[ SKILL: "BLOOD LUST" HAS BEEN ACTIVATED ]
[ TARGET STATS ARE REDUCED BY 50% ]
Bloodlust cost 100 mana and was his only chance.
He won't be able to use it a second time because he has a measly 90 mana left.
However, this way he bought himself at least one minute.
Wanting to make the most of this precious minute, with the monsters clearly weakened, Jin-Woo began attacking as fiercely as he could.
With terrifying momentum, he set about completely dismantling the knights.
Armor and armor fell to the ground, before one more body fell to the floor, he was already attacking another knight, not wanting to waste time.
It was a pity that the speed at which he defeated the knights was much slower than the speed at which the new knights surrounded him.
Even in the middle of the mad battle, Jin-Woo stole a glance at the clock.
[ 00:03:19 ]
Three minutes!
Pathetically little if he was honest with himself.
He hoped he could make it to at least fifteen minutes, worst case scenario.
If this time was converted into points, how much would he get?
Wouldn't it be good if he left this place now?
However, he had no room to think seriously about it.
Even as he thought, the knights continually proceeded to attack him.
He had managed to destroy countless knights, but he simply couldn't deal with so many of them.
In the end, Jin-Woo was buried in a sea of knights.
His health began to decline dangerously.
[ HP: 1036/10270 ]
[ PASSIVE SKILL "TENACITY" HAS BEEN ACTIVATED ]
[ 00:05:08 ]
Five minutes and eight seconds.
Too Little. Far Too little.
But I guess he had no choice.
Now completely trapped among the knights, Jin-Woo thrashed around helplessly in this silver prison and dug through his back pocket.
However...
The Return Stone slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor.
The round stone struck the foot of one of the knights, rebounded slightly, and rolled far away from him.
Jin-Woo hurriedly reached for the stone, but it quickly disappeared from sight.
The knights were constantly crowding around him, pushing each other and pushing each other without thinking.
Those metal cans must have been incredibly stupid to do something so thoughtless, but he had no way to think about it.
Breathing instantly became almost impossible.
His consciousness slowly began to blur.
He kept getting hit by the knights as he was trapped beneath them and as his mind began to darken.
He deserved this opportunity after going through so much. So how could he let it end like this?
So pathetic?
Because he had been at the bottom for so long, he wanted to be at the top more than anyone else.
He knew the suffering of the weak better than anyone else. He tried everything to survive, and when he survived, others kept pointing fingers at him.
How could a rank E help him here?
So how could he just watch and do nothing when a ladder was placed before his eyes that could take him to the very top?
He remembered well the voice that always barked from behind him.
He remembered a quiet laugh full of contempt.
He will fight until the very end.
Even if his HP drops to 10...
No, until 1.
He will bite and tug like crazy until the end.
He would fight until he collapsed, stopped breathing, went blind and covered in all the blood he had.
Jin-Woo rushed forward, pushing most of the knights away from his body.
He hit blindly at the first target he saw.
The knight's armor dented significantly and the monster itself fell backwards. Other knights collided with him and they all fell on their backs.
But even so, more knights attacked Jin-woo.
In response, Jin-Woo's movements became more violent and desperate.
Without exception, the knights colliding with Jin-Woo's body parts, be it his fist, elbow, knee, or feet, were destroyed like several paper dolls.
However, all this time, his fatigue was inexorably increasing and his speed was decreasing.
One by one, the knights he couldn't defeat in one blow struck at him. Jin-Woo resorted to hitting them three or four times and made sure to destroy them.
[ 8 SECONDS REMAINING ]
[ 7 SECONDS REMAINING ]
[ 6 SECONDS REMAINING ]
Meanwhile, a strange countdown ticked silently. He was too focused on the battle, so he didn't notice him until the clock reached a single number.
What?
Was the quest coming to an end?
But he had to last as long as he could...
For a brief moment, a glimmer of hope appeared in his head, but it turned out to be just a useless dream.
[ 00:06:27 ]
The job counter was still counting as it should. So what was it?
[ 5 SECONDS REMAINING ]
In the meantime, he destroyed two more knights.
However, contrary to Jin-Woo's unyielding stubbornness, his entire body was now riddled with various types of wounds. Gradually it became more and more difficult to raise my arms.
His weakened fist was no longer enough to stop the knights' attacks and charges.
[ 4 SECONDS REMAINING ]
[ 3 SECONDS REMAINING ]
Jin-Woo found himself sandwiched tightly between the two knights hitting him from the front and behind, and he let out a pained groan.
The other knights rushed at him as if they didn't want to miss this chance.
In the blink of an eye, Jin-Woo was buried under the masses of knights and couldn't even lift a finger.
Again.
[ 2 SECONDS REMAINING ]
This time he didn't have enough strength to throw them off.
Even at this time, more knights stood on Jin-Woo. Instead, the silver waves became a silver mountain.
Jin-Woo's breathing became incredibly rough.
At this rate, he would be choked to death first, not crushed.
Jin-Woo's hand somehow escaped from the knights' gaps and pointed helplessly at the sky.
[ HP: 93/10270 ]
He was in a really desperate situation. But even then, Jin-Woo didn't give up.
Just as Jin-Woo managed to tighten his hand pointing to the sky, the mysterious countdown finally announced its end.
[ 1 SECOND REMAINING ]
[ 0 SECONDS REMAINING ]
[ YOU FAILED TO COMPLETE TODAY'S QUEST ]
[ NOTICE! ]
[ FOR A SPECIFIED TIME, YOU WILL BE TRANSPORTED TO THE PENALTY ZONE]
Penalty Zone
Oh...
Oh!
It was then that he realized that he had not completed his daily quest.
He naively thought that the quest would take him at most two hours and on the way home he would do the running and the rest of the exercises at home.
Who would have thought that things could develop like this?
Just like in the hospital, everything started shaking violently.
The knights began to turn into sand and it fell on his face.
The world around him was changing.
Jin-Woo silently laughed to himself.
Now he understood why the system wished him luck.
Was he trying to suggest that the task itself was unimaginably difficult, to the point that he needed luck to complete it?
Or maybe he just wanted Jin-Woo to score as many points as possible.
Luck, coincidence, whatever it was called, he didn't care. No matter what it was, his chance had come.
He blinked, feeling sand in his eyes.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the middle of an endless sea of sand.
Jin-Woo lay face up, staring blankly at the sky.
His fingers dug into the desert sand as the breaths he had been holding exploded from his mouth.
A sense of relief wrapped tightly around Jin-Woo as he slowly began to sit up.
This place looked exactly like the penal dimension from his memories.
He had to pull himself together and make good use of this incredible opportunity he had been given.
A chance to survive.
He had no illusions that one more minute and he would be dead.
He had to reorganize and reflect.
He opened the status window looking at his life.
[ HP: 92/10278 ]
[ MP: 202/850 ]
[ FATIGUE: 91 ]
The first thing he had to do was beat the damn fatigue.
When he first came here for the one and only time, he was at level one and had no idea about the existence of the shop.
He didn't even have a complete idea of what was happening or what the system was.
Although it wasn't like he now knew exactly what the system was, he knew more or less how to use it.
He opened the store, praying that it would be possible here.
Something like this could have been blocked in the penalty zone.
After all, a penalty is a penalty.
But, to his great relief, he saw a familiar window in front of him with the store's offers.
This was probably the first time his fatigue exceeded 90 points.
Opening the consumables tab in the store, Jin-Woo looked at the offer of potions.
There were four types of regenerative potions.
[ COMMON REGENERATION POTION ] for 1000 gold.
[ HEROIC REGENERATION POTION ] for 3000 gold.
[ LEGENDARY REGENERATION POTION ] for 5000 gold.
[ MYTHICAL REGENERATION POTION ] for 10000 gold.
He had enough gold that this time he could afford the best of them, in addition, the level of fatigue was so high that obtaining ordinary or heroic potions would take an extremely long time, he would have to drink much more of them than he would like and in the end, it would cost him as much as the price of the best potion.
And if he had to choose between legendary and mythical, he preferred to buy the best if he had to.
[ YOUR FATIGUE HAS BEEN ELIMINATED ]
[ YOUR FATIGUE HAS BEEN ELIMINATED ]
[ YOUR FATIGUE HAS BEEN ELIMINATED ]
The fatigue problem was gone, but he was still low on HP.
He bought a powerful health-renewal potion, but to his dismay, after drinking it, absolutely nothing happened.
He bought another one, the weakest and cheapest, fearing another waste of gold.
Only after he had completely emptied the bottle did he finally understand the cause of this anomaly.
[ WHEN YOUR REMAINING HP IS LESS THAN 10%, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HEAL YOURSELF WITH HEALTH POTIONS. ]
What a simple reason - his remaining HP was too low.
Even health potions had their limits.
This was not a foreign concept to him.
Just as a healer's rank determined the extent of his healing ability, potions also could not heal beyond a certain limit.
He remembered a saying he once heard.
"You can't get blood from a stone."
He learned something important today. He could have landed himself in a really sticky situation, believing that potions could solve everything.
That's why it was important to experience it firsthand.
And as usual, the system didn't bother to help in terms of explaining anything.
I guess he was forced to wait until his health regenerated itself.
He didn't know what the rules were exactly, and the system, as usual, wasn't willing to explain more than the basic minimum.
But maybe he'll be able to get his life back after leveling up.
He clearly remembered those pesky centipedes that had chased him here for four fucking hours.
He sensed the presence of life forms beneath the surface.
Jin-Woo jumped to his feet.
His whole body was as light as a feather. His strength was fully restored thanks to the potion.
Standing straight on his feet, Jin-Woo turned and looked.
As he expected, the place where he was lying a second ago began to collapse and a deep crater formed there.
The first time he was here, he thought that if he accidentally slipped and fell into it, he would surely die.
But now he had so much freedom that he actually watched the entire process with a bit of fascination.
At the very bottom of the sand crater, the earth began to "boil" and tremble before...
The sand exploded, jumping into the air all around, and then a large, clearly pissed-off centipede appeared.
So far, everything matched his memories.
At the time, he found this monster macabrely terrifying. Not only in terms of strength but also in appearance.
But now he couldn't shake the feeling that he was watching some kind of slow-motion video.
Jin-Woo raised his eyes a little higher.
And he had to clearly acknowledge those red letters floating above the centipede's head.
Its name was written in red letters, the same color as Cerberus.
Just then, notification of the quest appeared before his eyes.
[ NOTICE! ]
[ PENALTY QUEST: SURVIVE ]
[ OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE UNTIL THE ALLOCATED TIME IS EXPIRED ]
[ PENALTY DURATION: 4 HOURS. ]
[ REMAINING TIME: 4H 00MIN 00SEC ]
Confirming the details of the message, Jin-Woo clenched his fist tightly.
He wondered if the timer on the job change task stopped after Jin-Woo temporarily left there or if it continued counting.
He didn't use the return stone so maybe there was a chance the counter was still working there.
He was almost sure that when the penalty quest was over, he would be sent back to the dungeon where the quest regarding changing his job took place.
According to the system, this place was supposed to be destroyed if Jin-Woo used the return stone.
And if he didn't use it, this place should still exist.
What if time spent in the penalty zone was considered as time survived during the quest?
The number of points awarded to him would probably be huge.
Four hours!
He couldn't endure even ten minutes and tried to withdraw, but just by moving to this place, he now got four hours for free.
However, there was one more problem he had to solve first. Could he get out of here alive with less than 100 HP?
Since he couldn't heal himself with potions, he had to do his best to carefully kill these centipedes until he leveled up.
Jin-Woo summoned the dagger into his hand.
[ REMAINING TIME: 3H 59MIN 59SEC ]
Then, as soon as the punishment began, he lunged forward, even before the centipede could move.
Jin-Woo shortened the distance in the blink of an eye and lightly jumped in front of the centipede
He didn't even need 20 seconds to kill the first centipede.
It was a complete contrast to when he fought Cerberus, who was supposedly on the same level as the centipede.
He has now become incredibly strong.
On the other hand, he has been leveled up many times since then.
It was quite an obvious conclusion.
Now he felt that a small amount of HP would not be such a big problem and danger as he had been worried about a moment earlier.
Now his problem would be the number of monsters in this place that he could hunt to reach the next level.
This would be the only way to increase his chances of winning when thrown back into the job change quest.
If he returned there without full HP, he would die there like a stray dog.
More monsters began to break out of the ground.
Almost immediately, Jin-Woo's expression brightened.
Seeing all those centipedes sticking their heads out of the sandy surface, Jin-Woo couldn't contain the wide smile that blossomed on his face.
These four hours would be very fruitful; he was sure of that.
***
[ THE SKILL "CRITICAL ATTACK" HAS LEVELED UP! ]
[ YOU HAVE LEVELED UP! ]
[ YOU HAVE LEVELED UP! ]
[ YOU HAVE LEVELED UP! ]
[ YOU HAVE LEVELED UP! ]
[ REMAINING TIME: 0H 06MIN 33SEC ]
As a result of the battles with these centipedes over the last four hours, his level increased by four and now stood at 51.
Before he realized it, the penalty quest was coming to an end.
[ PENALTY QUEST: SURVIVE ]
[ OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE UNTIL THE ALLOCATED TIME IS EXPIRED. ]
[ PENALTY DURATION: 4 HOURS. ]
[ REMAINING TIME: 0H 06MIN 27SEC ]
Soon, he would have to go back.
Jin-Woo looked around. Centipede corpses filled his field of vision wherever he looked. Thanks to them, he had fully recovered his HP.
He regretted a bit that these creatures didn't drop any items. Even some junk to sell in the shop and earn a bit of gold.
Well, it would be strange if loot appeared when he was supposed to be punished by staying in this place.
He stopped worrying about it and instead prepared himself.
- Shop.
He currently had just over 3 million gold coins.
Humanoid-type monsters dropped a leather pouch containing gold very often, and Igris also gave him 1.5 million gold in one go.
So now he had enough money to spend.
Jin-Woo spent all his gold to buy one weapon.
In fact, there was this one dagger that caught his attention.
[ YOU HAVE PURCHASED "KNIGHT KILLER." ]
[ ITEM: KNIGHT KILLER ]
[ DIFFICULTY LEVEL: B ]
[ TYPE: DAGGER ]
[ ATTACK +75 ]
[ KNIGHT KILLER EFFECT: DEALS 25% BONUS DAMAGE WHEN USED AGAINST ENEMIES WEARING ARMOR. ]
It was a specially created weapon to deal with enemies wearing armor. And it cost 2,800,000 million gold.
To buy this weapon, he had to spend almost 2/3 of all the gold he had in reserve, but he had little choice in the matter.
He couldn't take the gold to his grave.
Fists were not very effective. And his current dagger even less so.
The second, slightly more strange purchase was an ordinary cheap bandage.
In his right hand, he held the dagger with a quite frightening-looking blade resembling a saw blade and tightly wrapped it with a bandage.
After tying it to his hand, he was sure that the weapon would not fall out during the fight, just like the unfortunate stone of return.
It may not have been the most convenient solution, but he hoped it would be effective.
He also thought about tying his dagger to his left hand, but decided against it.
Not being able to use both hands would be too cumbersome and could even prove dangerous.
He figured having at least one of his hands still retaining mobility would make his life more enjoyable.
As he was putting the remains of the bandage back into his inventory, he noticed the Rune Stone from Igris.
Well, he unwisely put it in his inventory instead of breaking it right away.
He thought he was safe and the task was over, when in fact it had not even begun.
Now he will learn a lesson for the future.
And not only this one.
[ RUNE STONE: THE COMMANDER'S TOUCH ]
[ BREAKING THIS RUNE STONE WILL GRANT YOU A SKILL ]
The new skill may prove to be somewhat useful. He had to use every available power-up he had.
Whether it was an item or a skill.
Jin-Woo did not hesitate and broke the Rune Stone.
[ SKILL: "THE COMMANDER'S TOUCH" HAS BEEN ACQUIRED ]
[ SKILL: THE COMMANDER'S TOUCH LV.1 ]
[ ACTIVE SKILL ]
[ NO MANA REQUIRED ]
[ THE ABILITY TO PHYSICALLY CONTROL OBJECTS WITHOUT TOUCHING THEM ]