Chapter 9

[Travel to 1st floor waiting room?]

[You have learned: Fainting Resistance Lv . 1]

[You have learned: Battle Concentration Lv . 2]

[You have learned: Awakening Lv . 1]

Have I arrived…

As I regained consciousness, I saw a faint blue light shining from the portal .

I see the portal . My eyes came back to focus in this miraculous moment . The fact that I was able to see again overwhelmed me with joy .

I did it . I stayed alive .

Now I had to decide .

There was one question that wouldn’t leave my head even when I was confused and in pain .

What would happen if I go back to the waiting room with the arrow still pierced through my ankle?

What happens if I were to be healed in that state?

If I were to heal instantly with an arrow in me . . . maybe both my muscles and nerves would be crippled beyond repair, even with the power of the waiting room .

Do I have to remove the arrow before I enter?

How would I know? I’m not a doctor .

Maybe the waiting 's healing power is omnipotent like that of a game and would send a message,

'You have been hit by an arrow . We will remove the arrow first then heal you :D’

And provide exceptional customer service like that .

But if it doesn’t, I don’t know what will happen to my leg .

And so I decided .

Although I was on the verge of death not too long ago, maybe it was the new skills I learned or maybe I saw the chance of being able to live but I could feel some vitality coming back in my body .

Perhaps my body is burning the last vestige of life, with death waiting just beyond .

I had no time to waste .

Alright, let’s do this . I could simply enter the portal if the pain and danger was at critical level .

Maybe it was due to the new skills or my nerves must have all died but the pain coming from my body had lessened significantly .

With full determination, I sat next to the portal leaning on an adjacent wall .

I could really die at any time now . I couldn’t even see just a moment ago .

If something went wrong, if I had the slightest thought that my consciousness was slipping, get in the portal .

I confirmed to myself .

“Hooo . ”

I took a deep breath and bit down hard on the leather strap of my round shield .

I raised my right knee .

Shaking, I raised my sword…

And struck downwards .

Tick .

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Tremendous amount of pain struck me again, as if it came from the very depths of hell .

Blood dripped between my gums as I made inaudible groans .

Instinctively, my hands reached out to the portal . However, instead of teleporting back to the portal, I held on firmly .

I held the sword up again after crying and groaning for a time .

It was impossible to try hitting the arrow off in one swing . It was too greedy of me . No, why did I even have the thought of it being possible to begin with? I must have gone mental just from the overwhelming pain .

I lifted the sword once more and placed it on the arrow .

I started sawing .

"Uuuh! Guuuh!"

With each movement of the sword, I felt the pain piercing through my spine up to my neck .

Tick .

Finally, the tip of the arrow had been sawn off .

The pain finally subsided .

With my hand shaking, I grabbed on to the other half of the arrow pulled it out at once .

I had to groan and cry once more from the burning pain within my ankle .

Now instead of physically feeling painful, I felt emotionally depressed . Fucking . Why me . Fucking son of a bitch .

These fucking cunts . I don’t know who you are . But I will kill you .

[You have learned: Pain Resistance Lv . 3]

[You have learned: Haemorrhage Resistance Lv . 2]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Finally it was over .

It was time to be freed from this pain .

It felt like I was about to white out due to the pain but I also finally felt a sense of relief .

To end it, I pierced a small splinter of the arrow into the palm of my hand .

[Travel to 1st floor waiting room?]

Yes .

And then I lost consciousness .

“Mmmmm…”

When I woke up and opened my eyes, I saw the familiar view of the waiting room that I had stayed at for a few days .

I couldn’t feel pain any longer .

Slowly, I began to remember the pain I felt just before I fainted .

I actually nearly died .

It was beyond close, the closest anyone had ever reached .

I had pretty much done all the warm up exercises, changed into a swimming suit, dove straight into the River Styx, then was sent back because of a false start .

If I had come back here a little bit later, I may have had to introduce myself to my ancestors .

“Haaa…”

I felt a little bit relief . I avoided death and was free from pain .

As I looked downwards, my body was completely covered with dried blood . The white T-shirt I wore had dyed completely red .

And… Fuck . Did I piss myself?

Luckily the waiting room completely nullified the smell of blood and piss .

I looked at the ceiling all dazed and lifted up my right hand .

The splinter of the arrow was rolling around on the floor and my wound was completely healed .

How nice . The service supplied by the waiting room was much more exceptional than I had expected .

It pulled out the splinter from my hand and even healed it .

In other words, all that bullshit I went through for trying to take out the fucking arrow out of my ankle was for nothing .

Ahhh… Why am I so dumb? Am I retarded?

If I had to pull it out, I could’ve just pulled it out in the waiting room . Not only does the waiting room heal everything, it also nullifies all sense of pain .

To do something so insane just because I regained hope from getting to the portal .

It wouldn’t have been weird if I died due to shock, or even excessive blood loss .

Simply said, I literally gambled with my life on the line .

Haa . . . Let’s not do something like that again .

. . . How did everyone else do .

“Community . ”

[Difficulty Hell, Noticeboard (1/1)] P1

… . .

Um, what?

How do I take this in?

I read it once more .

… . .

Difficulty Hell, Noticeboard (1/1)

……

Again .

Difficulty Hell .

It meant the Tutorial’s difficulty was Hell .

Hell difficulty, Noticeboard .

It meant the Noticeboard for Hell difficulty in the Tutorial's Community .

Hell difficulty, Noticeboard (1/1)

The first 1 meant the number of people currently on the Community .

In the Hell waiting room, there was one person and the person looking in the Community chat was only me .

Ok . I understand the 1 .

The second 1 meant the total number of people in Hell difficulty .

1 .

… . .

I see . They’re dead .

All three of them .

‘How did all three of them die? This is unbelievable . ’ For some reason I didn’t feel any sort of emotion like that .

To be honest, the thought of them possibly dying did cross my mind . In fact, surviving it would be more of a surprise . It was a miracle to do so .

If I didn’t have my shield I would have definitely died 10 times out of 10 .

On top of that, Kyung Min and Su Ah didn’t even know they could come back to the waiting room .

Even if they avoided instant death, it would be difficult to survive all the bleeding .

Was it because I was about to die just before? Am I still in too much shock to feel emotion? Or, have I already adjusted to this crazy situation .

The deaths of the other three did not send me into any emotional or mental shock .

Although It was only for 3 days, I thought I managed to make a bond beyond that of friendship with them . But, all I felt was a little sadness for them, only that .

Was I the weird one?

I don’t know .

Fuck .

Although my brain had calmly accepted the situation, tears flowed from my eyes . To think I could still cry even after all that shit that happened before .

“…Status bar . ”

It's better to focus on something else to stop the crying .

I saw a lot of messages indicating I had received skills when I crawled my way to the portal . I couldn't check them because of the situation I was in before, so I opened the status bar to check it out .

[Lee Ho Jae (Human)]

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 13

Endurance: 11

Intelligence: 21

Skills: Battle Concentration Lv . 2, Will Lv . 1, Awakening Lv . 1, Pain Resistance Lv3 . , Haemorrhage Resistance Lv . 2, Fainting Resistance Lv . 1

Battle Concentration and Will skills that I learnt before being struck by the arrow had levelled up by one .

I also received 3 Resistance skills and Awakening .

Just looking at the name of the resistances vividly reminded me of the pain I went through .

[Pain Resistance (Lv . 3)]

Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘pain’ is increased .

[Haemorrhage Resistance (Lv . 2)]

Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘haemorrhage’ is increased .

[Fainting Resistance (Lv . 1)]

Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘fainted’ is increased .

All of them were passive skills that increased my resistance to a status effect .

They definitely looked like good, useful skills but I didn't want to look at its effects at all .

All they did were to increase my resistance a little . They didn’t lessen the pain I felt or even stop any bleeding .

[Awakening (Lv . 1)]

Description: Awakens the mind for a period of time in times of dire need .

This looked like another passive skill too .

It would be nice if I had an active skill . I was just a little disappointed .

Now with everything checked . . .

Do I have to go back again?