THUD.
“Ugh?!”
“Are you walking around with your eyes shut?!”
The bastard had walked into me, yet he was the one glaring.
But all I could do was lower my eyes.
One look at the ‘wriggling’ tattoo etched into his bald head, those menacing muscles, and the menacing greatsword strapped to his back was enough to tell me he was definitely an ‘adventurer.’
‘Damn bastard.’
All I could do was curse him in my head.
If I said it aloud and that punk bastard started some shit, I would be the only one who suffered.
He probably would not kill me inside Area 1, but adventurers were exempt from punishment for most ordinary acts of violence, so only the person who got beaten lost out.
“Phew.......”
I let out a sigh and hurried on again.
‘Ugh, let’s just get to work.’
If I was even a little late, the old geezer at the general store would raise hell and try to dock my already meager pay.
Step. Step.
As I trudged along, the gravel under my soles felt even more irritating than usual today.
This was a world where even finding sneakers or dress shoes that fit was difficult. The oversized shoes crudely made from low-quality leather had almost no cushioning, so I could feel every bit of debris on the road.
That was why even walking had been an ordeal when I first fell into this world.
I had calluses now, but that did not make it any less uncomfortable.
Even these low-grade shoes that tore at the slightest thing were still leather, so they were expensive for something disposable.
‘Once I make it, I’m getting artifact shoes first. No, should underwear come first? Damn it.’
What I missed most were the mass-produced goods of the twenty-first century.
Only after falling into this hell had I realized just how convenient the things I used to take for granted really were.
After going through the same thoughts I had been having for the past year, my workplace finally came into view.
[Johnson General Store]
[We Buy All Labyrinth Goods.]
CREEEAK.
The moment I opened the door beneath the shabby sign with its painfully ordinary name and stepped inside,
the owner of the shop, Old Man Johnson, immediately barked at me.
“You are cutting it awfully close again today, you damn bastard!”
“But I’m not late.”
“Would something get sore if you came even a little earlier?!”
“Yes. It would.”
“What did you say, brat?!”
“My delicate soles would get sore. Want to see?”
“Ha....... Are you still practically living at that martial arts hall?”
“Of course. I’m definitely going to make it as an adventurer.”
Because I had to clear the Labyrinth and get out of this shitty world.
“......You always have something to say. Tsk, tsk. Get to work!”
The bald old man irritably adjusted his monocle, swept back what little white hair remained at his temples, and tossed a pair of red crystals at me.
THUD.
Two red, jewel-like crystals shimmered with a faint light.
Ability Stones.
The essence spat out by monsters in the Labyrinth.
“What’s this? Ability Stones first thing in the morning?”
“They came over from the Magic Tower. They are probably low-grade junk, as usual, but appraise them anyway.”
Old Man Johnson was good at appraising other artifacts, herbs, antiques, and the like, but he could not appraise ‘adventurer-only’ items like Ability Stones.
Only adventurers could do that.
And among them, I was a little unusual.
‘Let’s see.’
First, the first one.
[Mind Split]
[Strength +9, Vitality +9, Magic Resistance +3, Mana +10]
‘Oh?’
The stats were respectable.
Red Ability Stones dropped within the first ten floors of the Labyrinth could have at most five stats, and the sum of their values could be at most 10.
‘This isn’t bad, then.’
But the name was far too strange.
‘I’ve heard of Consciousness Division, but Mind Split?’
It sounded like something that belonged in a psychiatric hospital.
An ordinary adventurer would have to absorb it to learn anything more, but anyone in their right mind would refuse to do that.
It was common knowledge that the more negative the name of an Ability Stone was, the worse its side effects tended to be.
Fortunately, I did not need to absorb it.
‘Additional Information Check.’
My trait as a Summoner.
It was an Ungraded trait without even a grade, but at times like this, it was definitely useful.
HUMMM.
[Through an experiment by Klinsmann, the Magic Tower’s eccentric rising star, the ability ‘Consciousness Division’ mutated into ‘Mind Split.’
Consciousness is divided into five rather than two, but acquiring it has a 100% chance of causing multiple personalities to manifest.]
“Ha. Shit.”
It was the rarest kind of garbage, even among garbage.
“Why?”
“It says if you learn this, you’ll develop multiple personalities.”
“What?”
Mental-type debuffs were the side effects adventurers hated most.
There might be ways to offset side effects like ‘Excitement’ or ‘Rage,’ but there was no answer for some unheard-of debuff like this.
“......Damn it! No wonder they sold it cheap. What about the other one?”
“Give me a second.”
The second Ability Stone.
[Forced Multiple Contract]
[Agility +4, Vitality +9, Magic Resistance +4, Physical Resistance +3, Mana +8]
Hmm.
Again, the stats were respectable, but the name was strange.
‘Don’t tell me this one too?’
HUMMM.
After using Additional Information Check,
[Through an experiment by Klinsmann, the Magic Tower’s eccentric rising star, the ability ‘Spirit Contract’ was altered into ‘Forced Multiple Contract.’
It now allows contracts with four spirits instead of one, but only with lowest-grade spirits. In addition, all other uses of mana suffer a Mana -20 effect.]
“Ah, shit!”
“......Another dud?”
“Yes.”
When I told Johnson about the side effects, his expression twisted even worse than before.
“So he pawned off two piles of shit on me! Shit! Haiman, you bastard. Just you wait.”
GRIND.
Johnson ground his teeth, blaming the Magic Tower supplier who had sold him the goods, but I found myself curious.
‘What the hell is this bastard Klinsmann even doing?’
How did someone use precious Ability Stones only to create trash like this?
“Throw them away.”
“Damn it. Do you know how much I paid for these? Put them on display anyway, just in case. I have to at least make my money back!”
“You keep putting things like this on display. That’s why people call our shop a minefield store or whatever......”
“And there are still lunatics who buy them every now and then!”
I had a feeling they were not lunatics so much as poor bastards.
“......Yes, yes. Understood, Boss.”
What power did a mere employee have?
I put the trash—no, the landmines—on display and went back to zoning out.
There were so few customers that I kept nodding off.
I had to go back to the martial arts hall and train again after work anyway.
Getting some sleep this way was probably better for my body.
And whenever I comforted myself with thoughts like that, reality inevitably came crashing back.
‘How did I end up like this......?’
The memory from a year ago surfaced naturally.
I had fallen asleep as usual in my two-room semi-basement apartment.
Then I became aware that I was standing among countless people in a vast, splendid plaza, wearing uncomfortable clothes I had never seen before, while a faint glow spread up from the floor.
**-Welcome to this world, Summoners.**
A greeting from extraordinarily exotic-looking men and women dressed in unusual clothes.
I thought it was some damn dream.
But the damn dream did not end.
And then there was this.
**-Additional Information Check? An Ungraded trait?**
**-And only one Ability Slot?**
**-The worst of the worst. To think a reject like this exists. Has there ever been a case like this?**
**-Not in the kingdom’s Summoner records from the past hundred years.......**
**-Throw him out. There is absolutely no value in investing in him.**
They judged me however they pleased even though I had done nothing, then threw me out of that magnificent palace.
‘As if that weird trait hadn’t already put me through enough.’
The year after that had been absolute hell.
Even the fact that I had thought we could communicate turned out to be thanks to translation magic.
Surviving after being dumped into Labyrinth City with nothing to my name had been a miracle in itself.
I had desperately begged while learning the language, then learned the writing system as well.
It took me half a year just to make use of my Summoner trait, get a job at this general store, and start attending a martial arts hall with that salary so I could train to become an adventurer.
You could call it the result of a struggle worthy of being a triumph of human perseverance.
And my grudge had deepened by just as much as my pride.
‘Those palace bastards.’
GRIND.
Those bastards had given me only one thing.
A single hope that if I made it through the one-hundred-floor Labyrinth, I could cross into another world.
And I did not even know for certain whether that world would be Earth.
I might have been broke, but I had still been living my life diligently. Those bastards had practically thrown me into hell by force.
No. From the information about the Labyrinth I had gathered while working, this place really was no different from hell.
‘Still, I’ll do it. I have to.’
CRACK.
If I were the sort to give up on life just because my circumstances were the worst, I would not have worked so hard back in South Korea.
Finding some way—any way—to improve this miserable life little by little was the only struggle I could put up against this X-damned world—no, these ‘worlds.’
Phew.
‘Status.’
At the quiet word I murmured inwardly, information about me appeared as though a screen had materialized before my eyes.
[Name: Go Cheol-woo]
[Race: Human]
[Level: 1]
[Stats]
Strength: 5
Vitality: 6
Agility: 5
[Ability Slot]
0/1
[Trait]
-Additional Information Check.
No matter how many dozens or hundreds of times I looked at it, the information was painfully sparse.
‘More than half a year of effort, and all I got was +1 Vitality and +1 Agility.’
It was bleak, but looked at another way, it was also proof that I had definitely grown.
‘Yeah. The money I’m spending at the martial arts hall isn’t going to waste.’
My trait might be Ungraded, but I still had one as befitted a Summoner, so becoming an adventurer was still my best chance of succeeding.
No, from the beginning, there had never been any other way for someone with no family or backing to improve his life in this savage world besides becoming an adventurer.
**-Having only one Ability Slot is the worst possible aptitude.......**
I did my best to ignore what those palace bastards had said.
There were lucky bastards born with as many as five Ability Slots.
But even having only one meant that I at least had the aptitude to become an adventurer, because an ordinary person could not equip a monster’s power—an ‘Ability (supernatural power)’—in the first place.
‘I’ll save a little more money, get one usable Ability, and then enter the Labyrinth. It won’t be long. I’ll learn a little more martial arts and raise even one more stat. No, maybe I should just enter a day sooner and use Runes to raise my stats......’
Just as I steeled myself and dreamed of a hopeful future,
CREEEAK.
The door of the general store opened.
Gasp.
“Welcome. What can I help you with?”
I sprang to my feet on reflex, wiped the corner of my mouth, and put on my twenty-first-century service mindset.
Then immediately regretted it.
“Huh? You’re seriously still here?”
Kim Hyeon-sik snickered the moment he came in.
Without even greeting me, he picked up an item from the display shelf. He tossed it around a few times, apparently did not like it, and set it down wherever he pleased.
No, he did not even set it down.
TAP.
He threw it on the floor.
“Hey, reject.”
Lee Jeong-ho, who had followed him in, looked me up and down.
“What was your name again?”
“Dunno. Wasn’t it Go-cheol—‘scrap metal’ or something?”
Kim Hyeon-sik answered for me.
“Oh, right. Scrap Metal.”
Lee Jeong-ho snorted.
“Fuck, your name really suits you.”
The two of them looked like punks at a glance.
They had been summoned a year ago and grouped with me for evaluation because we were around the same age.
‘Kim Hyeon-sik. Lee Jeong-ho.’
The bastards who had openly burst out laughing the moment it was revealed that I was a reject.
A month ago, they had come back from their first Labyrinth expedition, dumped a mountain of junk in this shop, and even caused a scene, complaining that we would not give them a fair price.
And then.
“So this is Scrap Metal?”
CLICK.
A woman entered behind the two of them.
Cha Hye-ryeon.
She stared straight at me.
Her gaze was not one you gave a person, but trash abandoned by the roadside.
“You look more normal than I expected.”
A smile tugged at her lips.
“I heard you were a reject, so I thought it’d be more...... obvious.”
Kim Hyeon-sik snickered.
“Hey, Hye-ryeon. You’ll hurt his feelings saying that.”
“Why?”
Cha Hye-ryeon looked genuinely confused.
“It’s not like I’m the one who decided he was a reject.”
“Puhaha!”
The two men burst out laughing.
‘......She hasn’t changed.’
Four Ability Slots.
A Summoner with the A-grade trait ‘Mana Modifier.’
I had heard she was receiving special treatment and magic instruction even at the palace, but apparently she had started hanging around with these two punks at some point.
As I glanced at Cha Hye-ryeon, Lee Jeong-ho approached me.
Then he crooked a finger at me.
“Scrap.”
“......”
“We’re customers.”
He smiled.
“Do your job.”
A curse surged all the way up my throat for an instant.
But I swallowed it.
“What can I help you with?”
You did not go near shit if you could help it.
“Wow.”
Kim Hyeon-sik grinned as if impressed.
“Looks like this guy really doesn’t remember us.”
“He remembers.”
Cha Hye-ryeon spoke as if it were nothing.
“He’s just not on our level enough to act like he knows us.”
“Heh.”
Cha Hye-ryeon stifled a laugh.
Only then did Lee Jeong-ho seem satisfied. He placed a large sack on the counter.
THUD.
“You buy Labyrinth junk, right?”
He turned the sack upside down.
CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER!
Fragments of stone, broken bones, old jewelry, and miscellaneous junk spilled across the counter. A few pieces even rolled onto the floor.
Lee Jeong-ho jerked his chin.
“Pick them up.”
“......”
“Why?”
When our eyes met, he smirked.
“A customer’s things fell on the floor.”
At the same time, he drew the greatsword from his back and planted it on the floor.
THUD!
“And.”
He grinned.
“Give us a good price like last time.”
Kim Hyeon-sik also hooked an elbow over the counter and grinned.
“Don’t make things annoying again with ‘we can’t take this’ and ‘that’s trash.’”
“......”
“That just makes things harder for both of us, doesn’t it?”
He spoke with a smile.
But his eyes were not smiling at all.
These bastards were pulling this shit again.
‘At a glance, it’s all garbage......’
I had half a year of experience now, so it was obvious that these were junk items from the lower floors.
Literal ‘junk’ items that were worth almost nothing.
“Give me a moment.”
Rustle, rustle.
There were only a few things that did not look like outright junk, but I still checked every single one with Additional Information Check.
Strange junk items did show up once in a while.
But there was one object I had never seen before.
“This counts as Labyrinth goods too?”
A shabby basket that looked like it was made of bamboo.
It looked like nothing more than a roughly made piece of handicraft.
“Yeah!”
He would not lie about something like this.
[Goblin Basket]
-A basket treasured by a goblin tribe. It appears to have been used in a tribal rite.
‘A Goblin Basket, huh.’
They really did pick up all kinds of things.
Even the basic information provided by the System showed that there was nothing special about it.
It had not even received a ‘Common’ grade. It was an Ungraded junk item.
Even so,
‘Additional Information Check.’
I used my trait out of habit.
HUMMM.
[A basket capable of synthesizing any item.]
[Synthesized items have a high chance of receiving a positive modifier.]
An explanation I had never seen or heard of before appeared.