Solo Leveling - Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I Alone Level-up: Chapter 14

The Lycan that had flown over his head was now looking at him with fear .  Its tail lowered, the wolf began to step backwards .

“Huh…?”

Was this the result of putting all of his points into strength?

As he stared at his fist with an open mouth, the headless body of the Lycan convulsed with a finality then stopped moving .  A familiar electronic sound rang through Jinwoo’s head .

ring~

“I’ve leveled up?”

Make sure he didn’t mishear, Jinwoo quickly opened his status screen .

[1]

He really had leveled up .  With it, all of his stats had increased by 1 point .  Jinwoo realized that the quest rewards were not the only way to raise his attributes .  It was apparent that leveling up increased them as well .

‘To think that I could level-up!’

Something that he had only dreamt about was now a reality before him .

His heartbeat quickened .

‘And the total points I’ve gained is bigger than the daily quest . ’

The stat points he received from quests were 3 .

The stat points he gained from leveling up were 5 .

Although he could not freely distribute these 5 points, the total benefit from a level-up was much bigger than the quest reward .

‘And I leveled up after taking down just two of them . ’

In a video game, low level characters were able to level up quickly .

Jinwoo was currently level 2 .  You could say he was at the bottom of the barrel .  But his level did not properly reflect his strength .  After all, his strength was already above 30; if you treated one level-up being equivalent to one point of strength, Jinwoo already had the strength of someone above level 20 .  And when a level 1 character hunts with the strength of a level 20?

‘I think they call this “power leveling”?’

The destructive power of his punch that surpassed all expectations was a testament to his progress .

‘I’ve tripled the strength attribute, but I feel more than just three times stronger than before . ’

Jinwoo’s original strength stat was 10 .  The difference between 10 strength and 30 strength was a factor of 3, but his power felt much greater than that .

‘Maybe…’

What if value of his attributes became weighted as they increased[2]? That would explain this destructive power .  On top of that, his movements had also become faster . If it was the old him, he could not imagine dodging the beasts’ fast attacks or make the wind howl when he made a punch .

“I suppose increasing my muscles would make me faster . ”

It seemed that increasing the strength stat increased both his ‘strength’ and ‘speed’ .  His battle with the Lycan was the proof .

But what about the agility stat? If not his mobility, what would it increase?

Jinwoo knew he could not satisfy his curiosity without more stat points .

‘Even if I had some…’

It felt a little wasteful to use up the points from quest rewards in agility .  If he could raise both his power and speed through the strength stat, why put points into agility?

If that’s the case, there was one answer .

‘Increase my level as fast as possible . ’

He would obtain points in the agility stat through leveling up, gathering clumps of dirt until he had a sizeable hill .  Surely the result of the incremental increases would be noticed eventually .

‘Then, shall I get started?’

He remembered the remaining Lycan .

“But, where did that bastard go?”

The Lycan that had cowered nearby had disappeared .  Jinwoo looked around but could not find traces of the beast .  It appeared to have ran away while Jinwoo was focused on his status screen .

“Bleh . ”

He rolled his tongue in his mouth, disappointed at the loss of experience points .  As he began to walk away,

‘Wait, do these things drop magic cores?’

He stopped himself in thought .

Every magic beast found in Gates had a magic core in their body; sometimes, a single magic beast could carry multiple cores .  If you were lucky, you might even find a Runestone . The magic cores, which had many uses, and the Runestones, which taught valuable skills, could be sold for a high price .  It would not be an exaggeration to say that the primary objective of most Hunters in a raid was to obtain magic cores .

Jinwoo was a Hunter .  Walking away from a hunt empty handed made him feel disappointed .  Just in case, he had cut open the belly of one of the Lycan but found nothing .  It seemed like these things were something different than a magic beast .

In his Hunting experience, Jinwoo did not recall hearing anything about a wolf-like magic beast that resembled these Lycans .

As Jinwoo wiped his hands and got up to leave,

“Hmm?”

He saw something shining in the Lycan’s mouth .  Jinwoo opened its jaws . One of the Lycan’s teeth was sparkling with light .  When he reached out to it, a message appeared .

“Acquire . ”

Jinwoo read the canine in his hand and was taken back .

‘There was a shop?’

Where in the world did this unhelpful System come from? To think that it would force the user to figure out everything on his own .  Jinwoo recalled how it had given him no explanation about the penalty quest; it just threw him in the penalty zone and expected him to run from death until his body gave out .

Jinwoo gritted his teeth and called the shop .

“Shop . ”

He half expected an NPC shopkeeper to popup out of nowhere .  He was disappointed to find that the ‘shop’ just ended up being another information screen floating like a hologram .  As if that wasn’t enough, the green letters on the screen displayed just two words .

“ . . . ”

Wow .  What an amazing shop .

Jinwoo selected “buy” .  Although he had no money in his pockets, he was curious on what kind of items could be found in this shop .  But of course, the System was not very kind .

He was used to being turned away from places that needed money .

“Yessir, yessir . ”

Not paying mind, he turned his eyes toward the other function .

“Sure . ”

With a sound of coins dropping, his inventory opened up .  At the base of the inventory screen, the section that said “Gold” was now displaying 20 .  Yesterday, it was 0 .

‘20 gold . ’

Unable to use it in real life or in the System, he was not sure what the value of this amount was .

‘I doubt anything from an E-rank Dungeon would be useful . ’

Even if there was a difference between a Dungeon and an Instant Dungeon .  Still, Jinwoo started to head over and collect the other Lycan’s teeth . He facepalmed .

“Right .  I blew off its head…”

Disappointed, he turned to leave .  He was disappointed at the loss of 20 gold, the value of which he wasn’t even sure about, but he was not about to waste the time to look for a tiny tooth that could’ve flown off to god knows where .  As he turned around, his disappointment melted away like snow .

grrrrrrrrl

grrrrl

grrrrrrrl~

The Lycan that had ran away had returned with many more wolves!

Jinwoo’s face bloomed into a smile .  At a glance, there were more than 20 of them .

“Eureka!”

‘Wait, that’s not the word… . Whatever . ’

What was certain was his happiness .  He squeezed the hilt of his sword .

“Thank you for the meal~”

At his greedy gaze, the Lycans cowered and trembled .

Jinwoo leaped toward the beasts .

As expected, his level rose quickly .  Having ran around the entire first floor looking for Lycans, Jinwoo’s level had already increased to 7 .  A rather large leap of 5 levels .

whimper-!

As he took down the last remaining Lycan, a strange message appeared .

ring~

“Title?”

His status screen reflected the new title as well:

A stat boost against beast type monsters .  Although the effect was limited against certain types, a 40% boost was nothing to scoff at .

‘There’s a lot of beast type magic beasts out there, wonder if it works against them?’

If it did, it would help a lot in Raiding .  Still, the loot so far was rather disappointing .

‘34 canines, two rusty daggers, an adventurer’s clothes and a return stone . ’

Every once in a while, a wolf’s belly would contain items .  However, most were not particularly useful . The rusty daggers had lower attack power compared to his steel sword, and the adventurer’s clothes ended up being junk items that he could not use .  After selling all the junk he had picked up, Jinwoo had earned about a thousand gold .

“ . . . I can’t tell if that’s a lot or little . ”

No matter how much he collected, there was nowhere he could spend it .

Ignoring the gold, the only other item that he had now was the return stone .  He recalled the invisible barrier that stopped him no matter how much force was applied .  The System had told him he required one of these to exit . So, now he knew he was able to leave .

Jinwoo was at a crossroad .

Ahead was the stairs descending to basement level 2 .

In his hand, the return stone .

‘Forward or retreat…’

If it was his old self, he would’ve ran away without a second thought .  After all, it was the only way he survived the many Raids with his weak abilities .  Others called it a miracle, but he knew it was due to his clever movements .

But it was different now .

He did not want to turn back .

If he left now, he felt like he could not return .

“I’m sick of running away . ”

It was about time he faced danger head on .  He put the return stone back in his pockets .

His footsteps down the stairs were light .

Translator’s Notes:

[1]: Oh shit, I just realized I can stack the stat screens horizontally… I had to keep making page breaks when I had them vertical .  Hope it doesn’t impact the mobile readers too much .

[2]: Sorry, I’m actually not a 100% sure what the original phrase is referring to (능력치가 올라갈수록 가중치가 붙는다면?) .  Lit would be “as attributes go up” “weighted value” “is applied” . From context, I just gathered it to mean that the increases in his abilities were not arithmetic (straight line progression) but geometric (increasing progression) .

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