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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Starting with 13 Hidden Traits
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Thirteen Hidden Traits!
"Useless slave bastards! Can't you walk any faster?"
Crack!
A sharp pain jolted me awake.
My body tumbled across the ground, unable to keep its balance, and only after my head smacked into the sand did I realize something was terribly wrong.
'What the hell is going on?'
I'd blacked out while watching the game intro.
And when I came to, this was the situation.
It was utterly bewildering, but my mind cleared with surprising speed.
'This isn't my body.'
Thick hands. Muscles so bulging and veiny even a bodybuilder would weep.
This wasn't my body. Yet it felt vividly real, just like mine.
My wrists were bound tight, and judging by the current circumstances, I was being dragged along.
I lifted my head. Hundreds of other men were lined up in chains, being hauled forward just like me.
Putting together the whip-wielding bastard who'd lashed me and the overall scene, the answer was clear.
'War slaves.'
Defeated soldiers. Captured after losing a war and turned into slaves.
But what shocked me more was the massive monster leading the procession up ahead.
'A Hydragon!'
That freakish beast, a mashup of a hydra's nine heads and a dragon's lower body—it looked horribly familiar.
I'd never seen it before, yet the moment I laid eyes on it, I knew exactly what it was.
Hydragon.
The first major ordeal every player in the game inevitably faced!
The graphical abomination had materialized right in front of me.
I'd raised nearly a thousand characters and slain that many of them, so of course it felt familiar—but instantly recognizing a game monster in real life wasn't exactly normal.
'I need to get up.'
No time for reminiscing.
If I stayed slumped here, I'd die.
The moment I stood, a whip cracked toward me.
Fur stood on end from the searing pain, but I swallowed my groan.
"Collapse one more time, and I'll feed you to the Hydragon."
...So it really was a Hydragon.
Now everything was certain.
'Pangeniar. I've entered the game world?'
An incomprehensible event.
I should have been freaking out, but astonishingly, I felt calm.
In fact, I'd already sized up the situation and adapted in seconds.
'Every sensation, from touch onward, feels exactly like reality. ...Which means.'
It was a game, but not a game. Utterly real, yet I remembered rolling the dice at the end.
All random.
Hadn't everything been randomized?
If this was the result, there was one thing I absolutely had to check.
"Status window."
That was the moment.
Rustle. A rolled-up parchment appeared before my eyes and slowly unfurled.
Level: 1
Strength: 12 Vitality: 12 Agility: 12
Intelligence: 12 Mana: 12
[Health][Constitution][Intelligence][Sensation]
[Swordsmanship][Shield Mastery][Spear Mastery][Axe Mastery][Dagger Mastery][Archery]
[Light][Darkness][Fire][Water][Earth][Wind][Air]
[Void]
[Art][Scholarship][Leadership][Observation]
...
[Activated Hidden Traits]
[Void]
[Dexterity]
[All Master]
[Weapon Master]
[Giant's Magic Resistance]
[Druid's Nature Affinity]
[Iron-Blooded Lord's Heart]
[Beast Lord]
[Golden Grace]
[Heavenly]
[Mutation]
[Glutton]
[Great Sage]
...
[Until Pangeniar Collapse: 6.12%]
<[As collapse progresses, the boundary between reality and Pangeniar crumbles.]>
<[When collapse exceeds 10%, the first rift will occur.]>
'Crazy.'
I barely suppressed the urge to curse out loud.
The status window had appeared, sure—but what it showed made no sense.
First, the stats.
Normally, stats ranged from 1 to 10 based on talents. But these were 12. All of them evenly starting at 12.
In five years of playing Pangeniar, this was the first golden starting stats I'd ever seen.
And that was just the beginning.
'How many talents is that?'
The parchment scrolled down endlessly. Over 200 talents acquired, and more than 10 hidden traits activated.
Hidden traits were what made even a single one turn you into a supreme powerhouse capable of uprooting mountains and dominating the world. And I had exactly 13.
'Thirteen hidden traits.'
Not even named NPCs who'd devoured stars to transcend, or abyss-level top monsters, had 13 hidden traits. At most five.
Unprecedented.
One in particular jumped out.
'Iron-Blooded Lord's Heart!'
The linked hidden trait that emerges when you max out all physical talents—Iron-Blooded Lord's Heart.
Roughly, it granted abilities like 'never tiring easily, unflappable in most situations, and quick adaptation.'
It also boosted invisible stats like 'Stamina' and 'Honor' in the status window, unlocked higher-quality quests, and bestowed the 'qualities of a lord.'
And there were 13 such traits.
I took in all the hidden traits, then eyed the next section.
'Pangeniar collapse. Boundary with reality? No idea what that means.'
I had no clue. What was clear was that events far beyond normal comprehension were unfolding around me.
But I couldn't afford to stand there pondering forever.
"Hey."
I called out to the man trudging ahead.
He turned his head weakly—a man missing his right middle and index fingers.
"What?"
"Where are we?"
"...? Kaltzman Desert."
I ignored his look—like I'd collapsed from heatstroke and lost my mind—and pressed on.
"Kaltzman Desert? We're not heading to Paysalmer, are we?"
The Kaltzman Desert in the continent's southeast was infamous, home to three major tribes.
All three made their living from slave hunting and constant warfare—like utter lunatics.
Paysalmer was the mid-sized trading hub where they sold off their captured slaves.
"Yeah. So give up any hopes of making it back alive."
That explained the lifeless eyes of the slaves.
Once dragged into Paysalmer, no slave ever came out alive.
'A starting point you should never pick. If you spawn in Kaltzman Desert, just delete the character and start over.'
The desert had a notorious reputation from the start.
I'd once tried it out of curiosity and quit immediately.
After that, I'd never chosen Kaltzman Desert as a spawn point.
'Damn it.'
My mistake for randomizing the starting point too.
Who could I blame?
I unpacked my last bundle of questions.
"But did the Kaltzman tribes always handle slaves in such massive numbers?"
Even big slave traders usually managed dozens at most, but this caravan had to be over 300.
The man scowled.
"How the hell should I know?"
"Why are we being dragged like this?"
"Why us? Hell if I know—stragglers from the expedition, maybe?"
"Expedition? What expedition?"
"Sigh... The Demon Realm expedition centered on the Eight Heroes. We lost, and you and I got caught running away. Heat getting to you or what?"
Eight Heroes? Demon Realm expedition?
'Ah!'
...It was my story.
No—more precisely, the character I'd played right before creating this one.
I'd gathered eight unique-grade items from the eight strongest characters to form an expedition.
And we'd gotten wiped spectacularly.
We'd made it near the Demon God's Temple in the Demon Realm but couldn't open the final door, ending in game over.
Apparently, that had become known as the Eight Heroes and the expedition.
"Fuck. If it weren't for the infighting, the expedition would've succeeded...!"
Infighting?
What infighting?
I started to ask, but the ground shook.
At the same time.
"Main Quest 1: Survive!"
"Reward: Issued differentially based on performance"
"On Failure: Death - Both game and real-world bodies will die."
A quest popped up before my eyes.
Survive? In this situation?
What made me freak out more was the failure penalty. Did "real-world body" mean my actual body?
The intro flashed in my mind—Pangeniar colliding with Earth.
Rumble! Rumble!
But there was no time for deeper thought.
With a guttural roar, massive shapes approached from afar.
"Three Hydragons!"
"Form ranks! Prepare for attack!"
The slave traders—seasoned soldiers—drew weapons from their gear and hunkered down.
Enemies charging in with three Hydragons started slaughtering the traders without a word.
"Snake Princess! It's the Snake Princess!"
"Snake Princess! Have you forgotten the non-aggression pact?"
"Aaagh!"
Screams filled the air.
Pacts and rules meant nothing; they were waging a massacre.
Yeah. A one-sided slaughter.
'Stay still and I'm dead!'
My instincts screamed.
They showed no hesitation even killing slaves.
Seemed like they planned to wipe everyone here.
I snatched a keyring from the pouch of the slave trader who'd whipped me, now dead right in front of me.
Freed my shackles, grabbed a scimitar, and braced for the assault.
"M-Me too!"
"Free me too!"
The expedition soldiers spotted the keyring and shouted.
They were soldiers who'd marched on the Demon Realm, after all.
I could hope they'd fight alongside me, but every one was crippled in some way.
[Lv. 1]
[Lv. 2]
Proof: All their levels were 1 or 2.
Level downs from physical injuries and mental trauma.
But still, levels that low? An expedition weaker than militia?
Thud!
"M-Me first!"
"Argh! Outta the way!"
I tossed them the keyring, and they started brawling.
Handle it yourselves. No time to unlock one by one.
Meanwhile, the slaughter raged on.
Pandemonium. Hell must be like this.
'I have to survive.'