Dong Bong-su returned to the Danri Family and finished his daily routine as if nothing had happened. On the surface, he was no different from before he had left the family grounds.
To anyone who saw him, he was just Sosam.
A stupid, idiotic mute who caught no one's attention.
That was Dong Bong-su as seen by others.
No one noticed the progress Dong Bong-su had made.
Far ahead in his vision, still visible only to him, the error box of New Murim Online continued to blink.
[A Critical ERROR has occurred... in the Murim Online system. There should be no problem proceeding with the game... but...]
Creeeak. Thud.
The door closed, and the stable became his space once more.
Critical ERROR.
'A critical error.'
The very fact that he existed here was already a critical error. How could there be an additional error on top of that? Perhaps that critical error also stemmed from the systematic discrepancy caused by his existence, which shouldn't be here.
He could roughly guess why that error message had appeared.
A kind of natural disaster occurring from the 'forced grafting' of this reality and the virtual reality of Murim Online.
Dong Bong-su estimated that this problem had been latent all along, but had finally surfaced with his level-up.
And.
That was quite an accurate guess. The 111th Dimensional Realm, the 112th Dimensional Realm, and the auxiliary dimension Murim Online that became the medium between them—the laws of these three dimensional realms were colliding along with the level-up, causing a 'critical error.'
Probably, the Critical ERROR message would appear every time he leveled up. If the differences between the three dimensional realms hadn't been significant, this wouldn't have happened in the first place, but the three dimensional realms were fundamentally completely different. Naturally, the application of all systems couldn't be accepted as is. In most cases, they would appear before him as distorted systems.
Dong Bong-su didn't know these deep details precisely, but he deduced something roughly similar.
The conclusion was.
All that distortion didn't really matter to him.
He just needed to keep leveling up and adapt to New Murim Online, the newly applied system. That was his path to survival and the way to become stronger.
Dong Bong-su raised his right hand and lightly clicked the X button on the right side of the error box. The error box disappeared, and several windows that had become usable or undergone changes upon reaching Level 2 sparkled with golden light.
"Inventory, Status Window, Skill Window, Quest Window"
Dong Bong-su first opened the Inventory, which he had now become quite familiar with.
Inside the Inventory, a sword he hadn't seen before, along with a set of clothes, a pair of leather shoes, and a hood were neatly arranged in the corner.
He pulled them out and laid them on the floor one by one.
All of them appeared to be made of shabby cloth, but their sanitary condition was pristine. Like brand-new products fresh from a factory.
In fact, these were items that should have originally been provided the moment Dong Bong-su logged into New Murim Online, but due to the critical error, they were basic equipment he was only receiving now. Of course, Dong Bong-su didn't know this, nor did he need to.
Since they existed, he would use them. It was a simple and clear proposition for him.
Dong Bong-su examined the items briefly, then grabbed the sword first without much hesitation.
Click—
Just by picking up the sword, a sound like fastening metal accessories rang out. At the same time, he felt a strange sensation.
'I feel stronger?'
It was hard to explain in words.
But he definitely felt an odd sensation, as if his strength, stamina, and agility had increased.
Dong Bong-su immediately put all the shabby groom's clothes he was wearing into his Inventory and equipped the laid-out gear on his body. Each time he equipped one, a clicking sound struck his ears, and just like when he held the sword, he felt as if he had grown stronger.
"Are these items?"
He had no choice but to be certain that all of this was game items.
Equipment that spontaneously appeared within the Inventory.
The feeling of abilities increasing each time he equipped one.
The mechanical sounds coming from inside his head or ears—he couldn't quite tell which.
Putting it all together.
The feeling of becoming stronger was.
'Not an illusion.'
It must be that by equipping the equipment, his stats had actually increased.
Click.
He closed the Inventory window. As if confirming the Inventory was finished, the golden light disappeared. Now that he had equipped the gear, it was time to check how much stronger he had become.
Dong Bong-su immediately opened the Status Window.
There, too, were dramatic changes.
"So the equipment is finally being recognized?"
Items were displayed in the equipment window that had been empty. What he was currently wearing was displayed exactly as it was.
[Novice's Sword], [Novice's Clothes], [Novice's Shoes], [Novice's Hood]
First, Dong Bong-su moved his hand like a mouse and hovered it over 'Novice's Sword.' Then a transparent window appeared beside it, displaying a description of the Novice's Sword.
[Novice's Sword]
Attribute: None
Required Class: Common
Required Level: 2
Minimum Attack Power: 2
Maximum Attack Power: 5
Critical Hit Increase Effect: ?
Minimum Martial Arts Attack Power: 3
Maximum Martial Arts Attack Power: 8
Martial Arts Critical Hit Increase Effect: ?
Additional Stat Increase: None
He checked the remaining items in the same manner, and they all had similar descriptions. The difference between the other items' descriptions and the sword's was that instead of attack power, they had defense power, and instead of martial arts attack power, they had martial arts defense power. Aside from that, the format itself was identical.
Another commonality between them was that the increased effects for critical hits and defense were consistently marked with a '?'.
Dong Bong-su judged this was also one of the phenomena occurring due to the Critical Error.
He briefly pondered what effects they might have, but soon shook off that thought. No matter how much he worried about it, it was a problem he couldn't understand at present anyway. There was no need to waste mental effort on such things.
What was important was.
'The fact that I've truly become stronger.'
That.
He continued examining the changes in the Status Window. Along with equipping the gear, major changes had occurred in his stats as well.
The basic stat values for Strength, Agility, and Intelligence had all changed from the previous '?' to yellow gauge bars. Since they weren't displayed in Arabic numerals, it was difficult to know the exact figures, but they were definitely tremendous changes. Though barely visible to the eye, all the gauge bars had filled up slightly.
With the level-up, the stat gauges had finally begun to activate.
Gauge bars also appeared for Health, Accuracy, Evasion, Attack Power, Defense Power, Martial Arts Attack Power, Martial Arts Defense Power, Elemental Defense, and True Energy/Internal Energy, which increased proportionally to the increases in Level, Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. Similarly, they weren't precisely quantified.
After checking several more things, Dong Bong-su closed the Status Window. Just like with the Inventory, once confirmation was complete, the Status Window's blinking disappeared.
Click.
This time it was the Skill Window's turn.
There were as many as five skills. More precisely, there were no 'Active Skills' at all—they were all 'Passive Skills.' The four basic actions that should have existed from the moment a game character was created, plus one unidentified skill, had been added.
The four were ones he knew well. Although he hadn't played for more than a few hours, he still had experience playing Murim Online.
He immediately checked the descriptions of those five.
[Slash (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]
The technique of swinging a weapon.
Moving a weapon up, down, left, and right to annihilate enemies is one of the most basic attacks.
Current Action Bonus: 0%
[Thrust (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]
The technique of thrusting a weapon.
Moving a weapon forward and backward to inflict penetrating wounds on enemies is one of the most basic attack techniques.
Current Action Bonus: 0%
[Throw (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]
The technique of throwing a weapon.
The technique of throwing sharp or blunt objects at enemies to inflict injury is one of the basic attack techniques passed down from ancient times.
Current Action Bonus: 0%
[Block (Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]
The technique of raising a weapon to block.
Blocking an enemy's attack by holding a weapon vertically or horizontally.
Current Action Bonus: 0%
These four were the basic actions that normally appeared commonly when creating a Murim Online character.
However,
[Spirit Eyes (Tester Passive) Lv.1 Proficiency: 0%]
Tester-exclusive skill.
Current Action Bonus: 0%
This was something he was seeing for the first time.
Aside from it being tester-exclusive, there was no particular explanation, so Dong Bong-su couldn't guess at all what it was. He could only speculate that it was a skill regular gamers couldn't possess.
In fact, everything within Murim Online—monsters, items, backgrounds, skills, etc.—were in principle components of the server, and as perfect artificial constructs in themselves, they were complete entities imbued with artificial intelligence.
Nevertheless, there were a few exceptional cases.
Testing.
Newly opened servers, newly created dungeons, new monsters, etc., sometimes had crude or incomplete configurations. So before revealing them to the public, testers would play through them in advance to see if they were imperfect or not. And there were separately prepared skills to help such testers with their testing.
Those were tester-exclusive skills.
Now one of those skills had been applied to Dong Bong-su through an unknown route—probably due to the Critical Error.
Why had a tester-exclusive skill been applied to Dong Bong-su, a mere player?
There were various reasons, but the most important one was, as Dong Bong-su had thought, the collision between the New Murim Online system and this reality of the Martial World. The New Murim Online system was itself a system with quite high-performance artificial intelligence, but it was currently in a considerably broken and tangled state. Things that should exist on the actual Murim Online server barely existed here in the Martial World, naturally. Because of that, the New Murim Online system came to regard all of Dong Bong-su's current gameplay as new actions—that is, 'test actions.'
Dong Bong-su had no idea about this fact, but it was a tremendous fortune for him and would be a great misfortune for the Martial World.