The next morning, Han Jaeyeong approached quietly and whispered, "Are you two all right?" By “the two of you,” they meant Lee Pyeonghwa and me, walking behind them in silence.
I shrugged. “Does that really matter in this situation?”
“Teamwork matters.”
“No, it doesn’t. Isn’t it wrong to demand teamwork from a twenty-year-old in a situation like this? This is something the adults should handle among themselves.”
“Jeong Daon, you’re also twenty, right?” Han Jaeyeong replied incredulously, though they clearly weren’t truly placing me and Lee Pyeonghwa on the same level. It would be hard to compare a mage capable of incantation magic with a genuine rookie Hunter. “Anyway, try to refrain from actions that might stress a kid out in a situation like this.”
“It was a situation that required pressure.”
Neither Han Jaeyeong nor I thought Lee Pyeonghwa was the culprit who created this mess, the one who gave Lee Seunghui the drugs. Still, it was true that we needed to be certain about the kind of person Lee Pyeonghwa was before continuing to move together.
The appearance of a monster that fed on emotions had been fortunate timing.
“You stayed quiet too.”
From the moment Lee Pyeonghwa woke up last night, we’d spoken loudly enough that there was no way Han Jaeyeong hadn’t heard, even if they’d been asleep. Which meant they’d listened to the whole exchange and chosen not to intervene.
And now they were acting like the good one.
Han Jaeyeong smiled. “Ouch, that hits where it hurts. Well, if we’re going to keep moving together, it can’t be helped. Still, she’s young, what I mean is, you could’ve been a bit gentler.”
"Nonsense."
If I hadn’t done it, Han Jaeyeong would have. If we were going to continue traveling together, we needed to confirm what kind of person Lee Pyeonghwa was at least once.
And thanks to last night’s “anxiety moth,” I’d heard more than enough of what was going on inside her.
It had paid off to collect those creatures’ eggs as items back when I used to sneak out of the barracks during basic training to sleep in the forest alone.
“If she were properly trained, insects like that wouldn’t have stood a chance…”
But Lee Pyeonghwa was, by any standard, a beginner who had just started training, for better or worse. So before traveling together, the one thing I needed to check was whether she harbored any intent to kill me.
From Lee Pyeonghwa’s perspective, having spilled her true feelings thanks to a monster, couldn’t have been pleasant.
I glanced back at her.
Even now, she was following quietly from some distance away. Part of it was her stamina, but anyone could see she simply wanted to keep away from me.
It was natural for her to hate me. From her point of view, I might as well have deliberately allowed the monster to force the truth out of her. That was something I’d have to accept.
Not that it was such a grand burden as the word “accept” made it sound.
Han Jaeyeong clicked their tongue. “If an interrogation was necessary, I could’ve handled it. Why make two people the same age clash and hurt each other’s feelings?”
“Then you should’ve stepped in earlier.”
“You say that, but honestly, didn’t you do it first because you didn’t want to see me interrogate her? In a situation like this, if I handled it, it wouldn’t end with just some hurt feelings…”
“That’s an interesting take. Do I really look like that much of a saint to you?”
"A little?"
Is this person insane?
I stared at Han Jaeyeong in disbelief, but they weren’t the type to care about my glare.
They chuckled and shrugged. “You’ve got a pretty cute side too, Jeong Daon.”
“Want to die?”
“So, are you really planning to keep exploring this dimension blindly like this?”
They were clearly changing the subject, but it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to continue either, so I went along with it. It was an important topic, after all.
“…Didn’t we agree to move in a way that would bring us closer to the system’s detection range?”
There was no doubt the system was desperately searching for us.
Either Han Jaeyeong or I would be cards it wouldn’t want to lose.
Normally, you couldn’t control a powerful existence like me so conveniently with a single contract. No, setting me aside, Han Jaeyeong alone was reason enough. A half-fairy, an S-rank Hunter, and someone connected to the hero. In a world where the Enemy of Humanity was running rampant, they were a card the system couldn’t afford to discard. With new talent hard to come by in the current situation, the system was surely searching for Han Jaeyeong with everything it had.
The timeframe… we might have to endure about a month.
Even so, that wasn’t much of a problem.
If anything, without the system’s restrictions, it’s easier.
The constraints the system had placed on me, binding my soul with ridiculous quests like
, were gone. Now, if I wanted, I could draw on my power freely, up to what my body could endure. That meant I could handle most situations without trouble.
Of course, I’d need to act in a way that didn’t arouse Han Jaeyeong’s suspicion.
If I could remodel my body to better withstand mana now that the system is gone, that would be ideal…
But if I did that, the system would become even more wary of me once we returned to Earth, so it wasn’t something I could do lightly.
“That may be true, but if we keep wandering around and run into people from this world, that’s a headache in its own way, isn’t it? We don’t know what kind of beings we might encounter.”
“People, huh.”
What Han Jaeyeong meant by “people” didn’t necessarily have to mean humans from Earth. Countless dimensions existed in this universe, and intelligent life came in many forms. Even monsters, after all, were capable of communicating among themselves.
The real question was whether the life-forms in this dimension would be friendly toward us. Even humans feared highly intelligent extraterrestrial beings. There was no reason to think “people” from another dimension would be any different.
“It doesn’t seem like a fairy-inhabited dimension, does it?”
“If this were a fairy dimension, you two would’ve already been turned into nourishment for the World Tree. Don’t say something so horrifying.”
For someone who had revealed themself to be half fairy, Han Jaeyeong seemed to have a remarkably poor opinion of fairies. And their earlier comment, that someone once returned from being dimensionally stranded six years later, holding a child’s hand, had felt oddly loaded.
…Not that I was particularly curious.
And it wasn’t especially important right now.
“Then if you have another idea, say it. Are you suggesting we set up a base camp and stay put?”
“Not exactly.”
“Be clear. You’re a guildmaster, why are you trailing off like this?”
“I’m not a swordsman, but ever since arriving in this dimension, I’ve had a very strange feeling.”
Han Jaeyeong looked around. The fish in the lake confirmed that this was a living world, but it lacked vitality. The plains held only the sound of a quiet wind and tough, overgrown grass. They had moved steadily for half a day, yet no matter how far they walked, the scenery never changed.
I actually missed the system.
If the system were still here, we might have been able to gather at least some information about this dimension.
“I don’t like it either… but I still think moving is the right choice for now.”
Staying in one place without any information would only allow anxiety to grow with time. That might be manageable for me or Han Jaeyeong, but Lee Pyeonghwa could become mentally unstable.
“Hm… if that’s your opinion, Daon, then let’s go. Just, unlike last time, something like that…” Han Jaeyeong trailed off. They were probably conscious of Lee Pyeonghwa walking behind us.
Even without finishing the sentence, I knew what they meant.
They’re talking about the lifeless idol.
The S-rank monster we encountered in the previous dungeon. I remembered how it absorbed all the mana in its surroundings.
Now that I think about it… this place feels strangely similar.
The overall concentration of mana in this dimension’s air was thin.
It could simply be a dimension like that by nature.
But the distribution of mana is definitely abnormal.
If I hadn’t encountered the lifeless idol before, I might not have noticed. But having once seen the aftermath of a place where it had drained mana, I could recognize the unsettling similarity in this dimension’s mana patterns.
That didn’t mean there was a lifeless idol here. Logically speaking, there was no reason there should be. Unlike the dungeon on Yeongjongdo, this was a randomly stranded dimension, and the lifeless idol was an artificial monster created by the Enemy of Humanity.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong. It was still a premature assumption, but…
I glanced sideways at Lee Pyeonghwa.
When Han Jaeyeong had come to find our unit, they had said, “I passed the information about the lifeless idol we found in the last dungeon to both the Central Management Office and the Hunter Association. I’ve thrown out the bait, so we should get a reaction from one side or the other.”
Han Jaeyeong also suspected that the lifeless idol was a monster created by human hands. And as organizations with the capital and power to orchestrate something like that, they had singled out the Central Management Office and the Hunter Association.
It’s a reasonable conclusion.
Anyone could make money, but recreating artificial monsters required advanced technology and access to a large number of elite Hunters. That limited the candidates to the Hunter Association or the government’s Central Management Office. No one else could pull it off.
And recent events only reinforced that suspicion.
During basic military training, Lee Seunghui had used illegal drugs and died in an explosion. On the surface, it looked like the reckless act of an incompetent trainee, but the real issue was that someone had managed to infiltrate the military, a tightly closed organization. Smuggling illegal drugs into the base and delivering them to Lee Seunghui at precisely the right moment wasn’t something just anyone could do.
That means someone high up, either in the government or the Hunter Association.
I’d hoped to catch a lead from the organization tied to the Yeongjongdo landfill dungeon, but all that came of it was a single senior official from the Central Management Office being dismissed for “personal misconduct.”
No meaningful clues.
I’d lost count of how many times this had happened.
Honestly, it was infuriating.
It felt like I was being led around by the nose, playing along exactly as my opponents intended.
Sure, no matter how highly my potential had been evaluated, I was still, publicly, a newly awakened rookie Hunter tied to the state, but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant.
Once basic training is over, I’ll need to think of another approach.
I just wanted time to pass faster. If I were reassigned to alternative public service, I’d have more freedom of movement. Either way, I needed to grab hold of their trail as soon as possible and put a stop to them dragging me into dungeons every chance they got. No matter where I went, something always happened. Seriously.
“You really do get dragged into all kinds of trouble, Daon,” Han Jaeyeong said while cutting through the tall grass to clear a path.
It seemed they were feeling much the same way I was.
“Let’s see, starting with the Gwanghwamun Dungeon Break, then the Truelight Sect human experimentation case, the Yeongjongdo dungeon, and now dimensional stranding. We’ve gone through so much in such a short time that it feels like I’ve known you for a hundred years.”
“Relax. We’re not that close.”
“Come on, spending a long time together doesn’t automatically make people close. It’s the
density
of shared time that matters. By that standard, don’t you think we qualify?”
“You want to be close with me?”
“Better a friend than an enemy. Even bad memories feel lighter when you share them.”
They certainly had a way with words. I wondered if the fairy who gifted Cinderella her dress, shoes, and carriage had been this eloquent too.
We kept moving forward, exchanging the occasional unwanted bit of small talk, when—
“We’re getting close to where the life-form readings were. Let’s stay alert.”
According to detection magic, there had been signs of life in this area. It was probably just animals, like the fish in the lake yesterday, but—
Flap!
“Oh, I see birds.”
Sure enough, small birds about the size of a child’s fist burst into the air. Han Jaeyeong frowned as they watched them fly off.
“Were those what the detection spell picked up? Their movement speed is much faster than what we detected.”
“Still, seeing birds means there’s at least a functioning ecosystem.”
Fish in the lake, birds in the sky. If we ended up stranded here for over a month, food wouldn’t be much of a concern.
“B-birds… you’re saying we’d eat birds?” Lee Pyeonghwa looked horrified.
“Well, you didn’t seem bothered by fish.”
“Oh, well… that’s different. I keep a parrot at home.”
“Wait.” Han Jaeyeong suddenly stopped. They were probably enhancing their vision with mana to survey the surroundings. “Over there. Doesn’t that look like… a village?”
As they spoke, Han Jaeyeong turned to look at me.
I followed their gaze, enhancing my own vision to see what was invisible to normal eyesight.
“…You’re right.”
In one corner of the vast plain, I could make out a partially collapsed fence. A fence meant something worth protecting inside, which meant there was a high chance that intelligent “people” lived, or once lived, there.
“Sh-should we be on guard?” Lee Pyeonghwa asked nervously, picking up on the shift in our mood.
Han Jaeyeong shook their head. “No… even from a distance, the fence is rusted, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s maintaining it.”
“Then…?”
“Let’s approach first.”
We moved carefully toward the settlement. And the closer we got, the clearer it became that Han Jaeyeong was right.
It wasn’t a large village. At most, it looked like a small settlement of around twenty households. There were wooden barns that seemed to have housed livestock, rusted cauldrons and tools hanging over a large hearth. Walls built from a mix of stone and earth and wooden roofs had rotted and collapsed halfway. Everything bore the unmistakable marks of decay over time.
“Hunter Jeong Daon.”
After observing the village for a while, Han Jaeyeong turned to me.
And I understood the meaning behind their look.
I nodded. “Yeah. I see it too.”
It was so similar, exactly like the scenery we’d seen in the Yeongjongdo landfill dungeon.