Scattered Through the Dungeon
But my NTL radar never kicked into gear.
It would be best to prioritize the cadets' safety for now.
...Fine.
I pouted and contacted Song Ara on my smartwatch. I'd already collected every cadet's contact information just in case something like this happened, and of the lot, Song Ara was the one I was closest to — so I called her first.
The line barely rang before her voice crackled through the smartwatch, static and all.
"Teach! Are you okay?"
"That's my line.... Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Everyone freaked out at first, but we've got our heads on straight now."
One weight off my chest, at least.
"Haa... what the hell is even going on..."
"It seems like a dungeon gimmick."
"A gimmick?"
Yoon Jia gave me a brief rundown. Every dungeon, she explained, had its own set of gimmicks like this. The problem was that so little was still known about dungeons that when something went wrong, the only real option was to improvise on the spot. Personnel-separation gimmicks like this one, she added, didn't happen often.
Piecing together what Yoon Jia and Song Ara had told me, I worked out the shape of it: we'd been split into three groups. Me and Yoon Jia. Six cadets and three guards. And the two Heroes. Three groups, cleanly divided.
"Ah! W-wait a second. I've got a call."
I figured it was one of the Heroes who'd gone the other way — but I knew almost immediately that it wasn't.
"Yeah... just a minute... a little quieter..."
"..."
Yoon Jia stepped well out of earshot so her conversation partner wouldn't be overheard, then started talking. It was Go Chungshin. Had to be. I left her to it and focused on the cadets first.
"Cadet Song Ara. Hold position and check your surroundings. I'll call back once I've got a better read on the situation. And if anything happens, contact me immediately."
"Yes, sir!"
The way she answered with that much confidence even in a situation like this told me everything I needed to know about her temperament — no further assessment required.
I hung up and approached Yoon Jia under stealth. She never noticed me coming, still deep in her call with Go Chungshin.
"Oppa... I told you not to contact me recklessly..."
(—!!)
Yoon Jia's voice came through crystal clear, but whatever was being said on the other end of the line was muffled beyond recognition. He'd probably enabled some function that kept the caller's side from leaking out.
If I just let her calm Go Chungshin down, I wouldn't be Sung Suho.
I walked right up and spoke.
"Instructor Yoon Jia. Did you get through to the others?"
"Eek! N-no! J-just a second!"
(—!!)
Yoon Jia frantically ended the call and turned to face me, the flustered look still plastered across her features.
"Th-that was a personal call..."
"Ah... well, can you try reaching the two who got separated?"
"Yes, right away."
Yoon Jia scrambled through the contacts saved on her smartwatch and dialed. Park Huiyeon picked up and laid out the situation with casual ease.
"Let's eat first."
"...Excuse me?"
At my baffled response, Park Huiyeon laughed and continued.
"When a dungeon splits people up like this, the monster density usually thins out too. You don't need to worry much about the cadets."
"I see..."
"I'm more worried about the two of you, honestly. You do know how to fight, right?"
"...Yes."
How to put it... There was no deliberate malice in her tone, but I could feel the lack of real trust in me coming through loud and clear.
"Be careful. Yoon Jia is Church personnel. If something happens to her, it'll be a problem."
"...Understood."
A completely different person from the one who dealt with the cadets. Half concern, half unease, mixed in equal measure.
I ended the call and immediately dialed Song Ara to pass along the situation.
"For now, post a watch and take an hour's rest, then move out."
"Yes, sir! Got it~"
With everything sorted, I turned to Yoon Jia.
"We should rest a bit as well."
"Okay..."
She still seemed bothered by how abruptly that earlier call had been cut off. Unlike before, she'd calmed down enough to read my mood — and that was keeping her from answering the phone. Her smartwatch kept lighting up, and she kept ignoring it.
Just block him already. What a pain.
Given her personality, she doesn't seem the type to block phone calls entirely.
Fair enough. Blocking whispers and blocking phone calls are different animals.
Being alone with Yoon Jia was, without question, a good situation. There was just one critical problem.
"Aren't you hungry?"
"Ah, I'm fine for now..."
All our supplies were with the guards. Of all the times to get separated — right as we were about to eat lunch — we were looking at the very real possibility of starving our way through the search for our companions.
"Let's head out early, then. If we end up going hungry until dinner, our concentration will only get worse."
"Okay."
I lit the smartwatch flashlight and took the lead. Yoon Jia followed carefully behind me.
"—!"
An insect-type monster collapsed to the floor with a short death cry. I glanced back at Yoon Jia.
"You all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
She held up her smartwatch light from behind me, and I put arrows clean through the heads of every monster the beam revealed. Four of them total. Roughly four seconds to put them down.
Between the boost to my magic power and the low difficulty of the dungeon, handling monsters was easy enough. Even the biggest problem down here — the visibility — barely registered as an obstacle for me. One look was all my aiming skill needed.
As I checked the corpses to confirm they were dead, Yoon Jia's voice floated up from behind me, laced with genuine admiration.
"Wow... you're incredible. Taking them out that fast in a situation like this..."
"Haha... I think you're giving me a little too much credit."
"No, I'm not! In conditions like these, most people make at least one or two mistakes..."
I'd figured she was just buttering me up to be polite, but there was real sincerity in it. This was only a low-rank dungeon, and the monsters were the same kind the cadets regularly trained against up in the mountains. Getting praised this hard for putting down creatures like that felt almost funny — but Yoon Jia clearly saw it differently. The dungeon gimmick, the zero visibility — most people would have been rattled, and the fact that I was handling it so calmly was what impressed her.
What she rated highest of all, though, was that I didn't seem bothered by the miasma in the slightest.
"Even weak miasma is still miasma. I've never seen a first-timer handle a dungeon this well."
"Haha..."
Not much I could say to that. Telling her I'd done it with Enel wasn't exactly an option.
Progressing through the dungeon itself wasn't a problem. I checked in with Song Ara at intervals to confirm the cadets were safe. The real issue was that no matter how far we pushed, we never ran into the cadets or the Church Heroes.
All three groups — mine and Yoon Jia's, the cadets', and the Church Heroes' — were advancing along straight corridors. The place we'd started had been a dead end, so my calculation had been simple: keep going long enough and we'd have to meet. An hour had already passed, and I still didn't feel like we were getting any closer.
I was walking with my ears pricked when it happened.
Grrrrrlk...
It wasn't my stomach. I momentarily doubted my own ears and checked over the comms.
Armonia, are you hungry?
It is not me.
...Sorry.
I could feel the frosty edge of indignation in her voice. I turned around to check on Yoon Jia. She had her head bowed, fidgeting restlessly, and turned the question back on me instead.
"W-what is it?"
"Nothing. Thought I misheard..."
Grrrrrrrlk...
"Haha... yeah, I don't think I misheard."
"Uuu..."
Even in the dark of the cave, Yoon Jia's face had gone so red it practically glowed. I grinned at her.
"Hungry?"
"N-no! It's not that..."
Grrrrrrrl...
Watching her tremble with her head down, I spoke over the comms.
Armonia. Do women prefer bread, or rice cakes?
"Do you like glutinous rice cakes? Or mochi donuts?"
"...What?"
Yoon Jia, still shuddering with embarrassment, lifted her head at Sung Suho's words and looked at him. He was holding a rice cake and a piece of bread, each about the size of a billiard ball, one in each hand — and he asked again.
"Which of the two do you prefer?"
"I-I... a-anything is fine..."
"Go ahead and pick what you want."
Yoon Jia started to wrestle with herself. Even as hungry as she was, accepting such a small piece of bread or rice cake felt too pitiful — too much like imposing. But turning down someone's kindness outright was rude, and she hated that even more.
Just take it.
Yoon Jia was the type who went out of her way to avoid the awkwardness that came from refusing a favor. She could always repay him later. For now, she'd accept.
"Th-then I'll take... the bread..."
"Here you go."
Sung Suho smiled and handed her the bread. Yoon Jia glanced at his face as she carefully peeled open the wrapper. In a cave where even a growling stomach echoed like thunder, the crinkle of packaging rang out absurdly loud. But her brain was already under the full command of her empty stomach, and she started eating the mochi donut without further ceremony.
She was still watching his reaction as she ate — but the moment the sweet-and-salty bread and chewy rice flour spread through her mouth, her appetite control snapped, and she finished the whole thing in seconds.
"Ah..."
Sung Suho smiled at her lingering look of regret and held out the rice cake.
"Uh...? That..."
"Go on. I'm fine."
"B-but..."
Her hands were still trying to refuse, but her eyes had already surrendered to the rice cake. Like the Eye of Sauron, that glutinous rice cake was pulling her hand toward it. In the brief moment she hesitated, Sung Suho pressed it into her palm.
"Eat."
"Uuu..."
Dominated at last by the Absolute Rice Cake, Yoon Jia stole one more glance at him — then stuffed the entire thing into her mouth.
Haa... this is so embarrassing...
The truth was, Yoon Jia had already been hungry when they entered the dungeon. So the moment Sung Suho offered her bread and a rice cake, her mind had been hijacked on the spot, and she'd wolfed both down. The problem was that she'd eaten everything herself.
"I-I'm so sorry..."
"Hm? I gave them to you to eat. Why are you apologizing?"
Sung Suho just smiled and started walking again. Yoon Jia followed behind him, gradually coming back to her senses.
Whew... still, I feel human again now that I've eaten.
They ran into another wave of monsters as they pressed deeper into the dungeon, and Sung Suho put them down in an instant. Until a moment ago, Yoon Jia had been too focused on her hunger to notice much of anything — but watching him work, a question surfaced.
I really feel like I've seen him somewhere before...
That first day, after talking with him, she'd been certain she'd met him before — she just couldn't place where. Now, watching his archery, the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together in a clumsy, half-formed way. And yet no face came to mind.
There are so many people who use bows. It's hard to pin down...
Yoon Jia was still turning over every real-world encounter she could remember when her smartwatch lit up with an incoming call. She looked at the screen, made a pained face, and glanced over at Sung Suho, who was still checking the monster corpses.
Haa... I told him it's dangerous and not to contact me...
Yoon Jia declined Go Chungshin's call and left him a short message.
Even if it meant catching some of Go Chungshin's resentment, she decided shutting the device off was the right call. The moment she powered down her smartwatch, Sung Suho walked over and spoke.
"We've covered a fair bit of ground. Want to rest for a while?"
"Okay."
Sung Suho and Yoon Jia found a spot well clear of the corpses and sat down. Yoon Jia looked at him and sank back into thought.
Where have I seen him...
And as she fretted over it, her eyelids began to grow heavy.
Is it because I finally filled my stomach...? I'm getting sleepy...
Leaning against the cave wall, Yoon Jia drifted off to sleep.