An Yumin and the Dungeon's Special Zone (3)
A moment later, exactly what I had expected came to pass.
"Wait. Just now—I sensed a presence…"
As expected, Jo Arin, with her razor-sharp instincts, was the first to react. At her words An Yumin scrambled up from her seat as well—but it was already too late.
KWAAAAANG—
One wall of the conference room exploded inward. And through the wreckage, a villain stepped into view.
"Watch out, senpai!"
An Yumin, who had been resting, was the first on her feet. Jo Arin had been so drained before we even arrived that she had ridden on my back the whole way; her reaction lagged behind. An Yumin and I threw ourselves in front of her at once.
Then the villain murmured in a quiet, almost conversational voice.
"So you fled somewhere safe to escape the dungeon's miasma. And no matter how much of a small fry Ash Monk may be, he is not the sort to lose to mere cadets. Just as the reports said—skilled ones."
An Yumin's expression hardened at the sound of that voice. Her hand clenched tight around her sword hilt. Even so, her body looked sluggish. The same way I could inflict a fear debuff on villains, she too seemed to have been seized, in that instant, by terror of the dangerous man before her. That was how crushing the pressure he radiated was.
"This is bad…"
I agreed completely. I had not immediately placed which villain he was, but ordinary villains were violent, always wound tight. That was the influence of the Chaotic they so often consumed. Of course some villains never touched the stuff—yet the mind of anyone who lived by constant crime was rarely sound. That was precisely why they fell under the Chaos Attribute's dominion far more easily than ordinary awakeners.
But the man in front of us was calm.
A villain with a clear head means…
It meant his will was strong enough to withstand the Chaos Attribute's instinctive mental interference—or that he was simply that powerful. A red bandana covered the lower half of his face. His presence felt cold and bloodlessly pale.
An A-rank villain. One slip and the whole party dies.
An Yumin, the protagonist, went without saying—and Jo Arin could not be allowed to die either. Yet for the villain standing before us, killing the three of us would have been easier than crushing a small, fragile animal. If this had been my old self, the sheer pressure rolling off him would have frozen me in place, unable to move a finger.
It's different now. I have to make an opening.
He went on speaking.
"The fact that the monsters have stopped attacking means the Ark system is functioning to some degree. But there will be a loophole somewhere."
He did not even seem particularly wary of the three of us. And in that moment, his hand traced a shape through the empty air.
"O Beast of Blood."
A tearing scream split the air, and a blood-red monster tore its way into existence from nothing.
A summoner. And a vampire after all.
I had known as much from the original work. The A-rank villain Fatal Blood was calling forth his familiar. As a vampire, Song Sia's potential—with true blood mixed into her lineage—might one day surpass his. But right now, Fatal Blood was overwhelmingly stronger.
Beast of Blood, huh.
A premium familiar forged from his own blood—something Song Sia at her current level could never create.
Ssssssssss—
The breath the creature exhaled billowed out as a blood-red mist, flooding the conference room. An Yumin's face went deathly pale. A dark-attribute vampire. Among the tools she possessed, she had no light-attribute skills. The only path to victory was to crush that familiar under overwhelming firepower—and An Yumin was already exhausted. She raised her sword in haste, but the frost coating the blade was a pale shadow of what it should have been at full strength. Jo Arin, who had already burned through her mana, needed no further comment.
That had been Fatal Blood's plan all along. He had deliberately thrown Ash Monk at them to bleed Jo Arin and An Yumin dry, then waited until the party was at its most unguarded. He was the most dangerous villain I had faced since Horror Hall.
"I bear no particular grudge against you three. But killing one of you would make it far easier to pinpoint the loophole in the Ark system. Preferably the strong one."
The massive bear-shaped familiar fully unsheathed its claws. It was not mere physical force—any wound would immediately begin draining blood. A graze meant death; that was no exaggeration.
"Beast. Tear that woman apart."
His gaze locked onto Jo Arin. Whether he had already obtained intelligence on the cadets or not, he showed not the slightest interest in me.
That's his mistake.
The situation was a hair's breadth from catastrophe—but I had prepared for precisely this moment.
Originally this would be An Yumin's job. But I have to do it in her place.
Buying time until the Ark system activated. An Yumin could probably weather a single blow from the villain—but it was better if I was the one who bought that time.
Fatal Blood is stronger than I expected. There's no guarantee An Yumin won't get seriously hurt the way she didn't in the original.
There had been game overs in the original, after all. The Ark would protect the cadets—but with the system already malfunctioning, it was far from perfect.
And this is the perfect chance to test my new skill.
For the moment, though, I deliberately kept my eyes off him. There was no need to slap Unknown's debuff on him directly.
Right then, the familiar moved.
"Senpai! Look out!!"
An Yumin's shout rang out as the creature lunged straight for Jo Arin.
"That won't do."
But every preparation was already complete. I stepped cleanly in front of Jo Arin and locked eyes with the familiar.
Flame
KWAAAAANG—
The new skill I had prepared in advance roared to life. Flame surged toward the familiar in a blazing torrent.
"KYAAAAAAAH!!"
The creature screamed.
"Hm?"
Fatal Blood turned toward me with a look of mild confusion—but it was already too late.
"What's going on? I had no information that another party member could use flame skills of this caliber… Wait—?"
He never got the chance to strike again.
Wiiiiing—
A dazzling light swallowed the three of us whole.
"Damn it! Did I lose them?!"
The villain's voice grew distant. The three of us left the dungeon behind and entered a new special zone.
What just happened…?
An Yumin opened her eyes.
Moments ago, the situation had been truly dire. Not only Jo Arin senpai but everyone had been exhausted. They had cleared every monster inside the building and let their guard down—and right then, an unexpectedly dangerous villain had appeared. She had tried to react quickly, but her body had been too slow. If even she, with all her real combat experience, had felt fear, then he had definitely been A-rank or higher.
And that blood-red familiar the vampire had summoned—that blood-soaked giant brown bear—had felt so blasphemous that simply looking at it without a cleric's holy spells had been almost unbearable.
And yet… we're safe?
She looked around. This was not the conference room where the party had been standing moments before. Her body seemed unharmed, at least. But neither Jo Arin nor Lee Junwoo were anywhere in sight. She had to find her party members—fast.
Lee Junwoo…
And in that instant, the memories of what had just happened came flooding back in full.
"Lee Junwoo saved me again?"
Those claws would have been lethally sharp. Even a light graze could not have guaranteed survival.
The Ark's protective effect didn't seem to be working either.
But Lee Junwoo had been different. Everyone had been equally drained—yet he had made the coldest, clearest judgment of them all. With a powerful flame spell prepared in advance, he had driven the familiar away from the party. She could not remember what came after that. But if he had not moved in that exact instant, the party would certainly have been wiped out.
Her chest ached at the thought of receiving his help yet again. She had believed their relationship was finished. And still, Lee Junwoo was a kind person.
At the same time, something felt wrong. It was not the inferiority or competitive fire she felt when she saw a cadet more skilled than herself. It was that same anxiety again—the ominous intuition that the stronger Lee Junwoo became, the further he would drift from her for certain.
"Where on earth is this…"
And so there she was, urgently searching for Lee Junwoo first—even ahead of Jo Arin, the idol she had always looked up to.
Her surroundings finally registered. It was disorienting, but this was unmistakably a hotel. And unlike the nighttime campus where the party had been moments ago, this hotel was flooded with brilliant light on every side.
"Are these… all mirrors?"
She realized she was standing in a hotel corridor. The walls of that long hallway were lined entirely with mirrors. She tried a guest room door just in case, but it would not open. Judging by the room numbers, this seemed to be the tenth floor—though that meant nothing now.
The tenth floor…?
Come to think of it, ten was An Yumin's favorite number. The way athletes fixated on a special jersey number, it was the symbolic number she clung to as a hero.
And then—
"Who's there? Stop!"
She drew her sword on pure instinct. But there was no one. No—someone was staring straight at her from the front. A woman with long reddish-brown hair, holding a sword in the exact same stance. It was An Yumin herself.
What. It's just my reflection. Did I overreact…?
But then goosebumps raced across every inch of her skin.
Is it smiling?
An Yumin herself was not smiling. She was tense, on edge in this unfamiliar place. And yet her reflection in the mirror was smiling of its own free will. The figure in the glass opened its mouth and spoke.
"It'd be better if you were a little more honest, An Yumin. You are me. I am you. I'm the you that you truly want to become."
The voice was painfully familiar. It resembled An Yumin's own, yet it was far more ominous—the cursed voice of the villain that lived inside her. The other her that had always whispered from within her heart.
"Don't you want to make Lee Junwoo your man again?"
"Shut up!"
Chachachang—
She swung her ice sword. The mirror shattered into a thousand glittering shards, and the villain in her heart who had been wearing her face vanished with it. An Yumin's breathing came hard and ragged.
"Hah… hah… What the hell. Am I under an illusion?"
She fled the spot as if running for her life. But there was no elevator, no lobby in sight. Nor did she have any desire to check the other rooms. Because if she looked into the corridor mirrors again, the self she so desperately denied and turned away from might appear once more.
—What's wrong? I'm only showing you your honest feelings.
She wanted to clap her hands over her ears against that voice that came like an auditory hallucination. But then she sensed another presence.
"Don't move!"
Every nerve stood on end. She leveled her ice blade—honed even sharper than before—in that direction.
"Choi Hana?"
The face of someone who could not possibly be here looked back at her. That Choi Hana moved—as if she were looking at someone other than An Yumin entirely.
"Lee Junwoo! I've been waiting for you!"
She called his name with such tender affection. Lee Junwoo. For a moment An Yumin's mind went completely blank. She simply raised her sword and cut the Choi Hana before her eyes in two.
"Hah… What kind of bullshit illusion is this…"
But the afterimage of Choi Hana would not leave her mind—the image of Choi Hana wrapped in Lee Junwoo's arms. To escape that horrific scene she ran even faster. And still, no matter where she went, there were only mirrors.
"Song Sia…"
New women appeared without end. Song Sia. Ha Yeeun. Even the president of Aegis's fan club. Every one of them a woman tied to Lee Junwoo. Every one of them a woman who had ignited vicious jealousy in An Yumin's chest.
—They're all the bitches who got in your way. How does it feel?
She swung her sword. She shattered every afterimage into glittering dust. But An Yumin could not escape the illusions. And she understood. The voice in her heart was right.
Yeah. I… can't escape Lee Junwoo. I can't give up.
She had believed she had already sorted out her feelings. But seeing those women who had stood between her and Lee Junwoo drove her out of her mind. Every time she faced those mirror phantoms, she swung her sword with more genuine killing intent. No—at some point she could no longer tell whether they were illusions or real. And even if they were real, it no longer mattered. Those women trying to steal Lee Junwoo from her—she wanted to cut every last one of them down.
"Yeah. You're right."
She stood before a mirror once more. This time it was not another woman. It was An Yumin's own face, reflected exactly as she was. The An Yumin in the glass beamed.
"So you admit it now. You want to take Lee Junwoo back, don't you?"
"Yeah. What do I need to do?"
It was right at that moment.
"An Yumin? Are you okay?"
A familiar voice reached her. She turned her head. A man was hurrying toward her.
It was Lee Junwoo.