Main Dish (1)
The leader had gone mad. The man forced into the role of porter instinctively knew it. No matter how hard he tried to rationalize it, the man before him was clearly not in his right mind.
A few hours earlier, when the party collapsed under the coordinated assault of the monsters, the first to flee had been the leader himself. Of course, he wasn’t foolish enough to run alone; he escaped alongside the handful of comrades who had been fighting nearby. The porter had been one of them. Even while carrying the heavy load, his assassin’s agility had let him weave through the monsters and, by sheer luck, rejoin the leader’s group. He had been genuinely relieved at the time. With him and his mining equipment now part of the group, they could still attempt to secure more mana stones. The presence of a comrade carrying the special navigation gear for the dungeon’s twisting paths had only reinforced that hope.
By any reasonable standard, they should have turned back immediately. Yet the leader had insisted, with brutal force, that they push deeper. The surviving members hesitated, but his overwhelming pressure left them no choice but to obey. Looking back, that moment had been their final chance. Even without the old man and the woman—their core fighters—they had still possessed enough strength to escape. From the moment they suffered that inexplicable attack inside a low-rank dungeon, every second should have been spent fleeing. But dwelling on it now changed nothing.
The porter slowly recalled everything that had happened on the way here. The ant-type monsters had attacked in relentless waves, as if they had been lying in wait. Even while struggling forward, he had questioned whether any of it was real. The sheer number of creatures blocking their path defied imagination—far more than they had encountered during the previous raid on this dungeon.
And that wasn’t the only problem. If the monsters had gathered in one place, even the leader might have given up. Instead, they had been scattered in small groups along every route, each cluster just large enough for the party to handle. In hindsight, the arrangement was deeply suspicious. No monster should have been deployed with such precision. It felt like a calculated strategy designed to wear them down without ever letting them abandon the expedition. Yet no one had voiced the thought. Or rather, no one could. Who would dare suggest that mere insects in a low-rank dungeon were capable of such tactics? Even if someone had spoken up, no one would have believed it. It was easier to tell themselves they had simply been unlucky.
In the end, the only ones dying were the remaining innocent party members. The leader never placed himself in real danger. As a result, the others were forced into the front lines, and their wounds multiplied with every fight. Eventually, the first death occurred—during the fifth wave of attacks. Once it began, the deaths continued. By then, everyone had probably realized the truth: if they kept going, they would be next. But turning back was impossible. The special navigation equipment was in someone else’s hands, and openly defying the leader would have looked worse. So they rationalized, endured, and kept silent.
But they were only human. When their minds finally reached their limit, they made the ultimate choice—one of the worst possible acts inside a dungeon. They staged a mutiny.
Three people led it. With the leader excluded, they represented every remaining combatant. Their first target was the comrade operating the navigation gear; they attacked him to seize the device. The sudden betrayal killed him instantly. That left only the leader—the root of everything.
Yet something unbelievable happened. The leader won a three-on-one fight he should have had no chance of surviving. One mutineer died outright. The other two suffered fatal wounds and collapsed, unable to fight. The reasons were simple: the three had been exhausted from constant battles, the leader had conserved his strength, and—most decisively—their levels were far lower than his. The outcome was inevitable.
The porter, who had secretly hoped the mutineers would succeed, fell into despair. There was no hope left. To make matters worse, the leader completely lost his mind after that. His party had collapsed in a single day, and now his own comrades had tried to kill him. The horrific truth shattered what little sanity remained, driving him to commit an act no human should ever consider. He used the two surviving, gravely wounded mutineers as bait to lure the monsters away.
It was a punishment worse than death. Surrounded by monsters, the two men screamed and begged for mercy as they died. The leader, now fully deranged, ignored every plea. The man consumed by greed and rage was no longer the person they had known.
Whether by divine prank or heavenly guidance, the group that had sacrificed their comrades miraculously reached their destination. Calling it a “group” felt wrong—only two people remained: the porter and the leader. The leader was drenched in blood that wasn’t his own. Numerous wounds and disheveled hair made him look grotesque. He approached the cavern wall where countless red mana stones were embedded, as if entranced. His eyes were filled with nothing but the crimson glow of the stones, making his normally black irises appear blood-red.
“None of it matters anymore. As long as I have these… as long as I have these!!! Hunters are everywhere if you offer enough money… I can always form a new party. In fact, with fewer people to split the profits with, all of this belongs to me now!”
His hands trembled as he stroked the stones, muttering in a voice that sent chills down the spine. It sounded like he was trying to hypnotize himself. Regardless, one fact was clear: the man before them was no longer sane. He had become something close to a madman.
“What the hell are you standing there for!? Get over here! Unless… you want to end up like those bastards from earlier?”
After staring at the stones with that twisted smile for a while, he suddenly whipped his head around and shouted. The porter, seeing the bloodshot eyes and the madness etched across his face, desperately wanted to run. Logically, if he dropped the baggage and sprinted, he might escape. But the navigation device that showed the way out was in the leader’s hands. Unless he wanted to wander these twisting tunnels until he died, he had no choice but to obey—for now. At least the leader didn’t seem intent on killing him. After all, without the porter to carry the stones, who would haul them all the way to the surface? Even blinded by greed, the leader still retained that much calculation.
Once the porter handed over the equipment, the two prepared to begin mining in earnest. They had brought expensive, high-end gear precisely because mana stones weren’t ordinary minerals. Even with only two people, a few hours of work should have filled their bags. But they froze before they could start.
Something was approaching from the darkness—something whose presence they couldn’t identify. The leader immediately drew his sword and pointed it forward. Anything that appeared here had to be an ant-type monster, so his reaction was natural. Yet as the figure gradually became clearer, confusion spread across his face. The silhouette wasn’t an ant. It was human.
Realizing this, the leader lowered his blade. When the person’s face finally came into full view, his eyes widened.
“You… Si-yeon? How are you here…?”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Relief and disbelief warred in his trembling gaze. In a way, his reaction was understandable. The comrade he had believed dead was standing before him, unharmed. The porter, still a short distance away, felt the same shock. He had never imagined she could have survived that chaos. It seemed like a miracle. Yet alongside the relief came doubt. Even if she had survived, how had she reached this place without any special equipment? The coincidence was too perfect to be chance. A chill ran down his spine—the instinctive warning of impending danger.
Whether the porter sensed it or not, the leader walked toward the woman standing not far away. One step, two steps, three… The distance between them shrank. When he finally stood right in front of her, he slowly raised a trembling hand, as if checking whether she was real. But his hand never reached her face.
Instead, the air filled with red. The man stared blankly at the empty space where his wrist had been. Then his gaze dropped to the severed hand lying on the ground. His mind refused to process the reality, but the pain from his mutilated body forced his consciousness back.
“Huh? Uh… uuuuuh?! AAAAAAARGH!!!! AAAAAAARGH!!!!”
He thrashed on the floor, screaming as the agony threatened to melt his brain. Blood gushed from the stump like a fountain, pooling across the stone in a crimson lake. The woman watched him writhe with a cold, unchanging expression. Her hand—now transformed into something resembling an ant’s razor-sharp mandible—had already returned to its normal shape.
“Disgusting… You really tried to touch me with that filthy hand?”
Those were the first words she spoke. Even through the haze of pain, the leader understood. The cold gaze and voice belonged to someone else entirely. The figure standing before him, splattered with his blood, was not the woman he had known. It was a monster wearing her face.
He stared at her with eyes full of terror. She met his gaze, licked the blood from her lips, and smiled with cruel delight.