Grind
I checked who was swinging a pickaxe in the middle of the night through the Eye of Oculus.
And I had to rub my eyes.
Of course, it did nothing. It wasn't my own eyes I was rubbing, after all.
"Louis?"
No, wait. Why was the guy who'd been at the Upo Wetland Gate just a while ago here of all places?
How?
I was pretty sure I'd come out first.
Hoping he'd come out later than me, I hadn't dismissed the Eye of Oculus even once until I was a full kilometer away from the Upo Wetland Gate. And in that time, he'd made it all the way to Oryukdo Gate?
Had he been set up here the whole time I was at the blacksmith's?
Clang— clang— clang—
His pickaxe rang out loud and clear.
And it was fast.
I could feel the desperation in it.
"He really is something else."
Worried he might recognize me, I took off my robe, stuffed it into my bundle, and changed into fresh clothes. A striped knit sweater and jeans. Everyday wear with a single pickaxe.
A total newbie, to anyone who looked.
I clambered, groaning, onto Clody's shell.
The turtle head Clody had raised toward the sky. The guy was asleep.
Clang— clang— clang— clang—
He really was diligent.
I set my bundle down a fair distance from him and picked up my own pickaxe. The varnish on the heavy handle had worn off ages ago, and blood from blistered palms had soaked into the wood.
A grip that fit like a glove.
The barnacles were still there in full force.
No matter how many you pried off, they grew back faster than you could clear them.
I raised the pickaxe, and—
Clang—
my barnacle hunt began.
Each swing had to strike a barnacle dead-on and kill it in one hit. Only then would the EXP—
—climb.
Clang—
If I'd been with Tess-hyung, we would've piled them into a mountain and torched the whole thing at once, but watching Louis made me change my mind. This was the madman who'd ground his way to level 10 with nothing but a pickaxe. If he could do it—
"Then so can I."
Clang—
Even with the trick of it finally sinking in, one swing still only bought me a single point of EXP.
Clang— clang— clang— clang—
Taking Louis's pickaxe work—about four times faster than mine—as my beat,
Clang—
roughly sixty BPM, quarter notes.
We both knew the other was there, and both pretended not to. Like two strangers soaking in the same bath at a public bathhouse, not exchanging a word.
And so the pickaxe work went on, until—
"Hah. Hah."
at some point I hit my wall and my breathing turned ragged again. My quarter notes kept slipping off the beat at sixty BPM.
I fought desperately to keep pace.
"I can do this too... I can do this...."
I didn't give up, even as I pushed myself toward exhaustion.
I know my limits.
And my limits are still far away.
Beating myself turns out to be harder than I thought.
Clang—
Matching Louis's rhythm, I slipped at some point into a trance of pure focus, and then—
"Take breaks now and then."
at the sound of that voice, I stopped swinging. The pickaxe beat had already ended.
Louis was holding out a bottle of water, the cap still sealed.
"Thank you."
The water tasted sweet.
Plenty of people will wait in line for hours just to try a famous restaurant. If this is the reward, then maybe grinding away at this once in a while isn't so bad.
After handing me the water, Louis abruptly started running.
Clody's shell was his track.
Level 10, all right.
He was seriously fast.
"Don't tell me... is he building stamina while his muscles rest?"
I knew he was impressive, but I hadn't realized he was this much of a beast.
"Can't lose, then."
I drained the bottle and started running too, just like him.
He was ahead of me.
The gap narrowed, and then he lapped me, pulling a full circle ahead.
No reason to let my pride take the hit.
I sped up.
"Hah. Hah."
But my Stamina stat was a measly 5.
What was Louis's?
He was a strength-junkie, the kind who dumped every point into Strength alone.
So did stamina grow outside of stats, then?
Louis ran about two more laps, then returned to his spot and picked up his pickaxe. I hadn't counted exactly, but he'd done at least five more laps than I had.
'I can't lose....'
In the end, I ran my five extra laps too, and made my way back to where I'd started.
"This is insane."
Right. This was what picking barnacles had always been.
Exhausting. Tedious. Something you wanted to quit.
Standing before my pickaxe, I hesitated to pick it up again.
Clang— clang— clang— clang—
Louis's steady sixty BPM.
A bass line beneath the quarter notes.
"Whew... all right. Let's give it another go."
Clang—
Once more, I forgot myself.
.......
At some point, Louis was handing me another bottle of water.
"Thank you."
"Don't overdo it. Today isn't the only day, you know."
With that, he set off running his laps around Clody's shell again.
"Hff... hah...."
I followed behind him.
My pace was slower than before. He lapped me again and again.
But I didn't stop.
Having someone even crazier than me out there was an insult to my pride.
Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.
My footsteps, light at first—tap, tap, tap—grew heavier with every step, until I couldn't tell whether I was walking or running. Sweat poured off me like rain, and the soles of my feet burned as if covered in blisters.
Louis started in on his pickaxe again.
Clang— clang— clang— clang—
Trudge—
But even so, he kept the beat for me.
Louis's barnacle grind had a routine. One hour of pickaxe work, ten laps around the shell.
After repeating that five times—
I'd done it.
Thump.
I collapsed onto the ground. The sun was rising.
Straight out of a storybook.
"I did it!"
I flopped onto my back, staring up at the sky, and threw my arms in the air.
I'd set out to do it, and I'd done it.
This sense of accomplishment hit harder than any dopamine rush from some cheap thrill.
"Congratulations. You leveled up, didn't you?"
came Louis's voice, which I was getting somewhat used to by now. I looked up, and the man who'd been crouching low under a tarp back at Upo Wetland plopped down beside me.
"Yeah, that's right. Leveled up. Just now."
"To what?"
"I'm at 2 now."
"Still, it's not your first time, huh. I mean, a first-timer wouldn't have a pickaxe like that. You know how it works, right? You only get EXP if you hit the barnacles dead-on with the pickaxe and kill them."
"Yeah."
I didn't even have the energy to answer properly. Everything was just hard. My lungs burned.
"Here, drink this tea. It'll help you recover."
He unfastened the watch from his wrist and handed it over.
//Recover from battle fatigue, fast!//
HP Regeneration during rest +50%
MP Regeneration during rest +50%
"It speeds up your natural recovery. It's practically essential gear, but...."
Wait, what?
He was going through the exact same routine as Tess-hyung.
An odd wave of déjà vu left me dazed.
"Once you start making money, you should get one of your own. They run about fifty million won, but since these are artifacts, they're not soulbound, so secondhand ones are out there too. I bought mine used."
"Thank you."
But something was off. A memory surfaced:
'If you clear the barnacles off Clody's body he actually likes it, so this is like, the crocodile-bird meta? Yeah. The croc-and-plover meta—leveling up like the bird that cleans a crocodile's teeth. This is a friggin' god-tier tip. What, you think it's BS? Shut up, you idiot.'
He seemed like a completely different person from the one who'd tossed out lines that flippant and shallow on YouTube. This version in front of me felt far more like the real him.
So the whole thing was an act?
"You know who I am, right?"
"Yeah—Louis of the F-Class Expedition. I subscribed, liked, everything. Notifications on too. I've been leveling up and getting by thanks to you. Thank you."
"Aw, come on, the whole YouTube thing's just me trying to make money. But...."
He held out his palm, offering a handshake, and continued.
"You're the first."
There was no malice in it, so I pressed my palm against his.
Damp.
"The first what?"
"Lots of F-class folks came out here with pickaxes copying me. But someone who kept their own pace and stuck it out to the end like this? You're genuinely the first. Thanks to you, picking barnacles wasn't lonely today."
There was a rough-edged loneliness in his voice.
I asked him the one thing I'd been curious about.
"But why do you push yourself this hard?"
Why drive himself this relentlessly? With that kind of effort, he'd have succeeded spectacularly at anything besides hunting. Even running YouTube with different content, he'd have made it this far. And if he couldn't, that would mean the world itself was unjust—betraying one man's grueling labor.
Louis gave me his answer.
"Because content showed up in my life."
"Content?"
"I'm F-class, sure, but a being called a Constellation actually chose me. So I figured, give it a shot. You know what I mean? There are people out there who envy us F-class."
I was one of them.
"I know."
Was the YouTube Louis—the F-Class Expedition Louis—a different self from the Louis standing before me now? The man in front of me was mature. He looked my age, but maybe even older, in a way.
"I think the moment I awakened, my life finally got its content. And I'm going to complete that content, no matter what. That's why I have to become a Hunter."
"That's a good way to look at it."
"But how on earth did you even find out you could level up on barnacles?"
And the leeches, too.
I swallowed the rest.
"That's... a trade secret."
And there, a small certainty took root in me.
'A skill?'
Classed as F-rank because it was useless in combat—but he definitely had some kind of ability. There are awakened people like me with no ultimate skill, but there's no such thing as an awakened person with no skill at all.
"I'm Lee Doosik."
I offered a proper introduction, and he flashed a grin.
"I'm Choi Hyeondo. Louis is just my screen name."
We shook hands again, this time properly, and exchanged phone numbers.
Right after strenuous exercise, my heart was still pounding fast. Was this what they called the suspension bridge effect?
We were both feeling a strange, quiet fondness for each other.
"But how did you get here safely?"
"You swim out from the sea near the entrance and come around the long way."
He pulled a pair of swim fins from his bag and showed them to me.
"I'm sorry... you swam?"
I could only stare at him, dumbfounded.
This guy is insane.
Genuinely.
The straight-line distance from the gate's entrance to here was about a kilometer. Coming around the long way, it was at least five, probably more.
And then he'd done the pickaxe work. And the running. And....
"You're incredible."
"How did you get here, Doosik?"
"Ah... well, I...."
I scratched my head. He'd been honest about his method, so hiding mine felt a little shabby. I felt like a bad person for no reason. I didn't exactly have a lie ready, either.
Could I really show him the Eye of Oculus? I remembered Louis back at Upo Wetland, stunned speechless the first time he saw it.
"I, uh—one thing. Don't be alarmed, okay?"
"Alarmed? After today—no, yesterday. After what I saw yesterday? I doubt anything could top that."
Which was exactly what I was about to show him....
"Hah... sss. Seriously, do not freak out."
"Doosik, I've been through it all—mountains, rivers, and aerial combat. What is it? Just tell me."
"One last thing. Promise."
"What could possibly be that amazing? Fine, I promise. I'll keep it secret."
He hooked his pinky with mine, and—
"Okay then... Summon."
"Huh? HUUUUUAAAGH!"
The eyeball of the Eye of Oculus floating up before him made him shriek and jump clean out of his skin. His panicked reaction startled me more than he'd startled himself.
"You said you wouldn't be alarmed!"
"H-hiiiiik! D-don't tell me—you—"
"That's right. Upo Wetland."
His eyes went wide enough to fall out of his head.
"HIIIK!! I never uploaded that video, I swear! I really didn't! Really! Spare me, please—I'll do anything you ask. Huaaagh, don't come closer! Waaahh... I'll do whatever you say, please.... Nobody's home!! Help!! Hiiik! I'm sorry! It was my fault! Waaaahh...."
Hah....
What a mess.
Fully in panic mode, he clung to my leg, then abruptly screamed and bolted, then came back and clung again, over and over.
Really? Was all this necessary?
He looked like he was about to wet himself....
And then he did.
"Calm down, please, just calm down. I'm not going to hurt you!"
"Hiiik—I don't want to be a skeleton!"
"Hah...."
What I didn't know then—
was that this guy's ability was even more terrifying than mine.