NOVEL NEXT Chapter 8: Angel Slayer (2)
“What’s important now is to quickly reach level 10 and change jobs.”
Ryu Min immediately chose the first reward.
[You have chosen the experience points tripled buff.]
[The buff will automatically apply at the start of the 2nd round.]
With still a month to go until Round 2, Ryu Min had already made his reward selection. There wasn’t anything worth choosing other than the 3x experience points boost.
“Receiving 2,000 gold isn’t bad, but it’s better to change jobs as soon as possible,” Ryu Min thought to himself.
Changing jobs meant gaining a skill, and in this game, skills were worth far more than anyone could imagine. “Skills are practically worth three runes put together,” Ryu Min reflected.
Having a skill greatly increased a player’s power, and on top of that, receiving a rune reward as a commemoration for changing jobs was an added bonus. The sooner Ryu Min changed jobs, the more he stood to gain.
“As for the third reward, there’s no point in choosing it,” Ryu Min concluded.
The third reward offered information about Round 2, but it was of no use to Ryu Min since he already had all the information up to Round 20.With a cold gaze, Ryu Min looked down at the angel’s corpse. The golden blood that had splattered across the ground began to evaporate into thin air.
Soon, the angel’s body disintegrated into dust, leaving no trace behind. This was the natural process for creatures of spirit like the angels – their bodies vanished along with them after a certain amount of time.
“I’m glad I don’t have to bother with the disposing of the body. This way there’s no evidence left behind,” Ryu Min thought.
He scanned the area just in case there were any witnesses, but the sky and surroundings were clear of anyone who might have seen him.
“Since I killed the angel in the same place at the same time as before, there shouldn’t be any problems,” Ryu Min reassured himself.
He had used the same method as always, and since there were no witnesses or evidence left behind, he needn’t worry about anything.
“Angels are a selfish and self-centered bunch who only care about themselves, after all,” Ryu Min mused.
He wondered why no one had seen him, but that was the only concern he had.
“From Round 2 onwards, a different angel will take her place, just like before,” Ryu Min thought.
There was no need to worry about witnesses or evidence. Even without an angel supervising, they could all return safely.
Although they might not receive detailed guidance on how things will be when they return.
As the message announcing the end of Round 1 appeared, Ryu Min and the others who had been trapped with him retreated to the shadows.
“Congratulations on surviving,” the message read.
◀ END OF ROUND 1 ▶
[Entire Area]
└ Survivors: 900,514,645
[ESKS45-5 Area]
└ Survivors: 5,143
[Your soul will return to your original dimension shortly.]
[Round 2 begins at midnight on February 1st, 2022. See you in the next round.]
With that, Ryu Min and the others who had been trapped with him disappeared from view.
***
“Phew.”
Gasping for air as if he had come back to life, Hwang Yongmin sat up, exclaiming, “Oh my god!”
The first thing he saw was a multitude of people surrounding him.
“Where are we? This is the site of the festival, right?” he wondered.
He immediately checked his phone for the time. “5:20…?” It was January 1st, 2022. Five hours and twenty minutes had passed since the start of the festival. It roughly matched the time he had spent in that dream.
“Ugh… my head,” he groaned. “My arms and legs are all sore.”
Nearby, his friends who had been sleeping on the street started to awaken one by one.
“Hey, Yongmin!”
“Are you up?”
“I was asleep?”
“Not just you, I was also asleep.”
“What…? Did we all fall asleep together?”
“Wait, then that was all just a dream?”
“I also had a weird dream…”
“Me too!”
“Yongmin, did you dream too?”
“Well, actually…”
Looking around, Yongmin’s expression turned serious.
“I don’t think it was just a dream.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen to what people are saying.”
His friends perked up their ears at Yongmin’s words.
“We’ve come back? We really came back from that hell…!”
“What? I swear I was fighting goblins…”
“I’m alive… I survived!”
As people muttered and murmured, his friends’ expressions gradually turned pale.
It didn’t make sense for so many people to have had the exact same dream.
“Does that mean it was all real? The goblins, the first round…?”
“Then, does that mean we have to be called for the second round on the 1st of next month?”
“Ugh… Damn it.”
His friends’ faces fell at the bleak reality, but they couldn’t completely fall into despair.
“Hey, why isn’t he waking up?”
“Taesik, wake up. Taesik!”
One of their friends was still asleep.
He seemed asleep but he was as still as death.
“Fuckl! He’s not breathing!”
“Listen to his heart! Can you hear his heartbeat?”
His friends frantically tried to confirm Taesik’s condition.
But the results were despairing.
“His heart’s not beating.”
“What?”
“Then… is he dead?”
“Taesik… is he dead?”
His friends couldn’t believe that he was gone, but they couldn’t deny it either.
“Could it be that he couldn’t catch 100 of them?”
“Or he couldn’t make it to the top half?”
According to the rules of the game, they understood the reality of their friend’s death.
And it wasn’t just Taesik who couldn’t get up.
Almost half of the people gathered there were still lying on the chilly asphalt.
“Are all the people who can’t get up here… dead?”
“C… corpses?”
“Ugh…”
The thought of corpses made him feel sick. It would have been fine if they were goblin corpses, but the thought of dead humans triggered revulsion.
“Did only half of us survive?”
“Fuck, what do we do for the next round?”
“Can I survive?”
His friends were already worried, but Hwang Yongmin remained calm.
No, he pretended to be calm and held back his laughter.
If he laughed now, not only his friends but also others would look at him like a madman.
“If this isn’t a dream but reality, then it’s not just me who’s screwed, but everyone in the world, right?”
It was only for those between the ages of 15 and 29, but still, it was a lot of people whose lives were at stake.
“We have to survive this, no matter who we are or where we come from. It’s about equality, isn’t it?”
He was envious of those who were born to good parents and lived comfortably.
On the other hand, he felt that his life was unfair.
“But there’s no point in complaining about life anymore. Haha.”
His life was already ruined, even without his parents.
He had thought of becoming a gangster as soon as he graduated from school.
These days, he knew that gangsters made a lot of money from illegal activities.
“Don’t worry, you guys. Just survive, what’s there to worry about?”
“But it’s unfair… We haven’t even had a chance to enjoy ourselves, and now we have to die…”
“We’re not the only ones in this situation. What’s unfair about it?”
Upon hearing Hwang Yongmin’s words, his friends fell silent, seething inwardly.
“You bastard…with your pathetic life, you wouldn’t even be missed if you died right now,” one of them muttered.
“I still have so much I want to do,” Hwang Yongmin said, oblivious to his friends’ thoughts, and then seemed to have remembered something and kept looking left and right.
As he scanned the area, searching, his friends asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Just looking for someone, but I can’t seem to find him,” Hwang Yongmin explained.
“Who? Your personal shuttle?” his friend asked.
Hwang Yongmin nodded, frustrated at not being able to locate Ryu Min.
“Where could that bastard have gone? I thought I saw him over there before I fell asleep…did he die in the first round?” he wondered aloud.
Eventually, Hwang Yongmin gave up searching for Ryu Min.
“Well, maybe that loser died, it’s not like he would have made it far in the competition anyway,” he thought to himself.
No weakling like Ryu Min could survive in such a cutthroat competition.
As he turned his head, he suddenly noticed a person wearing a strange suit of armor.
“Huh? Who’s that guy? Where did he get that outdated armor from…?” Hwang Yongmin muttered.
In that moment, a lightning bolt of realization struck his mind.
“No way,” he thought.
He immediately yelled to his friends, “Hey! Everyone, turn on your status windows! It works here too!”
“Huh? Status window?”
“But that can’t be possible…”
“Really? It’s working!”
As they muttered about the status window, a transparent window appeared in front of Hwang Yongmin, visible only to him.
The system that he thought was only applicable in this otherworldly realm worked in the real world too.
“Does this mean all our stats and items will work too?” one of his friends asked in disbelief.
“This is amazing!” Hwang Yongmin and his friends exclaimed in unison, their spirits lifted by this glimmer of hope in their otherwise bleak situation.