The Lone Transcendent

A sword gripped in her hand.

Her suit had been shredded to ribbons, leaving her upper body completely bare.

That long hair could only belong to the woman I knew.

Yes. There was no doubt.

She was so drenched in blood from head to toe that it was hard to be certain, but it was unmistakably her.

One step. Then another.

I picked my way around the monster corpses strewn across the floor and approached her.

Then I quietly opened my mouth.

"Isol-ssi..."

You're alive, right?

If you're standing, that means you're still alive, right?

Answer me. Quickly.

Kim Isol!

"Isol-ssi. Thank goodness you're safe. You somehow managed to hold—"

Slash—!

Without warning she swung her sword straight at me.

The motion itself was painfully slow, and I dodged it with ease.

"I-It's me, Isol-ssi! I'm Kang Junghyeok! I came to rescue you!"

She still wouldn't stop swinging.

After dodging several more times I seized her body and wrenched the sword away.

In that same instant I could not keep the shock from hitting me hard.

"This can't be..."

She...

Kim Isol, without my knowledge, had broken past her own limits and become a Transcendent.

How... just how is this even possible?

I was the one who had raised her magic power.

I had even tried to turn her into a Transcendent myself.

It had ended in failure.

It was still beyond what my ability could do.

So how, after only a single week, could she already be standing here as a Transcendent?

"Uwaaaaah! Die! Dieeee!"

The moment I grabbed her she began thrashing wildly.

I shouted for her to come to her senses and locked my arms around her as tightly as I could.

It did nothing. Instead, raw magic power began to surge across her entire body.

"Uwaaaaah! Dieeee! Aaaaaah!"

"Isol-ssi! Snap out of it! Hey! Kim Isol!!"

What the hell happened to drive her this far...

Still—she was alive. That was enough.

That was all that mattered.

But I could not withstand a Transcendent's power as I was now.

So I had no choice.

In the end I had to strip her magic away.

"......"

The instant her magic vanished she went limp, eyes sliding shut, and lost consciousness still cradled in my arms.

Only then could I finally breathe.

Her heart was still beating strong and steady.

"I'm so glad... I'm so glad you're safe, Kim Isol-ssi."

I held her unconscious body tightly against me.

And for a long while I simply stood there like that.

"So you're saying Kim Isol-ssi took down every single one of these monsters by herself?"

"Yes..."

"That's incredible. I expected as much, but still."

"Um..."

"Yes, Hwayeon-ssi. Speak freely."

"I want to get strong like her too..."

"Me too. I want to get stronger. I want to use more heals. Right now."

Just a moment earlier, while I was still holding Kim Isol, a cluster of light had come flying toward us.

More precisely, it was the light of a heal skill aimed at Kim Isol.

The caster was, of course, Lee Donggeul.

From behind the shattered giant stone throne inside the temple, Lee Donggeul and Baek Hwayeon had appeared.

The second I confirmed both of them were unharmed, the last of the tension ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠finally left me.

I pulled the two crying women into a tight embrace along with Kim Isol.

I didn't cry with them, but the relief that everyone was safe was completely genuine.

Only after they had finished pouring out every last tear did I finally hear what had happened.

And then—what?

They wanted to get stronger right this second?

That much was fine, but they wanted to do it here, covered head to toe in cow blood?

"It's impossible here. What are you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠two thinking in the middle of an emergency like this?"

"But there are still more monsters. Once we go outside..."

"She's right... and the others..."

"So in this situation you want to go 'heave-ho' with me and get stronger right now?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"I-I want to too..."

Aigoo, my head.

These two must have relaxed so hard the moment they saw me that they weren't thinking straight anymore.

And it wasn't just the three women in front of me who had been here.

There was also Senior Kim Chan-il and one male Awoken.

The sword Kim Isol had been holding, they told me, had been borrowed from that male hunter.

"Enough nonsense. Jang Yong-ssi and Kim Miyeon-ssi have already been secured. They're with my group right now. As for everyone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else... unfortunately... we've only found two bodies so far, but the rest probably didn't make it either under these conditions."

"I see..."

Senior Kim Chan-il was unconscious with a fractured leg.

He had other serious wounds as well, but Lee Donggeul had already healed those.

No amount of healing could fix a broken bone, though.

They had only managed a temporary splint and basic first aid.

The male Awoken, on the other hand, had barely used any magic and looked completely fine, so I put him in charge of carrying the senior.

Kim Isol was carried by Baek Hwayeon.

I would have preferred to do it myself, but we were still inside the dungeon.

A Minotaur could attack at any moment.

I needed to keep a weapon in my hands at all times for that kind of emergency.

"Then let's move out."

I planned to link up with Hong Eunyoung's group as fast as possible and get the hell out of here.

We would also grab the food and water I had stashed on the way in.

If it were just me, maybe. But dragging these fragile people into a fight against A-rank monsters was pure suicide.

Which only made me wonder how hard it must have been for Kim Isol.

"Team Leader! Isol-ssi was really amazing."

"Was she."

"At first the cows kept going 'um um um' and she had a really hard time. But then she got used to it and started winning even without my heals."

"I see."

"And then... she lured the cows toward this glowing goddess lady. There were just too many of them."

Lee Donggeul seemed determined to tell me every single detail; she chattered without a single pause.

It was a little exhausting, but the information wasn't useless.

While Kim Isol held the monsters off, the rest of the party that had been fleeing got scattered by Minotaurs that appeared from behind.

I had already heard that much from Jang Yong.

The people here now had decided to rely on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠strongest among them—Kim Isol—and had immediately turned back to find her.

Even so the monsters kept multiplying, so they had fled the main hall and run all the way into the temple.

Apparently they had the same idea I did: use the boss to thin the enemy numbers.

"But the goddess lady killed about twenty cows and then died herself. What kind of goddess does that?"

"She wasn't a goddess. She was just the boss monster."

The boss they had planned to use had died far too quickly.

They thought it was over—that they were all going to die—when Kim Isol's body suddenly began to change.

Steam rose from her entire body the same way it did during an awakening.

Then her skin peeled away and new flesh seemed to grow underneath, or something like that.

That was the cleaned-up version.

Listening to Lee Donggeul casually describe something so brutal made a chill run down my spine.

While Kim Isol was going through that, some of the monsters tried to attack the people hiding behind the stone throne—including Lee Donggeul.

They had been too busy running to heal her, so they had already written Kim Isol off as dead.

Then, suddenly, a sword came flying and cut every last one of those cows down.

That was Lee Donggeul's account.

A sword came flying?

So that's what this is...

The new skills that had been added to Kim Isol's information window.

Like Park Yuri's Lightning Sword, had Kim Isol generated her own original skill?

These definitely hadn't been there when I raised her magic to A-10.

Mind and Sword as One seemed to be something every sword user automatically gained upon becoming a Transcendent.

From Lee Donggeul's description, the sword had flown freely through the air, cutting down every monster around her.

After that Kim Isol had simply stood in place without moving an inch, cutting down every additional monster that came through the door one after another.

The monsters were terrifying, but Kim Isol herself had been so frightening that the others never even dared approach; they just hid behind the stone throne and occasionally tossed her a heal.

"I see. You did well to survive. Good job."

I lightly stroked Lee Donggeul's hair.

She closed her eyes, clearly enjoying it.

Maybe stay a little more tense? We're still inside a dungeon.

After several dozen minutes of travel we finally linked up with Hong Eunyoung's group.

Fortunately no monsters had appeared for them yet.

"We're getting out of here right now. There probably aren't any more survivors. We'll only recover the bodies that are on the way out. The ones in the main hall are too far gone to recover..."

"So this is it, then?"

"Yes. Why?"

"N-no reason. There are more survivors than I expected. Minotaurs are A-rank monsters..."

She wasn't wrong.

There had been plenty of casualties, but every single member of my old team had made it out alive.

I couldn't have asked for better luck.

But complacency was still the enemy.

"We're still a long way from exiting the dungeon. We need to stay even more careful from here on."

"I know... who doesn't know that."

Hong Eunyoung grumbled, while Ahn Jihyun kept shooting me sidelong glances without saying a word.

Still, with just the two of us—her and me—the path out of the dungeon shouldn't be much of a problem.

As long as the boss monster of the Minotaurs' home, Creta Labyrinth, didn't show up.

When we recovered the water and food, the dungeon cart was still sitting there perfectly intact.

Where the company staff had gone... they were probably all dead.

Anyway, we loaded Senior Kim Chan-il and Kim Isol into the cargo bed and set off again toward the gate.

All sorts of thoughts crowded my head.

How I had now skipped Academy attendance for both Thursday and Friday.

What Senior Ahn might be doing right now.

What I was going to do about the company going forward—my mind was a mess.

Even while thinking all that, I never let my guard down on the front or rear.

I had zero intention of lingering in this dungeon any longer than necessary.

So we began a forced march straight to the entrance without rest or sleep.

If we hadn't had wounded, I would have collected every single one of those axes and made some real money.

A-rank monster loot—those things would have sold for a fortune.

But that wasn't an option right now.

I clicked my tongue in regret.

After dumping my load into Ahn Jihyun nearly ten times over the past two days and getting almost no sleep on top of it, I was completely wrecked.

I just wanted to go home.

Lee Donggeul and Hong Eunyoung were already chatting away in that suspiciously cheerful atmosphere of theirs after the long separation.

Jang Yong and Kim Miyeon, having stuck close together through a life-or-death crisis, seemed to have developed some kind of chemistry.

They're just having a party out here.

This dungeon didn't only contain the people who had taken the right outer wall route that Senior Kim Chan-il chose.

There were people from other companies who had gone along the left outer wall or the center route.

They had probably been wiped out completely.

How was an F-rank team supposed to handle A-difficulty monsters?

My chest felt heavy.

The same thing was happening in other dungeons besides this one.

What the hell was the world coming to?

If every dungeon started overlapping like this, the whole concept of "low-difficulty dungeon" might stop meaning anything.

An S-rank beast could come crawling out of an F-rank dungeon for all we knew.

"Junghyeok-ssi..."

"Yes, Jihyun-ssi. Go ahead."

"A-are you going to let me go once we get out?"

"What would you prefer? You can just go home like this, or you can stay with me another day or two and leave with even stronger magic than you have now."

"That's... you're just going to send me back..."

"I don't remember saying anything like that. I don't have a choice either. Transcendents are special, after all."

Honestly, the fact that I had been kidnapped barely even registered anymore.

Right now I was just grateful that I had found my girls safe.

I could have simply released Ahn Jihyun as she was.

But revenge needed to be thorough so the same thing wouldn't happen again.

I planned to keep her a little longer.

At the very least I needed to push the synchronization rate to 100 percent.

I wanted to try using magic, too.

Besides, Ahn Jihyun didn't look particularly disappointed.

Had she started to trust me a little?

Or was it because of that woman Hong Eunyoung...

Ahn Jihyun immediately walked over to Hong Eunyoung and linked arms with her.

What the hell is she doing right now?

Sudden irritation flared hot in my chest.

If I left Hong Eunyoung alone she was going to cause real trouble.

First Lee Donggeul, now Ahn Jihyun—one on each arm... eyeing what's mine!?

"Hong Eunyoung-ssi."

"Yeees?"

"Come here for a second. Ahn Jihyun-ssi and everyone else, keep watching the front. Just in case."

I called Hong Eunyoung to the very back of the group.

Then I put a little distance between us.

Everyone was focused forward; no one was looking back.

Slap—!

"Hnnngh..."

"Don't make noise."

"Yeees..."

Slap—!

"Haaah... i-it hurts."

"I hit you so it would hurt."

"Hiiing... why only me..."

I gently rubbed her ass.

Then I grabbed a hard handful.

"Because your ass is the most fun to hit."

"Hing... you're so mean."

Slap—!

I kept spanking her right up until the moment someone was about to turn around.

My head, which had felt ready to die from exhaustion, cleared a little.

But the fact that I was doing this at all was already a problem.

Inside a dangerous dungeon, with F-rank people and even non-Awoken wounded present...

It was proof that my brain was completely fried from fatigue.

Why hadn't I noticed?

That I wasn't in my right mind right now.

BOOOOM—!

Rumble rumble rumble...

We were almost at the entrance.

The fountain that had frozen mid-flow was right in front of us; once we passed it we would enter the corridor where the gate was visible in the distance.

And of course that was the exact moment.

Noise erupted from every direction and clouds of dust billowed up.

The sound of buildings collapsing was deafening.

"W-what is it? H-hyung-nim!"

"Team Leader, I'm scared."

Everyone was panicking.

They had all started to relax the closer we got to the exit, thinking it was finally over, which only made it worse.

After more than twelve hours of forced march they were exhausted to the bone.

Who the hell is trying to stop us now?

"Don't tell me..."

If it was Minotaurs, it was only a matter of time.

I still had more than half my magic left.

The others looked nearly empty, but I alone would be enough.

But then—

I caught a glimpse of the source of the chaos.

Yes, only a glimpse.

Because it was extremely far away.

Yet it was so enormous that the distance meant nothing; its entire body was still clearly visible even from here.

The boss monster of Creta Labyrinth.

Daedalus.