After that, we held a meeting about Nargul’s dungeon for an hour. As expected, the common opinion was to get out as soon as we discovered the ‘Bone Dancer’.
“First, we have to clear it at least once. That way, we’ll know we don’t need to be on high alert.”
Yeon-hee might be thinking about it, but honestly, once the Bone Dancer appears, it would be easy to just throw the summoned creatures at them one by one before they reach the center of our formation.
Of course, except for me. Ddung-i or those guys who joined the Lizard Squad late would have to suffer a bit. Because I’m precious.
“But we can go on an outing, right? It might be good to buy supplies together.”
Joo-ah said this with a reluctant expression, as if she didn’t really want to.
“I’ve got a tent. It accommodates ten people, so it’s enough.”
“Why do you have a ten-person tent?”
“The old man we first explored the dungeon with gave it to me.”
“… Ah, seriously! Don’t accept things so carelessly.”
“I won’t anymore! But it’s new, so I can’t just throw it away…”
“… We should prepare other bedding or personal items. The entrance isn’t far compared to other dungeons, but it seems finding our way is quite difficult due to the dead air.”
“Food for a day should be enough, right? My inventory space is full, and I can’t carry anything more.”
“Yes, a day should be sufficient.”
‘We probably won’t have to camp on the first basement floor, but I’m in favor of being prepared.’
True to the habitat of the Undead, Nargul’s dungeon is filled with scams. Just entering is enough to lower your stats and significantly reduce recovery power. It’s a tricky place, so the meeting was bound to be long.
After parting ways with the party members and heading home, Yeon-hee kept glancing at me and smiling.
‘Huh?’
Of course, I had no idea why she was doing that. I just assumed she was in a good mood, which lifted my spirits as well.
“Should we just walk?”
“Tap…?”
Running through dungeons and then taking a stroll?
I threw a puzzled look, but she just smiled. Still, it would take at least an hour. Hmm…
I pulled her hood down a bit more and we set off together.
Tap tap-
I gave her head a little tap. No idea what was so amusing, but Yeon-hee kept giggling. It would be problematic if someone else saw that smile.
‘… She’s changed a lot.’
There were people following us at a distance from the gate.
They seemed to be journalists, and their numbers had grown to five. I had been stalking Yeon-hee for days, wondering who they were, but there wasn’t anything to see.
Tap-
Yeon-hee tightened her grip on my hand and played a video of a familiar man.
“Wow! Hyeon Joong-gil caught another monster! Benemos Behemoth? What a weird name. Who comes up with these?”
‘Scholars are usually the ones who give complicated names.’
While on the way home, she would read out trending events or show me videos.
One of those was a video of Hyeon Joong-gil slicing a massive monster that looked like a hippo in half with one stroke.
‘Beautiful…’
That was the ideal I was pursuing. The feeling of the world coming to a halt. In that frozen world, only the sword fused with Hyeon Joong-gil danced gracefully.
It was so noble and pure that we unintentionally stopped walking.
“Wow- amazing! I’ve never seen this video before. That monster was a top-tier one, right? It said it was one of the closest to a Great Beast, just like that. Wow…”
‘It seems like he controlled his strength a bit… He didn’t even use his utmost limits.’
Thinking back to the day I crossed paths with him, when a battle against a Great Beast unfolded in the heart of Seoul, what he displayed was beyond this level.
‘… Who’s the real monster here?’
But the image of him wiping his mouth at the end of the video pierced my heart. How long had it been… two years? Three?
I couldn’t remember exactly, but I hoped the world’s clock wouldn’t have sped up for him.
Yeon-hee seemed determined to fill me in on everything happening in the world, as she kept going on with her stories. Thanks to her, fragments of memories triggered by keywords stacked on top of each other.
On the way home, we encountered several people who recognized her as a fan.
While Yeon-hee was flustered, she still managed to give autographs, and it was quintessentially her to write “Lee Yeon-hee” in proper spelling.
“Thank you for that time at Gu-chang-ro. I didn’t know who you were since you were wearing a hood, but I just found out it was you, Yeon-hee, and now I’m finally saying thanks.”
“Really? Ah- no, it’s nothing…”
One of them was someone we had helped during the Gu-chang-ro dungeon break, where the ‘Speaker’ and ‘Spore Snail’ appeared.
He seemed to have a limp, likely due to the aftermath of that time, and given the amount of magic power settling down within him, he probably wasn’t hunting anymore.
After parting ways with him, Yeon-hee said, “But it feels rewarding…”
I nodded, giving a small toothy smile in affirmation.
Yeon-hee, with her hood pulled low, couldn’t see well in front of her, but she didn’t seem worried about tripping as long as I was there.
Following my lead, she stepped forward, and I wondered if this path we walked together would last forever—was that too greedy of me?
* * *
A few days before Il-wol and Lee Yeon-hee walked together.
“Ugh…!”
Thud-!
“……”
Another life was scattering away in the unique space where the golden mimic ‘Tanya’ resided.
“Ha-”
It had been an unimaginably long time, and she had thought of it as her sole duty. Being filled with fulfillment as it was for the Great Being she served, yet it felt rather mundane.
The golden mimic Tanya looked down impassively at an elf painting the gleaming floor with red blood.
Known as ‘selection,’ this work accepted challengers at random, rewarding them with suitable compensation upon victory; a truly rational system.
The knowledge accumulated over long years regarding this work had been passed down among races, meaning that there were no tricks left for the mimic to use.
It was merely a trial that did not compel challenges but merely offered choices.
The rewards were sweet, yet the flipside was that failure led directly to death. But, that was the challenger’s choice, so there shouldn’t be complaints.
Yet those who failed the challenge looked up at themselves with eyes full of resentment.
Just like the dark elf staring up at her with bloodshot eyes.
Perhaps it was due to being a half-elf with human blood mixed in? Her face was more akin to that of a human man than an elf. The tips of her ears were slightly blunt as well.
That face oddly reminded her of someone.
“Il-wol…”
Why she thought of the skeleton soldier when seeing the dark elf was something golden mimic Tanya herself didn’t understand.
Maybe appearance wasn’t everything. Perhaps when she looked at the fallen figure of the challenger, it simply reminded her of a skull that had eroded away.
“Il-wol— Il-wol—”
There was a feeling of tickling inside her chest each time she uttered that name.
Such a strange sensation was something Tanya, who had lived a long time, had never experienced, causing that unusual monster’s name to linger on her lips.
But returning from fishing and seeing the brown mimic ‘Tiny’ staring at her gotten puzzled behavior felt somewhat unnatural.
‘My master is acting strange lately. What’s going on? It feels like there’s something I don’t know.’
Except during fishing, Tanya and Tiny were always inseparable, like thread and needle. So, naturally, the brown mimic Tiny found it odd.
“Tiny, I need to take a break for a moment.”
Her owner, who had never acted like this before, was doing so now.
“Gasp… Master?! This can’t be happening! What’s wrong? This is already the tenth time! You’ve never rested for even a moment all those long years!”
When talking to hunters, his language was comically clumsy, but in this unique language they had created together, he was perfectly fluent.
“Hehe, Tiny. Are you dissatisfied that I alone get to rest while leaving you behind?”
“Of course not! I exist solely for my master’s sake! I have no such disrespectful thoughts at all!”
“… Then want to come along with me?”
“Huh? Where to?”
The brown mimic Tiny was taken aback by his master’s unexpected question. Seeing this, Tanya couldn’t help but smile a bit.
Without needing to say much more, Tanya took the brown box and entered another space that had been prepared inside the unique area.
“Oh… this is that space you prepared but never used, isn’t it?”
“You remembered well.”
“Of course! I carry a bit of your powers in me, after all, so there aren’t too many mimics that can outsmart me!”
Mimics were few in number, so that claim wasn’t very valid to express intelligence.
Vroom—
Tanya and the brown box entered a space that felt like being immersed in the most brilliant universe.
When Tanya was observing the world, it was an area she created to examine special moments in more detail. To modernize it, it resembled a high-performance telescope with some additional functions.
“Among the challengers who entered our space, was there anyone who stood out to you?”
Tanya asked the brown box with her characteristic blunt expression, while Tiny started listing numerous names by scratching his head with a long tongue.
“…… There were quite a few like that.”
After quickly naming around three hundred names, the brown box brought up two specific beings they had met recently.
“I remember the luckiest one. The skeleton soldier who hit the jackpot with a 0.01% chance of becoming a werewolf. If it had been any other monster, he wouldn’t have survived. Even with the conditions set to maintain balance.”
“Hmm… That could be true.”
The brown box was so absorbed in wrapping up his answer to his master’s rare question that he failed to notice the gentle smile on Tanya’s face as she looked at him.
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