When Aren opened his eyes, darkness welcomed him. His lungs filled with damp air.
Aren held his Gladius in front of him as a shield. He leaned his back against the cold stone wall.
His eyes were trying to adjust to the darkness.
A faint blue light of unknown origin, seeping through the cracks in the walls, illuminated the stone corridor. The walls were rough and mossy. It was just like a cave.
There were puddles on the ground. When the water dripping from the ceiling made contact with the ground, a splashing sound echoed.
A screen appeared in front of him.
QUEST: CLEAR THE DUNGEON. (SOLO)
DESCRIPTION:
Sword Saint Aunger, approaching the end of his life, wants to leave behind not just a sword, but a legacy. However, he carries a deep regret in his heart. Throughout his life, he could not find a student worthy of him, nor could he train anyone to pass on his wisdom and martial arts.
Note: This dungeon is his final will and testament.
TIME LIMIT: 100 DAYS.
REWARD: TO BE EVALUATED BASED ON PERFORMANCE.
PENALTY: DEATH.
After reading the notification, Aren frowned slightly.
"Sword Saint? Receiving such a quest right after choosing sword mastery as a skill. Is this a coincidence?" he couldn't help but think.
'100 days... A long time.'
He didn't lower his Gladius. He slowly stepped into the darkness. The structure of the cave changed as he advanced.
A corridor made of spotless, pure white quartz welcomed him. At the end of the corridor was a simple, wooden door.
After taking about fifty more steps, the corridor ended, and Aren reached out his right hand to open the wooden door.
He found himself at the entrance of a wide, circular hall.
The walls, ceiling, and floor; all were carved from a single piece of smooth white quartz.
It was difficult to gauge how high the ceiling was because a soft, white light filtering down from above illuminated everywhere.
Right in the middle of the room, there was an entity lying on the ground. It was a 'Training Dummy'.
The dummy was made of white, polished wood. Its joints were connected with flawless engineering. It had no face.
And in its hand, instead of a real sword, it held a training sword carved from the same white wood.
The wooden door suddenly closed.
Seeing the door close, Aren quickly tried to open it.
'It won't open...' he thought, after which he struck the wooden door with his Gladius with all his might.
'What a sturdy material. Not even a single scratch.'
Aren's eyes caught the wooden door behind the dummy.
'That must be the exit.' he thought.
A screen appeared in front of him.
QUEST: DEFEAT THE DUMMY.
REWARD: INTERMEDIATE SWORD MASTERY.
PENALTY: DEATH.
The dummy stood up as if suddenly coming to life.
It slowly raised its wooden sword and began to move.
It was slow, yet at the same time, fast. It was graceful, yet at the same time, powerful. It was simple, yet at the same time, deadly.
Viewed from afar, it resembled a dance. A dance where every move was designed to kill the person across from it.
When the dummy took its first step toward Aren, Aren thought it would be a simple attack. After all, the thing across from him was a wooden toy with creaking joints.
But he was wrong.
The dummy swung the wooden sword in its hand in a horizontal arc. The movement was so fluid that the sword made almost no sound as it cut through the air.
Aren raised his Gladius by reflex. His goal was to block the attack and immediately transition into a counterattack.
A thud, unexpectedly deep for the collision of metal and wood, echoed in the hall.
Aren looked at the dummy calmly.
He felt the bones in his arms vibrating. His feet didn't leave the ground, but he was dragged five meters backward from where he stood. The marks of his shoes were left on the white quartz floor.
"Too strong."
The dummy didn't stop.
Without losing the momentum of the first attack at all, it twisted its wrist at an impossible angle and swung the sword upward from below.
This wasn't a fight. This was a one-sided beating.
Aren dodged to the side with difficulty. The tip of the wooden sword passed just a few centimeters in front of his nose. The dummy was too fast. Aren was having trouble following it with his eyes.
Aren pulled back, widening the distance between them. He was panting. The hand holding the Gladius had gone numb.
Although the dummy missed its attack, it hadn't lost its balance at all. It returned to its previous position. It held the sword loosely, as if it were about to fall from its hand, but there was not a single opening in its stance.
Aren took a deep breath. He emptied his mind.
He saw the slight twitch in the dummy's shoulder.
'It's coming.'
The dummy attacked again. The same move. A horizontal slash.
Aren didn't block this time.
He watched the dummy's movement. The angle of the sword, the stance of its feet, the rotation of its waist...
Aren lowered his Gladius and ducked his body in harmony with the dummy's movement.
As the dummy's sword passed over his head, Aren swung his own sword too.
But it didn't work.
His sword struck the dummy's torso but failed to leave any mark.
The dummy did not delay in punishing this failed imitation of Aren's. With its free wooden hand, it delivered a heavy blow to Aren's chest.
"AGHH!"
Aren tumbled to the ground, the breath knocked out of him.
He quickly got to his feet and widened the distance. He spat out the taste of blood that came to his mouth onto the floor.
A melodic voice appeared in his mind.
"Let me help you. This dummy is way out of your league." it said.
Aren looked around. There was no one other than him and the dummy.
"Who's there?" he said.
His voice echoed on the empty walls.
No answer came.
"I guess I started hallucinating thanks to the blow I took." he said.
The dummy, with its creaking joints, took position again.
"Hallucination or not..." Aren tightly gripped his Gladius.
The sweat dripping from his forehead stung his eye.
"1st Rule: Survive."
The melodic voice echoed again. This time it was much clearer.
"Then shut your mouth and listen to me. Or else that piece of wood will turn you into minced meat."
When Aren heard the melodic voice again, with absolute calmness, he gave the most logical answer that could come to his mind.
"What are you? A part of the System?"
"Don't ask questions." the voice said in an ice-cold tone. "It's coming!"
The dummy suddenly dashed forward.
Its attack this time was much faster than the previous one. With a vertical slash, it aimed to cleave Aren in two from his head to his groin.
His eyes were locked on the approaching wooden sword. He had no time to dodge.
"Close your eyes!" roared the voice in his mind.
This was a command so dominant, so indisputable, that Aren's body reacted before his brain.
While his logic said 'Don't.', his body obediently closed his eyes.
Darkness.
"Right!"
Aren blindly threw himself to the right.
He could feel the wind of the wooden sword.
"Interesting." said Aren.
"Don't speak! Just do what I say."
"Lean slightly to the left." the voice said.
Aren leaned to the left without questioning.
The dummy's sword passed just a millimeter beside his right shoulder.
"The dummy is pulling its sword back." interjected the voice.
"Its balance is on its left foot. Its right side is open."
Aren saw nothing in the darkness, but the voice was narrating the entire scene to him.
"Now!" shouted the voice.
"Hold your sword at waist level. A straight thrust. FAST!"
He didn't even know where he was hitting or what was in front of him.
He merely did what the voice said.
He thrust the Gladius with all his might.
The Gladius traveled through the void... and struck something hard.
Aren felt a momentary resistance at the tip of the Gladius, then the sword slipped through as if entering a void.
"Pull back." said the voice with calm satisfaction.
Aren pulled his sword out and swiftly leapt back.
Aren opened his eyes.
He met the sight he saw with calmness.
The dummy stood where it was, but in its chest, right where its heart should be, there was a fist-sized hole.
The Gladius had pierced through that hard white wood, perhaps even more durable than steel, like butter.
'I understand. There was only one goal from the beginning. I had to discover its weak point and defeat it by exploiting that weakness.'
The dummy's wooden sword fell from its hand. Then it dropped to its knees and, within seconds, collapsed into a pile of dust on the ground.
Only its wooden sword remained.
Panting, he lowered his Gladius.
"Not bad." said the voice in his mind, in a noble tone.
"At least you know how to obey. You're lucky this dummy was designed to train, not to kill, or else you would have died in the blink of an eye." the voice in his mind said.
Immediately after, a notification appeared in front of him.
Experience gained.
CONGRATULATIONS! Level 2 > Level 6
Your Stats increased by 4 points.
QUEST: DEFEAT THE DUMMY. (COMPLETED)
REWARD: INTERMEDIATE SWORD MASTERY, PASSAGE TO THE NEXT ROOM.
PENALTY: DEATH.
'Level 6?'
The slight warmth he normally felt when gaining a single level had this time given way to a scorching wave of energy burning every cell in his body.
The blood in his veins was boiling, his bones were aching. It felt as if his body was being dismantled and reassembled.
"AGGHHH!"
Groaning in pain, Aren collapsed to the ground.
Seconds felt like minutes.
Finally, the pain subsided, giving way to an indescribable lightness.
He felt all his senses enhancing.
Aren stood up.
'I feel stronger than I've ever been.'
Immediately afterward, a shockwave hit his mind.
A tremendous amount of information was forcefully crammed into his brain.
Thousands of different sword strikes, stances, defensive techniques, and footwork flooded into his mind. It was as if the memories of a general who had swung a sword all his life and grown old on battlefields were being downloaded into his brain.
Aren clutched his head. "This... is too much..."
"Stop whining and check your stats." said the voice in his mind.
Aren did what the voice said.
Title: None
Level: 6
Name: Aren Khan
Race: Human
Bloodline: None
Age: 26
Height: 174CM
Weight: 73KG
Vitality: 6 -> 10
Strength: 6 -> 10
Agility: 7 -> 11
Endurance: 5 -> 9
Intelligence: 11 -> 15
Wisdom: 11 -> 15
Soul: 100 -> 104
Mana: 2 -> 6
Skills: Bloodlust (Passive), Intermediate Sword Mastery (Passive), Ghost Step (Passive)
Aren couldn't take his eyes off the screen.
'It's not just my stats that increased. I grew taller and gained weight too.'
His physical transformation could not be ignored. The black tracksuit set he wore was now too tight for his body. The hems sat above his ankles, and the shoulder seams were stretched taut due to his expanding muscle mass.
He raised his arms in the air and looked at his hands.
His wrists and fingers were thicker than before.
He clenched his fists. He felt a power he had never felt before.
"Just accelerated evolution." said the voice in his mind.
Its voice was as calm as if it were talking about something very simple.
"Accelerated evolution?" Aren could not recognize his own voice. His throat had thickened, his voice taking on a deeper and more authoritative tone.
"And you... Who are you? Why did you help me just now?"
The voice in his mind chuckled softly.
"To help you is to help myself." it said.
In a calm tone, Aren said, "I don't understand. Why are you inside my head?"
"You ask too many questions. I need to sleep for now. Do not die until our next meeting." it said. Its voice was slowly fading.
With absolute calmness, Aren said, "Sleep?"
There was no answer.
Since there was nothing he could do about it, he decided to ignore it for now.
He turned his gaze to the wooden door standing behind him.
As if extending an invitation, the door creaked ajar on its own.
Aren tightly gripped the Gladius in his hand, or rather, tried to grip it.
"What is this?"
The Gladius now felt awkward in his hand. Its hilt was too small for his widened palm. And its weight was no different from a feather. It was as if he were holding a toy, not a sword.
'It's a matter of moments before it breaks.' he thought, after which his eyes drifted to the wooden training sword made of white wood on the ground.
He picked up the wooden sword.
It was much heavier than he expected. The white wood felt even sturdier than metal. Its smooth surface was cold.
"It's definitely better than the Gladius." Aren murmured.
With the white wooden sword he had taken in his hand, he stepped inside through the wooden door that had just opened.