About an hour after we entered the dungeon, I made everyone stop. I sensed something strong, and there was more than one creature involved.

I said cautiously, “I feel something. It might be the boss.”

“Mm…Ah, there really is. One, two…there’s three,” my father confirmed.

Mastiford said, “Wait, let me use detection magic…Kyaaak!?”

Because I forgot to say they were hidden underground, I ended up hearing a high-pitched scream. Just like my father said, three spiders suddenly appeared from underground, and I quickly pulled the party back. Each spider was about nine feet tall. They felt oddly familiar, where did I see spiders this big before? Ah, that was right, Harry Potter!

“Kyaaaaak!”

Mastiford must have been extremely shocked by these giant spiders as she kept on screaming. As if it had been annoyed by all the screaming, one of the gargantuan spiders shot out a stream of white spider webbing towards Mastiford. It flew swiftly like a bullet. Minami then stepped forward and held her shield up.

“Haaaap!”

Boom! The resulting sound resembled a cannon shell colliding with metal. The spider webbing had an unexpected destructive power. I looked back out of concern as I wasn’t sure whether Minami was able to handle that. Thankfully, although she looked a little pale, she was fine. Apparently, she hadn’t been all talk when she said she was good at defending.

She stammered, “I-I’m fine, so take care of the spiders!”

“Got it!”

I clenched my fists and charged at one of the giant spiders in front of me. Father was also shooting out shockwaves at the other giant spiders, handling two at the same time. Since I couldn’t do long-range attacks with Spirit Aura yet, I could only fight one spider at a time.

I shouted, “Eat this!”

I kicked the ground and approached a giant spider. Before it could tilt its body and dodge, I plunged my lightning clad gauntlet into the spinneret, stopping it from shooting more web. Once I let the lighting explode, the giant spider trembled and shrieked.

“Kyaaaaa!”

“Eat another one!”

Left hand this time! Right hand again! When I started to punch it in a rhythmic manner it tried to use its two front legs to strike down at me. Although it moved fast, I could easily dodge the legs as I had seen their initial movement. The two spider legs only hit empty air and dug into the ground with an explosive sound.

Immediately afterwards, I threw a right cross at one of its front legs. Clang! It sounded like I had hit a metal pole. The resulting recoil made me clench my teeth but I had achieved what I wanted.

“Kiyaaa!”

“An opening!”

When the spider screamed and raised its body half way up, I instantly ducked and jumped under it. I then pushed it with my lightning clad fists, making it fall on its back.

“Wow, amazing!” Minami shouted out in awe.

I leapt past her and landed on the overturned spider’s belly. Although it struggled and tried to attack me with its legs, it was in vain. I held its carapace in one hand and rained my other hand down like a hammer.

I snarled out, “Die! You! Spider! Bastard! Stop! Shooting! Out! Webs!”

Every time I struck down with my fist strengthened with mana and lightning, the spider twitched violently. It let out a bloodcurdling scream and struggled every time it was hit, but its reaction lessened as time went on.

Eventually, I succeeded in penetrating its belly with my fist. Once inside, I let out as much lightning as possible.

Pzzzzzt!

“Ki—!”

The giant spider let out a short scream, then became calm as it dropped its eight legs on the ground. After confirming that it was dead, I dropped back down. A notification message popped into my ear.

[You have mastered Mid-rank Martial Arts! Attacks that make use of your body will be faster and stronger. Enemies possessing lower proficiency skills will be intimidated by you.]

I couldn’t believe that punching a giant spider over and over again was considered martial arts. Just as I was about to rebuke the message noona, another set of surprising notifications flowed in.

[You have satisfied the conditions and learned the High-rank Martial Arts skill. Your body has become even tougher. It has become easier for you to use highly complex skills, and your attacks will be effective against enemies stronger than you.]

[You have satisfied the conditions and learned ‘Thunder Beast’ skill. Thunder Beast is a special combat-type active skill that comes from possessing high-rank martial arts and a lightning ability.]

[Thunder Beast is a dangerous technique that attacks the enemy by exploding the user’s superb physical ability and the power of lightning. This technique puts a burden on the user’s body, so using it without a high constitution may hurt the user instead. The user also needs a high magic stat as it consumes a lot of mana. It uses 1 percent of total mana per second it is active. Using it for a long period of time may have negative effects on the user’s constitution. It uses 1 percent of HP and MP per second when used inside the dungeon.]

My eyes became wide. Obtaining high-rank martial arts was somewhat expected, but the Thunder Beast skill was something I would never have imagined. It was truly like getting a surprise gift out of the blue.

In addition, a skill like this was considered a compound skill. Compound skills occured under two circumstances. The first was when two or more skills were combined to create a stronger skill. The second was when a user upgraded their current skills to a certain level, leading to the natural and spontaneous combination of two or more skills. In my case, Thunder Beast was the latter. It combined my high-rank martial arts skill and lightning ability, or more specifically, lightning elemental Peika’s Spirit Aura. Although I had heard of compound skills before, I had never thought it would happen to me. I remembered Ellos complaining about wanting to get a compound skill…

The skill itself had an immense drawback befitting of its strong-sounding name. Using 1 percent of my total mana every second meant that I could only use it for 100 seconds at most. Not to mention, it also put a burden on my body. I could easily see how much of a burden it would be by looking at its HP consumption in the dungeon. Although the skill would undoubtedly be strong, I could feel how dangerous it was.

There was a reason why there was a difference in its consumption inside and outside of the dungeon.

Outside of the dungeon, it was impossible to check one’s HP and MP. Both HP and MP were values that only applied in the dungeon. They were safety mechanisms to prevent dungeon explorers from dying. When the HP hit 0, the explorer would be kicked out of the dungeon. Likewise, MP was the safety mechanism on the explorer’s mana.

No one had explained this difference to me. I had naturally learned the difference on my own as I continued to explore the dungeon.

In truth, there was not a big difference in my ability inside or outside the dungeon. I simply could not check my HP and MP outside the dungeon. That was just how it was.

Although Thunder Beast looked like a dangerous skill, the fact that I could use a powerful skill without my spear made me happy. I thanked my good fortune. With this, I really did not need to use a spear outside the dungeon.

When I finished going over all the messages I received, Mastiford had finally snapped out of her fear.

When I was about to say something to her, my father's shockwave grazed a spider and it hit the ground. It was then that I realized father was dealing with two spiders at once. Uh oh, he’s going to scold me later!

He yelled, “Yeon Hwawoo, Miss, I need help!”

“I’m coming!”

“A-Ah! Sorry, Ajusshi!”

Even Mastiford’s flames could not instantly burn up the giant spider. Plus, the two remaining spiders teamed up, as one attacked with its legs while the other attacked from the back by shooting out its webs.

In the end, Minami had to go forward and block the spider’s web bullets as my father and I dealt with the spider fighting with its legs. Mastiford then managed to burn them up with yellow flames she created after concentrating her energy for a few seconds. All in all, I thought we had some decent teamwork there.

“Since we burned them up, we won’t know if they had Bluestones.”

Mastiford stammered, “I-I don’t want to look through spider corpses! That one too!”

“Mastiford-ssi, that one’s mine. Don’t burn it up.”

I leisurely picked apart the giant spider’s corpse, and found a fist-size Bluestone near its head. As it was the first Bluestone I found, I was especially attached to it. So this is the reason why so many ability users have grit their teeth to fight monsters?

“Wow, it’s huge! With that size, it should easily go for 40 million.”

“40 million won? This thing?”

That was equivalent to about 20,000 gold. The giant spider was certainly strong, but that was still the amount I got from fighting two Floor Masters solo. I was suddenly disillusioned with being a dungeon explorer. But Minami still had more to say.

“No, it’s 40 million yen.”

“What!?” I screeched involuntarily.

Wait, then taking 100 yen as 900 won, that’s… 360 million won!?

“Why are you so surprised? It’s an elite monster even amongst A-rank monsters. Not only are their numbers small, but also Bluestones don’t always drop. Since we’re fighting with our life on the line, it’s only appropriate. In fact, isn’t it too small?”

“You should take this spider corpse too. I’ve never seen a spider this big, and its carapace is only broken around its belly. It should go for as much as the Bluestone.”

I stuttered, “7, 720 million won…”

… Maybe I should work as an ability user on the side. Once I realized just how much money ability users made, I fiddled around with the Bluestone in my hand. However, as my father was also eyeing the Bluestone with bright eyes, I decided to take a closer look at it later. For now, I stored the Bluestone into my inventory along with the spider’s corpse.

“Is this mine? Or do we have to split it somehow?” I asked.

“Since Yeon Hwawoo-ssi killed it alone, it’s yours. We didn’t help you in any way.”

“…Mm.”

It still felt weird to take it all by myself. I was able to focus on killing one spider because my father had been handling the other two with the two girls helping him.

I thought for a bit and then came to a decision. “I can give 10 percent to each. As a chippu.”

“Yeon Hwawoo-ssi, that’s Japanese,” Sumire chirped.

“Mm…as a tip[1] then.”

Sumire, why are you being so picky? I said tip in English and Mastiford didn’t say anything!

“By the way, that wasn’t the boss just now, right?” I asked.

“No. The Event Dungeons collapse when the boss dies. Ughhh, with elite monsters like them, the boss monster would be…ughhhhhhhh.”

I found Mastiford murmuring to herself with a frown to be rather cute. But I made myself ignore it and kept walking. Of course, my father’s eyes were still fixed on me. I won’t give it to you no matter how much you glare at me, father! Be happy with the 10 percent!

1. This was said in English ☜