Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 5

5. The First Night in Hell (4)

It took seven attempts to overcome the mosquitoes.

It took 30 days to overcome the fine dust, but only 7 days for the mosquitoes, so I guess that’s growth. Now I’m used to it, and even the nightmares don’t feel like nightmares anymore.

[Level Up!]

Hyeon-woo barely opened his eyes upon hearing the notification. Thanks to the increased stamina from leveling up, he regained his energy. Suddenly, Hyeon-woo realized that countless mosquito corpses were piled up around him. Then, another notification sounded.

[General Achievement Achieved!]

[You have simultaneously poisoned over 100 monsters.]

[You have acquired the title ‘Valentine’s Chocolate’.]

[As a reward, your Poison Blood becomes stronger.]

[The reward is increased due to difficulty compensation relative to your level.]

[The Shattering Star, Gaul, is watching you.]

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

“……What is this now?”

Listening blankly to the narrator’s message, he could guess the situation.

‘Poison Blood, so the mosquitoes all died from eating my poisoned blood?’

His current level is 5. It seems his stamina has finally increased enough that he won’t die from having his blood sucked by mosquitoes.

Hyeon-woo felt absurd, but as soon as he spotted a mosquito crawling on the floor, he stomped on it. With a splat, blood scattered horribly in all directions. It was satisfying, but the thought that it was all his blood made his head spin. Hyeon-woo, who had already lost a lot of blood, felt dizzy.

The intersection seemed to be free from the mosquito swarms now, but in the distance, swarms of mosquitoes still flew like fog. The few remaining ones were smart enough not to bite Hyeon-woo.

“Ha, haha…….”

This time, he won relatively easily. All he did was lie down, but the fact that he accomplished that while lying down was the result of 30 days of near-death experiences, so it could be said that he did it. However, he was too exhausted to move any further. Fortunately, the mosquitoes didn’t come any closer.

[Status Ailment: You have contracted a disease.]

[Stamina is continuously being depleted.]

“What?!

Before he could even finish thinking about all the different status ailments, his vision blurred. A fever seemed to be raging through his body, and his head spun again.

Mosquitoes… malaria? Did he get a malaria vaccine? He knew that it wasn’t usually given unless going to places like Africa. He had gotten a tetanus shot in the army, but he should have gotten this one too. Vaccines are so important.

***

“Huff!”

Hyeon-woo opened his eyes wide. His whole body was soaked in sweat. He unconsciously tried to open his mouth, but groaned at the pain of his lips cracking. He was thirsty. He felt like he wanted to lick up the sweat that soaked the floor.

[Disease germs have accumulated in the body.]

[Status Ailment: Disease has been cured.]

[Disease resistance has greatly increased.]

[The ‘Contagion’ trait has been added to Poison Blood.]

[The toxicity of Poison Blood has become even stronger.]

“Playing all the instruments by myself…….”

Surprisingly, he didn’t die this time. He didn’t know how many hours had passed, but malaria was cured in just that time. He didn’t know what was going on in this world. But Hyeon-woo couldn’t hear any of that. His throat was parched.

At this rate, he felt like he would die of thirst. And then the night would begin again.

Hyeon-woo struggled and crawled, then drank the water from a puddle on the floor. It seemed slightly toxic, but it had no effect on Hyeon-woo.

Hyeon-woo took out a caramel box from his pocket. He wondered if he could eat one, but he didn’t know if this was something worth celebrating.

Was overcoming the mosquitoes really that great?

Hesitating, Hyeon-woo eventually gave up on the caramel and lay down on the floor, looking up at the sky. He suddenly wondered when this would end. Was there even an end? Until when?

Hyeon-woo suddenly remembered that he had a quest. It was strange that he was only remembering it now, but it felt natural. He had been too busy trying to survive, and he didn’t even think it was possible.

[Quest: The First Night in Hell.]

[Survive until sunrise the next day.]

Hyeon-woo looked up at the sky, but he couldn’t even tell if it was day or night because of the thick red clouds.

But generally speaking, even the longest night shouldn’t last more than twelve hours. Hyeon-woo recalled the survival time that had been updated each time he died.

‘……It’s daunting.’

With a life-threatening crisis every minute and every second, a maximum of twelve hours. He didn’t know how long he could last.

‘This won’t do.’

The amount of time he was alive was gradually increasing, so if he kept enduring like this, he might be able to make it to morning someday.

But Hyeon-woo was only getting used to the fact that he would come back to life even if he died, and he could never get used to dying itself.

Death was always new, and the pain was still there. Especially since he knew how and how painful it would be, he felt his mind wearing down more and more.

‘Even if I go back, I can’t go back crazy.’

He wasn’t even sure if he was sane anymore.

Hyeon-woo looked around. First of all, he didn’t know what else would come out. He had to get something he could use as a weapon.

But there wasn’t much he could find. Hyeon-woo broke off a chair leg from a fallen building. At that moment, the narrator’s notification sounded.

[General Skill: Disassembly has been acquired.]

“Huh?”

Acquiring a general skill. Disassembly, of all things?

Hyeon-woo was flustered. The Disassembly skill was useful for effectively obtaining monster parts in dungeons, and it was a skill that was welcomed in any party.

Most Disassembly skill holders worked in research labs and received annual salaries in the hundreds of millions [of Korean Won, roughly equivalent to hundreds of thousands of US dollars], so they were treated with great respect even though it was a general skill.

But he got the Disassembly skill just for breaking a chair leg?

‘……No, wait. Is this for real?’

But this was hell. Everything was different from what he knew.

‘I should test it out first.’

Hyeon-woo put both hands on the chair and used the Disassembly skill. For a moment, he wondered how to use the skill, but the skill was activated automatically as if responding to Hyeon-woo’s will.

Thud, thud, thud, thud!

Hyeon-woo’s hands quickly and precisely separated the chair legs. He felt a bit of mana draining, but that mana was also quickly restored. As could be seen from the abundant crystal moss overflowing everywhere, the mana in hell was incredibly concentrated.

‘This is a complete honey skill [a term for an unexpectedly good or easy skill]?’

He only wanted to get a weapon, but he got a skill like this. Hyeon-woo thought he could expand his plans a little more.

‘Wait, if I have the Disassembly skill…….’

Hyeon-woo disassembled all the other furniture and gathered it in one place.

Because the disassembly was clean, it was easy to assemble something with the parts.

However, Hyeon-woo, who was still clumsy, roughly hammered nails into a large piece of wood to create a crude weapon.

It was a clumsy but vicious-looking nailed bat. Hyeon-woo was proud of it even though it looked absurd to him, because it was his first creation. And soon, the message he had been waiting for was heard.

[General Skill: Crafting has been acquired.]

Hyeon-woo wasn’t surprised by the message that he had acquired the Crafting skill. Instead, he just grinned.

If the Disassembly skill was welcomed in parties and research labs, the Crafting skill was welcomed in factories and workshops.

Currently, factories can only produce general-grade mass-produced items. But Crafting skill holders were the only ones who could create rare items. Naturally, Crafting skill holders with good skills were treated with invaluable respect.

‘Is it possible to acquire general-grade skills just by doing the act?’

When he thought about it, even the Poison Blood skill was created just by breathing. Hyeon-woo realized again that he was experiencing something absurd.

Hyeon-woo grabbed the screws and planks and cast ‘Crafting’. Just like when he disassembled, his hands moved skillfully.

His hands weren’t being controlled. It was closer to knowing how to move and moving instinctively. Soon, he created a nailed bat of the same shape as the one he had made.

[Nailed Bat (Common): A clumsily made bat. The durability is weak, but the attack power is quite strong.]

“Huh, is this even treated as an item?”

It seemed like he couldn’t make anything more than what Hyeon-woo had made. Still, it seemed to be treated as an item because it was made with skills and mana.

The specialized industrial complex where Hyeon-woo worked was a place to produce general-grade items for hunters.

It took a lot of processes and investment costs to make one item, but Hyeon-woo just took the materials and made it with the ‘Crafting’ skill.

“I’ll have to check how useful it is…….”

Hyeon-woo immediately started testing. He held the bat made with Crafting and aimed it at the bat he had made first, which was leaning diagonally. Hyeon-woo didn’t know what would happen since the bats had similar strength.

“Hup!”

With a whoosh, the bat Hyeon-woo was holding struck the other bat. At that moment, with a crisp cracking sound, the bat Hyeon-woo had made by hand was shattered miserably. Shards scattered messily in all directions.

Hyeon-woo stared at the nailed bat in his hand with bewildered eyes.

“……This, isn’t it stronger than I thought? Even though it’s general grade?”

An item is an item, I guess. But it seemed that the criticism that the durability was weak was true, as there were already cracks in it. But it didn’t matter. After all, there were plenty of furniture and nails in this ruin.

Still, he didn’t feel any regret that the first bat he had worked so hard to make was shattered so miserably. Rather, he was just happy that the performance of the item he had crafted had been proven.

Hyeon-woo checked the level of his Disassembly and Crafting skills. Unfortunately, the Disassembly skill couldn’t touch metal or stone, and the Crafting skill was limited to the things Hyeon-woo could make.

‘If there’s a blueprint, it’s easy to make copies afterwards.’

More than anything, Hyeon-woo felt the need to make various things, given that the replicas were far superior.

The possibility of survival was sprouting anew.

Not only the possibility of survival, but also the possibility of growth was sprouting anew for Hyeon-woo, the aspiring hunter.

Hyeon-woo decided to start working on what he had planned to do when he became stronger to some extent.

Originally, it seemed like he would have to train for a long time, but with these two skills, Disassembly and Crafting, there seemed to be no problem at all. Just in time, Hyeon-woo thought this house he had entered was 괜찮을 것 같다고 생각했다 [a Korean phrase meaning ‘it seems like it would be okay’].

There was only one entrance, and the windows weren’t big. The long, narrow stairs behind the counter led to a space that seemed to have been used as a two-story house. The door on the third floor was locked, but it didn’t seem easy for anyone to come and go.

‘It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either.’

‘Difficulty: Hell’ was a place where there was no time to rest. There was no existence that wasn’t fatal to Hyeon-woo, from the air and bugs to beasts and monsters.

He could fight fiercely, or he could run away constantly. But he couldn’t last long that way.

What Hyeon-woo needed was a safe zone, a shelter.