“Fuck..!”
The sun had finished its duties, and even the moonlight was obscured by clouds in the pitch-black night of the deep forest.
The fog was thick, making it impossible to see even a step ahead, and the heavy raindrops fell noisily, hitting the ground and scattering screams so that no one could hear them.
The gambison, which had been protecting my body with its layers of sturdy cloth, had become so heavy with rainwater that it weighed down on my shoulders.
The pouch, its leather belt torn off, was light as it held nothing inside.
The cold wind of mid-April still chilled my body.
Third floor of the labyrinth.
Only the third floor.
I was facing the brink of death.
The lantern that had been lighting the night had run out of oil and extinguished.
If I could refill the oil, I could light it again, but I feared carrying that heavy metal lantern around would kill me, so I threw it to the ground.
The grain cube I had brought to stave off hunger had turned into a mushy mass from the rain, making it impossible to eat.
“Haah..! Hah..!!”
Even though I had been running nonstop, I didn’t feel like I could survive.
The hunters prowling the dark night were still chasing me.
But continuing to run would surely lead to my death.
Inside the densely packed evergreen forest, I slowed my pace and drew my sword from its sheath.
“Come on, you bastards!!”
The prey, cornered, barked even louder.
The hunters, knowing the success was certain, became quieter and more cautious.
-Grrr…!!
The heavy raindrops, the thick fog, and the moonlight obscured by clouds.
In the forest, with no light at all, only the creatures’ eyes glowed yellow, shining brightly.
Six direwolves.
They started appearing from the second floor of the labyrinth, and were commonly seen on the third floor.
Some said they were weak monsters, easy to kill with a single strike or punch.
“Haah..!”
I swung my sword at one of them charging toward me.
Was it because I was in a life-or-death situation? My whole body was on edge.
Screech-
I slashed its foreleg shallowly, but it wasn’t enough.
In that moment, another direwolf attacked from the side, sinking its teeth into my left shin.
“Ahh!”
I stabbed my sword into the back of the wolf that was biting my leg and pulled it out quickly to strike forward.
-Ggekk…!
As I pushed the blade deeply into the wolf’s mouth, another jumped high and bit my right shoulder, knocking me back.
“Ugh.. you bastard..!”
I grabbed the wolf’s leg and forcibly pried it off, causing my gambison to tear and damaging the muscles in my shoulder.
My right arm no longer had any strength.
A wolf from behind opened its mouth wide and bit my face.
I quickly turned my head to the right, but in the process, its fangs tore through my eyelid, causing my left eye to lose function.
While lying on the ground, I desperately shook my legs to keep the other wolves from getting too close.
During the fall, my weakened right forearm was chewed on by two direwolves, causing me to drop my sword, and my right forearm turned into minced meat, bleeding heavily.
Blood leaked from my torn eyelid, and a bitter taste spread in my mouth.
Barely managing to stand, I kicked a direwolf that was hanging onto my boot, crushing its ribs and internal organs.
I fumbled around on the ground to retrieve my dropped sword with my left hand.
It was good that I got it, but I wasn’t used to wielding it with my left hand, and crucially, I couldn’t see, so I swung it randomly, and the blade hit a tree and broke.
The wolf that was biting my thigh was knocked in the eye with the blunt end of the broken sword handle, shattering its eye, and I shoved my finger into its eye socket.
-Grrr… Bark!!
After fighting for my life, the situation changed.
“Now you’re barking.”
The prey, cornered, barked even louder.
The hunters, knowing the success was certain, became quieter and more cautious.
The last remaining direwolf crouched low to the ground, carefully glaring at me.
In my left hand was the broken sword handle.
My right hand was like minced meat, bleeding heavily.
It bit hard into my left shin, but the tough leather boot effectively protected my skin.
Warm blood oozed from my right thigh, flowing down into the rain.
I brushed my rain-drenched hair back and took a deep breath.
My half-functioning vision didn’t allow me to see clearly, but the wolf’s bright yellow eyes served as a good landmark.
-Bark!!
In an instant, I dashed toward it and kicked its face.
As my right leg brushed past its muzzle, it bit down hard.
I struck the direwolf’s skull with the pommel of the sword handle in my left hand, and after a short while, the wolf’s jaw loosened and it collapsed.
“Haah, haah. I’m alive…”
I was alive.
Alive?
“No, I’m going to die.”
I may have won the battle, but I wasn’t going to survive.
My body was bleeding out.
It was clear that I was going to die soon if this continued.
In the freezing cold of the middle of the night, soaked by heavy rain, I could die from hypothermia before long.
So why had I fought so desperately? I wasn’t going to survive anyway.
“Fuck..! Fuuuck!!”
If only I had skills. If only I had skills.
No, wait.
Skills.
Actually, I did have skills.
The problem was they weren’t proper skills.
I had obtained a skill earlier than most people, after completing the labyrinth’s second floor.
I went to the appraiser to identify the skill, and the appraiser looked surprised.
“This is… a skill I’ve never seen before. You’ll need to use it yourself to understand its effects…”
Using the skill wasn’t easy.
I had no sense of these unscientific phenomena.
They said that the skill activates with willpower, but I didn’t understand what “will” was, so I couldn’t use the skill for a long time.
Even though I had obtained the skill, I couldn’t use it and entered the labyrinth once more.
When I started to feel helpless because I couldn’t use my skill, I finally activated it.
It felt as though my growing desire and willpower were at work.
But when I used the skill, my right forearm turned into the steak I had eaten the night before.
“Fuck.”
Below my right elbow, the lower arm became a well-cooked piece of meat, flopping around.
It definitely looked like the same piece of meat I had eaten last night.
I spent the next couple of days in despair, crying in the inn where I was staying.
Was I going to live without my right arm? But they say even when the sky falls, there’s always a way out.
In the end, after staying up all night and trying hard, my right arm returned to its original state.
“What a fucked-up world.”
The skill that would normally take months to obtain in the labyrinth was the ridiculous skill I had gained.
Evening in the Labyrinth City
Upon entering the inn, I could see many people.
Victors bragging about the strong skills they had obtained, beginner explorers looking at them with envious eyes, wishing to acquire strong skills in the labyrinth themselves.
And the losers who had obtained cursed, useless skills.
Although I hated to admit it, I was one of the losers.
Of course, even though I had acquired something in my second labyrinth exploration, it still didn’t meet expectations.
“Doesn’t that mean you can recreate what you’ve eaten?”
I ignored the words of another explorer, heavily drunk at the inn.
The ability to recreate food that I had eaten was indeed impressive, but turning the food I ate into my body was, without a doubt, a ridiculous ability.
The only ones who might benefit from me turning into delicious food would be wolves fighting to eat me.
At least, I could take comfort in the fact that the skill did not lower my combat ability.
Far more people had acquired horrific skills that made them incapable of fighting at all.
I couldn’t move forward, but at least I hadn’t fallen back, and that was my only solace.
Of course, since the first skill I acquired was terrible, my morale was in the gutter.
With my unchanged combat ability despite acquiring the skill,
I went into the labyrinth again.
Over and over again.
Then, the sixth labyrinth.
The party members I had teamed up with had already leveled up to Explorer rank and had left to form a new team of their level.
In other words, they had kicked me out, because I wasn’t strong enough to keep up with their level.
In a labyrinth full of magic and skills, and monsters that defied common sense,
I, with only the strength of an ordinary adult male, couldn’t do anything about it.
So now, where am I?
Only the third floor of the labyrinth.
I had spilled the oil for my lantern, and I had no food left.
My trusty one-handed sword was broken, and my gambeson was torn and heavy with water, making it feel cold.
My chewed-up forearm was in tatters.
After a desperate battle, I had won, but I didn’t think I could survive.
I bled out as much as I could, and my body temperature dropped rapidly.
Since it was still early spring, the temperature plummeted as soon as night fell.
My left eye was completely torn by a fang, and I lost my vision.
The blood kept draining from my right forearm, and I could barely see with only half my vision left.
My gambeson, soaked by the rain, became heavier and colder.
My muscles screamed in pain.
What was I even fighting for?
If I was going to die anyway, should I have at least given these dire wolves a good meal? No, I thought about it, but no.
What was it about? What was so tasty?
“Those fucking bastards…”
I looked at the six dire wolf corpses scattered around me and thought.
“Hah…”
Whether it was food poisoning or parasites,
“It’s better than dying.”
In a resigned manner, I shoved the raw meat into my mouth.
After I killed them, they would have torn my corpse apart and eaten me.
I was the victor this time, so it was my turn to feast on them.
I chewed, and the rain grew heavier.
I had finished all the water in my water skin, so it was almost a relief.
With the thick leather gloves, I clumsily removed the sword from its grip and began peeling the leather off.
I ignored my thighs, chest, and intestines, chewing on the lungs and swallowing the eyes.
I wasn’t the type to believe in superstitions like “eating the eyes will improve your vision.”
But I had already chewed and eaten that disgusting-smelling raw meat.
I just grabbed parts of the body not covered in leather and shoved them into my mouth.
The eyes I ate were from the ones that had bitten my face.
The tough raw meat barely chewed through as it slowly went down my throat.
I could feel the shape of the meat as it moved down my esophagus.
Finally, I tore out the heart.
They say the heart is the essence of life.
I cut the arteries to drink the blood, and to keep the dry blood from sticking to my mouth, I opened my mouth and let the rain pour in.
Once the rainwater mixed in my mouth, I washed out the blood and spat it on the ground.
I covered myself with the torn dire wolf bodies and fell asleep.
It hadn’t even been 30 minutes since they had died, and their warmth still lingered.
At least it was warm.
The smell of raw meat filled my throat as it climbed up my esophagus, but I was too tired to care about the awful taste anymore.
The next morning, I prayed to see the rising sun, leaning against a tree as I drifted off to sleep.
And when I woke up, the morning light returned to my eyes.
Well, half of them. Actually, maybe only a quarter of the left one?
“Why is my eye… like this?”
My right eye was fine. As usual, it was just doing its job.
But my left eye…
I must have lost it while fighting the wolves last night.
“I can see… a little bit, but it’s all blurry…”
The cold fog was settling in.
Dew was falling on the low weeds.
How did I endure the cold night?
Outside, the sunlight slowly touched my face.
It was warm, so I could tell that the dire wolf corpses I had used to keep warm had bled out overnight.
The ground beneath me was soaked in blood, but the problem was that the blood wasn’t red.
“Red-green color blindness…? Did I get color blindness from the injury?”
I couldn’t understand it.
If my eyeball had been destroyed, I shouldn’t be able to see anything, let alone distinguish colors.
The wolf blood had dried on my back and the ground, and as I stood up, I heard a squelching sound.
Shaking off my back, dried blood cracked and fell off like peeling paint.
I thought I’d wash my face, so I looked into a puddle formed by the rain.
That’s when I realized what had happened.
“This is…”
The bright yellow eyes of the dire wolf were staring back at me.
The black pupils of a Korean person had disappeared, and a wolf’s eye had taken over my left eye socket.
And then, I instinctively understood.
‘Doesn’t this mean I can recreate what I’ve eaten?’
My skill was to turn what I put into my mouth into part of my body.