Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Patter!

Drops of blood poured down from the ceiling.

A terrible smell of blood wafted through the air.

My whole body was soaked in blood.

Even so, I didn’t feel disgusted.

Because while working at the hospital, getting covered in blood or filth had been something that happened all the time.

This much was familiar.

However.

‘Damn it.’

Why does this kind of bullshit only happen to me?

I chose to participate in the beta test, and not only had I entered the game, but I’d also been dropped into a cave crawling with monsters.

It was a situation where it would have been understandable for an ordinary person to panic.

For some reason, though I was bewildered, my reason was perfectly intact.

It wasn’t that my thoughts had stopped because it was absurd. I truly felt nothing.

As if I had skipped all the way past stages one through four of the five stages of accepting death and gone straight to acceptance.

That fact only made my blood boil even more.

Because even this felt like I’d been swept up in the tricks of the bastard who had created this damn situation.

Phew. Let’s not think too deeply.

Right now, there were more than one or two things I needed to care about.

[Remaining Blink Uses (2/3)]

[Recharge Time: 8 hours]

‘I really got thrown into the game with nothing but Blink.’

This is driving me crazy.

I don’t know whose idea this was, but one thing is certain. Their head is screwed on wrong.

No. Is this fortunate, at least?

[Again Origin] boasted a deranged level of difficulty.

Even if you started with an incredibly powerful job and weapon, most people still died anyway.

How could I be so sure?

Because even if you searched the global server right now, I was the only player who had cleared Extreme Mode.

What I had brought into the game was Infinite Blink.

Considering the endless potential of Blink,

‘I can work with this.’

Of course, that was only something I could say if I survived here first.

And I had already used the hidden card I had been saving.

[Special Ability: Instant Kill]

-Destroys any living creature or object that exists at Blink’s destination.

-Cooldown: 30 days

It was Blink’s special ability.

To be more precise, it was a bug.

In the game, whenever Blink was used and an object or monster overlapped with the arrival point, a so-called “clip-through” judgment would sometimes occur.

It seemed the game company had implemented that in the form of Instant Kill.

Still, I wasn’t disappointed.

If I had done nothing and just stood there, I would have died.

Even if it was a waste, surviving came first.

I had no intention of dying a sudden, screaming death before even trying anything.

That was when it happened.

“Huuuh… sob, sob.”

I heard a woman sobbing behind me.

She was the woman who had been screaming her head off at me to run away until just moments ago.

“It’s all over… We’re all going to die now.”

The woman said it while trembling like aspen leaves.

I agreed with the part about things being over, but I wasn’t sure about the latter part.

Why was she making such a fuss trying to bury a perfectly living person alongside her?

“No, we can return alive.”

At my words, the woman snapped her head around.

Her eyes were venomous.

“Then the person saying that is a porter in the same situation as me, aren’t you?”

That was news to me.

It made sense that it would be.

From the moment I fell into this insane place and opened my eyes, this body had not been my own. The only thing I had customized was the Infinite Blink ability.

In other words, it meant I had possessed a randomly generated character.

So I did not answer the woman’s question rashly.

I wanted to watch the situation first.

When I remained silent, the woman added with a dispirited face.

“I remember seeing you at the briefing before the exploration. Of course, we didn’t talk to each other, but you were a porter from Group 4.”

In short, the background of this customized body was that I was a porter, same as her.

‘Tch. Of all things….’

Separate from my dissatisfaction, I had no choice but to accept it obediently.

The background of a customized character set by the game could not be changed.

“That monster from earlier was the type that self-destructs, so we were lucky. If it wasn’t, we’d all be dead.”

What kind of bullshit is this?

A question mark floated through my head for a moment.

Soon, I understood.

Well, from her perspective, rather than a porter having killed a monster, it was much more plausible that the monster had simply been that sort of creature in the first place.

The woman wailed like the heroine of a story who had suffered every hardship in the world.

Then she suddenly clapped her hands together and looked at me with a bright smile.

What is this?

Was she crazy?

“Ah! Right! Why didn’t I think of that? What happened to the people from your original group? If they’re nearby, maybe we can ask for help….”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes?”

“When I came to my senses, I was alone.”

It was not a lie meant to deceive her, but the truth.

Ever since I possessed this body inside the game, I had been alone from the moment I opened my eyes.

The woman’s face darkened rapidly after hearing my words.

Even among gamers, porters were not considered useful combat power.

Their role was to gather the byproducts left behind after the main force killed monsters, or to take charge of the party’s odd jobs.

Even if their numbers increased, porters without combat ability were simply baggage.

If they encountered a monster, they would be annihilated—something like that was probably the conclusion the woman had reached.

However.

No matter what conclusion the woman had reached, at the very least, I had no intention of dying.

I would use every means available and make it back alive.

This was the first step toward that.

“Get up. If you’re going to die like a pathetic mess without doing anything, then bet that life of yours on me.”

“Yes? What meaning would there be in porters like us struggling to survive…?”

What was she asking something so obvious for?

Of course it would help.

Even if my party consisted of nothing but porters, I was the master player who had conquered every difficulty for the first time on the global server and even received recognition from the operations team.

This was a declaration I could make confidently because I understood and had mastered [Again Origin].

“I’m going to return alive, no matter what it takes.”

***

First, we had to check our weapons for escape.

“Um…. The items I have are five throwing daggers and a wand. And emergency rations for about two days.”

Oh, this is better than expected.

I inwardly shouted with delight at the woman’s preparedness.

I hadn’t expected much, but something useful had come out.

A wand was an artifact capable of activating magic stocked in advance.

It had the advantage that even someone who was not a mage could use magic easily.

If they knew the theory, even a three-year-old baby could use magic.

“But the magic assigned to porters is practically for self-defense, so I’m not sure whether it can take down a monster.”

“I will decide whether it is useful or not.”

Enough with the mood-killing comments.

When I checked, the woman’s wand had the 1st-grade magic “Lightning” stocked in it.

I had one wand containing “Static Electricity” and another containing “Amplification.”

“My Lightning wand has weak output, so unless I use it extremely close to a monster, it probably won’t have much effect.”

That’s even better.

It’s exactly the same as the game settings.

I had been worried inwardly about what I would do if actual practice differed from the game knowledge I knew, but thanks to this, that worry was resolved.

After giving her several strategies for emergencies, I decided to move in earnest.

“Then let’s set out.”

I declared with confidence, and only a few minutes later,

“Huff, huff….”

Reality differed from my ideals.

Dust entered with every breath I inhaled, and dizziness came with every breath I exhaled.

“Um… We haven’t even walked a few steps. Are you all right?”

Maybe I had made it too obvious that I was catching my breath, because the woman following behind me asked.

Since a porter, whose life depended on stamina, was panting before taking even a few steps, it was understandable that she would be dumbfounded.

But I was dumbfounded too.

Because I could see the reason I had become a physical wreck overnight.

[Sung Ha-jin]

[Health [F], Strength [D], Endurance [F], Stamina [F], Luck [D], Wisdom [B]……….]

-You are afflicted with the Lich King’s Terminal Curse!

-Time Remaining: 108 days (Death approaches unless the curse is lifted.)

There had once been a meme that heated up the community.

Distributing 350 points among height, weight, and intelligence.

Some people distributed the three evenly so they were around average, while others dumped everything into just one.

Likewise, in [Again Origin], a character’s background, appearance, and stats were distributed within a fixed total amount of points.

No matter how broken the Blink I chose might be, the only thing that was even remotely intact was Wisdom. Everything else was busted.

‘This crosses the line.’

What the hell are they doing, turning a perfectly sound-limbed person into a wreck?

On top of that, they even attached a terminal trait.

They stuck every bad thing they could on me.

It was beyond absurd and had reached the level of a headache.

Especially the terminal trait.

“Um… If it’s that hard for you, should I support you, or maybe carry you?”

The woman watching my expression from beside me asked.

“I’m fine.”

No matter how hard it was, I still had my pride.

Now that I had become a full-grown man, I wouldn’t say two things with one mouth.

Huff, huff…!

Or not? What was one lousy “full-grown man” worth anyway?

It wasn’t as if it fed me.

I had no shame, but should I just shut my eyes once and ask her?

I don’t think the three-second rule has passed yet.

I was about to open my mouth carefully when the woman’s ears pricked up.

“W… Wait a moment. I think something is approaching.”

“Approaching?”

“Yes, from over there… at incredible speed! It’ll be here soon….”

Before the woman’s flustered voice could even finish,

the situation unfolded.

Splash, hissss!

Green liquid splattered at our feet.

The foul-smelling liquid gave off tremendous steam, and the ground began to melt.

It had landed only one step ahead.

If I had ignored the woman’s warning and stepped forward, my body would have been melting.

Just imagining it sent a chill down my spine.

However, this was not the time to calmly list my impressions.

“Prepare for battle!”

A shout burst out of me unconsciously.

By the time I came to my senses, my legs had lowered into a stance, and my hands were gripping the wands.

I had no idea how I, a shut-in gamer who had spent his days in his room, managed to do that.

The question soon faded.

“Be careful! It’s coming!”

Because I had no time to entertain miscellaneous doubts.

At the end of the woman’s shout, a monster with a snake’s head appeared.

“Eek…. Th… That’s a hydra! That thing is the boss monster!”

I knew that even without her explaining.

‘The Newbie Cutter.’

That was the nickname users had given it.

Despite being a boss monster that appeared in a dungeon, its specs matched a fairly serious floor boss, making countless users curse it bitterly.

To the point that there was even a joke that subjugating the hydra was the tutorial.

However.

When a dungeon’s boss monster was defeated, the dungeon lost its driving force and vanished.

Because the core that supported towers and dungeons came from boss monsters.

In short, to explain it simply,

“If we deal with that thing, we can escape from here.”

“Wh… What did you just say? That’s reckless! Didn’t you hear me? That thing is the boss monster! Even a decent subjugation team has to accept losses to face it, so what are we porters supposed to do?”

“Then can we run away from it?”

“Th… That’s…. Even if that part is true, what are we porters going to do with only one self-defense weapon each?”

The woman’s doubt was reasonable.

A wand was a self-defense weapon, and it was impossible to take down the hydra called the Newbie Cutter with it—that was common sense.

But as a rotten old-timer who had dug through this game from A to Z, I knew.

The difference between combat wands and self-defense wands came from output.

In the game, a combat wand was high-output, so even at long range, the difference in destructive power by the time it reached an enemy was negligible.

A self-defense wand possessed destructive power comparable to a combat wand at the moment it activated.

However, because its output was weak, by the time it reached the enemy, it often could not even buy time.

“It’s obvious. We won’t even be able to fight and will just die in vain.”

“We have a chance of winning.”

“Yes? What did you say?”

“I said if we can get close, we have a chance of winning.”

Fortunately, getting close was my specialty.

“Blink.”

Flash!

[Using Blink.]

[Remaining Blink Uses (■□□)]

With a golden flash, my vision whipped around and changed.