Chapter 135

After finishing their meal, the team resumed their conquest of [The Deepest Place].

The second floor contained slightly more monsters than the first, but the enemy composition remained unchanged, allowing them to advance without much difficulty.

“Ahh!”

“Get to the front, quickly!”

However, the following day, upon reaching the third floor, they encountered an unprecedented crisis deep within the dungeon.

[Red Commander]

[Rank: A]

[Description: A named monster of the dark attribute. Continuously summons ghouls with low resistance to physical attacks as subordinates.]

The creature possessed a translucent body and could not be defeated without employing a specific strategy.

It truly resembled a ghost. No matter how many times they slashed through its body, it simply regenerated.

“I-I’m sorry... I’m so sorry....”

“This isn’t the time to apologize. Focus!”

The key to defeating the Commander was to destroy its hardened heart, which had been hidden somewhere nearby.

Unfortunately, the newest member of the team had caused a major accident.

The strategic item had been sitting atop a tall rock, but her skill struck it and sent it tumbling into a deep lake.

‘I thought I could destroy it in one hit because they said it was fragile.’

Splash.

The monster’s heart sank into the seemingly bottomless depths.

‘I-I shouldn’t have done that. Ahhh, I should have pulled the box toward me with Bind first...!’

They had immediately attempted to retrieve the heart from the lake, but that effort had also ended in failure.

And that was how the situation had deteriorated into this mess.

“%&@#!@%~!”

The Commander’s eerie incantation echoed from the far side of the lake.

It was summoning another subordinate.

Recognizing the sound, the team leader shouted in alarm.

“Rookie! Climb back up, quickly! Get outside the gate and call for reinforcements!”

But the monster would not permit even that.

The newly summoned creatures soon began writhing their way out of the walls.

“We’re completely surrounded...”

“Tsk. It hardly ever uses this attack pattern. Why is it going berserk today?!”

Whoosh.

The woman wielding the crossbow threw a magic tool that erupted into flames, incinerating several enemies.

Yet their numbers showed no sign of diminishing.

The monsters had already swarmed together and blocked the team’s escape route. Now that they were surrounded, the distinction between the front and rear of the formation had become meaningless.

“Ugh!”

Their formation collapsed.

The Hunters grew agitated.

It was the unmistakable sign of a raid party on the verge of total annihilation.

“...If...”

Whisper.

Only one Awakened—the man serving as the team’s tank—maintained his concentration as he quietly repeated a single phrase.

“If it were Hyung-nim.”

That was the signal.

As though he had finally steeled himself, Yoonseung shouted to the teammates behind him.

“Let’s charge straight ahead!”

“What did you say?”

“Forget the monsters and run straight for the boss room! We’ll kill their leader as quickly as possible and escape the dungeon!”

Was he suggesting a speedrun now?

Within the industry, bypassing the smaller groups of monsters inside a Blue Gate and heading directly for the boss was known as a speedrun.

In practice, however, it was rarely attempted.

“That’s insane.”

The path to the boss room was lined with countless guards.

If they drew every one of those monsters after them and then entered the boss battle...

Unless they finished the fight quickly, there was a one-hundred-percent chance that the entire party would be wiped out.

“It’s too far to climb all the way back to the surface from here!”

“We’d probably collapse from exhaustion before we made it.”

“When we reach the boss room, I’ll hold off the minions for as long as I can. Hurry!”

What they needed at a moment like this was decisiveness.

The team leader made her choice without hesitation.

“On the count of three, Ahn Yoonseung and I will clear a path. The rest of you, grit your teeth and run!”

One.

Two.

Three.

At the signal, the high-ranking Hunters unleashed their skills.

[Magic Strike], [Judgment], another [Magic Strike]...

At the same time, Yoonseung cast defensive enhancement skills over his teammates’ bodies.

‘Not from the surface. Slowly, from the inside. Not from the surface, but slowly, from the inside...!’

Stone Skin.

After receiving Kim Giryeo’s advice, Yoonseung had developed a version of the spell several times more powerful than ordinary Stone Skin.

—Yoonseung, do you really think you can use a skill called Stone Skin by merely coating the surface of the body with magic?

—Then how should I do it?

—Imagine filling the person’s body from the blood vessels outward. Your magic is the blood flowing through them.

If it had been Kim Giryeo...

That was right.

He would have accounted for every possible variable and prevented a crisis like this from occurring in the first place.

But Yoonseung was not an exceptional person like him.

Therefore, someone like Yoonseung had no choice but to work hard enough to carve his efforts into his very bones.

“Haa.”

After taking a deep breath, Ahn Yoonseung charged forward, his shield wrapped in magic.

Bang!

The rotting monsters burst apart beneath the impact of his blue mana.

Beyond the spray of flesh and blood, a path opened before them.

***

Woong...

“Haha.”

One of the A-rank Hunters let the crossbow slip from her hands and collapsed where she stood.

“Hahaha.”

She was not the only one whose legs had given out.

A moment later, the man carrying the staff and the young healer also sank to the ground one after another.

“We actually cleared it.”

The humming passageway beside them served as proof that their desperate gamble had succeeded.

They had slain the leader of the monsters and escaped the dungeon before its collapse.

“We really came within a hair’s breadth of crossing the River of Death...”

Even more astonishing, however, was the performance of one particular Hunter.

“Hey, Ahn Yoonseung!”

“Yes?”

He had single-handedly held back the monsters that followed them into the boss room for four minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

Even after his mana had begun to run dry, he had still supported the team’s formation and helped them subdue the boss.

Clap!

The team leader silently raised a thumb.

The undisputed MVP of this operation was Ahn Yoonseung.

No—in truth, it felt as though he had seized their dying party by the collar and dragged them all the way to safety.

That was how tremendous his contribution had been.

‘How does someone with barely a year of experience pull off something like that?’

The team leader sighed as she retrieved the crossbow she had dropped.

At that moment, a tearful voice came from one side.

“E-everyone, I’m sorry.”

It was the newest guild member.

“I’m really, truly sorry... Sniff, sniff.”

Overwhelmed by the realization that her mistake had nearly led to the entire team’s annihilation, the rookie burst into tears.

The team leader attempted to calm her.

Naturally, they would have to address her reckless handling of the strategic item later. Still, allowing the incident to wound her too deeply would do no good.

She slowly approached the girl.

Before she could say anything, however, another teammate standing beside the rookie broke the silence.

“It’s alright.”

Ahn Yoonseung spoke with a bright expression.

“You don’t need to apologize at all. It’s perfectly natural for Hunters to make mistakes!”

Despite his gentle tone, there was something vaguely unsettling about his choice of words.

“It’s natural?”

Was he saying that he had expected her to fail simply because she was a rookie?

When she asked, Ahn Yoonseung shook his head and corrected her.

“Actually, before I joined the regular Team Three, I worked with all sorts of people as part of my rehabilitation. At first, I used to get frustrated and wonder why they made so many mistakes, but eventually I came to understand something.”

The pierced young man closed his eyes, reminiscing about the past.

Then he spoke with absolute conviction.

“There are only two kinds of Hunters in this world: those who are like Kim Giryeo and those who are not.”

Tuk.

Ahn Yoonseung took hold of the rookie’s shoulders and continued in a rapid murmur.

“It’s only natural for other Hunters to appear clumsy when compared to Hyung-nim. That includes me, of course.”

“Y-yes?”

“So don’t let it discourage you! We aren’t Hunter Kim Giryeo, so it’s perfectly natural for us to make foolish mistakes from time to time, right?”

“Y-yes?”

“It’s easier once you accept it as a law of nature, isn’t it?”

His eyes were clearly focused, so why did they look so frightening?

The Neo Sisters rookie hesitated beneath Ahn Yoonseung’s intense stare.

At that moment, the raid leader discreetly came to her rescue.

She offered a simple explanation.

“He’s just exhausted.”

“Ah.”

“He used to smoke a cigarette whenever something like this happened. But ever since he suddenly quit, stress makes him act a little strange.”

Upon hearing that, the rookie silently made a firm resolution.

Ah, so nicotine withdrawal could be that terrifying.

She would make sure never to start smoking.

***

Until now, Yoonseung had accompanied Kim Giryeo on numerous occasions.

Abnormal mutation gates.

Flame Bats.

Golden Fragrance.

And many others...

Although Yoonseung had not always witnessed Kim Giryeo fighting directly, there was one thing he had unquestionably learned by observing him.

‘Composure.’

Kim Giryeo rarely displayed any emotional fluctuation in the presence of monsters.

And the ability to avoid panic was an enormous advantage for a Hunter.

After all, Hunters were constantly forced to battle unknown creatures capable of breathing fire or soaring through the sky.

“If it were Hyung-nim.”

In a sense, Ahn Yoonseung’s rapid improvement had been born from that single thought.

Whenever he felt himself beginning to waver, he quietly repeated the phrase.

At a time like this, what would Kim Giryeo do?

By asking himself that question, he managed to preserve his composure.

“Wow! You cleared an A-rank Red Gate in only fourteen minutes? Everyone, could this be a new guild record...?”

Yoonseung worked tirelessly to draw closer to the man he idolized.

Reaching his current level of skill had required an extraordinary amount of practice.

“Damn it, that wasn’t good enough!”

The problem, however, was that the standard he had set for himself was fundamentally flawed.

“If it were Giryeo Hyung, he would have found a much cleaner way to defeat the boss! Why am I so stupid? I made three minor mistakes today alone...”

“What’s wrong with him this time?”

“Just leave him alone.”

One particular A-rank Hunter had drastically overestimated Kim Giryeo.

The illusion he had constructed in his mind drove him to keep running without rest.

It was a contradictory spectacle—like a stork tearing its own legs apart in a desperate attempt to keep pace with a sparrow.

‘Unlike other Hunters, I have to do better. Hyung-nim went out of his way to teach me!’

Still, judging by the results, perhaps it was not such a terrible thing.

Unlike a certain F-rank fraud deceiving the entire nation, effort, at the very least, did not betray those who devoted themselves to it.