Translator: Sudowoodo

He came to realize how useful a shovel was.

Daun Jung worked on digging out a burrow with difficulty, but the inconvenience could not be helped; there was no other tool apart from this iron skewer to dig, after all.

‘Better than bare hands.’

Daun Jung tried to think positive as much as possible.

He unceasingly continued to dig, resting when it became too hard and taking out food to eat when he became hungry. There was nothing else to do so deep underground anyway.

This was truly a fight of persistence.

‘The dirt piling up is getting bothersome now, more than anything.’

At some point, the dirt he had dug out had piled up beneath and was preventing passage.

He felt doubly tired due to feeling like he was swimming through dirt.

But then an idea flashed across his mind.

‘Can’t I put the dirt into my Inventory?’

It was not like he could put 99 grains of dirt inside, though. There had to be a good way.

As he pondered over it, though, he came up with a good idea.

‘Should I try bunching the dirt into a clump?’

It was an experiment.

As mentioned previously, he had nothing else to do.

Daun Jung bunched up some dirt into a clump, and when he tried putting it inside his Inventory…

Dirt Clump(1)

‘It works!’

Daun Jung was overjoyed.

From then on Daun Jung repeated the work of digging up dirt, bunching it into clumps, and putting it in his Inventory.

A new routine of labor was added aside from shoveling.

With no dirt piling up now, it was certainly easier to move about.

The time required for the work had greatly increased, but it was extremely hard to tell the flow of time in this dark underground anyway.

He maintained the most easygoing mindset as he could while he dug, sleeping, eating, and relieving himself whenever he tired.

He would take care of his business in a corner then cover it dirt before casting Purification on top.

Although he did not know how it worked, the odor would disappear upon being purified.

A day passed, then two days, then…

Right about when Daun Jung could not even tell how much time had passed, his Inventory looked like this.

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

……

‘I must be mad. Feeling proud of this? I feel strangely rewarded looking at these dirt clumps.’

Daun Jung thought he was losing sanity.

After being underground with no one around, now he found fun in bunching dirt of all things.

He would suddenly look back in the middle of working, and the sight of the rather long burrow he opened up would make him feel pleased again.

‘Looks like I’m a man who can do it when I put my mind to it!’

He felt like he had discovered his talent, though it was rather a pity that it involved digging dirt.

But it was at that moment.

Flash!

Out of nowhere, a golden light enveloped his entire body and a message window appeared before his eyes.

“A master of dirt clumping!”

– Reward : Skill

“Huh? First achievement of its kind? Wow?”

He opened his Status Window, surprised.

Name : ^&@$#」 (Error)

Health: 88/100 (%)

Satiety : 65/100 (%)

Skill: Purification (Elementary level 7)

Clump Dirt ( Level 1) NEW

“A new Skill!”

Daun Jung gazed at his Status Window in disbelief, but it was real no matter how many times he checked.

For long, long days he had just barely hung in there with a single poor Skill. Now, though, with the game cleared once, he had finally gotten the second Skill he had hoped and waited so much for!

However… the name of the Skill seemed somewhat off.

It did not even have a grade such as Elementary, Intermediate like the Purification Skill.

He touched the name of the Skill with a finger and its details appeared.

Clump Dirt ( Level 1) NEW

– Can quickly clump dirt well. The higher the level, the bigger and harder the clumps.

‘Clump Dirt? What the deuce of a Skill is this?’

He did not know whether to laugh or cry.

His first Skill was niche too, yet his second Skill was even more niche.

He could figure out why he got it — through constantly repeated actions.

‘Come to think of it, there was a time when Brother Seungwoo got a Skill in the middle of a fight.’

With a little exaggeration, the dirt he had clumped so far nearly amounted to a truck, thanks to which his hands had come to completely resemble the paws of a bear.

The blisters that formed over time were crushed and exploded so much that his entire palm had become calloused.

In other words, this ‘Clump Dirt’ Skill was the result of him laboring until now, consistently clumping dirt in the same size and shape.

… He felt rather sad.

‘Might as well try using it.’

Ridiculous though it was, it was still a good thing to have gotten a Skill.

Daun Jung sighed and reached out for a pile of dirt he had dug out as usual.

“Clump Dirt.”

And what happened at that moment was amazing.

Kwak!

A fist-sized clump of dirt was instantly created on his hand.

“I’ll be damned!”

Daun Jung was truly awed.

It was a high-quality clump of dirt that was decidedly top-class even when compared to all the clumps he had ever bunched.

Its shape was pleasingly well rounded, and more than anything it did not take any effort on his part.

He decided to use the Skill a few more times while he was at it.

“Clump Dirt. Clump Dirt. Clump Dirt.”

Kwak! Kwak! Kwak!

‘Ooh?’

One high-quality dirt clump would be produced with each use of the Skill.

Their size and shape were uniform as if printed out of a factory.

‘Looks like things are going to be easier from now?’

He laughed with satisfaction as he put away all the mass-produced dirt clumps into his Inventory.

If his laboring so far could be evaluated to be at the level of amateur domestic handicraft, it was going to be different from now on.

He was now a skilled assistant, a professional in the laboring industry.

He grabbed an iron skewer and began to dig again, vigorously.

But then he came to a stop.

‘Huh, hang on?’

A certain thought flitted through his head.

‘If I can clump dirt that’s been dug, couldn’t I do the same for dirt that’s not dug yet?’

He felt an absolute need to test this.

Carefully, he drew his palm near where he had been digging with the iron skewer.

“Clump Dirt.”

At that moment, the dirt that was in contact with his hand turned round and compact and came off.

“Holy?”

The beautiful clump of dirt stuck to his hand as he brought it up.

“Uh, wooaah?!”

His tongue froze in surprise.

‘It, it worked!’

Daun Jung trembled with electrifying ecstasy.

Did he think himself to be a professional in the laboring industry before? Well, he stood corrected!

He was a human excavator from now on!

Daun Jung left the iron skewer that had done its work until now on the ground and rolled up the sleeves of both arms.

“Clump Dirt! Clump Dirt! Clump Dirt!”

This Skill was an absolute gem!

A touch of the hand and clumps of dirt separated from the earth.

Which he tossed straight into his Inventory.

Could there be anything easier than this?

‘Damn! It’s a hella’ fun!’

Daun Jung was elated.

One might ask, what could be so fun about digging dirt?!

But perhaps because he had been using an iron skewer to do clumsy work the whole time until now, he found this moment so very thrilling.

Thus Daun Jung began to dig through the earth like scooping out ice cream with round spoons.

And as time went by, he suddenly came to his senses and saw…

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99), Dirt Clump(99),

Dirt Clump(99)

……

“Hahaha!”

How fulfilling! How rewarding!

When he turned around he became even prouder of himself!

There he saw not a cramped and squiggly passageway, but a wide, long, and solidly built tunnel.

* * *

Work progressed with lightning speed since then.

The times where he had to dig bit by bit with the iron skewers, fearing a collapse was already in the past.

At the end of several experiments, he had discovered that tunnels dug using the ‘Clump Dirt’ Skill miraculously maintained their form.

Not needing to worry about the ceiling collapsing meant it was that safe.

He had become able to open tunnels wider more comfortably.

From then on Daun Jung went around digging unreservedly like a true bonafide mole, and as a result, he became able to dig dirt better.

– Ring

[ Skill has been developed to level 2.]

[ Skill has been developed to level 3.]

[ Skill has been developed to level 4.]

‘Oh, level-ups!’

Skills would become developed the more they were used.

With the rise in levels, he became able to make even bigger and harder clumps of dirt, true to the Skill description.

But even when he was putting so much effort into digging upwards through the earth… he was surprisingly still wandering about underground.

‘Why do I keep running into stone!’

He became furious.

There was a fatal weakness to ‘Clump Dirt’; it could only dig up dirt and nothing else, which meant that it was utterly ineffective on stone. Yet when he dug upwards to a certain extent, there was no more layers of dirt but instead a hard layer of stone blocking the way.

He would have smashed it up and moved on, had he an explosive Skill or a powerful rock cleaving combat Skill, but that did not apply to Daun Jung who only had niche Skills.

In the end, the only way was to circumvent until soft earth appeared, but there was no end to that blasted stone layer no matter how far he went.

At this point, he began to suspect whether the surface of the dungeon’s ground was all made of stone.

“Ugh, why am I here again!”

To make it worse, he felt like he was going around in circles from a certain point onwards.

He dug with diligence only to keep on finding a tunnel he had dug through previously.

Truthfully, it was truly difficult trying to properly grasp directions in the dark underground, as it was not as if he had a compass or the like.

And so Daun Jung grew more and more mentally fatigued as time passed by… until he eventually exploded.

“Aargh! I’m done!”

He had depleted all his positive energy.

He ceased to go forward any further and began to unleash his Skill everywhere in a fit of rage.

There was no particular purpose behind his actions. He seemed like he had completely lost it, indiscriminately casting his Skill like a pure lunatic, and in doing so the space around him naturally began to increasingly grow.

“… Mm?”

He snapped to his senses after a while and flailed his arms about, but he could not feel the walls.

Wanting to see how his surroundings looked like, he took out a flint and torch from his Inventory.

Click, clack!

Fwrsh!

He lit the torch and looked around, and there he saw quite the spectacular sight.

A round, underground chamber beyond the standard of a tunnel had formed with him at the center.

‘Oh. Pretty nice.’

He felt his nerves ease up slightly upon seeing such wide space after all this time going through narrow tunnels.

He felt it would be a good idea to rest for a moment at this point and cool off.

‘Maybe I should spruce it up a little. I got nothing to do anyway.’

He stuck the torch in the ground and began to trim the bumpy walls.

Then he grew greedy for some reason and cut all the corners round.

Becoming increasingly interested, he took out several clumps of dirt and tried putting them together into a long and wide square.

‘This is now a bed. Well-well? Pretty stylish for something roughly made, I’d say?’

He even made a pillow out of dirt and laid down splayed out on the dirt bed.

Lying down and blankly staring at the ceiling, he felt his depression ease up just a little.

Rumble.

He grew hungry after working hard.

‘I’m doing all this to live. I should eat first.’

He was about to take out a piece of smoked meat from the Inventory, but all of a sudden he lost his head.

“Frick! Why should I be here doing this?! I’m a human, not a mole!”

He burst out in anger and jumped to his feet, and took out clumps of dirt with both hands instead of smoked meat.

Then he kneaded them into a square table and a chair.

“I shall eat seated! For I am human!”

He also made a plate, albeit clumsily.

It was as if time had turned back to the Old Stone Age, but still, it seemed fit for a person.

He took out a grilled fish too.

It looked rather fine when placed on the dirt plate.

Daun Jung filleted the fish with a knife and took a bite.

“Mmm!”

… It was tearfully delicious.

The texture of meat melting gently on the tongue was simply scrumptious.

‘That’s right. You should first eat when you’re in a bad mood.’

But at that moment, he suddenly heard a hollow-sounding voice from the side.

[Mister. What are you doing here?]

“Ahh! Bloody hell!”

Upon looking around in shock, he saw the Helper Rabbit who had appeared out of nowhere, staring at him incredulously.

For any errors and issues contact me through discord :- https://discord.gg/Q3dStgu