The cracking sound came again.
Then another.
Rin slowly raised his hand, enforcing silence.
That sound—
He already recognized it.
Not heavy.
Not singular.
Fragmented.
“That’s not Kingrat,” he murmured.
Mi-sun tightened her grip on the metal bar she had recovered earlier.
“Too fast. Too close.”
A sharp, shrill squeal echoed from the adjacent tunnel.
Then two.
Then several.
[Hostile Entities Detected.]
[Sharprats ×4]
[Rarity: ★☆☆☆☆☆☆]
[Threat Level: Low – Pack Behavior.]
Ha-joon went pale.
“Those rats again…”
They emerged from the rubble like a filthy tide.
Four low, muscular shapes—no larger than dogs—backs lined with jagged bone protrusions. Their dull fur clung to toxin-soaked skin. Their eyes reflected raw hunger.
They didn’t charge immediately.
They circled.
“They hunt in packs,” Rin said quietly. “Opportunistic.”
“So they’ll run if we hit hard?” Dae-hyun asked, tension thick in his voice.
“Yes. But only after a loss.”
One Sharprat lunged.
Mi-sun struck without hesitation.
The metal bar slammed against its skull with a sharp crack. The creature squealed and slammed into the wall—but rose almost immediately.
“Too durable…” she growled.
The others attacked.
Chaos erupted.
Rin grabbed Ha-joon and shoved him back against the wall.
“Don’t run. Watch their movement patterns.”
A Sharprat darted toward Dae-hyun’s leg.
He stepped back too slowly.
Its fangs scraped his shoe.
“Shit!”
Rin seized a heavy stone.
He didn’t aim for the head.
He aimed for the rear leg.
Crack.
The creature shrieked and collapsed.
The others hesitated—just for a fraction of a second.
“Now!” Rin shouted.
Mi-sun struck again.
Dae-hyun brought his full weight down onto the wounded Sharprat.
The body stopped moving.
Brutal silence.
The remaining three backed away instantly, growling—
Then vanished into the ruins.
[Creature Eliminated: Sharprat.]
[Loot Calculation in Progress…]
The group froze.
No one breathed.
Then—
[Essence Obtained.]
[Type: Sharprat]
[Probability: 30% → Success.]
A translucent object materialized above the corpse.
It pulsed faintly.
Its shape unstable—almost organic.
Ha-joon’s eyes widened.
“That’s… the Essence?”
Rin nodded slowly.
[Essence – Sharprat]
[Potential Traits Upon Absorption: Agility / Reflexes / Enhanced Senses.]
A heavy silence followed.
“Who takes it?” Dae-hyun asked quietly.
No one answered immediately.
Mi-sun looked at it with desire.
Ha-joon—with fear.
Dae-hyun—with hesitation.
Young-mi, leaning against the wall, spoke in a weak voice.
“The one who will need to run the most.”
All eyes turned to Rin.
He shook his head.
“Not me.”
Then he looked at Ha-joon.
“You.”
The boy stepped back.
“Me?! But I—I’m useless—”
“Exactly,” Rin replied calmly. “You’re the most fragile. And the fastest to learn.”
Mi-sun frowned—but didn’t object.
Ha-joon trembled.
Then slowly reached out.
The Essence dissolved into his skin.
He screamed.
His body arched violently. Muscles spasmed. His eyes snapped wide open.
Then—
Silence.
[Absorption Successful.]
[Sharprat Essence Integrated.]
[Minor Bonuses Applied: Agility ↑ / Reflexes ↑ / Auditory Perception Slightly Enhanced.]
Ha-joon gasped sharply.
“I… I can hear…”
“What?” Rin asked immediately.
“The other rats… far away. And… something heavier.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
A chill ran through the group.
Rin straightened.
“Kingrat never left. It’s still roaming.”
[Time Remaining: 61h 02m]
They had survived.
They had gained something.
But the Tutorial wasn’t rewarding them.
It was escalating.
Jin-woo walked alone.
He hadn’t been running for a while now.
Running made noise.
Noise attracted attention.
These tunnels were different.
Narrower.
Older.
The walls were marked with half-erased symbols—traces of something that had existed before…
Or perhaps of another Tutorial.
Much older.
He stopped and placed a hand against the wall.
“Shit…” he muttered.
His breathing was uneven.
Not just from exhaustion.
Fear didn’t manifest in him the way it did in others.
It accumulated.
Slowly.
Like pressure building behind the eyes.
He hadn’t fled out of cowardice.
He had fled because he understood something simple:
Groups attract catastrophe.
A faint sound echoed behind him.
He spun around, raising his improvised blade.
Nothing.
But he knew.
Something was watching him.
Not necessarily a monster.
Maybe the System.
A notification appeared.
Cold.
[Unstable Zone.]
[Progression Not Recommended for Tutorial Participants.]
“‘Not recommended,’” he repeated with a dry laugh.
“As if I still have a choice.”
He kept walking.
Further ahead, he found a body.
Human.
Old.
Desiccated.
Glued to the floor by black residue.
No System message.
No notification.
“So… even dying here doesn’t guarantee anything.”
He searched the corpse.
An empty bag.
Nothing else.
But something caught his attention.
The walls around the body were clawed.
Not like Sharprats.
Too high.
Too wide.
Jin-woo stepped back slowly.
“No…” he muttered.
That was when he understood.
He had done the opposite of the others.
They were fleeing visible danger.
He had walked straight into something that wasn’t even meant to be encountered.
A new notification appeared—brief.
[Independent Survival Detected.]
[Behavioral Analysis in Progress.]
He clenched his teeth.
“Great. Now I’m a case study.”
He turned away from the tunnel and retraced his steps.
Not running.
Methodical.
Jin-woo may have made the wrong choice.
Or maybe the only one that would keep him alive.
Time did not pass normally.
It stretched.
It wore itself thin.
When Rin opened his eyes again, he didn’t immediately know how much time had passed.
His body did.
Deep exhaustion.
Constant hunger.
Dull, persistent aches.
The group wasn’t the same anymore.
They had been walking for hours.
Maybe days.
They had avoided Kingrat.
Escaped multiple Sharprat packs.
Slept in intervals of twenty minutes.
Never more.
Ha-joon barely spoke now.
But he heard everything.
Mi-sun had shed whatever moral hesitation she once had.
Dae-hyun limped slightly.
And Young-mi…
She lay in the corner of the chamber.
Still.
No visible breath.
The group faced, for the first time, the loss of someone they could call a companion.
Ha-joon remained curled beside her for long minutes, a dark expression on his face.
He had been the first to realize she was gone—his sharpened senses detecting the absence before anyone else.
The mourning passed too quickly.
There was no choice.
The discussions resumed.
“We can’t keep going like this,” Dae-hyun murmured.
Rin nodded slowly.
“No.”
He lifted his eyes toward the tunnels ahead.
Somewhere, Jin-woo was surviving alone.
Somewhere, Kingrat still roamed.
And the System…
Was watching.
The real test wasn’t killing.
It was enduring long enough without losing your mind.
The silence was no longer comforting.
It was suspicious.
Rin walked at the front, but his steps were no longer as steady as before. Every movement pulled at sore muscles. His eyelids burned. He blinked repeatedly to stay focused.
Sleeping twenty minutes at a time wasn’t rest.
It was just enough not to die.
The tunnel widened slightly, revealing collapsed pillars and hanging cables that creaked occasionally—though there was no wind.
The world felt like it was breathing slowly.
Like a sick organism.
Ha-joon stopped abruptly.
“…Wait.”
Rin raised his fist immediately.
Everyone froze.
“What?” Mi-sun whispered.
The boy tilted his head, eyes closed.
“Not a monster… but… footsteps. Far away. Irregular.”
Dae-hyun swallowed.
“Humans?”
“Maybe,” Rin said quietly. “Or something that walks like them.”
The System remained silent.
And that was the most disturbing part.
They resumed walking—slower.
No one spoke.
At some point, Rin realized he was unconsciously counting his breaths.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Again.
As if he feared that if he stopped—
Something would happen.
A notification finally appeared.
[Time Remaining: 38h 09m]
No one reacted.
The numbers had lost their impact.
They were no longer a countdown.
They were slow torture.
—
They encountered another group.
Four people.
Two men. One woman. One teenage girl.
They were armed.
Not well—but better than Rin’s group.
Metal bars. Improvised knives. Bags filled with useful debris.
Both groups froze.
No one smiled.
“We don’t want trouble,” one of the men said.
His voice trembled too much to be convincing.
Mi-sun clenched her jaw.
“Neither do we.”
Heavy silence.
Rin studied their eyes.
Red. Hollow. Starving.
They had killed before.
Not necessarily monsters.
“Have you seen… a large rat?” the teenage girl asked, her voice cracked.
Dae-hyun paled.
Rin answered instead.
“Yes.”
A shiver ran through the other group.
“It took someone from us,” the woman murmured. “Dissolved him. Just… by touching him.”
The word lingered.
No one asked how many they had started with.
“We’re heading the other way,” the man finally said. “Good luck.”
They moved off quickly.
Too quickly.
When they disappeared, Ha-joon exhaled.
“They were lying.”
“About what?” Dae-hyun asked.
“The direction. They’re running from something.”
Rin closed his eyes briefly.
“Then we don’t follow them.”
Mi-sun nodded.
“The Tutorial is starting to force collisions.”
The System was shrinking the space.
Not physically.
Psychologically.
—
Later—much later—they were forced to stop.
Dae-hyun finally dropped his bag.
“I can’t anymore.”
It wasn’t a complaint.
It was a statement.
Rin scanned the area.
A semi-circular room. Reinforced walls. A single narrow entrance.
Not safe.
But acceptable.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “No more.”
They sat down.
No one lay down.
Mi-sun counted her breaths.
Ha-joon stared at the wall, focusing on sounds the others couldn’t perceive.
Dae-hyun trembled slightly—cold, or stress.
Rin remained standing.
A quieter notification appeared.
[Notification: Behavioral Profile Evolving.]
He felt neither pride nor fear.
Only fatigue.
“The System doesn’t want heroes,” he murmured to himself.
“It wants functional survivors.”
Ha-joon looked up.
“Rin…”
“Yes?”
“If… if my mom is still here…”
“…?”
“Do you think she’ll make it?”
Rin thought for a long time.
Then answered honestly.
“If she learns fast, yes.”
It wasn’t a promise.
It was a rule.
—
Somewhere, far within the ruins, Jin-woo sneezed loudly.
“Damn it…”
He leaned against a wall covered in symbols.
“I’ve never been this glad to be alone.”
A notification blinked before him.
[Time Remaining: 37h 02m]
He smiled faintly.
“Just a little longer, huh…”
Jin-woo had been alone too long to keep counting the hours.
He had stopped checking the timer.
Not out of courage.
Out of exhaustion.
The tunnels he moved through weren’t the same as the others’.
Narrower.
Older.
The walls bore irregular markings—sometimes dust-covered, sometimes deeply carved, as if someone—or something—had tried to leave a message…
And then given up.
“Seriously…” he muttered.
“What is this place?”
He spoke out loud.
Not for comfort.
Just to confirm he still existed.
A crack sounded behind him.
He spun around sharply, nearly stumbling, raising his improvised weapon—a bent metal rod he had picked up earlier.
Nothing.
Silence.
His heart pounded too fast.
“Haha… okay… very funny…”
He stepped back—
And planted his foot directly onto a weakened plate.
The ground gave way.
“F—!”
He fell violently, rolled several meters, slammed into a wall, and hit the ground with his breath knocked out.
Pain.
Vertigo.
A metallic taste in his mouth.
He lay there for several seconds, convinced it was over.
Then—
Nothing happened.
No monster.
No attack.
No elimination notification.
“…Huh?”
He slowly pushed himself up, wincing.
The fall had dropped him into a small side chamber, almost intact.
A forgotten room.
Off the main path.
Low ceiling, but stable.
Reinforced walls.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A nervous laugh escaped him.
“I should’ve died there, right?”
A notification finally appeared.
[Accidental Survival Confirmed.]
[Parameter: Contextual Luck — Minor Anomaly.]
Jin-woo blinked.
“…Excuse me?”
Another line appeared.
[Behavioral Analysis in Progress.]
[Profile Recording Ongoing.]
A chill ran down his spine.
“Wait… you’re watching me right now?”
No response.
Of course not.
He stood and inspected the room.
And then he saw them.
Bodies.
Two.
Human.
One slumped against the wall, skull cracked open.
The other half-dissolved, as if burned from the inside out.
Jin-woo swallowed.
“…Okay.
So I definitely avoided something.”
He searched the bodies quickly—more out of reflex than desire.
A nearly empty bag.
A rusted knife.
And—
Still-packaged food.
“Oh hell yes… thank you.”
He sat heavily against the wall and ate without thinking, chewing too fast.
His hands trembled.
He wasn’t brave.
He wasn’t strategic.
But he had something the others hadn’t realized yet.
He knew when to step back.
A new notification appeared—subtle.
[Critical Danger Avoidance: Confirmed.]
[Evaluation: Non-heroic behavior, but effective.]
[Profile: Opportunistic Survival.]
He frowned.
“Non-heroic…
Hey, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds.
Just a few.
When he opened them again, the silence remained.
No Sharprats.
No Kingrat.
Just him.
And the System.
[Time Remaining: 36h 11m]
He exhaled slowly.
“Well…
Looks like you and I are going to be spending some time together.”
Somewhere, far away,
Rin was analyzing.
Enduring.
Holding on.
Here, Jin-woo survived differently.
Not through strength.
Not through intelligence.
But through a sequence of mistakes that, strangely…
Didn’t kill him.
And the System—impartial and cold—
Was beginning to record something unsettling:
Some humans don’t survive because they understand the rules.
They survive because they bypass them—
Without even realizing it.
[Recording Complete.]
[Profile: Still Incomplete.]
The Tutorial continued.
And Jin-woo, without knowing it,
Had just become…
Interesting.
