The First Taste of Power
I stepped away from the battlefield and immediately pulled up my status window.
Thanks to the back-to-back fights, I’d gained two whole levels. Being at the entrance of the Tower really made a difference—the experience points poured in like crazy. With ten bonus stat points per level, though, the rewards felt almost stingy compared to everything I’d already stacked through Devour.
Back before the regression, why the hell did I wait so long to use something this good?
I distributed my new points and scanned the wasteland for my next prey.
“Chuuu?”
A few slimes wriggled into view, but I didn’t even spare them a glance. I’d already sucked their essences dry.
Slime corpses were one of the main ingredients for potion crafting, so they sold for a decent price—about five hundred thousand won each. Still, I wasn’t about to waste time scraping together pocket change.
I picked up my pace and left the slimes behind.
After walking for a while across the barren land, a familiar sound reached my ears.
“Grrrrr.”
“Grr?”
A pack of iron-armored armadillos—the same ones I’d run into while searching for the Forgotten Temple—were rolling across the ground in a group. They spotted me at the same time.
“Hey there.”
I gave them a little wave.
“Grrrrrr!”
“Grr!”
The iron-armored armadillos growled and immediately curled into tight balls. Their greeting was pretty aggressive.
“Grrrrrr!”
Ten gray spheres began spinning at high speed. The word “iron-armored” in their name wasn’t just for show. Their shells were ridiculously tough. For a first-day tutorial player, dealing damage to them while they were curled up like that was nearly impossible.
But that didn’t mean they were completely invincible.
They had a weakness. The iron-armored armadillo’s shell only protected its front. The sides—the axis of their rotation—were completely exposed.
I read the trajectory of their charge and took one casual step to the side.
One of them shot past me by a hair’s breadth. I timed it perfectly and slammed my fist into the monster’s defenseless flank.
“Grr…!”
The iron-armored armadillo let out a short shriek and tumbled across the dirt.
“Your path is so obvious it’s almost sad.”
Once an iron-armored armadillo picked a direction, it charged in a straight line. If you timed it right, hitting their weak point was child’s play.
More gray balls came flying in succession. I dodged them with the bare minimum of movement, letting their momentum carry them past me.
Splat after splat—crimson droplets painted the air.
“Grrrrrr!”
One of them tried to charge again after a slight delay. Oh? This one actually learned from its mistakes.
Too bad for it, there wasn’t just one way to deal with iron-armored armadillos.
I clenched my right fist with everything I had.
Brute Force
Power surged through every single muscle fiber. I drove my reinforced fist straight into the creature’s shell.
Crack—part of the armor caved inward. Crimson blood seeped out from the crushed gap.
“Tsk. That actually hurts like hell.”
I shook out my right hand with a grimace.
No matter how high their shell’s defense was, it couldn’t absorb one hundred percent of the impact. Even if you couldn’t pierce it, that didn’t mean you couldn’t transfer force through it.
A powerful enough strike would send the shock straight to the soft flesh inside.
A normal first-day tutorial player would never be able to break through head-on. But I was anything but normal.
Just looking at the total stats I’d gained through Devour, I was already on par with a level 30 player. Add in the necklace I’d earned from the Forgotten Temple—the Emblem of Valor—and hitting them through their shells was more than doable.
‘Still, I’d be in trouble without Brute Force.’
The spinning force was strong enough to deflect even a well-forged blade. If I didn’t concentrate all my power into a single point, my own arm would be the one to break.
The pack of iron-armored armadillos didn’t last long. One by one, they collapsed onto the dry ground.
You have devoured the essence of the Iron-Armored Armadillo.
Devour Grade — Common
Essence Absorbed: 3.5%
Stamina +0.1
Tenacity +0.2
After wiping out the entire pack, my essence completion rate had shot up by nearly a third. At this pace, I could fully absorb the iron-armored armadillo’s abilities in under twenty minutes.
My stomach let out a loud growl, still complaining about its hunger.
* * *
“Grr…”
The final iron-armored armadillo’s neck twisted with a sickening crack.
I immediately used Devour to suck up its remaining essence.
Essence Absorbed — 100%
You have perfectly absorbed the essence of one species.
New Skill Acquired — Carapace
Carapace
Grade: ★
Type: Active
Creates a layer of armor over the skin.
Once created, the same area can be regenerated after 1 minute.
Consumes a small amount of mana.
I tested it right away, channeling mana into the back of my hand.
Rrrrrumble!
A layer of armor spread across my forearm. It was the exact same gray color that had covered most of the iron-armored armadillo’s body.
“The effect is solid.”
A satisfied smile crept across my face.
The Carapace skill offered defense comparable to magic-grade equipment. Thanks to the Dragon’s Heart, I had mana to spare. I wouldn’t need to bother with regular armor anymore.
There was a second reason I wanted this skill.
‘To obtain dragon scales, I need a conceptual armor-type skill first.’
Dragonkin possessed the ultimate defense and magic resistance. To implant the very foundation of that defense—dragon scales—into my own body, I needed to gradually accumulate the right essences.
The iron-armored armadillo’s carapace was the first step.
Hehehe.
Like I always said, there wasn’t a single essence that should be thrown away.
Dragon’s Heart. Dissolution. Acidic Blood. Carapace.
I’d gotten everything I could from the wasteland for now. The ant lion was basically an impregnable fortress at this stage of the tutorial, so I’d have to leave it for later.
I looked up at the sky, gauged my direction by the position of the sun, and started walking southwest.
↖ Flame Zone
← LakeWasteland →
↙ Plains
The lake and the flame zone were still too early. Especially the flame zone—its insane temperatures would give me severe burns if I wasn’t properly prepared. I didn’t have any fire-resistance gear yet.
That meant I’d have to roam the tutorial stage and devour as many essences as possible before I could even think about entering.
‘There are still useful essences to be found in the plains anyway.’
As I walked across the dry earth, green grass began to appear beyond a clear line drawn on the ground.
You are now in the Plains region.
The only area without any penalties. That was exactly why the Tower’s advance party recommended starting here.
Even the air felt different. The wasteland had been so stifling to breathe in.
“Hey! You’re pulling aggro!”
“Block it properly!”
“Wind Cutter!”
Voices of other players echoed from all around. Just like I remembered from before the regression. Nothing had changed.
In my past life, I’d been one of those clumsy beginners, struggling alongside them to hunt monsters.
“Why is this horned rabbit so damn fast?”
“I told you, reacting after it starts moving is too late.”
“You have to anticipate the charge if you want to hunt them efficiently.”
A player holding a shield cautiously approached a horned rabbit. The creature’s ears twitched.
“Kyuuupiiit!”
It kicked off the ground and charged. Its speed was more than double that of the iron-armored armadillos.
The solid metal shield caved inward from the impact. The player let out a pained grunt.
“Now!”
His teammates quickly finished off the dazed rabbit while it was still recovering from the recoil.
‘Once you know the trick, they’re actually pretty easy to hunt.’
The horned rabbit’s weakness was that explosive charge. If you got within a certain range, it would always rush you. But once you blocked that attack, it became completely defenseless.
That was why the plains were recommended for beginners. With just an iron shield, you could rack up experience points without too much risk.
I stepped into the plains, which were teeming with horned rabbits.
“Excuse me, mister!”
Someone shouted loudly.
Horned rabbits didn’t react to sound, but that was still pretty reckless. I shrugged. That’s how beginners were.
“You! The mister who just shrugged! Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me—look over here!”
…Wait. Was she talking to me?
The source of the voice was a woman who looked to be in her early twenties.
“Horned rabbits are dangerous without any armor! So—!”
She was actually worried about me.
I waved my right hand dismissively.
“Kyuuupit!”
A horned rabbit lowered its horn and charged straight at me. With forty points in agility, I could read its movements perfectly.
Carapace
A gray shell met the rabbit’s horn head-on.
* * *
Jang Soo-jin was often told she had a bad habit of sticking her nose into other people’s business.
This was no exception.
When she saw a short-haired man walking straight toward a horned rabbit completely defenseless, she couldn’t help but shout.
“Excuse me, mister!”
The moment she yelled, her party members’ eyes all turned toward Jinho.
“He doesn’t even have a shield.”
“I told you taking a horned rabbit’s charge with your bare body is dangerous.”
“Did that guy even read the strategy guide?”
Walking Bullet.
That was the nickname the advance party had given horned rabbits. Easy to deal with if you had a shield. But if you tried to face them head-on without one, their sharp horns would pierce your body in the blink of an eye.
“…So—!”
Using Jang Soo-jin’s scream as its cue, the horned rabbit leaped forward.
But—
Clang—! Instead of blood, sparks flew everywhere.
“Not bad at all.”
The short-haired man—Jinho—muttered casually.
The horned rabbit’s charge, which could dent even iron plates, had failed to break through the iron-armored armadillo’s Carapace.
The rabbit collapsed to the ground, stunned from the recoil of its own charge. Jinho ended its life with a single strike.
“H-how…?!”
Jang Soo-jin glanced back and forth between her party member’s shield and Jinho. The iron shield was covered in deep gouges from the rabbit’s horn. In contrast, Jinho’s gray-covered arm didn’t have a single scratch.
“Is that arm harder than an iron shield?”
She muttered in a dazed voice. But the real shock was still coming.
Jinho canceled his Carapace and strolled leisurely into the middle of a pack of horned rabbits.
“Kyuuupiiit!”
“Kyuuupit!”
More than twenty rabbits kicked off the ground at once. Jinho used his carapace skill in targeted spots to block every charge.
Almost simultaneously, sprays of blood erupted in every direction—from the bodies of the rabbits that had attacked him.
“That’s insane.”
The player beside Jang Soo-jin muttered weakly.
“Soo-jin.”
“Yeah?”
“If you really wanted to, you could copy that, right?”
Among their group, Jang Soo-jin’s skills were by far the best.
“Don’t say stupid things. I’d only try that if I was planning to get myself killed.”
She was genuinely angry. React instantly to a horned rabbit’s movements and counterattack? That was impossible.
It took less than a minute for the entire pack of over twenty rabbits to be wiped out.
“Tsk. Still not enough.”
Jinho clicked his tongue and headed deeper into the plains.
The group of players stared after him in stunned silence.
“He just left the corpses behind?”
“Let’s at least harvest the horns.”
“Yeah. Those horns are expensive crafting materials for weapons.”
A few quick-witted players approached the abandoned rabbit corpses.
But—
“The horns turned to powder?”
“There’s barely any flesh left on the bodies.”
“What the hell happened here?!”
All they found were the dried-up, shriveled remains of the horned rabbits—nothing but skin and bones, the aftermath of Devour.