The Player Who Stands Above All

Chapter 13

Kuuung-

"Ugh!"

"Keuha!"

"Hoooo!"

Watching the wounded Horned Rabbits collapse to the floor, the players expressed their joy at defeating the monsters with breaths that were like exclamations.

When the Horned Rabbit screamed and struggled at the end, they all screamed in panic, but in the end, they composed themselves and calmly continued their attack.

Thanks to that, the three of them finally succeeded in conquering the Horned Rabbit.

"Haa~ We got it~"

"Thank goodness. Honestly, if the last attack didn't work, I was going to run."

"Me too. I was going to sprinkle pepper powder and run."

"You brought pepper powder too?"

"Yeah, I learned how to make it from watching YouTube."

They were a reasonably skilled party, and although it was a game, they knew the strategy for Horned Rabbits, so their hunting was quite efficient and stable.

But conversely, because it was too safe, there were too few crises that could serve as a foundation for growth.

A player's stats didn't just go up on their own by catching many monsters like game experience points.

Quality over quantity.

It looked more at how hard they fought to catch a monster rather than how many they caught.

That's not to say their method was wrong.

It was natural to choose a safe bridge over a dangerous one, and rather, the humans who chose a dangerous bridge just because a safe one was boring were the crazy ones.

After putting the Horned Rabbit they had killed whole into their inventory, they dragged their tired bodies back the way they came to get out of the dungeon.

-Tiring

"Hmm?"

"Huh?"

"Eh?"

At that moment, they were surprised by the sudden system sound and their eyes widened.

[The dungeon has been cleared.]

"Huh? A dungeon? This dungeon we're in right now?"

"Wow, someone has already cleared a dungeon?"

"The three of us went through hell to catch one Horned Rabbit, and there are already people who have cleared a boss room?"

They chattered in surprise.

Once again, a system message appeared before them.

And that system message didn't just appear to them.

Everyone who had entered the Horned Rabbit dungeon was seeing the same message as the three of them.

[From now on, no new monsters will appear in the dungeon.]

[In 24 hours, the dungeon will collapse and disappear.]

At the unexpected message, the three of them had a heated conversation and came out of the dungeon to sell the monster they had dealt with.

"Hmm, come to think of it, I wonder how many dungeons have been cleared so far?"

One of the three muttered, voicing the question that had suddenly come to mind.

He would later find out the answer to that question by a chance opportunity.

Less than an hour after the dungeons appeared, although no one knew it, the number of cleared dungeons at that time was exactly 11 worldwide.

***

Turning back time to when Lee Shin had just caught the Black Horned Rabbit.

Puk-

The dagger gripped in Lee Shin's hand plunged into the Black Horned Rabbit's chest, piercing a hole in its heart.

Thump-

Lee Shin watched as the light disappeared from the Black Horned Rabbit's eyes, which had been faintly burning with fighting spirit, and it collapsed to the floor like a broken toy, then he collapsed right next to it.

"Heok... heok... Damn, I feel like I'm going to die."

Lee Shin gasped for breath, but he kept grumbling.

But even as he said so, a deep smile hung on his lips.

Even though he was in a state no different from a living corpse, the corners of his mouth wouldn't come down, which was absurd even to himself.

'But if I just lie here like this, it's not a joke, I might actually die.'

After laughing for a long time, Lee Shin felt the pain from his whole body gradually subsiding and suddenly felt the seriousness of the situation.

It wasn't that the pain was lessening because his wounds were healing.

It was because his body was dying in real time due to the side effects of [Madness], which had now fulfilled its role and disappeared, that the pain was becoming blurry.

[Madness] was a skill that used the heightening of emotions as a trigger to momentarily overclock the entire body.

It was only natural, but since it was a skill that sacrificed the body for a single purpose, the aftermath was solely for him to bear.

Lee Shin let out a small sigh as he felt the black, dead blood gushing from the wounds all over his body.

"Haa, this is definitely more fun, but I miss the tutorial in moments like this. In the tutorial, I wouldn't have needed to heal, I could have just died and come back to life, and that would have been the end of it."

Muttering so, Lee Shin forced his body, which felt like it would tear apart at any moment, to get up.

He heard the sound of broken gears collapsing in his chilling body.

Eudeuk-

'I can't die. The world is just starting to get interesting, who knows what fun things will happen later... I will absolutely not die. Even if I die, I'll come back to life out of sheer stubbornness.'

Vowing so inwardly, Lee Shin approached the bag he had taken off, took out the water and food inside, and stuffed them into his mouth.

"Cough! This had better work."

The reason Lee Shin suddenly took this action was because of [Recovery].

He didn't know the exact mechanism of [Recovery], but when he was recovering his stamina at the door, he had felt that [Recovery] was being carried out using some kind of energy, like calories or internal energy, as a resource.

Lee Shin forced the food down his throat, thinking he had to fill his stomach with something first.

Then, perhaps it was just his imagination, but he felt his body getting a little better.

'Aww, but this much is definitely not enough. Is the best option to just fill my stomach and then operate my cultivation method to gather internal energy? That seems like a decent option...'

[The dungeon has been cleared.]

[From now on, no new monsters will appear in the dungeon.]

[In 24 hours, the dungeon will collapse and disappear.]

"Hmm? Cough! What's this now..."

As Lee Shin was finishing off the water and food and wondering what to do next, the same system message that the people who had entered the dungeon had received appeared before him.

However, his message had one more sentence added that the people outside the boss room had not seen.

[Boss room clear rewards will be distributed.]

Woooong-

At that moment, the bodies of the Horned Rabbit and the Black Horned Rabbit, which had been lying limply on the floor like dolls with their stuffing removed, turned into particles of white light and gathered in one place.

Watching that, Lee Shin let out a small exclamation of 'Ah!'.

He had been so engrossed in the fight that he had forgotten another function of the boss room that the system had told him about.

The moment a player succeeds in hunting a boss monster, the boss room uses the carcasses of the defeated monsters to create an item necessary for the player.

Lee Shin watched the process of the item being created while stuffing the last of his food into his mouth.

The particles of light that had gathered in one place turned into a single sphere, then, as if contemplating what he would need, it floated in the air for a moment before changing its shape.

The mass of light, which had hardened into a round, bead-like shape, gradually dimmed its light and flew toward where he was.

"What is this?"

A pill? A bolus?

Lee Shin squinted his eyes, which were too bright due to the faint light still remaining, and stared at the item.

Then, the system told him the information about the item.

[Black and White Pill]

-Normal

-A pill made by refining the essence of a rabbit's liver and mixing the magic stone within it. One can obtain a considerable amount of internal energy, and the rabbit liver, which is good for the body, makes it excellent for wound recovery.

"......"

Gulp-

The moment he confirmed the item's description, Lee Shin stuffed it into his mouth without any hesitation and forced it down his throat.

Then, he focused his mind and entered the inner world of his mind.

"What a sight."

The state of his body he confirmed was much more serious than he had vaguely imagined.

His body was tattered to the point where a rag would look like a fairy, most of his blood vessels were twisted and contorted, and a few severe ones had burst.

"No matter how I look at it, I'll be in the hospital for at least three months."

Lee Shin let out a small sigh and, feeling the energy of the elixir beginning to boil within his body, began to operate the Flame Lightning Tree God Art.

As he operated the Flame Lightning Tree God Art according to the incantation, he felt the internal energy rising within him.

Woooong-

Instead of guiding the newly created internal energy to his dantian, Lee Shin spread it throughout his entire body.

What was important to him now was not accumulating internal energy in his dantian, but recovering his broken body.

And as he had expected, [Recovery] began to busily reinforce his body, using nutrients and internal energy as resources.

In that time, Lee Shin slowly immersed himself in his cultivation method and fell into a state of selflessness.

His body began to slowly absorb not only the internal energy from the Black and White Pill, but also the magical power within the boss room.

Perhaps due to the influence of the item being created, the energy in the air was richer than in the dungeon.

And as Lee Shin began to slowly emerge from the swamp of death, the system detected it and raised his stats.

The dangerous battle, where he had crossed the brink of death once, had added many stats to him.

But the true beginning of the fortuitous encounter was from there.

By going through a life-threatening crisis and expelling the waste products from his body once, his body had become one layer purer.

It was not what he had intended, but as [Recovery] healed his body using the internal energy refined by the Flame Lightning Tree God Art as a resource, his body slowly began to change into a physique suitable for his internal energy.

The moment he emerged from this state of selflessness, he would be able to feel that his body had changed into one more suitable for operating internal energy.

And in the boss room, where no one could enter, Lee Shin prepared for his emergence, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis.

***

In the park outside the dungeon, a man sitting on a bench looked at his smartphone and roughly surveyed the events happening in the world right now.

"Dungeons and players, I understand that you are confused as the world has suddenly changed. To resolve that confusion, our government has entered an emergency meeting, and I will now inform you of the results."

In the video on the small smartphone, the president began with those words and then got to the main point.

"First, as dungeons can become a major threat that can endanger the safety of the public, the government has prepared two measures to protect the public's safety."

Two fingers unfolded from the president's raised fist.

"One is to establish an institution that subjugates monsters called the 'Player Association', and the other is to allow people who played Pantheon to establish guilds."

At the president's words, camera flashes exploded like bombs.

"Second, the government has created an app that allows the public to share information about dungeons. This app will be updated in real-time through the public's reports and will maintain its accuracy by mobilizing government agents."

In a corner of the video, a few of the reporters could be seen raising their smartphones at the president's words.

Murmur, murmur-

At that moment, the man sitting on the bench heard three people talking from the direction of the dungeon, tilted his ear toward them, and briefly scratched his cheek.

"A dungeon was cleared in a situation where even a Hundred-ranker couldn't get used to the monsters..."

The man in the suit, Kim Jae-hyun, muttered as if in disbelief, then let out a chuckle.

"It's really just as the young miss said."

(End of Chapter)