"Have you been playing a sick game with us from the very start?" Seo-yul demanded.
"That was precisely the plan," Caracol hissed back. Then the necromancer confessed that the human boy had genuinely surprised him by being so remarkably good at running away. "How on earth did you know the layout of this ancient temple just as perfectly as I do?"
"Leave me alive," Seo-yul snapped back, "and maybe I'll actually share the secret."
The necromancer scoffed with pure disdain. He had absolutely no reason to do that, he said. He would simply turn the boy into just another ghoul.
At that exact instant, Seo-yul was struck by a devastating curse. His capacity for healing and regeneration was drastically diminished, then completely cut off.
Feeling his body slowly crumble to dust, he thought to himself that if he had just accepted the manager's help, maybe he would have made it out alive. Or perhaps his fate would have been exactly the same. He reflected on how guild leaders and executives only ever cared about cold, hard cash and profit margins instead of actually saving human lives.
In a world overflowing with such selfish people, Seo-yul remembered the hero who had saved him in the past. That hero, because he had been unable to save anyone else besides Seo-yul, had wept bitterly on that day. It was precisely because of that trauma and that deep admiration that Seo-yul had wanted to become just like him — a dedicated department hunter focused on protecting the weak.
With that firm resolve locking into place, he absolutely refused to die in a dump like this. Once more he forced his synesthesia and his sixth sense to their absolute limits, desperately trying to spot any clue or exit route that could save his life.
That was when, deep within the temple, Seo-yul successfully detected a cracked monument glowing with an intense light.
The system responded to his efforts, granting him direct access to the records of a hidden class.
Meanwhile, the necromancer Caracol taunted him, saying the boy was struggling until the bitter end, but that he would put an end to his misery once and for all. The ghouls lunged forward to finish him off on the spot.
Right at that split second, a system prompt popped up, asking whether he would like to change his class to dungeon architect.
In that final second he obviously accepted the offer, since he had absolutely nothing left to lose. The very moment the transformation triggered, the tutorial officially began. He began to see countless fragments of that exact temple flashing through various visions and totally different perspectives.
Even Caracol couldn't comprehend what the hell was happening, because all of a sudden that little piece of trash had simply vanished into thin air.
Seo-yul had indeed been transferred to a completely separate space. Now, staring directly at his system screen, he saw his information displayed.
Seo-yul. Level 10. Class change quest currently in progress.
His stats were incredibly average. HP 80. Strength 17. Agility 20. Mana 30. Physical defense 16. He noticed that he still retained his synesthesia, his sixth sense, and his Silent Wave. He wondered whether his old class, the Observer, was officially gone for good.
The place he currently stood in was, in reality, a tutorial zone for his brand-new class. The system informed him that he had to utilize the map functions to slaughter twenty ghouls that had infiltrated the labyrinth, all within a strict time limit of twenty-four hours. The reward would be a permanent class change to dungeon architect. The quest would be completely canceled if he failed.
Seo-yul understood the rest of the warnings, but he found himself wondering what those map functions actually were.
The moment the words left his mouth, a 3D map hologram of the labyrinth materialized right in front of his face.
The map was surprisingly easy to read. A bright green pointer represented his exact position, while the various red dots indicated the enemies scattered all around the labyrinth. He understood perfectly how the whole thing worked. If he used this map to hunt down the ghouls within a single day, he could successfully secure his new class.
To some it might have seemed like absolute madness to hunt down that many monsters in such a massive area in so little time, but for an experienced tracker like him it was completely doable.
So he got straight to work. After all, why not give it a shot?
The hunt turned out to be easy and fast. By the time he slaughtered the sixteenth ghoul, with only thirty minutes remaining on the clock, he leveled up. He had a mere thirty minutes left to kill the four remaining monsters, so he needed to be incredibly fast.
The tutorial was turning out to be way more relaxed than expected in terms of difficulty. He was easily able to use the claws of the dead ghouls as weapons, relying on his mapping skill to carefully deal with every single one of them. He was hunting and killing the ghouls at a very comfortable pace, and he was absolutely certain he could take care of everything within the stipulated time.
That was until he spotted that massive thing stalking him.
It was a ghoul significantly larger than the others and completely different from them. The creature moved entirely on its own, pursuing Seo-yul through the labyrinth. He realized that not only would it take a massive amount of time to actually kill it, he didn't even know whether he was genuinely capable of pulling it off.
But if he absolutely had to kill it, he would first need to get rid of the other monsters quickly, to buy himself some time.
Right at that moment, the big guy closed in. Except he didn't come alone. He showed up with the other three remaining ghouls from the map.
Seo-yul was completely caught off guard. He had never expected the creature to move in a pack, since up until that point it had been wandering entirely by itself. In those final crucial minutes he had neglected to look at the map, and because of that he had ended up trapped in this mess. He had made a textbook, ugly mistake.
First he rapidly reviewed his plan inside his head. To start, he could only handle two ghouls at a single time, which meant he had to get the hell out of there urgently. The massive problem was that he was completely surrounded. He would have to force his way through them, killing at least one on the path out.
No matter how much he thought about it, the situation looked like total checkmate. Maybe this really was his limit as a rank D hunter. The situation had been ridiculous from the very start.
Thinking about it, if this whole thing was just a tutorial to become a dungeon architect, then he might as well act like it was a real tutorial.
So he charged straight at them like an absolute madman, activating his sixth sense.
That action caused him to discover a rotating block, connecting his sixth sense directly with the map interface. He didn't quite understand it at first, but when he analyzed the map with close attention he saw there was literally a little hand icon prompting him to spin that specific wall.
The moment he flipped the wall, he slipped onto the other side, leaving the ghouls completely locked behind him. It perfectly isolated one of the ghouls, and he instantly seized the opportunity to slaughter it.
That feature was incredibly convenient, Seo-yul commented to himself. It would help immensely in killing them off now, since there was still time left to complete the mission.
He repeatedly used the wall-spinning ability to constantly vanish and reappear, catching the enemies totally defenseless. When only the mutant giant was left, he caught it completely off guard too, plunging his knife with brute force deep into its neck.
But even so, the monster resisted bravely. The creature clamped its sharp claws tightly onto Seo-yul's face, trying to crush him by any means necessary.
He successfully finished it off with his blade, declaring with absolute determination that he hadn't struggled all this way just to die here.
The tutorial was finally complete, and Seo-yul successfully managed to change his class to dungeon architect.