The Shut-in Vampire Does Business in the Labyrinth - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Awakening

TL: DDTL

Tap tap-tap-tap.

In the darkened room, only the sound of fingers striking the keyboard echoed softly.

After a long stretch of work finally came to an end, I leaned back and stretched.

A project that had eaten up six whole months.

I sent the finished product to the client and waited.

Ding!

– Looks good. Let’s go with this. Great work on everything.

“Ughhhh! Finally done.”

Having been buried in work all this time, I’d handled everything in this room: meals, sleep, labor, all of it.

Freelance web designer. I’d originally planned to get a real job, but one thing led to another and here I was, freelancing.

Thanks to that, I’d become a shut-in who maybe left the house once a month.

Now that the project was done, I was officially unemployed.

“I really should get a job, but… it’s dangerous outside.”

A world with monsters and awakeners.

Sure, the world had changed around the time I was born, so things had mostly stabilized, but there was still more unknown than known.

Who knows what could happen if I went outside? Home was the best.

If I stayed home, the awakeners would handle everything on their own.

I’d live off the money from this project for a while and look for job openings in the meantime.

When I stood up and tried to loosen my body, every joint crackled and screamed in protest.

“Maybe I should exercise? Hmm… is there room for equipment in here?”

Going to a gym would solve the problem, but I was determined to handle everything from home no matter what.

That resolve was quickly crushed by the tiny apartment, though.

If there was no space for exercise equipment, then…

“Forget it.”

Just don’t do it. Going to the gym is a pain.

I don’t want to go outside.

I picked up my phone and opened a delivery app.

Six months of grueling work was behind me, my bank account was flush, so why not order some meat?

I placed my order on the app and tilted my chair back to sprawl out, when goosebumps suddenly prickled across my entire body.

“What the…?”

A wave of cold swept over me, and then…

Flop!

The chair vanished.

“What?! What? Where am I?!”

I looked around, but everything was shrouded in fog with no end in sight. Nearby stood a single unidentifiable building, and beyond it, a blue light shimmered.

I knew what this was.

I’d never seen it in person, but it was one of the most famous phenomena in the world.

“A tu… tutorial?! Why the hell me?!”

The so-called tutorial.

The system’s first trial, which, upon completion, granted entry to the labyrinth and awakened one’s unique abilities.

But I had been inside my house.

Didn’t tutorials usually snag people who were outdoors or walking around on the street?

This was exactly why I never went outside!! How?!

While I stood there gaping and surveying my surroundings, a system window appeared before my eyes.

[Chapter 1: Farming]

1. Enter the building.

2. Gather the items you need.

“No, I don’t need any of this!!”

I was living perfectly fine without awakening, so why drag me into this all of a sudden?

The world was full of people sobbing because they couldn’t become awakeners.

Some even hired shamans to perform rituals begging for awakening.

But I had never wanted that.

I just wanted to stay in my room, comfortably writing bits of code…

[Time Limit: 30 minutes]

“Fine. Fine, I get it!”

Watching the time limit flash like a warning, I hauled myself up.

When that timer hit zero, it was game over.

And game over in this world, which was no game, meant death.

I had to move.

Fortunately, the tutorial was, true to its name, just a tutorial, so its difficulty was nothing compared to the real labyrinth.

I entered the building in front of me.

It was practically a ruin, but I had to find something that could serve as a weapon.

This was the first tutorial chapter.

The chapter that taught how to search and explore the labyrinth.

Creeeak. The door swung open with an obnoxious screech, and a single drawer caught my eye, practically screaming “Open me!”

Creak.

I opened the drawer and found a folded-up baton lying inside.

[Beginner’s Baton]

-Grade: Normal

-ATK: 10

-A baton with a comfortable grip.

-This item will be destroyed when the tutorial ends.

Just like everything I’d picked up from the internet said, a weapon appeared.

All the gear from the tutorial was uniformly Normal grade anyway.

No point searching further.

The moment I picked up the baton, a new system window appeared.

[Chapter 2: Escape]

1. Find the exit (Hint: the blue light).

2. Prepare for danger.

3. Escape.

Finding the exit wasn’t hard.

“Over there?”

The blue light had been visible since the moment I entered the tutorial world.

There should be a blue gate leading back to reality at that location.

On the surface, it seemed like a cakewalk, but the real challenge started now.

I looked out the window.

The wide-open space from before was gone, replaced by walls funneling everything into a single straight path to the exit.

And roughly halfway between this building and the Exit Gate…

“Grrk! Grrrk!”

Two goblins stood there.

The instant I laid eyes on them, my legs turned to jelly.

Anyone watching would think I was a coward, getting intimidated by a pair of level 1 goblins, but…

How was I supposed to get past those things?!

I’d been cooped up in my room so long that my strength and stamina were scraping rock bottom. And now I was supposed to deal with two monsters oozing murderous intent and walk right through?

That was basically a death sentence.

I’d read about tutorials in online communities before, but the answers were useless.

– lol why would you fight them? goblins are slow. just bait them and run.

– if you can’t even kill a goblin just die in the tutorial lmao.

– can’t you just throw rocks at them from inside the building?

– bonk them on the head with your weapon, goblins can’t do shit.

Most of what I’d read was armchair nonsense from people who’d never actually been through a tutorial.

The accounts from people who had actually experienced it told a different story.

The hardest part after awakening was the first face-to-face encounter with a goblin.

An American ranker had said this in an interview:

– That was the first time in my life I’d felt genuine killing intent. I almost pissed myself.

“Agh, seriously!”

I checked the time limit.

[Time Limit: 19 minutes 57 seconds]

Ten minutes had already slipped by while I stood there trembling and agonizing.

In twenty more minutes, I’d die in the tutorial without accomplishing a damn thing.

I’d avoided going outside because it was dangerous, and now the universe was throwing this ordeal at me inside my own home?

I extended the baton, looked out the window, and steadied my breathing.

Goblins were about half the height of an adult man.

Their stride would be short, so the plan was to lure them out and loop around the building at a sprint.

Fighting two of them head-on and killing them was never an option to begin with.

Nobody knew my limits better than I did.

“Whew… get it together, Park Hyun-gi! Even if you walk into the tiger’s den, as long as you keep your wits about you…”

“SHRIIIEEEEK!”

“AAAAAAGH!”

I’d been inside the building, but the two goblins had locked eyes with me and were charging straight at me with terrifying speed.

I scrambled out of the building.

When I saw the goblins rounding the left side of the building to chase me, I bolted in the opposite direction.

“SHRIIIEEEEK! SKREEEEE!”

The murderous fury of monsters that wanted me dead.

For someone who’d spent his entire life in a room, it was an overwhelming amount of killing intent.

But I ran.

I looped around the building, shook the goblins, and didn’t look back.

My heart pounded like it was about to burst, and my breathing was ragged.

“Please! Just a little more!”

An oval-shaped blue gate came into view.

That was the Exit Gate, the only means of returning from the labyrinth to reality.

If I could just get through that, I’d be back in my room!

Please, just a little more!

But after six months of zero physical activity, my feeble ankles cast “Yeah, I’m Gonna Die” on their very first all-out sprint.

Twist.

Splat!

I went down hard and instinctively swung the baton behind me.

Crack!

A solid impact vibrated through my hand and one goblin toppled sideways, but the problem was that there were two of them.

“SHRAAAK! SKREEEEE!”

“AAAARGH! Get off! Get the hell off me, you little shit!!”

They had the build and strength of a middle schooler at best, but their killing intent was the real deal.

The goblin clawed at me, bit me, and clung to my body.

Crunch!

“GAAAHH!”

In the middle of the struggle, the goblin sank its teeth deep into my shoulder.

Swinging the baton was useless against a goblin already latched onto me at point-blank range.

I acted on pure survival instinct.

Crunch!

“KIEEEEEK!!”

With every ounce of strength I had, I bit down on the goblin’s shoulder as hard as I could.

Human dignity? You have to be alive to worry about that.

I clenched my jaw with the genuine intent to tear a chunk off.

Something hot flowed into my mouth. Goblin blood?

The goblin weakened from the pain, and I shoved it off with all my might, then scrambled to my feet and sprinted for the gate.

I felt the goblin I’d bitten latch onto my clothes, chasing after me, but…

Wooong…

The moment my fingertips touched the gate, the world distorted and my room materialized around me.

Thump!

“Hah. Hah. Hah.”

The relief of being alive lasted only a moment before pain from the goblin bite radiated through me, and then a system window appeared.

[You have passed the tutorial.]

[You are granted entry access to the labyrinth.]

“I’m not going! I’m not fucking going! I can make a living without that!!”

I’d barely made it back alive, and now they wanted me to go back there?

No matter how lucrative the labyrinth was, nothing was worth more than my life.

Try and make me go back in there. I dare you.

But the system, oblivious to my feelings, began its assessment.

[Beginning assessment based on your tutorial performance.]

[Name: Park Hyun-gi]

[Disposition: Seclusion (隱遁)]

“…Oh, wonderful.”

I liked my room, sure, but having Seclusion as my actual system-assigned disposition was something else.

But the characteristic that came next was even more spectacular.

[Tutorial Characteristic: Bloodsucking (吸血)]

Probably because I bit the goblin to survive.

Whatever. It didn’t matter what it was.

Seclusion, bloodsucking, I didn’t care. I had zero intention of setting foot in the labyrinth after this.

Still, I was a little curious.

What ability would I get?

Seclusion and bloodsucking? Hard to imagine what that combination would produce.

[Measuring subject Park Hyun-gi’s potential… Measurement complete.]

[Combining subject’s potential, disposition, and characteristic.]

[Trait acquired: Vampire (EX)]

“…Huh?”

While I stood there stunned by a grade I’d never seen before, light erupted from my body.

Flash!

My wounds healed and vitality surged through me.

Vampire? As in, the vampire I was thinking of?

As I stood there bewildered, system windows popped up one after another.

[Distributing tutorial rewards.]

[First bloodsucking! Thrall existence confirmed.]

[Summoning thrall.]

Flash!

Another burst of light, and something appeared before my eyes.

A silhouette about waist-height, shaped like a person.

But what appeared was none other than…

“Grrk?”

“Wh… what?!”

The very same goblin I’d just been fighting for my life against.

It wasn’t a different one.

There were clear tooth marks on its shoulder.

[Goblin LV 1]

-Strength: 5

-Agility: 5

-Intelligence: 4

-A common goblin found everywhere.

[Your thrall awaits its master’s command.]

“…Thrall? This thing? And wait, how did a goblin even get outside the labyrinth?”

I reviewed the information the system had given me.

So, I had completed the tutorial and awakened as a vampire.

At some grade called EX that I’d never seen or heard of before.

And the thing that immediately showed up was that goblin.

A thrall. Meaning, because I, the vampire, had bitten it, the goblin became my thrall?

The goblin was quietly tilting its head, watching me.

The fact that a monster had appeared outside the labyrinth was shocking enough, but based on the messages alone, this thing seemed to be my subordinate.

“…Hey.”

“Grrk?”

“Are you… going to attack me?”

“Grrrrk!!”

The moment it heard me, the goblin threw itself flat on the ground as if to say, how could I even suggest such a thing.

Its body language made its thoughts perfectly clear.

Something like, “H-how could I possibly dare?!”

That was the vibe as it lay there watching my every move.

Even without looking at the system window, I could feel it instinctively.

This goblin could never harm me now, even if it meant its own death.

“…The grade and trait aren’t bad, but I seriously have no intention of going to the labyrinth.”

The ability to create thralls. The unprecedented grade of EX.

And on top of that, the fact that thrall powers could be used even outside the labyrinth.

Normally, awakeners outside the labyrinth were no different from ordinary humans.

Anyone could see this was a jackpot, but… I was not the kind of person who could risk his life exploring the labyrinth.

Sure, hitting it big would mean sitting on a pile of money.

Just then, the goblin looked up at me.

“Grrk?”

“What are you looking at… Anyway, what are you? Go back to the labyrinth.”

Was this thing planning to live here permanently? Then I’d have to feed it.

I could barely feed myself as it was.

Just then, the goblin heard what I said, sprang to its feet, and nodded.

“Grrrk!”

Flash!

With a bright light, the goblin vanished from sight.

Did it actually go back?

While I stood there in confusion…

[Your goblin has begun exploring the labyrinth.]

[First solo thrall expedition!]

[Reward: Thrall Third-Person View (S) acquired!]

“…?”

A screen appeared before my eyes.

A ruined metropolis, the fabled scenery of Labyrinth Layer 1, along with the goblin looking around in every direction.

– Gruuuk!

The goblin picked something up from the roadside and gleefully thrust its hand toward the sky.

[Your goblin has acquired iron ore.]

“???”

The goblin had started farming the labyrinth all on its own.