Translator: Seven
Editor: Ana_Banana
[Entered the Third Floor.]
Following this notification, the sight that greeted surviving players was a rocky mountain covered in yellowish boulders.
It was completely barren with no vegetation in sight.
“Hoo, hoo.”
The players, who had just entered the floor, stood there while panting, with sweat running down their bodies.
“We’re finally on the third floor. It wasn’t as bad as I expected.”
“Right.”
Most of the players who appeared were optimistic. In fact the situation itself was optimistic.
The time it took for them to clear the first floor was 8 hours, without many of them even fighting.
On the second floor of the dungeon it also only took them six days to hunt 30,000 monsters.
‘We didn’t lose as many people on the second floor as we thought.’
Moreover, the monster hunting on the second floor went much smoother than any of them could have expected.
‘The monsters didn’t flock as much as we thought.’
Attacking monsters in an area filled with at least 30,000 in the dungeon was similar to poking holes in a dam.
If you poked a hole, you might end up with more water than you wanted, similarly, if you hunted a monster then you might end up attracting more monsters.
However, the battle on the second floor was a little different from that.
Even when battling monsters, the cases where more monsters were drawn over were actually quite rare.
‘As if someone was slaughtering the monsters ahead.’
This was the decisive reason behind the speed of the dungeon clear.
The distance that was travelled just by running as fast as you can was very different to the distance that was travelled by adjusting your pace properly.
So if the pace of the monster hunting was also controlled, it was natural that the hunting speed would be faster.
The problem was that they had entered the third floor from the second floor without any rest, but considering the easy time that they had before, it was still bearable.
“Alright, let’s figure out the situation then get some rest.”
“We have plenty of food, there’s no need to overdo it.”
If they needed a break, they could just take it now.
However, not everyone was feeling as relaxed as the rest.
Some of them had good senses.
‘Dangerous.’
‘It’s dangerous here.’
They felt that this floor might become a mass grave.
And one of them was already convinced.
‘It truly is a hell-like floor.’
This floor seemed to have the perfect conditions to become hell.
That one was of course, Kim Woo-jin.
Looking around at the rocky terrain, he immediately kneeled to the ground, scooped up some dirt and smelled it.
‘There’s only the smell of dirt.’
The dry scent of the dirt was the only thing that filled the air.
“Is there something wrong with this place?”
At that moment, Kim Woo-jin heard Lee Jin-ah’s slightly worried voice. It seemed that he also felt that this place was dangerous.
Kim Woo-jin happily explained to him.
“Because there’s nowhere to hide.”
“Nowhere to hide?”
As he said that, Lee Jin-ah looked around with confusion.
“Are you talking about locations?”
“I’m talking about the smell.”
“Smell?”
“There is only one scent here.”
Together with those words, Kim Woo-jin rubbed the dirt in his hand.
“There is no better stage for a monster with a superb sense of smell.”
“Is it similar to the desert?”
As Lee Jin-ah remembered the desert floor where they had faced the Firefox, Lee Jin-ah couldn’t help but shiver.
“The desert is nothing compared to this. The Golden Lion can’t miss the players’ appearance here…”
It was then.
Khung!
A huge roar from somewhere seemed to brush past Kim Woo-jin and Lee Jin-ah like a typhoon.
At the sound, Lee Jin-ah immediately entered battled mode and looked over to the direction that the roar came from.
Then, quite a distance away, he spotted a golden glow from atop a large boulder.
It was that Golden Lion.
A huge beast with a body at least 10 meters long with golden skin, three tails and a flowing mane, generously showcased his prowess to the creatures that had dared to enter his kingdom.
Lee Jin-ah couldn’t help but speak after seeing it.
“He’s doing a good job advertising himself.”
That was exactly what it was.
The Golden Lion wasn’t giving them a warning. It was instead a notification from a king telling those who entered his country to bow their heads.
“He doesn’t have to hunt and kill the players, is that it?”
This meant that in the Golden Lion’s eyes, they weren’t even a threat.
It was treatment that the players would definitely not tolerate.
“So what’s the plan?”
Lee Jin-ah spat out those words and put his hand on the sword that rested at his waist.
His eyes displayed a strong desire to poke a few holes through the Golden Lion’s arrogance with his sword.
Kim Woo-jin calmly responded to his question.
“We’re not doing anything for now.”
“We’re not doing anything? Good! Then we won’t do anything from now on…what?”
To the surprised Lee Jin-ah, Kim Woo-jin simply took out an energy bar and began to munch on it comfortably.
As he saw this, Lee Jin-ah couldn’t help but ask.
“Are you really not going to do anything? Then what if it gets hunted by those bastards?”
The goal of all the players was to hunt the Golden Lion.
And naturally from now on everyone would be doing their best to hunt it down. Therefore, it wasn’t strange that Lee Jin-ah was concerned that the Golden Lion might get hunted by someone else.
However, Kim Woo-jin was different.
He was convinced.
‘It was true that the first attempt was successful, but in fact there were only 31 survivors because they got lucky. However, the composition and capabilities of the team is different now. This time there would not be any such good luck.’
Before he returned to the past, the Golden Lion Dungeon had been cleared on the first try, but that was only possible because of luck.
Now the situation was very different from that so the chances of such luck happening again was incredibly low.
In other words, there was no reason for Kim Woo-jin to be anxious about when to attack.
“We’re the only ones who can kill him anyway.”
Lee Jin-ah didn’t question this statement.
Though Kim Woo-jin’s words were groundless, Kim Woo-jin had never spoken nonsense about monsters before.
Rather, Lee Jin-ah paid more attention to something else.
“So we’re going to make our move when the other players have died?”
If the only ones who could hunt the Golden Lion were him and Kim Woo-jin and if he did nothing, then the only result would be that all the other players would die.
That question made Kim Woo-jin shake his head.
“That’s not it. Then I wouldn’t be able to set my price.”
“Price? What price?”
“The price of the lives of those who manage to survive because of us.”
As he said this, Kim Woo-jin looked toward the Golden Lion in the distance while thinking.
‘Nothing is free in this world.’
…
It was only when Kim Woo-jin met a player in the Messiah Guild called Jung Ji-hoon that he truly learned about the Golden Lion.
“Do you know the Golden Lion Dungeon? I’m one of the survivors.”
The Golden Lion Dungeon where only 31 of 250 had survived. He was one of the 31.
“You want me to tell you the story? There’s nothing you can’t do with alcohol and snacks.”
Then Kim Woo-jin asked him to tell the story and he told it at a low cost.
“To clear the first floor. We had to catch a Red Eyed Orangutan in a forest above a desert. I thought my feet would fall off chasing a monkey through trees. After that horrific experience, we arrived at the second floor. But there we were told to hunt 30,000 monsters to advance to the next level. Can you believe it? 30,000.”
There was no stopping his story once it had started.
As if telling a little boy his heroic tales, he told him what happened there mixed with a few exaggerated gestures and some actions.
“…then after we hunted the 30,000 monsters, we arrived on the third floor…right away.”
But his actions and expression rapidly changed when he finished his story about the second floor.
He had finally stopped talking and it was only after he took a few deep breaths and finished a can of beer that he continued.
“As soon as we arrived on the third floor, there was a Golden Lion roaring at us.”
After that, his storytelling remained unparalleled.
However, it was no longer like he was telling his heroic story to a young child, but was instead it was like he was telling his nightmare to his therapist.
“At first, I didn’t know what it meant. We just did what we usually did without paying attention to how strange it was. The group gathered by the Phoenix Guild was the first to challenge following the order that we had agreed to before and the rest of the players watched them from behind.”
He solemnly recited his terrible memories of the lion.
“…it was a monster. No magic attack, curse or poison even left a mark on his fur. The only thing that seemed to work was blades. But even that was almost impossible to use. In exchange for the lives of over 50 players that the Phoenix Guild had organized, all they managed to get from the lion was a toe from his left foreleg.” (TL: ‘monster’ as the description rather than the creature.)
He told him just how ruthless the strength of the lion was.
“The funniest thing was that after the battle he simply went to sleep on the spot. Just like a lion going to sleep in the grassland after a successful hunt. He didn’t even consider the entire group of players as a threat, let alone a few.”
At the same time he told him just how large the gap between them and the monster really was.
“The moment they saw it, no other players wanted to take their turn.”
In that situation, the players had been robbed of options and so they had to make new decisions.
“Everyone gathered together while that monster was sleeping. With dead expressions on their faces.”