The Monster with Three Legs (1)

"—Sejun, do you think this company is a joke? You must think life is just a cakewalk, huh? Tsk, this is exactly why I told them not to hire high school grads……"

"—Haaah. How long am I going to have to keep explaining something this simple to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you?"

"—You're using your vacation days again? Unbelievable, the nerve of you. Keep your phone on while you're off. We might need you to rush in to work."

My name is Lee Sejun.

Twenty-four years old.

After drifting through life as a jobless bum, I'd barely scraped my way into a bottom-tier piece-of-crap company, where getting chewed out every single day was just part of the routine.

But that was fine.

Because whatever else was true, I had my vacation days now, and right now—

"Kahaha…!"

Thud!

Yes. THIS. This is the stuff.

That blissful feeling of chugging down a mug brimming with beer in one go and slamming it back on the table.

Pair that with a nice, juicy sausage—one crisp bite—and honestly, what more could heaven offer?

Granted, there were no rowdy drinking buddies beside me to shoot the breeze with, and no legendary stew that had presumably been simmering since the dawn of time… but hey, look where I was.

This much was more than enough to wash away the exhaustion the company had piled on me.

"Check, please~!"

"My, my. You drank all that by yourself?"

"Yeah? Haha, well, look at the size of me. And if I come out to drink alone, you've got to sell me enough to make it worth your while. Oh—by the way, ma'am, don't I remind you of something?"

Thump, thump.

I rapped my knuckles against the broad pecs carved by years of working out, then gazed at the lady behind the counter with eyes full of hopeful expectation.

"Hmm…? Let's see. You're a strapping one—you do look like you'd sing a fine trot song…"

"No, no, not that. Something that starts with a B."

"B?"

"Yep. Bar— bar… B…"

"Ohh! Ba—Barbarian!"

"Bar—what?! That's a gorilla, dear…!"

Failure.

Yeah, I guess expecting a total stranger in South Korea to say the word Barbarian was always asking too much.

But really, that's been my lifelong dream.

Sweat dripping down my face after splitting a horde of goblin skulls wide open. Kicking the tavern door open with a bang, my body painted in blood, swapping hearty laughs and clinking mugs of beer with a crowd of rowdy men-at-arms.

Ahh, now that… that's romance.

I'd always idolized the barbarian, that icon of fantasy.

Boisterous, unstoppable, absolutely exhilarating! If anyone embodied the true alpha male, surely it was the barbarian.

More than anything, what appealed to me most was that a barbarian seemed like the kind of man who could live without all the tangled, complicated thoughts that weighed me down.

Maybe that's why?

For any godawful trash game out there, if the word Barbarian appeared in the class list, I'd play it, drooling all over my keyboard.

"Hmm, hmm, hmmm."

And of all those games, the one I'd loved most was Labyrinth of Darkness.

A simple but captivating story. A middle-age-fantasy atmosphere dripping with romance. Plus hidden depths of lore to sink your teeth into!

Of course, the core experience was a hardcore roguelike trash game where one death meant the end, so I'd had to send my precious characters off to the grave more times than I could count.

The one where I finally saw the ending a few years back—was that Sejun1827? Or Sejun1828?

Anyway. Tonight, at 11 PM.

The sequel, Labyrinth of Darkness 2, was going live.

Which was exactly why I'd groveled through that hellhole of a workplace and wangled myself some time off. All for today.

"Let's gooooooo…!"

Shower done, I planted myself right in front of my monitor.

I wasn't wearing any clothes.

Taking a page from the barbarian's philosophy, I wanted to stay as close to nature as possible, even if only a little.

Current time: 10:59:56 PM.

I sat gazing fondly at my barbarian avatar—sculpted to perfection in advance through the character creation preview—waiting for the clock to tick down.

And so.

The time crept forward, second by tiny second—

Pop!

"……Whoa."

I had been sucked into the world of Labyrinth of Darkness 2—as the barbarian himself.

"You've got to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be kidding me. What even is this……"

One look told me this body was the creation of a man who'd spent nearly a week fiddling with his mouse.

Shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway. Little battle scars etched across the chest. Thick forearms that looked like they'd crush a goblin's skull with the slightest flick.

And yet…

"Why am I butt naked?"

I glanced down at myself. Plenty big, as befit a barbarian. Though the chilly wind whipping through made me fear for the welfare of my balls.

I looked around—no bag anywhere.

No weapon, either, obviously.

Was this just how the sequel started?

Or—no way—was it because I'd been sitting at my computer naked?

"That's such a crock, seriously."

And yet, somehow…

"……Heh. Heheheheh."

I couldn't stop the laughter bubbling out of me, even in this situation.

No, honestly? I felt like jumping around and screaming with joy.

"LET'S GOOO…!!!"

The company? I had zero attachment to it anyway.

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

Family? Never had one to begin with.

The only real pleasure in my life had been exercising and building up my body—and hey, I could do that here too, couldn't I?

If anything, it felt like I'd been handed a second life.

In the body of the barbarian I'd idolized all these years, no less!

Well, okay—I did have one small complaint about getting isekai'd into Labyrinth of Darkness 2 of all places.

'I'd rather not die the second the game begins……'

Barbarian baseline stats were top-tier across the board except Intelligence, sure—but that didn't mean I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could survive this place stark naked.

This was the place where even max-level veteran adventurers, one step from the ending, got game-over'd by a single cheap-shot unlucky break.

And that was all thanks to the Trait System unique to Labyrinth of Darkness.

A perfectly reliable party member might have the Depression trait trigger and hang themselves. A priest might have the Loss of Faith trait activate and temporarily lose every single ability they had.

Of course, it wasn't all negative—there were plenty of good traits to match, and in some cases, cheat-tier traits that made the whole playthrough several times easier just by acquiring them.

At least, that's how it worked in the first game. No telling if the sequel kept it.

"Floor 1 does look the same as before, at least……"

Labyrinth of Darkness 2 was supposed to take place a full 1,000 years after the first game's ending.

The core systems stayed largely unchanged, but the story was promised to feature some colossal cataclysm.

Not that any of that mattered until I survived the tutorial.

"Brutality is nice, Hardiness isn't bad… and isn't starting out with Wrath Is My Strength a bit too OP…?"

So I decided to check my status window first.

If the system hadn't changed from the first game, every starting character came saddled with one irremovable positive trait and one irremovable negative trait.

And those two traits defined the character's background and personality.

Barbarians typically got one combat-related positive trait and one social-related negative trait, so—

Hm.

What the hell is this.

"……"

Both of them were traits I'd never seen before.

Wait. Had I not transmigrated into Labyrinth of Darkness 2, but into some third-rate porn game instead?

Well, I had heard the rumors—that the sequel would be cramming in a mountain of adult content in the name of a "more realistic system."

But this isn't a barbarian. This is just a sex machine.

No, okay, it… fits, technically……!

"I'm losing my mind."

Maybe it was because I had to check this while completely naked, but my face was burning.

Don't tell me this is a trait that makes me pop a boner in front of my whole party and howl, 'Uuuugh, I want to have seeeeex…'

Suddenly I wanted to die.

"Haaah……"

That, I absolutely could not let happen. And to avoid that horrifying scenario, I needed to get out of this place first.

Because the Labyrinth's Darkness gnawed away at a person's sanity with every passing hour, maximizing the odds of a negative trait triggering.

Plus, it was getting cold.

I was at the point where I genuinely wanted to steal the ragged loincloth off a goblin and wrap it around my waist.

But.

"……?"

Ten-plus minutes of walking, and I hadn't found so much as a rat—let alone a goblin.

The only thing I could dig up was a bloodstain that looked like it had dried hours ago.

Reasonable deduction, given the evidence: some party had already finished hunting this area and moved on.

And the next thought that came to me was—

'……Am I playing the character who got backstabbed and abandoned?'

The first game's tutorial worked exactly like that.

It dumped a penniless character, robbed of everything, into the middle of the Labyrinth's first floor, and had you learn the controls while barely puppeteering a blood-soaked body.

And the tutorial ended with the protagonist hunting down the party members who betrayed them, butchering them one by one.

That signature atmosphere—monsters, humans, nothing in this world worth trusting—came through loud and clear, and honestly, the way it sucked you right in was part of why I'd loved it so much…

'Rehashing the same tutorial in the sequel is a bit lazy, though.'

Just as I was thinking that—

"……!"

I sensed someone up ahead.

The Lee Sejun of Earth, age twenty-four, might have missed it—but this barbarian body knew, for absolute certain.

Female. And judging by the ragged panting, she was sprinting this way in a panic, running from something.

"Haah—haah……!"

"……"

I got into position as calmly as I could manage.

I intended to talk first, and if she was being chased by monsters, I was even willing to fight alongside her.

But if things went south, I'd kill her on the spot.

Woman or not.

…Then it hit me how naturally that thought had come to me. Was this the barbarian body's influence too?

And in those few seconds of reflection, the sound of footsteps was suddenly right on top of me.

A woman with black hair.

"Hah—haa…… Huh?"

Golden eyes. A black veil draped over her hair. A cross hanging at her throat.

At a glance, the textbook look of a nun or priestess character.

If only her clothes weren't a little—no, a LOT—suspicious.

"Ah…… U-um…?"

"……"

The moment she spotted me, her eyes flinched wide.

But seriously, what was with this outfit? Something straight out of a porn flick. Slit in every possible place—it was basically a bikini.

It wasn't the kind of damage some monster's claws would leave, either.

No—she just plain walked around wearing something that looked like that by design, because she liked it.

Granted, that's rich coming from a guy currently dangling his junk in the open air.

"……"

"……"

I should probably say something.

This was, presumably, the tutorial event, after all.

The outfit was, well… the company must've been really desperate for cash, I figured.

Anyway, I was going to say, 'Are you okay? What's wrong?'

Deep down, I knew perfectly well that phrasing didn't suit a barbarian—but my brain was still a modern man's, after all.

However.

"Hey, wench. What's the matter?"

"Excuse me…?!"

Something completely different came spilling out of my mouth.

Along with a message like this:

What the hell is this.

Flustered, I tried to clarify—those weren't my intended words at all.

But my trait didn't seem inclined to permit that, either.

'I'm so sorry…! The words just came out on their own…! I only meant to ask what was wrong…!'

"Mmnh. The scent of a fresh wench's sweat after so long—it stirs the blood. Is someone hunting you, girl?"

"Wh-what……?"

No. What the fuck.

My barbarian is turning into a walking sex offender!

But here's what hurt the most.

"KYAAAAH…! It's a MAN……!!!"

The nun heard my words, let out some unidentifiable shriek, and bolted.

You could've at least screamed monster instead.

What even is "Kyaaah, it's a man" supposed to mean?!

Seriously, what is WRONG with this place?