1. My Skill is

“Shit..!”

In the pitch-black night of a deep forest, where the sun has finished its job and even the moonlight is obscured by clouds.

The fog was so thick that you couldn’t see an inch ahead, and the heavy raindrops pounded the ground noisily, scattering the desperate cries so that no one could hear them.

The gambeson, which had protected my body firmly by layering tough fabric, had become so heavy with rainwater that it weighed down on my shoulders, and the pouch with its leather belt torn off was endlessly light with nothing inside.

The still cold wind of mid-April cools my body.

Third floor of the labyrinth.

Only the third floor.

I am on the brink of death.

The lantern that had brightly lit the night spilled its oil and the fire went out. I could refill the oil and light it again, but carrying this heavy metal lantern around for the next time seemed like it would kill me, so I left it on the ground.

The grain cubes I brought to stave off hunger had turned into mush inside the pouch, soaked by the rainwater, and were now inedible.

“Huff..! Huff..!!”

Even though I ran without stopping, I didn’t think I could survive. Because the hunters prowling the dark night were still chasing after me.

But continuing to run here would surely mean death.

Inside the densely packed evergreen forest, I slowly reduced my speed and drew my sword from its sheath.

“Come on, you b*stards!!”

A prey cornered barks louder. For the sake of a foreseen success, the hunters instead become quieter and more cautious.

ㅡGrrr..!

Heavy raindrops, thick fog, even the moonlight hidden by clouds. In the forest without a single ray of light, only their eyes shone brightly with a yellow glow.

Six direwolves.

They started appearing from the second floor of the labyrinth and were commonly seen on the third floor. Most people say they are weak monsters that can be killed with a single slash or a punch.

“Hiss..!”

I swung my sword at the one charging at me. Maybe because I was on the brink of death, my whole body was sensitive.

Slash-

I made a shallow cut on its foreleg, but it wasn’t enough. Meanwhile, another direwolf lunged from the side and bit into my left shin.

“Argh!”

I stabbed the one clinging to my leg in the back, then quickly pulled out the knife and thrust it forward again.

“Kegh..!”

As I drove the blade deep into its gaping maw, another one leaped high and bit my right shoulder, knocking me backward.

“Ugh.. You b*stard..!”

I grabbed its leg and forcibly tore it off, causing the gambeson near my shoulder to rip and my shoulder muscles to be damaged. I could no longer exert any strength in my right arm.

The one approaching from behind opened its jaws wide and bit into my face. I quickly turned my head to the right, but in the process, its fangs tore through my eyelid, rendering my left eye useless.

Lying on the ground, I frantically shook my leg to keep the other ones at bay.

During the fall, two direwolves chewed on my now powerless right forearm, causing me to drop my sword. My right forearm was almost minced meat, bleeding profusely.

Blood seeped from my torn eyelid, and a bitter taste filled my mouth. I barely managed to get up and, with the tip of my sturdy leather boot, I luckily kicked one direwolf hard, breaking its ribs and crushing its insides.

I fumbled on the ground to find my dropped sword and grabbed it with my left hand. However, I wasn’t used to swinging with my left hand, and crucially, I couldn’t see, so the sword I swung randomly collided with a tree and broke.

I smashed the blunt end of the broken sword hilt into the eye of the one biting my thigh, shattering its eyeball, and then shoved my fingers into its eye socket.

“Growl.. Bark!!”

After fighting for my life, the situation changed.

“Now you bark.”

A cornered prey barks louder. For a predicted success, hunters become quieter and more cautious.

The last remaining direwolf, with its belly pressed close to the ground, cautiously watched me.

In my left hand was the broken sword hilt. My right hand was minced meat, bleeding profusely.

My left shin was bitten hard, but the sturdy leather boots effectively protected my skin. I could feel warm blood seeping from my right thigh, being washed away by the rain.

Sweeping back the hair soaked by the rain, I took a deep breath.

Although my vision was only half clear, the creature’s bright yellow eyes served as a good landmark.

ㅡWoof Woof!!

In an instant, I rushed forward and kicked towards the creature’s face. As my right leg brushed past its snout, the creature bit down hard.

I struck the pommel of the sword I held in my left hand against the direwolf’s crown, and soon enough, its jaw slackened and it collapsed.

“Huff, huff. I survived….”

I survived.

Survived?

“No, I’m going to die.”

I won the fight, but I didn’t survive. Blood was pouring out of my entire body, and if I continued like this, I was bound to die.

In the freezing cold of the night, drenched by the rain, I might die of hypothermia soon.

So why did I fight so desperately? I wouldn’t have survived anyway.

“Damn it..! Damn it ㅡ !!”

If only I had a skill. If only I had a skill.

No, that’s not right.

A skill. In fact, I did have a skill. The problem was that it wasn’t a proper skill. I had a skill that I obtained earlier than others, after completing the second round of the labyrinth.

* * * * *

When I went to the appraisal center to have the skill appraised, the appraiser looked surprised.

“This is… a skill I’ve never seen before. You might have to use it yourself to understand its effect…”

Using the skill wasn’t easy. Not to mention the skill itself, I had no sense for such unscientific actions.

They said that if you have the will, you can use the skill, but I couldn’t properly understand what that will was, so I couldn’t use the skill for a long time.

In the end, even though I obtained the skill, I couldn’t use it and entered the labyrinth once more.

When I was feeling powerless because I couldn’t use the skill, I used it for the first time. It seemed that my strengthened will and determination had worked.

But when I used the skill, my right forearm turned into the steak I had eaten last night.

“Damn it.”

From below the right elbow, my forearm had become a well-cooked piece of meat, dangling.

No matter how I looked at it, it was the same piece of meat I had eaten last night.

For about two days, I wallowed in despair, crying in the inn where I had settled.

I wondered if I had to live without my right arm like this, but they say that even if the sky falls, there is a hole that will rise.

In the end, after staying up all night and trying hard, my right arm somehow returned to its original state.

“What a shitty world.”

It was a skill that would take months to obtain in the labyrinth, but I ended up with a useless skill.

In the evening of the labyrinth city, when I entered the inn, I could see many people. Victors boasting about the powerful skills they had acquired, and novice explorers looking at them with envy, wishing to obtain strong skills in the labyrinth themselves.

And then, there were the losers who had obtained skills that were close to curses.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was one of the losers.

Of course, even though I had obtained it on my second labyrinth exploration, it was still disappointing.

“Doesn’t that mean you can recreate what you ate?”

I ignored the words of another explorer who was drunk in the inn. The ability to recreate the food I had eaten was indeed great, but the ability to turn the food I had eaten into my body was something that anyone would consider useless.

The only ones who would be happy that my body had become delicious food were the wolves struggling to eat me.

The only fortunate thing was that the skill didn’t reduce my combat power.

Many more people than I thought had acquired such terrible skills that they couldn’t even fight.

I couldn’t move forward, but the only comfort was that I didn’t retreat.

Of course, it was inevitable that my morale was at rock bottom due to the lousy performance of the first skill I obtained.

Even though I had acquired a skill, my combat power remained unchanged.

Next. The next. And a few more times after that, I headed to the labyrinth. During that time, on the sixth trip to the labyrinth.

The other party members I had formed a party with had already been promoted to explorer rank and left to find other party members that matched their level.

In other words, it means they kicked out party members who didn’t match their level.

In a labyrinth where magic and skills run rampant, and monsters that defy common sense swarm. For someone like me, who only had the strength of an average adult male, it was inevitable.

So, what about me now?

Barely on the third floor of the labyrinth. I spilled the oil for the lantern, and there was no food left to eat.

The one-handed sword I used well said goodbye to its blade and grip, and the gambeson was torn and soaked with water, making it feel heavy and cold. My bitten forearm was in tatters.

Although I won after a desperate fight, I didn’t think I could survive.

I bled profusely, and my body temperature dropped rapidly. It was still before spring had fully arrived, so the temperature dropped quickly as soon as night fell and the sun set.

My left eyeball was completely torn by fangs, losing my sight.

My right forearm, which had become minced meat, was bleeding in real-time. Half of my vision was lost. The gambeson, soaked with the falling rain, became cold and heavy, and my muscles screamed.

What on earth was I fighting for?

If I was going to die anyway, should I have just given these damn dire wolves a good meal? No, no matter how much I think about it, that’s not it.

What on earth. What was so delicious.

“Damn b*stards….”

Looking at the six dire wolf corpses scattered around, I thought so.

“Haah…”

Food poisoning or parasites.

“Better than dying.”

-Crunch

I shoved it into my mouth as it was, raw. If they had killed me, they would have devoured my corpse like this.

I was the victor of this battle, so it was my turn to devour them.

-Crunch-

The rain grew heavier.

Having drunk all the water in my canteen, it was actually a good thing.

Thanks to the thick leather gloves, I roughly skinned the creature with the blade of a broken one-handed sword.

Skipping the thighs, chest, and intestines, I chewed on the lungs and swallowed the eyeballs.

I didn’t believe in the superstition that eating eyes would improve my vision.

I had already chewed on the raw meat that reeked of a strange odor.

I simply brought the parts that weren’t covered in leather and were easy to bite into my mouth.

The one whose eyeballs I ate was also the one who had bitten my face.

The tough raw meat barely chewed and slid down my throat. It was so large that I could feel the shape of the meat chunk slowly descending my esophagus.

Finally, I tore into the heart. They say the heart is the essence of life.

To quench my parched throat, I cut the artery and drank the blood, standing with my mouth open to the sky to prevent the dried blood from sticking inside my mouth.

When the rainwater filled my mouth, I rinsed the blood inside like gargling and spat it out on the ground.

I wrapped myself in the tattered corpses of the direwolves and tried to sleep. It hadn’t even been 30 minutes since they died, so their body heat hadn’t dissipated yet. It was warm enough to sleep with them.

The raw scent of the things crammed into my stomach passed through my esophagus and stimulated my nose, but the dreadful nausea soon subsided, overcome by fatigue.

I fell asleep leaning against a tree, praying to see the rising sun the next morning.

And the morning when I opened my eyes, my vision returned to me.

Only about half of it. No, maybe half of half?

“Why… why is my eye like this…?”

My right eye was fine. As always, it was just doing its job.

But my left eye was not.

I must have lost it fighting the wolves last night.

“I can see… a bit more dimly…”

The cold mist settled down. The low weeds with dew falling from them. How did I endure that cold night?

Outside, the sunlight was slowly peeking through.

The bodies of the direwolves, which I had clung to for warmth, had bled from their wounds during the night, soaking the ground where I lay with blood.

The problem was, the color of the blood was not red.

“Red-green color blindness…? Did I develop color blindness from the injury?”

I couldn’t understand it with my common sense. If my eyeball was destroyed, I shouldn’t be able to see anything, so why couldn’t I distinguish colors?

As I got up, the sound of the wolf’s blood dried and stuck to my back and the ground made a cracking sound.

When I brushed off my back, the dried blood fell off like crumbling, dried paint.

Thinking I should at least wash my face, I looked into a puddle formed by the rain, and I could see the reason.

“This is…”

The characteristic bright yellow golden eyes of the direwolf.

The dark black pupils of the Korean disappeared, and the eyes of a wolf dug into my left eye socket and settled there.

And then, I instinctively realized.

‘Doesn’t that mean I can recreate what I ate?’

My skill was to turn what I put in my mouth into my body.