WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 2: Memory
──────
‘I'm going to die.’
Before my mind could register it, my spine already knew.
The man kicked off the ground.
A sword brimming with chilling inner qi split the air in a straight line, aimed at my throat.
In that instant, the world slowed as if by some impossible lie.
Something stirred deep in my chest.
Heat spread through my veins, as though someone had stuffed a red-hot ember beside my heart.
Then a line suddenly came to mind.
[It cannot be read yet.]
Was that what “yet” meant?
The path of the incoming blade stood out with impossible clarity.
My body moved before I could think.
I threw my upper body sharply backward and grabbed a fistful of dirt with my left hand.
Then, without hesitation, I flung it into his face.
“Ghk!”
He reflexively turned his head.
The sword aimed at my throat missed by a hair, only grazing the skin of my shoulder.
I clung to his waist and went down with him.
Whether it was the pride of an Orthodox martial artist or a dirty trick, I didn't care.
I wasn't a martial artist.
I had to survive somehow.
We tangled together and rolled over the dirt.
He struggled to pull free the arm holding his sword.
I gripped that arm with both hands and savaged the back of his hand with my teeth.
His fists struck my face again and again.
Blue sparks burst before my eyes, and it felt as though my nose had caved in.
Still, I didn't let go.
If I let go here, I would die.
He drove his knee into my side.
My vision spun, then went dark.
Just as I could no longer hold on and my teeth began to loosen...
“Move!”
A thunderous roar fell from above.
Thud!
There was a dull sound of bone breaking.
The weight crushing my breath rolled off to the side.
Panting hard, I looked up.
The scarred man stood over me, shaking blood from his saber.
“You're a stubborn bastard.”
I turned my head and looked at the face of the man who had tried to kill me.
His eyes were wide open and bloodshot, his body cold and stiff.
The man lifted the dead man's sleeve and clicked his tongue.
“Plum blossom embroidery. Why was a noble fellow like a second-generation disciple of the Mount Hua Sect mixed in with a pack of dirt-crawling grunts?”
With practiced movements, he searched the corpse and took the money pouch.
Dong.
Dong.
Dong.
The sound of a gong rang out at length.
The enemy began retreating like an ebbing tide.
Someone hurled furious curses at their backs.
That was all.
No one had the strength left to pursue them.
The battle was over.
I sank straight down onto the dirt.
My legs had no strength left.
The world that had been deafening moments ago was suddenly silent, as though all sound had been extinguished.
Corpses covered the valley floor.
Black and white robes lay tangled together.
The groans of wounded men crawling across the ground continued without end.
Crows that had gathered to feast on the corpses cried out.
The stench of blood smothered everything.
There was no joy at having survived on the faces of the survivors.
There were only hollow expressions, as though they couldn't even tell whether they had won or lost today.
The pockmarked man leaned against a rock, his torn shoulder roughly bound with cloth.
When our eyes met, he grinned.
He was missing two front teeth.
I looked up at the sky.
The sun had not even reached its height.
Over that brief morning, hundreds of people had died like lumps of meat in this narrow valley.
My hands trembled.
I couldn't make my right hand release the iron sword.
With my left hand, I forced open its stiffened fingers one by one.
At last, the iron sword dropped onto the dirt.
Blood had dried black-red on its chipped blade.
It was the blood of someone I had killed.
* * *
“Hey, rookie.”
The scarred man approached, crouched in front of me, and tossed over a water flask.
“First time killing someone?”
I couldn't answer.
He gave a dry laugh.
“If you're going to puke, get it all out now. Holding it in will make you sick.”
The moment he finished speaking, my stomach turned over.
I hurriedly turned away and threw up everything inside me.
The man waited in silence until I stopped retching.
Once my stomach was empty, something that might have been tears or sweat ran down my chin.
“I'm Jang Pal.”
Only after a while did he speak again.
“Third Squad Leader Jang Pal. Remember the name of the man who saved your life twice today.”
“This is...”
My voice was badly cracked.
I swallowed a mouthful of water and asked again.
“Where are we?”
“Blue Stone Valley.”
Jang Pal answered as he got to his feet.
“You should at least know the name of the valley where you nearly died.”
He turned away.
His steps were heavy as he went to count the survivors.
Jang Pal paused before the body of a boy with a spear lodged in his chest.
He bent down and used his rough hand to close the boy's vacant eyes.
“There were thirty of us.”
Jang Pal spoke flatly, his back still turned.
“Now there are twelve left. In our squad.”
As he walked away, he threw out one more remark.
“We rest for the time it takes to eat a meal, then retreat to the main force. Work your legs while they still function. Anyone who can't walk gets left here.”
It wasn't a joke.
I took a mouthful of water.
It tasted of blood.
Whether it was my blood or the blood of the man I had stabbed to death, there was no way to know.
Just yesterday, I had been an ordinary office worker worried about going to work.
Now, I was relieved by the simple fact that my neck was still properly attached.
I looked down at my trembling hands.
They were unfamiliar hands.
They were callused and covered in little scars.
They weren't my soft hands, the hands that had clicked a mouse every night.
Something suddenly occurred to me, and I hurriedly felt above my left eyebrow.
My fingertips found a long scar.
It was in the very spot where I had added that scar nine years ago because I thought it looked cool.
‘This is... my character.’
It made no sense.
How could the character that should have been on a screen be here?
Why was I inside this body?
No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn't find an answer.
A laugh slipped out of me like I had lost my mind.
It was almost a sob.
When I had taken the Demonic Cult route, Seo Jin-hyeok had risen as high as Young Cult Leader.
Now, I was a nameless, lowest-ranking Demonic Cult grunt.
A meat shield who didn't know so much as a line of martial arts formulas.
Still, one thing had become clear.
This was the world of 《Records of the Martial God》.
And the war before my eyes was one I had played through to its end time and again, whether I chose the Orthodox Faction, the Unorthodox Faction, or the Demonic Cult.
I knew how this war would unfold.
I knew where and who would die in droves.
If I was going to find a way to survive, the answer lay in those memories.
‘Blue Stone Valley.’
I had definitely heard the name somewhere.
It circled my mind, seeming about to surface but never quite doing so, like a fishbone caught in my throat.
Had it been on a list of major events?
A timeline of the world's history?
One thing was certain.
This was not a place where anything good happened.
I had to remember.
But my vision rapidly began to blur.
Instead of memories, distant drowsiness washed over me.
Just before my consciousness snapped away, a single golden character appeared over my darkened vision.
[Martial]
Before I could even consider the meaning of that one character, darkness swallowed me.
* * *
I stood in endless darkness.
There was no ground beneath my feet, nor a sky above to look toward, only pitch-black emptiness.
At its center, one golden character floated in silence.
[Martial]
As if possessed, I reached out.
The character retreated by exactly as much as I reached forward.
Whether I walked or ran, the distance never closed.
Instead, my chest began to grow hot.
It felt as though the ember beside my heart had begun burning to announce its presence.
Then a heavy voice echoed from somewhere within the empty space.
“You who have reached the end of the martial path.”
It was the voice of the Martial God I had heard at the True Ending only a few hours ago.
I was just about to shout and ask what the hell all this was.
“Wake up, you lunatic!”
Pain shot through my shin as someone kicked it, and my eyes flew open.
Jang Pal's fierce face loomed over me.
“I told you we'd leave anyone who couldn't walk behind.”
I staggered to my feet.
The blood-red valley, littered with corpses piled like a mountain, came into view.
The afternoon sunlight, steadily cooling, fell over it.
This hell was my new reality.
* * *
The column of defeated soldiers began moving heavily.
Those with all their limbs intact supported the wounded.
Those who couldn't walk were carried on stretchers.
There weren't even enough stretchers, so they hastily made them by threading bloodstained robes between two spear shafts.
Those whose breaths had stopped were left where they lay.
A flock of crows settled on the cliff rocks and waited for us to leave.
As we walked in silence, one stretcher ahead of us suddenly went quiet.
The two Demonic Cult grunts carrying it stopped and quietly looked down at their limp comrade's face.
Soon, they set the stretcher down by the roadside and resumed walking as though nothing had happened.
“He was going to die in the valley anyway, even if we carried him along.”
The pockmarked man walking beside me muttered indifferently.
“Still, people have gotten kinder these days. At least they lay them down properly before leaving them. Back then, they'd have just kicked him off the cliff.”
Air whistled through the gaps in his front teeth.
“Anyway, did you have a good nap? You were stretched out in that field of corpses, even snoring. Don't know if you've got guts or if you've lost your mind.”
“...What's your name?”
The man opened his eyes wide in disbelief.
“Did you get hit in the head wrong during the fight? I'm Du Chil. Du Chil! We've been in the same squad for half a year, and you already forgot my name?”
“Sorry. I wasn't thinking straight.”
“Forget it. Everyone calls me Pockmark anyway.”
Du Chil scrubbed his rough face with his palm.
“It's been over ten years since anyone called me by my full name because of these smallpox scars.”
I didn't have the strength to respond further.
I moved my legs in a daze, rubbing my chest.
A strange warmth remained beneath my skin.
It was the lukewarm energy given off by the ember beside my heart from that dream.
‘The Book of the Martial God.’
This wasn't a guess. It was certainty.
I had heard the Martial God's voice twice.
The reward that had been buried in the game's inventory had transferred into this body.
But I still had no idea what it did.
In the game, it had mocked me by saying it couldn't be read.
Now, it had settled beside my heart, where I couldn't even take it out to look at it.
The march continued deep into the valley.
The farther inward we went, the more fitting the name Blue Stone Valley seemed.
Dark blue-black cliffs that seemed to pierce the sky pressed in from both sides.
The mouth of the valley was narrow enough that three carts abreast would fill it completely.
Fortification work was in full swing along that narrow passage.
Bare-chested Demonic Cult grunts drove in thick logs and packed down the earth.
A massive wooden palisade was rising above them.
“Wow. Look at that. Once that palisade is finished, this place will be an impregnable fortress.”
Du Chil marveled, spitting as he spoke.
For some reason, the phrase “impregnable fortress” snagged in my mind.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
