Inside the narrow room, the smartphone screen lit up brightly and began vibrating noisily.
BUZZ. BUZZ.
Cheol-woo picked up the phone rattling across the table and turned off the alarm.
The time displayed on the screen matched exactly with the timer he had set around this time yesterday.
"Twenty-four hours."
Cheol-woo wet his lips and rose from his seat.
As soon as he moved, a sharp pain shot up from his side.
He lifted his T-shirt and checked the bandage. A little blood had seeped through the gauze. It was because the aftermath of the blow he had taken from the hidden boss still remained.
"Hiss. Trading blows head-on is going to be impossible."
Cheol-woo took a fresh bandage and disinfectant from the first-aid kit, cleaned the wound with practiced hands, and tied the bandage firmly.
He fastened the old work sack in the corner of the room to his waist. Then he took out a nylon rope, tied a knot to make it into a noose, and picked up his pickaxe, its blade already dulled.
They were the familiar tools he had carried around for years while working as a porter.
"This should be enough preparation."
After checking that the notebook he had written in yesterday was in his pocket, Cheol-woo glared into the air.
He opened the status window and touched the activated button.
‘[Enter]’
The space in the middle of the room distorted faintly, and a small blue gate opened.
Cheol-woo stepped into it without hesitation.
A damp stone floor touched the tips of his feet.
Acrid earth dust that stung the nose and cool air.
Cheol-woo blinked and let his eyes adjust to the darkness around him. On the surface, it was no different from the empty mineshaft he had seen yesterday.
But the air was different.
SCRITCH. SHRIEK.
From far away came the faint sound of something scraping against the stone floor, along with a grotesque cry.
They were sounds that had not been there yesterday.
Cheol-woo adjusted his grip on the pickaxe and pressed himself close to the wall. Holding his breath, he carefully approached the direction of the sound.
When he turned the corner, he saw shadows wavering at the end of the narrow passage.
Three goblins.
It was the very area where Cheol-woo had personally smashed the backs of their heads during the final recovery work. The place had been clean and empty without even a bloodstain when he reentered yesterday, but now they had appeared again.
"They really came back to life."
Cheol-woo muttered quietly and observed the goblins’ movements.
Fortunately, there were not many of them. It did not seem as though the empty space had been filled completely with monsters; rather, only a few had regenerated here and there.
The injury in his side bothered him, but three of them were manageable without foolishly wasting his strength.
Cheol-woo took a fist-sized stone from his pocket.
Then he spread the rope he had brought into a round noose trap across the floor of the narrow forked path. He tied the end firmly to a nearby rock.
"Hey. Over here."
Cheol-woo hurled the stone with all his strength at the wall of the passage.
CLANG!
A loud scraping noise rang through the mineshaft.
The three goblins turned their heads at once. Their crimson eyes flashed in the darkness, and the closest one came rushing out with a shrill cry.
"Good. One at a time."
Cheol-woo retreated behind the forked path and raised his pickaxe.
The moment the first goblin rushed forward and stepped into the noose he had laid out.
SNAP.
Cheol-woo snatched the rope and pulled with all his strength.
The noose tightened and violently yanked the goblin’s ankle.
"SKREE!"
The goblin lost its balance and fell, striking its chin against the floor.
Cheol-woo did not hesitate. Before it could even scream properly, he brought the blunt back of the pickaxe down on the back of its head.
THWACK!
With a dull sound, the first one went limp.
Just then, the remaining two, who had come running belatedly, stopped short at the sight of their fallen comrade.
Cheol-woo kicked up the dust on the floor with all his strength.
"SHRIEK!"
The second goblin, struck in the eyes by dirt, panicked and swung its dagger blindly through the air.
Cheol-woo twisted away from the crude dagger flying toward him, then struck the monster’s knee joint with the shaft of the pickaxe.
With the sound of breaking bone, the goblin collapsed. Cheol-woo used the recoil to turn the pickaxe blade and brought it down on the nape of the monster’s neck.
It was a clean sequence of movements without a single unnecessary motion.
"One left."
The last remaining goblin flinched in fear.
Cheol-woo did not let it escape. He kicked off the wall, rushed forward, drove his foot into the monster’s solar plexus, and buried the pickaxe into its falling body.
"Haa, haa."
Breathing roughly, Cheol-woo examined his surroundings.
The smell of blood spread, but he heard no more footsteps rushing toward him. His side ached, but the bandage had not come loose, and the wound had not reopened.
"Before, I was always busy running around with luggage on my back."
He had taken down three of them by himself without much trouble. It was all thanks to the survival methods he had absorbed while rolling around as a porter and learning by watching others.
Cheol-woo searched the corpses of the fallen goblins, cut away pieces of crude iron daggers and usable leather, and tossed them into his sack.
If this had been an ordinary field or a random dungeon, he would have been watching others in case someone took them first. But this place belonged only to Cheol-woo.
"Next is the ore."
He took out his notebook and moved toward the mining point he had checked yesterday.
As he went deeper along the passage, a familiar rock wall appeared.
It was the low-grade mana stone vein Cheol-woo had scraped clean with his pickaxe during the final recovery work.
"Oh."
Cheol-woo’s eyes widened.
Purple crystals the size of finger joints had sprouted here and there on the rock wall that should have been hollowed out and empty. It was not completely filled, but they were definitely traces of new growth in a place that had been empty yesterday.
The iron ore wall beside it was the same. A thin layer of iron ore covered the surface that had previously been dug out.
"The stone really grew."
Cheol-woo reached out and touched one of the newly sprouted mana stone crystals. He could feel a weak but unmistakable mana response.
At that moment, a ding sounded in the corner of his vision, and a translucent management window appeared.
[Goblin’s Abandoned Mine (F-rank)]
-Owner: Oh Cheol-woo
-Resource Status: Update Complete
-Monster Population: Update Complete
-View Detailed Information
When Cheol-woo pressed [View Detailed Information], the items that had been covered by (Calculating) until yesterday changed into specific numbers.
[Regeneration Information]
-Common Goblin: 12-hour cycle (Partial Regeneration)
-Low-grade Mana Stone: 24-hour cycle (Partial Regeneration)
-Iron Ore: 24-hour cycle (Partial Regeneration)
-Goblin Mine Supervisor: Scheduled to regenerate in 7 days
"So the regeneration cycles are different."
Cheol-woo nodded.
It meant the small-fry goblins would pop out every half a day, ores took a full day, and the supervisor, which had been the hidden boss, would take an entire week.
When he looked lower down, the detailed authority buttons for things like passage manipulation or environmental changes were still locked behind padlock icons.
It was probably because the Core in the boss room had remained fixed in its destroyed state.
"It is a shame the authority is restricted, but for now, I should be grateful for even this much."
Cheol-woo adjusted his grip on the pickaxe at his waist.
He tapped around the newly sprouted mana stones and carefully removed only the crystals. He also scraped off just the surface of the thin iron ore layer and gathered it into his sack.
There was no need to dig deep into the ground. All he had to do was collect what had formed on the surface.
After about an hour, the sack fastened to his waist had grown fairly heavy.
"This is enough for today."
There was no need to get greedy and go deep into the mineshaft. After all, this dungeon would still belong to Cheol-woo tomorrow and the day after that.
He reached into the air and pressed the [Exit] button on the management window.
Flash.
With a ripple of blue light, Cheol-woo’s body dropped into the middle of his rented room.
Through the gap in the window blinds, the light of the late-night streetlamp stretched long across the room.
Before even catching his breath, Cheol-woo roughly poured the contents of the sack he had been carrying onto the floor.
CLATTER.
With a heavy sound, the contents scattered across the linoleum.
Dozens of low-grade mana stones containing a purple glow, heavy lumps of iron ore, goblin leather, and fragments of old weapons.
None of the items he had harvested inside the dungeon had evaporated. They had poured straight into reality.
"It is real."
Cheol-woo sank down onto the floor and picked up one mana stone.
It was common knowledge that when a dungeon closed or collapsed, uncollected resources inside scattered together with the mana. But Cheol-woo’s owned dungeon mocked that common sense and spat its byproducts into reality.
He took his smartphone from his pocket and opened the calculator app.
TAP, TAP.
"The rough purchase price for one low-grade mana stone is about this much. If I weigh and sell the iron ore, then add the goblin byproducts even though they are cheap..."
When he saw the number on the screen, the corners of Cheol-woo’s mouth trembled slightly.
The value of the things he had safely gathered in just over an hour far surpassed the money he earned after spending an entire week rolling around in other people’s parties as a perpetual E-rank porter.
"This is insane, seriously."
He did not need to dangerously follow anyone into a boss room. He had no reason to carry hunters’ luggage for them and endure their insults.
All he had to do was enter once a day and harvest it as though he were gathering crops from a field.
After staring at the calculator for a long while, Cheol-woo set down the phone and hardened his expression.
"I cannot take all of this in."
He wanted to run to the purchasing office right away and turn everything into cash, but a warning alarm rang in his head.
Cheol-woo was a low-grade hunter and porter with no guild affiliation.
A porter who had been thrown out empty-handed at the dungeon closure site yesterday suddenly appeared overnight with this many monster byproducts and mana stones?
On top of that, Goblin’s Abandoned Mine had already been officially processed as vanished.
He would obviously be suspected of possessing stolen goods or mana stones of unclear origin and be subjected to an Association investigation.
"I cannot shove it at them like an idiot just because it is worth money. First, only enough that they will not have grounds to nitpick."
Cheol-woo began sorting the resources scattered across the floor.
Among the mana stones, he picked out only the ones with especially dim light or visible damage. As for the goblin leather, he took only a small amount from the most common parts.
It was the kind of amount porters often secretly slipped into their pockets in hopes of making a little extra money.
He put the remaining intact mana stones and heavy iron ore back into the sack and pushed it deep into the corner beneath the bed.
"I will go to the purchasing office tomorrow and try selling only this much. The first priority is confirming whether it can be exchanged for money normally."
After pressing down once more on the sack hidden beneath the bed with his foot, Cheol-woo straightened his back.
His gaze had settled into a calmness unlike anything before.
He had grasped the lifeline that would end his sickening life at the bottom. He had not the slightest intention of rushing and letting the wrong people take it from him.