Chapter 13

Tutorial 1st Floor (Part 6)

[1st attempt, Day 29 . 2 O'clock]

‘Gasp!’

Wow, out of all the ways to die…I nearly died from drowning .

Everything was fine until I decided to toss myself into the healing well, I nearly became the ghost of the waters .

Wow…

I looked around myself and saw the healing well dyed in red .

Just from the look of things, this was more like a leva pool from hell than a healing well .

I’m almost completely healed from it, so it’s fine .

“Hup . ”

I let out a short shout and concentrated as I took out the arrows in me, one by one .

Blood gushed out of my wounds as I pulled out the arrows from my bare body .

Luckily the healing well instantly acted to heal it .

Awwww, Ho Jae you’re so good at taking out arrows!

Is anyone going to compliment me?

I felt a little proud about myself, just like when I was young and finally got the hang of using chopsticks .

Wow, I’m growing stronger . At this rate, soon I’ll become a troll .

Perhaps later you could even use my blood to create potions .

Hahahahahahhaha . Fuck .

I made my way to the fountain of the healing well to drink some of the water that wasn’t contaminated by my own blood .

It kind of tasted like coconut water . Ew .

After I had thoroughly checked that my body had fully recovered, I waddled out of the healing well .

While waiting for myself to dry out from all the water and blood, I decided to sort out my thoughts .

First, the mistakes I made in the previous trap .

It was my third try .

Even on my third attempt I got injured too much .

Like, wayyy too much .

I think it was even worse from the first attempt .

I shouldn’t have taken this amount of damage, not from how far I’ve come and grown compared to when I initially attempted the crazy trap .

There was only one explanation . The time when I blocked an arrow coming straight towards me with my bare right arm .

The arrowhead must’ve hit some sort of nerve in there and my body stopped moving for an instant, causing me to become disorientated at the high speed that I was moving at .

On top of that, I even calmly thought that it would be better to tank a few more arrows rather than to dodge them . I thought it would be alright because there wasn’t that much distance left to cover .

In result, I nearly died, yet again .

Now let’s think of it again . The arrows that were fired didn’t have a consistent pattern like the previous traps .

But the frequency in which they were fired was .

Then maybe, Tutorial wasn’t trying to test how fast I could clear it, but instead to calmly dodge each arrow one at a time?

I couldn’t say for certain without any proof but I think it might just be so .

So the traps in this tutorial wasn’t simply to inflict excruciating pain while you clear them .

If you think of the concept of the traps, they were designed to help you grow and improve .

Perhaps if I stood still, or even moved slowly to calmly dodge the arrows…

I maybe could’ve learned a new skill based on dodging .

Even if I didn’t, it would’ve been good experience .

To constantly gain some sort of experience was the key element to becoming stronger .

If I just had a bit more time, I wonder how things would’ve changed if I had tried that trap four to five… no just even one more time .

It was a little saddening that I didn’t have much time left .

Honestly, there was no choice . There wasn’t enough time to backtrack to the waiting room and get back to this point .

I had already attempted this trap for the third time .

There were plenty of opportunities to gain something out of it .

It was my fault for not taking advantage of that fact .

‘Status’

[Lee Ho Jae]

Lv . 6

Strength: 12

Dexterity: 21

Stamina: 16

Intelligence: 22

Skills: Battle Concentration Lv . 5, Will Lv . 3, Awakening Lv . 1, Night vision Lv . 2, Eye Lights Lv . 1, Sprint Lv . 1, Heightened Senses Lv . 3, Beginner Swordsmanship Lv . 1, Cut Lv . 1, Pain Tolerance Lv . 8, Haemorrhage Tolerance Lv . 4, Fainting Tolerance Lv . 1, Piercing Tolerance Lv . 1

Miscellaneous: The God of Adventure has interest in you .

In that time, Pain Tolerance had gained a level .

I prayed that at level 10 it would evolve into a skill like Pain Immunity . Please do so .

Pain Tolerance allowed you to withstand pain, not lessen it .

Thanks to Heightened Senses, it felt like my sensation of pain was more noticeable now . This fucking . .

I turned off the status bar after checking that not much had changed other than that .

I took out some jerky from my inventory and walked as I munched on its chewy goodness .

The salty taste out of the blue shocked my tongue .

A new piece of information was spread around in the Community chat . It was some weird theory that there was a boss room at the end of each floor . Many didn’t believe it but as more and more people who had cleared the first floor confirmed its existence, the theory became a fact .

In addition, if I followed the information given in the Community chat, it also stated that the Healing Well was the last part of the tutorial .

In other words, the boss room was right ahead .

Again, at the point I have reached at this Healing Well, to clear the 1st floor of the tutorial, there was only one more trap left, the boss room .

I was finally at the point of clearing the 1st floor of the tutorial . At this point, I’ve reached this Healing Well and there was only one more trap left, the boss room .

“Finally, I can see the end . ”

If I really wanted to clear this a little quicker, I probably could’ve attempted the boss room a few days ago .

However, I decided that it would be better to grind my way through as much as I could and hence attempted each trap multiple times .

Now today, on the second last day of what time was allotted to me, I will finally challenge the boss room .

I was constantly wringing out the water from my clothes while I walking when the corridor was suddenly filled with a thick fog .

I took a few more steps, a large stone door appeared .

As I laid my hand on the stone door while thinking, ‘How do I open this?’, a message appeared in my field of vision .

[Will you attempt this?]

Um, I need an explanation .

Can that be arranged?

A warning sign about a boss room would have been nice .

“Yes . ”

Anyway, it was fine . I had worked so hard so I that could walk with confidence at this very moment right?

I worked so hard that I puked blood pfft . .

I believed in what I had achieved over the time .

Guguguguugug- With the loud vibrating sound of the towering stone door, it opened .

A pond appeared ahead of the stone door .

Kooguguguguugugu- Boom!

The stone door closed tightly shut with a loud crash . I guess it had no plans of opening again . Damn .

Without a choice, I turned to face the pond again .

[Please enter . ]

Damn .

No . Fuck, Why are you doing this to me, like really .

I remembered everything that was shared on the Community chat in regards to the boss room .

But apart from that, there was nothing about this fucking unbalanced difficulty of a boss room .

The theme of the Hell difficulty 1st floor was arrow traps .

So I predicted, based on the information given on the Community chat, that the boss room would be would be related to these types of traps .

I was dead right .

The walls and ceilings were packed with arrow traps .

Except I had one little error .

The pond right in front of me .

A lava pond .

With temperatures that was high enough that it looked like it would cook my skin instantly, my heart felt like it was being squeezed as I gazed upon it .

These crazy shits .

There were 9 circular stone bridges .

They were arranged as a 3 by 3 formation . The 9 stone bridges were separated with equal distance, roughly 2 metres apart .

The bridges weren’t even flat .

The stone was carved with a round surface and the texture was smooth .

Man, who would even call this shit stone a ‘bridge’ .

However just before, a message appeared for me to enter, asking to stand on those bridges .

[1st floor stage, Welcome to the final gateway . The trial begins the instant a step is taken upon the stone bridge connecting the pond together . The trial lasts for 5 minutes . ]

[Please enter . ]

Inside I was constantly muttering fuckfuckfuck, but the message never appeared again .

The good thing was, I could easily grasp the whole trial .

Like how the traps were right there in the open, it was pretty obvious .

Firstly, a lava pond where I would instantly die if I fell into it .

Secondly, 9 stone bridges that were hard to balance yourself on with the round surfaces .

Lastly, a shit ton of arrow traps packed with barely any space in between them on the walls and ceiling .

This trial was obviously about dodging the arrows for 5 minutes on the stone bridges without falling .

I couldn’t just drag out the time any longer, so I jumped lightly onto the closest rock .

I ducked in anticipation of an arrow flying towards me as soon as I set foot on the bridge .

Luckily, although the stone was shiny like it was waxed, it wasn’t all so slippery .

Due to the round shape of the stone, there wasn’t enough area for me to stand on with both feet, but it was enough to stand on one foot comfortably .

[The trial will begin in 30 seconds . ]

Oh ok . Thanks for letting me know .