The dampness of the cold cave settled over his old leather gloves.
Chae-ho lightly clenched and opened the handle of the iron sword in his hand. It was a familiar weight, one he had gripped until calluses had formed on his palms.
An E Grade dungeon located on the outskirts of Seoul.
This shabby cave, where individuals were allowed to enter alone, was the perfect place for him. It allowed him to avoid other people's attention and prevent unnecessary suspicion.
'This should be perfect for warming up.'
Inside the dungeon, the musty smell of dirt mixed with the scent of half-dried blood, creating a strange stench.
An ordinary Grade D Hunter would hesitate to enter alone without forming a party, but Chae-ho was different.
For years, he had worked as a porter for a Grade C party, observing monster habits so persistently that it felt as though he had eyes on the back of his head.
If there were only one or two E Grade monsters like goblins scattered around, he could deal with them without needing to use his skill.
Rustle.
The sound of a stone rolling came from the darkness.
Chae-ho stopped walking and raised his sword at an angle.
Beyond a curved passage outside his field of vision, a goblin crawled out, revealing its yellow teeth.
The moment it spotted Chae-ho, it charged forward with a shriek that sounded like its throat was being torn apart.
"Kieeeek!"
The crude dagger stabbed toward Chae-ho's thigh.
Chae-ho did not panic.
The moment the creature's shoulder moved, he had already read its trajectory. He lightly struck downward with his sword and knocked the dagger away.
Clang!
With a dull metallic sound, the goblin's stance collapsed.
Chae-ho did not miss the opening.
His iron sword drew a smooth curve and sliced across the goblin's throat.
"Kuhk, keugh......"
With a short death cry, dark red blood stained the floor.
The goblin collapsed, convulsed, and soon stopped breathing.
It had been a clash fought purely with physical ability and swordsmanship, without using his skill.
He felt the muscles that had stiffened overnight slowly loosen.
"Good. The feeling is still there."
Just as Chae-ho muttered lightly and was about to continue walking.
***
Swish!
As if the thick smell of blood had been a signal, strange screams erupted simultaneously from the cracks between the rocks near the cave ceiling and the blind spot on his right.
"Kieek!"
"Kyaaaak!"
Two goblins had been hiding in the darkness.
One leaped down from above like it was striking downward, while the other crawled low along the ground, aiming for Chae-ho's ankle.
This was not a simple ambush.
It was a synchronized attack with deliberately altered timing.
Even for a Grade D Hunter, it was a vicious coordinated attack that would be difficult to avoid if they lost focus for even an instant.
Two rusted blades with dulled edges rushed toward Chae-ho's neck and legs.
At that moment.
Chae-ho instinctively brought up the sensation he had carved into himself while training like a madman in the training room the previous day.
'Now.'
He decided to activate the skill for exactly one second.
Thoom.
Along with a cold vibration striking his mind, the flow of time around him stretched to an extreme.
The goblins' screams that had seemed ready to tear his ears apart became distorted into strange, low sounds, and the dirt falling from the ceiling seemed suspended in midair.
Countless pieces of information poured into his intensely sharpened vision.
The wrinkled bridge of the goblin's nose as it struck down from above.
The angle of the dagger held in the other one's grasp as it scraped along the ground.
Even the awkwardly shifted centers of gravity of both creatures.
'Idiots.'
The tangled paths of the two monsters were obvious in Chae-ho's eyes.
If things continued like this, the descending goblin's knee would inevitably collide with the lower one's shoulder.
There was no need to forcefully twist his body or desperately increase his speed.
Chae-ho simply stepped back half a step from the trajectory he had already read.
Then he canceled the skill.
***
Flash!
The world returned to its original speed.
The two goblins, which had been violently cutting through the air, panicked when their target suddenly disappeared.
The two blades that stabbed into empty space ended up exposing each other's weaknesses instead.
"Kyiek?"
Just as expected, the body of the goblin falling from above crashed down onto the one below.
Crash!
With their paths tangled, the two creatures rolled awkwardly across the floor and lost their balance.
It was a fatal opening.
They could not even control their own bodies, let alone defend themselves.
Chae-ho did not miss that brief moment.
The foot that had stepped back half a pace shot forward like a spring, and his sword stabbed in with a smooth, simple motion.
Squelch! Squelch!
The blade pierced the heart of the first goblin that had fallen to the ground, and as he pulled the sword free, he immediately cut the throat of the other creature that was flailing around.
"Ka, aaah......"
The two goblins collapsed helplessly while spilling blood.
From beginning to end, not a single unnecessary movement was involved.
Chae-ho lightly flicked the blood from his sword into the air.
He was not even breathing heavily.
His gaze moved toward the translucent status window floating in the air.
Remaining usage time: 9 seconds.
'This is insane.'
Chae-ho let out a hollow laugh without realizing it.
Exactly one second.
That short instant he had desperately divided while avoiding rubber bullets in the training room became an absurdly long and enormous opportunity in actual combat, one capable of deciding an opponent's life or death.
Just one second of Time Deceleration had allowed him to crush a two-monster synchronized ambush like a worthless scrap of paper.
This skill was not merely for buying time.
It was a merciless weapon that stripped away enemy trajectories, created paths where they destroyed themselves, and allowed him to drive his blade into the weakest point.
Knowing something in his head and experiencing its power while cutting through a monster's flesh in actual combat were on completely different levels.
"At this level, I can go deeper."
Chae-ho's eyes gleamed coldly as he gained confidence.
***
The deeper he went into the dungeon, the more rapidly the number of goblins increased.
When a wide open area with torches mounted along the cave walls appeared, more than ten goblins wandering in groups all turned their heads toward Chae-ho at once.
"Kieeeek!"
"Kyaaaak!"
After discovering the intruder, the monsters raised clouds of dirt and narrowed their encirclement from every direction.
Rusty weapons flew from the front, back, left, and right.
For an ordinary Grade D Hunter, this would have been a situation where they would desperately retreat toward a cave wall to avoid exposing their back.
But Chae-ho did not stop.
Instead, he walked directly into the middle of them.
Thoom.
The moment a spear came flying along the most dangerous trajectory, Chae-ho activated the skill.
This time, 0.5 seconds.
The flow of the world slowed as if it had sunk into mud.
The rotation of a stone floating in the air.
The angle of the spear tip stabbing forward.
The stomp of a goblin leaping from the left.
Countless pieces of information poured into Chae-ho's mind.
'The two on the right will collide with each other. If I clear the left side, the path opens.'
Chae-ho marked a safe opening where the trajectories would not reach, twisted his upper body, and claimed the blind spot.
Skill canceled.
Flash!
Within the world returning to normal speed, Chae-ho's sword drew a fierce arc.
The goblin's spear missed uselessly, causing its center of gravity to shift.
Chae-ho kicked behind its knee precisely, making it collapse, then sliced the back of its neck.
"Kyiek!"
When one fell, a hole appeared in the encirclement.
Through that opening, Chae-ho slipped between the monsters like a ghost.
Thoom. Flash.
Thoom. Flash.
He did not maintain the skill for long.
He did not waste it like an all-purpose invincibility skill.
He only activated and deactivated it at the terrifying instant before a monster's unpredictable attack reached him, when death was closing in from every direction.
When his vision slowed, he found openings.
When he turned the skill off, he immediately drove in a counterattack.
The insight he had accumulated by observing hundreds of battles as a porter.
And the minimum evasion routes he had carved into his body while nearly vomiting during training.
When those two things mixed with the scent of blood from real combat, the result was bizarre.
Clang! Squelch!
"Kyaa!"
"Kyiek!"
Every time his sword flashed, goblins collapsed like rotten logs.
His movements had none of the flashy skill effects or explosive power that shattered the ground.
But they were terrifyingly simple and efficient.
The monsters' attacks could not even brush the edge of Chae-ho's clothes by a sheet of paper's width, and his sword always pierced the vital points where they were most defenseless.
It looked as if the goblins were offering their own necks toward the tip of his blade.
"Haaah!"
The last remaining goblin leaped forward in desperation.
But Chae-ho was already standing at its landing point, holding his sword upward.
Squelch!
The sword tip pierced beneath the goblin's chin and passed straight through to the top of its skull.
The convulsing goblin went limp and released its final breath.
Tap. Tap.
The sound of blood running down the sword and staining the floor filled the quiet cave.
"Whoo."
Chae-ho pulled out his sword, shook off the blood, and exhaled deeply.
Around him lay the corpses of more than ten goblins.
If it had been the old Chae-ho alone, even escaping that encirclement without injury would have been difficult, let alone defeating them.
But now, Chae-ho's body did not have a single scratch.
He was not gasping for breath or feeling his muscles scream.
Before even a drop of sweat could form along his spine, the battle had ended anticlimactically.
The status window appeared before his eyes once again.
Thanks to using the skill only in short bursts at the most dangerous moments, the time remaining was still comfortable even after wiping out an entire dungeon group.
'It's useful.'
The image of the Grade D Hunter who passively hid behind others and only carried luggage was nowhere to be found.
It was the moment he confirmed with his entire body how terrifyingly effective his strategy of prediction and preemption, sharpened in the training room, truly was in real combat.
Under the faint torchlight illuminating the dark cave, Chae-ho tightened his grip on his old sword.
A cold smile spread across his lips.