from the very start. After my days of begging, I'd rarely strayed far from Jeong Manor.
Even for the examination, I didn't go very far.
I'd spent most of my time just studying like this, so of course I knew little of the world.
I'd vaguely heard from Hong-hyung that spirit beasts existed.
It was the sort of talk that went, "Well, such things do exist," so I'd let it go in one ear and out the other.
I'd figured I'd never run into one anyway.
The "Unidentified" part bothered me too.
It seemed this book really did exist to read in the world.
For now, it was writing everything based on my own understanding.
Since I hadn't fed it much, my memories it had read were probably its biggest source of information.
Suddenly I almost felt sorry for how little I knew of the world.
I didn't know by what principle it found the items it sold and offered them to me, either.
But it seemed to sell only things within the range of my awareness.
“And…….”
[Jeong Manor Chairman Jeong Ryang-ja] -2,300 points
I wasn't far short.
Then it was something I could check right now.
A pointless twinge of guilt jabbed a corner of my heart, but I ignored it and went outside.
Even in a world without clocks, after living in it long enough, you learn to roughly gauge the passage of time.
The Hour of the Dog had passed, and it was now the Hour of the Rat.
It was a dark night, but the moon was shining down somehow.
Couldn't I just pick up some pebbles and feed them in?
Out there, I began fumbling around, gathering this and that and putting it in.
With the book open, it readily took in whatever I placed on it.
And I ran into a problem right away.
The scroll, floating separately from the book, showed me.
Small Stone +2 points
Small Stone +1 point
Stone +0 points
Somehow, it made sense.
If collecting is the goal, there's no particular reason to want the same thing again.
So the points it converted gradually decreased and eventually disappeared.
Testing with other things, it seemed the value halved each time and eventually hit zero.
I couldn't get everything just by sitting still.
In the end, I was being forced to move around here and there.
The book was demanding it.
It was starting to sound like a devil's whisper. I'd have to pay a price, wouldn't I?
But wasn't it a really cheap price?
“There's still plenty to try putting in.”
I carefully brought out the oil lamp.
When I caught a bug and put it in, it yielded more points than I'd expected.
Does it value living things more than inanimate ones?
After figuring out that much, I got tired and sank down.
Suddenly I felt hollow.
“I worked so hard just to survive, and now it's no different from a game.”
I'd never played games even when I lived in Korea.
I didn't have the luxury. Even then, studying was my only way to survive.
Still, there were kids at the orphanage who played, so I roughly knew. It must've felt like this.
A world built so that less effort gets you bigger results.
My world, which had been solid reality just moments ago, had broken far too easily.
“Heh heh…….”
Still, I like it.
I want to profit easily too.
Considering how I worked myself half to death for the past five years, don't I deserve to enjoy at least this much?
Reaching 2,300 points looked harder than I'd thought.
Still, if I keep moving, it'll work out somehow.
I put the lamp back in my room.
I blew it out too.
A scholar wandering around with a light at this hour would be far too suspicious, no matter what.
I could manage by plucking leaves and such in the dark and feeding them in.
I waited for my eyes to adjust to the night's darkness, then moved.
Let's feed the book as many different things as possible.
It felt utterly unreal.
Maybe I was giddy.
That's why I was careless.
Not that being careful would have changed anything.
***
A martial artist's five senses were naturally sharper than an ordinary person's, but that alone had its limits.
The senses of martial artists, as though they had eyes in the backs of their heads, actually stemmed from a field made of qi.
For an Absolute Master, it was called a domain.
But neither the Sword Star nor the Hermit Forest's assassins had theirs spread out.
If one side spread its qi to sense, the one being sensed would sense it in return.
That would have ruined the secret talk, so they had no choice but to keep it reined in.
So the Sword Star discovering Heo Saeng was pure chance.
With night vision far keener than an ordinary person's, he saw a scholar lit by moonlight.
The scholar was fumbling about in darkness he couldn't possibly see through properly.
Suspicious didn't begin to cover it.
The only ones awake at this hour were gentlemen on the rafters.
‘The scholar I saw during the day. Not the slightest trace of martial training. Nor does he seem to have learned any other skill. So he was just a retainer of this disguised branch.’
So it was natural for the Sword Star to sigh.
‘An ordinary man.’
But words had been exchanged that must never leak out.
He couldn't take the risk.
Killing to seal mouths was not such an unfamiliar phrase even to orthodox knights-errant. Disposing of a body wasn't hard either.
The Sword Star closed his eyes for a moment.
Because, even so, killing to seal mouths was an unfamiliar phrase to the martial artists of the Namgung alone.
But he had already turned his back on the Namgung.
So he would have to do it properly.
The Sword Star silently drew his sword.
And, filled with murderous intent, he appeared before Heo Saeng's eyes.
***
The sight of the old man appearing like a ghost was startling enough to make me jump out of my skin.
But no voice came out of my mouth.
Something was constricting my body.
There was no time to think.
My mind was paralyzed to begin with.
My body went rigid.
My limbs wouldn't move properly.
I couldn't even think of the words killing intent.
I understood only the meaning of the sword the old man had drawn.
I didn't know why.
That old man was about to kill me.
That was the only thing my instincts grasped.
Before even resentment could form, the instinct to live moved me.
My legs gave out.
I fell limply onto my backside.
The book fell too.
It flapped open.
I scooted backward on my rear.
I desperately flailed my unresponsive arms and retreated.
Pity entered the old man's eyes.
Yet his resolve did not waver.
He was going to kill me.
There, my mind stopped working.
All that remained was fear.
Resignation came in an instant.
I didn't know why, but my life ended here.
The moment even my instincts accepted it.
The old man began walking slowly toward me.
His figure merely filled my vision.
Because my thoughts had stopped.
One step.
Two steps.
Bit by bit, what remained of my life shrank.
Then the old man lifted his foot and stepped on the book.
It was his right foot.
His left foot left the ground.
The open book glowed faintly.
What happened next was hard to grasp all at once.
The old man's expression changed drastically.
The foot he'd planted sank in an instant.
Aghast, the old man flailed his arms.
At least, I think he did.
I couldn't see it properly.
All I felt was the sound of air being torn and the wind pressure.
But those movements were of no use.
It all happened in an instant.
The old man vanished.
His sword dropped. THUNK.
Since it fell into the grass, it made no more than a rustle.
Then it was quiet again.
In the moonlit darkness, I was left alone again.
Only then did the sensation strangling my airway disappear.
I gasped for breath.
Even my arms gave out.
I lay down right there.
I saw the brilliantly bright moon.
I tried somehow to understand what had just happened.
But faster than understanding…….
The scroll blocked my view.
[M̷͎a̸̪r̵̻t̶̹i̷̮a̸̠l̵̝ ̶A̷̧r̸̫t̵̲i̶̙s̷̤t̸̼]
The scroll was trembling as if full of static.
Even the ink that formed the letters wavered, unable to settle.
[M̸̗a̵̩s̶̳t̷̹e̸̠r̵̻]
Countless letters swirled.
It was as if it had suddenly taken in something too enormous and was stuttering.
[P̷̙e̸̞a̵̖k̶̬ ̷M̸̳a̵̱s̶̪t̷̤e̸̝r̵̼]
I just stared at it blankly.
[T̷̖r̸̫a̵̳n̶̗ș̷c̸̫e̵̻n̶̮d̷̬e̸̹n̵̝t̶̤ ̷P̸̪e̵̙a̶̟ḵ̷ ̸M̵̳a̶̧s̷̖t̸̼e̵̪r̶̫]
And then—SNAP—it jumped.
That's how it felt.
Steady, complete letters appeared.
[Absolute Master]
It seemed the book had finished analyzing what it had swallowed.
At last, its value was converted.
+98,721 points
Total: 100,978
Goosebumps crawled over my skin.