Solo Leveling - Chapter 69

Chapter 69

I Alone Level-up: Chapter 69

Next morning, Jinwoo went straight to Daesung Tower .

‘Man, it’s still so tall . ’

A skyscraper with a hundred floors .  Standing near it, you’d have to strain your neck to look up to the top .

‘There are a lot of people here today . ’

Compared to the last time he had come here, there were a lot more people around .  Guess that was the literal difference between night and day . Whether it was the lobby, entrance or the sidewalk, people came and went nonstop .

‘Man, if I just disappeared into thin air like last time, it’ll cause quite a commotion . ’

There were already many eyes looking for him because of this so-called “unknown helper” incident .  Was there a need for him to reveal himself and purposely attract attention?

‘Of course not . ’

Jinwoo did not enjoy having attention focused on him .  He walked over to a hidden corner and took out the Demon Castle Key .  It was a slender, golden key . At a casual glance, it was clearly nonfunctional .

‘No one’s looking, right?’

Jinwoo looked around and nodded .

‘Time to go . ’

The Hunter used the ‘Stealth’ skill .

shooo-

The invisible man came out of his hiding spot then made his way through the crowd to the building .  Because of how packed the streets were, he couldn’t avoid bumping into few people here and there, but none of them paid any mind .

‘Man, this skill can be used for some really bad things . ’

No wonder high-rankers with ‘Stealth’ were under a lot of surveillance .

flaaaare!

In the meantime, he passed through the invisible threshold into a completely different world .

‘If I can hear the flames from here, just how hot is it?’

Jinwoo looked up at the massive tower on fire .  It stood where Daesung Tower was moments ago . The Demon Castle nearly filled his entire vision .  Still, they say humans can get used to anything .

‘Feels less oppressive than last time . ’

Indeed, Jinwoo’s anxiousness was practically nonexistent this time .

Or perhaps,

‘It’s because I’ve grown that much . ’

Jinwoo returned the golden Demon Castle Key to the inventory then took out a gray key .

It was what he obtained after killing the watchdog, Cerberus .  He was unable to use it in the past, having just barely defeated Cerberus .  Now, he would finally enter the castle . Next, he took out his weapon . Baruka’s Tanto in his right hand, the gate key in his left, Jinwoo carefully walked towards the castle gate .  Curiously, he did not see Cerberus .

‘Do monsters not respawn in the Demon Castle Dungeon?’

Might be just limited to the dog, but there was a strong possibility that it was a special rule of this place .

‘If that’s the case…’

The interiors might be a little different than the Instant Dungeons where monsters respawned .  Jinwoo sharply focused his senses .

BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM!

Because of the sense stat that had reached over a hundred, focusing his senses made his own heartbeat sound like thunder .

‘But I am not afraid . ’

Compared to the past, what he felt now was not fear but an overwhelming confidence resulting from his power .  Maintaining a sharpness and being afraid were two completely different things .

ring~

A message appeared in front of the castle door .

‘No, miss System, I’ll just turn back and go home . ’

Jinwoo laughed at the stupid question and selected “Yes” .

creaaaak-

He had not touched the door, but the giant gates swung open on their own .

Clunk!

‘Huh…?’

Jinwoo was taken back .  Even though his senses were focused, he did not sense any monsters past the doors .

‘No monsters?’

He had prepared for the exact opposite .  His worst case scenario visioned a scene where a ton of monsters jumped him the moment he opened the door .  It was this pessimistic thought that had carried him to the penalty zone for training .

‘But…’

Just what was this? It seemed like his efforts were in vain .  The inside of the castle was almost pathetically devoid of any monsters’ presence .

‘Huh… What now?’

With a disappointed feeling, Jinwoo returned Baruka’s Tanto to the inventory and stepped into the Demon Castle .  As these things usually go, that first step into the area triggered the response .

ring~

Jinwoo reflexively called his two daggers to his hands in a flash .

‘What! What is it?!’

‘A quest?’

And it’s not the daily quest? Well that would’ve been weird; he had already made sure to complete the daily quest before coming here .  Then this must be… just a quest .

This was the first time he had received “just” a quest .

‘Every other quest up until now was hidden, emergency or something . ’

Jinwoo checked the quest with a tilted head .

20 Stat points! As always, the first thing that grabbed Jinwoo’s attention was the stat point reward .

‘I can raise my intelligence by 20!’

He could not help but smile .  The disadvantages of low mana could not be understated .

‘I need a ton of mana to keep my soldiers regenerating . ’

And mana wasn’t the only benefit of the intelligence stat .  Jinwoo was finally able to learn that as his intelligence increased, the number of shadows he could extract and store increased as well[1] .  Because of all this, increasing his intelligence was urgent .

‘There’s a limit with just level-ups and daily quests…’

If he could earn 20 bonus stats through the quest, it would take care of a large problem .

gulp

‘And…’

Jinwoo looked up from the stat reward .

“Pick one item from every item possible”

Just the bonus stats were an insane reward, then there was this .

‘Really? Every item possible?’

Jinwoo remembered the absolute highest-class equipments from the shop .

‘There were even…’

S-rank equipment that cost billions, some even tens of billions, of gold .  Jinwoo looked at Knight Killer in his left hand . This powerful dagger cost nearly three million gold, and he was still using it .

‘If a B-rank dagger costing nearly three million is this good, just how good are the S-rank daggers costing tens of billions?’

He became curious .  Looking at just the first and second rewards, even ignoring the unknown third reward, this was an incredible quest .

‘Considering the rewards, taking down few monsters will be as easy as eating-’

Because Jinwoo’s eyes fell on the quest rewards first, he had not taken a closer look at the quest goal .  The man finally looked at the number of zeros and was shocked .

“Ten… thousand?”

Jinwoo could not help but exclaim loudly .  This was not just “taking down few monsters” .

‘It’s really, really not an ordinary quest . ’

No matter what kind of monsters these demons were, killing ten thousand of them would be an ordeal .  However, the Hunter smiled widely .

‘That is… if I was alone . ’

The current number of soldiers was 50 .  They each just had to take down 200 demons .  Yes, with those soldiers, this quest would be doable .

‘Of course . ’

There was no way he would refuse .

If he failed, the “penalty” would be just the wasted time .

‘Compared the penalty of those other quests… bleh…’

His life was on the line for the Class Advancement Quest and the Emergency Quests .  Compared to those, this was truly a blessed quest . Jinwoo raised his head,

‘So that’s going to keep track of my progress?’

The moment he accepted the quest, a counter appeared in the air .

‘10,000… This’ll be a long road . ’

With the numbers he imagined in his head actually visualized, Jinwoo chuckled in disbelief .  Suddenly, he discovered another counter to the left to the souls counter .

‘Huh?’

The holographic letters clearly displayed a number, and it was telling him that he would level up once he filled that number .

‘Am I finally able to see my experience?’

But he was Level 61 .  61 didn’t particularly seem like a milestone level for something like this to happen .  Not only that, Jinwoo didn’t see such a counter before heading into the Demon Castle .

‘Let’s see…’

Jinwoo took a step back and exited the Demon Castle .  With that, both the soul counter and the experience counter disappeared .  When he went back in, the two counters returned as if they were always there .

‘Looks like it’s only for the Demon Castle . ’

It was a shame he wouldn’t be able to see the experience counter on the outside, but it would surely be convenient while he was in here .  On the other hand,

‘Does that mean it’ll take that long to conquer this place?’

That was certainly a possibility .  Jinwoo pored over the details of the quest once more, then closed the message box .

‘Think I got the details down . ’

Finally, it would be time to explore the interiors of the Demon Castle .

‘Whoa!’

wooooooooo-

A ruined city lay before his eyes .  Unexpectedly, it was another field-type Dungeon .

‘Where is this? Is this Seoul?’

Perhaps if everyone in Seoul died and a hundred years passed, it might look like this .  A lifeless city faded to gray . Few street lights flickered on and off here and there .

‘To think that it’d be another field-type Dungeon…’

On top of that, it was using the great city of Seoul as its base .  Next to the Instant Dungeons that used a subway station or a mall as their base, this was incomparable .  Jinwoo’s eyes narrowed .

‘Where do I go first?’

Where was the goal? Jinwoo looked over here and there .  Thankfully, he did not have to wonder for too long . From a distance, where Namsan Tower should’ve been, a giant pillar of light stood in its place .

‘Let’s try over there . ’

Jinwoo started heading towards the direction .  In case he got lost, he carefully remembered the area where the castle gate was .  However, he did not go too far when he was interrupted,

“Kik kik . ”

“Kikikik . ”

Small monsters crawled out from between the buildings here and there .

‘Low-level Demon’

Jinwoo read the dark red names above their heads and understood what they were .

‘They look like…’

If the gargoyle magic beasts had wings, it would look just like them .  There were eight of them . Jinwoo smiled .

‘Got eight souls . ’

Pierce!

One of the demons sported Baruka’s Tanto out of its forehead .

“Kiak?”

“Kiek?”

While they were distracted by their fallen comrade, Jinwoo quickly ran over and removed another’s head .

slash!

These things gave a hundred experience points each .

‘And I need 60,000 experience points to level-up…’

Defeating 600 of these low-level demons should level him up .  The remaining demons fell quickly .

“Kiiiiiiek!”

“Kek!”

Current souls at 8 .  Experienced gained was 800 .

‘Not a bad start . ’

A marathon starts with just a few steps .  Jinwoo’s eyes sparkled, looking for the next prey .

Baekho Guild .  Guildmaster’s Office .

After being busy for the past few days, Baek Yoonho was going through the documents and reports that he had been neglecting .

Beep-

He picked up the phone .

- “Guildmaster, Hunter Min Byunggu-nim is calling . Would you like me to connect?”

“Yes, please . ”

- “Alright . ”

A moment later, a familiar voice came from the receiver .

- “Baek hyung, why is your cellphone off?”

Baek Yoonho sighed deeply,

“Because of those damn reporters . I’m going dark until this damn story dies down . ”

- “Oh, yeah, that! Red Gate! I saw the news from Japan . Hyung, you look pretty good on the TV . ”

“Don’t test me . I’m not in the mood to joke around . Once I find who leaked that story, I’m going to just…”

- “Don’t worry about that too much, hyung . That story’s going to get pushed over by a big news soon . ”

“A big news? From Japan?”

- “Yeah . The problem is worse than we thought . It’s going to make waves in Korea soon . ”

“Why? What happened?”

A week ago, Japan secretly contacted the Korean Hunter Association and the large Guilds of South Korea .  They were informed that Japan needed a consultation with Korea’s Hunters . And so, several Hunters representing Korea headed over to Japan for a meeting .  Min Byunggu was one of those Hunters . Baek Yoonho had been curious about the matter,

“Stop messing around and spill it . This is the first time those Japanese bastards asked for our advice on something . Just what’s going on over there that could rattle those arrogant fucks?” [2]

- “Baek hyung, you remember the ants of Jeju Island, right?”

An S-rank Gate underwent a Dungeon Break four years ago on Jeju Island .  The Dungeon was populated by ant type magic beasts . South Korea had attempted to reclaim the island three times .  They failed three times . Eventually, the government gave up on the jewel of Korea, and Jeju Island became the land of the magic beasts .

“How could I forget? I almost died during one of the reclamation efforts . ”

- “There’s been a development in that area . ”

“Development? Who the hell cares . Let them kill and eat each other on that island . ”

- “That’s…”

The voice on the phone became filled with worry and continued,

- “They discovered a corpse of a winged ant on the coast of Japan . ” [3]

Translator’s Notes:

[1]: Oh, here it is . The actual confirmation that intelligence increased his maximum shadows .

[2]: Err, in case anyone’s uncomfortable with the rather blatant racism, the relationship between Korean and Japan, especially for older folks, is not that good .

[3]: In the next arc of SoloxLeveling, we’ll be visiting the Chimera Ant Island :P

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