Chapter 28: Quest (1)
“It will be hard for you, but you have to hold on.”
“Are you really leaving for a very long period of time?”
“Well, I’m actually worried about the fact that I may not come back at all, okay?”
“Don’t be stupid. It won’t be like that. Of course, I believe in Hyunsung-ssi and Kiyoung, but… we can’t always predict what will happen. By the way, it seems to me that Hayan-ssi keeps looking over here. Is she okay?”
When I looked back, Hayan came into my view. She wore a calm expression.
She wasn’t looking at me as she was at the time of Park Hyaeyoung’s death that had caused her to be more pa.s.sionate about me. I wondered what she was thinking. I was worried that she’d begun to harbor negative thoughts about me, but there was no way I could know that.
It would be a fine idea to have a conversation with her at the moment.
If we talked while holding hands, then the situation may have been entirely different, but talking from a distance wouldn’t seem intimate to anyone.
When I turned back to look at her, Lee Jihye spoke again.
“You made quite the big decision.”
“So?”
“I thought you were the type that hated gambling.”
“I do hate that.”
“Then?”
“I’m not foolish enough to not throw the dice in a winning game.”
After considering all of the variables, the possibility of winning here was overwhelmingly high. I had information about the dungeon, the party members’ overall specs, and the ability to return at any time I wanted.
The chances of dying were negligible.
Of course, there were many other things to be considered too, but this was a rare opportunity for someone like me who had trashy stats to begin with. We could win if we all worked together.
And…
‘We could also be rewarded for attacking the dungeon.’
There was definitely a big reward for that. I thought about the box that Kim Hyunsung said he had found, and wondered if it was also that sort of a reward.
Lee Jihye listened to me for a while. She became silent for a moment, but then she smiled and spoke.
“I really like your way of handling things.”
“Oh, really now?”
“Anyway, come back soon, Kiyoung Oppa.”
“Alright.”
The small wrinkles were clear on her face.
Despite the fact that she looked quite young for her age, she was still quite worried about her appearance. Apparently, she seemed to think that the little girl was prettier, so Jung Hayan had a greater advantage to survive in this place.
As I moved away from her and approached Hayan, I could see Hayan moving quickly towards me and grabbed my sleeves’ ends. She didn’t say anything to me, but she seemed quite anxious.
Park Deokgu burst into laughter, and Kim Hyunsung just nodded his head.
The four men, including Jung Jinho and Yoo Seokwoo, were also quietly waiting for me.
“Should we go then?”
“Yeah.”
There were a total of 8 people.
If you really thought about it, this was still a large number of people.
Four of us were on one side and four on the other. If the other party was centered around Jung Jinho, then our party was centered around Kim Hyunsung.
We were walking together along a twisting path. I couldn’t hear much of the others’ conversation.
Most of the time, Jung Jinho talked to them all as he gave them instructions and orders occasionally. Other than that, they chatted with each other or spent their time looking and listening for monsters.
“By the way, it looks like you’ve been searching around a lot. We never thought there would be a new entrance here.”
“It was discovered unintentionally. As you may have also heard at the starting point, the basic condition to getting out of this place was survival, whether by attack or defense. I don’t know how long we will have to survive here, so I thought it was stupid to lean on the former… Then, I decided to try to explore and attack as much as possible.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe the period of survival will end when a person successfully attacks the dungeon.”
“I didn’t think about that, but…”
“It’s just a guess.”
“If it really is like that, does that mean that we need to attack the dungeon so that even those in the shelter can get out of this place?”
“You can think of it that way. Well, no matter how you look at it, it will not change the fact that attacking this dungeon is the most reasonable option for us right now. Anyway, thank you very much for agreeing to the offer.”
“No need for that. I also want to get out of this place. In fact, I want to thank you for making this opportunity for us. We were also a little anxious about this survival period situation as we did not know when it would end…”
This guy looked really good while smiling.
It was a kind of smile that would unwittingly cause a person to lower his guard, but I knew this guy’s disposition, so it was not going to work on me.
Rather, we were in a situation where I had to get this guy to lower his own alertness level.
Just sharing useless stories could help a lot with that objective of mine.
I started telling them stories about Earth, stories about dungeons, and the woman’s story at the starting point. Consequently, a rather embarra.s.sing topic emerged.
“It seems that Kiyoung often hangs around with Hayan. Perhaps… You two…”
It was something that no one had ever asked me. It was totally normal for me to be a little embarra.s.sed. I looked around and noticed several people looking at me, waiting for my response.
Park Deokgu and Kim Hyunsung both seemed to be listening too. Yoo Seokwoo, who had once flirted with Jung Hayan, was looking straight ahead.
In the case of Hayan, she was bowing her head and pulling my sleeves.
Jung Jinho seemed to be very curious about the topic.
‘It can’t be like this…’
So not only were there pigs whose brains were full of muscles, but the calculating killer was also able to figure out that they were in some relationship.
‘A relationship that was still developing?’
This was not possible.
No matter how much I thought about it, these excuses looked like the ones that a celebrity with dating rumors would make.
Obviously, my relationship with Jung Hayan was much closer than before.
I thought about it a bit, and it didn’t take long for me to come to a conclusion about what to answer.
I just grabbed Hayan’s hand with which she was holding my sleeve and said.
“I can’t really can’t say anything for sure yet… but, what you think about us personally is probably right.”
“Oh oh…”
Park Deokgu’s mouth was left hanging open. Meanwhile, Kim Hyunsung nodded.
In his case, he seemed to think that Jung Hayan’s relationship with me would be better for her.
But what was truly interesting was Hayan’s reaction. She was just looking at the ground with a very reddish face, but she was actually crushing my hand.
‘d.a.m.n… that hurts.’ My weak endurance was unable to withstand her strong grip.
After thinking about many possible responses, I settled on this reply because it felt like the best one. The reason why I said that I couldn’t define anything as of the moment was because I hadn’t conveyed my true feelings to Jung Hayan yet.
I thought it wouldn’t matter if I just confessed to her right now, but then I thought that we should connect the bond in a more memorable way.
It would be more effective to properly convey my sincerity afterward rather than just rushing everything.
When I turned my head over to the side once more, I saw Hayan, who had a big smile spread across from her face.
The other people looked like they were experiencing gooseb.u.mps, but Yoo Seokwoo just had a distorted expression on his face. One of the two people who were most interested in my relationship with Jung Hayan was him, and the other was Park Deokgu.
I thought he might have a bad reaction to my statement, but he was really taking it quite well.
I personally thought of Yoo Seokwoo as the real trash amongst ourselves, so I looked at him directly while stroking Jung Hayan’s hair.
We continued walking as we talked about other things.
One of Jung Jinho’s guys, the archer, was good at reading the tracks or discovering the signs of monsters, perhaps because of the effectiveness of his cla.s.s, but there was no reason for us to disregard his ability.
Jung Jinho seemed to be hiding his power, but it wasn’t too hard to deal with the monsters here, and it was the same with the others who were already used to it by now.
The thing that was a little surprising was that Yoo Seokwoo was also quick to adapt.
Contrary to what I had thought that he would show a sorry figure as Park Hyaeyoung did, he actually swung his sword quite steadily.
The others were by no means bad either.
Not everyone was a calculating killer like Jung Jinho, but at this point, I thought that theirs was an ideal party as everyone was doing their job well.
‘They act fast and play safe.’
It could be said that our current situation was a whole lot different from when Kim Hyunsung, Park Deokgu, Jung Ha-yan, and Park Hyaeyoung, along with me, were attacked. Jung Jinho and Kim Hyunsung took care of every monster jumping out of the bushes, while Park Deokgu blocked the front.
Jung Hayan and I were providing rear support, but the archer’s arrows and Jung Jinho’s attacks were much better than ours.
I could not help but feel a little regret for some reason, especially in the case of Jung Jinho.
Contrary to Kim Hyunsung, who used a single sword, Jinho also used a small shield on his left arm to keep his opponent in check.
If he could also use magic here, then that would be even more surprising.
I felt like I knew why he didn’t care about Park Deokgu, me, and Jung Hayan earlier.
He was definitely strong on his own.
I wasn’t dissatisfied with Park Deokgu, Kim Hyunsung, and Jung Hayan, but if I could use Jung Jinho in the long term instead of just using him temporarily, it would be even more satisfying.
“You are quite strong.”
“Yeah. It’s all thanks to everyone’s help. How much farther do we need to go?”
“We’re almost there.”
When I looked at Kim Hyunsung, he nodded at me.
There they were. Some kind of mana was emanating from them. I could sense it like before.
I didn’t know what exactly it was, but I couldn’t figure it out unless I went in.
In fact, I wanted to ask Kim Hyunsung for a more accurate explanation, but there was no way I could do that.
‘What is in there?’
The original question was why Kim Hyunsung, who had entered this dungeon, had judged it impossible to pa.s.s it alone with his current abilities.
Curiosity and anxiety filled up inside me, and then…
“Alright… we should enter.”
Giving up now was stupid.
The path going down the stairs was dark. As I went down the long stairs, I saw an enormous iron gate.
Park Deokgu, standing at the very front, slowly opened the iron gate, and soon we entered a room where a familiar voice rang out in our ears.
It was the voice of the woman I had heard at the start point.
[You have reached the underground dungeon. Rare level compulsory quest is activated.]
[Rare Grade Quest - Survival (0/1)]
“What’s happening?”
“Oh, Hyung-nim…”
“Prepare yourselves for battle.”
“Everyone, get ready to fight with your weapons!”
Kim Hyunsung didn’t need to shout it out, as everyone was already holding onto their weapons dearly.
“Kie-e-e-e-ee-ee-ee-ee-e-ee”
“Kie-e-e-e-e-ee-ee!”
Voices much like barking dogs were heard from far away.
‘Sh*t! Sh*t!’
I thought I had to take only some risks, but this was a bit more difficult than I thought. I realized now why Kim Hyunsung thought there should be a large number of people before attacking this place.
‘I have to defend myself.’
From the voices that we were hearing, they were certainly not monsters, as we had seen before.
“The gate… the iron gate is blocked!” Someone exclaimed.
“We don’t need to run away. We’ll be able to win this thing.”
“We can do it!”
“Kie-e-e-e-ee!”
Only
I could hear them rushing to this place.
Even the ground was rumbling.
I immediately started to create spells in my anxiety.
Jung Jinho’s party also seemed to be a little surprised due to this situation. However, all of them were still organized around Jung Jinho.
‘We can’t stop all of them.’
It was embarra.s.sing to admit, but it could not be prevented. Was it really possible for us to win with this level of power?
“Oh, d.a.m.n! There’s a lot.” Exactly like at the starting point, Park Deokgu could not control himself and spat out a curse for the third time.
Of course, the battle was unavoidable… And this time, it was really going to be the most brutal one yet.