The Second Tutorial (9)
I wandered around diligently, but since nothing was coming up for the hidden piece, I changed my approach. Instead of mindlessly roaming, I decided to backtrack from where the goblins were appearing. I had no idea how many would show up in this invasion, but it was certain there would be at least 150 or more. With that many goblins on the move, they would inevitably leave traces behind. Once I found even one goblin, I figured I could locate where they had been hiding, so I waited on the main path where they would descend from the mountain.
I hid by the trail and waited for quite a while. Then I saw an enormous number of goblins pouring down from the mountain—who knows from where—and the moment they disappeared, I immediately followed the exact path they had come from. Sure enough, with their large numbers, the route they had taken was obvious. I tracked their traces, climbing steadily up the mountain, until I found a cave.
“Jackpot.”
Discovering the cave lifted a huge weight off my chest. The thought of having to wander the mountain again if there was nothing here had made me dizzy, but now that I’d found it, I wouldn’t have to pointless climb anymore. It felt fantastic.
My mood was soaring, but I still entered the cave with extreme caution. Even if the structure was identical, something inside could be different, so I moved forward as carefully as possible. Fortunately, the angel wasn’t that much of a bastard—the layout was exactly the same. I quickly reached the wall leading to the secret room and smashed it.
This time, instead of using my sword, I wrapped aura around a rock, which made the job much faster.
“What the fuck?”
I had naturally assumed it would be another elixir and had been excited, but when I stepped inside and checked, the only things in the room were a skeleton turned to white bones and the tattered leather armor it was wearing. I looked around just in case there was anything else, but there was nothing but the bones.
With no other choice, I thought I might as well take the leather armor. When I gave the skeleton a light tap, it crumbled into dust, which startled me. Still…
“It feels a bit gross, but it’s not bad.”
Looking at it now, it seemed decent. The leather looked tough and would probably offer pretty good defense. The idea of wearing something a corpse had on felt a little off, but in dark fantasy, looting corpses is basically the standard. I told myself I should get used to it early, roughly rinsed it with water, and put it on over the clothes I was already wearing.
I had thought it might be a bit small, but the moment I put it on, it adjusted perfectly to my size. It looked like some kind of magic was at work.
It was a shame there was no elixir, but at this level, I probably wouldn’t die to goblins anymore. When facing a large number of them, there would inevitably come a moment where I had to allow some attacks. With this, I wouldn’t have to worry about goblin claws, and even against the occasional goblin carrying a dagger, it probably wouldn’t pierce through.
After gathering everything worth taking, I quickly returned to the village. The sky was already growing dark. If this wasn’t the final invasion, it looked like I was in for quite a bit of suffering.
Kereek!
“I’m so sick of this already.”
I hadn’t even reached the village yet, but the goblin cries echoing from ahead already made me feel utterly fed up. Still, I had to do it. To earn points and unlock talents, I really had to slaughter them until I was sick of it.
To unlock the two remaining talents I had my eye on, I needed 1000 points, but I had only gathered 600 so far. And if I had to earn another 500 points to give to Song Dayeong on top of that…
“Ugh, fuck.”
I’d let myself get blinded by a woman. This is exactly why you should listen to your parents. They always told me to be careful around women. What the hell was I thinking, getting horny in the moment and letting my dick do the thinking? I’d gotten myself properly screwed.
‘Once this is over, I’m not letting her off easy.’
I swore to myself that after the invasion ended, I would torment her until she begged for mercy. With that resolve, I entered the village and started slicing apart the goblins in front of me as I headed toward the house where Song Dayeong was staying.
I kept killing goblins for a while as I moved deeper in, when suddenly—
Slash.
An inexplicable sense of unease hit me.
“Why is it so quiet?”
After cutting down the goblins that had gathered around me, I flicked the blood off my blade and looked up at the sky, focusing on the sounds around me. Beneath the quiet night sky where only the wind whispered past, there was no sound at all except for the noisy goblin cries.
If the invasion had truly begun, the noise of battle should have been inevitable, yet everything was far too silent. Was it quiet because they were all dead, or because they were all hiding?
“I’ll find out if I check.”
I decided to start by checking the first house visible ahead and tried to open the door.
Clunk.
The very first house was locked. Since the basic house structure couldn’t be locked unless someone had deliberately blocked it from the inside, a locked door meant there was someone in there. Which meant they were hiding even while the goblins were rampaging around like this.
“Ha. Look at these bastards. Hey! Open the door.”
Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared if one or two people were hiding. Why waste time worrying about people who were just going to weed themselves out? But the reason my mood was so foul right now was simple. They had all hidden. There should still be quite a few people left, yet the fact that every single one of them had hidden meant they had coordinated with each other beforehand. And it was obvious what they had agreed on.
Yoon Iseo will take care of them, so we’ll hide and come out once their numbers drop.
The picture was crystal clear. I could easily guess whose head this idea had come from.
‘It has to be that bastard Im Do-geon.’
There was no one else who would come up with such a sneaky plan. But what pissed me off even more was the group of survivors. Especially those three I had spared. I let them go even after catching them tailing me, and this is how they repay me? This is exactly why you shouldn’t show kindness. If you treat people well, they always stab you in the back.
Grinding my teeth, I waited for them to open the door, but these bastards showed no sign of doing so. I couldn’t wait here forever, so I decided to use force. I raised my aura and kicked the door hard.
Boom!
With a loud crash, the door split cleanly in half. It looked like they had barricaded it with a drawer—behind the broken door, I could see the drawer that had been knocked over.
“W-what the…!”
I roughly shoved the shattered door aside and stepped in. The people inside jumped out in shock. One man and one woman. I didn’t know them well. Since I was a returning student, I barely knew anyone anyway. Still, I recognized their faces. They weren’t from the dropout side—they were from the survivor group.
“I was just going to ask you something. Why didn’t you open the door, guys?”
“Even so, how could you break the door?! What if goblins come in?!”
“Goblins?”
“Behind you! Behind!”
When they pointed behind me in panic, I turned around. Five goblins, led by one holding a dagger, were charging straight at me.
Slash.
“Making such a fuss over nothing.”
I casually swung my sword and dealt with them, then turned back. The two of them were frozen stiff. Whether they were shocked by how easily I killed the goblins or not, they couldn’t seem to pull themselves together. I simply asked what I wanted to know.
“Why didn’t you guys come out to clean up the goblins?”
“W-well… everyone decided to do it this way.”
“Who?”
“Uh… um.”
Thud.
“Who?”
When I asked again as if pressing them, the two exchanged glances. I slammed my sword into the floor as a warning. Only then did they seem to come to their senses. The man carefully opened his mouth.
“It was Im Do-geon. Im Do-geon suggested it.”
“Weren’t you guys on Kim Dae-kwon’s side rather than Im Do-geon’s?”
“We were, but the two of them reached an agreement…”
“So the two of them teamed up and screwed me over?”
“It’s not like that…”
Bang!
“Yes, it is! They said Senior would clean them up if we hid. Once it looked like they were properly thinned out, we could just come out and mop up the rest comfortably…”
Ha. These bastards were beyond saving. Especially that Kim Dae-kwon. I could forgive it if it had been his usual behavior, but the fact that someone who had pretended to be decent had done this filled me with a sense of betrayal that made it even more infuriating.
“Um…”
“What?”
“Are you going to stay here?”
“Telling me to fuck off?”
“No! That’s not what I meant…”
Come on, it’s not like I was going to eat them. Seeing the way the guy and girl were cowering and watching me made me not want to stay any longer. Besides, I had already smashed the door, so I couldn’t stay even if I wanted to.
‘Now then… what should I do?’
Now that I knew I had been played, I didn’t even feel like killing goblins anymore. Should I just leave them like this? That was also something I was curious about. If I really stopped hunting goblins, would the goblins break down the doors and invade the houses? Up until now, the proper amount of aggro had kept the goblins from turning their attention to the houses. But the situation had changed. With no one outside, the goblins would start searching for people. Even now, some of them were sniffing out the scent of humans and banging on doors. I wondered how long they could hold out against that. And whether they could stop this invasion without me.
I was genuinely curious.
“Sigh… Hey, shouldn’t we go out now?”
Park Yong-won asked, his leg shaking with anxiety.
“Come on. It’s fine. You saw how strong that Yoon Iseo guy is. And you saw him walking around right after the invasion ended, right? There’s no way that bastard would give up on points.”
“I get that, but what if we get caught?”
“That’s…”
Even the usually relaxed Kim Dae-kwon couldn’t answer that. If they got caught? Just thinking about the look in his eyes back in the cave made it clear that at least one arm or leg would get cut off. His eyes had been terrifyingly vicious. He definitely hadn’t been an ordinary college student before coming here.
“Damn it. We already decided, so what are you suggesting now! If you’re that scared, go out by yourself and kill some goblins.”
“What?”
Bang!
“Hey, hey. Why are you talking like that? It’s normal to be worried. Yong-won, you don’t need to worry too much either. Even if we get caught, it’s not like something terrible will happen.”
When it looked like Kim Dae-kwon and Park Yong-won were about to start fighting, Oh Jang-hyuk stepped in to mediate. Fortunately, it didn’t escalate into an actual fight, but an awkward silence fell over the house.
Oh Jang-hyuk, who hated this kind of atmosphere, was about to say something to break the tension when—
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sound of something violently pounding on the door made all three of them freeze in place.