The Player Who Stands Above All

Chapter 32

"Hoo~ I bought a lot, so I won't be short on clothes for a while. As for laundry... well, it'll pile up like a mountain, but it's probably more convenient to do a lot at once. If it's really annoying, I can just throw them away."

After spending a satisfying time wandering around, Lee Shin, who had returned home, thought for a moment, then threw the newly bought clothes, still in their bags, into the clothes room and lay down on the sofa.

Poof-

The moment he threw himself onto the sofa, a very familiar softness enveloped his body like a cloud.

"Ugh... expensive things are the best. This is why I spend money..."

He rested, muttering in an endlessly languid voice while entrusting his body to the sofa.

After enjoying a brief moment of paradise-like rest, he got up and opened the large carrier he had bought along with the clothes.

"Hmm, it's certainly convenient to have something like this. People really need to have ideas."

This large carrier was a specially made product that could fit into a player's inventory, and he had heard that it was a product that many players loved.

Until now, he hadn't been able to use it because weapons were gushing out of his inventory, but now that his inventory was empty, he could use it too.

"Hmm, for food, the chocolate-flavored calorie bars were the most delicious, so I should fill it with those... Is water the problem? Well, I can just pack a moderate amount."

He packed water and food into the carrier and made his own plan.

After packing, he put the fully packed carrier into his inventory.

And the spear he usually kept in his inventory, he put into the long cloth bag he had bought on his way.

From a distance, it didn't look much different from a bag for a kendo sword.

"Ugh~ All done."

After finishing all his preparations, he checked for nearby dungeons with the app.

Perhaps due to the recent Dungeon Break, there were no dungeons nearby, but he actually liked that.

A certain amount of distance was better for a drive.

Wooooong--!!!

"Kuh~ I thought I'd ride a motorcycle someday when I got my license, but I didn't think I'd achieve it today."

He moved the motorcycle, enjoying the wind that came with the speed.

***

"Die, yap."

Lee Shin lightly dodged the attack of the red bull rushing toward him, then, just as matadors do, accurately thrust his spear into the bull's neck.

--!!!

At his strike, which accurately pierced its vocal cords and cut half its neck, the red bull couldn't even scream in pain and collapsed to the ground, falling over a short while later.

It was a victory so simple it was almost anticlimactic, but it was also a natural victory.

His actual strength was far beyond the level of LV.1 players.

[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.]

[Boss room clear rewards will be distributed.]

Lee Shin looked at the message for a moment and then muttered as if he had expected it.

"Sigh, as expected, there's no message saying my stats have gone up."

As he seemed to have said before, Pantheon's system was not so lenient as to raise stats just by catching monsters.

Even if you catch just one, if you go through all sorts of hardships to catch it, it gives you a lot of stats, but even if you catch a thousand, if you catch them while yawning without any hardship, it doesn't give you any stats.

'Thanks to that, it went up incredibly fast in the beginning. That was good.'

But the problem appeared now that his stats had risen as much as they could.

It was a fact that everyone around him, including himself, was feeling, but he was a genius who was beyond human common sense in both martial arts and in killing something else.

In other words, to put it simply, it was too easy for him to kill something with just a handful of power within him.

And this was the cause of the problem.

Because he dealt with his enemies so easily, he didn't need to use all his strength, and therefore, his stats didn't go up.

"Sigh, I wish dungeons would appear faster and their levels would just go up faster."

He muttered with a sigh.

Given his personality, if there was a strong monster, he would run there without any hesitation, but the problem was that such a monster hadn't appeared anywhere yet.

In game terms, it was a kind of blank period that occurred because his growth speed was faster than the speed at which content was added.

He was able to feel that fact when he fought all the monsters that came out of a dungeon at once during the Dungeon Break.

The moment he felt that, he felt his interest in dungeons suddenly wane.

In the first place, his goal was not to earn money or become stronger like other people.

Lee Shin simply enjoyed fighting strong opponents with his life on the line, and money and power were just things that followed after the fight.

In other words, the original him had no particular reason to want to become stronger.

No, on the contrary, from his perspective, it was a loss if he became stronger.

It was like this now, but if he became stronger, wouldn't it be harder to enjoy even if higher-grade dungeons appeared over time?

Therefore, he was thinking of just traveling and moving as his heart desired.

In fact, in the original future, he had moved in that way.

He had chosen the option of stopping his current self to maximize the stimulation of the future.

But due to Cheon Yuhwa, the future that should have been was twisted.

She had used the Dungeon Break to engrave her influence on Korea, and in that fight, she had deliberately guided it so that her fighting appearance could be filmed.

And she had told the other [Kings], especially the kings who led organizations, about such things in advance, and made them actively use the medium of video.

Thus, a video that should not have appeared originally appeared, and he saw it.

"Hmm, it's the first time I've tried training while thinking I want to get stronger."

Thus, the original future was twisted.

He, who would have originally lost his motivation, found a new goal after seeing the [Kings]' fight, and as a result, he started training for the first time in his life.

What he had done so far could be called training if you were to call it that, but honestly, to him, it felt like a mini-game, so he himself did not think of it as training.

In his opinion, training was basically about experiencing the pain of blood splattering and bones creaking.

"Now, shall we begin?"

Lee Shin took out the carrier from his inventory, opened it so he could eat food at any time, then switched his mental switch, gathering his scattered mind into one and at the same time heightening it, activating [Madness].

-[Madness] is encroaching on your body.

He smiled faintly, feeling the sensation of the gears in his body starting to spin furiously and putting a load on his body.

'As expected, [Madness] is not a skill that can only be activated in a combat situation.'

It was a skill that was automatically activated when a specific condition was met.

The moment he realized that, he thought he might be able to use [Madness] for training, so he tried it, and it was a success.

'Hmm, if I use this well, I might be able to use it for the circulation of my cultivation method. After all, the trick of having to focus on one thing is similar.'

He swung his spear in the air and upgraded [Madness], which he had been thinking of as a chicken rib.

But [Madness] was not a panacea-like skill as he was thinking now.

On the contrary, for ordinary players, even the word 'chicken rib' was too much for the skill.

Ppadeudeuk- Ppadeudeuk- Ppadeudeuk-

An ordinary player would not have been able to activate [Madness] at will, and they would not have even thought of the crazy idea of training in the extreme pain that [Madness] gave.

He began to act, feeling his muscles starting to tear little by little as he moved, and his full stomach quickly emptying.

He flicked his spear lightly, sending five energy bars from the carrier into the air, and then swung the spear to peel off the packaging of the energy bars.

Nom-

'I'm glad I bought the chocolate-flavored ones.'

And he moved his body and naturally put the five into his mouth.

The process was so natural that if you didn't look closely, you would have missed that something had entered his mouth.

Lee Shin, who had eaten the energy bars, smiled, feeling that [Recovery] was being continuously maintained.

There was nothing as pleasant as everything falling into place as he had thought.

'[Madness] breaks the body, and [Recovery] heals the body, so I can raise my stats quickly and train my skills, so it's killing two birds with one stone.'

Thinking so, he swung his spear even more strongly at the air.

'By the way, this is also fresh.'

It was the first time for him to continuously swing his spear at the empty air like this.

Basically, even when he was in the tutorial, he had created his martial art by summoning monsters and swinging his spear, because he didn't get excited if there was no opponent.

But now, in this place, there was only himself.

'Hmm, I think I can move a little differently.'

Therefore, for the first time, he could be lost in thought, looking only at his own spear.

Lee Shin looked at his spear cutting through the air and continued to move according to the method that came to his mind.

Hwareureuk-

Flames were placed on the spear gripped in his hand, creating a red circle in the air.

That red circle deflected a powerful attack that was only visible to his eyes, and the red circle that had fulfilled its role became leaves of flame and scattered in the air.

In those red leaves, he swung his spear, cut something, and then corrected his stance.

Pajijik-

The moment he took a thrusting stance, lightning was placed on his spear.

In that instant, he thrust the spear in his hand forward.

Once, twice, three times.

The spear, thrust in succession, created a huge wind hole in the imaginary enemy.

Even seeing that, he did not stop swinging his spear and slowly fell into a state of self-forgetfulness.

In that state, he gradually refined his spear art.

It was a kind of fortuitous encounter that he was experiencing for the first time.

In that state, he was slowly learning the fun of training in martial arts.

And when the energy bars that had been piled up in the trunk were all gone and the sun that had set outside the dungeon rose into the sky once more.

He came out of his state of self-forgetfulness and collapsed on the floor.

(End of Chapter)