Chapter 9
[Travel to 1st floor waiting room?]
[You have learned: Fainting Resistance Lv.1]
[You have learned: Battle Concentration Lv.2]
[You have learned: Awakening Lv.1]
Have I arrived…
As I regained consciousness, I saw a faint blue light shining from the portal.
I see the portal. My eyes came back to focus in this miraculous moment. The fact that I was able to see again overwhelmed me with joy.
I did it. I stayed alive.
Now I had to decide.
There was one question that wouldn’t leave my head even when I was confused and in pain.
What would happen if I go back to the waiting room with the arrow still pierced through my ankle?
What happens if I were to be healed in that state?
If I were to heal instantly with an arrow in me… maybe both my muscles and nerves would be crippled beyond repair, even with the power of the waiting room.
Do I have to remove the arrow before I enter?
How would I know? I’m not a doctor.
Maybe the waiting ‘s healing power is omnipotent like that of a game and would send a message,
‘You have been hit by an arrow. We will remove the arrow first then heal you :D’
And provide exceptional customer service like that.
But if it doesn’t, I don’t know what will happen to my leg.
And so I decided.
Although I was on the verge of death not too long ago, maybe it was the new skills I learned or maybe I saw the chance of being able to live but I could feel some vitality coming back in my body.
Perhaps my body is burning the last vestige of life, with death waiting just beyond.
I had no time to waste.
Alright, let’s do this. I could simply enter the portal if the pain and danger was at critical level.
Maybe it was due to the new skills or my nerves must have all died but the pain coming from my body had lessened significantly.
With full determination, I sat next to the portal leaning on an adjacent wall.
I could really die at any time now. I couldn’t even see just a moment ago.
If something went wrong, if I had the slightest thought that my consciousness was slipping, get in the portal.
I confirmed to myself.
“Hooo.”
I took a deep breath and bit down hard on the leather strap of my round shield.
I raised my right knee.
Shaking, I raised my sword…
And struck downwards.
Tick.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Tremendous amount of pain struck me again, as if it came from the very depths of h.e.l.l.
Blood dripped between my gums as I made inaudible groans.
Instinctively, my hands reached out to the portal. However, instead of teleporting back to the portal, I held on firmly.
I held the sword up again after crying and groaning for a time.
It was impossible to try hitting the arrow off in one swing. It was too greedy of me. No, why did I even have the thought of it being possible to begin with? I must have gone mental just from the overwhelming pain.
I lifted the sword once more and placed it on the arrow.
I started sawing.
“Uuuh! Guuuh!”
With each movement of the sword, I felt the pain piercing through my spine up to my neck.
Tick.
Finally, the tip of the arrow had been sawn off.
The pain finally subsided.
With my hand shaking, I grabbed on to the other half of the arrow pulled it out at once.
I had to groan and cry once more from the burning pain within my ankle.
Now instead of physically feeling painful, I felt emotionally depressed. f.u.c.king. Why me. f.u.c.king son of a b.i.t.c.h.
These f.u.c.king c.u.n.ts. I don’t know who you are. But I will kill you.
[You have learned: Pain Resistance Lv.3]
[You have learned: Haemorrhage Resistance Lv.2]
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Finally it was over.
It was time to be freed from this pain.
It felt like I was about to white out due to the pain but I also finally felt a sense of relief.
To end it, I pierced a small splinter of the arrow into the palm of my hand.
[Travel to 1st floor waiting room?]
Yes.
And then I lost consciousness.
“Mmmmm…”
When I woke up and opened my eyes, I saw the familiar view of the waiting room that I had stayed at for a few days.
I couldn’t feel pain any longer.
Slowly, I began to remember the pain I felt just before I fainted.
I actually nearly died.
It was beyond close, the closest anyone had ever reached.
I had pretty much done all the warm up exercises, changed into a swimming suit, dove straight into the River Styx, then was sent back because of a false start.
If I had come back here a little bit later, I may have had to introduce myself to my ancestors.
“Haaa…”
I felt a little bit relief. I avoided death and was free from pain.
As I looked downwards, my body was completely covered with dried blood. The white T-shirt I wore had dyed completely red.
And… f.u.c.k. Did I p.i.s.s myself?
Luckily the waiting room completely nullified the smell of blood and p.i.s.s.
I looked at the ceiling all dazed and lifted up my right hand.
The splinter of the arrow was rolling around on the floor and my wound was completely healed.
How nice. The service supplied by the waiting room was much more exceptional than I had expected.
It pulled out the splinter from my hand and even healed it.
In other words, all that bulls.h.i.t I went through for trying to take out the f.u.c.king arrow out of my ankle was for nothing.
Ahhh… Why am I so dumb? Am I r.e.t.a.r.ded?
If I had to pull it out, I could’ve just pulled it out in the waiting room. Not only does the waiting room heal everything, it also nullifies all sense of pain.
To do something so insane just because I regained hope from getting to the portal.
It wouldn’t have been weird if I died due to shock, or even excessive blood loss.
Simply said, I literally gambled with my life on the line.
Haa… Let’s not do something like that again.
… How did everyone else do.
“Community.”
[Difficulty h.e.l.l, Noticeboard (1/1)] P1
…..
Um, what?
How do I take this in?
I read it once more.
…..
Difficulty h.e.l.l, Noticeboard (1/1)
……
Again.
Difficulty h.e.l.l.
It meant the Tutorial’s difficulty was h.e.l.l.
h.e.l.l difficulty, Noticeboard.
It meant the Noticeboard for h.e.l.l difficulty in the Tutorial’s Community.
h.e.l.l difficulty, Noticeboard (1/1)
The first 1 meant the number of people currently on the Community.
In the h.e.l.l waiting room, there was one person and the person looking in the Community chat was only me.
Ok. I understand the 1.
The second 1 meant the total number of people in h.e.l.l difficulty.
1.
…..
I see. They’re dead.
All three of them.
‘How did all three of them die? This is unbelievable.’ For some reason I didn’t feel any sort of emotion like that.
To be honest, the thought of them possibly dying did cross my mind. In fact, surviving it would be more of a surprise. It was a miracle to do so.
If I didn’t have my shield I would have definitely died 10 times out of 10.
On top of that, Kyung Min and Su Ah didn’t even know they could come back to the waiting room.
Even if they avoided instant death, it would be difficult to survive all the bleeding.
Was it because I was about to die just before? Am I still in too much shock to feel emotion? Or, have I already adjusted to this crazy situation.
The deaths of the other three did not send me into any emotional or mental shock.
Although It was only for 3 days, I thought I managed to make a bond beyond that of friendship with them. But, all I felt was a little sadness for them, only that.
Was I the weird one?
I don’t know.
f.u.c.k.
Although my brain had calmly accepted the situation, tears flowed from my eyes. To think I could still cry even after all that s.h.i.t that happened before.
“…Status bar.”
It’s better to focus on something else to stop the crying.
I saw a lot of messages indicating I had received skills when I crawled my way to the portal. I couldn’t check them because of the situation I was in before, so I opened the status bar to check it out.
[Lee Ho Jae (Human)]
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 13
Endurance: 11
Intelligence: 21
Skills: Battle Concentration Lv.2, Will Lv.1, Awakening Lv.1, Pain Resistance Lv3., Haemorrhage Resistance Lv.2, Fainting Resistance Lv.1
Battle Concentration and Will skills that I learnt before being struck by the arrow had levelled up by one.
I also received 3 Resistance skills and Awakening.
Just looking at the name of the resistances vividly reminded me of the pain I went through.
[Pain Resistance (Lv.3)]
Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘pain’ is increased.
[Haemorrhage Resistance (Lv.2)]
Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘haemorrhage’ is increased.
[Fainting Resistance (Lv.1)]
Description: Resistance towards status effect ‘fainted’ is increased.
All of them were pa.s.sive skills that increased my resistance to a status effect.
They definitely looked like good, useful skills but I didn’t want to look at its effects at all.
All they did were to increase my resistance a little. They didn’t lessen the pain I felt or even stop any bleeding.
[Awakening (Lv.1)]
Description: Awakens the mind for a period of time in times of dire need.
This looked like another pa.s.sive skill too.
It would be nice if I had an active skill. I was just a little disappointed.
Now with everything checked…
Do I have to go back again?