Solo Leveling, Vol. 1, page 9
“You know a lot about hunters, right?”
“As much as the next person. Why?”
“Have you heard of a hunter with the ability to heal quickly?”
“Healers are like that. Just one recovery spell and bam!”
“No, no. Not by using magic—I mean unconsciously.”
“Unconsciously?”
“Like while they’re passed out……or while they’re sleeping.”
Her friend shook her head. “Nah, not possible. That’s called regeneration, and it’s a special ability only certain A-rank and above magic beasts have.”
“But not people?”
“Nope. I’ve never heard of a hunter with that ability.”
“R-right……” Had she been seeing things?
Yura was nodding when her friend added, “But……who knows—it may be possible for an S-rank hunter.”
Yura perked up. “S-rank?”
“S-rank hunters are absolute beasts, but there’s not a lot of public info about them. What was it again? There was some rumor going around that Yoonho Baek from the White Tiger Guild can turn into some kind of monster.”
But Jinwoo Sung was an E-rank hunter. Hunters’ ranks were public knowledge and on the association’s website for anyone to look up if they so desired.
After the incident from this morning, Yura had searched for Jinwoo online out of curiosity.
His rank is too low to have any special abili…… Oh!
A reawakening! She remembered hearing something about a reawakening when she’d passed by his hospital room yesterday or the day before.
Did he reawaken as a high-rank hunter?
Never mind being friends with an S-rank hunter, it wasn’t easy for the average person to even meet one. Not only were they rare, they were also incredibly busy. What were the chances she’d have such an outstanding person as her patient?
A hunter who’d just gone from E rank to S rank…
Since people don’t know how great he is yet……
If she could score some points with him now, it might benefit her down the road. Opportunities to befriend an S-rank hunter didn’t come easily. Some even tried paying fortunes just to meet S-rank hunters and failed.
Yura’s grin grew bigger as she daydreamed.
“Hey, girl. Did something good happen to you? Why’re you smiling like that?”
“No, no. It’s nothing.” Even as Yura shook her head, she found it hard to hide her smile.
“Wow, check him out.”
“Did that patient always look so yummy?”
Two young female nurses whispered to each other as they passed Jinwoo in the hallway. He pretended not to hear them and went back to his room.
It had been a week since he’d started doing the daily quests. A lot had begun to change, including his body. Jinwoo stood in front of the mirror placed in the corner of the room.
“Ahem…” Jinwoo looked himself over in the full-length mirror. Even though no one could see him, Jinwoo wasn’t used to checking himself out and could only bring himself to peek after hemming and hawing for a few moments.
Like he thought……he looked different. His body was transforming.
I’m bulking up.
The most obvious change was his muscles. He was leaner, and his muscles were more pronounced. Due to this, his shoulders were wider, and his whole body appeared bigger.
But I don’t look too stocky.
He had the right amount of muscle in all the right places. If someone had to describe him in a single word, they might call him ripped. Even he had to admit that he looked good, so no wonder the nurses agreed.
I guess it’s all because of these quests.
Jinwoo brought up the stat screen.
Ping!
[Name: Jinwoo Sung]
[Job: None]
[HP: 100]
[Fatigue: 0]
[Level: 1]
[Title: None]
[MP: 10]
[Stats]
Strength: 31
Stamina: 10
Agility: 10
Intelligence: 10
Perception: 10
(Available ability points: 0)
[Skills]
Passive skill: (Unknown) Lv.Max, Willpower Lv.1
Active skill: Dash Lv.1
His strength attribute was already over thirty. He didn’t know how effective raising the other stats would be, so he’d concentrated all his ability points into raising his strength for the time being, since that would be the most helpful attribute when fighting magic beasts.
But this couldn’t have happened to my body after only a couple of days just by exercising.
There could be only one reason. As his strength increased, his muscles were changing in response for optimum effect. He couldn’t think of any other explanation.
He’d been slightly worried about investing his points solely in strength, but after seeing the results, he’d been very satisfied, and his worries had faded.
Still, I do think I’m attracting too much attention.
The nurses were talking about Jinwoo more and more. Since their job required knowledge of human anatomy, it was inevitable that they would quickly notice the change. Because of his keen hearing, Jinwoo was very aware of this.
Looks like it’s time to get out of here.
All this attention wasn’t good. He not only felt burdened by it, but he wanted to avoid anyone else finding out about the system. There was no point stirring something up for no reason. He wanted to upgrade his ability level in peace without anyone knowing.
Getting discharged shouldn’t be a problem.
Luckily, all the test results had come back normal. He could leave at any time.
Heck, the association and the hospital seemed to be hoping he’d leave soon. They probably didn’t want to spend too much money on an E-rank hunter. It was said that the government paid for S-rank hunters’ hospital bills as one of their many benefits, but Jinwoo lived in a completely different world from them.
He decided it’d be a good call to leave the hospital soon. He wanted to check on something anyway.
“Where did I put it……?” He riffled through his pockets and took something out.
It was a shiny gold key. It had a simplistic design and could easily be mistaken for a trinket.
He gazed at it for a long while before shoving it back into his pocket.
As he was going through discharge paperwork, a young nurse came flying up to him.
“Huff, huff! Are you leaving, Jinwoo?”
“What? Oh, yes.”
It was Yura Choi, the nurse in charge of Jinwoo. She looked disappointed that he was leaving.
He didn’t understand her reaction. He wondered if he had done something wrong, but nothing came to mind.
She hesitated a little before taking out a notepad. “May I have your number?”
“My number?”
“Yes……if that’s okay with you.”
Maybe they were planning to send him more test results? He took the notepad from her, but that’s all she had for him.
Yura’s face flushed as Jinwoo blinked at her. “Wh-what’s wrong?”
“Um…… I don’t have a pen.”
“Oh. J-just a minute, please.” In her haste, she hadn’t thought to bring a pen. She looked around, all flustered.
Oh, wait a minute. If it’s a pen……
The next second, he was holding a pen. It had instantly appeared in his hand as soon as he recalled the ballpoint pen in his inventory.
Anything he put in his inventory could be put back in or taken out with a mere thought. The inventory really was a convenient feature.
Once he confirmed that it really was the pen in his hand, he called to Yura.
“I realized I already had a pen.”
“Oh, really? Whew, I’m glad.” She placed her hand on her chest and gave a sigh of relief.
Jinwoo smiled as he wrote out his phone number.
It was always like this. An opportunity to use items from mystery boxes tended to come up shortly after obtaining them. It rained the day after he received a raincoat, and he’d gotten a glass cup the day before the water cooler ran out of paper cups. Sometimes he’d get worthless things like the bandage, but most of the items had their uses.
“Here.”
Yura happily took the notepad back from Jinwoo. She gave him a bow.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Oh, um… I’m looking forward to it, too.”
With that, Yura rushed off somewhere. He cocked his head as he watched her hurry away.
But……looking forward to what?
In any case, it was nice to see that she was as polite as she was cute.
With that in mind, Jinwoo left the hospital with a spring in his step, feeling like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
Jinwoo’s first stop was the Hunter’s Association Headquarters in Guro-gu, Seoul. Hunter-issue smartphones used specialized technology, so Jinwoo had to put in a request directly with the association.
The employee checked their monitor and then informed him, “It’ll take two weeks to get your phone.”
“Excuse me? It takes that long?” Jinwoo’s eyes went wide.
His old phone had been totaled while he was being chased by the gigantic statue. To think it’d take two weeks for a new one…
“If you need a phone right away, you can rent one temporarily for fifty thousand won.”
Forget buying, simply renting a phone cost as much as 50,000 won. It was too expensive for him, considering his financial situation.
No one ever calls me anyway.
The association would contact his house directly if they couldn’t reach him by phone, so there was no reason to waste money on a rental.
Jinwoo shook his head. “I’ll just wait for the new one.”
“Understood. We’ll send your new phone to your house as soon as it is available.”
“Thank you.” Jinwoo got up.
He was now finished with his errands. He’d already diligently completed his daily quest, and signing up for a new phone had gone faster than he’d expected.
He fished the gold key from his pocket after exiting the association building.
I guess it’s time to figure this out.
The key’s info screen popped up in green writing.
[ITEM: DUNGEON KEY]
Acquisition Difficulty: E
Category: Key
A key that will take you to an instance dungeon. It can be used at exit 3 of the Hapjeong subway station.
The key had come from a mystery box he’d received after finishing a daily quest. At first, he’d dismissed it, but when he saw the display indicating the level of difficulty to acquire it, he figured it couldn’t be a regular key.
This had been the deciding factor for leaving the hospital.
A key to an instance dungeon……
Instance or not, a dungeon was a dungeon.
Jinwoo had many painful memories related to dungeons. Once, he’d participated in an E-rank raid and was hurt so badly that he’d ended up hospitalized for a week. At least he’d made it out alive thanks to his colleagues. If he used the key to go to a dungeon, he’d have to do it alone.
After much thought, he came to a decision.
It shouldn’t be a problem if I take a quick peek.
He could run away if it came to it. Since he was jogging ten kilometers daily these days, he was confident in his ability to get away, at least.
Jinwoo was mistaken.
Knock, knock!
“Where did this wall come from……?”
He knocked on the invisible wall and yelled at passersby, but that was all in vain. People kept going their own busy ways. Sometimes they approached exit three to enter Hapjeong Station, but they vanished from his view once they reached the invisible wall.
It was as if he were in a different dimension.
When Jinwoo tried to force his way out, he received another message.
Ping!
[You cannot leave the dungeon. You must either kill the boss or use a teleportation stone.]
He’d been getting the same message for a while now.
The dungeon’s key had disappeared as soon as he stepped through exit three. Realizing something was wrong, he’d turned back only to find the entrance was already blocked. He had been expecting there to be a gate or a secret door somewhere near exit three, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
To make matters worse, unlike a typical dungeon, it was impossible to leave of his own accord.
“This isn’t a normal dungeon……”
Jinwoo sighed and turned to get his bearings.
The subway station had transformed into a jungle. Vines covered the walls, and the stench of a rotting corpse hung in the air. He could hear some animal howling in the distance every so often.
“……”
It wasn’t that there was a dungeon near exit three of Hapjeong Station. The station itself was the dungeon.
Jinwoo took the steel sword out of his inventory.
Ping!
[ITEM: KIM SANGSHIK’S STEEL SWORD]
Attack Power +10
The exit was blocked, and he had no way to contact the outside world. His only option was to go forward.
Jinwoo swallowed nervously and slowly descended the stairs. He quietly looked around but sensed nothing amiss. He held his breath as he assessed his surroundings, but he couldn’t sense anything.
Still, it would be unwise for him to let his guard down. Even among low-rank magic beasts, many of them had ways of masking their presence. Or rather, it’d probably be more accurate to say that, because their ranks were low, they had to mask their presence in order to pull off surprise attacks.
Past the washrooms and farther in the station were the subway shops. The old, run-down stores reminded Jinwoo of abandoned buildings. Under the dim fluorescent lighting, the abandoned stores and corridors with absolutely no sign of life gave him the creeps.
Zzzt-zzzt…
Some of the lights flickered as if they were about to go out.
As he walked down a corridor with weeds pushing out between the broken floor tiles, Jinwoo felt an uneasy chill.
“……”
Everything was deadly quiet, but he sensed he was being watched.
And then there was the smell. It was the intense stench of a rotting dead animal infested with flies. It was a scent familiar to Jinwoo, since he frequented dungeons.
This smell…… It’s an animal type!
Jinwoo couldn’t feel its presence anywhere. It was almost like a predator, hiding and lying in wait for its prey.
It’s waiting for an opening, huh?
Then Jinwoo had to give it one.
He purposefully turned around, exposing his back, and slowly started walking the way he’d come. Animals attack when an opponent shows their back. Animal-type magic beasts aren’t much different.
Jinwoo had taken three steps when…
Crrrshhh!
Something blasted through the display window of a clothing store at the end of the corridor. It landed on the floor and immediately jumped for Jinwoo’s neck.
Graaar!
Prepared for the attack, Jinwoo swung his sword around in a wide arc as soon as he heard the noise.
It was like a reflex!
Shhhk!
The sharp blade sliced through the creature’s jaw. The monster tumbled to the floor with a squeal.
Kiiiin, kiiin!
It was a huge wolf with bright-red fur. Its snout had been severed, and the monster was writhing on the floor in pain.
When Jinwoo inspected it, he noticed its name floated above its head like the centipede in the penalty zone.
[Steel-Fanged Lycan]
Unlike last time, the writing was in white and not red.
No time to waste!
This was his chance—while the wounded monster couldn’t get up. Jinwoo leaped into action. He ran at the creature and swung his sword down, lopping off its head.
Gaaackkk!
The lycan gave a howl of pain as it died.
[You have defeated a Steel-Fanged Lycan.]
“Yes!”
But his celebration was cut short.
Two more lycans that had been hiding behind display windows now emerged. Looked like it had friends.
Jinwoo’s eyes went wide.
Grrrrr!
They bared their fangs and raced toward him.
Jinwoo grimaced. In his excitement, he’d struck his sword down with too much force, and it was now embedded deep in the floor. It must’ve gotten caught on something, as Jinwoo couldn’t pull it out.
It’s stuck.
One of the lycans leaped at his face.
“Oh no!”
He ducked. His attacker sailed over his head and smacked its head on the ground, unable to slow its momentum.
Kraaak!
The stone floor cracked as its fangs pierced it.
Those teeth aren’t just for show.
There was no time to be impressed, though. The other lycan was running straight at him.
It didn’t look like he’d be able to free the sword in time.
“Dammit!”
Jinwoo gave up on the sword and instead swung his fist at the lycan flying toward him.
Whoooosh!
The sound his fist made as it snapped forward wasn’t normal.
THWAK!
The lycan’s head exploded with one punch. The headless body skidded out from where it hit the ceiling and then fell to the ground hard.
Whump!
“……?”
Jinwoo stared at his fist, dumbfounded. That level of monstrous strength was completely unexpected.
Having witnessed this, the lycan he’d dodged earlier started backing away with its tail between its legs.
“Huh……?”
Was this from using all those points on his strength attribute? Even as the headless lycan’s leg stopped twitching, Jinwoo still could not pick his own jaw off the floor.
