In Geon-mu's case, it was his name.
In the second world, which had been a martial world, Hong Yun-ju.
In the third world, a world of magic and fantasy, James Hallenmoor.
And in the last world...... he had simply been Cha Geon-mu.
It had been a world of madness where names and everything else meant nothing.
Even in the worlds where a name like Hong Yun-ju or James Hallenmoor had already been decided for him, Geon-mu had always introduced himself as Cha Geon-mu.
The reason was simple.
Because that is my name.
It was because the name Cha Geon-mu, and no one else's, was the thing that expressed who he was.
Geon-mu made sure to blend into each world while keeping his own identity intact.
"This is no different from the place I used to live."
No, if anything the environment seemed to have improved.
Had the sky over Seoul ever been this clear?
The sky over Seoul had been one that could never crawl out of its hell of fine dust.
It was no different from the real world he had known, so long ago now that it was dizzyingly distant.
It made the Heavenly Venerable's warning seem pointless.
'It really is no different from my old hometown, though.......'
No different, perhaps, but that did not mean he knew everything.
'Now that I think about it, how do I even apply for a name change?'
In his former life he had never once been dissatisfied with his name, so there was no way he would know such a thing.
In the martial world and in the fantasy world he had been of lowly standing, so it was enough to simply say that was his name and leave it there.
But the Republic of Korea had a system of its own.
And so did this damned thing called a trait window.
He had no idea how to strip the name Kim Jin-hyeok off the trait window.
'My resident registration will be under Kim Jin-hyeok anyway, so it has to be changed regardless.'
He decided to start by changing the name on the family register.
He was about to grab a passerby and ask where a name change had to be filed.
That thought lasted only a moment.
A message rose up in front of Geon-mu.
[Alert!]
[In ten minutes, the <Trial of the Goblin King> will begin.]
'A trial?'
Geon-mu tilted his head at the text that had appeared out of nowhere.
Unlike Geon-mu, who knew nothing at all, the world moved as though it were used to this.
A moment later, an air-raid siren rang out between the buildings that soared high into the sky.
[A gate manifestation signal has been detected within Tapgol Park. All civilians other than authorized personnel are requested to evacuate immediately. Repeating this notice once more.]
The people who heard the warning quickly began to leave the area.
'I don't know what a gate is, but it's clearly dangerous.'
And what should one do when something is dangerous?
Go in, of course.
In any case, the best way to learn how this world's system worked was to experience it firsthand.
Having reached that conclusion, Geon-mu started walking toward Tapgol Park.
He knew he was heading in the right direction only after he saw a black van and the people standing beside it.
Geon-mu swept his eyes over all of them quickly.
'Straight swords, sabers, shields, bows....... From the books and staves, it seems some of them can use magic as well.'
The Heavenly Venerable's words, 'It will be different from what you knew,' began to feel real to some degree.
'If those people can do it, then so can I.'
Geon-mu gave them a quick once-over, sized them up, and headed into Tapgol Park.
A man who saw him walking in so casually caught hold of him.
"Hey! Didn't you hear the warning? Civilians need to evacuate, now. If you go and die trying to suck up views on YouTube, it turns into a headache for us."
Geon-mu tilted his head at the middle-aged man's warning.
"So that means anyone who is not a civilian may simply walk in?"
"Are you an Awakened?"
Geon-mu gave a shrug.
"Probably?"
"What do you mean, probably......?"
The middle-aged man looked at Geon-mu with an utterly dumbfounded expression.
Geon-mu nodded as though he had gotten good information out of the exchange.
"So people like us are called Awakened. If you are worried on my account, there is no need. I am not a civilian."
"Are you playing word games with me? Who are you? What outfit are you with—"
Just as he was about to pick a fight, a message appeared in front of them.
[The <Trial of the Goblin King> is beginning!]
[Trial of the Goblin King]
Trial Type: Annihilation
Difficulty: D
Recommended Level: 12
Slay the goblins pouring out of the gate.
A semi-transparent window hung before the Awakened.
A mage who had finished the final checks looked at the middle-aged man and shouted.
"Captain! It has begun!"
"Damn it...... Look, you and I will talk later."
"I have no desire to see you."
Veins bulged at the sight of him digging in his ear, but the man turned his focus to his mission.
Thanks to that thoughtless provocation, Geon-mu learned one more thing.
'A petty vessel like a third-rate foot soldier, and yet he drops the quarrel and ignores me. It must mean this trial is important.'
It meant there was a reward large enough to make a quarrel like that worth letting go.
'I don't have a single copper to my name, so earning a bit of pocket money is worth a try.'
By his estimate, the range would be inside Tapgol Park.
He would rather not cross paths with that lot, so Geon-mu headed west.
'Shall I run a little?'
Geon-mu steadied his breathing and began to run.
TAK-TAK-TAK!
It was superhuman footwork.
He shot off at a speed hard to believe from a Level 1 and reached the western sector in an instant.
"There they are."
The task of the trial was in sight.
A blackish distortion of space opened between the trees, and monsters of small, stunted build came swarming out.
"Kek-kek-kek!"
"The King commanded it! Kill human!"
They were monsters Geon-mu knew well.
'Goblins, without a doubt.'
As Geon-mu's eyes rested steadily on the goblins, another message appeared.
[<Myriad Phenomena> sees through the goblin.]
[Goblin Grunt]
Race: Goblin
Lineage: Hungry Ghost
Rank: Grunt
Level: 12
Traits: None
Strength: 10
Agility: 15
Perception: 8
Stamina: 12
Magic Power: 0
Skills: <Swing>, <Draw Attention>
*Under the rule of the Goblin King.
'So this is how a trait works?'
Myriad Phenomena was an eye that saw through all things.
It was a kind of truth he had attained through enlightenment as he rose to the seat of the Asura King.
'Having it laid out like this is convenient.'
The information coming in was less than before, but too much was as bad as too little.
Before, whenever he looked at someone, strange information had poured in unfiltered, and far from being pleasant it had only given him headaches.
Seeing the memories of asuras in the Asura Realm, where all they did was fight, had been particularly unpleasant.
'Enough reminiscing.......'
Geon-mu turned his eyes to the goblins.
There were over forty just in sight.
They were still steadily pouring out, so there would be at least sixty.
'Goblins, is it.......'
Before he lived as the Dragon-Slaying Emperor, Geon-mu had worked as a mercenary.
Those were destitute days when he had to grind down a sword someone else had used and thrown away just to have a weapon.
He had to earn money to keep from starving to death, so he took whatever work came his way.
More than half of those commissions had to do with goblins.
Individually they amounted to nothing, but unless you wiped out their seed, they kept springing up endlessly.
They were the sort of nuisance that never ended no matter how many you killed, like rabbits loosed in Australia.
'I took them for weaklings, but their levels and stats are far above mine.'
Every stat Geon-mu had was a 3.
They were surely figures that stayed at a civilian's level.
The stat gap with these goblins was threefold, so a head-on fight offered no chance of victory.
"This should be fun."
A smile hung at the corner of Geon-mu's mouth.
What it meant was that Geon-mu had found himself an opponent.
"Kek-kek! A human!"
"The King commanded! Kill human!"
It began to charge at Geon-mu without a thought for anything else.
Geon-mu let out a sigh at the sight.
'Nothing has changed, then or now. Not with the goblin breed.'
They were a breed so lacking in intelligence that it was a wonder they could speak at all.
Geon-mu set his stance.
Staring straight at the charging goblin, he gathered his internal energy.
He stepped back once, slipping out of the club's arc.
The goblin had swung wide, and its balance collapsed.
"Kek-kek!?"
The sound of a flustered goblin.
And that changed into a scream the instant Geon-mu's palm touched its chest.
THWACK—!
"SHRIEEEK!"
The goblin's insides twisted, and it was flung away.
It rolled about ten meters before stopping.
And even that would not have stopped it had a tree not been there.
The goblin's level and stats were certainly far higher than Geon-mu's.
But there was something that made all of that weakness utterly meaningless.
Something that shattered the unbreakable heavens.
That was the Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord's martial art, the Heaven-Breaking Divine Art.
'A bit weak.'
He had sent it flying in one blow, but Geon-mu was not satisfied.
As with Myriad Phenomena, everything had been downgraded across the board.
'Even at my current level, a goblin like that should have lost its shape entirely.'
Granted, he had not unfolded a form or unleashed his internal energy; he had simply shoved with his palm.
Even with a changed body, the breathing and the memory he had maintained across centuries remained intact, so wielding a simple palm force was well within him.
'And with the Nine Dragon Divine Meridians backing me, this is all I get? Is it the stats affecting it after all?'
The stats were clearly not something to dismiss.
Geon-mu decided to settle on that conclusion for now.
While he was thinking, the scattered goblins moved.
"Kek-kek-kek! Killed our kind!"
"Kill, kiiiill!"
He had pulled their aggro.
They had surely come after hearing the scream of the first goblin to die.
Geon-mu raised one eyebrow and gave them an interested look.
"How strange. Far from losing their will to fight, they gather......."
Being treated as that weak soured his mood, but only for a moment.
Geon-mu decided to take it as good news.
At the very least, it meant he would not have to track down scattered goblins one by one.
The number of goblins swarming toward Geon-mu alone was over thirty.
He had already tested his ability once, so there was nothing to fear now.
"This should be enough for a light warm-up."
Geon-mu kicked off the ground, ran, and bored into the horde of goblins that lunged at him like hungry ghosts.
"Kek-kek!?"
He attacked faster still, giving them no time even to respond.
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!
Every goblin his palm touched had its ribs broken, vomited blood, and sprawled out like illegally dumped trash in the park.
There was no need to count them.
To Geon-mu they were objects without worth, not even worth the counting.
Geon-mu merely moved, and the goblins charged with no thought of retreat.
Like moths flying into a flame, they only burned away their own lives.
***
Tapgol Park, where the Trial of the Goblin King was underway.
Unlike the west, the east was struggling badly.
"Hold formation! Hold formation!"
"Agh! I'm hit, give me a heal! Heal!"
"Do not panic! I give the orders! Hold that formation!"
The party, which had never been fully organized, was on the verge of becoming a screaming hell.
Kang Ho-seok, the party leader and vanguard, kept command in hand even in the middle of the chaos.
The formation was precarious, but had Kang Ho-seok not taken the vanguard, the party would have collapsed long before.
'Dragging around greenhorns like these...... damn it.'
Of course, with connections and specs like Kang Ho-seok's, there was no need to haul around raw beginners.
But he had no choice.
The condition for receiving a reward from a trial was that the party's average level must not be too far above the recommended level.
That was why Kang Ho-seok had formed a raid team with beginners between Level 3 and Level 5.
It was a loophole, but a method quite a lot of people used.
To take the reward from this trial, he needed to be overwhelming.
'First place gets the Golden Box.'
Trials had rankings, and rewards followed those rankings.
The first, second, and third place rewards differed sharply.
The first place reward was double the second place reward, and the second place reward was four times the third.
To win the reward from the <Trial of the Goblin King>, Kang Ho-seok had thrown together a team of novice Awakened as a stopgap.
Controlling the novices was not easy, but with Kang Ho-seok carrying it alone they somehow got past the crisis.
They had wiped out every goblin from the gate that manifested in the east.
"Whew......."
"So this is a trial. It's really terrifying."
"G-good work, sir."
Soaked through with sweat as though a storm had swept over them, the beginners let out sighs of relief.
Kang Ho-seok, wearing a face that found even their moment of relief unreliable, immediately gave his next order.
"Don't relax yet. We're moving to the next area right away."
"What? A-already?"
"If someone else cuts into the trial, there'll be less for us to take. Annihilation types like this one especially are best finished fast. Top up whatever mana and stamina you're short on with potions. We move immediately. Move it, move it!!"
At their captain's order, the beginners hurriedly began uncapping bottles.
They were potions Kang Ho-seok had bought with his own money for this very moment.
At a hundred thousand won apiece, five hundred thousand won evaporated in one go.
Now he had a reason to make certain this trial ended as his own one-man stage.
As they moved, Kang Ho-seok counted the number of goblins he had killed.
'The party killed eighty goblins in total. Half of them are mine.'
The number Kang Ho-seok had taken down was exactly forty-two.
They were the only ones taking part in this annihilation trial, where a total of one hundred and sixty poured out, and even if someone barged in late, they would never catch up to Kang Ho-seok's count.
'First place by an overwhelming margin. No question.'
Kang Ho-seok smiled.
It was the moment when he, who had always had to stand by and watch someone else take the first-place reward, became the protagonist.
Just as he was buzzing with curiosity about what the first-place reward might be,
[The <Trial of the Goblin King> has ended.]
"Huh?"
"What? It's over?"
The party members wore bewildered expressions.
So did Kang Ho-seok.
"Did some other party break in?"
The area had been locked down, and there was only one party.
No, there was one person he could think of.
'That insolent bastard, alone?'
Before he could even finish guessing who it was, the man himself appeared.
"Oh? We meet again."