Trying something new

Hi! Hope your day is going well! I was feeling inspired, so I wrote a little something. If you've been here a long time, this might not be the first time you have seen me post a first chapter for a new story. It's the same deal as usual, I'm not compromising SSS to write something else, but I'm starting to get ready for whenever it does end (likely some three or four years in the future...) This one has some potential, I think, so if you're curious, have a gander, and leave your first impressions.

Alt Account Murim

Chapter 1 ///

Three white-bearded old men sat around a small table at the top of the world’s tallest peak above the clouds.

“So you’re both quitting?” the tallest one asked the other two. 

“Yeah, sorry leader, it was a great time… But six years grinding, and now we’re stuck because of a decision we made in the damn character creator?! That’s the final blow, man!” the larger of the three men complained, grabbing his head, the sound of his VR gloves hitting the headset echoing in the game. “And my first child is coming in a few weeks, so I better stop anyway,” he added, sounding defeated.

“I get it Wide, you’re right, family first… Failing at character creation…” with a sigh, the man looked at their other companion who had been silent for a while now, “And you, Lan?”

“Dragon’s Lineage 3’s coming out next month. I’ll take a break and switch over on release. Good timing, in a way. What ‘bout you, leader?”

The leader frowned, “I’m too pissed at this shitty game design! I’ll be the first Ascended Immortal no matter what!” he resolved, stabbing the table with a dagger.

Wide looked at the leader like he had lost his mind, “You’re going to erase your character and start over? Even if no one else makes it… It’ll take you years!”

The leader laughed, “Ah! I’ll lose my rank one spot at this rate if I keep playing this doomed character, might as well start over! I can frame it as a speedrun back to rank one, the viewers will love it. Matter of fact, I’ll delete right now, before I change my mind.”

Lan nodded, “Seems you’re serious, then. Have fun, leader, I’ll save you a spot in my Dragon’s Lineage Guild in case you want to hop in too, aight?”

“Appreciate it.”

“I’ll be watching your streams, let’s all grab a drink sometime, guys.”

“Sure, Wide. Wishing you the best with your kid,” leader said, standing up. He shook hands with the other two before disappearing in a cloud of gray pixels.

[Tactical Knight has left the ‘Three Knights’ Sect]

///

I need to get things right this time! 

Do I stream the character creation? Hmm… It’s four AM… That’s boring content, I’ll just do the tutorial and go sleep, so I can get right into action tomorrow.

Alone in a white void, he stared at the first prompt of the character creation.

[You are eligible for the inheritance start. Accept?]

What? Inheritance start?! How have I never heard of that? There are no explanations either?

Quickly tabbing to another view outside the game, he brought up a search engine. ‘Ultimate Murim World Online Inheritance start’

Zero results?! No fucking way! Did I trigger a hidden feature? Shit! I should have been streaming!

Wait no… I’m not sure what triggered this, but I can monopolize it. Depending on what it is, it might get me back to rank one faster. Lucky.

Returning to the game, he accepted the special start. Worst case I can always restart tomorrow…

[Please choose a name for your cultivator]

It skips all the way to the name? I don’t get to pick anything at all? This better not just give me the same starting stats I took last time or I’m going to lose it…

Alright, a name… I want to try something different since the three Knights are no more… Should I just steal the Emperor’s family name? Might get me some funny reactions from the NPCs. And FINALLY they will stop calling me lord tactical. So awkward.

[Cultivator ‘Wushen Ren’ has been created]

[Have a nice time in the world of Murim]

Huh? Was that always the starting message? Ren wondered, looking at the line of black text. His thoughts felt muddled. Slowly, his vision turned dark.

///

Ren woke up with a slight headache.

“Did I fall asleep?” he mumbled as he came to, the weird sensations under his back immediately startling him. His eyes shot open, and the sight left him speechless.

This is… The hidden bamboo valley starting shack? Why does it look so decrepit?

“No… Wait… That’s…”

Ren blinked, expecting the familiar weight of his headset, but feeling only warm air on his skin. The shack’s musty scent and the light filtering through the old bamboo walls were too real, far beyond his rig’s outdated graphics.

Stunned, he pinched the skin of his left arm, and the subtle feeling of touch and pain left him with little doubt.

“This doesn’t feel like a game anymore… Am I dreaming? I can’t open any menu…”

Ren scratched his head, trying to find a logical explanation for his situation, but in the end, he could only see two possibilities.

So… Either I’m an AI built from my original memories and put into a newer version of UMWO… Or I was reincarnated into the game somehow…

“I don’t even know which option sounds the least ridiculous… But holy shit.”

Looking down at his body, Ren could tell that he was currently sixteen at most, a healthy young man just at the end of puberty.

“My vision is clear… My shoulder injury is gone. And I’m give or take fifteen years younger?! I’ll take it! No more rent to pay! No taxes to file! I don’t know how I got here but I don’t want to go back!”

After a moment of silence, Ren sighed and lay back down on the straw, “I wonder what happened to me on Earth, though… Is there still a version of me there? Am I gone? Dead? I just hope it won’t be too hard on Lan and Wide…”

“Ugh, why am I so thirsty…”

Ren rose from the hay bed and walked to the door, leaving the desolate shack empty save for the straw. Wind blew through his hair as he stepped out into the bamboo forest of the hidden valley. The tall but sparse bamboo trees gave the forest a calm silent charm.

“The tutorial area… It’s been a long time. Things look more or less the same? The cobbled path is a bit overgrown… There should be a stream not too far.”

After a short walk through the tall bamboos, Ren hydrated and washed his face in a weak stream of ice-cold mountain water.

“Alright… I have a shelter and water… I can eat berries for now and soak bamboo shoots in the stream, so food won’t be an issue in the very short term at least…”

Ren looked around, taking in the scenery for a moment.

“I never realized the tutorial area looked this good. The tutorial dungeons… I would start with the bear den in-game but… Maybe not today. Ah! It’s the perfect opportunity to get the hidden chest I missed back then!”

Quickly returning to the shack, Ren placed himself properly with his back against the back wall, and started counting his steps forward.

“Forty two. Forty three. Here. Now left until the mossy rock, then another two hundred forward…”

After counting his steps, Ren stopped in the spot that should be the exact center of the tutorial area.

In game the chest is buried here. I should grab a stick.

Digging through the moss and dirt with the tip of a fallen bamboo, Ren soon found the buried wooden chest, showing up under a layer of thin bamboo roots. The roots turned out to be harder than expected, and what was not even a thing in the game ended up taking him almost a full hour, hacking away at bamboo roots with the sharpest stone he could find near the stream.

His forehead dripping with sweat, he lifted the small chest out of the hole and wiped away the dirt.

“Finally!”

If I remember correctly, it contains any three items of the Qi gathering rank, and one is guaranteed to be at least Epic rarity. 

Not wasting anoter second, he opened the old chest on the spot. Unlike in the game, there was no mystical glow and cute jingle escaping the chest revealing the items inside, just three unknown things wrapped in washed-out blue silk.

The guaranteed Epic drop should be in the center, Ren thought as he unwrapped the silk. Looks small, sadly not a weapon or a manual…

“An elixir!” he exclaimed, grabbing the black pellet the size of an eyeball.

Hmm… Black pellet of this size… Ah shit.

If it’s at least Epic rarity… It’s either the Epic Black Slate poison, or the Legendary Chaotic blood pill.

“So either this brings a random one of my stats to 50… Or it kills me. And I don’t know which one it is…”

With a frown, Ren observed the black elixir.

“If it’s the Chaotic blood, the earlier I take it the better, if I wait too much it could actually be a stat loss… But I can’t take the gamble…”

Ren carefully wrapped the elixir back in the silk, and brought the chest next to a huge bamboo, sitting with his back against it.

“Hopefully the other two items are not too bad. If I’m lucky I could get another Legendary or even a Mythic!”

Ren grabbed the smallest of the two remaining items and unwrapped it, “Uncommon ivory talisman… Saves a limb from a broken bone once… It was a trash item in the game… but I really can’t complain about it now.”

Ren tied the charm around his right wrist, which would protect his entire right arm and shoulder. Then grabbed the last item.

“Black stone Mortar and Pestle?! It’s actually a good rare!”

Stopping to think for a second, Ren mumbled to himself, trying to remember his first time through the tutorial in the game, six years back.

“I might actually be able to do some alchemy within the tutorial… That would be a first. Preparing an antidote for the Black Slate poison isn’t impossible.”

Happily nodding to himself, Ren placed the mortar and pestle back in the chest.

Decent start… I need to beat the first dungeon, get the starting manual, and start gathering Qi as soon as possible. Then I can go herb hunting!

Ren took a few minutes to rest, leaving the chest in the shack and returning to the cold stream to wash the sweat away, before heading straight toward the first tutorial dungeon, the paper viper’s cave.

“Time to pay an old snake a visit.”

///

“Damn cliff… Climbing was easier… In the game… Aaaagh!”

With a last push, Ren hoisted himself over a rock ledge.

“There we go! The viper cave’s exit!” Ren exclaimed, looking at the dark hole in the cliffside. “Normally there’s an invisible wall here to prevent entry but…”

He kicked a small rock into the hole and watched it fall down.

“This isn’t a game after all, ahahahahah!”

After laughing by himself for a few seconds, Ren suddenly felt self-conscious and stopped.

“I picked up too many bad habits from streaming…” he mumbled, crouching down to look into the hole. “Why even try to put on a show if nobody is watching… Pretty dark in there… The ladder should still be there…”

Crawling into the hole feet first, Ren struggled for a bit to latch onto the rope ladder with his bamboo sandals, and started to climb down. The rope ladder started to dangerously creak midway down.

Shit. It should still be about five meters down… 

The rope ladder suddenly snapped. As he started falling, Ren pushed against both sides of the narrow hole with his arms and feet, and barely managed to avoid falling.

Bad luck… I should be able to make my way down, slowly… Ugh, my arms hurt…

After making his way down painfully slowly, Ren landed in a dusty dark room, his muscles aching, but without injury.

This body is younger but it’s also a bit weak, I’ll need to hunt some game and train the basics as soon as I’m out of the valley. 

Of course the torches aren’t lit… Taking the ladder back up is too risky but I can run the dungeon in reverse now, that’s much easier. The chest should be around the back wall…

There!

Fumbling around in the dark, Ren got his hands on an old book wrapped in paper.

It’s still there! Thank god… Now the boss. Clearly the place has deteriorated compared to how it was in the game, so quite some time must have passed, but the paper viper is a guardian golem so if the book is still here, it’s probably still around too.

My issue here is I don’t know where the game logic starts and ends. Clearly the tangible things from the game are still there. Do hidden item properties also remain? It feels unlikely for the reward chest to actually be indestructible like in the game. But…

Well, it’s a risky gamble, but it’s not like I can climb back up so…

Ren grabbed the book, and found the door leading out of the room and into the boss room.

Moment of truth.

In complete darkness, Ren braced himself. The sonorous hissing of the paper viper assaulted his ears, and, as Ren hoped: nothing. He sighed in relief.

“That was more scary than I thought… Good to know it’s still the same tutorial boss. ‘Swing your arms to perform a basic punch!’ I remember this part well. Well I’m keeping my arms crossed today, we’re never moving on to learning how to dodge!”

Still, I need the drops so… Better hope all the AI exploits from the game still work here, since it’s not attacking, it should be safe.

Having located the viper by sound, Ren kicked as strongly as he could in front of him.

The paper viper hissed as it was hit in the side, with an angry growl, it slithered back to its place in the center of the room, right in front of Ren’s feet.

“You’re not the brightest, huh.”

Ren kicked it again.

After ten kicks, the paper viper hissed one final time, and died, making strange sounds of paper being shredded. Ren focused on his hearing, and he heard the faint dings of two solid objects hitting the rocky ground.

“No-hit the tutorial boss! Guaranteed drop viper fangs acquired!”

Even if it probably would have dropped anyway… If this isn’t a game, surely the fangs wouldn’t just disappear… 

Feeling the ground around him to collect the fangs, and grabbing a third hard thing he felt in the middle of the shredded paper, Ren made his way out of the boss room.

Now it’s all traps to prevent entry, since I’m going the other way, I should just be able to run and avoid it all, the only dangerous ones are the arrows that will be coming from beh-

I can probably disarm those actually.

Again, after some blind feeling of the wall near the door, it was not too hard to find the holes with the arrows in them. Stabbing the slightly curved viper fangs into the hole, it only took a few minutes to hook the head of the first arrow and pull it out, the three other ones came easily after that.

Trap disarmed.

Ren sprinted out of the dungeon in a straight line toward the door he had opened when he checked the entrance before deciding to climb, slowly returning to the light. Traps activated after him, spikes and large wooden hammers spinning out from the walls and ceiling, only hitting air.

Finally out and out of breath, Ren laughed by himself.

“Easy! That’s one third of the tutorial complete!”

Congratulating himself, Ren looked toward the entrance of the cave that led out of the valley.

“Though there’s likely nothing preventing me from leaving right now… But this isn’t the speedrun I hoped it would be. I should suck this area dry before leaving. I have to assume there is no respawn if I die… The world’s dangerous out there.”

Ren grabbed and ate some red berries on the way back to his shack, and, sitting on the straw bed, looked at his gains so far.

A pill I can’t eat, a mortar, two viper fangs the size of my hands, four arrows… And a golem core? I think? This isn’t supposed to be a drop from the viper but here it is. I should be able to make a weak golem with it later.

And most importantly, the book that will show me whether I can reach Ascended Immortal in this life or not.

Carefully unwrapping the book from the paper it was in, Ren was relieved to see he could perfectly read the title. “Foundations to heaven. The highest rank basic cultivation manual that every player gets. The lore’s explanation of how and why the players get strong so fast… In the game it’s just the tutorial item that unlocks cultivation. Here…”

We were never able to actually open the manuals in game…

Ren read through the manual for hours until the sun started going down.

“Crap, I got too into it… I need to stop and get a fire going fast.”

Ren gathered some rocks to make a small fire pit not too far from the shack, and quickly gathered some dry bamboo.

Using a viper fang to split an old dry bamboo in half and carve out some shavings to put inside of one half, it was then just a matter of rubbing the two halves together in the same spot until there was an ember. With practiced moves, Ren got the fire going before the sun completely set, and sat by the fire in the silent valley. Having used the last moment of sunlight to have a drink and gather more berries, he poked the fire with a stick, sighing.

“It feels really lonely here… Without the chat scrolling on the side… The inheritance start, huh… It must be what sent me here. And…” Ren sighed again, “I almost wished that the Foundations manual would be missing. Just to know I’m not alone in this… But it looks like I am. Judging from the state of this place, it must be at least a few decades after the actual setting of the game, so even if it were to follow the game world one to one, a lot of things are bound to have changed…”

Sitting in silence, he threw another few bamboo sticks into the fire.

“After all the plan won’t change too much. I know the location of almost all secret dungeons and treasures. It won’t quite be a speedrun… But I can get strong faster than anyone else… Assuming I don’t randomly get stabbed by a bandit group.”

Ren’s first night in the valley was peaceful. there were no animals around as far as he could tell, aside from a few noisy insects, but thankfully none seemed to be attracted by the light. The wind was very light, and the temperature only slightly cold, which made sleeping out of the shack next to the fire on a bed of bamboo leaves surprisingly comfortable. When morning came, Ren tended to his earthly needs and the fire, and got right back to reading.

Two hours later he was done.

“Gather Qi, purify Qi, circulate Qi. The way it’s explained, it sure sounds easy. In game it was just sitting cross-legged and completing a few minigames…”

Moving away from the fire as the day was starting to get hot, Ren sat on a flat rock next to the stream, and started following the instructions in the manual.

Can I really do this?

The supernatural life force of the game existed in this world, the paper viper golem proved that without a shadow of a doubt, but Ren couldn’t help feeling anxious at the thought he might not be able to use it.

He worried for nothing, as after just a few minutes of following the manual’s first breathing exercise, he could already feel something, an invigorating flow of energy, like the world’s breath coming into his own. With every breath he took, it gathered within him, like moths drawn to a flame. Slowly, it gathered in three points. One within his head, one in his chest, and one in his lower abdomen.

Ren felt like he got stronger every time he inhaled a breath of fresh air. The feeling was indescribable, addictive. He kept breathing in, more, and more, until, the ambient cold shook him out of it.

“Night already?!”

He had not eaten all day, but he felt full, quickly hydrating his parched throat with handfuls of stream water, he ran back to the shack to try to revive the dead fire. Luckily, embers remained, and the fire started again with a little effort.

I feel so much stronger already.

The difference was night and day, it was just a bit of unrefined Qi, but Ren already felt his body being more responsive, his muscles more explosive, even in his previous life, he had rarely felt so strong.

I was so focused, I never even checked my natural disposition… The book says I should be able to feel my own ‘destiny with martial arts’ with the second breathing pattern. That has to be it. Since the steps were skipped in the character creation…

Staying close to the fire, Ren followed the second breathing pattern he had already memorized. Soon, he felt the Qi within him gather in four spots.

This is it!

The repartition of the Qi would mean everything for him going forward. In the game, this was what had prevented him from reaching the last cultivation rank. Qi gathered into the three cores and the root center. The Spirit core in the head, the Force core in the chest, and the Physical core in the lower abdomen were the main attraction. In game the player would throw a six, four, and three sided dice together as many times as he wanted, and assign one die’s result to each core as ‘talent’. Most people would roll until they got perfect rolls and go from there, and that was the mistake.

No core imbalance! YES!!!

Ren almost jumped from joy, feeling that roughly the same amount of Qi gathered in his three cores.

That was the trap, with scores of 6, 4 and 3, there were no good outcomes, no matter what one did, they would create an imbalance between their cores, and by the time they reached the higher levels of cultivation, the imbalance this created would be so monumental that it would prevent further progress altogether. There were only two ways to be stable, getting perfectly equal cores, or a 3-3-3, or having one major and two minors, the 3-6-3. It didn’t matter which one the 6 was, but having a single one be the sum of the other two was also a stable combination. Technically 1-1-1, 1-2-1, and such combinations were also balanced, but such weak cores would also pose issues. 

I guess I got a 3-3-3. That’s the second best outcome. I can totally work with that!

Now to check the spiritual roots.

Those were a bit different. Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, Wood and Stone, were the big six. The strength of the each simply dictated how easily each kind of Qi could be gathered. In game this was again just a matter of allocating the value of a handful of different value dice.

Hmmm… Two of them seem to be much stronger, and the rest quite weak. Left and right shoulder. If I remember the diagram from the character creation screen correctly… This should be Wood and Wind. No wonder I had such an easy time, I must have gathered mainly Wood Qi from all the strong old Bamboo around. Would have been a different story with a prominent Lightning root.

I used to play Stone exclusively… A bit sad that my Stone root is weak, but well… Lan was Wind-Lightning and Wide was Wood-Water, I remember where they got their best skills well enough.

I have a good combination, actually, as far as having to use it in real life goes.

Wind gives a lot of speed and easy movement, while wood gives great utility and healing. I’m just going to be a bit lacking in terms of attack power, but nothing a legendary weapon can’t fix.

///

Ren woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed and quite hungry.

“I could use some meat… I think it’s time to hunt the old bear.”

/////////////////////////////////////////////

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I realize the different setting and theme will turn some people off, so it's fine to be honest about it, don't worry. ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧