“Progress on the Deokso Succubus Den trespassing?”
The lady who usually sat on standby at the dungeon booth replied through the phone.
“President-nim, there has been no change since yesterday. The gate has yet to return to its purple hue. The rogue hunter is still in the dungeon.”
The man behind the phone, President Min-Ho, spoke after a second of thought.
“How many hunters are currently stationed to capture this criminal?”
“Four.”
It was odd how so many hunters were dispatched to handle the affair when one would have been enough. And not even, as trespassing was hardly an offense punishable in prison. The worst was a fine of a million won. Yet, the president was directly paying attention to the case.
Due to the strange importance of the matter, the lady believed it had to be related to the mass monster outbreaks across Korea yesterday. As all dungeon entrances have been barred off by ASH since then, the Deokso station dungeon should have been no different—except there was already a hunter inside when the temporary rule was instated.
“Three hunters are 1st class. One is an early 2nd class. And… Huh?”
The lady fell to silence all of the sudden.
“Speak.”
“T-that. The dungeon just… It just disappeared!”
True to her words, the Deokso station dungeon that glowed red for the past 24 hours disappeared as if the rift in reality had sewn itself back together.
~~~~~
The first thing I noticed was the change in environment. On the other side was a chamber filled in a musky stench. A moist ickiness condensed in the air to clog my throat. It was too humid for a castle, and my body had to adjust to the sudden shift in climate from winter into a tropical rainforest despite the dungeon clearly being an indoor environment.
Unless it was a classless dungeon meant for beginners, most dungeons 1st class and onwards strayed from the “dungeon-esque” style of habitat. It was more common to see prairies under the sun or snowy mountains with deep cave networks rather than confined castle spaces seemingly conjured out of nowhere. The Deokso Succubus Den turned out to be the latter type of dungeon.
It shouldn’t be like that.
The only reason this dungeon wasn’t popular was because of its solo-clearing nature. In this day and age, the name of the game was teamwork. It reduced occurrences of fatalities, injuries, and allowed lower-leveled hunters the opportunity to slay higher-leveled monsters by banding up. The records of the monsters would be proportionally distributed based on the damage distribution of each team member, so leveling up wasn’t an issue as long as you pulled your weight.
This dungeon was old to the point of being considered a ruin well documented online. All accounts stated they were immediately hallucinating the moment they entered the dungeon.
All the hunters who survived reported different locations. Some said they opened their eyes to a love hotel, while others with less ambition were stranded at the peak of Mount Chiri, which matched the trend of most 1st class and higher dungeons being dimensions that housed fictional realities. Never amongst all those accounts was it reported of being an orthodox dungeon with grim castle bricks and mossy exteriors laid in abandon.
It wasn’t difficult to deduce its relation to my trait. It seemed to have activated on its own subconscious judgment. And here I was, thinking I needed a mental trigger for it to work. But if that wasn’t the case, why was it that Ahn Hajin’s fireball succeeded in striking me whereas the succubus’ illusions failed?
I turned around. The gate remained as it was, this time with a sickly red aura to it in lieu of purple.
I figured it was normal, though I didn’t have much to go off of. Technology such as phones and cameras were rendered disabled in dungeons for unknown reasons which was why all there was to go off of were first-hand accounts.
My knowledge in the game I used to play didn’t help either. It was wildly different to how I imagined it. The texture of the dungeon walls were precise to the videogame’s record, and in some ways, playing that hunter simulation game prepared me for what to expect, but it also skewed my expectations for reality.
I was quite used to encountering monsters immediately in the game, but to my disappointment, the initial Deokso dungeon was devoid of monsters. Perhaps there were no monsters in this dungeon at all—or so I joked.
But as I walked down the chamber, the feasibility of that idea grew. Where had those succubi gone? And if they had cast their illusion spells on me, it would make sense that they’d be within a close vicinity of me.
Unless they didn’t.
I continued walking. And for a long time, nothing really happened. The chamber was long with turns, but a straightforward path existed with no forks. While it was strange that I could see fine given no actual lightsource, I dished it off as the dungeon’s inherent ambience.
It was while I contemplated such mundane phenomena that I heard a sound echoing from behind me, reminiscent of a cow tipping over dead.
[You have slain a Succubus (lvl.269).]
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[You have leveled up.]
[You have…]
[You have earned a title for sucking the life out of a succubus, a race known for sucking the lives of all creatures under the night.]
It was truly a “What the fuck?” moment. This was supposed to be a 1st class dungeon, meaning only monsters within the level 100 range spawned, so why was there a 2nd class succubus in this dungeon?
But the fact of the matter remained. If the Akashic Records said I killed something, then I definitely did. It also confirmed something about how my trait functioned. I needed no mental cue to activate it. It was a passive defense mechanism.
Some back-tracking later, I found the corpse of the demon sprawled out on the floor. While human in silhouette, no person in their right minds would call it one even disregarding its pair of goat horns. To begin with, its body was transparent in the shadowy sense, clearly made for camouflaging in the grim hue of the dungeon. It was also faceless with the only facial feature being the charred lips that hid numerous sets of piranha-like teeth within.
I was prepared to get messy which was why I brought gloves. Unfortunately, its corpse did not house a magic stone.
[As you have reached level 100, you cannot grow further until after class advancement.]
The message came after a momentary delay from the level-up notifications, but seeing that I’d killed a 2nd class monster as well as a 3rd class one in the morning, I’d be angry if I hadn’t reached level 100 from doing so.
It had only been a few minutes since I entered the dungeon, and my goal was already fulfilled. I could leave, but doing so felt wasteful considering all the preparations I made with the intention of staying an entire two weeks.
Each class advancement came in intervals of a hundred. And in order to advance, I had to fulfill the designated tasks.
Normally, I wouldn’t bat an eye at such things since it was common knowledge what the demands of the 1st class advancement was. One only needed 100 classless magic stones which were 1,000 won a piece given how over-saturated the market was.
The issue was, my class advancement was different. And not just different, but absurd given that it was only for obtaining my 1st class.
**********
1st class advancement requirements:
1st class magic stones (0/100)
2nd class magic stones (0/10)
Slay 1st class beings (0/200)
Slay 2nd class beings (0/50)
**********
Rather than the requirements for 1st class, it looked more like the requirements for the 2nd class advancement—but not even the 2nd class advancement asked for 2nd class magic stones! Not to mention how ludicrous it was to slay both 1st and 2nd class monsters when I didn’t even have a class!
Well… My trait’s abilities were unparalleled, so it wasn’t impossible for me to complete the tasks. Nevertheless it raised the question of what future class advancements would call for.
As long as I didn't start a fist fight with a monster, I was confident in killing anything. So in hindsight, it shouldn’t be difficult to complete if I targeted specific dungeons containing monsters that only attacked with some metaphysical element, such as the very succubus dungeon I was in.
I didn’t know why a 2nd class succubus appeared, but since I knew, it would be a waste not to hunt them for their magic stones. Of course, I called it a “hunt,” but if anything, they were just killing themselves and offering their cold corpses to me on a silver platter. Ideally, I’d knock out all of the aforementioned requirements before I left the dungeon. Once I bought the prerequisite magic stones, I’d advance.
The only issue being—the succubi were too few in number.
After an hour of dallying, I encountered two more succubi, both 2nd class. I had yet to find any 1st class succubi, while the 2nd class ones were stealth enough to evade my vision unless they suicided on their own accord.
Even though it was my first time in a dungeon, I could recognize the population of succubi was lower than it should be for any dungeon. While it was common practice to have hunters clear out all dungeons twice a year to eliminate the possibility of monster outbreaks, the population should not have declined to such an extent.
At the rate I was going, it’d be impossible to complete any of the class advancement quotas before exiting the dungeon.
But there was nothing I could do apart from walking forwards. In times like these, being able to use my phone to entertain me would be desirable, as such, I made a mental note to bring a wuxia novel the next time I went into a dungeon.
The next best thing to entertain myself with was reviewing my status. I remembered earning titles from killing the fallen angel and the succubi.
**********
Kang Cheong-Sin
Type: Human
Level: 100
Title/s: Made In Hell, Merciless, I Am Better, I Don’t See Class
Trait/s: Kill Me If You Can (Absolute)
**********
**********
Title: Made In Hell
Effect: High resistance against all fire-based attacks.
You call that fire? It can’t even warm my bathtub!
**********
**********
Title: I Don’t See Class
Effect: Inflicts 20% greater damage when fighting higher-classed opponents.
Levels don’t mean anything to you.
**********
Judging off of the descriptions alone, I knew these two came from my battle with the fallen angel.
**********
Title: I Am Better
Effect: Inflicts 10% greater damage when fighting opponents with their specialty.
You drained the life of a creature specialized in life draining.
**********
And this one was what I got from the succubus. I could already imagine how “I Am Better,” and “I Don’t See Class,” would synergize by enhancing my trait’s power. I would no longer reflect merely 100% of all damage, but an additional 30% on top of it. All in all, they were satisfying to look at.
It was then that I noticed something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
I’d arrived at a dead end, where a portal was. Another one.
At first, I thought I’d returned to the entrance, but that couldn’t have been the case. It was difficult to get lost when there was only a single direction to move towards. The gate’s ridge was also purple, distinguishing it from the gate of origin that was red.
Perhaps the gate sensed my presence, because it began flickering from purple to red like my thoughts had jinxed it.
Then.
A man, a European-looking man, walked through.
His pupils revealed a faint fog.
Just before he collapsed, I was able to catch him.
I didn’t have the leisure to question the situation as a clique of succubi passed through the portal like a bunch of mosquitoes thirsting after a victim..
The question of where all the succubi were was now answered. As it turned out, they weren’t in their own damn dungeon.