SSR - Intuition Lv1

Ryu Hwi shuddered at the sheer, terrifying nature of the ability.

When he'd dodged the instant-death trap, he'd simply assumed it was a skill for sensing danger in a crisis.

Then, the moment he laid eyes on the cave path splitting into several branches, a strange feeling seized him.

The second path from the left.

Something told him that if he went that way, things would work out.

There was no basis for it. It didn't match any of the patterns Ryu Hwi had memorized either.

So why did he feel like that was the way to go?

The sensation was eerily similar to what he'd felt moments ago, when he'd seen through the 'instant-death trap'.

Don't tell me….

He moved as the feeling directed.

The answer he'd painstakingly pieced together had been rendered useless, but he couldn't press forward anyway with the instant-death trap blocking the way.

This wasn't accumulated data, and it wasn't progression by the guidebook. It was 'instinct' — a hopelessly vague thing to rely on.

Nothing to lose but everything to gain, he figured, and kept walking, following his gut.

When he came to, he was standing in the Central Hall.

"…Huh?"

Why? Why? Why?

No, seriously — why?

Ryu Hwi was bewildered.

The Central Hall was an area you were supposed to reach only after a long stretch beyond the maze. He had no idea how on earth he'd ended up here.

There was no time to ponder it leisurely, either.

Something deeply unpleasant filled this Central Hall — a feeling much like the instant-death trap had given off.

And in the midst of it, he detected yet another sensation.

The same one he'd felt when he'd stumbled out into the Central Hall.

Fine. If it had come to this, he would trust this feeling to the letter.

Acting on the baseless hunch of 'somehow, this feels right', Ryu Hwi advanced toward an empty stretch of the Central Hall.

He set his foot on a tile that looked just like every other tile there. To the eye, there was nothing whatsoever different about it.

But the next instant, Ryu Hwi found himself standing in what looked like a laboratory.

"…"

A bug.

He didn't know why, but a bug had struck ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this dungeon.

That was almost certainly the cause of the previously nonexistent instant-death trap appearing as well.

YggON's lens glinted.

"Hold on. I've got a bad feeling that staying here any longer is dangerous."

Cutting YggON off mid-sentence, Ryu Hwi immediately sprang into motion.

The moment he approached a human mannequin abandoned in the corner of the laboratory, the scenery before his eyes shifted yet again.

Every time he moved on that 'feeling', he arrived somewhere new.

Zipping this way and that across the dungeon, Ryu Hwi pressed his exploration onward.

And with that, one fact became crystal clear.

"This Intuition skill — it's the real deal."

It was a jaw-dropping ability — the kind that made him want to travel back in time and beat up his past self for wondering whether it wasn't a bit underwhelming for an SSR grade.

Reading danger was just the baseline; it also made him instinctively grasp the means of escaping it. It even detected the spatial rifts born of the bug, finding paths through them.

If it was this good at Lv1, what on earth would it be like once he leveled it up…?

YggON had a point.

It was undeniably an incredible skill, but Ryu Hwi didn't worship SSR - Intuition as infallible.

Even while on the move, he kept the dungeon's layout committed to memory. Thanks to map-recording mode, the work went considerably smoother.

The dungeon had been rendered un-clearable by the bug, but thanks to SSR - Intuition, a degree of exploration was still possible.

What the clear required was information built through trial and error.

Gather the intel, then find a clear strategy.

Ryu Hwi set his foot forward once more.

And then…

"Oh — the boss room."

His hard-won trial-and-error intel turned out to be utterly unnecessary in the face of Intuition.

He could see the 'boss' that had been sitting in the chair of the spacious boss room frozen in sheer disbelief.

The boss was so flustered that it stammered through its own words.

Ryu Hwi could completely understand how the boss felt — after all, he was just as flabbergasted at having arrived in the boss room.

This wasn't merely insane performance.

This was performance that could only be called a bug, plain and simple.

The skill was demonstrating, firsthand, exactly why SSR was SSR.

Ryu Hwi scratched his head as he faced the boss.

"Well, whatever. Details can wait. First things first…"

He stowed his short sword and drew out the Gunsword. The boss room was plenty spacious, so swinging it around wouldn't be a problem.

"Time's money, so let's settle this. Boss of the Witch's Hideout — the Witch… no, wait. Maybe I should call you this instead."

Ryu Hwi glared at the boss.

The boss of the Witch's Hideout was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠known as Solitary Witch Cyriel.

The Solitary Witch Cyriel he'd fought in the simulations had been a hideously warped crone who wielded all manner of magic.

Because he'd fought her in simulation before, he could identify her at a glance.

The only part of her that retained its original form was that hideously contorted old woman's face. Her lower body had transformed into something like a spider's, and a pair of wings — seemingly assembled from heaps of scrap metal — spread out from her back.

Almost nothing of her original form remained; she had warped into something grotesque and bizarre. And that figure seemed to embody every single anomaly that had occurred in the dungeon.

"A bug (BUG)."

The boss standing before him now was, beyond any doubt, the ringleader of the 'bug' that had stricken the Witch's Hideout.

The enemy information had come up garbled.

From time to time, Game Labyrinths did experience what were known as bugs.

The detailed cause was unknown.

At the end of the day, the labyrinth itself was a world built by Yggdrasil's power, so nothing that happened inside it was ever truly strange.

In that instant, the word DEATH flared into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠vivid existence all around the Solitary Witch.

Ryu Hwi's senses — his survival instinct amplified by SSR - Intuition Lv1 — screamed a warning of danger. And it didn't merely warn him of peril; it showed him where safety lay, too.

The instant Ryu Hwi moved along the path Intuition traced for him, a curse of instant death engulfed the space on all sides.

Having dodged the death spell by the narrowest of margins, Ryu Hwi clicked his tongue.

One of the reasons he'd chosen the Witch's Hideout in the first place was to build combat experience against magic — attacks that couldn't be answered with Parrying.

Solitary Witch Cyriel might have been the boss of a low-difficulty dungeon, but she commanded a wide variety of spells.

He'd figured she'd make good practice.

But there was no leisure for calling this 'practice' against an enemy who could cast instant-death magic.

The Witch raged.

Her words were slurred and rambling, but beneath them burned an unmistakable, ironclad will.

They say dungeon bosses are like puppets that faithfully perform their assigned roles… is this the bug's influence?

There was no time to think it all through.

Ryu Hwi cut straight through the ground shrouded in death's aura.

High-speed movement so fast the eye could barely register it.

The moment the skill activated, a timer displaying the remaining cooldown popped up before him.

Ryu Hwi swung the Aura Blade-reinforced Gunsword at the Witch.

The Witch's head went flying into the distance.

Ryu Hwi's attack, unbound by level scaling, had dealt the Witch a critical wound.

But in the very next instant, Intuition screamed its warning.

"Wh—?!"

The second he felt that sensation, Ryu Hwi hastily retreated. Hardly had he done so when the word DEATH flickered back to life on every side.

The power of instant-death magic had swallowed the entire area around the Witch. Had he not pulled back at once, he would have been caught squarely in the death spell.

The Witch's head — severed by Ryu Hwi's attack — regenerated, reappearing whole and unharmed.

It wasn't that his attacks were doing nothing. The Witch's suffering was proof enough of that.

But Ryu Hwi's gut told him that hammering away like this would never bring the Witch down.

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

Flames surged upward.

Judging that her instant-death magic no longer worked, the Witch had switched up her assault.

She hammered Ryu Hwi with a continuous barrage — the varied spells she'd always commanded in her original form, layered on top of the instant-death magic born of the bug.

Pausing for even a heartbeat meant getting hit. Ryu Hwi threaded through the Witch's magic, leaning on the Intuition skill every step of the way.

Each time its cooldown expired, he fired off Dash to break out of the Witch's attack range.

His movements, endlessly dodging the Witch's ceaseless torrent of spells, were nothing short of an acrobatic feat.

Appraisal was a mode YggON had come equipped with, meant for identifying items acquired inside Game Labyrinths on the spot.

YggON had modified that very mode to work on 'monsters' as well.

Ryu Hwi immediately executed 'Appraisal Mode'.

New information etched itself onto the YggON system.

"This is…"

Beyond the monster's basic stats, one piece of information after another kept scrolling across his field of vision.

"Found it!"

Intuition was pointing, shouting, right there! The wings on the Witch's back.

Whatever YggON grumbled, Ryu Hwi ignored it and appraised the wings.

Those wings were not of World of Phantasm.

They belonged to Space Alien, the Game Labyrinth that had been shut down three months ago.

He didn't know why that thing had fused with the Witch — but there was no doubt it was the source of the bug.

DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!

Countless letters bloomed with every activation of the instant-death spell.

The Witch fired off the death magic like machine-gun rounds.

A downpour of black shells.

A single graze meant guaranteed, instant death.

Facing down the falling barrage of death, Ryu Hwi drew in a breath.

This was dangerous.

And yet he felt no fear. If anything…

Ryu Hwi was smiling.

The higher the wall that barred his way, the hotter Ryu Hwi burned.

What he aimed for was the very summit of humanity — the road to Diamond.

A barrier of merely this caliber was nothing more than firewood to stoke those flames higher.

SSR - Intuition Lv1.

SR+ - Sword Mastery (Ygg) Lv1.

He charged at the enemy.

The falling hail of death-bullets didn't concern him in the slightest.

If a graze killed him, then he simply wouldn't get grazed.

He felt the trajectory of every shell blanketing the space, predicted it, and slipped past.

If I abuse this power, won't I just end up a puppet moving according to 'SSR - Intuition'?

…The feeble thought flickered through his mind for a moment, and Ryu Hwi snorted out a hollow laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.

So what?

SSR, UR — if it's usable, I'll use every last bit of it.

Ryu Hwi accelerated further.

The countless shells raining down vanished into nothing, never even grazing him.

DEATH!

The Witch's magic converged upon a single point, forming a colossal sphere.

Ryu Hwi's eyes went wide as he stared at the ominous black orb.

The condensed mana crushed the very space around it as it surged forward — and then, at last, it erupted in a tremendous explosion.