Level Up With the Gods
Chapter 10

It worked.

The flow of mana stabilized.

The mana bomb no longer stirred. The fact that it was registered as a skill indicated the mana bomb had completely formed.

Understandably, he couldn’t control it entirely yet, and he had to fight it to keep it from being unleashed.

Still...

Yuwon pointed his palm at the approaching monsters.

“This is good enough.”

The moment the mana bomb gleamed in his hand, a powerful light emanated with Yuwon at the center of it.

***

The stairway down to the subway station collapsed.

The heads of the monsters that were running toward Yuwon exploded, and their bodies collapsed and rolled on the floor.

The range wasn’t that wide, but its power was substantial.

I can’t control it easily yet.

Yuwon felt his mana leaving his body like water from a broken jar.

It used up too much mana since he could barely produce one mana bomb.

It’ll only be useful once the stat and the skill’s proficiency increases...

In the tower, mana bomb would become one of the most basic skills. It was simple, but it still required proficiency.

“This really isn’t my thing.”

There were definitely people who used the mana bomb as their main skill, but Yuwon didn’t normally utilize it in battles.

Two mana essences dropped and rolled on the ground.

Not all monsters had essence, which was why he was lucky to have collected so many before the tutorial started.

Yuwon picked up the mana essence rolling on the ground and put it in his inventory bag. He pulled out his sword and caught the monsters flinching at the power of the mana bomb.

“Huh?” Yuwon walked down the stairs. “What are you guys afraid of?”

Tutorial no.3 was a stage for hunting.

Yuwon had seventy hours, and he had no intention of wasting that time.

***

Two days passed after tutorial no.3 ended.

While tutorial no.1 saw the highest number of casualties, in terms of percentage, the greatest losses occurred in tutorial no.3.

Out of approximately 14,000 participants, only 400 managed to survive.

The survival rate for this tutorial was less than thirty percent.

“I think we might’ve gone too far.”

“Yeah... It’s kind of eerie in here.”

“We don’t have a choice. Hiding in a place like this seems to be the best option. But was Hongik Uni station always this big? Do you remember?”

“Don’t know. Maybe when the world turned upside down, this place did too.”

Three people entered the station: one woman and two men.

The woman walking in the back, Juyeon, said, “Hey, hey! Look.”

“What? Huh?”

“A convenience store?”

Their faces brightened up immediately.

They had been starting to worry about running out of the food they had packed.

“I bet they have instant noodles too!”

“Instant noodles? We don’t even have boiling water.”

“Who cares? We can just eat it raw.”

“Let’s go. I am starving.”

They rushed to the convenience store, thinking only of food. Something dropped down in front of the man who was running at the very front.

“Aaagh!”

“Junho!”

It was a huge green spider. The man screamed in pain with the spider covering his head, and he quickly fell.

As if his head had just melted, liquid mixed with poison and flesh dripped down on the floor. Immediately, Juyeon pulled out her sword, and Seongchan, the man by her side, grabbed his big hammer.

Bizarre crying sounds echoed as monsters near the convenience store began to appear one by one.

There was one zombie, two moss spiders, and three cannibal rats.

“Wait...”

“There are so many...!”

They had already lost one of their friends.

Will we be able to get through this?

Juyeon’s heart started racing.

For the past two days, the three of them had desperately tried to survive.

They hunted monsters and zombies outside, facing numerous risks.

They had also leveled up significantly. All three surpassed level 10 in two days, and their stats increased considerably.

However, Juyeon wasn't confident that this alone would allow them to kill the monsters in front of them.

But she didn't have enough time to think, as three cannibal rats soon rushed toward them.

The cannibal rats, each the size of a large dog, moved the fastest among the monsters in the station.

Juyeon quickly swung her sword at them. She had purchased the weapon from the messenger for 200 points, but it wasn’t enough to kill the cannibal rats.

“Eek!”

Anything faster than a zombie was able to cleverly avoid Juyeon’s sword by dodging left and right.

The two moss spiders that had melted their friend’s head had already closed the gap and were right in front of them.

“G-go away!”

“Seongchan!”

Juyeon tried to shake off the cannibal rats.

She got bit by one cannibal rat and killed another. In the meantime, Seongchan, who was fighting two moss spiders and a zombie, screamed after getting bitten by the zombie.

It was nearly impossible to handle six monsters with just two of them.

Is this really how I die...?

They had gone through so much to survive until tutorial no.3.

They wanted to try a little longer and survive. Juyeon, distracted by Seongchan’s situation, was startled when a cannibal rat jumped up and targeted her face.

Something flew in and popped its body like a balloon before she had a chance to react.

“...Huh?”

The cannibal rat’s blood splashed over her. Without having a chance to feel disgusted by that, Juyeon turned her head to the convenience store.

The broken door creaked open.

“Can you guys keep it down...?”

Through the gap, someone walked out.

“You woke me up.”

***

Yuwon went to take a nap. No matter how high your stats got, going too long without sleep would still fatigue you and dull your senses.

Between tutorials no.1 and no.2, it was the first time he’d slept in three days.

He’d chosen to sleep in the storage room in the convenience store deep in the station.

There was only one reason he could sleep in the subway station swarming with monsters.

It was because of the Odorless Powder he had purchased from the new messenger for a hundred points.

The odorless powder removed any scent where it was applied and protected the user from monsters with sensitive noses. After waking up, Yuwon checked the time.

[22 : 58 : 12]

About twenty-three hours remained.

Has it been about six hours?

Yuwon got up and took a big yawn.

It was enough to relieve his fatigue. A desire to sleep more, separate from his physical tiredness, peeked.

Well, I did push myself a bit.

Yuwon couldn't help but think that he may have been a bit too ambitious with his hunting over the past three days.

The constant push to keep leveling up, particularly before the end of tutorial no.3, had taken its toll.

Before he had a chance to finish that line of thought, he heard screams from outside. He shook off his desire to go back to sleep, the noise enough to bring him to full wakefulness.

It didn’t matter—a longer rest would only make the body lazy and dull anyway.

When Yuwon got up and exited the storage room, he saw two people fighting monsters at the entrance of the convenience store.

Though he had initially heard three different voices, the lifeless body on the floor indicated that one of them had died.

“...The others will die if I just wait.”

He wondered why they had come all the way here with such a small number of people.

It would’ve been safer for them to hunt at the station entrance where there weren’t as many monsters.

Let’s see the situation outside.

Yuwon looked around.

Inside the convenience store, the heavy canned sodas caught his eye.

He grabbed two cans and held them in his hands.

[Eyes of the Monkey is activated.]

The power of a skill with higher proficiency never ceased to surprise him.

As his eyes activated, he felt the senses of his entire body changing.

The sounds became more vivid, and their directions became clear.

He could clearly hear footsteps, detect presences, perceive breathing sounds, and even see the movements of the cannibal rats.

He threw the can he was holding. It flew, shattering the door before it continued on to hit the cannibal rat’s body. Its head exploded along with the can.

Yuwon grabbed another can and threw it again.

The zombie that was biting the man’s body also exploded.

With that, the crisis was finished.

Yuwon held another can from the pile and walked out of the convenience store door.

“Can you guys keep it down...?” Yuwon alternated his gaze between Juyeon and Seongchan. “You woke me up.”

Yuwon threw the canned soda up and caught it before throwing another can, which blew up another cannibal rat’s head.

One cannibal rat and moss spider got cut in half, and another moss spider exploded under Yuwon’s foot.

The poison that dripped out of the moss spider’s body briefly sizzled on the floor.

All of this happened in an instant.

Juyeon stared in confusion at the soda cans on the ground.

He killed the monsters with this?

They didn’t die no matter how much she swung her sword.

Besides, the cannibal rat was so fast that it wasn’t even any easier to kill up close.

But Yuwon had done it effortlessly with a few cans of soda and a knife so fast that she couldn’t see it.

How is this even possible...?

Juyeon realized that she still hadn’t properly thanked him for saving their lives.

“T-thank you. You saved us.”

“Ughhh... Thank…” Seongchan was in too much pain to finish the sentence.

Yuwon rummaged through his pocket and threw them an ointment. “Put this on first. It’s pretty effective. What’s your HP?”

“Huh? It’s... at about seventeen...”

“You won’t die then. Although you might not be able to use that arm anymore.”

“Huh... Wait, what?!” Seongchan said in obvious shock.

“Hurry and put it on. It might not be too late.”

He rushed to apply the ointment on his wound. Juyeon flopped down on the floor with a sigh and asked, “Have you been hunting here the whole time? The subway station is dangerous.”

The station had become a forbidden zone for the people above.

Monsters appeared frequently, and the ground snake, which seldomly appeared, was so dangerous that no amount of participants could kill it.

“Not the whole time.”

Juyeon had expected that. There was no way he would’ve stayed the whole time, considering the number of monsters that resided in the subway.

“This is my resting area. Sometimes it is my cafeteria,” Yuwon continued.

“What? Resting area?”

“I have a separate hunting ground,” he added as he stood up.