Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 3

First Night in Hell (2)

[Difficulty: Hell

Entering the Star of Doom.]

Hyeon-woo opened his eyes.

“…A dream?”

Hyeon-woo muttered, dazed. He was still in Hell, surrounded by a burning red landscape.

He vividly remembered dying. Yet, here he was, still in Hell.

It felt strange to even think of it as ‘just now’; waking up felt like yesterday. But the agonizing pain of his body being torn apart was still fresh in his mind.

The sharp pain of a razor blade slicing through his lungs, the blood erupting from his throat, even the acrid, burning smell.

Difficulty: Hell? Microdust?

If he hadn’t died, what was this? A dream? He desperately wished someone would slap him awake. But nothing happened. Instead, a familiar notification chimed.

[Quest Generated!]

[The ‘First Night in Hell’ quest has begun.]

[Survive until dawn.]

As soon as he heard the voice, Hyeon-woo instinctively started running, as if he could outrun the choking, foggy dust.

But his efforts were in vain. Before long, Hyeon-woo felt a searing pain in his throat and collapsed. His eyes turned bloodshot as he vomited blood. He clutched the return stone tightly in his blood-stained hand.

‘What the hell did my father give me!?’

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 00 hours 05 minutes 22 seconds.]

***

3rd attempt.

[Level Up!]

A strange message echoed.

Hyeon-woo frantically tried to understand the message, then realized his situation felt like a game.

There were people like that in the real world, too.

Of course, they didn’t die and resurrect like Hyeon-woo, but they leveled up like in a game, increased their stats, and became stronger. They were called ‘ability users’.

‘This feels just like… becoming an ability user?’

But Hyeon-woo seemed to be the only one thrown into an absurdly high difficulty, forced to restart over and over.

‘I wanted to become an ability user, but not by struggling and dying in a hell like this!’

Hyeon-woo remembered a game he had played long ago. He had defeated the final boss, then the next boss, cleared all the DLCs [Downloadable Content] and expansion packs, and then simply kept raising the difficulty, increasing the stages.

By the time he reached Hell difficulty, which was almost end-game content, he could swat the final boss of normal difficulty like a fly.

Hyeon-woo was like a level 1 newbie who had stumbled into that Hell difficulty.

Naturally, his life was worth less than a fly, less than microdust.

“Damn iiiiiiit!”

Hyeon-woo screamed, his voice choked with bloody foam. That was his last shout. The microdust sliced through his throat, and blood gushed out. He collapsed again, writhing.

This time, the situation was similar to the first. Hyeon-woo covered his mouth with his clothes instead of a mask. But the microdust mocked him as it burrowed into his body. He felt like his entire body was being stabbed.

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 00 hours 06 minutes 17 seconds.]

***

5th attempt.

This time, Hyeon-woo decided to simply hold his breath. As soon as he heard the words ‘Difficulty: Hell’, he covered his mouth and lay face down on the ground.

The pain seemed to come a little later this time. He couldn’t protect his exposed skin, but at least he wouldn’t die vomiting blood.

But of course, a person can’t live without breathing. And before Hyeon-woo suffocated, his body, desperate for oxygen, forcibly inhaled. The microdust, waiting for this, rushed in and instantly tore through his lungs.

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 00 hours 08 minutes 41 seconds.]

***

8th attempt.

[The Wailing Star, Verde, is watching you.]

Since when had he been hearing these notifications? But whoever these perverts watching him were, they didn’t offer any help or salvation.

At first, Hyeon-woo believed it might be something divine and tried everything he could.

He really tried everything. He sang the clumsy hymns he had learned at church as a child and scratched a cross into the ground. He even recited any Buddhist scriptures that came to mind, though it was just ‘Namu Amita Bul’ [Homage to Amitabha Buddha, a common Buddhist chant].

Then, he blindly begged for forgiveness from anyone and everyone. He begged for all the minor sins he had committed, the sins of his ancestors, the sins of Koreans, and the sins of humanity.

Naturally, all of Hyeon-woo’s attempts were meaningless.

When repentance proved useless, Hyeon-woo instead cursed everything while vomiting blood, especially the microdust and his father.

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 00 hours 11 minutes 13 seconds.]

***

11th attempt.

Hyeon-woo realized that every time he died and resurrected, all fatigue and physical injuries were healed. Because of this, even though he had never slept, his mind was clear, and even if he harmed himself due to the pain, he wouldn’t get a single scar. He didn’t feel hunger, either.

That meant he was gradually dying in a healthy state with a fresh feeling.

When he realized this, Hyeon-woo didn’t choose to give up and be helpless, nor did he run away in fear.

Hyeon-woo wanted to screw over everything that was trying to screw him over. If a tsunami hit, he’d retaliate by dumping garbage into the sea.

Of course, that was just a metaphor; he wouldn’t really do that.

But it was different here.

‘Since it’s come to this, I’ll eat it all up.’

Since he knew that all fatigue and injuries would be healed even if he died, it wasn’t strange that his thoughts turned this way.

No, if you repeated dying ten times, gasping like a goldfish on land just by breathing, anyone might do the same.

As soon as Hyeon-woo fell into Hell, he started breathing deeply and quickly on purpose. He knew this wasn’t sane. It was like using his lungs as a filter to become an air purifier.

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

[Poison has accumulated in your body.]

[The Starving Star, Yogulem, is watching you.]

Perhaps because he was breathing so much, the notifications popped up more often. Rarely, a message appeared saying that poison had accumulated. He didn’t know if this was positive, but he didn’t care. Hyeon-woo wasn’t trying to live anyway; he was doing this for revenge.

Hyeon-woo breathed wildly, retaliating against the microdust. He no longer thought about whether this made sense.

Anyway, in conclusion, it didn’t seem to be very good for his health.

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 00 hours 24 minutes 55 seconds.]

***

14th attempt.

Hyeon-woo gave up on the ‘Filter Plan’, which he had named ‘Eat up all the microdust and get rid of it’.

Not because it felt worthless, but because he had found a way to last a little longer.

The method was breathing.

The strange breathing technique he had unknowingly used on the day he first died made his body less painful. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to do it, but he had been putting it off because of his hatred for the microdust.

‘Is this what they call a mind technique?’

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

The notifications were still the same, but one thing had been added.

[Level Up!]

After starting this breathing technique, the level-up message popped up again.

It really felt like he had become a gamer or a hunter. But he didn’t care since he had already received so many messages about what had increased or not.

Anyway, his survival time was increasing dramatically with this. He wasn’t able to get up, but he had enough room to move, so he could sit in a lotus position, which was good for breathing.

Every time he inhaled, he could clearly feel the microdust inside his body. He could also feel the air staying and melting in his lungs and stomach, and something unknown seeping in. But Hyeon-woo didn’t have time to figure out what it was.

Perhaps someone might think of it as enlightenment. But if someone saw him and asked, ‘Are you an ascetic [a person who practices severe self-discipline and abstention] who says that the world is only suffering and that only practice can free you from 煩惱 [bonnō, Japanese term for earthly desires that cause suffering]?’, Hyeon-woo would immediately punch them in the face and show them what worldly pain was.

Unfortunately, there was no one who could see Hyeon-woo. He was dying in a place with no witnesses.

[You have died.]

[Total survival time: 00 days 01 hours 41 minutes 21 seconds.]

***

28th attempt.

‘I think I’m getting used to it.’

Hyeon-woo felt like he understood ‘detachment’. Now, when he meditated while breathing, he couldn’t even feel the pain in his body.

Pain, struggling to live, hatred for microdust—what was it all? At this point, Hyeon-woo seemed to be able to artificially cut off the pain in his body. Or maybe he was in so much pain that he had forgotten what it felt like.

[Resistance to poison slightly increased.]

[Resistance to paralysis slightly increased.]

[Poison has accumulated in your body.]

Yeah. What were these messages all about? Certainly, the time he could endure had increased considerably, and it seemed like he could move his body more easily.

He felt like he could get up and walk now, but he didn’t want to break his concentration and die in pain.

[Level Up!]

He was now level 3.

‘It’s been a while since I heard that.’

If there was anything sweet in this terrible hell, it was this notification. After all, this narrator’s voice was the only thing that made him realize that he had become an ability user.

If he could return to reality, Hyeon-woo would be at a level where he had barely shed his beginner status.

Of course, top-class ability users like Lee Ji-tae, who frequented 3-star dungeons like their own home and coveted 5-star dungeons, had reached level 50.

They were already being treated as important national resources rather than job seekers, so they had to be excluded.

But the treatment differed greatly depending on the ability user’s rank. A 1-star hunter had a level limit of 20. After that, the level limit was extended by 10 levels in the order of 2-star at 30 and 3-star at 40, but the ceiling was clear.

Among them, there were only about 70 4-star ability users in the world, and even fewer who were active as hunters. Not all ability users were able to fight, or enjoyed fighting.

That’s why hunters with high levels had no choice but to be treated differently. At least level 40 or higher were treated as important resources, and level 50 or higher were treated as national treasures. They were given all kinds of privileges and benefits wherever they went.

‘But I wonder what kind of faces they would make if they fell here.’

Hyeon-woo smiled bitterly. He didn’t know what 5-star dungeons were like, but he had never heard of them having such crazy microdust.

He had heard that even ordinary people had entered under strict protection, so it wouldn’t be like this. No matter how good Lee Ji-tae was, he would turn pale and choke to death as soon as he set foot here.

Imagining that made him feel a little better.

Fortunately, Hyeon-woo was living longer and longer. If he stayed here for about a year, he thought he might be able to move to some extent.

Then this place might become a living space in its own way. It looks terrible, but if you adapt anywhere, it becomes livable. There’s also a saying that if you can lie down and sleep, it’s a home.

Hyeon-woo suddenly realized that his legs, which were in a lotus position, were numb. As he changed his posture, he suddenly thought that this time it seemed to be lasting particularly long. Just then, the narrator’s notification rang.

‘Level up?’

It wasn’t.

[The poison in your body has reached its critical point.]

[Acquired rare skill: Poison Blood.]

[You will no longer take poison damage.]