Episode 23
“Ack!”
He’d been caught.
Less than ten minutes after he’d started hiding his presence and searching for the tribe, he’d been caught.
‘How the hell do they know my location?’
Several dozen orcs glared at Jonghyeon.
A gaze that would have terrified him just a few weeks ago.
“It can’t be helped. What are you all just standing there staring at, huh?”
Jonghyeon snapped at the orcs for no particular reason and drew his short sword.
As one would expect, a short sword has short reach. And its blade is also narrow.
To the orcs wielding rapiers or wide-bladed swords, Jonghyeon’s weapon posed no threat.
The orcs gradually tightened their encirclement as they approached Jonghyeon, and the orc at the very front swung its sword at him.
Sss-
In that instant, the sword qi Jonghyeon unleashed.
Craack-!
The sword of the orc that had swung at Jonghyeon shattered instantly upon colliding with Jonghyeon’s sword-qi-infused short sword.
It was thin, dark-colored sword qi, but its power was anything but small.
The orcs began to waver.
The monsters in the dungeon that appeared in the watch all had something in common.
They all felt emotions.
Suddenly, Jonghyeon wondered if the monsters in dungeons outside also had emotions.
‘I’ll have to check next time.’
Of course, Jonghyeon had never properly tested his sword qi either. Seeing the sword qi enveloping his blade slice through the orc’s sword, even Jonghyeon himself was surprised.
But he didn’t show it.
The time he could maintain his sword qi was two minutes at most.
He had to settle the fight within that time.
At that moment, the orcs sensed a strange energy.
Their own shadows attacking them. It was just as surprising to orcs as it was to people.
Before they could even fully experience the rare sensation of their own shadows binding them, their comrades were dying one by one.
Stab- Swish-
Jonghyeon began to slash through them rapidly, drenched in orc blood like a demon of slaughter.
Though Jonghyeon’s inner thoughts were simply to finish things as quickly as possible due to the time limit, his appearance was more than enough to instill fear in the orcs.
“Snort-”
The orcs snorted their characteristic nasal sounds and struggled to break free from the shadows.
But Jonghyeon had trained quite a bit in qi, and accordingly, he could now use shadows strong enough to bind orcs.
In less than two minutes, several dozen orcs were annihilated!
But because Jonghyeon had also expended tremendous stamina, he needed to move away quickly before other orcs arrived.
‘There’s no strength left in my legs at all.’
It was exactly as he’d thought.
To the point where he could barely feel sensation throughout his entire body.
If there had been over a hundred orcs, it might have been Jonghyeon who met his death instead.
‘Assessing their numbers is important too, but I should save my sword qi usage as much as possible and fight with shadows.’
Surprisingly, qi replenished quickly.
It had been that way since childhood; even after expending a considerable amount of his qi, it would usually refill before even an hour passed.
But with his current body, whose capacity had expanded, and in a situation where he had no choice but to expend a significant amount of qi…
The optimal judgment Jonghyeon could make in this situation was simply to reduce his qi usage.
Several hours had passed since he’d started searching for the orc tribe in that manner.
He’d nearly encountered orc groups several times, but each time, Jonghyeon hid in the shadows and avoided them.
The orcs who sensed his presence repeatedly snorted as they searched for Jonghyeon, but they couldn’t find him hidden in the shadows.
Feeling that his ability to manipulate shadows had grown beyond his expectations, Jonghyeon was quite proud.
He had now reached a realm where he could hide for about 30 minutes.
Grrumble-
As night gradually approached, Jonghyeon grew hungry.
Having entered once before and checked the clear conditions, Jonghyeon had simply packed dried meat and drinking water in his backpack. And hiding up in a tree, he quickly began his meal.
Fwoosh-!
But before he could even take a bite of the meat, an arrow flew in from somewhere.
The arrow may have been aimed at Jonghyeon, but instead of Jonghyeon, who had reflexively dodged, his bag took the hit.
No way. It can’t be. My… food?
Before even fully checking the orc group, Jonghyeon examined inside his bag.
In the bag pierced by the arrow, the food Jonghyeon had packed was run through.
Unbearable rage!
Jonghyeon felt greater rage than when he’d spent ten hours in the second stage without a sip of water, knocking away throwing knives.
Whether it knew of his rage or not, the orc that had landed the shot was elated.
An orc looking around snorting, as if showing off its archery skills to the surrounding orcs.
About forty orcs hummed along with nasal sounds as if cheering him on.
“Snort- Snrk snrk-!”
Losing his mind at that sight, Jonghyeon took out a keyring from his pocket. And infusing it with a considerable amount of internal energy, he manifested an axe about his own height.
“Snort?”
With an axe suddenly flying out from the tree, the orc expressed confusion.
And it reproached itself for realizing too late that the axe was flying toward it.
Thwack-
Starting with the orc archer pinned dead by the axe, the orcs began to see their comrades being hacked to pieces one by one.
But for some reason, the orcs couldn’t even move their bodies.
It was night.
“You guys.”
Stab-
“To me.”
Shhk-
“Have committed an unforgivable sin.”
Every word Jonghyeon spoke was filled with rage.
And of course, with each word, two or three orcs were hacked to pieces.
Jonghyeon sighed amid the corpses of the orcs who had died in an instant.
“Whew. Looks like there aren’t even any manifested animals here.”
Jonghyeon clutched his empty stomach and climbed back up the tree.
For now, he’d go hungry today. If worst came to worst, he’d try tearing into some orc meat. But just thinking about it was horrible, so he left that as his last plan and examined his surroundings again.
Grrumble-
As the night deepened, Jonghyeon’s stomach grew severely hungry.
‘Come to think of it, I’ve been eating too well lately.’
Since starting to live in Chairman Yi’s mansion, Jonghyeon hadn’t missed a single meal recently.
It was because Jonghyeon loved cooking, and grieving the fact that he could only eat three meals of such delicious food a day, he’d eaten like a madman.
Jonghyeon’s stomach, accustomed to that regular lifestyle, was thoughtlessly hungry.
Then something caught his eye. It was a light.
‘A light? Could it be that I found the orc tribe?’
Jonghyeon was skeptical, but thanks to his Eye skill, he could quickly figure out what it was.
It was the orcs’ mealtime.
The orcs were roasting pigs they’d obtained from who knows where.
And upon seeing that, only one word came to Jonghyeon’s mind.
Food.
He could eat.
About twenty pigs were being roasted, and the orcs looked to be well over a hundred.
But Jonghyeon had already lost some of his reason.
And wasn’t it night right now!
The condition of it being night, and his current situation where he was maddeningly hungry.
Due to those two factors, Jonghyeon prepared to assault a horde of over a hundred orcs.
‘First, the sentries.’
Stab-
The orcs had posted sentries as if prepared for an attack.
So in order to kill even those sentries smoothly, Jonghyeon hid in the shadows and approached cautiously, killing them one by one.
But the orcs, crazed for meat, hadn’t even realized Jonghyeon was approaching until a full twelve of their comrades had fallen.
“Snort?”
An orc who suddenly noticed something off began saying something to the surrounding orcs.
Only then did they stop roasting the meat and draw their weapons to search for Jonghyeon.
‘They seem to have caught on, but it’s already too late.’
Having regained some reason, Jonghyeon found the easiest way to deal with the orcs in the current situation.
That was precisely the shadows.
It was night now. The tree he was in, the orcs, everything was covered in shadow and darkness.
Jonghyeon decided to put into practice what he’d been conceptualizing in his head recently.
A dark curtain of shadow was drawn centered on where the orcs were.
A thin curtain, but sufficient to block the moonlight.
The orcs covered by such a curtain used the fires they’d lit to roast the pigs as torches to guard their surroundings.
“Snort! Squeal!”
Taking the orc’s irritated snorting as a signal, Jonghyeon used the remaining shadows to extinguish even the fire roasting the meat.
Perfect darkness.
Only loud snorting filled the space. Of course, darkness was something Jonghyeon’s eyes couldn’t feel.
The orcs began dying one by one to an enemy they couldn’t see.
It was a strategy absolutely impossible during bright daylight.
A dark space with all light blocked out. Within it, Jonghyeon was free.
He didn’t even need to bring out his sword qi.
Of course, shadows didn’t require qi either. Because of that, Jonghyeon concentrated his qi solely on his physical abilities, sweeping through the orcs at tremendous speed.
“Squeal!”
The orcs’ screams rang out intermittently, and about ten minutes later, over a hundred orcs were completely annihilated.
“A race’s mistakes are corrected by its own kind. Right?”
He had no hobby of talking to corpses, but Jonghyeon had been talking to himself a lot these days. He didn’t know why.
Crackle crackle-
Amid the sound of the campfire burning, Jonghyeon tore into the pork and thought.
About the origin of this pork.
But he couldn’t figure it out at all.
Whether this training dungeon system truly possessed some kind of intelligence.
Or if it was just a string of coincidences.
Whatever the case, as long as he filled his stomach, but separate from that, he thought deeply about the watch.
What was the meaning of this watch?
He’d definitely heard that he’d obtained the qualifications of an Awakened.
He’d never deeply thought about the words “qualifications of an Awakened” that he’d heard when he first put on the watch.
Furthermore, what the third button was still hadn’t been revealed.
Did becoming an Awakened open the third button?
He still didn’t know.
He’d hunted to the point where there were almost no orc groups nearby.
But even so, he was somewhat afraid to sleep.
So instead of sleeping, Jonghyeon dried the cooked pork and put some pieces in his pockets.
His bag had been pierced from bottom to top, so he’d discarded it.
‘Should I look for water?’
After finishing his meal, Jonghyeon was quite thirsty.
Even though he was clearly in a mountain, strangely he couldn’t find any valleys or streams.
But after repeated training, and with Jonghyeon’s innately developed five senses, he could clearly hear the sound of water.
Jonghyeon closed his eyes and began focusing on the surrounding sounds.
A very small sound of water. Following that sound and changing direction, a small cave appeared.
Inside the cave, Jonghyeon discovered groundwater pooled up.
‘Right. Even Master Wonhyo drank without knowing it was skull water.’
For now, the fact that it was pooled was a bit unpleasant, but since he could still hear the sound of water, it was clearly flowing somewhere.
With his throat extremely parched, Jonghyeon had no choice but to take a sip of water.
---------= Afterword ---------=
What kind of water could it be?