WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 1: True Ending
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[All achievements have been completed.]
[The 100% completion reward has been unlocked.]
Golden letters appeared on the monitor.
I took my hand off the mouse and sank back into my chair.
It was over.
《Records of the Martial God》 had held me captive for nine years.
My total playtime had long passed ten thousand hours.
I cleared the Orthodox Faction route.
I cleared the Unorthodox Faction route too.
I even cleared the Demonic Cult route, which most people did not even know existed.
I completed all twelve hundred-plus achievements.
And today, I defeated the final trial, the hidden boss, the Martial God.
It had been a four-hour bloodbath.
There were no strategy videos for this boss, so all I could do was die again and again while memorizing its patterns.
This was my 327th attempt.
Before my character, whose health was nearly depleted, the Martial God sheathed their sword and spoke.
“Seeker who has reached the end of martial arts. This is all I have to leave behind.”
The screen turned pure white.
The final reward entered my inventory.
[Book of the Martial God]
I clicked the icon.
An old book with a golden cover appeared.
Its description was only two lines long.
[A book containing the source of martial arts.]
[It cannot be read yet.]
“Yet?”
It was an odd line for a commemorative item.
There was not even a Use button.
It was merely a trophy, proof of nine years.
A faint laugh slipped out.
“What a halfhearted reward.”
I was not disappointed.
This was simply how endings were.
It was three in the morning.
For the last time, I opened the character window.
[Seo Jin-hyeok]
I had been too lazy to come up with a name, so I used my real one.
During customization, I had added a scar to my left eyebrow because it looked convincing.
Inside this screen, I could be anything.
On the Orthodox Faction route, people called me a great hero.
On the Unorthodox Faction route, I sat at the head of a faction.
On the Demonic Cult route, I rose as far as Young Cult Leader.
In reality, I was nothing.
I was twenty-nine, in my third year at a small company, and half my studio deposit was still borrowed money.
That was why I logged in whenever life got hard.
I did it after getting chewed out by my boss, and after breaking open my savings account.
Only when the enormous mountain gate appeared on the login screen could I finally breathe.
“I got everything there was to get.”
I muttered as I looked at my reflection in the darkening screen.
“It’s time to end this too.”
I logged out.
When the monitor went dark, the room became pitch-black.
I collapsed onto the bed.
I still had work tomorrow.
The moment I closed my eyes, sleep swept over me as if it had been waiting.
* * *
“Kill them!”
I snapped awake at a roar that tore through my eardrums.
I was running.
‘What?’
My body understood the situation before my mind did.
My heart felt ready to burst.
My thighs burned.
Dust scratched my throat.
Something heavy was in my right hand.
It was a cheap iron sword, its blade chipped in several places.
Then I noticed what I was wearing.
A rough, black-dyed hemp robe, with a red sash carelessly tied across my chest.
I turned my head.
Men in black were running alongside me.
There seemed to be hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
Every one of them raised a weapon and howled like a beast.
I looked ahead.
A massive tide of people was rushing toward us from the other side.
Dust billowed, and blue spearheads led the charge.
‘It’s a dream.’
I wanted to believe that.
I wanted to stop, but I could not.
The force pressing in from behind was like a wave.
If I hesitated, my own side would trample me to death.
The distance shrank from fifty paces to thirty, then to ten in an instant.
My mouth went dry.
This was too vivid to be a dream.
I could even smell the sour sweat of the person beside me.
A boy running nearby let out a terrified scream.
He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
Then the two tides crashed head-on.
The world flipped over.
The front line was impaled on spears and lifted into the air.
The living trampled over the dead.
A thunderous roar and screams erupted all at once.
Bones shattered, and steel scraped against steel.
A spearhead flew straight at me.
My body twisted on its own.
The spear grazed my side.
It burned.
My clothes tore, and something hot ran down my stomach.
It hurt.
This was not a dream.
“Argh!”
A sound that might have been a scream or a battle cry burst from me.
I swung my iron sword wildly.
My sword knocked aside the spear shaft.
My palm went numb as if it had split open, and I nearly dropped the sword.
The enemy spearman pulled back his spear, then thrust again.
Bodies were packed together on all sides. There was not even room to take a step back.
Then my foot slipped.
The ground was soaked in blood.
I fell backward.
A chill wind swept past.
The spearhead cut through the space where my head had been moments before.
Falling had saved me.
The spearman flinched and looked down at me.
Just as he was about to readjust his grip on the spear, I instinctively thrust my sword upward while lying on the ground.
Thunk.
A thick, yielding sensation traveled up my hand.
My sword had pierced the man’s stomach.
“Urk.”
Our eyes met.
His face, far younger than mine, slowly twisted.
Then he collapsed onto me with bloodshot eyes.
Blood pouring from his body soaked my chest.
I had never known human blood could be so hot.
His hand scratched at my shoulder a few times before sliding down limply.
‘I...’
‘I killed someone.’
My stomach turned.
I did not even have time to vomit.
Beyond the corpse, a saber was falling toward my head.
Clang!
Sparks flew beside my ear.
A battered saber knocked aside the blow in midair.
A burly man kicked away the corpse covering me, then grabbed my collar and hauled me up.
He was a middle-aged man with a long scar carved across his left cheek.
“Seo Jin-hyeok! You crazy bastard!”
The man shouted as he swung his saber to drive back the enemy.
“If you fall on a battlefield, you die! I won’t pick you up twice!”
‘How does he know my name?’
The man smacked me across the back and positioned me beside him.
“Back to back! Don’t break away!”
I pressed my back firmly against his broad one, as ordered.
Spears and blades flew in from every direction without pause.
While the man’s saber knocked them away, I squeezed my eyes shut and swung my iron sword.
Wham!
“Open your eyes, idiot! Watch the tip of your opponent’s sword! The sword tip, not the bastard’s eyes!”
I was smacked on the back of the head.
“If they thrust, deflect! If they slash, step back! Just do that!”
It was not some great martial arts formula.
It was a survival trick learned from rolling around in blood-soaked battlefields.
But those rough words saved my life.
I deflected a thrusting sword with my iron sword.
I stepped half a pace back to avoid a slashing saber.
Then the man at my back always swept his saber across their throats.
A man with a saber rushed in from the left.
I could clearly see the path of his slash.
I stepped half a pace back.
The blue blade passed right in front of my nose.
Before he could regain his balance after missing, I brought down my sword with my eyes half-closed.
I missed.
My sword only grazed his shoulder before cutting through the air.
That was enough.
The man’s saber swept across the staggering enemy’s throat.
A pockmarked man forced his way toward us and pressed his back against ours.
“Squad Leader! The right side is giving way!”
“Hold the line! Those who turn their backs die first!”
My arms grew as heavy as lead.
I was gasping for breath.
I did not know how many times I barely escaped death.
When I came to my senses, there were fewer enemies before me.
Panting, I looked around.
The boy who had been running with me was nowhere in sight.
I lowered my eyes and saw the boy sprawled on the dirt.
A broken spear shaft was buried deep in his chest.
Only the gray sky reflected in his unfocused eyes.
I did not even know his name.
Yet my throat closed up.
The arm holding my sword trembled.
Then it happened.
Rumble!
The ground shook.
A roar like the sky collapsing struck the valley.
Everyone in the midst of slaughter froze.
Enemy and ally alike looked toward the same place as if by agreement.
I raised my head too.
The ridge beyond the valley was splitting apart.
Two streams of light tangled above it and exploded.
Whenever the figures made of light collided, thunder boomed from the sky.
The shockwave reached us and swept away the dust.
Boulders as large as houses flew into the air like pebbles.
“It’s Blood-Hand Demon Venerable!”
Someone cried out in delight.
“The old one from Mount Hua is their opponent! Blood-Hand Demon Venerable will win!”
‘The Transformation Realm.’
A term I had seen until I was sick of it in the game crossed my mind.
It was a realm where one could split mountains and sever rivers.
In 《Records of the Martial God》, it had only been a flashy screen effect.
Back then, I had sat before my monitor and marveled at how well it was made.
A person was splitting a mountain.
Goosebumps rose all over my body.
The enemy seemed no different.
Before the fight high above, there was no orthodox or demonic side.
We were only a swarm of ants that could be crushed to death at any moment.
Only then did I truly see the battlefield.
A massive flag fluttered behind the enemy lines.
The three characters for Martial Alliance were embroidered boldly on its pure white field.
I looked over our own camp.
A large flag stood behind us as well.
The four characters for Heavenly Demon Divine Cult were dyed blood-red across its black field.
And I was dressed in black hemp clothes.
My mind went blank.
This was the Orthodox-Demonic War, the central conflict of 《Records of the Martial God》.
It was a living hell in which half the population of the martial world would be ground away while the orthodox martial world and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult fought for supremacy under heaven for ten years.
And I was standing at its center, of all places, as one of the Demonic Cult’s lowest-ranking foot soldiers.
When I started the game, I could at least choose my faction.
This mad world had not asked me anything.
It would have been better if I had been a promising disciple from a prestigious orthodox clan.
At the very least, it would have been better if I had landed as a farmer in some backwater village with nothing to do with this war.
But reality did not even give me time to dwell on my injustice.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Heavy drumbeats rang out from the enemy camp.
An urgent shout rose from ahead.
“They’re coming! Grit your teeth!”
It was the enemy’s second charge.
Among the rushing soldiers were real experts.
The swordsmanship of the attacker charging toward me was on another level.
His movements held no waste. His strikes were precise and sharp.
Wherever he passed, allies in black fell in heaps.
I wanted to run.
I looked behind me.
A solid wall of people in black filled the space.
There had never been anywhere to retreat.
The pockmarked man beside me stepped forward to meet him, only for his shoulder to be deeply slashed. He screamed and fell away.
Then the man’s cold killing intent locked directly onto me.
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