“Could you shoot me already? The Gamble time has passed, so you can attack me now.”
【T-This is a B-Rank Skill……! Your rank is……】
“It is fine. I will not die. I will not die if it only hits my shoulder. I know that!”
【H-How could you know that without being hit by it?!】
Because one of your badly aimed Ice Bullets pierced my shoulder around the ninety-first iteration, you ice-cube b×stard!
Damn it, I had probably died more times than the number of knives an average craftsman had ever made, but there was no way to explain that!
“Listen carefully. You shooting that at me is the only way. If you cannot come out now, you will remain trapped here for over five more years.”
【……!】
The moment she heard that, a sharp icicle burst from Leia’s hand and pierced my shoulder. I had told her to shoot quickly, but firing it immediately after I finished speaking was still a little irritating.
The rapidly spinning icicle, like a drill, vanished only after passing through my shoulder.
【G-Guest!】
“……Ah, it hurts.”
【That is what I told you! I said you could not do it! Ah, it seems you cannot even withstand C-Rank. What should I do? Ah, if they discover that I attacked a human who succeeded in the Gamble, I will……!】
“Excuse me, I am not dead.”
【Waaah……. I was deceived by a creepy-looking pervert, and now this happened……】
Who was this shaved-ice-looking b×stard calling creepy-looking?
No, I could vent my anger later. I needed to move first. It would become troublesome if the Center employees came upstairs.
I raised my uninjured right hand and aimed it at the mirror.
[Skill 「Mimicry」(???) has been used.]
[Mimicry - 「Ice Bullet」 (C-)]
Mimicry.
The only Skill I possessed.
It allowed me to copy a desired Skill or Ability and use it once.
The closer I was to the Skill or the better I understood it, the closer its rank would be to the original. Otherwise, it would be copied at a slightly lower rank.
Abilities worked similarly, but the details were not important right now.
‘C-……. I was hit by it directly, but the evaluation is stingier than I expected.’
Throughout countless regressions, I had gained a rough sense of how Mimicry evaluated things, but its accuracy never improved.
In any case, the reason I had gone through all that pain just to mimic 「Ice Bullet」 was……
“Hey, Goddess. Listen carefully. When I count to three, we both fire 「Ice Bullet」 at the center of the mirror at the same time. Got it?”
【Waaah……. What kind of bullshit is that……. I do not know! Why do I have to do this? Waaaah!】
Seriously…… How could she be so pitiful and pathetic at the same time?
I glanced at the clock, then kicked Leia’s mirror outright.
BANG!
【Eek!】
“Hey. Why do you never change? Trust me. We can both get out of here without any problems. I swear it on the Icefire Tree.”
At the word “swear,” Leia hiccupped and roughly wiped her tears and snot on her sleeve.
Ah. Viscous liquid stretched across the fabric of that expensive-looking dress.
And that was supposed to be a goddess……
【You swear it on the Icefire Tree……?】
“Yeah. Is there a phrase that would show greater sincerity? If there is, tell me quickly. I will swear on that instead.”
【……I will do it.】
She wore a solemn expression as though she had made up her mind, but her face was still wet with tears and snot. Was that really all right? Ah, whatever.
Leia took a breath, then faced forward with a serious expression and spread her palm wide.
I aimed at the same spot.
A mirror—now more commonly called a ‘Gate’—could be a place from which monsters emerged, the entrance to a dungeon entered for wealth and resources, or even a barrier that imprisoned someone like that one did.
There were several methods to break such a barrier.
First, its creator could release it.
Second, one could use a high-ranking unsealing Ability.
There were a few other methods, but the only method available to us now was this.
[Ability 「Rapid Reading」(D) has been used.]
[Rapidly reading ‘Leia’s’ ‘gaze.’]
We had to unleash the same attack at the exact same location.
I aimed at the same point Leia was targeting, but because my rank was lower, I moved closer.
[Skill 「Mimicry-Ice Bullet」(C-) has been used.]
[Leia has used the Skill 「Ice Bullet」(B).]
WHOOOOM.
A chill intense enough to make my hand tingle spread through me.
The stake-shaped icicles formed at our command shot forward with unbearable speed and force, colliding at the same point.
***
“Maybe bringing you out was a little reckless.”
“Whad?” (What?)
“Taking you out. And swallow everything in your mouth before you speak.”
Leia had just escaped and was shoveling steaming soup and rice into her mouth as though it were cold water. I waved my hand at her in disgust, but she simply went back to stuffing her face. As I watched her, I began to think.
Good heavens, I was actually thinking.
Since around the 4,000th iteration, thinking was something I did only occasionally—about once every ten iterations.
In any case, the problem was Leia.
She cried messily with tears and snot everywhere, and she ate with a vulgar lack of restraint that did not suit a divine child or a goddess. Still, outwardly, she was the person in charge of Death Gambles at the Gamble Center.
Perhaps taking her out like this had been a reckless act with no plan.
Because of my regression habits, I had been living with the mindset that I could simply die whenever things went wrong or annoyed me. I must have done this without realizing it.
“Wait. Why am I thinking about this?”
“Whad?”
“I told you to finish eating before you talk.”
“Okay.”
Whether everything fell apart or not, what I wanted was to die. If I acted a little shamelessly, I could probably avoid being discovered until Yu Danyeong became a Skill Master.
After that, it would finally be time for the death I had dreamed of.
Suicide was ethically problematic, so I should die in a way that looked more respectable. I was always the kind and virtuous Kang Seon, after all.
Should I make someone I hated kill me?
Teasing some Rankers and perishing gloriously would not be bad either.
Ah, but since I had turned the Gamble Center upside down anyway, perhaps that perverted b×stard from the underworld would come slit my throat on his own.
Either way, the important thing was that I had no intention of dragging out this work or this life for long.
“Hey, stop eating and let us go. You are going to scrape through the bowl. There is not even anything left in it.”
“O benefactor who saved me, please bestow one more morsel of mercy and grant me a bowl of food…….”
“If you do not want to wash dishes here to pay for your meals, stop your f×cking nonsense and get up.”
Leia had now gone so far as to throw herself onto the floor and begin throwing a tantrum.
“Just one more bowl, one more!! You earned 800,000 Coins from a Gamble with me, and you are reluctant to buy me soup and rice that costs only 70 Coins?!”
Ah.
Should I attach her to a shaved-ice machine and sell her off to a dessert shop?
In the end, only after ordering three more bowls of soup and rice to go, in an attempt to forget the shame I had not felt in a long time, could I drag that piece of baggage out of there.
***
Once we arrived home, I put the bowls of soup and rice far away from Leia, then clapped my hands as though to say that we should talk first.
“Good. Shall we discuss the important matter first?”
“The broth is delicious.”
“I want to tell you to leave my home immediately, but I will endure it for now. Because I am civilized.”
Before she was captured by the Gamble Center, she had supposedly been a gatekeeper in a dungeon. Why did she become such an idiot every time?
“You said you wanted to go to , right?”
“……Was that really true?”
“What? You did not believe me?”
Leia nodded.
“Of course, I thought you were lying or mistaken. Because…….”
“Because is already a closed space?”
“Yes.”
That was not wrong.
Various Gates appeared throughout the world, and after most were cleared, a passage opened again after a certain period of time so that people could reenter them.
However, there was always an exception.
‘Required Gates.’
Beginning about two years earlier in this time period, these dungeons had appeared with the insane condition of, ‘If you fail to clear them, the world ends.’ Once they closed, they never opened again.
Leia, standing before me, had been one of the bosses of the third Required Gate, the C-Rank .
She was someone who could not return to her homeland even if she wanted to.
Normally, that was.
“There is a method. If you want, I can even write you a contract. In exchange, you only need to do one thing for me. Can you promise that?”
“……I would like to hear the condition first.”
“It is nothing difficult.”
I pointed directly at Leia with my index finger.
“You have a Skill called 「Snowman」, right? Give it to me.”
“Snowman……. That E-Rank Skill?”
“Yeah. That one.”
Leia watched my expression for a while, then cautiously asked,
“Um, Benefactor. Are you perhaps the type of person who feels satisfaction and excitement from pain, unfair circumstances, difficult situations, and watching yourself fall apart?”
“Get out of my house right now, you Olaf-looking b×stard.”
***
“Um……. Hello. But who is the person beside you?”
“Yeah. A porter.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, human woman. I am Lei—”
I covered Leia’s mouth with one hand.
Just where had this idiot been listening when I had made it very clear that if people heard her name, the Gamble Center bastards might cause trouble?
Only after I covered her mouth did she seem to realize it. She made a small sound of realization, then replied again with a fake smile.
“My name is Rei.”
“N-Nice to meet you. I am Yu Danyeong……. Um, I have never gone through a Gate before, so please take care of me.”
“You are not a combat type, so it cannot be helped. Here, take your ticket.”
Most Gates were managed by individual Guilds. To enter one, you had to pay an entrance fee to the Guild managing it.
I distributed the tickets, which cost 20,000 Coins each, to the two of them and casually began walking into the dungeon.
“Do not worry too much. It is an E-Rank dungeon for mining ore, so nothing dangerous should happen. It will be safe.”
“Y-Yes! Please take care of me!”
And so, we entered the dungeon as an unprecedented party consisting of one Damage Dealer, zero Tanks, zero Healers, and two pieces of baggage.
Still, there would be no danger in an E-Rank ore-mining dungeon.
If it really was an ‘E-Rank Dungeon.’
“Um, Benefactor.”
“What?”
“I thought the sign at the entrance was written in Dungeon Language. Did it say, ‘B-Rank Dungeon, Lava Desert,’ or was I imagining it?”