Levelling Up In An Exclusive Dungeon

Chapter 43

When Tyrant’s Hunters had just exited the barrier.

Kang Jin-hyuk, who remained in the building, ran to a door in the corner of the first floor.

Inside, it looked like an ordinary warehouse, but if you removed the stacked boxes, a hidden door would be revealed on the floor.

The door was tightly locked.

It was a structure that could not be accessed without knowing the password or having the fingerprints of an authorized person, but it was not an obstacle for Kang Jin-hyuk at all.

“Heave-ho!”

The baseball bat, swung with a deep breath, easily cut the steel door in half.

The vertically split steel door showed a clean cross-section as if it had been cut with a knife.

Kang Jin-hyuk smiled with satisfaction, confirming the same result as when he cut the iron bars.

“It’s definitely become easier to use after the color of my aura changed.”

When he used aura with Holy Power, all he could do was strengthen his strikes.

But now, he could even mimic a sword like this.

“As expected, I think this side suits me better than a Cleric.”

The Hidden Class that appeared in place of the Cleric.

He still doesn’t know exactly what kind of power it holds.

Still, the abilities he has discovered so far were satisfactory enough.

Among them, the ability he liked the most was being able to see Karma values with his eyes.

Kang Jin-hyuk could see twelve Karma values, averaging over 300, in the place he went down to after opening the door.

‘If you go down to the basement through the hidden door, you’ll find people making the elixir.’

Recalling Jeong Dae-yoon’s words, Kang Jin-hyuk met the gazes of the twelve people staring at him.

Jeong Dae-yoon said that these people were all civilians, not Hunters, but Kang Jin-hyuk felt no need to spare them.

If they were good people, they wouldn’t be showing such high Karma values.

“Wh, who are you?”

Kang Jin-hyuk gave a test to the middle-aged man who was looking at him with anxious eyes.

“I’m a police officer. I came because I heard there were people trapped here innocently.”

“P-p-police officer?”

The man showed signs of anxiety with his pupils shaking so much that even a fool could notice.

He was extremely afraid of hearing the word “police,” like a criminal caught red-handed.

“Oh my~ Why are you only here now!”

Perhaps the man’s colleagues sensed the anxious atmosphere, and the ‘foreman’ stepped forward quickly, unable to stand it any longer.

“We were locked up without knowing why. Thank you so much for coming!”

He even shed a few tears, putting on a great performance, but it was useless against Kang Jin-hyuk.

Kang Jin-hyuk could see the opponent’s Karma value rising in real-time.

And the fact that the people who were supposedly locked up and only worked were clean without a speck of dust on their bodies didn’t make sense.

Faced with an undeniable lie, Kang Jin-hyuk pretended to be fooled and smiled.

“Don’t worry now. I’ll get you out soon.”

While the men inside were relieved, thinking that the act had worked.

Kang Jin-hyuk slyly asked them.

“By the way, what were you doing here? It looks like you’re making something…….”

“W-well, I don’t know. We’re just doing as we’re told.”

“Is that so? Can I take a look inside to find out more?”

The foreman and the other men exchanged glances, showing great agitation.

Refusing here would be suspicious to anyone.

But if they let him look inside, there was a possibility that he would find out about the Alraune.

After weighing which option was riskier, the men concluded that the former was better.

“It could be dangerous, so how about you investigate it separately later?”

“Dangerous? Are you making weapons or something?”

“No, it’s not that…… It means we need to be careful because we don’t know what it is. Hahaha.”

The foreman, who had stepped forward playfully, grabbed Kang Jin-hyuk’s arm and pulled him.

“If we dawdle, we might get caught by the Hunters, so let’s get out of here quickly!”

“Shall we?”

While Kang Jin-hyuk was being led away obediently towards the door, the foreman signaled his colleagues with his eyes.

Then, the men inside approached Kang Jin-hyuk’s back with unusual expressions.

In their hands were threatening objects such as hammers and awls that could inflict fatal wounds if used properly.

The men, mistakenly believing that Kang Jin-hyuk was examining the door, aimed for his seemingly defenseless back of the head.

The moment the man in the front aimed for the back of the head with a hammer.

With a sound like a watermelon shattering, it was the face of the man holding the hammer that was smashed.

“Gah!”

The man with the hammer screamed and fell backward.

The other men grasped the situation by alternately looking at their colleague’s face, crumpled like a kicked milk carton, and the baseball bat Kang Jin-hyuk was holding.

“Fuck! Get him!”

The foreman, who was pulling Kang Jin-hyuk’s arm, clung to him even tighter.

It was an attempt to tie up his limbs and prevent him from moving, but it was a futile act with the strength of an ordinary person.

Just by twisting his body with a little force, the foreman, who didn’t have a single muscle, was easily thrown into the air.

“Uwaaaack!”

While the other men were distracted by the foreman soaring towards the ceiling, Kang Jin-hyuk smashed the heads of the three men in front of him with the bat.

Because the colleagues who were hit collapsed without a single scream, the remaining men only realized Kang Jin-hyuk’s actions after two more heads were smashed.

“S-spare me…….”

One man belatedly threw down his weapon and begged for his life, but Kang Jin-hyuk’s bat mercilessly struck his face.

“Ugh!”

The foreman, who had been thrown by Kang Jin-hyuk, slowly got up from the broken desk.

He felt a terrible pain in his back, but he didn’t have time to care about it now.

None of his colleagues who had attempted the surprise attack were left with their heads intact.

“A-am I the only one left……?”

He hoped it wasn’t true, but the only human standing upright where the foreman turned his gaze was Kang Jin-hyuk.

The foreman belatedly realized that Kang Jin-hyuk was not an ordinary police officer.

“Y-you……! You weren’t a police officer, but a Hunter!”

“You figured that out now?”

As a reward for figuring out a trivial secret, Kang Jin-hyuk didn’t take the foreman’s life immediately.

Kang Jin-hyuk grabbed the man by the collar, lifted him up, and pushed him towards the inside of the basement.

“Lead me to where the elixir is.”

“If I do that, I’m a dead man to Tyrant!”

“Is this the time to worry about that? If you don’t do as I say, you’ll die right now.”

“Ugh.”

Tyrant’s fist was far away, and Kang Jin-hyuk’s baseball bat was right in front of his nose.

The foreman, not wanting to die, had no choice but to lead Kang Jin-hyuk to the vault where the elixir was kept.

After passing through a maze-like complex passage and opening two thick steel doors, they arrived at a secret place, indeed suitable for hiding Alraune’s elixir.

Kang Jin-hyuk spotted at a glance the seemingly complex locking devices, a transparent door, and a blue glowing barrier inside.

“Is that glass?”

“It looks like it, but I heard it’s actually a special alloy made using monster materials.”

“Hmm. Is that so.”

Kang Jin-hyuk thought it wasn’t wise to use his aura against a door of unknown nature.

Just in case it might damage the elixir being stored inside. It seemed better to proceed conventionally for now.

“Can you open them all?”

“N-no. You can see that the Hunters have even put up a barrier so that we can’t open it on our own.”

“Then what about the other doors besides the barrier?”

“That’s…….”

An ID card was required to unlock the locking devices.

It was a matter of course that if he opened the door using the ID card, his name would be left in the usage record.

The foreman, who wanted to avoid Tyrant’s retaliation, didn’t want to open the door with his own ID card.

“I can’t open the door with my authority.”

The foreman tried to get out of the situation with a lie, but it was useless against Kang Jin-hyuk.

Kang Jin-hyuk didn’t miss the increase in the Karma value the moment he uttered the lie.

“Don’t try any tricks and open it quickly.”

“What are you talking about? I just said I can’t open it!”

When the foreman continued to be stubborn, Kang Jin-hyuk struck his left arm with the bat.

“Kyaaaaaack!”

The foreman grabbed his broken arm, which had snapped like a twig, and rolled on the floor.

Kang Jin-hyuk sprayed him with bottled water he took out from his inventory, in case he lost consciousness due to the pain.

The foreman groaned in agony as the cold water splashed over his face.

“Alright! I’ll do as you say, so please stop!”

“You should have done that from the beginning.”

The foreman, with tears streaming down his face, took out his ID card with his good hand.

Then he unlocked the door by placing the ID card on the door and operating the buttons.

In front of the door that opened to the left and right, there was the barrier that he had seen from the outside.

The barrier was emitting an intense blue light in all directions, as if determined not to let anyone through.

Kang Jin-hyuk pushed the foreman aside and stepped forward to get a closer look at the barrier.

“I can’t tell what kind of effect the barrier has just by looking at it.”

Behind Kang Jin-hyuk, who was contemplating how to disable the barrier, the foreman wondered if this was his golden opportunity.

‘Even if he’s a Hunter, if he touches the barrier directly, he’ll be finished!’

Since he had already opened the door with his ID card.

The only way the foreman could survive was to capture Kang Jin-hyuk and offer him as a sacrifice to beg for Tyrant’s forgiveness.

The determined foreman held his broken arm tightly and charged at Kang Jin-hyuk.

He planned to push Kang Jin-hyuk into the barrier like a charging bull, but things didn’t go as planned.

“Huh?”

The foreman saw Kang Jin-hyuk, whom he had tried to push, disappear from sight.

Where did he go?

The foreman lost his balance and fell towards the barrier with that question in his mind.

As soon as he touched the barrier, the foreman’s body was burnt black like an insect touching an electric bug zapper.

Fortunately, it happened so quickly that he didn’t even have time to feel the pain.

“Tsk tsk.”

Kang Jin-hyuk looked at the foreman collapsing on the ground with a pitiful look, along with the acrid smell.

“I was going to spare you, but what can I do if you do this?”

Kang Jin-hyuk wasn’t soft-hearted enough to save someone who had tried to take his life twice.

After moving the obstructing corpse aside, Kang Jin-hyuk stood in front of the barrier again.

Thanks to the foreman’s sacrifice（?）, he was able to figure out how the barrier worked.

If he knew how it worked, disabling it was a simple matter.

“I just have to do what I always do.”

The method he was most confident in and used often.

Kang Jin-hyuk coated his baseball bat, held in both hands, with aura and swung it towards the barrier with all his might.

“Heave-ho!”

The barrier, touched by the aura, began to resist, emitting an even brighter light.

Kang Jin-hyuk gritted his teeth and put strength into both hands as his body was about to be pushed back by the recoil.

Soon, cracks began to appear in the barrier, unable to withstand the power of the aura.

Like ripples spreading from a stone thrown into a pond.

The cracks that started where the bat touched soon spread throughout the entire barrier.

Crack!

Finally, the barrier shattered with a sound like glass breaking.

Kang Jin-hyuk, who went past the vanished barrier, was facing a small box.

『Alraune’s Elixir』

Kang Jin-hyuk’s lips curled up involuntarily as he checked the contents of the box with his Appraisal skill.

“Jackpot.”

Two Alraune’s Elixirs that were supposed to be delivered to Tyrant’s Guild Leader and Vice Guild Master.

One was ruined during production due to the raid.

And the one that had been completed in advance was now in Kang Jin-hyuk’s hands.