Surviving The Game as a Barbarian is a web novel series authorised by Jung Yoonkang and adapted into a webtoon illustrated by Among and produced by Midnight Studios, which is published weekly on Naver.
Hansu Lee is a 29-year old korean gaming addict with a passion for challenging titles, born from his infirm body requiring him to spend long period of time in the hospital growing up. His overexposure to so many games has dulled his interest in the more mainstream titles, recognising all the common tropes or half-assed writing plots they share at a glance, until he comes across an obscure indie pixel-art game titled "Dungeon and Stone". This game has ridiculous difficulty level, obscure and in-depth mechanics, no Korean translation for the english-based language, requires you to start from square one with a new character every time your old one dies, and practically no walkthroughs or hints to be found about it online, requiring Hansu to identify how best to proceed from trial and painstaking error. He immediately falls in love with it.
After 9 and a half years of painstaking effort, Hansu finally reaches the final boss room, "The Gate of the Abyss" with his chosen barbarian build. Figuring it'll understandably take him several tries to figure out the boss' mechanics, Hansu settles down alone in his room to finally enjoy the fight he's been working towards for years....only for the game to tell him his tutorial is over the second he proceeds. In Korean.
Before Hansu can make sense of this, a blinding light occurs and when he opens his eyes, he finds himself inhabiting the ridiculously muscle-bound body of Bjorn Yandel, a Barbarian about to proceed on his journey to become a great warrior in the kingdom of Rafdonia, the tutorial stage for the barbarian class in Dungeon and Stone.
Reeling from his sudden transformation, Hansu barely has time to process his new circumstances when another barbarian close to him stammers out the same thoughts running through his head, revealing that he too is a human transported into the "game". This immediately gets him executed as an "Evil Spirit" possessing the barbarian's body, driving home Hansu's situation to him. He must find a way to survive in this world as a savage warrior race, without tipping off anybody that he is an "Evil Spirit" himself, and whilst overcoming the notoriously difficult challenges of Dungeon and Stone with the added difficulty of reality and only one life to work with bearing down on him.
But Hansu's situation is not hopeless. Sure, he's an incredibly unlucky fellow, in a situation he never expected to be forced into. But with his wits, decisiveness, years of in-depth gaming knowledge about this world and the fortitude of a Barbarian on his side, he just might stand a chance at surviving in a real-life hellish difficulty.
The webtoon can be read in English on webtoons
, and the original novel can be read on Yonder.
Surviving The Game As A Barbarian contains examples of:
- Barbarian Hero: Hero is really stretching the definition of the term, but Hansu nonetheless finds himself playing this kind of character as Bjorn when he's transposed into the real-life version of Dungeon and Stone, it being apparently selected by the type of character he managed to reach the final boss room with.
- Contrived Coincidence: Meres minutes after Hansu winds up transported into Bjorn's body, the barbarian next to him speaks out about Dungeon and Stone, revealing himself to also be another transmigrated human from Earth. This serves to illustrate to Hansu the seriousness of him needing to hide this fact from everybody, after the barbarian is one-sidedly executed by the Barbarian chief, as a form of Mercy Kill to the body he's possessing. Information he scrounges up from the city library afterwards indicates that such Demonic Possession from "players" controlling their character do occur semi-frequently, but the odds of two cases occurring side-by-side in such a close timeframe as still pretty slim.
- Genius Bruiser: Hansu is a downplayed case, in that he is not quite the smartest person in the room at any given time, nor immensely calculating for all possible actions he takes going forward and what the repercussions might be like other intelligent heroes. However, he is decently smart and crafty in a crises situation, and he soon discovers that amongst the average Barbarian, he may as well be goddamm Einstein. The newbie warriors all get lost minutes after entering Rafdonia's streets, merely charging yelling at the top of their lungs after whomever was designated to be the leader, whom is equally clueless about how to navigate the streets to the labyrinth until Hansu discreetly suggests following other adventures walking to the location. One of them outright compares Hansu's ability to properly use a watch to magic. Ainar, motivated by Hansu's clear-headedness and desire to improve herself, shamelessly admits that she has to learn what the alphabet even is before she can start to read books for knowledge like him, and the Barbarian Chief notes that it's unusual for two warriors like them to show interest in studying rather than brawling and improving their fighting technique. This makes Hansu's bouts of common sense and decent logic troublesome for him to showcase, because it makes people suspicious that such a "well-educated" barbarian could be an Evil Spirit.
- Human Resources: After surviving Hans' nearly-fatal sneak attack on him whilst he was sleeping, Hansu beats him until he confesses that Barbarian hearts are in high demand in the Black market at present, due to apparently being a vital ingredient in a newly-developed spell Rafdonia. A disgusted Hansu notes that Hans saw him as no different than the Goblins he's been killing on the first floor, a difficult-to-kill monster if carelessly handled, but one which provided valuable rewards if properly slain. With this in mind, Hansu realises he cannot trust any other human adventurers to be night companions with him, in case they gang up on him whilst he's too fatigued, and instead looks for fellow barbarian or non-human species to ally with. It's implied that Ainar had a similar situation occur to her on her first trip as well, as she acts aggressively towards other human adventures they encounter in the second floor, though she doesn't elaborate as to the specifics.
- Humongous-Headed Hammer: Played With. Hans used a double-handed warhammer as his personal armament, with the head being bigger than his own, but thanks to Bjorn's incredibly tall and muscular body, Hansu can wield the same weapon one-handed like it was a normal hammer, leaving his other free to hold his shield for defence. However, as it's not designed to be held as a one-handed weapon, the balance is a little bit off whenever he swings it. Against the weak Goblins on the first floor it's more than sufficient, but Hansu later trades it in for stones to switch to a less-impressive but more easily-usable one-handed mace to stick with the same fighting style.
- Irony:
- As Hansu notes, he graduated from living like a "savage" in the Labyrinth into living like a human being, with all the proper, if basic, comforts of good equipment and decent bed wear only after he savagely killed another human being.
- Following his experience with "Hans the heart stealer", Hansu gain an aversion to the name, considering an impending sign of misfortune paired with his own natural bad luck, despite it being an incredibly common name amongst adventurers. This is despite the name sounds quite phonetically similar to his own original Earth name Hansu Lee.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Hansu picks a shield as his starting weapon based on his prior experience playing the Barbarian class in Dungeon and Stone, noting that whist they can be immense damage-dealers thanks to being given good-quality weapons right from the start, it's actually better to play to their role as a tanker with their immense physiques, as they can swiftly over-extend themselves fighting in the Labyrinth and bleed out if their defences are neglected. As Hansu doesn't want to be a stand-out attacker or risk himself too much now that the game is his reality, he opts for a "weapon" that boosts his own survivability as much as possible. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that in addition to the shield, he needs to ensure he's properly armoured as well in all the right places to minimise damage, as he walks into a goblin trap in the dark zone that badly damages him because the shield up held up high to protect his upper body, and passed over the trap on the ground.
- Shield Bash: Having selected a shield as his main weapon prior to entering the labyrinth for it's increased defensive nature compared to more traditional weaponry, using this becomes the only means Hansu has of inflicting serious damage on his enemies, beyond beating them with his bare hands. Hansu even takes to calling out "Shield Bash" as he does so to receive stress after his near-death from bleeding out in the dark zone.That said, due to Bjorn's immense strength and speed, either option is still devastating for the goblins he fights as the primary first-floor opposition, but when he equips himself with Han's warhammer, Hansu finds himself killing the same enemies in a single blow, noting how much more efficient a proper damage-dealing weapon is in a Barbarian's hands.
- Villains Want Mercy: After trying to sneak-attack him in his sleep in order to steal and sell his heart on the Black Market later, Hans cravenly begs for his life when Hansu wakes up in time to turn the tables on him with a savage beating. Hansu just points out there there will be a lot of people inside the labyrinth or outside who will be trying to kill him in the future, and ask Hans is he's honestly supposed to let them go each and every time he has them at his mercy., before finishing him off by smashing his skull in with the rim of his shield.
