Leveling Up Alone

Chapter 5: The Awakened System (5)

The little sister in his imagination was the unrealistic type who acted cute with her older brother and took care of him, however.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?” Han-Yeol asked after undoing the rope that bound her and checking for any injuries on her.

“Sniffle…”?The girl just sobbed quietly.

“Hey, hey,” Han-Yeol said, looking genuinely worried about her.

Then, the girl suddenly cried loudly, the tears she had been holding back gushing out. “Waaaaaaaah!”

Shrrk!

The girl suddenly jumped and hugged Han-Yeol tightly as she started to cry even more loudly. She was usually always bright and cheerful, but she was still a teenager regardless, and the traumatic experience was undoubtedly a huge shock to her. She cried in Han-Yeol’s arms over and over again.

Pat pat…

Han-Yeol, who did not possess the talent of comforting a woman with words, could do nothing but gently pat her back…

‘She smells good.’

…while having those kinds of silly, childish thoughts.

Twenty minutes passed since the girl had started crying in Han-Yeol’s arms. Finally, she gradually stopped crying before looking away in embarrassment. She then took out a small mirror and checked her puffy eyes. Her face turned bright red when she realized that she looked like a mess.

“Are you alright?” Han-Yeol asked carefully.

“Y-Yes, I’m fine now. Thank you, Han-Yeol oppa,” the girl replied.

“Wow! You used to give me the cold shoulder whenever I told you I wanted you to call me ‘oppa’. Am I your oppa only in circumstances like this?” Han-Yeol playfully teased her.

“I-I don’t know!” the girl exclaimed before turning her bright red face away from him.

“Haha!” Han-Yeol let out a hearty laugh while looking at the shy little girl.

Suddenly, he felt a tingling sensation that seemed to be warning him that his back was about to be stabbed. He immediately turned his body and sidestepped to avoid the attack from behind.

Swoosh!

“Kyaaaah!”?the girl screamed.

The rapist had regained consciousness and tried to stab Han-Yeol from behind, and the girl screamed when she saw the man charging aggressively toward Han-Yeol.

However, the rapist was dumbfounded when Han-Yeol sidestepped and avoided his surprise attack. He had been certain that it was a perfect sneak attack from the guy’s blind spot, but the guy easily avoided his attack as if he had already been expecting it.

“E-Eh…?” The rapist was stupefied for a moment, but that moment lasted for only a split second as the enraged Han-Yeol punched him once again in the face.

Pukeok!

“Euk…!”?The rapist could only utter a moan, as the power-packed punch knocked him out cold and made him foam from the mouth.

Han-Yeol had only put a small amount of mana behind his punch, so he was certain that the rapist was not dead.

“A-Are you alright?” the girl asked Han-Yeol.

Han-Yeol replied calmly, “I’m alright. You must have been surprised.”

“Y-Yes…” the girl said.

“It’s alright now. It’s all over,” Han-Yeol said, comforting the high school girl as he smiled brightly at her. Then, she returned a small smile, slowly starting to calm down.

‘She’s surprisingly tough,’?Han-Yeol thought. The incident was already over, but the fact that she was still trying to smile after what she had just gone through was quite impressive.

The whole incident was wrapped up after Han-Yeol called the police, and they reached the scene after huffing and puffing up the hills of the moon village. The suspect, the victim, and the witness all went to the police station together. The high school girl, Yu-Bi, testified about everything she had gone through at the hands of the rapist, and Han-Yeol testified about the things he had witnessed.

Thankfully, both of their testimonies matched, and the rapist was arrested on the spot and locked up due to the police having sufficient evidence against him.

The cops were about to have their dinner, but Han-Yeol pulled out his usual shameless money-grubbing face and convinced them to order additional servings for two. They enjoyed a hot meal of police gukbap before leaving the police station.

“Ah, I’m full. It feels as if it’s been ages since I ate this well,” Han-Yeol said in satisfaction.

“Hehe, me too!” Yu-Bi added while smiling brightly.

Yu-Bi was already back to her old, cheerful self, and she was smiling so brightly that nobody would believe that she had just been a victim of attempted rape.

“Are you really alright?” Han-Yeol asked.

“Hmm? What do you mean?” Yu-Bi asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“You just went through a horrible experience. Are you really alright?” Han-Yeol asked once again.

“Umm… It would have been bad if that guy managed to have his way with me, but that wasn’t the case. Oppa helped me and saved me from danger,” Yu-Bi replied.

Hug!

Yu-Bi clung to Han-Yeol’s arm, and his face turned bright red when he felt a certain kind of softness unique to women for the first time in his life.

Han-Yeol had grown up in a single-parent household, and they had not been that well-off in his younger days. In fact, one of his inferiority complexes was because he had actually been poor growing up. He had tried his best to cover that up by making a lot of friends, and he had been famous among the girls in school.

However, he had been unable to afford to go out with women, let alone hold a woman’s hand, in recent years as he had been busy trying to make ends meet. Now, though, he had a young and beautiful high school girl clinging onto his arm. Han-Yeol, who was turning 28 years old this year, would be called a criminal by his friends if they saw him with Yu-Bi just then.

“I-Is that so…?” Han-Yeol replied, stuttering from embarrassment.

An infectiously happy aura surrounded Yu-Bi once again as she smiled; Han-Yeol liked the feeling of her clinging to him, and he did not even make an attempt to push her away.

“Oppa, you will walk me all the way home, right?” Yu-Bi asked with a hint of anxiety in her voice. Her anxiety and nervousness were clearly evident no matter how hard she tried to hide it by pretending to be cheerful. She squeezed his arm with trembling hands when she asked if he was going to walk her home, and Han-Yeol could clearly sense her anxiety through that trembling.

“Of course! Let’s go. Your house is right beside mine anyway,” Han-Yeol replied.

Their houses really were literally right beside each other. Han-Yeol safely walked Yu-Bi home before entering his house. He plopped down on his bed and stared dazedly at the new phone number on his mobile phone.

[Han Yu-Bi]

[010-4xx8-9xx5]

Yu-Bi had given him her number and firmly insisted that she would definitely repay him one day after thanking him a few times, and she had also told him to send her a message whenever he was bored.

‘Yu-Bi, Yu-Bi, Han Yu-Bi… What a pretty name,’?Han-Yeol thought.

He had already known that her name was Yu-Bi, but he had not known that her surname was ‘Han’. He had initially been reminded of the main character from the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ and found her name to be funny, but her name sounded beautiful now that he added her surname to it.

That was how Han-Yeol felt his heart flutter for the first time in a long while as he slowly fell asleep. His sleep that night felt very different from how it usually did, when he would pass out from being too tired.

***

It was a little past lunchtime the next day when Han-Yeol woke up and slurped up a bowl of ramyun. He flicked through the channels on TV briefly, before turning it off with a yawn as he found nothing interesting on.

He then put on his trainers and left the house, heading to a commercial complex in a residential neighborhood next to the moon village. There, he went up to a gym on the third floor.

Ring!

A voice greeted Han-Yeol the moment he went in. “Welc… Eh? Oh! Han-Yeol! Long time no see!”

A middle-aged man with a buzz cut warmly welcomed Han-Yeol, and Han-Yeol greeted the man in response. “Hi, coach! How have you been?”

Thud!

The two men greeted each other with a tough hug, of the sort commonly shared among men to express how glad they were to see each other. The scene brought to mind the term ‘bromance’.

“Hey, you brat! I’m doing well. How about you? How many months has it been since you visited? I thought you died working as a Porter or something!” the middle-aged man joked.

In truth, however, his words were halfway between a joke and the truth. That was because the Porters’ line of work was a dangerous job, in which they never knew when and where they would die.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been too busy and too tired these days, but I have a bit more free time these days so I plan to start working out again,” Han-Yeol said.

Han-Yeol had a personal relationship with the owner and coach of this place, the OKGYM. The owner of the OKGYM had been a hometown junior of his father. It was also this man who had pushed Han-Yeol to work out and train when he was younger, telling him that a man should be strong and dependable.

Han-Yeol had been able to train for free at the gym in exchange for cleaning the place, as the man could not help but feel guilty if he took money from a boy who was no different from his nephew.

Han-Yeol had visited the gym for old times’ sake and to use the newfound free time he had on his hands.

“I’m going to do some exercise and clean up the place. Leave this place to me and relax for the day,” Han-Yeol said.

The man replied, “Alright, just call me if you need anything.”

“Okay,” Han-Yeol replied.

The man went to his office, and Han-Yeol got to work, taking out the cleaning tools and meticulously cleaning the place. He finished in no time, as he had cleaned this place more than a thousand times by now.

Afterward, it was time for him to start exercising.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh!

“Heup! Heup! Heup!”

Han-Yeol started warming up by doing double-jump jumping ropes, running on the treadmill, and doing bench presses. He did some weight training as well by utilizing the assorted equipment at the gym for ten minutes each.

Two hours after he had started doing weight training, a message popped up.

Ding!

[Your continuous body training has unlocked limitless potential for you to grow stronger.]

[A new skill has been created—Body Strengthening.]

‘Body Strengthening skill…?’?Han-Yeol read the message in his mind.

Tak!

He had been doing bench presses when the message popped up, so he put the barbell back in place and checked the skill’s details.

[Body Strengthening]

Type: Passive

Description: You will be able to permanently increase your physical stats by putting yourself through arduous training.

‘Wow! What a haul!’?Han-Yeol exclaimed inwardly.

The exercise and training he would do from now on were no longer merely for the purpose of maintaining his health. If the skill was going to increase his physical stats, he now had the potential to grow exponentially stronger through his own effort and hard work.

‘I should?work out more frequently from now on,’?Han-Yeol thought after he checked the skill’s details.

He would want to work out more if it were up to him, but unfortunately, he had other things to attend to. So, he said goodbye to the gym owner and left the gym after taking a quick shower to freshen up. Then, he took a bus and went to the S-Hospital—the hospital where his father was admitted.

“Hi, Han-Yeol,” a nurse warmly greeted him.

Han-Yeol greeted her back. “Ah, hello, Nurse Kim.”

She was the nurse Han-Yeol had become close with, as he frequently visited his father whenever he got the chance to. The doctors in charge of his father had changed multiple times over the years, but the nurses who watched over him had stayed the same.

“Have there been any changes to father these days?” Han-Yeol asked as he went into the ICU.

Nurse Kim followed behind him and replied while smiling bitterly, “Unfortunately, there is no news I can give you.”

“Oh… Don’t mind it. I can entrust my father to this hospital’s care because of Nurse Kim, after all,” Han-Yeol said.

The doctors had said that Han-Yeol’s father had cancer, but the cancer he had was very different from the normal cancers most people knew of. The doctors had no idea what the cause of his illness was, nor the cure for it.

The time his father spent sleeping had started to become longer than the time he spent awake as the cancer progressed, and his father could not wake up at all no matter how many times anyone tried to wake him up once he fell asleep.

“How many hours has father been sleeping these days?” Han-Yeol asked.

“He sleeps for fourteen hours a day these days,” Nurse Kim replied.

“Ah…” Han-Yeol was speechless. The only thing he could do was to hold his sleeping father’s hands, and his own hands trembled as he held onto them.

Han-Yeol was aware of what was happening to his father. He had overheard the doctors talking to each other by chance one day, and they had been saying that his father was going to pass away once his sleep began to last for twenty-four hours.

Han-Yeol had been holding on hoping that a miracle would happen one day, but the miracle had never come, and his hope was getting fainter and fainter.

However, Han-Yeol now had hope.

‘Karvis, can I also learn a skill to cure illnesses?’?Han-Yeol asked the Ego System in his mind.

[Of course.]

[Although there is a tricky condition, you will be able to learn it as long as you satisfy that condition.]

‘I see…’?Han-Yeol pondered.

[Yes.]

His hope lay in the true power of the ability he had awakened with.

An average Awakened usually possessed three abilities after awakening, and their positions were decided based on the skills they had. Han-Yeol, on the other hand, had no limits on the number and types of skills he could learn.

That was when Han-Yeol decided to use his ability to learn a healing skill to cure his father’s illness.

‘There’s no time.?Karvis, what should I do if I want to cure my father’s illness?’?Han-Yeol asked.

[The most basic condition is to increase your level first.]

‘That’s right. My level,’?Han-Yeol thought. He felt the need to change his usual schedule of working as a Porter four times a week.

‘Let’s go work as a Porter for now. It won’t be a bad idea to gain some experience while working as a Porter, since it’s a growth-type ability after all.’

1. A Korean term used by girls to refer to men a little older than them.

2. Gukbap (??) is a Korean dish made by putting cooked rice into hot soup. The word is a combination of ?, meaning soup, and ?, meaning rice. Police gukbap is basically the style of gukbap eaten in a police station.

3. Yu-Bi (??) is the Korean name of Liu Bei, the main character of ROTK.