Chapter 4: The Guest from the Capital

Judging by the carriage’s design, it was not hard to guess that the individual riding inside possessed quite elevated status.

“Grrr, grrrrr.”

“Yeah, that carriage looks right.”

“Grrrrrr…”

“…Beom-il, shh.”

The moment Yun-jo placed a single finger against his lips, Beom-il ceased his low growling.

Instead, he began thumping the hard earth with his massive tail, looking thoroughly displeased.

Yun-jo attempted to ignore the display.

However, every time that thick ball of fur struck the ground, a plume of fine sand kicked up to eye level, becoming entirely intolerable.

When Yun-jo reached out and gently scratched the very top of Beom-il’s head, the tiger appeared to feel slightly better; he stopped beating his tail against the soil and finally settled onto his belly.

Beom-il was born and raised in the northern mountain range of Bukryeong, situated at the outermost northern edge of Baekyang’s vast territory.

He had never ventured more than two hundred li south in his entire life.

Consequently, the figure traveling within that carriage was likely the person who had journeyed from the farthest reaches he had ever witnessed.

Strictly speaking, it was not a person yet—merely a carriage.

Who could they be?

Honored guests arriving all the way from Wonkyung.

Wonkyung, the imperial capital of Baekyang, was located far in the central southern domain.

To reach northernmost Bukryeong required a full fifteen days even for a swift rider mounted on a fast horse.

A horse-drawn carriage moved significantly slower, meaning their journey must have consumed over a full month.

By Yun-jo’s calculations, he expected the carriage to arrive sometime today, though pinpointing the exact hour had been impossible.

Had the horses grown fatigued and rested along the trail, the procession might have rolled in during the dead of night.

If delayed further, it might have arrived the following morning.

“Fortunately, they made it before nightfall. I genuinely thought I’d have to spend the entire night out here.”

When Yun-jo offered a faint smile and looked down at Beom-il, the giant tiger turned his head away, rumbling out an irritated complaint.

“Grrr…”

The white tiger Beom-il had been named by Yun-jo himself.

He had first encountered Beom-il roughly three years ago.

Not long after his recurring dreams began, a wild tigress prowled into the isolated mountain where Yun-jo lived alone.

From Yun-jo’s perspective, he could not simply turn a blind eye to a ferocious beast invading his private territory, making a territorial clash inevitable.

He had not realized back then that he possessed the martial capability to stand toe-to-toe with a full-grown tiger.

At any rate, the tigress and Yun-jo were evenly matched; he did not lose to her, yet he could not decisively subdue her either.

Every time she strayed near, he drove her off; whenever she returned, he chased her away once more.

This drawn-out, exhausting standoff came to an anticlimactic conclusion one afternoon.

The tigress abruptly vanished from the mountain.

A few days later, Yun-jo discovered fresh tracks belonging to the beast near a secluded cave by the mountain village.

The tigress, whom he had assumed had given up and abandoned the territory, had actually been heavily pregnant.

She had sought out his mountain specifically to find a safe sanctuary to give birth.

Unable to simply leave her to starve, he began bringing her food.

The fresh meat he deposited at the mouth of the cavern was completely devoured by the following morning, leaving nothing behind but polished bones.

She would stare up at him with glittering eyes as if demanding another meal, leaving him with no choice but to procure additional game.

He returned the next day, and the day after that.

The tigress lounged lazily, contentedly accepting the rabbits and deer Yun-jo hunted for her, and eventually birthed three chubby cubs.

Beom-il was by far the largest and fiercest of the litter.

After roughly a year, the mother tigress abandoned the mountain, and the young cubs scattered off to claim their own distinct territories.

Beom-il alone elected to remain on Yun-jo’s mountain.

Even though he had been partially raised around a human, the mountain-born beast did not welcome uninvited intruders setting foot within his domain.

His brothers, Beom-i and Beom-sam, cared little if outsiders traversed their lands so long as they refrained from venturing deep into the forest, but Beom-il possessed an exceptionally fierce territorial instinct.

Thanks to his presence, Yulsi Mountain—Beom-il’s domain and the place Yun-jo called home—became notorious across the rugged Bukryeong region for fatal tiger attacks.

Travelers forced to cross Bukryeong and pass near Yulsi Mountain had to exercise extreme caution to avoid crossing paths with the apex predator.

Villagers from the surrounding settlements and slash-and-burn farmers residing along the lower slopes knew the terrain intimately, generally taking care to stay well clear of the tiger’s hunting grounds.

The true problem lay with travelers arriving from far away.

They recklessly encroached deep into the wilderness while emanating unfamiliar scents, something Beom-il despised with a passion.

The sole method to avoid provoking Beom-il was to quietly traverse the designated public path without making a sound.

The moment a traveler lost their way and strayed deep into the forest, they were instantly categorized as Beom-il’s prey.

The octagonal carriage currently rolling through the pass was already far too deep by Beom-il’s standards.

Had Yun-jo not actively restrained him, the tiger would have long since charged down the ridge to maul the procession.

The frantic clatter of over ten horses’ hooves colliding along the narrow mountain path echoed loudly through the valley.

Beom-il twitched restlessly, his eyes locked onto the convoy below.

He clearly yearned to leap down and drive off the impudent trespassers, but with Yun-jo standing directly beside him, he barely managed to suppress his primal rage.

“Not today.”

“Grrrrr…”

“I was formally asked not to harm that carriage.”

The dreams Yun-jo experienced in the beginning had been exceedingly brief and fragmented, lasting ten minutes at most.

The initial dream, in particular, had passed in a flash.

Recently, however, the moment he drifted off to sleep, he was plunged headfirst into this alternate world, only waking right before his morning alarms sounded.

It was almost as if he was devoting his entire sleep cycle to living out these dreams.

As a natural consequence, he gradually pieced together a clearer understanding of his surroundings.

The original Yun-jo avatar seemed to lack a distinct personality, possessing no personal ambition or drive to accomplish anything.

From the very moment the game launched, the character had remained stationary on Yulsi Mountain, endlessly performing a rigid daily routine without interacting with others or ever leaving the region.

Thanks to that relentless automated routine, his experience points had accumulated to absurd heights, yet his daily existence remained utterly static.

It was so monotonous that even inside the dreamscape, distinguishing one day from the next proved difficult.

At first, he assumed he was merely experiencing disconnected, random dreams.

Soon, however, he realized that assumption was entirely wrong.

The events unfolding within the dreams were strictly interconnected.

As clear proof, events foreshadowed in yesterday’s dream manifested directly during today’s sequence.

Take, for instance, the case of a certain official who had come seeking an audience with Yun-jo not long ago.

Bukryeong was situated in a northern territory of Baekyang known as Gangpyeong, and the administrative town nearest to Yulsi Mountain was called Anwon.

The individual who came searching for Yun-jo was the governing magistrate of that jurisdiction—a fifth-rank official named Joo Pyeong-gi.

Calling him a non-player character felt slightly unnatural; he was not an entity that had existed in the original game code, but rather a person who naturally inhabited this living world.

He was akin to a passing villager given form and purpose.

Then, one afternoon, he appeared and addressed Yun-jo directly.

In truth, stating that Magistrate Joo sought out Yun-jo was somewhat inaccurate; it was more precise to say that Yun-jo happened to stumble across Magistrate Joo.

At the foot of Yulsi Mountain stood a modest shrine that drew constant foot traffic.

It was an altar dedicated strictly to the mountain deity.

Local villagers frequently visited to offer prayers, and officials from the regional government office dropped by each season to perform solemn rituals.

Fresh fruit and rice cakes were routinely left as offerings, so Yun-jo occasionally wandered down to collect the food whenever he craved a light snack.

A few days prior, the shrine had been unusually crowded with men.

Judging by their formal robes and administrative headwear, they clearly hailed from the regional magistrate’s office.

Yun-jo had climbed a massive tree to peer down at the gathering, deciding it would be best to return at a later hour.

Yet as he turned to slip away, the group caught sight of him.

[Are you Manra?]

Yun-jo had paused mid-step.

‘Manra?’

His face had likely been obscured by the dense canopy of leaves.

When he offered no immediate response, the official continued in a deeply respectful tone.

[I am Joo Pyeong-gi, the magistrate of Anwon. I have come today to make a humble request of the mountain lord.]

At some point over the years, Yun-jo had come to be revered as the ruling mountain lord of Yulsi Mountain by the local populace.

It felt somewhat embarrassing, yet considering he had inhabited the peak for eight years—including the five years preceding his dreams—and personally viewed Yulsi Mountain as his own domain, the title was not entirely misplaced.

However, he did not know the precise meaning behind the title ‘Manra’.

He had been addressed by that title a few times in the past by villagers he occasionally encountered near the base of the mountain.

He had never found an opportunity to inquire about its meaning, primarily because Yun-jo resided deep within the untouched wilderness, making encounters with humans exceptionally rare.

Even on the rare occasions they did cross paths, most villagers were far too busy fleeing in terror at the sight of him to engage in conversation.

Why?

Because of Beom-il, of course.

Spending his daily life alongside a wild tiger naturally minimized his opportunities to socialize with human beings.

[In seven days, an honored guest will arrive from Wonkyung, and they will unavoidably be forced to trespass upon your domain. It is presumptuous of me to ask, but if the mountain lord would watch over them and grant them safe passage, I would be eternally grateful.]

Having spoken his piece, Magistrate Joo did not wait for a formal response.

He bowed deeply three times toward the canopy and hurriedly departed alongside his subordinates.

Left alone in the tree, Yun-jo had mused to himself.

‘He’s asking the wrong person.’

If one desired safe travel for an incoming guest, they should offer prayers to God, the mountain spirit, or a divine deity—not plead with a random hermit living in the woods.

While it was true he claimed ownership over this mountain, he was no divine spirit.

The wilderness did not obey his commands, and he possessed no ability to prevent natural disasters from occurring across the terrain.

There were still seven days remaining before the guest was slated to arrive; if heavy rainfall struck and triggered a devastating landslide, he obviously had no power to stop it.

Yet, looking at the situation from a different perspective, he could understand their logic to an extent.

What terrified the local authorities most was not heavy rainfall or sudden landslides, but rather brutal tiger attacks.

If their primary goal was ensuring the guest did not encounter a tiger along the trail, making a plea to Yun-jo—whom they happened to spot—was far more practical than praying to an intangible mountain spirit.

Of course, whether he held any actual obligation to honor that magistrate’s plea was an entirely separate matter.

‘A noble guest…’

Whoever they were, the governing magistrate himself had personally ventured out to present offerings at a common shrine, meaning the traveler possessed exceptional status.

‘It wouldn’t be good if a major incident occurred on my mountain.’

After careful consideration, Yun-jo had concluded that fulfilling Magistrate Joo’s request was advantageous in more ways than one.

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