Chapter 6
Are these two the only people here?
Ji-woo felt frustrated that he couldn’t clearly deny the preference status that didn’t appear in his own status window. Just as he was frantically widening his field of vision to find someone else who could help him deny it, Ji-woo’s eyes caught sight of the lush greenery inside the forest and a figure nestled among it.
Due to the considerable distance, Ji-woo narrowed his gaze and examined the person positioned inside the forest. His heart pounded with the terrible possibility that his beloved “Majuk” world had truly become an adult work.
Preferences — Justice, goodwill, protector
Dislikes — Malice, betrayal
Fortunately, the preferences he hastily checked were different from the perverted twins brazenly occupying the space beside Ji-woo. Just as he was about to turn his head to cast a disapproving glare at the guards with a sigh of relief, Ji-woo realized something strange in that instant.
『Si-yeon, having obtained the Guardian of Light, exits the forest boundary before the Forest of Trials is shrouded in darkness.』
This was a content mentioned in the novel. This was why Ji-woo had no hesitation in his plan to reach the forest boundary after obtaining the healer profession. However, the current situation of looking at the forest from outside.
『Si-yeon looked back at the forest she had just escaped. The place where the forest had been was filled with hazy darkness.』
The heroine who escaped the forest couldn’t see inside it. Was this also thanks to Ji-woo obtaining a higher-tier profession?
It had been only a week since falling into the Natrene Empire—a short time, but Ji-woo was already feeling it multiple times. The reality Ji-woo was experiencing differed from the novel in many ways.
Not only were there changes due to Ji-woo’s actions, but also the two guards with perverted tendencies in front of him and that unfamiliar man trapped inside the Forest of Trials over there.
They were all people he had never encountered or heard of before. A novel was just the given situations and presented descriptions. The book’s content and settings that he had confidently thought he knew everything about were merely fragments.
In this world he was directly confronting, countless variables, new characters, and unexpected situations that couldn’t be contained in a few pages of a book were unfolding.
While Ji-woo’s knowledge of the original work would be greatly helpful for major events and world-building settings, it didn’t have much utility for the trivial movements that actually occurred in daily life.
Ji-woo just realized the crucial importance of the Third Eye and checked the distant man’s status window again to test his ability.
Kim Yu-jin [Profession: None] (Disposition: Neutral)
HP 207/500, MP 0/0
Stats — Strength 13, Agility 299, Stamina 10, Intelligence 0, Mana 0, Luck -5 [Total Stats: 317]
Skills — None
Preferences — Justice, goodwill, protector
Dislikes — Malice, betrayal
When he slowly reviewed the stat numbers he hadn’t been able to check earlier due to his urgency, numbers so bizarre that he couldn’t believe them even when rubbing his eyes filled his vision.
“Already agility is… two hundred ninety-nine?”
This was an agility stat that could never come from an Earth person who had just been summoned. Even the protagonist Han Jung-hoo didn’t have such stats from the early stages.
Within the empire where the stat limit was nine hundred ninety-nine, even among those who had been around for decades or those called the greatest awakeners, few had stats exceeding three hundred.
It was a fraudulently overpowered number to dismiss as simply being in the realm of talent.
Not only that, but the miserable distribution excluding agility stats was also strange. Particularly intelligence and luck.
Intelligence was a stat needed to understand and utilize magic, alchemy skills, or abilities, and in reality, the intelligence number itself didn’t represent actual intelligence.
Nevertheless, there was a superstition that having too low intelligence meant being stupid, and it wasn’t entirely wrong. When gathering those who seemed lacking and asking about their intelligence, they were always at levels that couldn’t reach seven or eight.
Unless one needed mental power or was magic-related, intelligence didn’t have much influence, but everyone wanted to exceed at least ten, which was the minimum value. Those lower than that either never revealed their intelligence numbers or lied about them.
Yet the man filling Ji-woo’s vision, who could freely see others’ status windows, had an intelligence of 0 no matter how many times he looked.
Intelligence completely absent? Just how stupid would someone have to be to have 0 intelligence?
Moreover, luck.
Since reading “Majuk,” Ji-woo saw someone with negative values in stats for the first time.
“Um… excuse me…”
The guards finally came to their senses and called Ji-woo, but he couldn’t respond as he was focused on the continuing scene with the man inside.
As if proving his intelligence of 0, the man was already injured even in the Forest of Trials, which had maintained peace until just moments ago.
To make matters worse, time didn’t wait for the injured man at all.
Not long after the Forest of Trials began to darken and transform into an ominous atmosphere, a hideous and massive monster three times his size appeared before the man who had been sitting and resting between tree root pillars.
The man was still showing only the back of his head while confronting the hideous and massive monster. With stats like that, even if he couldn’t attack, he should be able to use his agility to escape, yet the man didn’t avoid the encounter with the monster.
They say stupidity is bravery. Even while still bleeding from one shoulder, he was bold despite his condition. However, courage without skill was just recklessness.
Though he was dodging all attacks thanks to his high agility, if he continued only evading without attacking due to his injury’s aftereffects, the man would surely be the first to fall.
Though he was a stranger with no connection, the moment of life and death arriving so futilely caused frustration. The cry “Just run away” that he conveyed only internally couldn’t reach him, and the man’s sharp movements were slowing down in real time.
If left like this, the man visible ahead would obviously die, but Ji-woo had no way to help. The Forest of Trials couldn’t be re-entered once you left. That was the rule.
He had wondered why someone with such useful stats had never appeared in the novel, but it was because he met death early on like this. Ji-woo, who preemptively mourned the man’s death that was clearly drawn out, kicked at pebbles scattered at his feet in unnecessary uneasiness.
Whether it was the groups he encountered in the Forest of Trials or that man foolishly confronting the monster over there, from Ji-woo’s perspective, they were all other people’s business. Having already obtained a healing profession, it was right that he had no reason to care about such things…
Nevertheless, completely ignoring someone whose shadow of death was looming right before his eyes was quite difficult for Ji-woo, who had lived in the 21st century.
Moreover, the pebble Ji-woo kicked rolled pointlessly as if giving a hint, flowing into the inner boundary of the forest.
“Huh…?”
The boundary that seemed merely covered by a black curtain should have caused a repelling reaction that pushed away entry even if you just brought your hand near it.
However, unlike others, Ji-woo perceived the Forest of Trials not as a black curtain but as a distinct forest form. The small pebbles he kicked also naturally flowed into the forest boundary.
That meant… The moment he gained small certainty.
The man’s body seemed to lose strength as he barely dodged the monster’s claws. After a precarious situation with a paper-thin margin, Ji-woo reflexively drew the dagger he carried at his waist and threw it toward the monster. It was a purely reflexive reaction.
The dagger flew through the boundary into the forest as if praising Ji-woo’s correct guess.
A surprised sound from right beside him rang in his ears, but Ji-woo couldn’t take his eyes off the trajectory of the dagger he had thrown.
Unfortunately, though it pierced the boundary, it didn’t reach the aiming point Ji-woo had wanted. Despite throwing it with all his might, the dagger couldn’t even approach the monster and crashed to the ground.
He bit his lips in embarrassment and regret, but for the man, just the presence of a weapon that had suddenly appeared seemed helpful as he picked up the dagger that had fallen a step behind and began hunting the monster.
The man who had been nimbly dodging the monster here and there even without a weapon flew around like a fish in water once he held a weapon—especially one that dealt DOT damage [damage over time].
Wait? DOT damage?
Ji-woo felt a chill run down his entire body and checked the information of the other dagger remaining at his waist.
Name: Ordinary Dagger [Common] Effect: Attack Power +5
The ordinary and common dagger that Ji-woo had originally intended to throw greeted him.
Damn it.
Ji-woo realized his mistake and helplessly stared at the legendary weapon thrown far away.
Once the man held the legendary weapon that Ji-woo had carefully selected and brought, he gradually gained the upper hand. With tremendous attack power and continuous DOT damage accumulation, it was perhaps a natural result.
Thanks to this, the monster met its end, but the man watching the monster’s final moments had also already exhausted much of his health, carelessly dropping the dagger in his hand and collapsing to the ground.
Ji-woo felt like he might cry from his own patheticness.
Though he had no desire to meet the protagonist group, his fan heart toward them was sincere. That’s why, after the seven days ended, he had risked the precarious danger of the forest potentially turning upside down and deliberately sought out items found on routes far from the Guardian’s Temple.
That was an item beloved by ‘Lee Jin-sung,’ one of the villains in the original work.
He cherished that dagger obtained in the early Forest of Trials until the day he died. In the final bloody battle between Jung-hoo and Jin-sung, Jung-hoo sustained fatal injuries from that dagger.
He had made the effort to retrieve it because he didn’t want to see that happen…
Originally, he had planned never to let it leave his possession, ensuring no one could use it.
Ji-woo alternately looked at the legendary item and the man collapsed beside it, biting his lips.
Uncharacteristically for someone who had been troubled just moments ago about not being able to ignore a person’s death before his eyes, Ji-woo was running calculating thoughts through his head.
