Chapter 12

The secret art of assassins that lets one maintain composure and aim for mutual destruction with enemies even while dying, by momentarily blocking out pain.

Even when the orc’s club struck his side directly, with Pain Nullification activated, Yuseong only felt a slight sensation of his body tilting sideways.

‘Two remain. This is the decisive moment.’

Fighting through the throbbing headache caused by his accelerated thoughts, he swings both sword and whip simultaneously.

“Kuk…”

The sword that pierced through the falling orc’s side successfully achieved its goal, impaling the stomach of the foolish orc behind it.

Swish!

“Foolish human!”

The problem was the whip.

The orc smiled cruelly seeing the whip fly off in a completely wrong direction, nowhere near its target.

A mocking smile at the clumsy skill that couldn’t even hit a target just a few steps away, and at the shallow idea of trying to stop its advance with a mere whip.

Though he was frantically pulling back his arm to retrieve the whip, the distance was too close to swing again, and the sword had both orcs’ weight on it, making it impossible to pull out with one hand.

“Die!”

Certain that there was no way to reverse this situation no matter what, the orc swung its axe with full force without even thinking about defense or evasion, and Yuseong raised his left hand toward the orc before lightly pulling his finger.

“Someone will die. But not me – you.”

Bang!

An ear-splitting explosion and acrid gunpowder smell.

The orc stared blankly at the metal object in Yuseong’s left hand before staggering and falling backwards.

‘…Lucky there were bullets left.’

The final whip strike wasn’t aimed at the orc.

Remembering from watching the police fight orcs that modern weapons could inflict meaningful damage, Yuseong had swung it to grab the revolver.

He somehow managed to retrieve the police officer’s revolver through a combination of three techniques – mental focus from Asura Perception Way, the serpentine prey-snatching movement of Snake Shadow Whip Technique, and the willfully controllable Thorny Vine – but if there hadn’t been ammunition left, the survivor here would have been the orc, not him.

“Keh…hack!”

As Pain Nullification ended and the ignored pain came flooding back, Yuseong collapsed to the ground with violent coughing and rising nausea.

Lifting his clothes slightly revealed his side had turned not just blue but black.

‘Judging by the location, broken ribs? No blood mixed in so internal organs seem unharmed…’

No matter how many times he retched, only saliva and stomach acid came up.

After catching his breath for a moment while assessing his condition based on what seemed like movie knowledge, Yuseong activated Pain Nullification again and stood up.

His mana was nearly depleted and his physical condition was at rock bottom.

The gunshot might attract more monsters, so finding a safe place had to come first.

“Haa, haa…”

He walks with large strides but stops at the rising pain, gritting his teeth and repeating the cycle of activating Pain Nullification whenever mana recovers enough to walk again.

Though he initially planned to find somewhere safe, discreet and comfortable, realizing his current condition wouldn’t last long, Yuseong looked around briefly before heading toward a nearby commercial building.

Ding!

After sweeping energy bars and water into a plastic bag at the empty convenience store, Yuseong slowly climbed the stairs and entered through the nearest door.

“Kuk!”

The moment he closed the door, Yuseong collapsed on the spot, strength gone.

Though Pain Nullification had somehow let him move, Yuseong’s injuries weren’t the kind that would improve just by enduring the pain.

On top of that, Yuseong’s mind and body had reached their absolute limit after the desperate fight with the monster in the mansion, falling from the apartment and building collapse, endless simulations over fifteen days, and the fierce battle with the orcs.

‘Before losing consciousness…’

-There are many types of elixirs in the world. The Ten Thousand Year Wild Ginseng that grants massive yang energy, the Ice Crystal that grants extreme yin energy, the Pure Azure Stone Oil that grants the purest internal energy, the Sun-Moon Divine Pill that eliminates all impurities and creates a body suited for martial arts. But if asked to choose the greatest elixir among them, I would pick the Great Revival Pill without hesitation.

Though its absolute amount of internal energy gain and secondary effects are inferior to other elixirs, it’s the ultimate in stability – anyone can take it without side effects, whether they practice any type of martial art or even if they’re ordinary people who’ve never learned martial arts at all.

Recalling Hae Cheongyeong’s advice, Yuseong immediately popped the Great Revival Pill from his inventory into his mouth.

“…Let’s rest a bit.”

Then he closed his eyes, unable to resist the powerful drowsiness washing over him.

Only his faintly rising and falling chest showed that Yuseong wasn’t dead.

* * *

‘Cold’ was the first word Yuseong uttered upon opening his eyes to the chill spreading through his whole body.

After staring blankly for a moment at the unfamiliar scene instead of his familiar room, Yuseong belatedly recalled everything that had happened and got up with a sheepish expression.

Perhaps due to the Great Revival Pill’s effects, his side that had caused unimaginable pain with just breathing now only felt slightly sore.

Growl.

“…Better eat first.”

He unwraps an energy bar from the convenience store and puts it in his mouth while walking to the window to carefully peek outside.

Besides occasionally flickering streetlights, no other lights were visible.

Instead of the usual car engine sounds, only the cries of unknown beings occasionally pierced through the city’s silence.

Staring blankly at this scene, Yuseong burst into bitter laughter.

“Well, this is so absurd I can only laugh.”

He could only laugh hollowly at a situation that went so far beyond common sense, let alone the ordinary.

After coming back inside and silently satisfying his hunger with energy bars and water, Yuseong thought for a moment before taking off the goggles on his head and pulling out his smartphone from his pocket.

He judged that understanding the situation had to come first.

Fortunately the smartphone worked fine, and though the speed was slow with some lag, he could still connect to the internet.

‘The date is March 11th. It was March 7th when I bought the goggles, so 4 days have passed.’

He checked his smartphone’s internal information and various websites just in case, but nothing contradicted his memories.

As he’d suspected, this was definitely the reality where he had lived.

‘When I spent fifteen days in the martial world and came back, not even a second had passed in reality, so I thought time didn’t flow in reality while in other worlds, but is it just that each quest has different time ratios? For [Please, Anyone, Help Me!], each death averaged about 5 minutes and I died 999 times, so that roughly matches. More importantly, now…’

-RoomDweller: Mr. DeadGameThrower. There seems to be a slight issue with the item, could we meet again? ^^

Though he initially wanted to unleash a long message filled with curses and insults, Yuseong suppressed his anger with superhuman patience and wrote a conciliatory message.

The one at a disadvantage was him.

Rather than needlessly provoking, better to somehow coax and persuade to set up another meeting first…

Crunch.

Grinding his teeth, Yuseong began browsing portal sites.

Monsters with bizarre appearances like from creature films, cities in chaos, soldiers moving with grim expressions – all this was somehow within expectations, but seeing one particular post made Yuseong freeze.

[Ability User Direct Shot! Video of Giant Insect Extermination – Unfazed by Machine Gun and Grenade Barrage!]

A photo of a youth standing before a centipede-like monster the size of a small building, holding huge fireballs in both hands.

When he checked YouTube just in case, videos started appearing of countless people fighting monsters.

Some wielded weapons like in martial arts novels, some cast spells with incantations and hand signs like mages, some fought monsters with invisible forces like psychics.

They were called various names – martial artists, mages, psychics, saviors, ability users, awakened ones, and so on.

‘Could there be thousands or tens of thousands of goggles like this?’

After thoroughly searching through YouTube videos and websites just in case, he concluded that wasn’t the case.

Though many posts and videos were written by ability users rather than ordinary people, there wasn’t a single mention of goggles or anything similar, with most saying they suddenly gained powers or made contracts after hearing some voice.

‘Are the mechanisms behind the goggles and ability users different?’

Unlike people who just gained ‘abilities’, the goggles could bring not just ‘abilities’ but also ‘items’ from other worlds.

Though he couldn’t be certain yet, until finding evidence otherwise, he decided to consider the goggles, monster invasion, and appearance of ability users as separate matters without connection.

“…Well, the situation isn’t quite that hopeless.”

He’d been imagining the worst case like in web novels where the government helplessly collapses before sudden invasion without putting up any real resistance, but fortunately humanity was handling things reasonably well.

Come to think of it, even orcs could be fought with police revolvers, so it was rather unrealistic to think 21st century humanity with all its gunpowder weapons and cutting-edge equipment would collapse unable to overcome a monster invasion.

“But isn’t this already quite unrealistic?”

After scratching his head briefly, Yuseong turned off his smartphone upon seeing the low battery message while browsing the internet filled with all sorts of agitation, rumors and misinformation.

Monsters had appeared and suddenly emerging ability users were cooperating with the government to stabilize the situation.

This was the only certain thing in the current situation.

As someone who’d read countless web novels, Yuseong judged this was quite a favorable situation.

After all, wasn’t it better than otherworldly beings appearing that modern weapons couldn’t affect at all, or a zombie virus suddenly breaking out and civilization collapsing in an instant?

Though comparing reality to novels felt wrong, this was several times better than an apocalypse story – more like a raid or hunter story.

“Well, now that the identification is done…”

After pondering briefly, Yuseong swallowed dryly and reached for the goggles set carefully in the corner.