The Triangle Temple (1)
I had already carpet-bombed the giant hornet nest that night and climbed two levels, from 20 to 22. On top of that, taking down two of the four colossal species at the same time had boosted me another five levels. All told, I'd shot up six levels in one go.
Me. Level 24.
It might look similar on paper, but a hunter's level-up is nothing like the kind you get in games.
In games you can die over and over and grind your character without consequence. Real hunters can lose their lives to a single mistake, so we have no choice but to play it safe.
That's why, even after years of struggle, only a tiny handful of people ever reach level 24. Just look at the Byun brothers; they'd lived in the tower for years and were still stuck below level 10. That alone showed how brutally difficult it was.
And yet I'd done it in only a few months of tower life.
Master of the True B3 and B4
📍 You have slain Megahornet.
🎁 Reward: Triangle Temple One-Time Pass acquired.
Titan Tula Slayer
📍 You have slain Titan Tula.
🎁 Reward: Triangle Temple One-Time Pass acquired.
Heh. Two Triangle Temple passes. Not bad.
If I played my cards right, maybe these tickets would give me the breakthrough I needed to take down the other two colossal species.
Just then, several devil-bees flew up beside me and spoke in their usual clipped way.
“Operation. Huge success. Giant hornets. Mostly. Annihilated.”
“Good work.”
“Spider. Corpse. Ours. Promise.”
“Of course.”
These devil-bees had originally served as the Waterfall Queen’s royal guards. After her death they’d been captured by the honeybees and were facing execution. I’d decided to give them a second chance.
I’d offered them a deal: if they gathered their friends and joined the air raid, I would spare their lives and gift them the corpse of the largest spider on B4—the Titan Tula.
Devil-bees were famous for laying eggs beside paralyzed spiders. The larvae would hatch and feast on the spider carcasses as they grew into adult devil-bees.
The two devil-bees I spoke with were overjoyed. Not only had they escaped death, they’d received an incredible reward. They quickly rounded up hundreds of their comrades.
Every last one of them was strong enough to hold its own in one-on-one combat against a giant hornet. Following my orders, they lay in ambush around the hornet nest. Once the flames rose, they swept in and wiped out the remaining hornets. The operation had been a complete success.
Then another devil-bee flew in, speaking urgently.
“That. Shining. Honeybee. Queen. Injured.”
“What?”
“We. Protected. As much. As possible. But. Extremely. Fast. Giant hornet. One. Stung. Her.”
“And then?”
“Right now. Bringing. Her. Here.”
Sure enough, a large devil-bee soon appeared in the distance, cradling a brilliantly glowing bee while escorted by a swarm of devil-bees.
The bee in its arms was none other than Ganeungi.
A quiet stir rippled through the honeybees that made up Bonggu.
Bzzzzzzzz—
I shouted in alarm.
“Straight to B3, now!”
* * *
“Ganeungi!”
When we laid her down on B3, she had a massive puncture wound in her abdomen, yet a faint thread of consciousness still remained.
She was communicating through her antennae.
“I. Now. Return. To Gaia.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I’m definitely going to save you.”
“Emperor. Fought. Together. Honor……”
That was as far as she got before she lost consciousness.
I immediately stabbed her with the Queen of the West’s Sting to neutralize the poison. But she still didn’t wake up.
My chest tightened, but I held myself together and asked the queens.
“How bad is the injury? Can she recover?”
All the queens shook their heads.
“Impossible.”
“Cannot.”
“Difficult.”
Damn it.
I’d suspected as much.
If it had only been poison, the Queen of the West’s Sting would have solved everything. But Ganeungi hadn’t passed out from the toxin alone. The huge gash in her belly was the real problem.
I tried wrapping her with a low-grade mummy bandage. Just as I expected, the status window popped up.
The effect of Low-Grade Mummy Bandage applies only to humans.
I immediately turned to Han Yejin for advice.
“How can I save her?”
Han Yejin answered right away.
“Wouldn’t it work if we transport her to the Jeguk Medipharm? They always have healers on standby.”
I shook my head.
“I heard that if you put an injured monster in your inventory, the wound deteriorates rapidly. And carrying her myself would be too noticeable.”
That was right.
The inventory had a built-in safeguard to prevent abuse: injured pets or monsters placed inside would suffer worsening wounds.
Besides, Ganeungi was currently three meters long. While I could technically carry her, doing so would draw far too much attention. On top of that, the waypoint for the Medipharm was underwater. There was no good way to keep her wound from getting soaked.
Han Yejin suggested, “Then how about bringing Eunpa? She wouldn’t spill our secrets.”
“Do you think Eunpa can actually treat insects?”
“……”
The tower world was different from games.
Just as it was hard for a human doctor to treat a dog, or a vet to treat a person, healers in this reality each had their own specialties.
“Where could I find a healer who specializes in insects?”
Han Yejin’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Oh! I’ve got it! Jang Sara! Let’s bring her. She’s a monster specialist, so she’s bound to have a solution!”
This was getting complicated.
Even having Han Yejin come down to B3 felt like a burden… If that brilliant woman Jang Sara learned about this place too…
But I couldn’t just let Ganeungi die like this.
Reluctantly, I decided to meet with Jang Sara. After asking the ogre louses to look after Ganeungi as best they could, I headed for the waypoint with Han Yejin.
5 days 6 hours 26 minutes 12 seconds
* * *
By the time we slipped out through the Jeguk Medipharm, it was already close to midnight.
“So the day-night cycle on B4 matches the surface,” I muttered.
“How are we supposed to contact Jang Sara at this hour?”
“I’ll handle it. We’re both women around the same age, so it should be less awkward.”
Han Yejin immediately took out her phone and called Jang Sara. Ever since our first meeting, Jang Sara had been relentlessly calling us to grill me about my injuries, so finding her number in our contacts was easy.
Jang Sara picked up before the third ring, as if she’d been waiting.
“Ah! Miss Yejin, have you finally decided to blow the whistle?”
Her energetic voice burst out over the speakerphone.
“Ahaha, no, that’s not it… Anyway, I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“Not at all. I’m in the lab right now. I can take calls 24/7. I’m always ready for testimony.”
“You… don’t sleep?”
“Ah, I’m addicted to ‘Abyssal.’ ”
The Potion of Abyssal that Han Yejin and I had drunk a few hours ago was ridiculously expensive. But for the daughter of a chaebol family like Jang Sara, it was pocket change. Drinking it every day wouldn’t be strange at all.
I snatched the phone and spoke.
“Where are you right now? There’s something I need to discuss in person.”
“Oh, so you’re finally ready to confess. Come straight to my lab. It’s on the top floor.”
* * *
The moment we stepped into Jang Sara’s lab, we were stunned. The entire top floor had been turned into what looked less like a laboratory and more like an artificial indoor forest.
In short, it was a miniature version of B4.
Bzzzz— Tak-tak-tak—
There were even devil-bees flying around inside.
At that moment Jang Sara popped out from inside a beehive and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve already removed their venom—”
But she stopped mid-sentence and stared at me in shock. All the devil-bees had flown straight to me, clinging to my body and showing affection.
It was probably because of the Empress’s pheromones clinging to me everywhere.
“…As I thought. There really is something, isn’t there?”
Until a second ago I’d still been debating whether to tell her the truth. But after seeing the massive forest she had created in her lab, I couldn’t help thinking about what kind of synergy would occur if she gained access to B4.
After all, she was a woman obsessed with social insects.
“You’re openly raising monsters? Did you get permission for this?”
Jang Sara stuck her tongue out playfully and answered.
“Well, there are a few minor violations… but you’re not going to report me to the prosecutors, right? If you do… our company is finished.”
“Just for something like this?”
“The authorities are lenient about monster research, but breeding highly reproductive species like devil-bees is strictly prohibited. And I’ve even succeeded in shortening the 21-day pupation period to just three days using growth accelerators… The moment I get caught, it’s over.”
“Don’t chaebols usually stand above the law?”
“The one who stands above the law is my cousin, Jang Mageuk. That’s why this is even more dangerous. He’s been eyeing the management rights of our Medipharm for a long time. The corrupt prosecutors are just waiting for a single piece of evidence.”
“If you can raise devil-bees into adults in three days, couldn’t you produce royal jelly and make a fortune?”
“Unfortunately, this small greenhouse doesn’t produce proper royal jelly. I’m working on it from multiple angles.”
Her expression was filled with genuine regret.
“I came here because I have a favor to ask.”
“That’s quite rude. You won’t even tell me the truth, yet you’re already thinking of asking me for favors.”
Her words were prickly, but they didn’t feel hostile at all. Her bright personality and friendly demeanor made her feel more like an old friend.
“Haha, was I? But if I do tell you the truth, how can I be sure the secret will be kept?”
“Feel free to record everything here. If I betray you, just take the footage straight to the prosecutors. Actually, you wouldn’t even need to record it. Just telling the prosecutors would be enough for them to raid this place, and I’d be arrested on the spot.”
After hearing that, I decided to trust her.
What I’d been worried about wasn’t so much her “betrayal” as the possibility that she was too much of a model student and might reveal the underground secret for the sake of the public good.
But seeing this lab, I became certain that she was far more obsessed with “research” and “potion development” than with “public interest.” A truly public-minded person wouldn’t be conducting illegal experiments like this.
“All right. But in exchange, you must agree to one absolute condition.”
“What is it?”
“A three-meter-long ancient honeybee queen is injured. She was stung by a giant ancient hornet. Can you save her?”
Jang Sara immediately began preparing to head out and asked in return.
“I’ll need to see the wound first. Which floor?”
Han Yejin and I flinched in surprise. Jang Sara grinned.
“It really is underground! I was right! Kahaha! Come on, let’s hurry to that waypoint you hid under the lake!”
It seemed she had already investigated quite a lot about us.
* * *
Jang Sara was registered with the Hunter Association as a “Researcher.”
Researchers didn’t fight monsters directly; they were people who entered the tower for investigation purposes.
“If you were planning to assassinate me and steal my rune stone, you should give up now. The only rune stone in my body is a cheap one that raises Intelligence by a mere 10 points.”
A rune stone that raised Intelligence by 10 points would be worth at least three billion won at the lowest estimate.
Calling a three-billion-won rune stone “cheap”—the audacity of this chaebol heiress was something else.
When we reached the lake, Jang Sara spoke as if she were already a member of our guild.
“Can’t we move this waypoint to my lab? If you keep coming and going like this, rumors will spread eventually…”
I asked, “You placed a waypoint near the tower, right?”
She gave an unexpected reply.
“Why don’t we just go straight underground? Why go through all the hassle of traveling in circles?”
“That’s impossible because Director Jang hasn’t placed a waypoint on the underground floors—”
Wait a second.
She wasn’t thinking of using the Hug Breakthrough, was she?
At that moment I glanced at Han Yejin without thinking.
Han Yejin, who had never been good at hiding her expressions, was already blushing bright red.
* * *
Normally, hunters could take pets, summons, mounts, or monsters they had tamed or captured through waypoints.
However, hunters could not take other hunters through waypoints. The fundamental rule was that a hunter could only travel to waypoints they had personally set in advance.
But there was one exception: the Hug Breakthrough.
No one knew exactly why it worked.
When a man and a woman pressed their bodies tightly together and used a waypoint, an anomalous phenomenon occurred that allowed travel to locations one of them had not previously marked.
At first everyone thought it was a system error.
The theory was that when two hunters clung tightly to each other, the system mistook them for a single hunter.
But that hypothesis was proven false through various experiments.
It didn’t work at all between people who felt zero sexual attraction toward each other.
Of course, that “sexual attraction” didn’t seem to mean pure, innocent love.
Affairs worked.
Minors worked.
Even same-sex pairs worked as long as both parties felt sexual attraction.
But if even one side felt no attraction toward the other, it failed completely.
For example, show-window couples or fake marriages didn’t work even if both parties were legally recognized as a couple.
These days, some hunter couples and married hunter pairs even used the Hug Breakthrough to test each other’s true feelings.