becoming dungeon explorer (3)

I was extremely excited and I couldn't calm myself hearing all these alerts. The first thing I thought of was 'Yes! I'm finally a dungeon explorer!' The next thing was 'I think Bronze Rank 9 is a low rank?' The last was 'potion? what's potion?'

following thoughts caused my brain to overheat because of my lack of intelligence.

"Ugh, I'm getting dizzy.

Once my brain finally cooled down, I asked the thing that was speaking in my head.

"Wait, what did you say?"

[Would you like to check your message log?]

"Can you say that slower?"

[Would you like to check your message log?]

"What's a message log again?"

[It contains the messages Kang Shin-nim received.]

"oh yeah, show me!"

As soon as the words left my mouth, a translucent window filled with a bunch of words appeared in front of my eyes. Startled, I took a step back. To think it has a bunch of words and explanations which I disliked. since nothing happened I let my guard down and approached it. There, the voices I had been hearing were recorded. It was amazing.

"Sharp Wooden Spear?"

[It is inside your inventory. Would you like to confirm?]

"Confirm how?"

[You just have to say the word inventory.]

"Inventory…? woah!"

It was the same as before. A translucent window suddenly appeared before my eyes. The only difference was that this one did not have lots of words on it, and that it was long in height and short in width. There were 10 fist-sized spaces next to each other. There was nothing above or below them, so it was 1×10. And on the first space was picture of a glass bottle filled with red liquid. The number 5 was written next to it. It seemed this was the potion the voice was talking about. In the second space was a wooden spear. When I reached toward it subconsciously, my hand went into the window.

"woah!"

What was more surprising was that my hand didn't come out the other side. It really felt like my hand was wriggling 'inside' the window. I wriggled my hand in surprise, but I stopped when I felt something touching my hand. It was thick and long. This was… a spear! I immediately grabbed onto it and pulled it out of the window. As expected, a sharp-looking wooden spear was in my hand. As I stared at it, a small window popped up in front of me.

[Sharp Wooden Spear (Normal)

Durability – 70/70

Attack – 10

Equipment Limit – None

Explanation – A wooden spear perfect for a beginner to use. It has no special abilities.]

"I don't think I need a wooden spear? Instead, my fists are better then any weapon!"

I will be honest. I had no clue what this spear did.I just assumed it was like the same spear shin got for his birthday. For me who had never played a single game before, the terms 'beginner's weapon' and 'basic weapons' were foreign. In any case, I knew it was a weapon I would never use since I prefer my fists over the spear.

I opened my inventory and I put the wooden spear back into it making the wooden spear icon appear in one of the squares and then I proceeded to check out this thing called potion. It said it would restore 100 HP, but I didn't know what that meant. Then, the voice told me to check my status. I didn't know whose voice this was, but I thought of it as a caring noona's, and just like she told me, I yelled out 'check status.'

[Name: Kang Min Race: Human Sex: Male

Class: None Title: None Rank: Bronze 9

Level: 1

HP – 400/400 MP – 0

Strength – 30 Dexterity – 30 Constitution – 30

Intelligence – 6 Magic – 0 Charm – 7 Luck – 10

Skill – Low-rank Martial Arts (Master)Mid-rank Martial arts (lv 3), Low-rank Spear Technique (Lv 4)]

Strange. I see a zero there, I wonder what that means. Is my strength is 30 but my intelligence is 5, is my strength stronger then my intelligence?

"What's HP and what's MP mean?"

[HP represents your life. When you get attacked by monsters, your HP will decrease. When it reaches 0, you will be kicked out of the dungeon. In that case, you will not be able to re-enter the dungeon for one week.] [MP represents your mana. It is used to cast magic or skills. It is also called Qi.]

"Qi!"

'QI! Dad mentions this all the time! the legendary Qi!'

As if hearing my thoughts the voice halted me.

[Your MP is 0. It other words, you have no Qi.]

shocked I asked

"what?"

[Your MP is 0. It other words, you have no Qi.]

unwilling for my grand ambition to end here I asked the voice.

"How can I get it then?"

[Those from worlds other than Earth know methods to accumulate mana in their bodies. Also, those who already have mana can increase the amount of mana they have by clearing the dungeon floor and leveling up.]

"Leveling up?"

[It will be explained to you soon. In conclusion, there is currently no way forthe current Kang Min-nim to obtain MP.]

"What can I do to get it?"

[You need to obtain a mana cultivation method.]

"How can I obtain that?"

[You can buy it at the Floor Shop located at the end of dungeon floors. Note, it can only be bought from Floor Shops above 10F, and they are very expensive.]

"10F! Since I'm on 1st floor, I just have to climb to 10th, right?"

[That is right.]

'that's gonna be easy'

"How much does it cost? …is it more than 50,000 won?"

I was more concerned with its cost more then the difficulty of getting it.

I was in my 3rd year of middle school, and with my monthly allowance being 10,000 won, 50,000 won was an enormous amount of money. As I was wondering, the voice answered me.

[You cannot buy Floor Shop items with the earth's currency. You may only trade gold or monster remains dropped by the dungeon's monsters.]

"Gold!"

"monsters dropped gold? wow they must be rich!"

Okay, there was hope! From what I understood, there were monsters in the dungeon and they dropped gold when defeated. I could climb to a higher floor when I defeated all of them, and when I reached the end of the 10th floor, I could buy a mana cultivation method from something called the Floor Shop. Then, I could finally obtain Qi! I could fulfill my dream as well!

I was awed at my brain's ability to comprehend all this.

Of course, my brain wasn't yet capable of thinking complicated thoughts like 'if it was so easy, my father would have done it already.' all I thought of was how easy this was going to be. Later did I know that lv ones average stat wasa 10.

I signaled noona that I wanted to begin exploring by asking her where monsters lived. Noona kindly told me I could begin by shouting 'Commence Exploration.' I shouted as soon as I heard it.

"Commence Exploration!"

Then, all the windows that had been floating around me disappeared in an instant. A few of the torches were extinguished and darkness started to envelope the room. only the ones closest to me remained lit, burning strongly. Because I traveled the world with my father and little brother Shin every break, darkness was a common occurrence for me because I was able to see in the dark either way. However, the prickling sensation I felt on my skin was starting to bug me. Then, I felt a presence start to approach me.

I held my fists up and put on a stance. Having never been to this dungeon I put on a bit of caution This presence was like that of the 10m long anaconda's I fought at the my vacation at the Amazon!

Sss, sss. I could sense the anacondas crawling towards me from all sides, and I gulped. I knew I could defeat an anaconda with my strength alone but at the cost of being badly injured. But could I defeat several of them? I didn't want to be kicked out when I finally became a dungeon explorer!

Thinking this, I tightly gripped my fists. I saw them walk out of the darkness, and my brows shot up in surprise.

"it's not an anaconda?

50cm long and 30cm wide. What seemed like puddings seemed to be diligently crawling towards me. To compare these things to anacondas… I felt like I would be insulting the anacondas. I doubted whether these things were even alive. When the slime got close enough I allowed it to touch my hand and I only felt a tingly sensation when I made contact. After nothing happening after it touched my hand I slapped it lightly.

[You've defeated a slime ]

[You obtained a Slime Piece.] [You obtained 1 gold.]

It exploded with a bang. I stood still, stupefied, but soon gave a shout of joy and jumped.

"Whoo! So I'm a dungeon explorer now!"

The curtains had lifted for the legendary stage of the dungeon explorer Kang Min!

… Or so I thought before I knew any better.Things started to get troublesome

When I first felt it was when I reached the 3rd floor, past the 2nd floor when honey bees attacked. Compared to the 1st and 2nd floor, which were relatively easy, monsters called goblins appeared on the 3rd floor, giving me some trouble.

When I first entered the 3rd floor goblins started shooting poison arts at me but the darts aren't able to even break my skin leaving only the poison giving my a numbing feeling on my body.

When monsters hit me, it usually hurt as much as when my father hit me, which was not much. But because of the paralyzing poison, my movements became slow allowing more hits to connect. Because there were so many of them, it was hard to defeat all of them but I got past the floor with only minor annoyances.

"Dad I'm already on the 4th floor

"Hm? You're already at the 4th floor? It hasn't even been a month yet."

"Why is it so easy dad?"

"Easy?It took your Dad a whole year to reach the 2nd floor."

It turned out Dad had not yet awoken his sixth sense and was unable to feel the slimes approaching. As a result, it had taken him a year to take the initiative. Since you couldn't enter the dungeon for a week once you were kicked out, it wasn't surprising it had taken so long.

"So you're level 4 now?"

"Yep."

When you cleared the dungeon floor, your level increased by 1 and you were given 5 bonus stats. With it, you could raise your strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, and others. Because I was unhappy with my intelligence being at 5, I put all my stats into intelligence when I reached level 2. Thanks to that, my intelligence had reached the level of an average person.

Of course, even with my increased intelligence, because of the long years I lived out of touch with reality, I still believed I could easily reach the 10th floor. I tried to raise my magic stat when I reached level 3, but I couldn't put any points into a stat that was 0. In the end, I put 4 into strength, 4 into dexterity, and 2 into constitution.

"You must have made some money then."

"Money?"

I tilted my head. Money? I had gold, but no money. What relation was there between the dungeon's gold and money? What my father said next made my ears perk up.