“Aaah!”
Startled, the child tried to run, but Yu Hanul caught them by the scruff of the neck and lifted them up. The child’s skinny legs flailed wildly in midair as they beat their fists against Yu Hanul, but it was useless.
Yu Hanul frowned in awkward discomfort. “I’m not trying to hurt you… though I guess they wouldn’t understand even if I said that.”
He was clearly trying to handle the child gently, but the resistance was so fierce that if he let go even for a moment, the kid looked ready to bolt.
Lee Pyeonghwa asked in a flustered tone, “Isn’t this the first time we’ve found a human…inside a dungeon? Or should we call them an alien?”
Yu Hanul shook his head. “No. There’s a high chance they’re actually from Earth.”
“Based on what?”
“There’s a label on their clothes.”
Now that he mentioned it, despite how tattered the clothes were, they did have the unmistakable tag of mass-produced factory clothing.
Han Jaeyeong frowned. “You said this was an uncleared dungeon. That doesn’t add up.”
“I found out after coming to New York. Apparently, some homeless people choose to disappear into dungeons now and then, thinking it’s better than staying outside.”
It wasn't impossible. If someone had completely slipped through the cracks of national administration—unable to access the system, or lacking the talent to awaken—then they might be able to enter a dungeon but not clear it. From the system’s perspective, the place would still remain an unidentified dimension.
Han Jaeyeong clicked their tongue. “The survival rate must be abysmally low. And they still choose that?”
“Well,” Yu Hanul replied, “this one’s clearly still alive.”
“Then they probably speak English? Let’s see… I think I’ve got a translator somewhere.”
“You have something like that?”
“Yes. It’s a prototype our guild developed. It only supports twelve languages so far, so let’s hope one of them works.”
Han Jaeyeong took out an earpiece translator and put it on, then carefully fitted another one onto the child’s ear as they dangled from Yu Hanul’s grip. They spoke. “Can you understand me?”
The child stared at Han Jaeyeong as if they’d seen a ghost, then nodded. Once it was clear they could understand, the struggling stopped. Yu Hanul carefully set the child down on the ground.
Han Jaeyeong knelt to bring themselves to the child’s eye level. To be fair, they were the best choice. I might find them personally irritating, but Han Jaeyeong did look kind enough that you could believe they were half-fairy.
Since the rest of us weren’t wearing translators, we could only hear Han Jaeyeong’s side of the conversation.
“You were scared, weren’t you? I’m sorry. That man isn’t a bad person either. So, where do you live? Have you been living here the whole time? Are you hungry?”
At first, the child only shook or nodded in response, but as the questions continued, they gradually began to speak.
“Chinese,” Lee Pyeonghwa said. “Not Mandarin, sounds like Cantonese.”
“How can you tell?”
“Chinese was my second foreign language. I can’t understand it, but I can tell it’s Cantonese.”
I should’ve studied Chinese too. So the child was from China; Earth, at least.
After talking with them for a bit longer, Han Jaeyeong had the child drink an entire recovery potion. Then they straightened up and stood. “It’s just as Yu Hanul said. It looks like the child came into the dungeon with her homeless mother. They’ve probably been here for a few weeks, living in a tent somewhere nearby. The child says she slipped out to play while her mother was drunk.”
Unable to endure their crushing poverty, the mother had taken her child by the hand and fled into the dungeon. It was practically a suicidal act, but once inside, leaving wasn’t an option. In that sense, it must have felt like the only choice left.
Yu Hanul looked at the child with a darkened expression. “…We should go protect the mother too. They’ve been lucky so far, but there’s no guarantee they won’t run into monsters going forward.”
I let out a quiet sigh at that conclusion. From the moment we realized the figure hiding behind the house was a child, I’d more or less expected things to go this way.
“Let’s do that. Hopefully she’s not completely out of it.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Han Jaeyeong and Lee Pyeonghwa seemed to agree with Yu Hanul as well.
They were all too kind. We were practically stranded ourselves, still hadn’t even found the dungeon’s clear conditions, and yet the priority was to rescue a homeless child and her mother.
The kid is one thing, but do we really have to go find the mother too?
Wasn’t this basically child abuse?
The thought crossed my mind, but I couldn’t say it out loud. Surrounded by a hero, a fairy, and someone literally named Lee Pyeonghwa, I felt like the wrong puzzle piece jammed into the picture and looked up at the sky.
The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.
Ignoring vulnerable individuals in danger constitutes antisocial behavior.
Just as expected, a system message appeared.
Fine. I get it.
Who said I was going to ignore them?
I was just surprised at how unquestioningly everyone accepted prioritizing helpless people who were of absolutely no practical use, even though there was a high chance that a soul core, likely a lifeless idol, existed somewhere in this dungeon.
“Oh? You think I’m like an angel? I hear that a lot.”
The child had completely let her guard down now, holding Han Jaeyeong’s hand and chattering away.
It was an environment where anyone would normally be wary, yet she clung to them so easily. She must have been starved for human interaction after such a lonely life. And since she only spoke Cantonese and no real English, it didn’t seem like she’d ever truly been part of society in the U.S.
“Her name is Xuemei,” Han Jaeyeong said. “Plum blossom in the snow. That’s a beautiful name.”
Hand in hand with the child, Han Jaeyeong walked along, gently coaxing out every bit of information. Anyone watching would think they’d been friends for a decade.
Lee Pyeonghwa muttered quietly, “That’s unexpected. They’re really good with kids.”
“It
is
one of their virtues.”
"Huh?"
“Nothing.”
By fairy standards, humans are inherently impure beings, simply by the act of sustaining themselves through consumption. But children are still innocent, and fairies are kind to human children.
As we walked out of the village holding the child’s hand—
“There’s a road.”
It was badly deteriorated, but there were clear traces of one: a stone-laid path once maintained for carts and other transport. For a village this small, it made sense. There must have been a larger settlement or castle nearby for trade.
The sun had already begun to set by the time we left the village, and the road, devoid of any light, quickly sank into darkness.
"Watch your step."
Yu Hanul’s light illuminated the path brightly, but still—
“At least this is a relief, Daon.”
“What is?”
Walking beside me, Yu Hanul said, “That I found you, even if it was by chance. If it hadn’t been a coincidence, you might’ve wandered forever.”
“…Yeah.”
A coincidence.
There was no way.
I glanced sideways at Yu Hanul’s gentle profile. No matter how kind-hearted a hero was, there was no way they wouldn’t find this situation strange. Was he probing me? Testing whether this was truly a coincidence? Or was I just being overly sensitive because my conscience was pricked?
After walking for quite some time, we finally found a tent spread out beneath a large tree. It was nothing more than a miserable scrap of cloth compared to the one Han Jaeyeong carried, but it was unmistakably a tent.
And in front of it, a woman was crying and raving in hysteria.
The child wrenched her hand free from Han Jaeyeong’s grip and ran toward the woman. And then—
Smack!
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
Han Jaeyeong sprinted forward and pulled the child into their arms, shielding her after she’d been struck hard by her mother. The woman, who had lashed out at the child, flinched in shock and stared at Han Jaeyeong, clearly having never imagined there might be other people here.
“Step back,” Yu Hanul warned her in English, sword already drawn.
“I-I didn’t do anything!”
For better or worse, unlike the child, the woman spoke English. As we approached, the stench of alcohol hit us immediately. Her body was as scrawny as the child’s, wrapped in filthy rags.
“Why did you hit your child?”
“She ran off on her own! I was disciplining her.
Discipline!
”
The child didn’t even cry. Despite being hit so hard, she only lowered her head and covered her cheek, as if she were far too used to it.
Terrified by Yu Hanul’s drawn sword, the woman tried to flee, but Han Jaeyeong was faster. With a simple binding spell locking her legs in place, she quickly stopped resisting.
“Your name? Did you enter from New York?”
“…Liuli. I came in from New York.”
“Why would you bring a child into a place like this?”
“I had no money! I couldn’t survive in New York!”
From what she said, it seemed her husband had died after running up enormous medical bills, leaving her buried in debt and homeless.
“At the very least, you should’ve put the child in a facility!”
“I did! After the bankruptcy, I put her into the social welfare system. But she ran away! So what was I supposed to do then?”
“What kind of irresponsible mother does that make you?” Lee Pyeonghwa snapped, furious.
I sighed.
I knew it would be like this.
A kind-hearted hero and a fairy might think,
The child entered the dungeon with her mother, so we should protect them both
… but what were the odds that a woman who dragged her child into a dungeon like this was actually a good parent?
Maternal love tends to be idealized. Not every mother loves her child.
“Hm? What is it?”
The child, who had endured being hit without a sound, suddenly tugged frantically at Han Jaeyeong’s clothes and rattled off something in an agitated tone. As they waited for the translator to finish processing, Han Jaeyeong’s expression darkened.
This time, they didn’t even need to translate it out loud.
“Yu Hanul, step back. The child’s getting anxious because her mother feels threatened.”
When you’re young, your parents are your entire world. No matter how much they hurt you, you still cling to them.
Pointless.
The child hurried over and took her mother’s hand; a trembling hand, shaking from alcohol withdrawal. The atmosphere among the three, who’d set out to do a good deed only to be confronted with something ugly, grew heavy.
“…Don’t you think we’ve strayed a bit too far off track?” I finally said. “Let’s focus on finding the dungeon’s clear conditions first. We can think about the mother and child after that.”
“…You’re right.”
Yu Hanul nodded, his face still dark. Han Jaeyeong let out a short sigh and joined the discussion.
“It’s been three days since we entered. Two for you, Yu Hanul, right? And yet we haven’t properly encountered a single monster. That’s definitely strange. Detection magic has its limits.”
“Th-then are we supposed to just keep wandering around blindly, looking for monsters?” Lee Pyeonghwa asked, her face paling. “If that’s the case…isn’t this basically being stranded?”
A fair point.
“What happens if we never find the boss monster?”
“…Then there’s no answer.”
The system has successfully located a “soul core”.
The system is currently pinpointing the exact location of the “soul core”.
Lee Pyeonghwa didn’t know, but Yu Hanul and I did: the boss monster
was
the soul core.
The problem was that we had no idea where it was. Even if this didn’t count as dimensional stranding, the fact that the system itself couldn’t provide clear information meant it was impossible to predict how long the search would take.
Yu Hanul spoke carefully. “It may be concealing itself with illusion magic.”
“That’s definitely a possibility,” Han Jaeyeong agreed.
For once, the two of them were on the same page, and I agreed as well.
Looks like it’s hidden itself pretty thoroughly.
The lifeless idol we faced before had cloaked itself in large-scale illusion magic, after all. There was a strong chance this dimension’s soul core was doing the same.
In theory, it shouldn’t be extremely far from where Yu Hanul entered the dungeon. But then where is it…?
“How are we even supposed to find—huh?” Still wearing the translator, Han Jaeyeong responded to something the child said, “Yeah, that’s right. We’re looking for a monster, but… what did you say?”
…No way.
Han Jaeyeong’s voice jumped an octave. “You saw terracotta soldiers around here?”
Why would
that
Chinese relic be here of all places?