abcnovels
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Translated by: Shawnsuh
Edited by: SootyOwl
“Where’s the closest dungeon from here?” Min Sung asked. Chuckling as if finding his question absurd, the redheaded hunter asked, “You askin’ me?”
“I don’t see anybody else around,” Min Sung replied, looking around.
At which point, the redhead chuckled yet again and said, “This hobo’s acting like he’s enlightened or something. Sigh... You just HAD to stop me and ruin my day,” scratching his head while unsheathing a longsword and glaring fiercely at Min Sung.
‘Shing!’
The blade shone brightly in the sunlight.
Confused by the redhead’s hostile behavior, Min Sung gave the hunter a puzzled look. With narrowed eyes, the hunter said, “You must be out of your damn mind speaking to an advanced hunter like me that way. Do you know who you’re talkin’ to? Do you not see my level? Oh, I get it. You don’t value your life. Am I right?”
It wasn’t until then that Min Sung looked up at the text floating above the hunter’s head, which read:
‘Lv39 Tae Yong Youn: An Appreciator of Fireworks’
“I need you to direct me to the nearest dungeon from here,” Min Sung said.
At which point, a murderous glare appeared in the redhead’s eyes, and he said, ” You need me to do what?! Are you telling me what to do?! A newbie like you should be on your knees begging for your life by now! You just don’t get it, do you?”
Amused by the redhead’s attitude, Min Sung chuckled.
“You’re laughing? Let’s see who’s laughing when there’s a sword stuck through your body!” the redhead said, raising his sword above his head. At that moment, realizing that the hunter was fully intent on killing him, Min Sun swung his fist at the redhead, shattering the hunter’s teeth. Eight, bloodied teeth fell on the ground, and the redhead backed away, staggering from the impact of the champion’s punch. Though Min Sung didn’t even use his full strength, the hunter seemed devastated, collapsing on the ground with his mouth in a bloody mess.
‘I thought these were notorious outlaws, not some human trash? I didn’t expect the guy to pull a sword on me for asking directions,’ Min Sung thought. Chuckling and dumbfounded, he walked unhurriedly toward the redhead, who was bleeding profusely from his mouth. As the helpless hunter looked up at Min Sung with eyes filled with terror, the champion picked up the sword from the ground and stepped on the redhead’s shoulder.
“Agh! P... pleath! I... I beh you! Don’t hill me!” the redhead begged desperately, teary-eyed. At the sight of the so-called hunter missing his teeth and barely comprehensible, a wave of strange emotions came washing over the champion. It felt as though he had seen something he shouldn’t have: a mere human, feeble in body and mind. Despite the great urge to kill him off, Min Sung managed, barely, not to act on it. Then, moving his foot away from the hunter’s shoulder, the champion signaled to the hunter with his chin and said, “Dungeon. Now.” At that moment, still trembling out of control, the redhead managed to bring himself up to his feet.
—
The dungeon looked like a UFO standing vertically, levitating about fifty meters above ground.
‘This must be it,’ Min Sung thought while looking around the building, which looked quite grand in person. For some reason, there was a cold, hostile tension in the air, as if a fight would break out at any given minute. It almost resembled the atmosphere around the thugs and gangsters that existed in Min Sung’s memory of his old life.
There were other hunters, who were mostly in groups, around the dungeon. As Min Sung recalled from the newspaper he had read prior to arriving at the dungeon, those groups of hunters were referred to as ‘clans.’
Waiting on standby around the dungeon, the clans’ members conversed with each other, bought and/or sold weapons, exchanged information, or, finally, entered the dungeon. Because there was a limited amount of information at hand, Min Sung was reminded that it might take him a while before he got used to the new world he found himself in.
After looking around the dungeon, the champion made his way to the entrance in order to enter it. On his way, he glanced toward the redheaded hunter who had brought him to the dungeon. The hunter was busy talking to his fellow clan members, pointing toward the champion as he did. Ignoring him, Min Sung stood in a magic circle that appeared to be the entrance to the dungeon, asking himself, ‘Do I just stand here?’
At that moment, a feminine, mechanical voice sounded out of nowhere.
[Welcome to your first dungeon.]
[Stage 1]
Then, a burst of laughter came from the surroundings.
“He must be new.”
“Look at his hair and beard! Oh, he looks enlightened all right... an enlightened hobo! Hahahaha!”
“Stage 1! Man, I can’t remember the last time I heard that!”
“Ain’t he cute.”
“I didn’t know there were newbies still around.”
“What’s with his clothes though?”
Standing quietly at the entrance, Min Sung ignored the jeering and mocking around him intentionally. Otherwise, he would’ve killed them all in a matter of seconds.
Soon, the gate to the dungeon just above his head opened up, and the same mechanical voice said:
[Entering Dungeon]
To his surprise, Min Sung started to levitate, and before he knew it, he got sucked into the dungeon.
—
“Wait, are you telling me that newbie was the one who did this to you? That hobo?” a charming looking man, who appeared to be in his early thirties, chuckled and asked the redheaded hunter, whose face seemed like it had caved in on itself. He was Ho Sung Lee, the head of the clan.
“T... tho... it wath that hunk who hunched me in the hathe...”
“What the hell’s this idiot saying? Well, what are you all doing standing around!? Fix him! I can’t understand a word he’s saying!”
At Ho Sung’s command, a clan member with a healing ability walked over and healed the redhead. Although most of his wounds had healed, only half of his teeth grew back. Making himself look like a victim, the redhead looked at Ho Sung, rubbed his sore chin and said, “He wasn’t just an ordinary newbie! What kind of level 1 newbie knocks out a level 39 with a single punch!? Where the hell did this guy even come from!?”
Looking toward the dungeon, the head of the clan immersed himself in thought.
“Hey, boss, you don’t think he’s working for the Central Hunters Institute, do you? What if the institute showered him with legendary items to bring his stats up?” the redhead asked.
Looking at him with disdain, Ho Sung said, “Now, why would the institute waste its time and resources on some level 1 newbie?”
“Then, who do you think he is?” the redhead asked, looking stressed and puzzled at the same time. Meanwhile, greed started to fill Ho Sung’s eyes.
“How the hell should I know? I’m sure he’s got good gear and all, but at the end of the day, you can only fight so many opponents at once,” he said with an evil smile on his face. “Tell everyone to get ready. We’re following him as soon as he comes out.”
At his command, the redhead hesitated as he remembered the champion who had knocked him out with a single punch. Nevertheless, with a determined look on his face, he nodded.
—
[Welcome to your first dungeon.]
[Stage 1]
[Kill monsters and earn experience points for rewards.]
The mechanical voice echoed throughout the dungeon.
‘That’s nifty,’ Min Sung thought. At that moment, he felt his body lowering from midair and his feet touching the ground. At which point, the dark surroundings lit up at once, revealing a room made of gray marbles.
After looking around briefly, the champion stood in front of automatic glass doors, and the doors slid open to either side of him.
That dungeon’s cutting edge system was far more advanced than those of the dungeons in the Demonic Realm. Impressed and curious, Min Sung kept walking forward. Upon exiting the gray room, a dark, narrow hallway, which was about thirty meters wide, appeared, sparsely lit by the dim red lights on the ceiling. The champion strode across the hallway without hesitation, and it wasn’t long before he came across the very first monster in the Earth dungeon.
[Lv1 Small Slime]
Looking like a piece of chewed up gum, the slime crawled toward the champion. It looked almost too adorable to kill. In the end, after staring at it for a little while, Min Sung stomped on the monster.
‘Splat!’
The slime exploded like a balloon and scattered in all directions.
[Small Slime has been slain!]
[You’ve earned 230 experience points.]
Rubbing his feet across the ground to remove what was left of the slime, Min Sung kept on. Then, a few paces later, he came across yet another monster.
[Lv2 Young Goblin]
Fitting to its name, the goblin tilted its head from side to side, waving its axe at Min Sung as if trying to threaten him. Remaining unfazed, the champion stared intently at the creature, which started walking toward him, eventually charging at him with a strange squeal while swinging the axe.
‘Clunk!’
“...?”
Caught off guard by its axe bouncing off of Min Sung’s thigh, the goblin started to swing at him repeatedly. Soon...
‘Clunk! Clunk! Clank!’
... the blade of the ax shattered into pieces, leaving the goblin shocked and flabbergasted. As fear sank in, the creature started to shake. Nevertheless, the champion kicked the helpless creature as if it were a soccer ball, sending it into the air. Shortly after, the creature met its demise as it hit the wall, splattering blood all over the place.
[Young Goblin has been slain!]
[You’ve earned 320 experience points.]
[Level up!]
‘... That’s it? I barely did anything,’ Min Sung thought. Sighing, the champion kept on. To his disappointment, none of the monsters in the dungeon posed any threat to him. After killing a few monsters and chucking them into the distance, he started to grow skeptical of the place. Although the dungeon had been designated for lower level hunters, there was a tremendous gap between it and the Demonic Realm, where he had had to fight desperately to survive.
‘I better pick up the pace. There’s no time to lose,’ Min Sung thought.
—
“Hell, he’s taking forever,” Ho Sung let out while sitting in his oversized imported American car and spitting out the window. It had been five hours since the mysterious newbie had gone into the dungeon. The Sun was almost setting, and the Moon was about to come out.
“Maybe he’s dead.”
A beautiful girl sitting next to him in the car clung to Ho Sung, trying to charm him. However, he pushed her away annoyedly, and the girl stormed out of the car and with a furrowed brow and lit up a cigarette. At that moment, as he got out of the car scratching his head while staring at the dungeon, the mysterious newbie appeared in front of the dungeon. Only... something was different about him.
“Wait... What? Is that... the same guy?”
‘Lv50 Min Sung Kang: Leveling Up at the Speed of Light.’
Blinking in confusion, Ho Sung rubbed his eyes several times, thinking that he was seeing things. However, no matter how many times he did so, the man who had once been a newbie was no longer.
‘A level 1 newbie got to level 50 in just five hours?’ the head of the clan asked himself. Although leveling up to fifty wasn’t all that difficult, the man had still done so at a frightening speed. Flabbergasted, Ho Sung rolled his eyes. However, his anxiety dissipated quickly upon realizing that the average level of his clan members was close to 100.
Even equipped with legendary items from head to toe, it wasn’t likely that a level 50 would stand against three or four level 100 hunters.
‘Level 50... in five hours... What kind of gear do you have, anyway?’ Ho Sung asked himself, the greed in his eyes deepening.
—
Upon exiting the dungeon, Min Sung looked at his item inventory with a smile. The dungeon system on Earth was rather interesting, and the fact that there was a feature like an item inventory made it more so. It was almost like playing a video game. Then, while he was looking at his inventory proudly, the champion tilted his head as he was struck by a question: ‘Where do I sell all this?’
Because clearing a floor in the dungeon rewarded him with quite a few items, there was an impressive array of items in the inventory, including ones that looked quite valuable such as the ‘Soul-imbued Goblin Tooth,’ or those that seemed far from useful like the ‘Thorn Bush.’ The system really was like playing a video game.
Although the battles were lackluster, the fact that he got to enjoy his life instead of having to fight for survival was a tremendous blessing for Min Sung. With that, the champion redirected his attention to the surroundings. It seemed like the only way to find out how to dispose of the items was to ask the hunters around the area. Then, seeing a hunter who was watching him intently from afar by his large imported car, Min Sung walked toward him. When the champion stood in front of the hunter, he felt the hunter seemed quite nervous for some reason.
‘Lv101 Ho Sung Lee: The Head of the Diamond Clan’
‘The head of the clan... that’s pretty self-explanatory,’ Min Sung thought, then asked, “I need to know where I can sell the items I found in the dungeon for some cash. Can you tell me where to go?”
Looking up and down at the champion with wary eyes, Ho Sung put on a friendly smile, nodded and replied, “You see the booth there? Next to the dungeon? That’s the place you’re looking for.”
Because it appeared to be an ordinary truck from the outside, it didn’t cross Min Sung’s mind that it could be a store.
“Thanks. Oh, and...” Min Sung dragged on, looking at Ho Sung, who stared at him with a nervous look. “Do you know any good restaurants around here?”
Caught off guard by Min Sung’s serious tone, Ho Sung asked, “... Restaurants?”
“Yes, restaurants. Preferably Korean.”