Full-Fledged Dungeon Runs
The next morning.
Beep-beep!
A text message arrived.
Seo Hwarang's eyes snapped wide open.
Finally?
It wasn't the job he was happy about.
It was the chance to read books again.
"Mmm."
And yet.
Something felt off. He still looked like a wreck, hollow-eyed and lifeless. The truth was, he hadn't slept a wink since yesterday, lost in thought the entire night.
"Haaah."
A sigh slipped out.
Do I actually enjoy reading that much?
Of course he did. But just as a drug addict gradually chases stronger hits and bigger doses, Seo Hwarang was in exactly the same state.
Skill books are definitely more stimulating than any other book. Fresh, new, exciting every time.
As mentioned before, Seo Hwarang had a tendency for his enjoyment to plummet the moment he was reading something he already knew. But skill books?
Every single moment of reading them was a thrill. Pure happiness.
Seo Hwarang was the type who couldn't rest until he was doing what he wanted with his life. It was the very reason he'd stuck it out as a librarian on a measly, bottom-rung salary for so long.
Sorry, though.
This time, he was quitting.
The System had said so, hadn't it? Fill the average proficiency to 80.
Sure enough.
The moment skill books crossed his mind, life flooded back into Seo Hwarang's eyes. Apparently there was just no helping it.
Having tendered his resignation by text with a suitably vague excuse, Seo Hwarang stepped outside.
The moment he was out the door, Seo Hwarang went hunting for dungeons. Now officially registered as an F-rank Awakener, he finally had access to the exclusive community app.
Awakener Net.
A space where Awakeners could trade information and resources with one another, post missions, or apply for them.
Through the app, Seo Hwarang found a newly registered F-rank dungeon nearby and dove straight in.
Fwoooosh!
First up, Master Fire Bolt.
Fwooooosh!
He had no idea why a mastered skill's proficiency started back at 1, but if the system told him to grind, he'd grind. Let's go!
All of this was simply the journey back to reading skill books. If 1st Circle magic was already this fun, what about 2nd Circle? 3rd Circle?
What would the 9th Circle even be like, way down the road?
"Heh heh heh heh."
Just thinking about it made him chuckle uncontrollably.
And so, after flattening dozens of dungeons over the course of the entire day—
Ding!
Master Fire Bolt proficiency has reached 20.
Ooh, already?
No—actually, "already" wasn't fair. Back when he'd been running around farming coins, he'd used this spell more than anything else.
Into the next dungeon he went.
Fwooooosh!
A ball of flame bloomed into existence and came roaring down on the back of a fleeing goblin.
KWAAAAAAM!
The instant it connected, the fireball detonated—flesh sprayed, and the corpse went up in flames.
A brutal sight. It had been hard to stomach at first, but by now he was fairly used to it.
Hoo.
Certainly, once proficiency crossed 20, something did feel different. The firepower seemed stronger, and the orb flew faster, too.
And so Seo Hwarang kept roaming from dungeon to dungeon. Aside from the time it took to choke down convenience store meals, every hour went to the dungeons.
"Hah... hah... hooooh."
Sweat poured down his entire body, and his breathing was ragged. His chest ached like his heart was about to burst.
"Gah, I'm dyiiiing."
Only when darkness finally fell did Seo Hwarang call off his dungeon run and go looking for a bench. He collapsed onto it, wheezing.
"Ha, hahaha..."
Laughter bubbled up out of him. When had he ever moved with this kind of passion? He'd spent his whole life buried in books, and his physical condition had been an absolute disaster because of it.
What if he hadn't distributed any stat points into Stamina? He might well have been knocked out cold inside a dungeon.
Still.
The results were respectable. Master Fire Bolt sat at proficiency 22, and the average for his other 1st Circle spells—Magic Shield, Light, and the rest—had climbed all the way to 15.
This is honestly busted. Infinite mana really is a cheat.
If he just kept cycling all ten of his skills on cooldown, nonstop, hitting 80 across the board seemed well within reach.
He paused to catch his breath and browsed Awakener Net. He was curious how long it typically took to reach proficiency 80.
📌 [Level Up Your Skill Proficiency Like This! Pro Secrets Revealed!]
📌 [Stuck Proficiency Got You Down? Read This.]
📌 [Proficiency IS Your Mana Economy!]
The moment he searched the topic, a flood of top-rated posts appeared. Taking a break anyway, Seo Hwarang clicked into them one by one and read every word.
Heh.
A smile crept across his lips.
So Awakener Net has plenty to read, too.
Skill books were the end goal, of course—but the occasional snack like this wasn't bad at all.
"Oh."
The information Seo Hwarang needed was right here.
The user 21 was an A-rank Awakener, someone named Lee Hana—and judging by her popularity, she seemed to regularly dump genuinely useful information onto the community.
Nice. Very nice.
A veteran of the industry sharing knowledge for the rookies. Hell yeah, that's how it should be!
Seo Hwarang's eyes spun in circles as he devoured the guide.
Lee Hana had divided proficiency into distinct stages.
1–20: the Beginner zone. A range you could build up through basic, repetitive training.
21–40: the Novice zone. From here on, a certain degree of adaptability was required. The time needed per point varied from person to person, but it could generally take anywhere from one day to three.
Hmm.
That part struck him as a little odd.
I hit proficiency 22 in a single day, though...
This was the terrifying side of infinite mana—proficiency could be raised absurdly fast.
So this is what an S-rank class can do, huh.
It was surreal. He'd simply spent his whole life reading books like a maniac, and now a windfall like this had come looking for him.
41–60: the Intermediate zone. From here, each point took more than a week, and skills gradually began to transform. The stronger they got, the harder they became to control—that sort of stage.
61–80: the Advanced zone. Beyond this point there was no fixed benchmark; proficiency climbed steadily as long as you could fully control your skill from the Intermediate stage. She'd even mentioned cases where it jumped all at once from 61 to 80.
Guess Yoo Seon-ah really was something, then.
He remembered her Fire Bolt proficiency being above 70. And as far as he knew, she'd only been Awakened for two years. Impressive, honestly.
Next.
81–100: the Expert zone. From here, repetition alone wouldn't cut it—you needed a fundamental, essential understanding of the skill itself.
"Haaah."
A sigh escaped him of its own accord.
Which meant—he had to drag every single one of those proficiencies up to 80. Only then would Skill Book Collect's seal be lifted again.
"...Right. Time to move."
What choice did he have? If the grind demanded it, he'd grind.
As always, the addict had no choice but to comply.
If anyone had watched Seo Hwarang run his dungeons, they would have been floored.
Vmmm!
First, once every minute, he wrapped his whole body in Magic Shield.
Then, with Light illuminating the dungeon, he concealed himself with Dark Cloud. Detect Magic, Low Heal, and Veil of Deception he simply kept cycling on cooldown for no reason at all.
And then.
The magical bombardment began.
Fwoooosh!
1st Circle. Master Fire Bolt.
KUKWAGAGAGAGA!
And into that explosion—
1st Circle. Master Wind Cutter.
Wind blades riding the blast pressure howled through the air and carved through the enemies. No—more accurately, they carried the fire.
Fwoosh, fwoooooosh!
Once the dungeon had become a sea of flames?
Time to put it out, of course!
1st Circle. Master Aqua Splash.
Chwaaaaaa!
A modest wave of water caressed every last corner of the dungeon. Aqua Splash was technically a suppression spell, but he mostly used it to douse the flames.
And finally, for whatever monsters remained—Master Light Arrow, spearing them through with bolts of light.
1st Circle. Master Light Arrow.
Pshushushuk!
And that was exactly one cycle. By the time a single rotation finished, Fire Bolt's cooldown was already charged.
In other words: uninterrupted, infinite repetition.
Proficiency, proficiency, proficiency.
It was the only thing in Seo Hwarang's head. Soon—very soon—he'd drag all of these skills to 80 and cross over to the continent!
A week flowed by.
As the skills grew more practiced, his dungeon clear speed picked up dramatically. And that, in turn, meant money.
The copper ore piling up in his inventory had already passed 50 kg, and he'd picked up two magic stones to boot. Even his coins had accumulated enormously.
"Ha-cha."
No more worrying about coins. Enough to read a full 39 skill books!
And his proficiency? Sadly, sitting at roughly 35.
Still a long road ahead.
Apparently skills started transforming at 40, though... how would that turn out? A flicker of anticipation stirred in Seo Hwarang.
Seo Hwarang wasn't the only one who'd quit the library.
Yoo Seon-ah had quit too. No matter how she looked at it, there was no windfall to be found in books. The real windfall, rather—
It's with that brat, Seo Hwarang.
The past week had been hectic. She'd needed to properly recover from her injuries after running into the Horned Bat, and she had to run the dungeons she'd fallen behind on with her party.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Seo Hwarang came drifting back into her mind.
Etherion, was it?
She wanted to go back to that dungeon. Not out of some adventurer's spirit or youthful curiosity at her age—
It's a continent of magic, after all.
She simply couldn't help wondering if there might be something there that would let her grow.
"Seon-ah, what are you thinking about so hard?"
"Unnie! Focus, next target!"
"Ah—okay!"
Fwoooosh!
Inside an E-rank dungeon, Yoo Seon-ah loosed a Fire Bolt.
Before her stood a man and a woman—both E-rank Awakeners, both magicians.
The man was Kang Cheol-woong. Twenty-five years old, class: Iron Wall Magician, working mainly with earth and rock magic.
1st Circle. Rock Blast.
KWADUDUK!
Rock Blast—summoning shards of stone and scattering them in a barrage—was his signature spell, and he'd piled his proficiency nearly up to 70 as well.
And then.
The woman was Ha Seorin. Also twenty-five.
Her class was Healer Magician, wielding water and light attribute magic. "Magician" was a stretch—she was practically a full-time healer.
1st Circle. Aqua Shield.
She'd drape the party in protective barriers with Aqua Shield—
1st Circle. Purify.
—and with Purify, which harnessed the power of pure light, she'd cleanse poisons, curses, and debuffs.
One remarkable detail: Ha Seorin's older sister, Ha Seoryeong, was an S-rank Awakener.
Sword God Ha Seoryeong.
One of only ten S-ranks in all of South Korea, and famous for a beauty that crushed ordinary celebrities underfoot. As for her skill...
Where would I even start. We'd be here all day.
Yoo Seon-ah had fallen in with these two through pure chance. Ha Seorin had opened a small magician's social group on the community and set the joining requirement at E-rank mage. Capacity: exactly three members.
At first, Yoo Seon-ah had no idea Ha Seorin was the Sword God's younger sister. Only after years of raiding together and growing close had she found out.
Honestly, the secret itched at her lips.
Etherion Continent. She wanted so badly to tell them about the existence of that dreamlike dungeon.
But she hadn't.
Because I promised that brat Seo Hwarang.
To tell no one.
"Unnie, you're having trouble focusing today, huh? You've been spacing out for a while now."
"Ahh, sorry."
Yoo Seon-ah scratched her head.
"I'm not really in top form today. Mind if we call it and come back next time?"
It seemed she'd have to go see Seo Hwarang sooner rather than later.