“Spell Spear─!”
*Thwuuuk-!*
*Bam Bam Bam-!*
The finish came as Noh Ha-yoon’s ice spear shattered the creature’s head into pieces.
– The battle against the undead led by the Ghoul Champion ended with astonishing speed.
– Achievement [Rotten Corpse Cleaner] acquired.
=====
[Rotten Corpse Cleaner]
– 7% increase in damage against undead-type monsters
=====
It was a small achievement that increased damage dealt to undead monsters by 7%.
‘I have a few achievements to gain from Nargul. This is the least impressive one.’
“Ahhh─! What’s going on from the start?!”
“Puhihihit-! It’s been forever since I got an achievement!”
Despite my assessment, our party members jumped in place, celebrating their achievement.
“Haha, I hadn’t gotten this one, so it’s a relief, Ha-yoon.”
“Hehe, I told you so.”
Unexpectedly, Noh Ha-yoon was congratulated by Yeom Tae-seok with a gleeful expression, as it seemed she hadn’t acquired that achievement either.
“Ugh- Il-wol, are we going to clean their stuff too?”
Yeon-hee pointed at the ghoul corpses sprawled across the ground, wrinkling her nose as she held it shut.
The stench from the rapidly decaying ghoul bodies soon filled the air.
‘Ugh… Block it.’
I shut off my senses and went around collecting their corpses along with Zombie 1 and 2.
I couldn’t work with these stinky things in my house, so I wanted to wrap things up here. But there were so many, I’d have to store them in Space for now.
“I see. Il-wol is acting as the intermediary, huh?”
Yeom Tae-seok clapped his hands, finally grasping the situation, speaking to Yeon-hee. Seriously, don’t use weird titles.
“Er? Ah, I guess…”
Yeon-hee awkwardly chuckled, trying to keep up the conversation. She seemed to struggle when faced with unfamiliar men, even though she had improved a lot.
“I’m glad we met up in the early phases. It would have been quite dangerous if we ran into them near the exit, right?”
“I mean, it wasn’t too difficult, was it?”
“No… It wasn’t a force that could be considered easy. Indeed…”
Noh Ha-yoon trailed off, gazing at me intently. Did she realize the battle became easier thanks to me?
“Well, Eun-young was a bit in danger… but isn’t it always like this with us? Oh! Sister! What was that thing earlier?”
Bae Joo-ah rushed over to Ham Eun-young, pressing her for information about the mirror.
Shouldn’t she at least tell her party members what effects it had? She had a reasonable argument.
“Th-that… this…”
The being that popped out of the hand mirror only pushed monsters away, but its ominous aura and appearance drew everyone’s attention to Ham Eun-young.
“… Grandma caught it in a high-tier dungeon…”
……? What? A demon? Those with dark attributes?
“… Huh?! What?!”
“Demon!”
The beings we call demons wield a power called mana, which is extremely cheating and difficult to deal with.
Typically, each attribute has relationships of weakness and strength, while mana has an advantage over everything except light attribute.
‘That’s strange. I didn’t sense anything unusual, did I?’
It hasn’t been long since I joined Ham Eun-young—only about ten days—but I thought I had been watching her attentively.
I had never sensed anything like that even once—not even when the mirror activated its power.
As I tilted my head in confusion, Yeon-hee couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked me about it. Eventually, I revealed that I had never felt anything like mana.
“Hooh…? Can you also sense mana? That’s… really…”
Yeom Tae-seok seemed to transcend mere interest; his eyes sparkled as if he had discovered a mimic. It’s kind of overwhelming, Uncle.
“He was… purified…”
“Purified? The kind of [purification] we know?”
“Uh-huh…”
“But how is it still alive? Demons should be weak to purification abilities, right?”
“They say it’s not really alive, even if it is… I don’t know the details…”
“Whoa… since they’re trapped in a mirror, that makes sense.”
The artifact’s owner didn’t know much, so what could we say?
‘Surviving after being purified… what kind of being was it?’
“There aren’t any dungeons with demons in our country, right?”
“Well… they must have gone abroad a few times… before the restrictions kicked in.”
Ham Eun-young’s grandmother had helped overseas with requests a few times, and they grabbed this one back then.
That was all we could gather, and the conversation about the mirror fizzled out.
We resumed our journey, each lost in thought, questioning if it was correct to party with a woman who handles demons.
“Puhuhuh… it’s an interesting team…”
Noh Ha-yoon chuckled to herself, her mind seeming to wander. Our party composition was indeed unique.
A hunter handling monsters and demons, a reincarnated skeleton, and a rabbit beastman. I guess Joo-ah is the most normal one?
It was balanced out by Yeom Tae-seok, who had light attribute skills.
Since I was the strangest of them all, I decided to stop pondering that.
More importantly, the skill I gained from defeating the ghouls was fascinating.
Eating (食)
– Restores 5 health when consuming the flesh of a living creature.
– Restores 5 mana when consuming the flesh of a corpse.
‘……’
I flinched momentarily at the word ‘consume,’ but since I had somehow progressed with Irmana’s quest, there must be a way to utilize this too.
Of course, it wouldn’t be easy.
‘Do I have to try gnawing on it at dawn…? Damn…’
A wave of self-loathing swelled up, but there was no choice but to adapt. It might be a skill that could help someday.
*
About 30 minutes passed.
*Squish- Squish-*
We were still marching on.
*Swooooosh─*
The dead, withered branches and grass turned to powder, swirling everywhere.
Only we, the living foreigners from another world, moved through this dungeon filled with death.
“How far away are the other parties?”
Ah-rin was more on guard against other parties of hunters than the monsters.
When I told her there were two teams about 200 meters away, the others also showed signs of tension.
‘Worrying about everything, huh.’
With our current strength, we could easily crush any average C-class party. It was clear who should be scared of whom.
In fact, when our distance to other parties decreased, it was often the other parties that cleared the way for us.
“Why is it so hard to see even a single person?”
Thus, Joo-ah made that comment.
“Fewer monsters than I expected. Has it been like this recently?”
Yeon-hee curiously asked Noh Ha-yoon. She must have a better sense since she’s been frequently roaming here.
“It’s been like this lately. Suddenly, a mutant pops up.”
“Are you talking about the giant type?”
“Yes. Not the slightly bigger ones that normally appear. I’ve encountered real giant types over 5 meters tall.”
She meant the giant skeleton type, not the ones wielding shields the size of an adult male mixed in with ten-man squads.
“They moved surprisingly fast for their size, causing quite a bit of trouble. We were lucky, to be honest.”
“Right. Even though I’ve been coming here for over two years, they’ve become too frequent recently. Is the world truly crumbling…?”
In fact, the gift of a ring by the ‘witch’ to Ha-yoon had also been greatly influenced by these variables.
Yeom Tae-seok seemed deeply concerned, clicking his tongue, focusing once more on his surroundings.
After hearing Yeom Tae-seok’s words, Noh Ha-yoon spoke in a calm yet resolute voice, as if to bolster her own determination.
“So we need to push ourselves harder. If we don’t, these things will all escape outside. That’ll be too horrible.”
“……”
People looked at Ha-yoon in surprise, and she scratched her face, refusing to avoid their gaze.
‘Why are you suddenly acting righteous? Just the other day, we were attacked head-on.’
Having directly faced her attack, I found it absurd. But I didn’t want to show that. Everyone has their own duality, after all.
She had initially been an incredibly annoying presence to me, but what mattered was that she was being helpful to us.
We continued walking, sharing various stories. Among them, the most interesting topic to me was the dungeon’s anomalies.
“Monster drops that used to occur only on the second basement floor are happening on the first floor too.”
Noh Ha-yoon spoke in the most serious tone I had seen so far, the term ‘monster drop’ originating from famous games. But it had become a firm expression due to its closely related situation.
“Wow… I didn’t see anything about that online?”
“So this means monsters could suddenly spawn all at once?”
Ah-rin gasped in surprise at the prospect, as if the thought of numerous monsters bursting out of a portal was alarming.
Such occurrences hadn’t existed up until a decade ago, but they started increasing, and now even the first basement floor showed this phenomenon.
In other words, we could suddenly be surrounded by hundreds of ghouls and skeletons while walking this path—it was a chilling thought.
“How many times have you experienced it?”
“What? Monster drop?”
“Yeah!”
“Twice…? I guess?”
“You’ve experienced it three times with me.”
Yeom Tae-seok shook his head in disbelief, nudging Noh Ha-yoon’s memory. By the looks on their faces, it seemed to be something that had happened several times.
“Whoa! But how did you survive?”
It seemed that the event of a “Monster drop” felt life-threatening to Ah-rin, and she asked Noh Ha-yoon with a hint of admiration.
“Cough- Well, for me, I can just lay down an ice floor and freeze anything that pops out immediately.”
Noh Ha-yoon shrugged her shoulders, acting as if it was nothing major and that they could just rely on her.
But Yeom Tae-seok shaking his head again clarified that things were precarious every time.
“Ugh… Seriously. Why are you saying that, Uncle?”
Ha-yoon seemed to think she looked bad and whimpered at Yeom Tae-seok.
Yeom Tae-seok confirmed there was some truth in it.
He must have seen Ha-yoon since she was little. I could easily guess that from the warm look in his eyes, like a trusting uncle watching his niece.
We passed by shattered and broken grave markers, entering a path where the ground was slimy like mud.
‘Slime with poison also sometimes appears here.’
Even though such slimes have a low chance of appearing in this terrain due to their poison nature, we shouldn’t let our guard down.
*Squish- Squish-*
So our movement continued for another 20 minutes, and we began to feel anxious.
‘It’s not just that monsters are missing around us. The monsters within a radius of about 480 meters have all but disappeared.’
It felt similar to the time we encountered a goblin village in the goblin dungeon. When the number of monsters decreases usually, other variables tend to arise.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.
