Reverse Dungeon

The strangest thing about life was that you never knew what would come next.

By that standard, Jeong Yiwon was having a particularly unusual day. It began with him waking up somewhere he had absolutely not expected to be when he’d fallen asleep the night before.

To be precise, he woke up on a horse.

“Huh?”

For the record, he had never ridden a horse in his life. He wasn’t especially fond of physical activity in general. Jeong Yiwon’s favorite pastime was sitting quietly in front of his computer. Not to brag, but he had once gamed for twenty-four hours straight without taking a real break.

So it was only natural that the moment he realized his backside and thighs were planted on a living, breathing animal and that he was clutching the reins in one hand, he nearly fell off. The only reason he didn’t was pure survival instinct.

Instead, he lurched wildly in the saddle. A man sprinting beside him shouted in exasperation, like a parent scolding a troublesome child.

“What are you doing? At a time like this! Were you falling asleep?”

He hadn’t been falling asleep. He had been fully asleep until just now.

Yiwon kept that to himself. For one thing, the man was a stranger. For another, he was clearly a foreigner. Like plenty of Koreans, Yiwon had a mild case of xenophobia, probably brought on by being forced to study English for more than ten years.

He almost asked, Who are you? But before he could get a word out, something suddenly burst behind him.

Bang!

It sounded like a firecracker. A streak of red light shot into the sky and scattered overhead. It looked almost like fireworks. Apparently he was the only one who thought so, because screams broke out all around him.

“They chased us all the way here!”

“Kyaaaah!”

“Your Majesty! What should we do?”

The last cry came from the man who had been berating Yiwon moments earlier. The cloaked old man running ahead of them—presumably the “Your Majesty” in question—looked back with terror written across his face. His eyes locked with Yiwon’s, and in that instant Yiwon felt a sudden, inexplicable foreboding.

“Ian, my brave son!” the old man shouted.

Me?

Yiwon frowned in confusion.

“I entrust you with twenty soldiers. Hold the rear!” the old man commanded.

“What?”

“How dare you question His Majesty’s order? Ian, answer properly!” The man who had been complaining all this time snapped at him again.

“Huh?” Yiwon said, now staring straight at the irritable man. What the hell was he supposed to do here?

Slowly, the thought began to sink in: this had to be a dream. It had to be. But the wind biting at his skin was too cold, the feel of the horse’s mane slapping against him was too vivid, and even the stench of manure hanging in the air was painfully real. Still... there was no way this could actually be reality, right?

The last thing Jeong Yiwon remembered was dozing off on the bus after spending hours playing a game—a defense game, to be exact. Not one with particularly good character balance, either.

The most ridiculous thing about that game was how badly its difficulty patch had been handled. In most mobile games, players start with a single default character and have to pay to unlock the rest. Fine. But the performance of the default character in this game? Absolute trash.

Why is the default character the hardest one to use?

That question had become so popular that it resurfaced at the top of the official fan café every single month. Considering the game barely had a hundred players, Yiwon included, and even fewer people who actively used the forums, it was safe to say the one posting it was Yiwon himself.

This wasn’t a joke. If the developers wanted to make money, the least they could do was give beginners a character who was actually beginner-friendly. Yiwon had often wondered what went on inside those developers’ heads. More than once, he had wanted to crack one open and take a look.

In place of the unmotivated development team, Yiwon had diligently written strategy guides for the character himself. Titles like A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Ian and Anyone with Working Hands Can Clear Ian stood proudly among his contributions to the strategy board.

Despite all that effort, however, no new players seemed to be joining. Even for Yiwon, Ian had been a character he could only clear after countless attempts. He was that difficult.

Out of sheer frustration, Jeong Yiwon had written a brutally sincere review and even emailed the developers a painstaking five-thousand-character rant. They remained perfectly unbothered. No reply ever came. Right before falling asleep, Yiwon had still been cursing them out while drafting yet another guide for Ian’s route.

Wait.

Ian?

“Of course, I’m not asking you to hold them off perfectly with only twenty soldiers. Do you think I would burden you with such a task? Naturally, I will assign a mage to assist you. Ian, my warrior, we are counting on you! Show this father of yours your resolve!”

“What?”

“Go! Hurry!”

...Wait just a second.

The old king urged him on, leaving Yiwon staring after him in disbelief. That line sounded far too familiar.

No sane person made a hobby out of replaying a game’s tutorial hundreds of times. But Jeong Yiwon had watched Ian’s tutorial dozens of times—not because he was a freak, but because he had suspected there might be an Easter egg hidden in it, or some crucial clue for future strategy.

There wasn’t.

If the players couldn’t find it, that was the developers’ fault. Even if something did exist, as far as Yiwon was concerned, it might as well not.

But that wasn’t the point.

If his guess was right, then the next line should be—

“Wait, Ian! Stop!” the man who had been nagging him from the beginning suddenly shouted.

Yiwon had not even started moving.

“You’re not taking the horse with you, are you? You won’t need a horse anymore. Why would someone setting up a defensive line ride off on horseback?”

“Oh, Eric, you’re absolutely right. Ian, leave the horse behind,” the king chimed in brightly.

The man—apparently named Eric—snatched the reins from Yiwon’s hand and shoved him off the horse. Yiwon hit the ground hard, yet somehow did not break his neck. Since there was no way his own reflexes had saved him, there was only one explanation.

Something like a game mechanic that prevented the character from dying before the tutorial had even begun...

Ian’s character.

The starter character the king abandoned, left to face the pre-tutorial battle with no faction and no resources.

This... this was , wasn’t it?!

“I’m counting on you to hold the rear, my son!”

“Show me you’re worth something for once!”

The king and Ian’s brother, Eric, shouted their “encouragement” as they rode off into the distance.

When the royal entourage finally disappeared, only Jeong Yiwon and twenty-one ragged-looking people remained. The king had promised him soldiers, but none of these people looked remotely like soldiers. At best, they were refugees.

“We’re doomed. We’re all going to die!”

“Oh gods, save us.”

One person started sobbing, and the despair spread like an infection. Amid the crying and lamentation, the only one who was not in tears approached Jeong Yiwon.

“Lord Ian, what should we do? This is an open plain—we’ll draw the monsters’ attention right away.”

The man did not inspire confidence. He was trembling as he spoke, his voice quivering with every word. The moment the sentence left his mouth, a translucent window popped up in front of Yiwon’s eyes.

Ding!

[Tutorial is starting.]

[Create a dungeon to defend against monsters.]

[Character]

‘Bastard’ Ian (★★★★☆)

[Reputation]

Bastard, Playboy, Extravagant, Hedonist

[Skills]

Purification: LV.1

Horseback Riding: LV.1

Archery: LV.1

⋮

(Expand)

Jeong Yiwon had somehow ended up inside the game .

As Ian, the single most useless character in the entire roster.

Or maybe he was just dreaming.

–

To explain what kind of game was—well, it was a failed one.

The premise was simple: in a world where the human race had nearly been wiped out and demons reigned supreme, the few surviving humans retreated into dungeons and fought a desperate defensive war against the demon hordes.

Ordinarily, humans are the ones who storm dungeons and hunt monsters. In this game, the roles were reversed—hence the title .

The game itself was well made, and the illustrations were gorgeous. So why had it flopped? Simple. Because the developers were idiots. No matter how good your concept is, if you can’t run a game properly, it’s doomed.

Jeong Yiwon had been playing for three years. Not because he was some die-hard fan—he had simply kept playing because, for whatever reason, the game had managed to stay alive for that long.

In that time, he had cleared every ending with every character and seen every event. The only things he still didn’t know were the things the developers themselves had never revealed. For instance, why they had decided to sabotage the game by making the default character so awful. That remained one of life’s enduring mysteries.

In any case, the game had a [Reputation] system. It reflected what each character was known for inside the world. Whatever reputation was most famous became that character’s [Title], displayed in front of their name.

And Ian’s title?

[Bastard].

Which meant that, canonically, he was the most notorious bastard alive. Every NPC who met him might as well have screamed, Oh no—it’s Bastard Ian! Ridiculous, but true.

Why anyone would make that man the default character was beyond Yiwon.

Ian’s second most infamous reputation was [Playboy]. Which was already enough to make anyone want to keep their distance.

People’s opinions of him were brutally simple: nobody wanted anything to do with him. That included the so-called troops assigned to him in ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) the tutorial. None of them had the slightest intention of following his orders. You could tell just by listening to them wail that they were all about to die.

“......”

That was enough about his reputation.

The next problem was his skills.