Hoarding in Hell Novel

Chapter 4 first night in hell (3)

‘What?’

Hyunmoo opened his eyes.

Of course, I didn’t pinch my cheeks to see if this was a dream or real life. Because I’ve had enough painful experiences than pinching the ball. Hyunmoo got up from his seat. He felt his legs ache, but he didn’t feel the pain in his body anymore, nor the helplessness that paralyzes his body.

“Shut up…”

A proper moan escaped Hyunmoo’s mouth for the first time. Hyunmoo felt like a sign that it was alive. He doesn’t know what happened, but it seems that he somehow survived the fine dust.

“…what happened?”

Hyunmoo muttered blankly, but there was no answer. Of course, Hyunmoo was able to make a rough guess.

‘Is it possible that consuming fine dust was checked as a treatment, and in the meantime, tolerance to fine dust was developed? Is it concentrated and poisonous blood is formed?’

It was absurd, but there was no other reason other than that. Among the capable people, he said that he often awakened his skills in extreme stressful situations or in the crises of death.

‘If it’s a death crisis, I’ve been through a lot. No, he’s completely dead.’

Hyunmoo sighed. In any case, it meant that I would no longer be just breathing and dying. Maybe this is what it means to level up just by breathing.

Even though I died thirty times to get that one breath right.

‘If I say that I am a man who won the fight against fine dust, I would laugh.’

But Hyunmoo himself could not laugh. And if there is one who laughs, it will blow his cheekbones away.

He also swore that he would pick up a mask in the future when fine dust alerts come up.

Hyunmoo moved his body with an unfamiliar feeling. Perhaps because of his mood, his whole body was still stiff and his intestines were twisted. Hyunmoo felt his hearthstone rattle on the edge of his chest. For a moment, I had the urge to grab it and throw it away.

But he might be able to send it back since he brought this here himself.

Hyunmoo believed that this was a parallel world, or some sort of bizarre dungeon. If I just believed that this was the reality, I thought I would give up on everything.

Hyunmoo barely let go of his hearthstone.

“Damn, where the hell are you…”

For the first time, I had the opportunity to explore the geography of this area in detail. If you look at broken signboards or letters drawn on the road, it was somewhere in Korea. The colors faded and the letters were erased, but it felt like somewhere in Seoul.

The problem was that Seoul was already completely ruined.’Is there even a war?’

If it was before the opening of the dungeon, you might have thought that they had invaded from North Korea. However, North Korea was destroyed when the 5-star dungeon Baekdu caused problems.

There were rumors that a nuke had exploded in a dungeon, but it was not credible.

‘After all, if the control failed and the monsters came pouring in from the North, it might have to be said that they really came from North Korea.’

I don’t know how Seoul came to be this way. For once, Hyunmoo did not stop and continued to look around.

The first thing that caught my eye when I had room to move was the crystal moss. If the country is ruined, I know that picking it up is a bummer. However, as a collector, I couldn’t stop my eyes from seeing crystal moss that was a great hit even if I picked up a handful.

Crystal moss usually grows in places where mana is abundant, such as dungeons. Abilities use that very mana to use skills, craft items, and amplify their abilities.

To recharge the mana consumed, you had to drink a potion made of crystal moss or stay in a dungeon. Judging by the size of these crystal moss, mana around here seemed to be incredibly abundant.

Hyunmoo picked up a crystal moss and put it in his hand. Hard and smooth to the touch. However, if you apply a little bit of force, it feels like it will break, and it gives off a faint sweet scent.

It was not the crystal moss residue that Hyunmoo saw every day, but the crystal moss of high purity. Crystal moss like that is strewn like weeds on the roadside.

“I wish this was real.”

Hyunmoo muttered involuntarily. I had a different feeling when I went to the bathroom and when I left, and I became greedy because it was worth living. Hyunmoo was desperately trying to put it in his pocket. At that moment, the voice of the narrator was suddenly heard.

[Do you want to collect crystal moss?]

“Uh… yes.”

The moment he answered in a hurry, the crystal moss he held in his hand disappeared in an instant.

[Inventory has been activated.]

Hyunmoo was puzzled by the disappearance of the crystal moss, but learned what an ‘inventory’ was.

Crystal moss was clearly felt through a strange sense that was neither tactile nor visual. He also felt that he could quickly pull it out, like something in his pocket. As Hyunmoo tried to pull out the crystal moss, it magically appeared in his hand.

[Crystal moss. best condition. crystal form. Weight 1.16 kg.]

“Heh, it’s all right.”

Hyunmoo tilted his head.

‘Is there an inventory function like this for ordinary people?’

none. This could be confirmed. That is why there is such a position as a porter who carries a wide range of loot and combat consumables.

Hyunmoo wondered if the inventory function was a kind of his own skill, but he had no way to check it. Hyunmoo decided to take the crystal moss generously.

“I’ll have to take a look at it first.”

Hyunmoo shoved random crystal moss into his inventory. Crystal moss was scattered all over the ground. It seemed much more than any other dungeon. Hyunmoo decided to enjoy now with a sense of just playing a game.

The level went up, and I was able to gather crystal moss as much as I wanted, and even acquired a rare skill. He intended to enjoy it to the fullest until the day he died.

***

How much inventory was filled, at some point, an eerie alarm sounded.

[Inventory is full. You have reached the limit of the strength you can possess.]

When I checked the inventory, I was able to confirm that 56kg was filled with crystal moss alone. It was the first number Hyunmoo had ever seen.

The day I picked up the most up to this point was only over 300g. If it was 56kg, I couldn’t get a sense of how much it weighed. Still, her body was as light as if nothing had been lifted.

‘I feel strange.’

If I could carry this on my back and return to reality, I thought I would feel a little better. Hyunmoo roughly calculated the price of the crystal moss collected now. Unrealistic numbers that he had never touched in his life went back and forth in his head.

‘Too many zeros.’

It wasn’t a bad feeling. But now it meant nothing. He may have had to find something more practical. Hyunmoo noticed something strange while looking around.

“Yes?”

It was a small rectangular box.

It was a cigarette, but the size was a little small. It was hard to recognize because of the faded color, but it was written “caramel”. I didn’t even know how long the expiration date had passed.

Hyunmoo hesitated. I wondered if this was a trap called ‘Hell Caramel’. If it’s not, it’s an experiment with the human case.

Hyunmoo honestly didn’t like caramel that much. Not to mention the caramel that had been lying on the floor for years. However, it seemed that he hadn’t put a proper thing in his mouth for several tens of days or hundreds of years.

Especially if it’s sweet.

‘Crazy.’

Hyunmoo quickly grabbed one and popped it into his mouth. He died from eating fine dust, so it wouldn’t be strange if he ate the expired caramel, but it felt like it didn’t matter.

The caramel was old and did not melt well. But the caramel, which had been rolling around in the mouth, soon soaked in saliva and began to release the sugar it had been hiding.

A sweet sensation she hadn’t tasted for decades began to seep into her mouth.

Hyunmoo shuddered at the sensation at the tip of his tongue, as if he had felt it for the first time in his life. It was the first sweet taste I had ever tasted.

‘Oh my gosh.’

Each cell seemed to rush towards the caramel, craving for sugar. But as if not a drop was wasted, Hyunmoo couldn’t swallow the saliva properly.

It was so sweet that I doubted that even caramel might have a drug-like effect in this hell.

Tears seemed to fall all of a sudden.

It was as if the whole world I had left behind was condensed into this one caramel. A love for the world that had only seemed cruel and harsh was blooming. How sweet and beautiful it was compared to this terrible hell.

‘I will definitely return.’

Hyunmoo made up his mind anew, unexpectedly. And when he went back, he promised that he would definitely buy a box of caramel and eat it, and he ate it carefully without chewing the caramel in his mouth.

***

No matter how carefully I melted the caramel, I couldn’t eat it forever. Hyunmoo let the sweetness in his mouth sadly and looked at the box of leftover caramel. This he vowed to forget, one by one, only when he had a day to commemorate himself.Suddenly, on the other side of Hyunmoo’s field of vision, a strange thing appeared. It seemed that the clouds were lower than before. It seemed to move unnaturally regardless of the wind.

“Huh? No, maybe…”

But soon an annoying noise began to be heard. Hyunmoo’s face turned pale at the familiar noise. What appeared before his eyes was a terrifying existence even from the original world.

“That, that, that’s what I’m thinking, right?”

[Mosquito (LV 3) has appeared.][The effect of the title ‘Hell’s Strongest’ will increase the stat compared to the level.]

“No, what! Damn it!”

Thousands or even tens of thousands of mosquitoes swarmed the streets like mist. Hyunmoo didn’t even have time to touch it.

After fine dust, mosquito swarms attack.

For a moment, Hyunmoo felt a tingling and bee sting in his left arm. A single red striped mosquito the size of a palm sat on Hyunmoo’s arm. The mosquito’s stomach swelled up in an instant, no matter how much his blood had been sucked.

“This bastard!”

Hyunmoo smashed the mosquitoes with an evil spirit. But he didn’t die so easily as to prove he wasn’t an ordinary mosquito.

After a few slaps, he pucked and blood splattered onto Hyunmoo’s arm. It felt like bursting a blood pack, not a mosquito.

But that meant spreading the smell of blood everywhere. This time, hundreds of mosquitoes ran towards Hyunmoo. Hyunmoo thought of himself becoming immobilized and mummified.

“ね!”

The spot where the blood had been sucked by the mosquito began to swell and swell. Seeing this made Hyunmoo unsure whether he was going to be mummified or whether his whole body would be a swollen, swollen corpse that had been bitten by mosquitoes.

“No, what mosquito!”

Hyunmoo groaned and rolled over on the floor to keep mosquitoes from sticking. Despite his efforts, the mosquito swarm devoured Hyunmoo’s body. In an instant, my head became dizzy and anemia came on.

I can barely breathe, so I’m dying from mosquitoes.

But instead of giving up, Hyunmoo clenched and popped the mosquitoes one by one. I didn’t even hear the message that I had leveled up.

Fortunately, the process of killing mosquitoes was not difficult, as if they were physically weak. But the number of mosquitoes that landed on his body was much higher than that. Before long, Hyunmoo’s entire body was swollen.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

In an instant, my eyes began to darken. I lost too much blood. symptoms of anemia.

[The resistance to bleeding increases slightly.][Health has dropped below 10%. Playback starts with the ‘Last One’ title privilege.]

At some point, Hyunmoo stumbled on his foot and fell helplessly. I wondered if I was going to die in vain like the fine dust. After being bitten by a swarm of mosquitoes after fine dust, you die. He doesn’t know how miserable he is here.

Hell seems like hell

[You are dead.][Total survival time: 00 days 06 hours 18 minutes 01 seconds.]