Getting Out (2)

Ding—

Fwaaah—

A brilliant light seeped through the broken wall.

'Finally...'

It was finally over. He had escaped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that living hell.

Ba-dump— ba-dump—

His heart pounded wildly. How would he repay them — with revenge? First, he would need to raise his level and grow. Picturing the road ahead, he drank in a deep lungful of the outside air spilling through the shattered wall, and as the fresh scent of grass teased his senses, a dazzling landscape unfolded before him.

Two suns so piercingly bright they were hard to look at. An endless blue sky stretching on forever. And at its far edge bloomed the colossal World Tree. The sight of that tree spewing rainbow light made it real at last — he was outside.

'How much time has passed?'

Woobin shaded the sunlight with his palm and pressed on.

Crunch—

Sand grains ground beneath his bare soles. Woobin made a pitiful sight. Every item he owned had been stripped away; all he had left to call his own was a pair of underwear worn down to rags. He paid it no mind. What he needed right now wasn't decent clothes — it was information. How many days had passed since he'd been sealed in that dungeon, and where those bastards were and what they were doing. Under normal circumstances he would have walked into a city and gathered intel in person, but there was another way to find out indirectly.

Ding—

The community board held thousands upon thousands of posts, most of them stuffed with useless chatter — people tending to their own private errands. But from a handful of hints alone, Woobin began piecing the situation together.

The Red Dragon was a world boss their leader had been desperate to conquer even back when Woobin was locked away in the dungeon.

As if to prove the point, his gaze had gone straight to the author's name.

'That son of a bitch.'

InfiniteWall — the handle of Cha Juseong, the leader who had betrayed him. In that instant, a ferocious killing intent came seething up in Woobin's eyes.

'Just you wait a little longer.'

He wanted to hunt the man down and tear him apart that very second, but he had to hold back. He needed to keep his head.

Level 1, of all things. He was weak enough now that a single goblin would give him a hard fight.

Hoo...

Forcing his fury back down, he started sizing up the situation all over again. He had no idea how long he'd been trapped in the dungeon, but by feel alone it might as well have been centuries. And yet the Red Dragon still hadn't been brought down — which meant not nearly as much time had actually passed. The going prices on traded items looked about the same, too.

He was reading the situation through guesswork alone, with no hard information to go on, when one line of text caught his eye.

On the surface, it could pass for a post from a player in crisis begging for help. But most players ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would have caught on at a glance.

'A newbie, huh.'

Whoever had written that post was a fresh Hero who had only just been transferred to Elid. Heroes crossed over to Elid on a yearly cycle, and every time a new batch arrived, posts just like this one went up. Someone killed by a monster. Someone kidnapped.

Ding—

One look at the contents and it was obvious the poster was a newly transferred rookie. He'd opened it with no particular expectations, yet it held a critical piece of information.

'The 18th batch...'

Woobin was a 3rd-batch summon — and the moment his comrades betrayed him had been right when the 13th batch began.

'So roughly five years, then.'

Far too little time had passed to account for everything he'd endured in that living hell. By his own reckoning, a hundred years should have gone by at the very least.

As if to prove it, Fist Strike's level had already blown clean past anything resembling normal.

'......'

Something about it was strange, but he couldn't have cared less. The only thing that mattered to Woobin was hearing those bastards spit out screams of agony and grovel for mercy.

He went on reading through the rest of the thread.

……

……

Goodwill and condemnation coexisted in the thread.

'So newbie hunting is still alive and well.'

The System gave newly summoned Heroes the support they needed to survive. Back in the 3rd batch, when Woobin crossed over, that support amounted to little more than a basic low-grade weapon. Because of it, the survival rate among the comrades summoned alongside him barely scraped thirty percent.

But word had it that as the batches went on, the rewards grew extravagant beyond all imagination. According to rumor, a 12th-batch summon had received as a reward a top-tier Skill Card with enough power to blow a mountain off the map.

Even so, Woobin bore no grudges. The early starting point of the 3rd batch had given him the chance to accomplish a great deal. And now, six more batches down the line — what kind of rewards had the 18th batch received? At the very least, the odds were high that they'd been given support rivaling S-Rank.

That was exactly why people came swarming to posts like that one like a pack of hounds.

'Not bad.'

Ordinarily, he'd never have had any interest in hunting newbies. That was no longer true. Even one decent catch would be ideal prey — enough to roughly restore everything he'd lost. The only catch was that his Good-Evil Value would drop. But hadn't he already sworn to tear apart the comrades who had thrown him away?

'Let's do it.'

His mind made up, Woobin organized the information from the comments. Dense forest, purple earth. Trees shaped like human faces. Blue-skinned humanoid monsters. Extrapolating from all that, the rookie hero had been summoned somewhere near the Violet Rainforest in the northwest — not all that far from Chronos's Temple, where he himself had been imprisoned. The only snag was that without a map or a compass, he had no way of finding his bearings.

Ding—

Woobin opened one of the system windows with the ease of long habit.

'Still plenty of names on here.'

It was the system known as the Bounty Wanted List. Boss monsters that had survived long enough in Elid, or players whose misdeeds had crossed a certain threshold, ended up with prices on their heads like this.

Among the familiar names, Woobin's gaze snagged on one monster in particular.

The predator of the southwest — a monster that had devoured countless players and monsters alike in the Violet Rainforest.

Ding—

The moment he selected the Giant Death Tree, a prompt floated up,

Ding—

A pillar of light surged up into the blue sky. He couldn't judge the exact distance, but going by experience, it was at least six hours away. With an expression gone cold as ice, Woobin set off.

Elid's civilization had flourished outward from the rainbow-hued World Tree. For reasons no one understood, the farther out you went, the fiercer the monsters that prowled the land — and the thicker the air hung with the scent of death. Chronos's dungeon, where Woobin had been imprisoned, lay in the western outskirts known as the Navy Zone. Monsters swarmed the region, and every last one of them was a superior breed. Even the goblins shuffling about right in front of him were no exception.

Grrrr—

Elite goblins — a cut above the common variety — moved in packs of five, clad in high-grade equipment as they prowled for prey with wary eyes. For Woobin as he stood now, it was the worst possible matchup.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

He carried a skill that had broken clean out of the bounds of reason, yet there was no way to punch through the goblins' encirclement and land a blow.

And his HP was a measly 50 — a number that meant instant death from a single elite goblin's punch. Barely ten minutes had passed since he'd picked a direction and set out, and already his path was blocked.

'This is a problem.'

Setting aside the five right in front of him, more than thirty elite goblins littered the surrounding area. Slipping past all those eyes would cost him upwards of five hours. What should he do? Force a hunt even at reckless risk? Or sneak around them?

Just as his head was beginning to ache over hunting strategy for the first time in ages—

-Grrk?!

The face of a goblin out searching for prey went suddenly grave—

THOOM!!!!!

A colossal impact erupted from dead ahead.

Whoosh—

As a violent dust storm raked across his entire body, he saw it.

Greeeak—

A bulk that rivaled a five-story building even at a glance.

THOOM!!!!!

The earth rocked with every casual step. A giant golem, its dark shell ominous to behold, was striding straight toward the goblins.

GRRRK!!!!

The elite goblins fled in utter panic the moment they spotted the golem. The path that had been jammed solid with goblins blew wide open — but planted squarely in that path stood an even more colossal obstacle.

If this were the Woobin of before his imprisonment, there would have been nothing to think about. A frame on par with a five-story building. A hard shell wrought of solid iron. The crimson glow smoldering in its two eyes declared exactly what this golem was.

'An Iron Golem.'

The Iron Golem. The apex predator of the Navy Forest — the very ground Woobin stood on now. A monster that had shrugged off a hundred-man raid pounding on it for a full week without falling, and he'd heard that the runes burned through in those attempts had come close to five million points. It was a field boss so powerful that no one could ever take it alone — no one would even dare to try.

But the corners of Woobin's mouth curled upward.

'I was just wondering about this. Perfect timing.'

Because the so-called invincible Iron Golem harbored one great weakness.

Ordinarily, challenging a boss raid meant losing at least five percent of your fighting force — as much as seventy percent in the worst cases. But a full week of raiding the Iron Golem had produced zero casualties. Not one person had died. The reason was simple: the Iron Golem's counterattacks were utterly predictable. The only genuinely troublesome thing about the boss was its overwhelming, off-the-charts defense. That was all.

Ba-dump— ba-dump—

And that was exactly why he had to know.

With the skill he now possessed — could he actually kill that monster? Could he at least wound it?

Twitch—

Without a moment's hesitation, Woobin broke into a sprint toward the golem.

Greeeak— THOOM!!!

The golem's massive legs hammered the earth, and dust whipped up by the pressure swallowed him whole. Just as it always had, the Iron Golem's gaze registered no such thing as Woobin. He bored through the hazy dust — whoosh — running flat out, and closed the distance to the golem's very feet.

Scrrrape—

He planted his legs wide and drew back his fist. Then — whoosh — he flung it forward with everything he had.

Thud—

His frail fist rapped against the golem's leg, each one the size of a small apartment building.

Ding—

CLANG!!!!!!!

The air wobbled, and — KWA-GWA-GWA-GWA — the ground began to scream,

Greeeak—

With a sound he found deeply satisfying, the golem was blasted off the ground.