Jeong-min returned to the inventory late at night.
Despite his fatigue, he didn't forget to enter Leia's inventory and stock up on ramen and snacks.
Jeong-min laid a thin blanket on the hard inventory floor and lay down.
"A bed... no, at least a thick mattress would be nice... But where do I get one? Should I search through ruined houses or something? There are so many things I need, but no way to get them..."
Jeong-min pondered how to decorate the inventory and drifted off to sleep.
*****
Flash
Jeong-min's eyes snapped open from his deep sleep.
Jeong-min twisted his body.
"Ugh... my whole body aches..."
The aftereffects of the intense training, and resting on the hard floor, inflicted pain all over his body.
Jeong-min roughly composed himself and got up.
"What time is it..."
Jeong-min wiped his face roughly with a wet wipe and took his smartphone out of his pocket.
He pressed the power button on the turned-off smartphone, but it wouldn't turn on.
"Ah... the battery's dead... How am I supposed to charge this... Sigh..."
Jeong-min put the turned-off smartphone back in his pocket and opened the inventory gate.
As the bright scenery outside came in, the inventory also brightened.
The scenery beyond the gate was the alley next to the Daesung Shelter, where Jeong-min had last opened and closed the inventory.
Jeong-min stared blankly at the desolate alley, where there were no people, no monsters, nothing, and then shook his head and said.
"Am I still half asleep... Let's get moving. I have to go get trained by Leia tonight, so I need to get as much done as possible until then."
Jeong-min decided to practice the swordsmanship movements he had learned yesterday.
Jeong-min, who appeared in the alley after passing through the inventory gate, put on the Cuffs and Shackles of Growth on his wrists and ankles, and set each weight to 20kg.
"This should be enough... Now, a thousand repetitions of each movement... Should I start with blocking first?"
Jeong-min recalled the movements he had learned from Leia and began repetitive training.
As the movements were repeated, a question arose in Jeong-min's mind.
'Can I really get stronger by repeating these simple movements? Am I wasting my time on something useless?'
Whenever such doubts arose, Jeong-min thought of Leia.
'Let's trust Leia. She walked the same path and became so strong. I just need to trust Leia and work hard.'
After a long time, Jeong-min was able to repeat a total of 3,000 movements.
Jeong-min thought, panting.
'Just a thousand repetitions per movement is this hard... Leia repeated them ten thousand times? Haa..."
Jeong-min roughly wiped away the dripping sweat. Looking at the sky, the sun was passing overhead, so it seemed like it was already past lunchtime.
"Quite a bit of time has passed... I should wake up earlier and train from now on. The remaining time is ambiguous."
Jeong-min opened the base gate and entered the inventory.
"I'm hungry... What should I eat..."
The food piled up in Jeong-min's inventory was mostly ramen and rice.
Other than that, there were only a few side dishes that had been in the refrigerator, so Jeong-min was slowly getting tired of the same meals every time.
"I think I stocked up on a few cans of tuna..."
Jeong-min began searching the inventory and soon found several cans of tuna.
"Great. Let's solve today's meal with rice, tuna, and kimchi."
Jeong-min put water on the portable gas stove and cooked instant rice.
While eating the completed instant rice, tuna, and kimchi, Jeong-min muttered.
"There's not much kimchi left either... I need to find a way to procure supplies somehow. I need a lot of things to make the inventory a livable environment... It would be nice if the Store opened soon... Then I could just buy them, right? But there's no telling when it will open... Sigh."
Jeong-min finished his simple lunch and roughly cleaned up the dishes he had eaten from.
"The time is ambiguous. It's well past lunchtime, so I have to go to Leia's world soon... What should I do... Should I train some more?"
Jeong-min stared blankly at the wall leading to Leia's inventory and thought.
'Come to think of it... I've never been anywhere other than Leia's inventory... Should I go somewhere else...? My mana is full right now too...'
Jeong-min found a flashlight and turned it on.
'The inside of the inventory isn't completely dark, but it'll be easier with a flashlight.'
When he turned on the flashlight, the light felt weak, as if the battery wasn't full.
'I won't be able to use it for long... I need batteries too... Sigh...'
Jeong-min packed water and some snacks in a bag with the internal space expansion option that he had taken from Leia's inventory, and slung it over his shoulder.
"I'm just looking around the inventory... This should be enough to take, right?"
Having finished preparing, Jeong-min moved to the wall opposite the wall that could enter Leia's inventory and used the Clairvoyance skill.
A bluish light appeared in Jeong-min's eyes, and he began to see beyond the wall.
"As expected... It's someone else's inventory. Then..."
Jeong-min stared beyond the wall and used the Spatial Movement skill.
Jeong-min, who had disappeared from inside the inventory, appeared inside the inventory beyond the wall.
Jeong-min looked around.
"...Why is it so empty?"
Unlike Leia's inventory, which was full of all sorts of weapons and items, this inventory he had crossed over to was almost completely empty.
Jeong-min turned on the flashlight and shone it around.
"Hmm...? This inventory's walls feel a bit more drab, don't they? Is the color different...?"
Unlike Jeong-min's and Leia's inventories, the color of the walls inside seemed to be a bit more drab.
"Is it just my imagination? It's strange..."
Jeong-min looked around at the objects with the flashlight and picked up a small box.
"This is..."
A famous brand of cereal that Jeong-min also occasionally bought. But the language written on the packaging box was not Korean.
"This is... all in English... Is this the inventory of someone who lives in an English-speaking country?"
He roughly looked around, but since there weren't many items, he was able to finish exploring quickly.
"There's not much to see here. Should I move on to the next one?"
Jeong-min touched the wall and used the Clairvoyance skill and Spatial Movement skill again to move to the next inventory.
Jeong-min, having arrived at the inventory, looked around.
"Oh... there's quite a bit here?"
It was an inventory with various items, though not as many as Leia's.
Jeong-min turned on the flashlight and began to examine them one by one.
"Coming to these other inventories like this, I can definitely tell. The inventory I went to before definitely had walls with a more drab, gray color. What's the difference? Was there something special about that inventory?"
Jeong-min had a question, but he couldn't find an answer, so he gave up and began exploring the inventory.
Jeong-min decided to look at the weapons first and picked up a large weapon that was nearby.
"Hmm. It's a pretty brutal-looking sword. It's also quite large... This... isn't an item... is it?"
Jeong-min opened the status window.
[Choi Jeong-min
Strength: 24(+10)
Stamina: 25(+10)
Agility: 20
Intelligence: 11(+10) [MP:24/38]
Gold held: 410 Gold
Skills held: Gate(Lv.1), Spatial Movement(Lv.2), Clairvoyance(Lv.1), Eye of Appraisal(Lv.1), Mana Recovery(Passive)(Lv.1), Detection(Passive) (Lv.1)]
"...Hmm?"
Jeong-min confirmed that the Strength stat was increased by 10, and the Stamina stat was increased by 10.
"This... is an item with stat increase options... The increase rate is insignificant, but... still..."
Jeong-min put down the sword.
"It's not a great item, but... it's an item that can't be obtained on Earth right now... In that case..."
Jeong-min sighed softly.
"That means the owner of this inventory is also from another world, not Earth... Like Leia..."
Jeong-min shook his head and muttered.
"...How many places is the [Trial of God] being conducted in? How many other worlds are there?"
Jeong-min picked up the other weapons next to him one by one.
Most of them were items with stat increase options similar to the sword he had first picked up.
After picking up and putting down all the weapons, Jeong-min's eyes fell on a large number of glass bottles placed in one corner of the inventory.
White bottles with long spouts and round bodies. The entrances were covered with lids made of the same material.
When he picked one up, he could feel the movement of a liquid sloshing inside.
"...Is it some kind of potion?"
Jeong-min opened the lid and smelled the liquid inside.
"Hmm... the scent is quite... nice... What is it...?"
Unable to overcome his curiosity, Jeong-min looked at the glass bottle and used 'Eye of Appraisal'.
The information of the glass bottle appeared before Jeong-min's eyes.
[White Flower Liquor: A high-quality liquor made by receiving the dew of a hundred flowers. Brewed with 'Sun-yang's Brewing (lv.6)' skill. Stamina +20 for two hours when consumed.]
"Huh...?"
Jeong-min was surprised once that these glass bottles were all liquor, and again that this liquor gave a Stamina buff.
"These are all liquor that give buffs...?"
Jeong-min, who didn't drink much but enjoyed it quite a bit, swallowed hard.
"...Should I just take a sip...?"
His heart was moved by the temptation of the fragrant liquor, but Jeong-min shook his head.
"...I have a lot of things to do and I have to train tonight... I can't do that... Hmm... It's a shame... There's so much, wouldn't it be okay to take one bottle...?
Jeong-min hesitated, but soon shook his head.
"Eh, let's stop. Why bother with something that's not mine..."
Jeong-min put down the liquor bottle and explored other items.
"What's this?"
What Jeong-min picked up was a small wooden box.
When he opened the box, he felt a refreshing scent wafting out.
Inside the box, on top of a luxurious silk cloth, were three thumbnail-sized black pills.
Jeong-min used 'Eye of Appraisal' once again.
[Clear Mind Pill: A stat-enhancing pill made with 'Jeong-cheon's Pill Making (lv.4)' skill. Permanently increases all stats by 5 when consumed. One person can consume up to three times.]
"Heo..."
Jeong-min was very surprised to see the explanation that appeared before his eyes.
"A pill that raises stats? And not temporarily, but permanently? If I eat all these pills, all my stats will increase by 15? An item like this exists..."
Jeong-min put down the pill and looked around.
"Looking at the items here, I can roughly tell what kind of world the owner of this inventory lives in."
Jeong-min picked up a book stacked in one corner and opened it.
The book was filled with characters that looked similar to Chinese characters.
Putting the book down again, Jeong-min muttered.
"As expected... the world where the owner of this inventory lives is probably..."
At that moment, the dark interior of the inventory brightened.
The light coming in through the inventory gate, which opened silently, brightly illuminated the interior of the inventory.
'...The inventory gate opened?!'
Jeong-min tensed up and looked at the gate.
What was visible through the gate was the face of a man who looked flustered.
The man, wearing something like martial arts clothing often depicted in martial arts novels, reached out his hand towards the inventory gate and shouted something.
Whoosh
The sword that Jeong-min had first examined floated into the air and flew swiftly towards the gate.
The sword spun around and passed through the gate from the handle, and the owner of the gate grabbed the handle of the sword and turned his body around to swing it.
The sword swung by the man passed through the waist of a large monster behind him.
But at the same time, the monster's hand pierced through the man's back.
"Keuheok!!"
The man's desperate death cry, as he was looking at the gate in surprise, pierced Jeong-min's ears.
The man trembled once and collapsed forward, unable to get up.
"D... died...?"
Jeong-min couldn't come to his senses at what had suddenly happened before his eyes.
As the man fell, the situation beyond the inventory gate came into view.
The first thing that caught his eye was the large monster's gate.
But the feeling was different from the black gate that Jeong-min had seen so far.
A yellow, translucent gate stood there, emitting an ominous aura, and around it, large monsters that Jeong-min had never seen before were fighting with people wearing similar clothes to the man who had just died.
The people fought the monsters using their respective weapons.
Some people soared into the sky, stepping on the air to attack, and some attacked with white energy wrapped around the swords they were holding.However, due to the overwhelming number of monsters, one by one, people collapsed onto the cold ground.
Once everyone was dead, the monsters let out victorious roars towards the sky and began collecting the corpses.
The body of the man who seemed to be the owner of the inventory where Jeong-min was, was also dragged away by the monsters.
Jeong-min, witnessing the stark reality of people dying before his eyes for the first time, froze, staring only at the inventory gate.
'…Get a grip. I can't freeze up just because I saw this. I might see this countless times in the future.'
Jeong-min raised both hands and slapped his cheeks hard enough to make a sound.
He felt a tingling pain in his face, and his mind seemed to calm down somewhat.
'If it's a yellow gate... it's probably not D-grade at least. It's a gate higher than that. This world, which seems like it's straight out of a martial arts novel, must have started the [Trial of God] earlier than Earth... Anyway... the
owner of the inventory is dead, right? Is this inventory okay...? It's not going to disappear, is it?'
Fortunately, even though the owner had died, the inventory remained intact.
Just in case, Jeong-min looked around the inventory again and was greatly shocked.
'The inventory wall... it's changed!!'
The inventory wall, which had clearly reflected light subtly when he first entered, had turned a dull gray, like the wall of the inventory he had visited just before.
Only then did Jeong-min realize what the gray wall meant.
"An inventory with a gray wall... means its owner is dead... The owner of the inventory I visited just before... must have died too..."
Jeong-min thought, looking at the inventory gate, still open and showing the outside.
'…That gate will disappear after 30 minutes. And... it will never open again...'
The moment the man, the owner of the inventory, died flashed through Jeongmin's mind, but he shook his head and tried to shake it off.
'How many inventories have lost their owners... Not only on Earth, but in every world where the [Trial of God] is taking place, inventories are losing their owners even now...'
Jeong-min looked around with a gloomy face.
'The items in this inventory have become ownerless. Then... it's okay if I take them all, right?'
Jeong-min began to move the items into his space-expanding bag.
As he moved the items, Jeong-min felt an unknown sense of guilt.
The space inside the bag was quite large, enough to hold all the items in the inventory.
Jeong-min bowed towards the gate that was still open.
'I don't know who you are... but rest in peace...'
Jeong-min took all the items and opened the gate for his base, returning to his own inventory.
He no longer felt like continuing his inventory exploration.
Jeong-min suddenly felt like seeing Leia.
Jeong-min sat on the floor of his inventory and waited for the time he had promised Leia to come quickly.