Chapter 323

Grid logged out, ate a bowl of jjamppong in the kitchen cooked by his mom, did his push-ups, and slept like a dead man.

When he logged back in, the first thing he did was summon Randy.

She appeared in a puff of black smoke as a little girl, took one look at him, and threw herself at his waist so hard he staggered. She held on with both arms and didn't let go.

"Hey. Hey, it's fine." Grid patted her head awkwardly. "You came back, didn't you? You did good. You saved me."

Randy looked up at him with a fierce pout, as if she was still angry at the drake for having the nerve to kill her. Then she finally let go and went to sit on a rock, swinging her legs.

"She was worried, Nyang," Noe said from Grid's shoulder.

"I know."

Grid opened his status window.

Level 300. The number sat there at the top of the window, and he stared at it for a while. Then he looked at the stats underneath. They were the same numbers as before the awakening, but he the derived stats such as the attack power, health, mana and the others have all increased by a lot.

He opened his inventory next. A pile of black scales. Several slabs of lizard meat. And in its own slot, glowing a slow, steady red, Gorvathul's Molten Heart.

Grid touched it with one finger and grinned like an idiot.

Legendary production material, he thought. Mine. All mine.

Then he closed the inventory and stood up.

"Okay. Door time."

The door hadn't changed. It still stood at the far end of its round chamber, black and smooth and enormous, covered in carved lines he didn't understand.

Grid walked up to it, drew Failure, and hit it with Pinnacle Kill.

Clang!

This time, it was different. His arms didn't go numb. And when he looked at the spot where the blade had struck, there was a mark. A thin, shallow scratch. The first one the door had ever taken.

"...It's working," Grid breathed. Then louder: "It's working! I scratched it!"

"It's a very small scratch, Nyang," Noe pointed out.

"It's a scratch! Yesterday it didn't even get scratched!"

But a scratch wasn't a hole. Grid stepped back and looked at the door with his chin in his hand.

"The awakening isn't enough on its own," he muttered. "So we add more."

He had thought about this while lying on the floor next to the drake's corpse. Around every thirty seconds, Noe could eat the soul of a monster and hand Grid a huge chunk of its strength for three seconds. Three seconds wasn't long. But it was long enough for one perfect strike.

He just needed a monster close to the door when he swung.

The lizards were easy to find. They were never far away. Grid walked out into the tunnels, picked a fight with the first pack he saw, landed one good hit on the biggest one, and then turned and ran.

"Follow me, you ugly things! This way! Come on!"

The lizards chased him all the way back through the tunnels and into the round chamber. Grid ran straight for the door, skidded to a stop with his back to it, and spun around.

"Randy! Hold them off!"

Randy blurred from a little girl into a copy of Grid and charged into the pack, sword swinging, pulling their attention onto herself. Grid turned back to the door and raised Failure high above his head.

"Noe! Biggest one! Now!"

Noe dove down onto the 389. His mouth opened wide, the motion of swallowing it whole, and a thread of pale light tore free from the lizard's body and slid down his throat.

[The memphis has taken part of the target's soul.]

[There will be a 50% decline in the target's main stats for 3 seconds.]

[The stats taken from the target will be transferred to the master.]

[Strength has increased by 2,710.]

The power hit Grid like a wave. with the bonus stats he almost hit 6,000 Strength stat.

Three seconds.

"Linked Kill!"

Failure came down on the scratch. Then again. Then again, and again, and again. Five strikes, all on the exact same spot, each one heavier than anything he had ever thrown.

The first strike widened the scratch into a line.

The second turned the line into a crack.

The third sent the crack spreading in every direction across the black stone like a frozen lake breaking.

On the fourth, the whole door shuddered.

On the fifth, it burst.

The sound was louder than the drake's death. Huge chunks of black stone exploded inward. Dust and grit filled the chamber. Grid shielded his face with his arm and staggered back, coughing, his ears ringing.

When the dust finally began to settle, there was a hole in the wall where the door had been. And on the other side of it, there was light.

Behind him, Randy, who had shared experiences with him in the past month and also reached over level 300, finished off the last lizard. The blue pixels drifted up past Grid's shoulder, but he didn't even turn around. He was staring through the broken doorway.

On the other side, the ground fell away into a vast cavern, so big that its ceiling was lost in shadow far above. And spread across the floor of it was a city.

It was built of black stone, the same stone as the door. Towers and walls and arched bridges, all carved smooth, rising in tiers along the cavern walls. And everywhere, on every wall and doorway and street, there were glowing lines. The same strange carved shapes that had covered the door, but here they were lit from inside with soft blue and violet light, so many of them that the whole city glowed in the dark like a sky full of stars.

Somewhere down there, water was running. Smoke rose from a few chimneys. It wasn't a ruin.

People lived here.

"...Whoa," Grid said.

Then the notifications started.

[You are the first to discover the "Hidden Dark Elf City"!]

[As the First Discoverer, you will receive a special reward.]

[The hidden stat 'Good Luck' has been opened!]

[Good Luck has increased by 100.]

[Dignity has increased by 100.]

[Charm has been opened! Charm has increased by 100.]

[Your affinity with the residents of this place has greatly increased.]

Grid read the third line again.

Then he read it a third time.

"Good Luck," he whispered. "Good... Luck."

His hands started shaking.

He thought about every Normal-rated item he had ever made after pouring his whole heart into it. He thought about the bird that had pooped on his head the day he first logged in. The second bird. The third. He thought about the time he had stepped in a fresh pile of horse dung in front of the entire Overgeared guild, and the time a monster had dropped nothing but a broken bottle after a three-hour hunt, and every single time the universe had looked at him and decided, very clearly, no.

And now he had Good Luck. A hundred points of it.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Grid threw his head back and laughed so loudly that it echoed across the whole cavern.

"Did you see that, Noe?! Good Luck! I have Good Luck now! No more Normal items! No more birds! No more stepping on anything!" He grabbed Noe off his shoulder and held him up in the air. "Do you know what this means?!"

"That Master will stop being unlucky, Nyang?"

"It means I've been chosen!" Grid spun around in a circle with Noe in his hands. "All that suffering! All those years! It was a test! The heavens were testing me, and now I've passed, and now the world is finally going to give me what I deserve!"

"The heavens, Nyang?"

"The heavens!"

Randy, a little girl again, clapped her hands happily without really knowing why.

Grid set Noe down, put his hands on his hips, and looked out over the glowing city below him like a king surveying his lands.

"From today," he declared, "Grid's bad luck is over."

Something sharp touched the back of his neck.

Grid froze.

Slowly, very slowly, he turned his eyes to the side. A spear point was resting against his skin. Then another one appeared at his throat. Then another. He looked up and saw them, figures standing on every ledge and rooftop around the broken doorway, dozens of them, appearing out of the shadows without a sound.

They were tall and lean, with skin the color of storm clouds and long white hair. Their ears were pointed. Their eyes glowed faintly red in the dark. Every one of them held a spear, and every spear was aimed at him.

One of them said something sharp and angry, in a language Grid had never heard in his life.

Grid stood there with three spear points touching his neck, staring at the glowing city he had just declared the start of his new, lucky life.

"...You've got to be kidding me," he said.