Reverse Dungeon

The mysterious aspect of life lies in its unpredictability.

In that sense, Jung Iwon faced a rather special day, starting from the moment he woke up in a place he could never have imagined when falling asleep the night before.

To be precise, he found himself on horseback when he opened his eyes.

'Huh?'

For the record, he had never ridden a horse in his life. He didn't even like physical activities to begin with. Iwon's hobby was sitting quietly in front of a computer, and though he wasn't bragging, he had once played games for 24 hours straight without a break.

So when such a person realized he was gripping reins with one hand while his buttocks and thighs were pressed against a living, breathing creature, it's only natural that he almost fell off the horse. The fact that he didn't can only be attributed to survival instinct.

Instead, he swayed greatly on the horse. A man riding beside him shouted as if exasperated:

"What are you doing? At this critical moment! Were you dozing off?"

He wasn't dozing, he had been sleeping until just now.

Jung Iwon didn't respond that way. First of all, the man was a stranger, and a foreigner at that. Iwon, like some Koreans, suffered from a mild xenophobia. He suspected it was due to being forced to learn English for over a decade.

Instead of refuting the foreigner's words, he was about to ask "Who are you?" At that moment, if only a flame hadn't suddenly shot up from behind.

Bang!

As if someone had set off fireworks, a red light soared into the sky and scattered in the air. It looked like a fireworks display. However, that impression seemed to be his alone, as screams erupted around him.

"They've caught up to us!"

"Kyaaak!"

"Your Majesty! What should we do?"

The last question came from the man who had been scolding Iwon. An old man wearing a cloak riding in front of that man looked back nervously. His eyes met Iwon's, and Iwon felt an inexplicable sense of foreboding.

"My brave son Ian!"

The old man addressed as 'Your Majesty' shouted.

'Me?'

Jung Iwon frowned.

The old man commanded:

"I entrust you with twenty soldiers. Hold them off!"

"Pardon?"

"How dare you question His Majesty's words? Ian, answer properly!"

The man who had been displeased from the start got angry again.

"Pardon?"

This time Iwon asked the man, not understanding what he was supposed to do.

He was starting to think this might all be a dream. The wind was too cold for a dream, the sensation of the horse's mane hitting him was too vivid, and the smell of horse dung was assaulting his nostrils, but... how could this possibly be reality?

Jung Iwon had fallen asleep on a bus, and before that he had been playing a game. A defense game with rather poor character balance.

The infuriating thing about that game was how terribly they had patched the difficulty. Like typical mobile games, it gave you one basic character and the rest had to be unlocked through paid transactions. But the performance of that basic character was the worst.

- Why is the basic character the most difficult?

This question was posted as a popular thread on the game's official cafe every month. There were barely a hundred people playing this game, including Jung Iwon, and even fewer active on the cafe, so of course, the person who posted that was Iwon.

This was no joke. If they wanted to sell the game, shouldn't they give an easy-to-adapt character first to attract beginners? Jung Iwon wanted to open up the developers' heads to see what they were thinking.

On behalf of the developers who seemed to have no intention or will to do business, Jung Iwon was writing strategy guides for that character.

$<Even beginners can follow. Ian strategy>, $<Ian early game strategy that works if you just have hands> and so on.

All the shining strategy guides on the Best Strategies board came from Iwon's hands.

Still, it didn't seem like many people were starting the game. Even Iwon himself had to try numerous times to succeed with this Ian character.

Jung Iwon had written detailed reviews and even sent a 5000-character email hoping the developers would come to their senses. The developers didn't, and there was no reply. Until he closed his eyes, Iwon had been cursing the developers while searching for a new strategy for Ian's route.

Wait, Ian?

"Of course, I'm not asking you to completely hold them off with just twenty soldiers. How could I put such a burden on you? I'll assign a mage to you as well. Ian, our fate rests on you. Show your father your resolve."

"Pardon?"

"Go now. Hurry!"

No way....

The old king urged. Jung Iwon stared at him in disbelief. He thought those lines sounded very familiar.

There probably aren't many perverts with the hobby of replaying game tutorials hundreds of times, but Jung Iwon had seen Ian's tutorial dozens of times. Not because he was a pervert, but because he thought there might be some easter egg in the tutorial that could be the key to a strategy.

There wasn't. If a user couldn't find it, it's the fault of the developers for making it unfindable, so even if it existed, it was as good as non-existent... that was Jung Iwon's philosophy.

Anyway, that wasn't the important part.

If Iwon's guess was correct, the next line would be...

The man who had been displeased with Iwon suddenly said:

"Wait, Ian! Stop."

Iwon hadn't been going anywhere to begin with.

"You should leave the horse behind! You won't need a horse anymore. Why are you trying to take a horse when you need to set up defenses here?"

"Oh, Eric! You're right. Ian, leave the horse behind."

The king agreed.

The man called Eric snatched the reins from Jung Iwon's hands and kicked him. Jung Iwon rolled off, and surprisingly, landed on the ground without breaking his neck. Since Iwon didn't have such physical abilities, it must have been the work of something else.

Like how a game character can't die before the 'tutorial' even starts...

Character Ian.

The basic character who is abandoned by the king from the start and has to fight the tutorial battle without any forces.

This is $<Reverse Dungeon>, isn't it!

"I'm counting on you to guard our rear, my son!"

"Show us that you can be useful for once!"

The king and Ian's brother Eric cheered as they rode away.

After the king's party left, only twenty-one people in rags remained with Jung Iwon. The king had promised to assign soldiers, but these people didn't look like soldiers at all. At best, they might be refugees.

"We're done for. We're going to die!"

"Oh, God."

As one person began to sob, tears spread like an epidemic. Amidst everyone covering their faces in despair, the only man not crying approached Jung Iwon.

"Lord Ian. What should we do? This is open ground, we'll be easily spotted by the monsters."

He didn't look particularly confident either. As he spoke trembling, a translucent window appeared before Jung Iwon's eyes.

Ding!

[Tutorial begins.]

[Create a dungeon to defend against monsters.]

[Character] 'Bastard' Ian (★★★★☆)

- Reputation

Bastard, Womanizer, Extravagant, Aesthete

- Skills

Purification: LV.1

Horseback Riding: LV.1

Archery: LV.1

⋮

(Expand)

Jung Iwon had been transported into the game $<Reverse Dungeon>.

As Ian, the most incompetent character.

Or he was dreaming such a dream.

***

To explain about the game $<Reverse Dungeon>, it's a failed game.

The basic setting of the game is this: In a world where humanity has fallen and demons rule, the surviving humans flee to dungeons and engage in defense games to survive against the demons... that's the story.

Isn't it usually humans who enter dungeons to beat up monsters? The roles are reversed, hence Reverse Dungeon.

The game itself is well-made with pretty illustrations. But why did it fail? Obviously because the developers were stupid. Even a good restaurant will fail if it's poorly managed.

Jung Iwon was a three-year veteran of this game, though not exactly a huge fan. The game had been around for three years.

In those three years, he had cleared all existing endings with every character in rotation and seen all events. The only things he didn't know about this game were what the developers hadn't disclosed. So he still didn't know why they made the basic character so terrible and ruined the game.

Anyway, this game has a 'reputation' system. It's about how this character is known in the game world. The most famous reputation becomes a 'title' that's attached before the character's name.

And Ian's title is 'Bastard'.

It means he's most famous for being a bastard. Everyone who first meets him goes, "Gasp, Bastard Ian?" Really.

Why would they make such a guy the basic character? That's anyone's guess.

And Ian's second most famous reputation is 'Womanizer'. Doesn't he sound like someone you'd rather not associate with just from hearing that?

Since people's thoughts aren't that different, in reality, no one wants to associate with him. That includes the people thrown under Ian's command in the tutorial. These people have no intention of following his orders. You can tell just by looking at them crying "We're going to die soon."

"......"

Let's stop looking at the reputation here.

Another problem is his skills.