Chapter 13

Tutorial 1st Floor (Part 6)
 
[1st attempt, Day 29. 2 O’clock]
‘Gasp!’
Wow, out of all the ways to die…I nearly died from drowning.
Everything was fine until I decided to toss myself into the healing well, I nearly became the ghost of the waters.
Wow…
I looked around myself and saw the healing well dyed in red.
Just from the look of things, this was more like a leva pool from h.e.l.l than a healing well.
I’m almost completely healed from it, so it’s fine.

Hup.

I let out a short shout and concentrated as I took out the arrows in me, one by one.
Blood gushed out of my wounds as I pulled out the arrows from my bare body.
Luckily the healing well instantly acted to heal it.
Awwww, Ho Jae you’re so good at taking out arrows!
Is anyone going to compliment me?
I felt a little proud about myself, just like when I was young and finally got the hang of using chopsticks.
Wow, I’m growing stronger. At this rate, soon I’ll become a troll.
Perhaps later you could even use my blood to create potions.
Hahahahahahhaha. f.u.c.k.
I made my way to the fountain of the healing well to drink some of the water that wasn’t contaminated by my own blood.
It kind of tasted like coconut water. Ew.
After I had thoroughly checked that my body had fully recovered, I waddled out of the healing well.
While waiting for myself to dry out from all the water and blood, I decided to sort out my thoughts.
First, the mistakes I made in the previous trap.
It was my third try.
Even on my third attempt I got injured too much.
Like, wayyy too much.
I think it was even worse from the first attempt.
I shouldn’t have taken this amount of damage, not from how far I’ve come and grown compared to when I initially attempted the crazy trap.
There was only one explanation. The time when I blocked an arrow coming straight towards me with my bare right arm.
The arrowhead must’ve hit some sort of nerve in there and my body stopped moving for an instant, causing me to become disorientated at the high speed that I was moving at.
On top of that, I even calmly thought that it would be better to tank a few more arrows rather than to dodge them. I thought it would be alright because there wasn’t that much distance left to cover.
In result, I nearly died, yet again.
Now let’s think of it again. The arrows that were fired didn’t have a consistent pattern like the previous traps.
But the frequency in which they were fired was.
Then maybe, Tutorial wasn’t trying to test how fast I could clear it, but instead to calmly dodge each arrow one at a time?
I couldn’t say for certain without any proof but I think it might just be so.
So the traps in this tutorial wasn’t simply to inflict excruciating pain while you clear them.
If you think of the concept of the traps, they were designed to help you grow and improve.
Perhaps if I stood still, or even moved slowly to calmly dodge the arrows…
I maybe could’ve learned a new skill based on dodging.
Even if I didn’t, it would’ve been good experience.
To constantly gain some sort of experience was the key element to becoming stronger.
If I just had a bit more time, I wonder how things would’ve changed if I had tried that trap four to five… no just even one more time.
It was a little saddening that I didn’t have much time left.
Honestly, there was no choice. There wasn’t enough time to backtrack to the waiting room and get back to this point.
I had already attempted this trap for the third time.
There were plenty of opportunities to gain something out of it.
It was my fault for not taking advantage of that fact.
‘Status’
[Lee Ho Jae]
Lv.6
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 21
Stamina: 16
Intelligence: 22
Skills: Battle Concentration Lv.5, Will Lv.3, Awakening Lv.1, Night vision Lv.2, Eye Lights Lv.1, Sprint Lv.1, Heightened Senses Lv.3, Beginner Swordsmanship Lv.1, Cut Lv.1, Pain Tolerance Lv.8, Haemorrhage Tolerance Lv.4, Fainting Tolerance Lv.1, Piercing Tolerance Lv.1
Miscellaneous: The G.o.d of Adventure has interest in you.
In that time, Pain Tolerance had gained a level.
I prayed that at level 10 it would evolve into a skill like Pain Immunity. Please do so.
Pain Tolerance allowed you to withstand pain, not lessen it.
Thanks to Heightened Senses, it felt like my sensation of pain was more noticeable now. This f.u.c.king..
I turned off the status bar after checking that not much had changed other than that.
I took out some jerky from my inventory and walked as I munched on its chewy goodness.
The salty taste out of the blue shocked my tongue.
A new piece of information was spread around in the Community chat. It was some weird theory that there was a boss room at the end of each floor. Many didn’t believe it but as more and more people who had cleared the first floor confirmed its existence, the theory became a fact.
In addition, if I followed the information given in the Community chat, it also stated that the Healing Well was the last part of the tutorial.
In other words, the boss room was right ahead.
Again, at the point I have reached at this Healing Well, to clear the 1st floor of the tutorial, there was only one more trap left, the boss room.
I was finally at the point of clearing the 1st floor of the tutorial. At this point, I’ve reached this Healing Well and there was only one more trap left, the boss room.

Finally, I can see the end.

If I really wanted to clear this a little quicker, I probably could’ve attempted the boss room a few days ago.
However, I decided that it would be better to grind my way through as much as I could and hence attempted each trap multiple times.
Now today, on the second last day of what time was allotted to me, I will finally challenge the boss room.
I was constantly wringing out the water from my clothes while I walking when the corridor was suddenly filled with a thick fog.
I took a few more steps, a large stone door appeared.
As I laid my hand on the stone door while thinking, ‘How do I open this?’, a message appeared in my field of vision.
[Will you attempt this?]
Um, I need an explanation.
Can that be arranged?
A warning sign about a boss room would have been nice.

Yes.

Anyway, it was fine. I had worked so hard so I that could walk with confidence at this very moment right?
I worked so hard that I puked blood pfft..
I believed in what I had achieved over the time.
Guguguguugug- With the loud vibrating sound of the towering stone door, it opened.
A pond appeared ahead of the stone door.
Kooguguguguugugu- Boom!
The stone door closed tightly shut with a loud crash. I guess it had no plans of opening again. d.a.m.n.
Without a choice, I turned to face the pond again.
[Please enter.]
d.a.m.n.
No. f.u.c.k, Why are you doing this to me, like really.
I remembered everything that was shared on the Community chat in regards to the boss room.
But apart from that, there was nothing about this f.u.c.king unbalanced difficulty of a boss room.
The theme of the h.e.l.l difficulty 1st floor was arrow traps.
So I predicted, based on the information given on the Community chat, that the boss room would be would be related to these types of traps.
I was dead right.
The walls and ceilings were packed with arrow traps.
Except I had one little error.
The pond right in front of me.
A lava pond.
With temperatures that was high enough that it looked like it would cook my skin instantly, my heart felt like it was being squeezed as I gazed upon it.
These crazy s.h.i.ts.
There were 9 circular stone bridges.
They were arranged as a 3 by 3 formation. The 9 stone bridges were separated with equal distance, roughly 2 metres apart.
The bridges weren’t even flat.
The stone was carved with a round surface and the texture was smooth.
Man, who would even call this s.h.i.t stone a ‘bridge’.
However just before, a message appeared for me to enter, asking to stand on those bridges.
[1st floor stage, Welcome to the final gateway. The trial begins the instant a step is taken upon the stone bridge connecting the pond together. The trial lasts for 5 minutes.]
[Please enter.]
Inside I was constantly muttering f.u.c.kf.u.c.kf.u.c.k, but the message never appeared again.
The good thing was, I could easily grasp the whole trial.
Like how the traps were right there in the open, it was pretty obvious.
Firstly, a lava pond where I would instantly die if I fell into it.
Secondly, 9 stone bridges that were hard to balance yourself on with the round surfaces.
Lastly, a s.h.i.t ton of arrow traps packed with barely any s.p.a.ce in between them on the walls and ceiling.
This trial was obviously about dodging the arrows for 5 minutes on the stone bridges without falling.
I couldn’t just drag out the time any longer, so I jumped lightly onto the closest rock.
I ducked in antic.i.p.ation of an arrow flying towards me as soon as I set foot on the bridge.
Luckily, although the stone was shiny like it was waxed, it wasn’t all so slippery.
Due to the round shape of the stone, there wasn’t enough area for me to stand on with both feet, but it was enough to stand on one foot comfortably.
[The trial will begin in 30 seconds.]
Oh ok. Thanks for letting me know.