I Stole the Number One Ranker's Soul

I might be able to.

I might be able to get out alive.

My cold body heated up with excitement. I did my best to stay composed. If I move rashly and ruin the opportunity I’ve been waiting for a long time, it’s the end.

There was only one chance.

As far as I know, there are three ways to get out of a dungeon. The first was killing the boss of the dungeon and using the simultaneous gates to escape while the dungeon collapses. That was a method I couldn’t even dream of. Pass.

Countless hunters have teamed up for the challenge but so far there has only been one dungeon where the boss was successfully attacked. Nevertheless, it was possible because of the sacrifice half of the team made.

It was impossible for a capable and experienced team of hunters. A collecting hunter like me challenging it alone? And one who had just awakened? It wasn’t even worth considering that method.

The second was the most commonly used method. Using an item called an escape stone, which was made out of mana stones.

Escape stones were made by crafting hunters by using related skills and mana stones. If made well, dozens of escape stones can be made with one mana stone.

Of course, I don’t have an escape stone so this method was inapplicable because I also didn’t have any crafting skills to make escape stones.

The last was breaking the mana stone itself, which will then be used as escape stone material. To tell the truth, mana stones were only recognized as escape stone material.

No one knew that breaking a mana stone would produce an escape gate. If you break it for no reason and lose the mana stone, you’ll lose dozens or tens of billions in loss.

However, there was one person who did such a crazy thing.

The first person to break a mana stone and escape via its gate. This story became a hot subject as if it were an epic tale so there were few people who didn’t know it.

Well, he was also a very famous hunter.

Anyway, thanks to that incident, it was discovered that once a mana stone is broken, a gate will be created that can be used by a certain number of people depending on the mana stone’s rank. However, it was a method that wasn’t used unless it was a fairly urgent situation. Since it was such an inefficient method.

Why would you do such a wasteful thing if the mana stone can be processed into an escape stone that can be used by dozens of people?

If he wasn’t in a situation where he was isolated in a dungeon like me, he would’ve never done it. But the thing is, he wasn’t swallowed by an irregular rupture but was officially admitted for the attack since he was a seriously strong combat hunter. That’s what’s different from my story.

Every hunter who enters a dungeon needs an escape stone. And the material to make escape stones, mana stones, could only be obtained in an especially limited quantity.

Though the number of people who would be able to use the gates would slightly increase if the mana stones were processed into escape stones, the supply was too insufficient to keep up with the demand.

Because of that, the price of escape stones rocketed so high that not even rich hunters could use them so easily. Occasionally, there wouldn’t be any sales at all so even if you had the money, you wouldn’t be able to obtain any. As a result, fraudulent sales were in full swing.

Nowadays, the method to distinguish fake escape stones from real ones was widely known so few people suffered from it, but back in the day, many catastrophic events happened. ‘Somehow, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an escape stone that was cheaper than the market price, but it turned out to be fake’, that kind of tale circulated around like a ghost story.

Furthermore, there were hunters who just awakened and blindly jumped into dungeons while believing ‘I’ll be the bastard to succeed’.  There were also people who attacked in moderation and swiped other hunter’s escape stones and those who tried to jump into the gates of others in order to escape. What was even worse was that there were people who just entered dungeons while thinking ‘it’ll work out somehow’.

It was a way of thinking that people like me who pour cement on a stone bridge before leaping couldn’t understand. At any rate, there were a few people like that.

Still, the safest way was entering through dungeons. When a rich business man who desires dungeon items purchases a ‘multi-person escape stone’ and invests in a guild that attacks dungeons, it became a type of fund that was prevalent. Hunters would circulate around dungeons to allocate the profits to the investors.

In the end, hunters dashed into dungeons while relying solely on multi-person escape stones. Since it was considered a stable method, over time, people began to attack dungeons in that way.

However, if you don’t know what’s going on, bad luck will always find you in a dungeon. For example, a hunter who was overwhelmed by the want to wander around and falls behind the others. The fate of that hunter, who was alone without a mana stone, was fixed.

Death.

However, there was one person who went against the odds and came back alive. The current number one, Seo Jihan. The person who has killed the most dungeon monsters on earth.

After killing monsters at random for three days and three nights without eating or sleeping, he barely managed to obtain a mana stone. He was happy at first, but broke it after thinking it was useless since he couldn’t get out of the dungeon anyway and as luck would have it, a gate was created. This was also revealed in an interview.

Back to the main point.

I don’t have the power to knock down thousands of monsters like Seo Jihan. But there’s no need to knock down thousands. The average hunter would need to kill dozens or hundreds of monsters before a mana stone appears. With my hidden skill 〈Nothing, Something〉, I’ll only need to kill one monster to get a mana stone.

Just one.

The plan was simple. Since a chungwang passed by just now, there’s still some time left till the next fellow goes on patrol. In that time frame, I’ll collect as many plants as possible, eat their cores and increase my stats before knocking down the chungwang. Then, I’ll acquire a mana stone and use it to escape from here.

Can I do it?

Will I be able to fight against a monster five times my size and win?

No.

It’s not because of whether or not it’s possible. I have to do it. There’s no other way. I tried to suppress my fear. Even if I’m scared, I have to do it. Even if it seems like I can’t, I have to do it. It might be worth it when I do it.

Straightening my quivering emotions, I moved my hands and attempted to meticulously collect as many plants as I possibly could. Thanks to the slight increase in agility, the rate in which I collected the plants seemed to be better than before. Plants I’ve heard of like evitanis, pimtofis and raniad as well as unfamiliar plants and their miscellaneous by-products neatly piled up in my inventory.

At first, I only considered eating evitanis’ core, but even if I were to do that and increase my stats, the fact that I’m a naked body without a weapon hasn’t changed. If I can’t quickly damage it, my efforts will all be in vain. I decided to hang onto any chance I could.

[t/n: hope this meant naked as in defenseless and not actually naked ]

If the core increases my stats, I think it’s best to eat all of the cores I have and get as much help as possible. I took out pimtofis’ core. It was a murky violet fruit with an extremely uncomfortable texture. What if it’s poisonous? No, that can’t be. If it was poisonous, it wouldn’t be common enough for me to know about it’s name. Trying to think positively, I chewed pimtofis’ core.

[Strength has been temporarily increased by 1 due to the ingestion of pimtofis’ core.]

It worked!

If evitanis was agility and pimtofis was strength, the basics were now set in stone. Encouraged by the good news, I threw the next core into my mouth without hesitation.

[Your state has changed to ‘poisoned’ due to the ingestion of raniad’s core.]

“Bleeeergh!”

Don’t misunderstand, the sound wasn’t made by a chungwang. It was my shriek.

As soon as I chewed it, all the areas where the juice protruding from the core touched felt like a searing pain. From my throat to my tongue and my palate till my lips. I could feel the juices of the core going down to my guts.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

Ughhh.

“Gurghh……”

It hurt so much that a strange sound came from what remained of my mouth. Without thinking about my surroundings and situation, I rolled over and grabbed my stomach and throat. The poisonous plant I was looking for a while ago was here……

Argh, aaargh.

Anything, is there anything that can help? The name seemed unfamiliar, so it must’ve been poisonous. I opened my inventory and frantically threw any core into my mouth. Fortunately, one of them worked and at some point my poisoned state was cleared.

Until my poisoned state was cleared, it seems like I continuously got poisoned and they all overlapped. It hurt so much and I couldn’t think so I didn’t know which ones were poisonous.

Apart from evitanis and pimtofis, it seems like a considerable amount contains poison. I should just eat these two. I was barely able to take a breather before trying to collect evitanis again when I heard a sound.

Clank, clank.

It looks like quite some time has passed since my frantic collecting. The monster on patrol duty was back. I hid behind a boulder. As the sound drew closer, ominous thoughts rampaged through my mind.

Can I really do it?

I don’t know how to fight, I don’t have any skills nor any weapons, so can I really do it? What if that thing lets out a horrible shriek and the chungwangs in the vicinity come rolling in? What if that monster was a lot stronger than I thought? Should I just give up this time? Wouldn’t it be better to collect as many evitanis’ as possible?

Because of the fear nibbling at my nerves, I couldn’t take action this time.

L-let’s gather more cores. Yeah. It’d be better to fight with as much strength as possible.

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Clank, clank.

Holding my breath, the chungwang slowly passed before my eyes. Its long antenna, resembling a reed, continuously searched the walls and ceiling. I held my breath the entire time in case the chungwang’s antenna caught the small vibrations of my breathing. But I couldn’t control every part of my body.

My stomach that had been starving for a long time, only able to consume small nail-sized fruits, took action without me knowing.

Grooowl.

‘Give me more’, it seemed to say.