I Became an Academy Veteran in the Novel
We made our way up to the second floor.
The second floor housed a restaurant where breakfast was served.
“Welcome.”
A staff member politely ushered us inside. It was a buffet-style dining hall.
Laid out as if they were food were human limbs severed at the joint, entrails, eyeballs, living insects, and filth of every description.
Fucking hell.
We had known there was a restaurant on the second floor before coming up, so we'd already predicted this kind of scene would be waiting for us.
The clock on the wall read one in the afternoon.
2) Breakfast is served from 7:00 AM to 8:30 AM. If the restaurant is operating outside of these hours, absolutely do not use it.
“Mmm. Looks delicious.”
Glasses said it with a face that looked one second away from throwing up.
The staff member guided us to our seats.
“Please enjoy your meal.”
Seo Yujin exchanged glances with the others, then spoke to the employee.
“Put together a well-balanced plate and bring it over for us.”
The employee bowed at the waist.
“...I'm very sorry, sir, but our food is buffet-style, according to our guests' preferences...”
She burst into an awkward, hollow laugh.
“Oh, come on. Well... are you busy?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked if you're busy.”
“...”
“We're the only customers you have. Surely you can manage it.”
A troubled look crossed the employee's face.
“I apologize, but our hotel breakfast operates as a buffet, so...”
“Fucking hell, seriously.”
Seo Yujin threw her knife.
It buried itself in the employee's stomach.
“Guh—!”
“Get the manager out here. Now.”
She shot up from her seat.
“I-I'm terribly sorry, but...”
“Do you have any idea how many times I've stayed at this hotel? First time I've ever been treated like this. Honestly.”
“I apologize, but if you insist—”
“On your knees.”
“Sir—”
“If you're sorry, then get down on your knees and apologize like you mean it!”
Seo Yujin raged like a storm. It was all an act, of course.
Wow, she's good at this.
The employee's eyes rolled back as if seized by a convulsion, and its tongue stretched out long past its chin, dangling down its throat.
“Kkeeeeeeegh!”
Seo Yujin didn't miss a beat — she slapped the thing full across the face.
Whap!
“What exactly did you do right, huh, you piece of shit, that you're sticking your tongue out?”
The struck employee's head twisted around a full three hundred and sixty degrees with an unnatural, boneless ease. The tongue swayed like a reed.
“Kkeeeegh...”
The employee rolled its eyes and shuffled about awkwardly.
Seo Yujin, hand resting on her hip, snapped briskly,
“Now go fill up six plates and bring them back here.”
The employee's tongue was sucked back into its mouth like the cord of a vacuum cleaner, and it spoke again.
“Th-thaaat is... s-sir. I-I'm terribly sorry, but there are only five of you...”
“You idiot. You're supposed to grab dessert and fruit too!”
Seo Yujin kicked the employee in the stomach.
The thing flew across the room and crashed into a serving tray heaped with centipedes.
Crash.
She raised her bow and took aim at the employee sprawled under the swarm of centipedes.
Fire Shot
A crimson mana arrow formed, burning hot, and streaked toward the employee.
Shwuuuk—
The arrow struck it squarely between the eyes of the thing with the twisted neck.
“...I-I-I-I-I-I-I'm s-s-s-s-sorry.”
The employee's head dropped.
Fwooom!
Amid the flames, it slowly crumbled into ash and vanished. Astonishingly, the fire didn't spread at all — the moment the corpse was gone, the flames died with it. And in the same instant, every one of the horrific dishes on the buffet dissolved into smoke with a long, whispering hiss.
Clap clap clap clap clap—
We said nothing — we simply applauded her magnificent display of sheer audacity.
Dessert fruit — I never even thought of that.
What would have happened if she'd panicked and tried to simply walk out of the restaurant? Going by the usual urban legend formula, wouldn't we have ended up as part of the buffet ourselves? Who knew. I didn't want to find out, either.
Yoon Seokhyeon clapped and gave me a knowing nod.
She saw through the solution to an urban legend no one has ever solved, in a single stroke. My, my. At this rate I might actually have to acknowledge him as a true S-rank.
We climbed to the third floor.
From the third floor up, it was all guest rooms.
We kept our formation tight and moved quietly down the corridor. No demons in sight.
Nothing of note appeared on the third floor, so we tried to head up to the fourth — but the stairwell's emergency exit wouldn't open. Not with Glasses's magic, not even when I tried to smash it with my fist. The door didn't so much as crack.
The windows won't break either, and the elevator's dead...
Yoon Seokhyeon spoke up.
“Looks like we're meant to use the rooms.”
The rest of us nodded in agreement.
But when we tried to open the guest room doors, none of them would budge.
We walked the corridor, turning each doorknob one by one. Yoon Seokhyeon and Chubby covered front and back while the rest of us checked whether any door would open.
I tried another handle.
Seo Yujin came up beside me and asked,
“Locked?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey. Let me ask you something.”
“What.”
“You. Did you tag along just for the money?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
Seo Yujin folded her arms and eyed me warily.
“No, I mean — why else would you come somewhere this dangerous? You could die. It's weird that you followed us.”
“They're offering 1.7 billion won. Obviously I'm coming.”
“You could die, and you came for a bit of pocket change?”
“Maybe it's pocket change to you people. Not to me.”
Seo Yujin studied my face for a moment, then said,
“You — you were trapped in a dungeon with Instructor Choi Jiyoon and Yoo Seolha, weren't you.”
“I thought you had one question.”
“That dungeon. Did you really clear it with Holy Explosion?”
“That's what happened, isn't it?”
“...”
Seo Yujin said nothing.
Wait. It was true?
The glass bead on the bracelet around her wrist glowed blue.
Oh.
Right. I'd forgotten about that thing.
Seo Yujin had once scored a rare item drop in some dungeon — a trinket known as the Bracelet of Truth. It revealed whether the words of the person in front of you were true or false. It had a limited number of uses per day and burned through a lot of mana, but it was undeniably useful.
In the novel, Seo Yujin never told a soul about the bracelet — not anyone except the protagonist, Kim Seonghyeok.
“...There's a rumor going around that you're dating Yoo Seolha. Is it true?”
I shrugged.
“Who knows?”
Seo Yujin fixed me with a suspicious look.
“You started that rumor, didn't you?”
No matter how traumatized you get co-trapped in a dungeon, there's no way Seolha would fall for a guy like this. Impossible.
“Yeah. I started it.”
At my words, the glass bead on her bracelet glowed red.
He's lying. So he and Seolha really are something to each other? Feels like he's trying to protect her somehow.
“Could you stop digging into my private life?”
She frowned.
“What's that supposed to mean? I'm just trying to figure out what kind of guy you are before you stab us in the back later. They say F-ranks backstabbing their party members in dungeons is just everyday life.”
“You know, most people don't say that kind of thing to your face. Did your parents skip the manners lessons because your personality was already a lost cause?”
“Oh, screw off. Not that I care one bit about your private life anyway, so don't flatter yourself. God, unbelievable!”
And with that, Seo Yujin snorted and stomped ahead of us.
Up front, Yoon Seokhyeon was gesturing at us urgently from around a corner. Our whole party, myself included, quickly converged on him.
“Look over there.”
he whispered.
At the far end of the bending corridor, a middle-aged man was wheeling a cleaning cart out of one of the hotel rooms.
Seo Yujin said,
“Looks human?”
Even through my status window, it read as human.
We exchanged looks and advanced down the corridor.
Yoon Seokhyeon called out to the cleaner.
“Hey there!”
The man looked up, saw us, and his eyes went wide with shock. His body had frozen solid; he couldn't move from the spot.
We approached him. I asked the dazed cleaner,
“Are you alright?”
“A-are you... hunters, by any chance?”
Beside me, Glasses quickly cut in.
“Mister. How are you still alive?”
Damn. That mouth of yours is so damn charming.
The man gave Glasses a warm, gentle smile.
“You talk just like my son.”
Glasses narrowed his eyes.
The cleaner went on.
“I just kept cleaning. When those ghost-like things tried to talk to me, I was too scared to listen, so I pretended I couldn't hear and just worked. That's the only reason I'm still alive, I think.”
“Hold on a second.”
Chubby, beside him, took his hand. The cleaner's entire hand had turned pitch black.
“What happened to you?”
“Ugh. On the first day, some squid-looking monster showed up and tore the whole hotel apart. Couldn't get out of the building, either. While I was running, I got stabbed by something like a stinger on the end of that monster's leg, and after that it's been like this...”
He undid a button on his cleaning uniform and briefly showed us inside. From his arm all the way down to his solar plexus, the skin had turned completely black.
“This... could you hunters possibly cure it?”
the cleaner asked hesitantly.
Every eye turned to Chubby, the only healer among us.
She let his hand drop limply and said,
“This is... Demon Poison.”
“What... is Demon Poison?”
the cleaner asked.
The corridor was silent.
Yoon Seokhyeon nodded.
“I see...”
He turned around.
And then, without warning, drove his spear straight into the cleaner's heart.
The man was slammed back against the wall, his heart impaled.
“Ugh.”
He died instantly.
Yoon Seokhyeon shouted my name.
“Kim Ian!”
In the same instant, from the wound the spear had torn open, came a wet, squirming hiss — and long, tentacle-like things burst out with a pop.
They shot toward the five of us in the blink of an eye.
I dodged the tentacles and snapped my fingers.
Golden light erupted and engulfed the tentacles bursting from the man's chest.
And then—
Thud, thud.
The thick tentacles dropped to the floor one after another.
Ssssssss—
They soon burned away into ash and were gone.
“Hah— hah—. Wow. Fuck. We barely dodged that. Hey. Give us a signal before you pull something like that.”
Glasses spat out a curse.
Yoon Seokhyeon said,
“If you're S-rank, you should be able to dodge that much.”
“Holy Explosion is so convenient.”
Chubby remarked, looking at me.
Yoon Seokhyeon asked Seo Yujin,
“You alright too, Yujin?”
She patted her chest and answered.
“Yeah. Scared the hell out of me, though.”
Yoon Seokhyeon clapped me on the shoulder.
“If it weren't for you, things would've gotten ugly.”
Without holy magic, they would have had to fight those tentacles for their lives.
“Exactly.”
Chubby gave me a brief thumbs-up.
Glasses pushed up his glasses and said,
“What did I tell you? I said this guy would be useful.”
I stood there quietly, looking at the cleaner impaled on the spear.
Yoon Seokhyeon had been ruthless — but it was the rational call. It had been an instant, painless death. Left alone, the man would have died in agony, watching a demon claw its way out of his own chest.
I searched the cleaner's pockets. A keycard came out.
“Master key. We should be able to open the guest rooms with this.”
Glasses grinned beside me.
“Wow. Classic. Straight to farming, huh? Must be that F-rank background.”
I ignored him and peeled the name tag off the dead cleaner's uniform, then handed it to Yoon Seokhyeon.
“Maybe. Just maybe — you could look after this for him.”
Yoon Seokhyeon stared silently at the name tag in his hand.
We opened a room with the master key, laid his body on the bed, and covered him with the blanket.
We walked the long corridor to the opposite end of the building.
“Better if we all stay together tonight, no?”
Yoon Seokhyeon said.
“...How about we split by gender, though? For the washing and everything.”
Seo Yujin said with an awkward look.
“Oh? Sure. Let's do that.”
Yoon Seokhyeon nodded.
So it's an automatic yes to anything Seo Yujin says, huh.
I jerked my chin toward a room on the other side.
“That one's got two beds. I'll take it and stay alone.”
“Hey. You should stick with us. It's dangerous.”
Glasses tried to dissuade me.
I showed them the Guide for Guests of the Novelpian Hotel.
3) Room service will not be provided for the time being. If room service you did not order arrives, absolutely do not open the door.
“As long as I'm careful about this one, I'll be fine. You think some F-rank scrub deserves to room with S-ranks anyway?”
“Hey. Quit taking that joke seriously. Fine. Do whatever you want.”
Glasses let out a sigh.
And so Seo Yujin and Chubby, Yoon Seokhyeon and Glasses, and I each filed into our own rooms.
I watched quietly as Seo Yujin entered hers. There was a small hole in her sleeve that hadn't been there before.
What do I do? What do I do? It got me back there. What am I supposed to do?
Our eyes met just as she was closing the door.
Click.
The door shut. The corridor fell silent.
I unlocked the door with the master key and stepped inside.