2. Wolf’s Blood

“Tsk, judging by your appearance, you barely survived. Still… you came back alive.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The guard who was guarding the portal to the labyrinth sighed deeply when he saw me.

My body was emaciated, and the smell of blood wafted from my entire body. Surprisingly, there were no wounds, but the guard had no way of knowing whose blood was on my clothes or the condition of the skin underneath.

My face was gaunt, and my equipment was tattered, so he must have realized that I had barely survived.

Amazingly, I had really come back from the dead.

This was already my sixth trip to the labyrinth, but as always, when I wrote down ‘3’ as the highest floor I had reached, the guild staff looked at me with pity.

Having spent most of my money on supplies and equipment, I had only about thirty coins left.

I bought a piece of stale rye bread that I didn’t particularly want to eat for five coins and stuffed it into my mouth, then returned to the inn where I still had about two days left and washed my clothes.

The innkeeper lady was so honest. She didn’t count the time when I wasn’t sleeping.

There were quite a few innkeepers who scammed low-ranking explorers.

When a weak explorer booked a room, they would put a stronger explorer in that room for money.

Of course, the weak explorer couldn’t say a word to the stronger explorer, and when they tried to complain to the innkeeper, the stronger explorer would back up the innkeeper.

There were many low-ranking explorers who were swindled out of their money and rooms in this way.

Thanks to the kind innkeeper lady, I had paid for a week’s stay in advance. While someone else would use the room while I was in the labyrinth, I could still get a room without any trouble on the day I came out.

“The smell of blood is overwhelming. Wash up before you enter the room.”

“Haha, yes. Sorry, ma’am.”

“Enough. You’re not the only one like this. Just don’t let the bed smell.”

“Understood.”

As always, despite her perpetually angry expression, the innkeeper lady had a kind heart. I washed the blood-stained upper garment at the well, removing the visible blood.

Maybe it was because of the heavy rain, but it wasn’t too dirty. If rainwater counts as contamination, then it was quite filthy.

I washed my body in the bathhouse, where the water was just the right temperature, and crawled into my room to inspect my body.

“I definitely bled a lot… but I’m not feeling dizzy.”

Thanks to the gambeson, it blocked most of it, but in the end, my right forearm was almost in tatters. But now, even that arm is completely healed.

The biggest change, however, is my left eye.

“No matter how I look at it, this is a direwolf’s eye…”

Under the blinking eyelid, the eyeball in my left eye socket was unmistakably that of a direwolf. Of course, since it’s a large canine, it feels a bit smaller than what I knew.

“Did I really eat the eyeball?”

No matter how much I think about it, that’s the only explanation. Since I only have one skill, any abnormality in my body must be due to that skill, or someone else’s skill.

Even so, would someone really use magic to implant a wolf’s eye into a person who lost their left eye in the forest?

It doesn’t seem likely. If that’s true, they wouldn’t be a bad person. My body is back to normal, after all.

That’s not the only strange thing.

“Why am I so hungry?”

All the food I stuffed myself with seems to have been digested, and a handful of bread is nowhere near enough to satisfy my hunger.

I have about 25 coins left. The food here at the inn costs 30 coins per meal. Even though I’m starving right now, there’s nothing I can do.

Because I already owe the landlady a lot.

“I’ve been living off the landlady for a week since I got here.”

Of course, I helped with odd jobs, did some cleaning since I have some strength. I didn’t just shamelessly eat my fill and play around.

But to say I worked as much as I received…

“Ah.”

I remembered. A way to make money.

‘It’s rare, isn’t it? After all, how many people have gone into the labyrinth and come out? Identifying a new skill is a tremendous thing! If you find out about the skill, you must come to me, okay? I’ll give you a small reward!’

That’s what the appraiser said when I had my skill appraised. I hadn’t mentioned that my right arm had turned into a steak the first time I used the skill. I just thought it was a worthless skill.

But if it’s like this…

“Let’s go.”

* * * * *

In the labyrinth city of ‘Kallax’, there are many appraiser shops. There’s no particularly special appraiser among them, but since the price of an appraisal isn’t that high, naturally, the appraisers located nearby charge a bit more.

On the other hand, the farther away or the worse the location, the lower the appraisal price.

Explorers with low ranks like me tend to go far away to get appraised.

—Creak

The door opened with the sound of old, rusty metal hinges clashing, revealing the interior.

“Welcome! This is Sateria Appraisal… Oh, it’s you from before!”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That… the new skill! By any chance!? Did you figure out the skill’s ability?!”

“Well, roughly…”

The girl with softly curling bright red hair pushed up her broken glasses and smiled brightly.

Ravi Sateria, the appraiser. A girl who set up her appraisal shop in a place so bad it made you wonder if it was on purpose.

Thanks to her, I can get my skills appraised for a mere ten coins, but thinking about it, I should be paying her a fee.

‘She doesn’t seem to have much money either… Should I go to a more expensive appraiser and get a proper fee?’

While I was pondering this a couple of times, Ravi circled around the desk and took my arm.

“Hurry up! I’ll listen while I check your skills!”

“I haven’t really gotten any new skills, so there’s no need for an appraisal.”

“No! I’m going to check the skills you got last time again! I can see what they do by looking at the circuits!”

“Well then…”

Since I came all the way here. Looking at her face, it feels wrong to go somewhere else.

Maybe it’s because I’m a beggar, but I feel a sense of kinship. Ravi, who even set up a shop, might not be in dire need of money, but compared to other appraisers, she’s probably a beggar too.

As Ravi said, I took off my shirt and lay face down on the wide bed.

According to her, the location where my skills are engraved spreads from the back of my head down my spine to my whole body.

“Uh… Doesn’t your body feel different…?”

And… Every time I see this kid, it reminds me that this place is another world.

If she had this face in South Korea, she could have made billions a month on internet broadcasts.

“He, hey… The difference in gender is really big for animals… Is every man’s body like this…?”

“Stop just staring at my body and do your job.”

“Uh, right…”

Her soft, white hands, which had never held anything but a pen and a staff, slowly moved from the back of my head down my spine.

“Yes! The circuit is exposed! Can you tell us how you found out and what effects you suspect?”

First, I explained the situation. I encountered a dire wolf on the third floor of the labyrinth and was driven to the brink of death. My right arm was tattered, and I was bleeding heavily.

In a desperate struggle, I tore open the dire wolf’s belly, devoured its meat, heart, lungs, eyes, and drank its blood.

When I woke up in the morning, my eyes had changed to those of the dire wolf.

“What?! Eyes?!”

“Didn’t you see?”

“Gah… I’m sorry… I have trouble making eye contact…”

Well, he always avoided looking directly at me.

“Then, could you please stand up for a moment..? I’d like to see those eyes too…”

“Yes. It’s my left eye.”

As I got up from the bed where I had been lying face down and faced him, Ravi, with cheeks as red as my hair, held his face in his hands and rolled his eyes around.

“What are you doing? You need to look at my eyes.”

“Ugh… Right…”

Ravi, who had tightly shut his eyelids, opened them and made eye contact with all his might for three seconds. Then he turned his head and fanned his flushed cheeks with his hands for thirty seconds.

“Phew…!!”

“How is it?”

“I’m sorry… but it’s black…”

What? That can’t be. Just to be sure, I looked in the small hand mirror on the desk, and there it was, the yellow eye of the dire wolf.

“What do you mean? It’s yellow.”

“R-really?! I’m sorry! I only looked at your left eye from my perspective!”

It was hard to look at both eyes, so he only stared at the left eye from his perspective. I wanted to punch him, but I just held back.

“Look again. Here, aren’t these the eyes of a direwolf?”

“Yes, really..!”

After confirming the pupils, I lay back down on the bed, and Ravi came over and started examining the circuits revealed in red.

“Oh! Unlike last time, there are circuits that are activated! So here is like this.. and there is this function….”

Ravi, who had been looking for a while, tilted his head a few times as if something was strange. Then he muttered something and asked me.

“By any chance, hasn’t anything else changed?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“No..? It’s just, how should I put it. I don’t think an eyeball alone would show this level of activation…? The active circuits are spread throughout the body…”

The whole body? It shouldn’t change the whole body yet. One eyeball is enough. I didn’t eat the direwolf from head to toe, and if I had changed like that, wouldn’t I have turned into something like a werewolf by now?

“Oh! By any chance.. did you say you drank the blood of a direwolf…?”

“Yes. So what.”

Huh?

“Damn it.”

“Let me take a blood sample! Just a little bit will do!”

“Yes. Go ahead. If that’s true, it’s a bit nauseating.”

Suddenly, wolf blood flowing through my body? What kind of messed-up situation is that? That’s a bit too much. Honestly, an eyeball? Even with a Korean’s sensibility, it’s not too bad.

As long as I’m not colorblind, I think this is fine. Wolf vision is better than that of an office worker.

But having that mutt’s blood flowing through me… there are problems with blood type and various other issues, aren’t there?

“Oh, oh oh….”

Dropping a special solution into the thin flask containing my blood, Ravi’s expression began to change moment by moment as he shook it around.

“This, this… It’s half direwolf blood….”

Suddenly, wolf blood began to flow inside my body.