Dungeon Defense- Magically Upgrade

by Elan Wang

  What is more important than effort? Items. Duh. Have you ever played games before? If I buy a super crazy deluxe protect me forever armor and fight against you, I’d probably have an advantage right? Right. In this damn world, you can buy abilities if you fork up the right amount of dough. Everyone and everything has a price. Even if I practiced for a million years, a loser like me would have a hard time passing even level 1. But you know what, those spoiled and rich snot-nosed brats somehow end up at level 10 from the very beginning every time.

  So what did I do, you ask? You serious, bro? I fought like crazy at level 0. And so I became the master of that level 0.

  Damn. I can feel tears coming out. Kind of like being the master at picking your nose. Who needs that.

  And so it begins.

  The world is an unfair place.

  In the very beginning there was a collective understanding of joint ownership and joint distribution. I guess you could think of it as communism in a way, right? Everyone hunted together to support their community and they all shared in the spoils. They probably never really ran into too many issues. Probably because the community acted as one family and they never really had anything like inheritance or passing things on to just their blood

  But then they got smart. They started farming and keeping livestock, and soon food was everywhere right? Now we have a problem. This was when the concept of ownership began to emerge. You see where I’m going with this? Now the stronger ones began to monopolize things like tools, farmland, horses, cows…everything. And the rest..well..yeah.

  One day, these guys in power asked themselves. Hey. Why is it that I can survive without having to work all day while those weaklings do? And that was when they realized. Because they were just a different class. And that was how they became the upper class. The elite. The noblemen. Because they were just born with better blood.

  After experiencing lots of ups and down, modern civilization came to a new conclusion. All men are born equal.

  Honest to God there was a time when people really believed this.

  From there, capitalist society drew a line and said this line…this line is the divisor between success and loserdom. They now needed a new special word for those special people who crossed the line of success. This was how the mythical word, “effort” was born.

  It was genius. People were now slaves to the word and convinced themselves anything was possible with just the right amount of effort.

  Now if you were poor, it was all your fault. It was because you just didn’t put enough effort. You loser.

  ‘I’m different from them. I put in all this effort and came all the way here, while those lazy lazy people sat on their asses and ended up there.’

  An era arose where people easily pointed their fingers and called others who worked over 18 hours a day lazy bums.

  But then that too passed fairly quickly. Shortly a new revelation came to everyone. They realized that success was built on a foundation of failure and society could not exist without its underdog.

  And so the 21st century came to pass and the 22nd century arrived.

  What do you think it’s like now? You think things improved even more?

  Unfortunately, the world never really truly changes.

  That’s why I’m stuck here in this situation.

  “You. Clean all of this up and come out.”

  “Yes. Sir.”

  I picked up all the odds and ends haphazardly dumped into the dungeon and put it into a bag. The party of 5 had left the area while killing a bunch of monsters, and I was over here picking up all the items they dropped.

  These “Sirs” (ha!) dressed in their fancy shmancy armor with their expensive swords never waste their time in picking up these odds and ends – saying it would interfere with their hunt. It doesn’t happen often, really, but once in a while they’ll drop something valuable. But if that happens, someone in the party will make sure to pick it up.

  They’re basically looking at me as if I’m a thief.

  “Kkeung!”

  I put on the backpack weighing over 200 kg and stood up. If I didn’t do my daily training of squats, I would probably have thrown out my back before even getting halfway up.

  Let me give you some advice. Squats are a good stamina exercise.

  “Damn this weasel is slow as hell. What are we going to do with a porter this slow!”

  “Yes sir. I’m coming~”

  I nudged the heavy backpack into a more comfortable position and shuffled on a bit faster.

  ***

  “Thank you sir.”

  I bowed deeply. Very deeply. The party head who was probably about 5 years younger than me handed me an envelope with a look on his face that said he didn’t want to give me any of it. There was about 100 dollars in there. This was half the usual pay. I was barely able to hold my composure.

  “If you keep doing a crappy job like you did today, I’ll never call on you again.”

  “I’m sorry sir.”

  I bowed my head again. This jerk was the youngest son of a famous construction company owner. He’s only a hunter for fun but, using his father’s money for some expensive equipment and some skillbooks, he was able to become a level 3 hunter.

  If you were a level 3 hunter, you were still in the top 5 percent. If I were to guess how much it cost him to get there, I’d say it was probably about 2 million dollars. To think that he used that kind of money to get to a level 2 dungeon. It seems like such an inefficient way to invest such an amount, but it really isn’t. Honestly, to be able to kill monsters way bigger than yourself. A person who has never experienced that feeling would never truly understand.

  For this reason, a lot of the wealthy frequent dungeons. And in these dungeons, there is always a need for people to follow them around. And those people are bagboys – the official term is a porter.

  Yeah yeah. I’m one of those porters.

  Porters follow around those rich and spoiled kids who call themselves hunters so they can hunt as safely as possible while we can pick up their dropped items and loot for them. They hate picking up dropped items so that job falls under my description. Our job doesn’t end there. We also have to compliment them and hype up their kill when they are successful in hunting a monster. (What are we, seven?) But I can’t be too annoyed because how much we get paid depends on their mood. So if I can get paid more, I’ll compliment their kill all day. If you’re lucky, you might even get paid a tip of several hundred times your normal amount.

  But, of course, today was not that day. 100 dollars. Treating me like some kind of a beggar.

  The party head must have noticed something in my expression because he suddenly made a frown.

  “You have a problem?”

  “No sir.”

  Tap Tap

  “Then don’t make that face. It might start to really upset me. Understand?”

  The jerk nudged my shoulder as he started to laugh. Not wanting to let anything slip again, I looked down. This much I can handle.

  ***

  I’m currently renting a room in a 3 story red bricked private home. I’ll be 26 this year. I did graduate from college but in this recession, there was no way for me to find employment so I ended up going from being a porter part time to taking it full time. I hope you don’t look down on me just because I’m a porter though. If you want to stay alive in a dungeon, you still need to have at least some degree of skill.

  In that sense, I’m quite capable I guess. It’s pretty rare to find someone who can porter at a level 2 dungeon at my age. A porter’s most important skill in survival skills. Because in a dungeon, there is no one there to save a porter’s life.

  Ringringring-

/>   My cell phone rang. I took it out of my pocket. It’s an older model with a cheap LCD screen. Those guys with money have the new smartphones with the touch panel. Not me though. I only need my phone to be able to make/take calls and send/receive messages. Nothing fancy. It was a good broker buddy of mine. Song Minhan. In his mid thirties, he has over 10 years of experience as a broker, and we’ve worked together for a good number of years since he always seems to find me good porter jobs. If you were to do any sort of freelancing, a good broker is a must you see.

  “Yes. It is I, your ever vigilant pretty boy porter, Jeon Sangmin!”

  “Can you please change the way you answer your phone?”

  “The ladies love it though.”

  “Yeah right. I need a porter quick. Do you have time?”

  “Just one moment while I check my schedule.”

  “Stop being funny. I know you don’t have that much work these days.”

  “I just did one today.”

  “Great. You’re warmed up then right? Come to Ansan by 3.”

  “Ansan? There’s only level 1 dungeons in that area.”

  “Don’t worry. The pay ain’t bad. This time, Severance Hospital owner’s son is going into a dungeon for the first time. They said they needed a skilled porter so I recommended you. Shake a leg and get over here will ya?”

  “How much?”

  “You’re fee is 200. Tip is separate.”

  “What. Not bad for a level 1 fee. How much are you taking?”

  100 was the normal fee for level 1 portering. Level 2 portering was usually 200 but there were a lot of times the fee was docked as was the case today.

  “I take exactly how much I’m supposed to so don’t worry your pretty little head alright? How many years do you think I’ve been doing this to play around with money like that?”

  “I was just asking. Just wondering if sitting around and making money might be worth doing.”

  “I take 100. Feel better?”

  “What. Thief. Someone gets to sit around and make that much while others risk their lives for just 200.”

  “Someone eavesdropping would think that you were going into level 10 dungeons or something. Are you coming or not?”

  “I’m coming. You said 3 right?”

  “Yeah. And don’t come at 3 am like you did last time.”

  “Yes yes sir Song Minhan. I am the sowee.”

  Jeez how long is he going to bring that up. I mean I only did it that once.

  I quickly checked the time. It was three so two hours to get to Ansan was doable. I hurried over to the closest train station.

  This world messed up big time. About 50 years ago, monsters appeared. They came from the ground, the air, and the ocean. Blah. They made a sudden attack on the human race and we were almost wiped out. The weapons we had developed over thousands of years were useless. These guys had crazy tough skin that it took about dozens of bullets to bring one down. We had about a couple hundred of those just in our country alone.

  We shot our guns, mobilized tanks, and shot out missiles too. But these monsters learned to protect themselves. They would dig themselves underground to evade our weapons and were smart enough to only come out at night to continue their attacks.

  We were barely able to keep the city from falling to complete disaster by mobilizing a bunch of soldiers but it didn’t end there. As time passed on, a huge crater appeared within the city. The black hole got bigger and bigger until one day a stream of monsters started spilling out of it. We tried everything. Shot into it, threw grenades into it…but it didn’t stop them.

  North Korea activated a nuclear bomb. Of course, right? That incident didn’t help any but cause their immediate collapse. They got absorbed by China. What used to be North Korea became an autonomous region of China.

  Later there was an incident where a scout actually went into the black hole and came back out…alive. He had personally witnessed the monsters that were teaming within that hole and somehow lived through it. Nothing short of a miracle, I say.

  Using his testimony and realizing that more monsters lived in that hole, a whole army was sent in to take care of them all. The results were disastrous. The monsters in the hole turned out to be way more powerful than the ones that were running around outside. And on top of that, inside the cramped space of the dungeon, the army was not able to fully use strategy or anything else that would have helped.

  Humanity had no choice but to create a defensive line around the hole and resort to just trying to fight the weaker monsters spilling from out of it. And then..a man appeared.

  Lee Wheeseung.

  This man, equipped with only a sword, had gone inside the dungeon and wiped out the monsters there. He had killed monsters, whose hides could not be penetrated by even bullets, with just one blade. Not only did this catch the attention of the country, but it was spread far and wide across the world.

  The secret to his success was in none other than the skillbook that the monsters had dropped. These guys rarely die but when they do, they drop their skillbook. Luckily, Lee Wheeseung had attained one of these – the “Pedro” skillbook. He learned its contents. Being the first of mankind to be able to clear a dungeon, he basically monopolized the fortune found in the dungeons.

  From the fortune he acquired as he cleared dungeon after dungeon, he began to gain fame as well across all of Korea. He became the best hunter as well as the biggest celebrity. Recruitments for commercials came wave after wave, he even made some music here and there, and appeared in several movies too. At one ridiculous point, he was the number 1 presidential candidate. But hating politics, he never ran. If he did run, he would have been made President. No doubt about that. Ultimately he ended up marrying the leader of Korean’s most popular girl group and lived happily ever after.

  If you really think about it though, you can’t really say that it was all his luck. Honestly, if the Pedro skillbook was picked up by anyone else, all of that luck would have belonged to someone else. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time and attained everything from it.

  “Hmm…?”

  I opened my eyes to see that the bus had passed Shinchon and was headed toward Yeonshin. That woke me the hell up. I quickly got up and rushed to get off. The bus headed back where I came from hadn’t arrived yet. Looking at the bus schedule, it would be another 20 minutes until it would come.

  I looked around as I stood at the bus stop. There was a female student with earphones on listening to music. And there was a middle aged looking salaryman. That was it.

  Several busses passed by and just as I was about to yawn from the wait, the 1500 bus I’d been waiting for finally arrived.

  Something was weird. The bus was jiggling around like it was dancing and didn’t seem like it would stop.

  “Shit.”

  There was blood all over the inside of the bus. A monster was going to town in there. The driver looked as if he was probably already dead. The bus was speeding – the driver probably died with his foot still on the pedal.

  Crash!

  The rumbling bus crashed into a store nearby. It overturned from the impact and the monster peeked out of the wide open door.

  I screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs.

  “Run!”

  The middleaged man started to run with horror on his, but the girl was just standing there reading her damn book. I think I remember seeing this exact scene in a movie one time. A monster would appear but the girl extra reading a book with earphones in hear damn head gets eaten.

  Shit shit shit

  I grabbed her hand and started running.

  “What, what are you doing?!”

  “There’s no time to explain! If you need to know, just look behind us!”

  “Hee eek?”

  The girl collapsed to the ground. Looks like she lost the strength from her legs. What could I do? I just scooped her up. Remember I told you about those squats? Came in handy, didn’t it? I practice 3 sets of squats.
Carrying a girl who looked to be barely 100 pounds was nothing to me.

  The problem now was, would I be able to outrun that monster.

  Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

  I turned to look at the monster. Probably 3 meters tall. Had some thick skin with a muscular body. Kind of had a humanoid body with two 30cm ish claws. Its teeth looked sharp as hell too. A narrow jaw…rather than developed to better eat its food…it seemed like it was designed to slaughter.

  I thought a moment about whether I could go up against this thing. Even if it didn’t have those claws and teeth, it had the advantage of longer limbs and bigger reach.

  The answer was clear.

  Run for my life.

  “Haaaa!”

  Crash!

  The entire bus station crumpled like a piece of paper.

  That thing was a level 4 monster at the very least.

  Would I even be able to outrun it?

  Swoop!

  Crash!

  Shit. It jumped over me and landed up front. The concrete had scattered and split from the impact. A chunk hit my cheek and made a long cut.

  “Craaaaap!”

  It began to swing its hand.

  I jumped backward to keep out of its reach

  Crasssh!

  “Ugh..”

  My back. I could feel a cool and painful sensation. I didn’t have time to check the damage. I can see the thing thinking for a minute so it’s not entirely stupid.

  The girl was on the concrete floor crawling to move away. I could see her black stockings ripping from rubbing against the hard ground.

  I hurriedly got up and grabbed her by the arm again.

  Swish!

  Crash!

  The monsters claw swiped at the area we were just in a moment ago.

  At least there was one hope.

  ‘It’s slower than I thought.’

  Compared to its strength and crazy jumping skills, his movements were on the slow side. Otherwise, we would have been caught in this monster’s claw right when the girl and I attempted to roll away.

  I took that small bit of hope and ran like hell. We just might get away. Shit.

  ….was what I thought.

  But the monster caught up to us in mere moments. I was overcome with a nauseating feeling as I stared up at the gigantic monster blocking my path. It was funny looking and scary at the same time. I couldn’t really pick which one exactly. With his head that was small like a bird atop a thick and muscular body…am I right? I also couldn’t figure out if his red body was the natural color or if it was from all the blood…