The only thing that mattered now was reaching level 10 and changing his job as quickly as possible.
Park Jin-ho immediately selected the first reward.
[You have chosen the Experience Points Tripled buff.]
[The buff will automatically apply at the start of Round 2.]
With a month still to go until the second round, Park Jin-ho had already made his choice. Nothing else on the list could compare to a threefold experience boost.
Two thousand gold wasn't a bad prize, he thought, but it couldn't compare to the urgency of a job change. Changing jobs meant gaining a skill, and skills in this game were worth more than anyone could imagine. A single skill was worth more than three runes combined.
Having a skill was a massive increase in a player's power. On top of that, the commemorative rune awarded for a job change was a welcome bonus. The sooner he did it, the further ahead he would be.
As for the third reward, it was pointless.
It offered information about Round 2, which was useless to him. He already knew everything up to Round 20.
With a cold gaze, Park Jin-ho looked down at the Cheon-sa’s corpse. The golden blood splattered across the ground began to steam, evaporating into nothing.
Soon, the Cheon-sa’s body followed, disintegrating into motes of light that faded away, leaving no trace. It was the natural way of spirit-beings like them; their physical forms vanished after death.
At least I don't have to worry about disposing of the body, he thought. No evidence.
He scanned the area just in case, but the sky and the surrounding ruins were empty. No witnesses.
I killed the Cheon-sa in the same place at the same time as before. There shouldn't be any problems.
He had used the same method as always. With no witnesses and no evidence, there was nothing to worry about.
Cheonsa-ui were a selfish, self-centered race who cared for nothing but themselves. Another would simply take her place in the next round, just like last time. He didn't need to worry about being hunted down. Even without a supervising Cheon-sa, everyone would be returned safely, albeit without detailed guidance on what was to come.
As the system message announcing the end of Round 1 appeared in his vision, the world around him began to dissolve into shadow.
[Congratulations on your survival.]
[Survivors: 900,514,645]
[Your soul will return to your original dimension shortly.]
[Round 2 begins at midnight on February 1st, 2022. See you then.]
With that final notice, Park Jin-ho’s consciousness faded.
Lee Jun-ho shot upright, gasping as if he’d just been pulled from underwater. “Oh my god!”
The first thing he saw was a sea of people surrounding him, all stirring on the ground.
“Where are we? This is… the festival site, right?”
He fumbled for his phone. 5:20. January 1st, 2022. Five hours and twenty minutes had passed since the festival had started. It roughly matched the time he’d spent in that hellish dream.
“Ugh, my head,” he groaned, rolling his shoulders. “My arms and legs are killing me.”
Nearby, his friends were waking up one by one, groaning on the cold street.
“It’s not just you. I was out cold.”
“What? We all fell asleep at the same time?”
“Wait, so that whole thing… it was just a dream?”
“I had a crazy dream, too…”
“Jun-ho, did you have it?”
Looking around, Lee Jun-ho’s expression hardened. “I don’t think it was just a dream.”
“Listen,” he said, nodding toward the crowd. “Listen to what people are saying.”
His friends quieted, their ears catching snippets of panicked chatter.
“We’re back? We really came back from that hell!”
“What the hell? I swear I was just fighting goblins…”
As the murmurs grew, the color drained from his friends’ faces. It was impossible for so many people to have had the exact same dream.
“You mean… it was all real? The goblins? The first round?”
“Then we have to go back? On the first of next month?”
Their faces fell, the bleak reality crashing down on them. But the despair had only just begun.
“Hey, why isn’t he waking up?”
“Choi Tae-sik, wake up! Choi Tae-sik!”
One of their friends was still lying motionless on the ground. He looked like he was sleeping, but he was unnaturally still.
“Fuck! He’s not breathing!”
“Check his heart! Is there a heartbeat?”
They frantically pressed their ears to Choi Tae-sik’s chest, patting his face.
The result was crushing.
“His heart’s not beating.”
They couldn't accept it, but they couldn’t deny it either.
“Did he not catch a hundred of them?”
“Or he didn’t make it into the top half?”
They understood the game’s rules. They understood that their friend was dead.
And it wasn’t just Choi Tae-sik.
All around them, nearly half the people who had been lying on the chilly asphalt remained still.
“Are all these people… all the ones not getting up… are they dead?”
The thought of so many corpses made him sick. Goblin bodies were one thing, but human bodies triggered a primal revulsion.
“Only half of us survived?”
“Fuck, what are we going to do in the next round?”
His friends were spiraling into panic, but Lee Jun-ho remained strangely calm. No, he was forcing himself to be calm, holding back a wild laugh that was bubbling up in his chest. If he laughed now, everyone would think he was a madman.
If this isn't a dream, if it's real… then it's not just me who's screwed. It's everyone.
Only those between fifteen and twenty-nine, but still, that was a hell of a lot of people.
We all have to survive. It doesn't matter who we are or where we came from. It's equal.
He’d always been envious of kids born to rich parents, the ones who lived comfortable, easy lives. His own life, by contrast, had always felt so unfair.
But there’s no point complaining anymore. Haha.
His life was already in the gutter. He’d planned on becoming a gangster the moment he graduated. He knew they made good money from all their illegal rackets.
“Don’t worry, you guys,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “We just have to survive. What’s there to worry about?”
“But it’s not fair! We haven’t even had a chance to live, and now we might die…”
“It’s the same for everyone. What’s unfair about it?”
Lee Jun-ho’s words made his friends fall silent, though one of them muttered under his breath, “You bastard… with your pathetic life, no one would even miss you.”
Ignoring them, Lee Jun-ho said, “I still have so much I want to do.” He suddenly remembered something and began looking left and right, scanning the crowd.
“What’s wrong?” one of his friends asked.
“Just looking for someone,” Lee Jun-ho said. “Can’t see him anywhere.”
“Who? Your little gopher?”
Lee Jun-ho nodded, a flicker of annoyance on his face. He couldn’t find Park Jin-ho anywhere.
“Where the hell did that bastard go? I’m sure I saw him over there before I passed out. Did he die in the first round?”
Eventually, he gave up the search.
Well, maybe the loser did die. It’s not like he would’ve gotten very far anyway.
No weakling like Park Jin-ho could survive in a place like that.
As he turned his head, his eyes caught on someone in the distance wearing a strange, full suit of armor.
“Huh? Who’s that guy? Where’d he get that old-fashioned armor?” Lee Jun-ho muttered.
In that instant, a thought struck him like a bolt of lightning.
He yelled to his friends, “Hey! Everyone, open your status windows! It works here, too!”
“Huh? Status window?”
“No way, that can’t be…”
As they mumbled in confusion, a transparent blue screen, visible only to him, materialized in front of Lee Jun-ho’s eyes. The system he thought only existed in that other world worked here, in reality.
“Does this mean… our stats and items work, too?” one of his friends asked in disbelief.
“This is amazing!” Lee Jun-ho and his friends exclaimed, a wild glimmer of hope suddenly piercing through their despair.