Episode 1. Tutorial.
[You have defeated the Level 1 Elite Monster, the Tight-Grip Prostitute!]
[First kill!]
[A Rune is guaranteed to drop!]
[You have been awarded 30 experience points!]
[Mission updated!]
[Level 1 Elite Monsters (1/5).]
He faced an elite monster. The dropped item was still the utterly useless Rune Stone Tightening (Common), and the difficulty hadn't changed much.
No, it wasn't just that the difficulty hadn't changed. His opponent was still Ada.
The big-breasted plain girl who had taken his virginity!
"Put another way, it feels like I grew an extra organ. She definitely was tighter."
Jaeseok said that and was about to move on to the next room when he paused.
Something about the room felt off.
"......Wasn't there only one pen in here?"
Jaeseok spotted the pen on the computer desk in one corner of the room and frowned. There had been one pen, but now there were two.
If the room he'd entered first had been an elite room, he might have just thought, Huh, guess there's a pen in here. But Jaeseok had already been in and out of countless ordinary rooms, and they'd all been identical. A room with one extra pen felt wrong.
"Should I take it with me, just in case?"
But the moment he carried it out of the room, it turned into smoke and scattered. It shared the same properties as all the other objects.
"What the hell is going on?"
Still baffled by the inexplicable situation, he walked down the hundred-meter hallway toward the next room.
1. Nothing.
2. Strong enemy.
3. Trap.
Ignoring the ordinary room that had disappeared, he headed for the strong enemy. This time, Slender Girl F appeared. In keeping with her title, [Enduring], he was able to enjoy himself for quite a while.
[Mission updated!]
[Level 1 Elite Monsters (2/5).]
".....I'm not imagining this, right?"
The pen from the previous room was gone. Puzzled, he looked around carefully and noticed that this room had one more coat hanger than the others.
[Mission updated!]
[Level 1 Elite Monsters (3/5).]
This time, his opponent was Kay. Her fellatio, befitting her title, [Swallowing], was truly fantastic—but the objects in her room left Jaeseok stunned.
"So that's what got added. Now it's not even an object."
He took an orange from the refrigerator and tried it, but it was only refreshing. Nothing else happened.
[Mission updated!]
[Level 1 Elite Monsters (4/5).]
In this room, there was a blank notebook on the table.
And then, the last room.
[You have fulfilled the additional condition (Elite Monsters 5/5)! You have proven that you are sufficiently [Rare] to face the Labyrinth's trial!]
[You have been given the following choices as a clear reward!]
1. Normal: Characteristic Rune. Rune Vessel (Rare).
2. Adaptation: Characteristic Rune. Vigor Bank (Rare).
3. Unique: Characteristic Rune. Body Reconstruction (Rare).
"Oh, so the clear reward just means a different Rune reward. You can get Runes from monsters too, but it looks like getting one this way is better."
A higher-grade reward was a huge deal—the reason countless explorers regretted their tutorial.
Jaeseok, however, was distracted by something else.
"This time it's an eraser."
Jaeseok quietly retraced the clues in his mind.
Pen. Coat hanger. Orange. Notebook. Eraser.
Unlike the ordinary rooms, where everything was identical, the elite rooms had each differed in a small way.
"Ah."
Jaeseok groaned.
"I have no idea."
He wasn't stupid. Especially when you considered that making it to Seoul National University as an orphan wasn't exactly easy.
But his grades had been good because he'd desperately focused on studying to avoid his sex drive, not because he was some born genius.
"If I'd known this would happen, I should've tried an escape room or something beforehand. Or is this actually nothing, and I'm just overthinking it?"
He sat there and pondered for another ten minutes, but still couldn't come up with a single guess.
Thinking wasn't the problem. The problem was that time was passing.
[Time limit: 3513 seconds.]
"First, I'll kill the boss, then think about it."
Carrying another bundle of shields, Jaeseok left the studio apartment and started walking down the hallway.
"It feels like I can pick whenever, but I might as well check the choices."
He looked at the choices pushed to the side of his vision. They naturally enlarged, and their details appeared.
First, he checked the Normal option.
[Normal (A Rune given when no Adaptation or Unique Runes are available.)]
"If it's something you can choose under normal circumstances, doesn't that mean it's the most common?"
But the contents were pretty essential.
[Space Expansion (Uncommon.)]
Designate an enclosed area and expand that space. However, the area cannot be far from the user, and the larger the interior space becomes, the less the space can be expanded.
1 slot: 1. 0.1x-10x.
In other words, a subpar version of an inventory. Naturally, it would be incredibly convenient to have.
"So I could make a Space Expansion bag or a storage pouch like the ones in web novels."
Muttering to himself, he checked the next option.
[Adaptation (Appears in response to the environment and situation faced.)]
[Tenacious Stamina (Uncommon)]
1. Buff activates when health drops below 50%. Health recovery begins automatically.
2. When health drops below 25%, the body's calories are forcibly burned and converted into energy.
1 slot: [Common] recovery amount.
"This one's tempting. Looks like this system figured out my stamina's pathetic."
And, in truth, his stamina was in a terrible state. In particular, Endurance (Common) consumed health, so once the act was over, he'd be left barely able to breathe!
There was just one problem.
"I only have one Rune slot."
Of course, he had a cheat—the Garbage Dump—so he could swap Runes out. But there'd be little point if equipping Tenacious Stamina didn't immediately restore his health.
For this Rune to really come in handy, he'd have to level up or do something else to get more Rune slots.
And finally, the third option.
[Unique (Appears in response to the target's talent.)]
[Psychokinesis. Physical Evolution (Uncommon). 2 slots.]
Awaken the psychokinetic ability to evolve the body by taking in calories or energy.
1 slot: 10% absorption efficiency.
"I have a talent for psychokinesis? Is this for real, or is it just flavor text?"
After skimming the description, Jaeseok checked the Rare Runes too.
Rune Vessel (Rare) stored and replicated Runes he possessed. Vigor Bank (Rare) stored stamina, energy, and the like in some invisible space. Body Reconstruction (Rare) used calories as a resource to transform or heal the body.
Just as their descriptions said.
Normal offered a Rune with an effect that was generally useful.
Adaptation offered a Rune suited to Jaeseok's low-stamina situation.
Unique offered a Rune that could strengthen his body.
Fortunately, there didn't seem to be a time limit on the choice. When he casually looked away, it shrank and slid back to the edge of his vision.
"I'm not sure what I should choose. Rare sounds better than Uncommon, at least."
Just as Jaeseok was thinking he should first max out his Endurance training and strengthen it, since none of the Runes felt like an easy choice to equip right away, a voice came from the end of the hallway.
".....A customer."
The setup was the same as before. He walked down a hundred-meter hallway and met a prostitute who was supposedly already booked.
But there was a difference.
Her title made it clear what that difference was.
[Level 1. Boss.]
[Beautiful Aeliss.]
That was right. A literally beautiful woman was sitting on the bed. Neat, regular features, clear skin, long jet-black hair, a fresh-faced beauty in her early twenties. She wasn't quite distinctive enough to be called a once-in-a-generation beauty, but she was close.
The kind of girl you could walk into a high school and ask, "Who's the prettiest girl in your school?" and get an immediate answer: "XX! She's fucking gorgeous!" The kind of beauty an entertainment agency might try to debut no matter what, even if she lacked talent or skill.
In other words—
'She's too beautiful for a place like this.'
Just as Jaeseok thought, a woman who didn't belong in this place was sitting there.
She looked at him with a somewhat weary, sorrowful expression.
"Why are you just standing there? Get in before someone sees you."
"Ah, yes."
Jaeseok entered the studio apartment and closed the door. Aeliss sat on the bed, gazing at him without a care in the world.
And at the sight, Jaeseok froze.
'Wow.'
It wasn't just the beautiful woman who had surprised him.
'How many of these are there?'
The room—
was packed with hundreds of garbage bags.
Objectively speaking, this was good news. Unlike the usual garbage bags, which turned into [power] that could expand the [Garbage Dump] only after Jaeseok endured or processed them himself, garbage bags absorbed from outside instantly became power the moment he touched them, then were absorbed into the Garbage Dump.
'The problem is, these are objects like the bloodstains you often see in Souls games. In other words, that girl's killed this many times.'
That meant this incredible beauty, this gorgeous girl who looked like she couldn't hurt a fly, had killed countless men.