F-Rank Secretly Becomes Stronger - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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2

A clear sky where the sun cannot be seen.

A grassland so vast its end cannot be seen.

A Real Sword placed before me.

And a doll staring at me intently.

The choice I made here was to slowly back away and flee.

‘Don’t show my back.’

I could roughly guess why it threw the sword to me.

This is the characteristic of an Artifact.

I was probably dragged into some unknown space, and it must be structured so that I can’t easily escape unless I complete the task written in the message.

‘But can I really defeat that thing a million times?’

No matter how weak it might be and easy to defeat, attempting this when food wasn’t even secured would be foolish.

Seeing that the doll doesn’t attack first, there’s still a chance.

‘Let me examine the surroundings first.’

I slowly move away while observing the environment.

Defeating the doll and all that – survival comes first.

‘The sword… would it be okay to take it?’

In an unknown location, a weapon is essential.

However, if there’s one concern, it’s that this weapon might become the starting point.

The message said to defeat the doll, and the doll threw a sword to me.

If I were to grip this sword, it might consider that the beginning and charge at me, so rashly picking up the sword would be reckless.

‘Let me slowly back away first.’

One step, two steps.

As I backed away to distance myself from the doll, at some point the doll also slowly approached me.

‘It has no intention of letting me go easily.’

The doll then reached the sword it had thrown.

It picked up the sword again and tossed it in front of me.

When it repeated this action more than 5 times, I realized there was nothing in this Grassland that could serve as food.

A truly endlessly spread green grassland.

Even though I felt like I had walked several hundred steps, the same scenery kept appearing.

‘There’s no food. Finding an exit is also difficult.’

If I can’t find a place to hide or obtain food, there’s only one method left.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 0/1,000,000]

“….”

Not a hundred times, not ten thousand times, but a million times.

I have no idea what level of strength the doll possesses, but I can’t just stand here in a daze.

‘If I’m going to die anyway, I should at least struggle.’

Looking at the Real Sword with a half-resigned heart.

After alternating glances between the doll and the sword, I finally steel my resolve and carefully pick up the sword.

Kieek! Kieek!

As I gripped the heavy one-handed sword, a strange sound emanated from the doll.

The doll, which had been defenseless until now, raised the Wooden Sword it was holding.

“Ha.”

I quietly take a breath.

Can I really escape from this space?

Just how strong is that doll?

The moment various distracting thoughts scrambled through my head, the doll charged at me.

Kieek! Kaak!

The swords clashed with a crisp sound, announcing the beginning.

*

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 0/1,000,000]

After fighting the doll for what felt like 30 minutes, I learned one thing.

No matter how hard I struck its body parts, the doll wouldn’t fall.

Even when I slashed it with a real sword, that body didn’t get a single scratch, and it would only stagger back slightly as if taking impact like a real person.

Before long, it would recover its stance and attack me again.

While searching for this bastard’s weakness to figure out how to defeat it, I happened to trip the doll’s foot and knock it over, then spotted a pattern carved on its back.

‘Is this it?’

A mysterious pattern carved on its back.

When I struck it, the doll made a thunderous sound and crumbled into dirt.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 1/1,000,000]

One rule I learned here.

The doll disappears when hit on the back.

‘This doesn’t even seem like D-rank level… If I do well, maybe a million times is possible?’

If someone like me, who ranks in the top 200 at Hunter Academy, struggled to win, it couldn’t be a high rank.

I felt that at this rate, I could escape the artifact before long.

However.

Kieek! Kreek!

“Kugh!”

When fighting the doll that reappeared a few minutes after turning to dirt, I immediately had to change that thinking.

‘It definitely felt like D-rank before. The difficulty suddenly jumps up like this?’

If it had been a gradual step-by-step increase, I might have been able to accept it.

But this time, the physical abilities and skill level were completely different from the doll I had just defeated.

‘This is at least B-rank. What kind of messed up structure is this?’

Moreover, even its swordsmanship had changed from the orthodox textbook style of before to quite irregular swordsmanship.

It felt as if the doll had been reborn as a new person.

Kieek! Kyaak!

“Wait, time out!”

In the end, my body collapsed without being able to do anything.

The doll mercilessly beat me with its wooden sword.

After getting beaten for several minutes, I barely found an opening to get up, then fought again only to drop my sword and get beaten like a rat again.

I was beaten so badly that I wondered if I might actually die from this.

Here I discovered one more peculiar fact.

‘I got beaten this badly but there’s not a single wound on my body?’

Despite never having been beaten this severely in my entire life, my body was unharmed without a single injury.

Furthermore, while I could feel pain, my muscles didn’t complain of fatigue, and despite quite a long time passing, I felt no hunger.

There’s no sun so I can’t roughly tell the time, but it feels like more than half a day has passed.

It was naturally strange that I felt no hunger at all despite rolling around on the grass continuously during that time.

‘Is this the artifact’s power?’

It was certainly possible if it was an artifact.

However, I couldn’t believe that a virtual space could be created that only gives humans pain while making them feel no fatigue or hunger at all.

I briefly wondered why such an object had been on the school rooftop in the first place.

Kieek! Kieek!

“Aaah!”

But the situation wasn’t leisurely enough for such carefree contemplation.

With the doll mercilessly beating me with its wooden sword at every opportunity, when would I have time to sit around making such observations?

If it hadn’t been for the artifact, my head would have been beaten to pulp and then some.

Being perfectly alive despite receiving such pain made it feel even more hellish.

Fortunately, as time passed and I got beaten so much, I roughly figured out this doll’s attack patterns and barely managed to defeat it.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 2/1,000,000]

“Like this, barely two times…”

It took this long just to defeat two of them.

There wasn’t even time to sigh in despair about when he’d ever fill the remaining numbers.

Kieek! Kaak!

The doll that had crumbled to dust soon sprouted from the ground again.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 15/1,000,000]

The constantly changing styles made it difficult to adapt.

Only after falling thousands of times did he barely manage to land one hit, but even that wasn’t enough to defeat the doll.

To strike the back, he needed to achieve complete victory against the doll.

In a one-on-one fight, it was a spot that couldn’t be targeted through luck.

Thanks to this, he could feel his skills improving, and there was no risk of starving to death.

Since he didn’t get injured, naturally there was no threat to his life.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 126/1,000,000]

However, the problem was the human mental fortitude needed to endure it.

He had to fight continuously for eons, adapting to ever-changing styles.

Since he didn’t feel fatigue, there was no time to sleep and clear his head.

The only moment he could relax was the brief few minutes after defeating a doll.

Naturally, an ordinary human’s mind couldn’t endure this.

Yes, if they were an ordinary human, that is.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 1,000/1,000,000]

“One thousand times.”

Rather than becoming worn down over time, Juhyeok became more immersed in combat with the dolls.

It was his nature.

Moreover, it was the way he had lived his life.

The way of life of a human who had shown no talent for anything despite effort alone since birth did not easily crumble under such pain.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 5,603/1,000,000]

He grips his sword and fights.

Since fatigue doesn’t accumulate, there’s no need to rest.

Simple rules where he only needs to focus on defeating his opponent.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 22,059/1,000,000]

At first, he couldn’t see the end of this path, but that didn’t make him despair easily.

His steadily accumulating efforts were converted into numbers and shown directly before his eyes.

He could feel himself improving by leaps and bounds while sparring with countless styles.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 62,000/1,000,000]

Juhyeok feels a sense of achievement.

A type of achievement he couldn’t have in the infinite competitive society he had lived in.

Since he wasn’t evaluated by rankings and didn’t need to worry constantly, he could focus even more on the sword.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 410,300/1,000,000]

When he had reached nearly half of his target number.

He gradually began to feel anticipation.

What kind of swordsmanship would the doll show this time?

Things not even shown in textbooks

A space where he could live thinking only of the sword.

If it had been someone else, their mind would have already collapsed without it being strange.

Ironically, this moment where he could focus solely on the sword without interference from others became enjoyable.

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 840,041/1,000,000]

Immersion.

It’s magic that makes humans lose track of time.

Like a human addicted to games, Juhyeok became obsessed with sparring and eventually stopped caring about the numbers appearing before him, focusing only on defeating the dolls.

Slash, stab, knock down, then attack the back.

He devoted himself madly to only that act and finally…

[Defeat Swordsman Doll 1,000,000 times 1,000,000/1,000,000]

[Congratulations! You have cleared the Training Room (Swordsman)!]

[Returning user to location before transfer.]

He had achieved the goal that had seemed impossibly distant.

*

“….”

He was back.

The rooftop—the place where he had been standing before being sucked into the artifact.

Juhyeok looked around the rooftop instead of the grassland, clenching and unclenching his fists, and tapping the ground with his foot.

“Am I really back?”

Juhyeok looked around, trying to assess the situation.

He wanted to check the storage room first, but the storage room door was locked tight again, making it impossible to see inside.

If he could at least check the cube, he could be certain that what he experienced in the grassland wasn’t an illusion.

Unfortunately, the storage room door was locked, so he couldn’t even see if the cube was there.

As he stood there holding the storage room door, lost in deep thought.

“…Juhyeok?”

He heard a familiar voice calling him from behind.

“Instructor…?”

When he turned around, there stood his homeroom instructor.

It had been so long since he’d seen another person’s face that he didn’t know how to react.

The instructor rushed over to Juhyeok like an arrow and grabbed his arm.

“You! You haven’t come to class for a week, and you’ve been hiding here this whole time?”

“…What?”

“I know it’s hard because your grades aren’t good, but you still need to come to class… okay?”

The instructor looked at Juhyeok with a worried expression.

His face showed no sign of joking at all.

From the start, Juhyeok knew this wasn’t someone who would pull such a pointless prank, so there was no need to doubt it.

One week.

Juhyeok had spent an unimaginably long period of time, only to return to reality just one week later.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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