Chapter 23
Chapter 23
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: First and Foremost, a Female is a Female
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Wow, was this the legendary "bus" I'd only heard about?
It was ridiculously broken.
No wonder—up until now, every level up had required me to claw my way through a near-death ordeal. But this time, I just sat there listening to stories, and already my level had shot up by two in a mere two hours.
In the first layer of a dungeon where monsters gave a pathetic 0.0001 EXP, no less.
'As expected from a global super rookie. When else would I get to learn from someone like her?'
Dungeons varied wildly in size from layer to layer, danger levels aside.
Some layers sprawled out bigger than Earth itself in map scale, while others were no larger than Yeouido Island.
The first layer we were in was roughly the size of Gyeonggi Province.
Which meant that unless we headed straight to the second layer, we could spend about a month exploring it thoroughly.
"Ah, this one's called the Rice Cake World Tree."
"Rice Cake World Tree...?"
"Yep. It's a tree shaped just like a woman's lower half, luring in males with its intense pussy stench. A real nightmare—for men only."
Made sense for a beginner zone, I guess.
In this place with its lush natural environment, even inside the dungeon, I was picking up all sorts of knowledge.
"Pussy stench... Yeah, no textbook's covering that."
"Exactly. To women, it just smells like a chicken coop, so it's totally harmless to them."
Slash.
With that explanation, Lee Gok sliced clean through the tree in front of me—the one shaped like a woman's ass cheeks.
'What the hell did she cut it with?'
Her whole dungeon exploration style was downright enigmatic.
She was decked out in a hanbok that offered basically zero defense, and she didn't have a single piece of metal gear on her, weapon or otherwise.
Yet she moved with such casual ease that if she'd been some average Joe, I'd have been sweating bullets. But...
"Well then, shall we head somewhere else?"
"Y-Yeah!"
With Lee Gok, it was the opposite. I felt totally at ease.
That nonchalance radiated the unshakable confidence of a true powerhouse.
"...By the way, that armor you're wearing? Or whatever it is."
"Hm? Oh, you mean this suit?"
We were trekking into a dense jungle thick with overgrown trees for her next lesson when...
"Aren't you hot in that? You should take it off..."
Fair point—this was a sun-baked grassland region.
Was she worried about me?
I appreciated the thought.
But honestly, I was fine.
"Haha, no need to worry. It's got a built-in cooling system, so I'm not hot at all."
"C-Cooling system?! Oh... r-right."
A 10-point skill that was actually worth it.
I'd been ready to strip down everything but the helmet when she mentioned heading into the jungle, figuring it'd turn into a sweatbox inside.
But whatever cutting-edge tech they used to make it...
"Whoa?!"
Thanks to its auto-AC kicking in, I could stroll right through the heart of the jungle feeling nice and cool.
Meanwhile.
"Status window."
'Hmm... 40 points already from level ups. Where should I dump them?'
+4 levels from taking down the Alligator Warrior and exploring layer 1.
That gave me these 40 points.
A lot if a lot, not much if not—figuring out where to invest was my biggest headache.
'Just spread 'em evenly across everything but Magic Power? ...But what if a real crisis hits later?'
Back when I first leveled up in layer 8, I'd dumped 50 points straight into Magic Power, creating Fire Cannon that melted a whole orc pack in one shot.
If I'd skimped there, a party member would've died protecting my backlash-ravaged ass for sure.
Points were precious to me.
'10 points per level up, though? Kinda stingy, isn't it?'
Even soloing the layer 8 boss Orc Wife at level 5 only netted 0.1 EXP.
Now I was level 9.
Meaning to grind more points via levels, I'd need to hit at least the mid-layers, layer 10 and up.
But layer 1 still had way too much to teach me.
I just didn't have the bodies for it.
'Lee Gok's hunter knowledge has limits too, obviously. So the only way to get more points is diving into the mid-layers?'
I was sighing with a nagging unease even as I absorbed her lessons in the jungle when...
Sudden status window congrats?
'What now?'
A bombastic fanfare blared in my ears—audible only to me.
Figuring something big was up, I waited.
"...Content?"
Holy shit.
A convenience patch tailored just for me was rolling out.
'Quests?! And the rewards are lavish?'
Had to take it.
But penalties on failure?
Foolish.
How can you strive for victory without steeling yourself for defeat?
Humans fail. It's inevitable when you challenge yourself.
Tremble in fear of failure, and you'll never amount to anything.
Just like me in my past life.
'Already?'
My first quest latched on at Korean-level speed.
The corners of my mouth curled up inside the helmet.
All because the super rookie of Korean hunters, Lee Gok, was right here.
'More reliable than a million soldiers. Hell yeah.'
As long as it wasn't some insane "head to the mid-layers right now" bullshit, I figured it'd be an easy clear.
...Hell, even if it was that hardcore, with her along, we'd pull through.
She had that kingly aura—like there was nothing she couldn't handle.
Subjugate the Pretentious Princess!
Lee Gok, first heir of the Supreme Lee Clan, has been itching to fuck a guy while pretending to be all innocent and pure.
Time to give her a harsh lesson!
⏰ Time Limit: 7 hours 21 minutes 6 seconds
🎁 Success: 100 points
💀 Failure: Get raped
'Come at me!'
I wasn't scared at all.
Like some Heavenly Demon from the martial world, I waited for the quest window, gazing down imperiously.
And there it was—my first quest.
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......?
?????
"What the hell is this?"
They might as well have told me to head to the mid-layers.
This was way—way—more insane. My face went ghost white.
"Hyunjun, you okay? You look totally drained."
Of course I wasn't.
I'd just heard a massive truth bomb.
No—got handed the most batshit quest imaginable.
Lee Gok had led me to some random cave deep in the jungle for a lunch break now that it was midday.
"A cave all the way out here...?"
"Hehe. Pretty neat, right? Most hunters blitz through layer 1, so they don't poke around much. Probably no one else knows about this spot."
No one else knows about it...
Before the quest, I'd have brushed it off. Now? Straight-up chilling.
The quest the status window dropped on me.
According to it, the woman sitting across from me right now—Lee Gok—was secretly hoping to fuck me while playing the innocent card.
'Why hasn't she just raped me already?'
Even as a hunter clan heir, was she holding onto some bare minimum of propriety?
Or maybe...
'...Rape just isn't her kink?'
This was a world overrun by women with filthy strong libidos.
Turn on the news, and one in three stories was rape-related—with all kinds of bizarre fetishes.
Cases like the bitch who "sleep raped" a kidnapped guy after drugging him into oblivion.
Or the one yelling "Mama power explode!" while forcing baby clothes on a dude before fucking him.
Others demanded uterus slaps during sex, or in the worst cases, killed the guy, made a corpse doll, and fucked that.
'She wants to fuck me, but she's holding back... must be aiming for something specific.'
Like those NTR genres where even with the rape tag, the protag gets hard anyway.
So what was Lee Gok's fetish?
She looked like a perfect saint on the outside—what perversion was she hiding?
I was tilting my head, pondering, when...
"Oh, right. On the way here, I whipped up some onigiri using only stuff from the dungeon."
"Onigiri...?"
"Yeah. Go ahead and eat."
Lee Gok held out a sticky rice ball that looked suspiciously like chapssaltteok.