WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: BerageeBomb
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Obtained the Martial God’s Book ◈
Chapter 4: New Moon
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That night, I stood watch with Du Chil.
Our post was at the southern edge of camp, bordering the reed field.
As we walked, I found myself unconsciously measuring the terrain.
It was a little over two thousand paces from the barracks to the mouth of the valley, four hundred to the spring, and the reed field looked roughly five hundred paces across.
They said this body had always been quick with calculations. It seemed to be a habit ingrained in it.
The valley howled like a colossal flute, drawing the wind inward.
The campfire flames shuddered.
“That wind’s fierce.”
Du Chil grumbled, pulling his collar tight and rubbing his shoulders.
“If even one spark blows in, we’re finished. Those reeds are dry as tinder.”
The words spark and dry reeds struck together in my head like flint.
[Quest: Wipe out the Demonic Cult forces hiding in Blue Stone Valley.]
[Do not let a single one escape alive.]
It was the message that appeared in the quest window of Records of the Martial God.
It took place in the autumn of the fourth year of the Orthodox-Demonic War, when playing the Orthodox Faction route.
I had repeated that main-story quest so often that I remembered every word.
In the dark night, torches stretched along both ridges of the valley, and flaming arrows rose all at once.
The sea of oil-soaked reeds became a river of fire in an instant.
And in that scene, the Orthodox Faction warrior I controlled stood at the valley entrance, cutting down black-clad martial artists fleeing the flames.
It was a meticulously designed hunting ground, an event where experience points poured down like rain.
I clearly remembered the person who watched that sea of flames from atop the ridge.
A white-robed scholar holding a fan.
A strategist of the Martial Alliance and a member of the Zhuge Clan, the mastermind who had laid this trap.
Once the quest ended, the achievement window always appeared.
[Achievement: The Night That Burned the Sky]
Even the chronicle entry came sharply back to me.
“In the ninth month of the fourth year of the Orthodox-Demonic War, on the night of the new moon, Blue Stone Valley burned. Fewer than a hundred Demonic Cult members escaped alive.”
My breath caught.
In my most recent Demonic Cult route, it had been nothing more than a name that flashed by in a single line of the chronicle.
My character had been on another battlefield then.
When I played the Orthodox Faction route, I hadn’t cared whether it was Blue Stone Valley or Blue Snow Valley.
All I had to do was kill whoever the quest window told me to kill.
But they were men like Jang Pal, comrades like Du Chil, and children like Samdol.
Sitting in front of my monitor, munching snacks, I had cut them down without a thought and collected my rewards.
A nausea unlike the kind that had made me vomit at the sight of the corpses yesterday surged through me.
It no longer mattered whether this was a game or reality.
The people beside me were real. They breathed, ate, and missed their homes.
“What’s wrong? You look pale as dirt.”
Du Chil peered at me anxiously.
Forcing words through my dry throat, I asked, “W-what day is it today?”
“Why are you asking that out of nowhere?”
Du Chil counted on his fingers.
“It’s the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month. Why?”
“How many years has the war been going on?”
“Did you really hurt your head somewhere? That Mount Hua Sect bastard beat you pretty badly yesterday.”
Clicking his tongue, Du Chil answered anyway.
“Four years. This is the fourth.”
It was the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month in the fourth year of the Orthodox-Demonic War.
Only three days remained until the new moon.
I looked up at the sky.
A thread-thin moon hung in the night sky above the ridge.
On the night of the new moon, fire would fall upon this sea of reeds.
Twenty thousand people would burn to death in this narrow valley.
‘What if I tell the Hundred Commander?’
The thought immediately ran into a wall.
‘The Martial Alliance will set fire to this place on the night of the new moon.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because I saw it in a game.’
Would anyone believe that?
Like the man rolling in the dirt that morning, I would immediately be accused of being a spy and lose my head.
I would die if I told the truth.
I would burn to death in three days if I stayed silent.
Then heavy footsteps sounded behind me.
It was Jang Pal, making his patrol rounds.
I swallowed and spoke while trying my utmost to hide my agitation.
“Squad Leader. Aren’t the reeds far too dry?”
“...So?”
“The wind also blows into the valley every night. If even a single ember flies in from somewhere, it’ll spread beyond control.”
Jang Pal stared at me steadily.
Then his gaze turned to the black reed field swaying in the darkness.
After a long silence, he spoke.
“Don’t speak such ill-omened nonsense carelessly. You’ll lose your head for disrupting the troops’ morale. Didn’t you see that clearly this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Soon, we’ll mobilize the entire squad and cut down all the reeds around the barracks.”
As Jang Pal turned away, he added, “They obstruct our view and get in the way when we stand watch. There’s no other reason.”
The back of the man who had felt the need to add that there was no other reason receded into the darkness.
While Du Chil nodded off, I watched the ridge.
The howl of the gale tangled with the rustling cries of the reeds.
A light flashed three times on the southern ridge, then three more times after a short interval.
“Up on that ridge...”
At my murmur, Du Chil groggily opened his eyes.
The lights had already vanished into the darkness.
“What did you see? There’s nothing there. You’re probably starting to see things. You haven’t slept properly in two days.”
It was not an illusion. It was a signal.
They must already have climbed the ridge, carrying oil and waiting for the new moon.
I had to find a way to survive.
This was not a disaster I could solve with swordsmanship.
Cold sweat gathered in the palm gripping my sword hilt.
Three days remained.
And among those twenty thousand people, I was likely the only one who knew.
* * *
At dawn, I stood by the spring.
I had come straight there as soon as my watch ended.
Water bubbling up through the rocks formed a pool knee-deep.
By my stride, it was about twenty paces across.
It was just large enough to hold twenty adults, coincidentally the size of our squad.
The water was bone-chilling when I dipped in my hand.
Its current seeped beneath the reed field and vanished.
Even the waterway could not escape this enclosed valley.
“What kind of washing are you doing before dawn? Have you lost your mind and decided to freeze to death?”
Du Chil, who had come to draw drinking water, clicked his tongue.
Instead of answering, I took in the terrain around the pool.
I had spent the entire night considering how to survive.
I needed four things.
A place the flames couldn’t reach, enough water, a tool that could turn fire against itself, and a reason to keep our squad in that place.
And I needed to do all of it without arousing anyone’s suspicion.
It was no different from submitting a project proposal at work.
You settled on the conclusion first, then added one reason after another to persuade the person with approval authority.
The only difference was that this proposal would cost me my head if it was rejected.
I slowly walked along the edge of the reed field, measuring distances with my strides.
At every bend, I placed a fist-sized stone as a secret marker.
It was forty paces from the spring to the reeds, and sixty paces to the spot I had marked for the new barracks.
“Why have you been picking up stones since this morning?”
Du Chil asked curiously, a water yoke over his shoulders.
“I have a use for them.”
“I’ve seen all kinds of strange people, but you take the prize.”
Numbers did not lie.
People always did.
As soon as breakfast ended, I headed to the supply depot at the western end of camp.
Carts and sacks were piled there like mountains.
A skinny old man had his nose buried in a ledger, flicking an abacus.
“I’m here to exchange my sword.”
No matter how much I had considered it overnight, the answer was the same.
Unless I intended to die and use the money as travel expenses for the underworld, it was better to spend it all on replacing my weapon.
I took a tael of silver from my clothes and held it out.
The old man glanced at it, then jerked his chin toward an old chest.
“Pick one yourself.”
The chest was overflowing with swords whose owners had been lost.
Each hilt was deeply worn by hands.
I gripped and drew them one by one.
I had appraised tens of thousands of swords in the game.
My mind knew the shape and balance of a fine sword.
If that knowledge connected to this body’s senses, I could pick out a usable weapon.
The first was a flashy sword with silver thread tightly wrapped around its hilt.
But when I flicked the blade with my fingernail, it gave a light, hollow sound.
The second sword was far too heavy.
A strong person might use it in place of an axe, but it was beyond me.
My movements stopped when I gripped the third.
Its blade was straight, without even a trace of a nick.
The plain black hilt, free of decoration, settled flawlessly into my hand.
Above all, its balance was almost unbelievable.
“You’ve got a decent eye for quality.”
The old man snorted without looking up from his ledger.
“But that thing has changed owners three times already. All three died on the battlefield.”
“Because of this sword?”
“Does it look like some demonic sword that devours its owners to you? If it were that remarkable, it never would’ve ended up in your hands.”
“Then it’s fine.”
The old man let out a short laugh at my firm reply.
“Still, it’s more than a common soldier deserves.”
I asked for the rest of what I had planned to buy.
“Please give me five water skins as well.”
“Five?”
“Yes. We need plenty of water.”
The old man looked as though he had encountered yet another strange fool.
“I also need flint and a bottle of oil.”
“What would a mere soldier need oil for?”
“There might be a need to make a fire.”
The old man let that pass.
As I gathered my things and turned to leave, I heard him groaning behind me.
“What in the world? Where did six seom of grain go?”
My steps stopped of their own accord.
When I turned around, I saw the old ledger open before him.
Numbers and entries filled its pages in dense vertical lines.
I could see at a glance what was wrong.
“Sir.”
I walked over and pointed to a line in the ledger.
“Here, twelve seom of sorghum have been entered twice. And this line says twenty-six, but it should be thirty-two. I think you copied it incorrectly from another ledger.”
The old man looked back and forth between the ledger and my face.
He stared at the places I had indicated for a long while, then slapped his knee.
“You’re right! I couldn’t find it even after looking for three days and nights... You. Which squad do you belong to?”
“Seo Jin-hyeok, Third Squad.”
“I’m Yeom Gu. I’ve managed this miserable storehouse for ten years now.”
For the first time, the stern old man gave me a kindly smile.
“Come back tomorrow morning. I need to inspect all the supplies, but I’m short on help that’s good with numbers. I’ll make sure you’re well paid for the day.”
“All right.”
* * *
When dinner time came, I returned to the barracks and sat across from Jang Pal.
“Squad Leader, I have something to say.”
“Say it.”
“The wounded are freezing on the bare ground. What if we cut reeds and weave mats to lay beneath them?”
Jang Pal slowly raised his head from his porridge.
I laid out the justification I had prepared in advance.
“If we say the mats are for the wounded, the higher-ups will have no reason to refuse. Any leftovers can be used as horse fodder, so it will count as merit for our squad. Also, I think we should move our barracks beside the spring. It would be much easier to wash the woven mats or draw water.”
“Do it.”
Jang Pal set down his spoon with a light clack.
He swept a wary gaze around the room, then gave a short jerk of his chin.
“Follow me.”
I followed Jang Pal into the darkness behind the barracks.
With his arms folded, he looked down at me.
“Cut the reeds. Move the barracks beside the spring... Before that, I hear you bought five water skins, oil, and flint.”
“That was...”
“Old Yeom Gu at the supply depot told me everything.”
Even in the darkness, Jang Pal’s eyes glinted.
“You. What exactly do you know?”
My heart sank to the pit of my stomach.
One misstep here, and it was over.
I could not tell him exactly what I knew.
But I also had no intention of fabricating something that had not happened.
I could call what I saw on the screen a dream.
“...I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
“I had the same nightmare again and again. This entire valley burned. The dry reed field became a river of fire, and countless people inside it...”
My voice shook.
It was not an act.
I had seen that massacre clearly.
It had been beyond a monitor, but now that I had been thrown into its midst, it made no difference.
“The pillars of flame seemed to reach the ends of the sky.”
Jang Pal said nothing for a while.
The night wind swept across the reed field.
“I don’t believe in dreams.”
At last, Jang Pal spoke heavily.
“But... the scouting squad hasn’t shown its faces for two days.”
Jang Pal slowly turned his head and stared at the pitch-black reed field.
“Even the nocturnal beasts are quiet as dead mice. More than anything, the birds have gone completely silent in this forest.”
“Squad Leader...”
“Ten years ago, I camped in a valley exactly like this one.”
Jang Pal’s voice dropped lower, like an animal’s growl.
“It was the same then. The birds disappeared, we lost contact with the scouts. The men above us kept saying it was nothing.”
“...What happened?”
“Out of the thirty men in my squad, I was the only one who made it out of the valley alive.”
Jang Pal slowly rubbed the scar on his cheek with his rough thumb.
“Never speak of that dream again. If you spread it around in front of others even once more, I’ll cut off your head myself.”
Turning toward the barracks, Jang Pal continued.
“I’ll personally report the matter of the mats to the higher-ups and push it through. We’ll move the barracks beside the spring as well. We are doing it solely to make it easier for our squad members to draw water.”
“Yes. I’ll remember that.”
“There’s no other reason.”
Those final words sounded like a code shared only between us, a promise to cross the coming valley of death together.
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