Chapter 365

Im Haekyung lowered their head and silently looked down at me. The time I spent looking up at them from below continued for a moment before they spoke first.

“You don’t look that good right now.”

Im Haekyung, who had taken off only one of their leather gloves, grabbed my arm and pulled me up. My arm slid through their hand, leaving their palm drenched in blood.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you fight?”

“No.”

Im Haekyung stared quietly at their palm, then suddenly raised their hand high and watched the blood run down their wrist.

“The blood is flowing.”

“.......”

“It doesn’t look like it just got on you either.... Could it not be blood? Is it yours, Jehyun?”

“No. I’m not hurt anywhere.”

“.......”

“I don’t think I am? Nothing hurts.”

I spread both arms, and they naturally began checking my body step by step, starting with my arms. Only after confirming that no more blood seeped out even when they firmly pressed the places where the most blood had gotten on me did Im Haekyung finish their examination.

“Can you tell me what you remember since entering the Dungeon? Preferably without leaving anything out.”

“I threw Executive Director Yoon into the Dungeon and waited, then came in first to check. I saw a shoe floating on the lake, figured he must’ve died, and lost consciousness for a bit. Hunter Sung came in, we talked briefly, then we met the Hunter Association Hunters, had a short strategy meeting, and they went under the lake to clear it.”

“Without you?”

“I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Im Haekyung readily accepted that and pointed at my hand with a finger.

“What’s that?”

“A Nullification Ring. Hunter Sung’s personal artifact.”

“You used it because of the mental confusion. Did Hunter Sung seem all right?”

“Probably? It looked like the effect depends on Rank.”

“Because it’s an A-rank Dungeon.”

After answering briefly, Im Haekyung wiped the blood from their hand and asked,

“Entering alone wasn’t part of the original plan, was it?”

“I thought I needed to confirm whether Executive Director Yoon was dead.”

“So you entered an A-rank Dungeon alone.... Jehyun, what were you planning to do if you got hurt or died? You should’ve done only what we discussed. The reason I’m going along with that flimsy, half-assed plan of yours is because I judged that the risks you would create were below the threshold I could handle.”

“.......”

“Don’t make things difficult for me.”

The voice reciting the sentence without emphasizing any particular word was strangely cold.

“I don’t want to bear the risk of something happening to you, Jehyun. This is the furthest we’ve ever ‘advanced,’ and I don’t want to repeat all of this again.”

“Yes.”

“That was an easy answer. You’re not going to follow through, are you?”

“No?”

Im Haekyung stared silently at me, then put the glove back on over their bloodstained hand.

“Jehyun, I....”

“.......”

“I don’t want to be the one left wanting.”

Im Haekyung quietly looked at their hand, clenched it tightly into a fist once, then opened it and looked directly at me. I rolled my stiff neck once and met their gaze.

“So sometimes... I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“You should listen to me.”

“I am making that the priority.”

After a brief silence, Im Haekyung looked toward the lake and asked,

“Did you confirm that Executive Director Yoon died?”

“The last thing I saw was one of his shoes floating around, so probably.”

“Did you see it with your own eyes? What I mean is, did you kill him? Or, even if you didn’t, did you confirm his corpse after he died? I’m asking about all of that.”

“No.”

If they asked it like that, I had nothing to say.

The moment they finished speaking, I immediately denied it, and Im Haekyung narrowed their eyes and stared quietly at me before jerking their chin toward my arm.

“If the blood is still flowing, that means it isn’t just blood. It must be mixed with water. If his shoe was on the lake, then Executive Director Yoon must have sunk underneath it. There’s a section of your memory missing in the middle, so how do you know you didn’t kill him?”

“With my bare hands?”

“You think you couldn’t kill one unawakened person with your bare hands? No matter how... bad your condition is right now. And you know. Considering your physical strength, even if you weren’t awakened....”

“.......”

“It’s possible.”

Im Haekyung finished lightly and cupped my cheek with their hand. I felt the alien texture of the leather glove against my skin. I stared quietly at them and asked dryly,

“I already sent Hunter Sung and the Hunter Association Hunters down there, so this is inconvenient. If I killed Executive Director Yoon, he probably didn’t die all that beautifully.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“The Hunter Association Hunters, sure, but Hunter Sung too?”

“What else can I do? I’ll have to accept it.”

“.......”

“I came prepared for that.”

I grabbed Im Haekyung’s arm and lowered it as I answered.

“Well, Hunter Sung isn’t on our side anyway.”

“.......”

“Then want to go down together? I don’t know what kind of interesting things are happening below. They might need help. Hunter Sung isn’t a very good match for this place.”

“If there’s nothing physical to affect... then yes. Put differently, that could mean I’m a bad match for it too. My abilities only work on living creatures.”

“There’s an A-rank Hunter down there. They have offensive Skills too.”

If necessary, we could use Mental Domination to make the Hunter act for us. Im Haekyung seemed to understand what I meant and nodded, then suddenly frowned.

“I don’t particularly like using Mental Domination on Hunters.”

“You use it appropriately when there’s no other choice.”

“Enough. Let’s go down. No, I’ll go first.”

With that, Im Haekyung approached the lake, stared at the smooth surface for a moment, then looked back at me.

“Do you have something to say?”

“No.”

“Ah, what about a stealth item?”

“I have one.”

I had told them beforehand because I didn’t particularly want to expose Im Haekyung to the Hunter Association Hunters. Telling them to come ‘secretly’ included this meaning as well.

“Use it before you go.”

“It’s already active. I only deactivated it because I’m in front of you.”

“You listen well.”

“You really don’t, Jehyun.”

I walked closer and lightly crooked my finger, and Im Haekyung narrowed their eyes and warned me.

“Don’t use that as a means of praise.”

“I just wanted to.”

“And don’t touch me rudely either.”

“There sure are a lot of things you dislike. This is the only time there’s no one around.”

Im Haekyung fell silent for a moment. I caught hold of them, pressed a short kiss to their cheek, then gestured toward the lake.

“Go.”

“.......”

“Should I go first?”

“Follow right behind me.”

Well, if that’s what you want.

I watched Im Haekyung enter the lake, then threw myself into the water right after them.

It felt as though my body were sliding through a soft fluid. My vision spun for a moment, then my body flipped over and dropped toward the ground.

Thud.

Pain flared as my body struck the ground. After catching my breath for a moment and getting up, I found a landscape completely different from the one outside.

The entire space was dark, with only occasional patches illuminated by faint lights no brighter than candles, and cracked stones were scattered across the floor beneath those dim lights.

I used an artifact that illuminated the surroundings to light up the area nearby.

Then something more striking came into view.

‘Statues?’

I had thought they were simply broken stones lying around, but apparently not. Irregular stone statues stood or sprawled around the area, and the closest one had a hole smashed through around its abdomen.

Half of its face had also fallen away, leaving it cracked. The one unfortunate thing was that it was already a face I knew.

‘Executive Director Yoon.’

So if you died here, did you turn into stone like this?

I alternated my gaze between the hollow abdomen and my bloodstained arm, then picked up a stone fragment from the floor and completely smashed Executive Director Yoon’s face. It was to destroy the evidence in case a Hunter Association employee came close enough to inspect it later.

‘Looks like I really did kill him.’

To think my memory had been completely wiped out.

I clicked my tongue lightly and started walking toward where Sung Uijae was.

“Hunter Seo!”

At that moment, Sung Uijae’s voice rang out, more urgent than usual. Since it carried a warning tone, I reflexively ducked, and in an instant, a massive chunk of stone swept past where I had been and flew into the wall.

Booom-!!!

Its power was considerably weaker than its size suggested, but even accounting for that, it was large enough that getting crushed under it would have caused at least a fracture.

“Fuck, I almost died.”

I spat out a short curse and looked around, only for my head to suddenly spin. It was a peculiar sensation, as though the space around me had become infinitely distant.

Then an irritating sound began buzzing around my ears like tiny mosquitoes.

-He killed someone.

-He brutally killed someone.

-He devoured his parents.

-He killed his friend.

-He destroyed the world.

-He deceived people.

‘What the hell?’

It wasn’t just one or two voices. At first, they had sounded like tiny whispers murmuring directly into my ears, but before I knew it, they had become so loud it felt as though they were being hammered straight into my brain.

-He brutally killed someone!

I waved my hand around as though swatting away mosquitoes and focused for a moment, trying to pick out Sung Uijae’s voice.

“Hunter Sung, where are you?”

“Why did you come down?”

Voices echoed from every direction at once.

‘I’m losing my sense of space.’

Still, it wasn’t completely impossible to distinguish them. Ignoring the annoying noise, I headed in the direction where Sung Uijae’s voice had sounded a little clearer.

Crunch, crunch. I heard what sounded like stone being crushed beneath footsteps. Though it was probably not ordinary stone, but the remains of corpses that had turned to stone.

“Hunter Sung.”

“.......”

At my call, Sung Uijae irritably waved a hand near his ear, looked once at the Hunter sprawled on the ground, then turned his head toward me.

“Hunter Seo.”

“You still haven’t cleared it.”

“Keeping people alive was hard enough.”

I looked briefly at the Hunter curled up on the floor, trembling violently with their hands clamped over their ears, then turned my head forward again.

Sung Uijae, who had already wiped the irritation from his face, stood there expressionlessly.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I stared quietly at Sung Uijae, then slowly smiled, narrowing my eyes.

“Why does your concern sound so much like you’re checking something?”

“.......”

“Are you hearing strange voices in your ears?”