At first, he'd been confused by things like the existence of martial arts. He'd thought that perhaps some abnormal phenomenon had occurred in Murim Online due to a game bug.
However,
After observing for several weeks, Dong Bong-su became certain that wasn't the case.
This place was reality. He was sure of it. There was no longer any room for doubt.
He couldn't understand the principle of exactly how he'd come to this place, but the fact that this was reality was absolutely undeniable. He felt pain, moved vividly and alive, and radiated raw wildness. Enough that every time he faced Machil, it was difficult to suppress the urge to kill him.
Was Machil a player? Or an NPC (Non Player Character)?
Of course, he was neither.
There were several people he'd met in this place. The first was Machil, and occasionally Machil brought other people with him. They would mount horses with lightning-fast movements and disappear from the stable.
Each time, Dong Bong-su checked people's eyes. It was work to confirm whether or not they had emotions. Everyone had their own emotions and was 'alive' and moving. Those with such eyes could never be NPCs.
Then what about himself? What was he?
Was he human? Was he a player? Was he even alive?
Dong Bong-su didn't really know either. He just knew one thing for certain: that he was different from the others in this place. He moved like a human the same way they did, but there was a decisive difference.
That was precisely those hologram letters reading 'Murim Online.'
In other words, he, Dong Bong-su, was 'half-human half-character.'
He had the ability to open all the windows that had been possible in Murim Online—Status window, Skill window, Inventory, Map, and so on. However, not all functions were operating normally. Most windows were displaying '?' due to errors, and the only window that was 100% properly functional was the Inventory window.
He still didn't know how to use anything except the Inventory window. That was something he planned to figure out gradually going forward. As written in his status window as Lv.1, he was still just a Level 1 Novice after all.
Swish.
Dong Bong-su quietly raised his upper body. His chest wound ached, but not to the point where he couldn't move. He slowly untied the twisted rope pressing against his chest. Then he scraped the gruel stuck to the twisted rope and put it back in the bowl. It was still hot and hurt his hands and chest, but he didn't care. Once most of the gruel was back in the bowl, he lifted the bowl and poured it all into his mouth at once.
It was food worse than what dogs ate on modern Earth, but Dong Bong-su didn't particularly care. Food had always been something he ate just to survive, not to enjoy the taste.
For him, a nutritionally balanced diet was the best food. From that perspective, this gruel was the worst food possible. Gruel has almost no calories. It would take quite a long time to fully recover his stamina eating something like this. So he had separately prepared food for quick recovery.
"Inventory."
A translucent Inventory hologram appeared before his eyes. Actually, this Inventory was also very different from what had been in the original Murim Online. The original Inventory window had been in a format where one item went into one slot.
But.
Here, it had changed from a slot system to a space system. The current Inventory allowed him to examine every nook and cranny inside according to the movement of Dong Bong-su's hand.
The inside of the Inventory was extremely spacious. He couldn't know exactly how large it was until he filled it completely, but he thought it was at least about a hundred pyeong.[1]
This was the first law of this new 'game' that he'd discovered.
Inside the Inventory were hundreds of ants, dozens of fly larvae—that is, maggots—and hundreds of unidentified bugs.
That's right.
The food he'd prepared for rapid stamina recovery was insects. Insects took up little space while being very high in protein. That's why even on modern Earth they were receiving spotlight as a future food source, wasn't it?
With the same feed, you could raise several times more insects than cattle or pigs, and their nutritional value was far superior to cattle or pigs of the same volume. Naturally, insects were excellent food for Dong Bong-su. Low volume, high protein. That description was sufficient for insects.
Without hesitation, he pulled out all the insects in the Inventory. He grabbed a handful regardless of type and dumped them into his mouth.
Crunch.
A disgusting sound echoed through the stable, but that was by ordinary people's standards—to Dong Bong-su, it was nothing.
For a while, Dong Bong-su stopped all brain activity and focused on eating. All of this was also evidence that the world he was in now was a game, but also not a game. In the game, he couldn't eat food, couldn't perform excretory functions, and had no genitals.
But here, over the past two weeks since waking up, he'd eaten gruel and insects every single day without fail, and urinated and defecated. In the mornings, he never failed to have an erection either.
"New Murim Online."
This was the name Dong Bong-su had given this 'game.' As mentioned earlier, he didn't know where this place was. But he clearly remembered the last words the Murim Online operator had said.
―Then we wish you a pleasant time with Murim Online...
They told him to enjoy it, so he'd enjoy it.
Dong Bong-su had absolutely no attachment to the real world. Comfortable mechanized civilization, splendid material civilization, forests of gray buildings, ultra-speed fiber-optic internet world. All such things were meaningless to him. As long as he could maintain his own unique hobby, he didn't care what world he was in.
Above all, he liked this world.
Unsuited to the clear air, this place seemed to be a merciless world. Machil and several people, and the movements of the martial artists he occasionally saw. From all of it, he could glimpse the 'ruthlessness' of this world and the law of 'survival of the strong.'
If it was this place, couldn't he fully pursue his hobby? No, there was no need to hide his true nature in the first place. Carnivores like himself would be freely roaming the jungle called Martial World out there.
Therefore, he named this place 'New Murim Online.'
A game for true predators, New Murim Online.
Dong Bong-su slowly got up. He could feel his ribs rattling, but he rose from his spot as carefully as possible.
There must still be many hidden insects in the stable. Each and every one of them would be used to help his recovery. Perhaps Dong Bong-su's insect consumption wouldn't stop until every last insect in this place was gone.
Squeak squeak.
As he caught insects with slow movements, rats appeared in his eyes. If he could just catch rats, he might be able to recover his stamina a bit faster. But with a body that still didn't move as he wished, he couldn't catch rats that fled nimbly.
If he could catch rats, he might perhaps learn a new law of New Murim Online. According to his experimental results, no matter how many insects he killed, his experience points didn't increase. But if it was rodents the size of rats, they might affect his experience points.
But not yet.
The moment he recognized that he still couldn't catch rats, he stopped all action. Dong Bong-su wasn't foolish enough to waste energy on things that wouldn't work.
Now there was nothing more for him to do in this filthy stable. He let go of all threads of thought again and fell into sleep. If he ate well and slept well, he'd probably be able to completely recover his stamina within a few weeks. From then on, he'd be able to begin investigating New Murim Online more in earnest.
Before long, the stable was once again filled only with the quiet purrr of horse sounds.
***
A few weeks later, Dong Bong-su had almost recovered his stamina. Now there was no major hindrance to his activities. His chest still ached a little whenever he moved, but he could sufficiently perform daily activities. Nevertheless, when the time came for Machil to arrive, he still unfailingly wrapped the twisted rope around his chest and lay down. This was because he still wasn't ready to go outside.
There was too much to learn: the language of this place, living habits, geography, culture, and so on. The biggest problem was that 'this body' was still weak.
Dong Bong-su of modern Earth had been a powerhouse of that world, armed with various martial arts and various knowledge.
Then what about this body?
Sosam—that is, the previous owner of this flesh—had been a person of the lowest class in this world called Murim, with nothing to his name, and his body was also insignificant. It might have been trained through various hard labor, but due to hardship, various parts of his body were badly damaged instead.
He had no intention of leaving this place, the Danri Family, until he solved these problems. If he went out into that world called Martial World in his current state, survival would be difficult to guarantee. Dong Bong-su wasn't reckless enough to entrust himself to uncertain situations.
Even so, he couldn't just lie here indefinitely like this. If he continued not being helpful to the family in this way, he'd eventually be kicked out. He had to endure only to the extent that wouldn't happen. He had to drag out the time but not get expelled.
During that time, he also had to gradually figure out the New Murim Online system. He still hadn't discovered much. Even what he had discovered was all related to the Inventory. The other windows were still hiding themselves with armor called '?'. Perhaps they would take off those clothes one by one as he leveled up.
But he couldn't guarantee that would definitely happen.
In the worst case, everything except the Inventory might be useless. In that case, he would have to find another way to become strong.
***
New Murim Online 1st Law: The Inventory is not a slot system but a space system. The space is a cube shape of one hundred pyeong with equal length, width, and height.
Footnote:
"Pyeong" (평) primarily refers to a traditional Korean unit of area, roughly 3.31 square meters or 35.58 square feet, commonly used for real estate floorspace despite being officially discouraged in South Korea.