Chapter 4 : Log Out

Chapter 4: Log Out

He did not know whether his own body had tilted and collided, or whether the other side had crashed into him. Sensation had already been fading from his body.

“Did this bastard lose his mind?”

A rough curse rang out. It was that voice from just now.

Was it Machil? That was what he thought at first.

Thud, thump.

In an instant, three or four blows were delivered to Sosam’s abdomen.

“Ugh!”

It hurt. It hurt as if he were dying.

Only after tasting the fist did Sosam realize that it was not Machil. Machil’s punches were not this vicious, not sharp enough to feel as if his belly were being torn apart.

Saliva streamed from his mouth, and tears burst from his eyes. It was not because he was sad. It was because it hurt. He thought he had become accustomed to being beaten by now, but this was far too painful. If there was anything fortunate at all, it was that his vision, which had blurred from the pain, was recovering at least a little.

“Huh...ugh. Keuh...ugh....”

Unable to breathe properly, he gasped and dropped to his knees. Even in that state, he lifted his head with all the strength he had.

A familiar face came into view. He did not know the name clearly, but it was one of the warriors of the Danli Clan.

Thud. Another impact struck Sosam’s face.

“S-spare....”

After taking a kick infused with internal energy, Sosam could not even finish begging to be spared.

Why? Why? Why...? Just why was this happening...? What did I do wrong?

Was I not even allowed to live quietly, holding my breath like a bug?

Yet the answer he reached on his own was painfully clear.

This situation itself was the answer, and the Murim had always been that kind of place. It was not a world gentle enough for the lowest-tier herbivorous insect like him to survive.

“What the hell is this bastard babbling about? Speak properly, you piece of horseshit trash.”

With the curses, the endless kicking began.

Even so, Sosam could no longer feel any pain at all. He was dying. He realized that he had already placed one foot halfway into the Underworld.

It was unfair. He had only wanted to live somehow, in any way at all, yet he could not understand why the world treated him like this.

He wanted to kill Machil, who had provided the spark for all of this in the first place. He wanted to kill the warrior bastard who was trampling him now. He wanted to kill all the people of the Danli Clan who had ignored him, looked down on him, and toyed with him.

Just.

He wanted to kill everyone. He wanted to smash the world to pieces.

But.

The words that came out of his mouth were different.

“...Sp...are...me....”

The words that spilled from his lips could only be that, after all.

Thud.

Those were the last words he uttered in the living world.

Although it was a world like hell, he had wanted to survive to the very end.

And so, Sosam—the owner of the soul numbered 3789028376 of the 112th Dimensional Plane, who had wanted to live so desperately—brought his loathsome life to an end.

And then....

● ● ●

Thud.

“Kraah!”

With a soulless scream, a ‘Neighborhood Thug Elite’ died.

Dong Bong-su’s spear did not stop there. Each time he swung his spear, a neighborhood thug—elite or normal—collapsed onto the ground one by one. Naturally, no matter how many he killed, the number of neighborhood thugs did not decrease. As many as were reduced, that many reappeared. Not only him, but other people here were also indiscriminately killing the neighborhood thugs, yet the thugs regenerated endlessly.

That was not all.

Despite using his body for such a long time, he did not feel tired at all.

It had not even been long since he logged in, yet Dong Bong-su had already lost interest in ‘Murim Online’.

Was this really the kind of game for which claims were raised that murder cases had increased due to the harmful effects of gaming?

Completely below expectations. He thought he had found a new hunting ground....

This was not a hunting ground but a playground.

The blood spilled when neighborhood thugs died only resembled real blood in color.

It lacked the heat and moisture of real blood, and its unique, stimulating stickiness. There was no sensation at all. The heavy ‘hand-feel’ that should have been felt in his hands was completely absent. Players who were counterattacked and killed by the neighborhood thugs even had smiles on their faces.

Dying was not truly dying. Killing was not truly killing. The acts of killing and being killed here were nothing more than play, not slaughter.

More than anything, what dulled Dong Bong-su’s interest was the fact that there was not a single ‘carnivore’ here. The creatures here were either toys or, at best, herbivorous insects.

To begin with, he had not placed great expectations on this virtual reality game called ‘Murim’. No matter how similar to reality it was made, how could it possibly match the feel of reality itself? Even so, this was far below what he had anticipated. Even if it was not a hobby, he had thought it would at least be like a fishing spot where he could occasionally feel some ‘hand-feel’.

But this was not it.

After smashing the head of yet another neighborhood thug charging at him, Dong Bong-su reached a conclusion.

This could never become a hobby. Of course, his level was still low, and he knew nothing about the game’s rules, but even if he continued leveling up, would the texture of blood really change, or would carnivores that did not exist suddenly start appearing here?

A fake was just a fake. It could never become real.

Without hesitation, Dong Bong-su turned his body away. Toward reality, overflowing with real prey.

“Log Out.”

Dong Bong-su’s low, precise voice.

At the same time, his game character disappeared from the virtual reality game Murim, and Dong Bong-su’s consciousness also shut down.

In Korea. No, on Earth. No, in the Dimensional Plane to which Earth belonged.

That moment was—

The very moment Belteruk’s Soul Grafting succeeded.

Thus, Dong Bong-su—the owner of the soul numbered 3789028376 of the 111th Dimensional Plane, ‘logged in’ to the 112th Dimensional Plane.

● ● ●

“Umm....”

The instant Dong Bong-su regained consciousness, he felt an extreme pain in his chest. It hurt so much that he could barely breathe properly. Not only that, every bone in his body felt limp, as if they had all been shattered, and his muscles were screaming madly in agony, as though they were about to die.

Even his eyes were so swollen that they would not open properly.

‘What is this? Was I finally caught by the police?’

Dong Bong-su thought that his past actions had finally fallen into the investigative net.

Three hundred and thirty-two murders.

He had thought it was perfect, but perhaps it had not been perfect after all.

Heh.

A light laugh leaked out.

Right, it really had been a dangerous hobby. He had thought it would end someday, but it had ended like this. He did not feel particularly regretful. After all, as long as he did not die, this hobby could be done anywhere. Wasn’t the Republic of Korea practically a country without the death penalty? Unless a special law was created specifically because of him, even if prosecutors sought the death penalty for a murderer, it would not actually be carried out.

The Republic of Korea, a nation of human rights, was the best hunting ground for a predator like Dong Bong-su.

But even setting all of that aside....

Something felt strange.

As he had just thought, the Republic of Korea was a country where human rights were guaranteed. No matter how many as 332 murders someone had committed, criminals could not be arbitrarily tortured or beaten without a trial. Even if they secretly used violence to extract information, they would not go this far.

Judging from the sensations he felt in his body, the injuries he had sustained would require him to lie still for at least several months to even have a chance of recovery. A slight misstep and he might have died.

This was not for interrogation, and yet they beat an unconscious suspect to this extent?

Unless all of Dong Bong-su’s charges were fully proven, such actions would place enormous pressure on the police. If the media and human rights activists raised an uproar, it would be the police who would suffer the headaches.

From Dong Bong-su’s perspective, it would have been welcome, but unless the police were idiots, there was no way they would handle things like this.

This was....

Wasn’t this far too strange?

Having thought that far, Dong Bong-su forced his eyes open. A searing pain surged through his severely swollen eyes. They were so puffed up that he could only see about one-fifth of what he normally could. Everywhere was a blind spot. What he could confirm with his eyes right now was only a very limited fragment of the surrounding scenery.

At least, a faint moonlight was seeping in from somewhere, telling him that it was evening. The light dazzled his eyes, but that fact alone suggested several things to Dong Bong-su.

‘Moonlight.’

Naturally, this was not his room.

Because there was a window. Every source of light that existed in his room came from electric lighting.

Dong Bong-su slowly examined the environment where he was lying.

Immediately, a creaking sound came from his neck.

It further restricted his already limited movement. Even so, he endured the pain in his neck, minimized its use as much as possible, and rolled his eyeballs to look around. Because he could only open his eyes to a squint, they were not functioning properly, but even that was enough.

The first thing that entered his field of vision was several fairly large animals with long faces. He had never seen them in person even once, but they were animals he had encountered countless times through television.

‘A stable?’

They were horses.

A suffocating stench of horse manure pressed down on his nose, mixed with the pungent animal odor unique to beasts. Even if someone secretly brought a horse into his room, such a smell would not soak in within a day or two. This place had originally been a stable, and it was possible to infer that he had been moved here.

His eyes swept the surroundings even faster, and his brain began to writhe. Placed in an unpredictable situation, his instincts and intuition as a predator were being unleashed without restraint.

At that moment—

Something extremely strange...something grotesque was captured by Dong Bong-su’s eyes.

‘This is!?’

Some kind of translucent letters appeared overlapped on the horse’s face. He turned his head. The horse’s face stayed right where it was, but the letters followed his line of sight.

After repeating this several times, Dong Bong-su grasped that the letters always stayed within his field of vision—moreover, right at the center. He also realized that they were not the common two-dimensional form, but had a three-dimensional, solid shape.

‘A hologram window?’

He had seen something like that just recently.

The virtual reality game, Murim Online.

When he first logged in, a message welcoming him had floated before his eyes in that exact format for quite some time.

[Welcome to Murim Online, the world of true strong ones.]