The Groinhead Victory
Crack! Thwack!
"Gaaahhh!"
Fresh blood splattered onto the frozen snowfield of the northern borderlands, dotting it like ink.
The ear-splitting scream sliced through the frigid evening air, echoing emptily beyond the high walls of the slave camp.
Jinhyuk readjusted his grip on the crude wooden club in his hand, breathing heavily as he shuffled his feet in a rough stance.
Cold air flooded his oxygen-starved lungs like knives, and a delayed surge of pain shot through his palms where the calluses had split and oozed.
But he couldn't stop.
No—he instinctively knew that stopping now would turn this frozen ground into his grave.
"Hah, hah... Hey, next! Who's up? Don't come one by one—crawl out all at once! Huh?!"
The guttural shout from Jinhyuk's mouth was in rough Korean.
An alien tongue no one in the Central Plains could understand, but the raw, furious momentum carried through clear enough.
Thanks to the system's aid, Jinhyuk could parse their babbling Central Plains dialect in real time.
But the words from his own mouth stayed Korean only.
The bizarre sounds struck the locals like the tongue of Goguryeo or Baekje, leading them to assume he was a slave soldier dragged in from some distant northern fringe.
'This is insane. I almost died for real. What the hell is this bullshit?'
Jinhyuk's vision swam.
He'd majored in history, a run-of-the-mill 'history nerd' and 'gamer' who'd dreamed of academia after falling for Zhao Yun's unmatched badassery in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games.
That overwhelming coolness of cradling Adou while single-handedly smashing through Cao Cao's 500,000-strong army at Changban.
Aspiring to that, he'd written papers as a history student—only to crash against the job market wall, left scraping by as an unemployed shut-in devouring alternate history novels and blowing cash on mobile gacha games.
But in this brutal reality, it wasn't flashy martial arts propping Jinhyuk up.
It was the 'real-world labor muscles' forged from dealing with convenience store Karens, late-night PC bang shifts, and the infamous hell of unloading delivery trucks and day-labor sites.
Not gym-bro aesthetics, but vicious, compressed survival muscle from hauling thousands of packages and bricks day in, day out just to eat.
That was his sole weapon in this alien slave camp.
"You barbaric foreigner... I was going easy, just planning to rough you up, but you dare sully the dignity of the Cheonrangdae? Today, I'll tear your limbs apart and scatter them."
The Cheonrangdae—Thousand Wolf Pack, self-proclaimed pack of a thousand starving wolves from the unorthodox paths.
At their apex stood the real power, Doksa, drawing a dagger from his belt with chilling eyes.
A slave with his dantian shattered and martial arts sealed, yet true to his past as a famed assassin, he radiated bone-chilling menace and lethal precision etched into his body.
"Barbaric foreigner... not bad. But that's as far as you go. Your luck ends here."
As Doksa murmured in Central Plains tongue, Jinhyuk read the murder in his eyes—far deadlier than the drunk knife-wielders from his PC bang nights. The gaze of a true killer.
"What're you yapping about, you snake bastard? Hey! Knife's cheating! No rules here? Huh?!"
Jinhyuk's protest rang out, but Doksa answered with motion.
Shwick—!
The dagger grazed his nose bridge by a hair.
No game button for 'frame-perfect dodge' here.
Only his labor-honed legs twitching on pure death-fear instinct, following footwork patterns.
Doksa was fast—even dantian-broken, an assassin's steps were carved into his bones.
'Danger! That old man's move from yesterday... twist the left foot 45 degrees and pivot...!'
Jinhyuk desperately recalled Hwang Yeong-gam's bizarre footwork and lunged.
But no labor drone's body could handle a master's steps half-understood in his head.
His ankle buckled with vicious pain.
Snap—!
"Argh! My ankle! Ow ow ow!"
His ankle twisted pathetically with the scream.
As he lost balance and toppled, Doksa lunged, dagger raised for his spine.
The blade whistled white through the air.
In that instant, a whirlwind of thoughts flashed through Jinhyuk's mind.
'I'm dead! If I die like this, who gets my pre-order game rewards?! Who's deleting that 'secret folder' on my PC hard drive?! My life ends without even a girlfriend?!'
Death terror, digital legacy shame, and random crap brewed a bizarre adrenaline surge.
In that moment, his pride shattered on the frozen earth, and raw, groveling survival instinct awakened the system.
Cowardly Survival Instinct (F-Grade)
Scrrrape—!
Jinhyuk's body instinctively slithered across the ground.
No noble martial art or assassin step.
A pathetic crawl, face mashed into snow-dusted dirt like a dog—or a bug.
But Doksa couldn't have imagined it.
A famed killer's technique dodged by belly-crawling humiliation.
His blade sheared only hair, slicing empty air.
Doksa's stance crumbled in that split second.
"Wh-what the...!"
As Doksa recoiled in shock, Jinhyuk scooped handfuls of dirt and snow, hurling them straight into the man's face.
The pinnacle of cowardice—but his only lifeline.
Pathetic Throwing (F-Grade)
Splat—!
Point-blank, snow and grit filled Doksa's eyes perfectly.
As the man screamed and clawed at his face, Jinhyuk coiled his labor-forged legs and rammed his skull upward—straight into Doksa's groin.
A gutter-fighting low blow no warrior, no man, would ever choose.
But Jinhyuk instinctively loaded it with 'center-of-mass shift' principles from unloading trucks.
Thud—!
"Guh... h-heuk...!"
Doksa's eyes rolled back as he foamed and collapsed.
Dantian intact or shattered, qi or no—every living thing shared that fatal weak spot, and Jinhyuk's thighs delivered full labor-muscle power.
Doksa convulsed in deeper, primal agony than any deadly technique from his assassin days.
His body arced like a bowstring, then slumped limp.
"Hah... hah... See that? I... I won! You bastards! Anyone else wanna try—come on now!"
As Jinhyuk crowed victory, the encircling slave soldiers and Cheonrangdae watchers froze like statues.
Incredulous that their boss fell to this northern barbarian's cheap tricks.
Terror beyond shock filled their eyes.
From the barracks roof, the veteran slave soldiers—the Survival Demons—spoke up.
Dantian-broken, but their eyes as sharp as any martial master.
"Puhahaha! See that guy? Thought it was footwork—turns out it's pure street dogfight! Hey, where'd this barbarian meatball roll in from? That dirt-toss was pro-level!"
Unorthodox gambler Dogwi rolled clutching his gut, while Demon-eyed Gui-an from the White Lotus Cult barked a metallic laugh.
"Cowardly, but effective. He timed it perfectly when the assassin got cocky in his own steps. That's not martial arts—it's beast instinct."
Orthodox elder Cheonun clucked his tongue at the 'shameless cur without a shred of warrior's way,' but odd interest gleamed in his eyes too.
Jinhyuk felt their stares and thought inwardly.
'Whoa, those old-timers got insane presence. Game terms? Rotten-water max-level vets for sure. Those dead-fish eyes all on me? Please, let me lay low, gramps.'
He bowed his head obsequiously, wiping cold sweat.
In this hellhole camp, face was a luxury he couldn't afford.
The next morning, the training grounds.
The camp's mood had flipped entirely.
"Hey! Doksa! Get your ass over here. Deaf or what? Huh?!"
Jinhyuk pointed his club at the grounds, toward Doksa hobbling up clutching his groin.
Post-fight, Doksa flinched at eye contact alone.
"Run. Run! Got it? Go means go! Idiot! No Korean? Right, Central Plains. Anyway—run!"
Doksa stood blankly; Jinhyuk cracked the club across his ass.
Smack—!
"Not running? Hey, want round two yesterday? Huh? Tested how hard my skull is already!"
Jinhyuk mimed headbutting his crotch; Doksa freaked and bellowed.
"Everyone—run! Do what the crazy barbarian says! Or we're all dead! Move it!"
The Thousand Wolf Pack kicked up dust, circling the grounds.
Jinhyuk grinned, approaching Hwang Yeong-gam.
The old man silently eyed him, dragging a stick through the dirt.
Jinhyuk eyed the spot where he'd twisted his ankle yesterday.
He scratched into the dirt with his club first.
[Remaining 79 Days] — 79 days left
Hwang Yeong-gam glanced, then scrawled roughly beside it.
[Foundation Building (Zhuji)] — Build the foundation
Jinhyuk tilted his head at the term.
Foundation Building? Laying groundwork? But he shoved idle thoughts aside.
Realm levels mattered less than controlling these 1,000 thugs.
Eyeing the circling pack, he recalled game 'guild management' and epic novel 'conscript handling' tips.
No Central Plains fluency needed—efficiently grinding these idiots was gamer-labor-maxer's specialty.
'Even at unload sites, one foreman yell and everyone moves. Humans are slaves to systems and fear. No exceptions here.'
Jinhyuk bellowed again.
"Hey! Doksa! Three more laps! Wanna die? Speed up! You slack, everyone pays!"
His Korean roar echoed across the grounds again.
The rooftop Survival Demons bet on this freak barbarian meatball's fate in the Black Forest 79 days out, then closed their eyes.
It was a bizarre comedy blooming in hell—the pathetic, groveling origin of a legend that would one day shake the continent.
Jinhyuk gazed past the dust at the towering Great Wall, vowing inwardly.
'79 days. Just hold out 79 days... then out the Great Wall. And survive, no matter what.'