Chapter 14
Chapter 14
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 14
Chapter Title: A Feeling I've Never Experienced Before
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‘Full Moon's elites were so strong-willed that even getting them to agree on one thing was no easy task.
Yet the moment they first laid eyes on Chrog, they all, uncharacteristically, shared the exact same thought.
‘The Leader's gonna lose her mind over that face...’
‘It's exactly the Leader's type.’
A petite frame and big round eyes.
Chubby cheeks flushed with a peachy glow.
The healer who had been suddenly thrown into the mix matched perfectly with their Leader's weakness for anything cute.
Of course, the Leader desperately hid that preference to avoid anyone catching on.
But tastes like that don't just vanish because you try to bury them.
The guild members had figured it out ages ago; they just never let on, out of respect for her pride.
‘You seeing this, Leader?’
The woman wrapped head to toe in bandages cast her gaze toward the sky.
A clear blue sky without a single cloud.
In its midst, so faint you wouldn't notice unless you looked closely, a subtle ripple wavered.
It was a surveillance camera attached under the pretense of collecting combat data from guild members during gate entries and providing feedback.
Suddenly, she wondered what the Leader's face looked like right now, watching this girl live through the camera.
‘Maybe she's grinning ear to ear?’
Or pretending not to care?
Either way, picturing the Leader glued to the monitor made her stomach twist for no reason.
The man with the hood pulled low felt the same.
His eyes burned with an envy that had twisted into jealousy.
Their reactions were, in a way, inevitable.
She was the one person who had unconditionally embraced them when everyone else pointed fingers and called them monsters. The founder of Full Moon Guild.
The first to claim the number one ranking spot.
The one person in Korea no one could match in raw power.
Someone so extraordinary had treated them without discrimination, despite how the world shunned them.
Naturally, Full Moon's members harbored deep respect and awe for their Leader, emotions that had gradually warped into thirst and possessiveness.
So of course, this girl who perfectly matched the Leader's tastes wouldn't sit well with them.
As the two eyed the little girl before them as a rival...
One person alone harbored different thoughts.
The necromancer, Ha Do-yeon.
‘She's so cute... The Leader's gonna love her.’
Do-yeon's mind was filled with worries: Would the girl get scared once inside the gate? Would she get hurt? What if she burst into tears—should she comfort her then?
‘She doesn't look like she has much combat experience...’
The gate they were about to enter was undead-attribute.
No matter how you sliced it, it seemed too much for such a small girl to handle.
‘...She'll be okay, right?’
Just as needless worry crept in...
“Everyone, please take care of...”
The girl's round eyes suddenly turned her way.
In that instant, her heart clenched tight, and sweat began pouring out.
She couldn't breathe properly.
Her chest felt stuffy, and her vision blurred hazily.
‘...Why is this happening all of a sudden?’
It was a strange symptom she'd never felt before.
There was no way eye contact with the healer could cause this.
She'd run through countless gates with their exclusive healer Kim Sae-byeol, and she'd never felt anything like it.
‘This is weird.’
Do-yeon wiped the streaming sweat and tilted her head.
With a nagging sense that something was off, she cautiously stepped into the gate.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Undead-attribute gates made every single healer skill crucial.
The air inside the gate was laced with corrupting poison; breathe in too much, and you'd suffer deadly debuffs.
On top of that, undead monsters relentlessly inflicted curses, fear, confusion, recovery block, and more...
The problem was, without the healer's Purify skill, none of it could be cleansed.
The necromancer Ha Do-yeon was immune to all those debuffs, so she was fine.
‘Screw up once, and I'll strip your soul bare.’
‘Botch a skill, and you're dead by my hand.’
The rest of the party wasn't so lucky.
Clearing an undead-attribute gate without a healer was next to impossible.
And yet...
“...Oh?”
“......”
They began to see the little girl they'd been sizing up in a new light.
It started the moment a lich hit someone with a mental curse. A fast, precise Purify came right in.
No prior briefing, and mental debuffs weren't even visible—how had she timed it perfectly?
‘Just luck...?’
They figured it was coincidence.
But even during moments of carelessness, a Shield was already up, as if anticipated.
Reinforcement buffs slipped in right at the peak of their damage cycles.
‘...Well, I'll be.’
Thanks to her impeccable skill timing, the dealers could unleash their full power.
The notoriously tough undead monsters started crumbling like tofu.
“Watch out! A lich revived in the right corner!”
“The vibrations feel off—looks like a monster wave incoming from the front. Focus forward while you fight!”
Even better, this little girl was spotting details the frontline dealers missed and taking command of the battlefield.
They'd expected her to freak out at the grotesque monsters and run.
Instead, her eyes sparkled as she led the charge, like a tiny, brave pup.
“This healer's quick on the uptake. I like her.”
“...Not bad.”
Bit by bit, they were starting to warm up to the little one.
Finally, after wiping out all the gate's monsters save the boss...
“...C-Could you, um, back up a little...?”
A suspicious noise came from behind, followed by...
“Kehack...! Kek...!”
The necromancer collapsing, vomiting blood.
She was one of their top elites, the strongest in raw power among the elites.
And she gets ambushed out of nowhere?
In an undead-attribute gate, practically her home turf?
Impossible.
Bandages and hood exchanged baffled looks, then pieced together the scene before them.
A faint glow spreading from the healer's hand. The same-colored light rippling over the fallen skeleton.
In an instant, they got it.
“No way... She got mouthy with a skeleton, so you slammed her with a heal?”
The hood ducked, stifling laughter.
How does a tiny body like that pack such attitude?
“Uhahaha! Team kill... Ahahaha!”
Pfft... Pfbt...
The healer they'd seen as a thorn at first was now genuinely growing on them.
‘...What the hell just happened?’
Do-yeon staggered to her feet from the sudden shock.
The girl approached cautiously and spoke.
“Um... Are you okay? You looked really unwell for a while now, so I thought a heal might help...”
Her face looked ready to burst into tears any second.
No malice or intent in her trembling hands and fidgeting—no trace at all.
But the problem was...
“...Ugh.”
The more her emotions flared, the harder it got to breathe.
“I-I'm fine. As leader, I should've warned you beforehand... My fault...”
Do-yeon quickly raised a hand to calm the girl.
Then she began explaining her situation.
She looked human on the outside, but awakening dark-affinity skills had turned her undead-adjacent.
Heals and Purifies caused pain instead of recovery, and so on.
“So, you don't need to use skills on me.”
The girl's face filled with shock at the words.
Tears welled up in her eyes almost immediately.
“S-Sorry...”
But the way she squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to cry in front of others, was just too adorable.
“It's fine. My fault for not taking care of myself. Thanks for worrying.”
No sooner had Do-yeon finished than the girl's brows furrowed in an inverted V.
A tear dropped from her strained eyes, then streamed down both cheeks.
Her quivering lips as she sniffled were utterly cute.
‘...So cute.’
Do-yeon unconsciously reached out and gently patted the girl's head.
And...
One person had watched the entire scene from start to finish, silently.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ “Leader. Staring at the screen like that will ruin your eyes.”
Full Moon Guild's Leader.
Lee Hyun, wielder of the Moon Spirit Sword.
Right now, her eyes were locked on the monitor, as if she'd be sucked right in.
‘She's crying...’
Why?
Scared of the undead monsters?
Or freaked out by Do-yeon's scary face?
Having never learned to empathize with others' emotions since childhood, she couldn't comprehend the girl's tears on screen.
But one thing was crystal clear: her crying face was unbearably cute.
“Se-yeon. Do you know why that kid's crying?”
“She messed up, but the other person thanked her instead, so she's crying from emotion?”
Lee Hyun's lips parted slightly in disbelief.
“People cry over something like that too...?”
...An impactfully cute reason.
How could a kid be this cute, from her looks to her crying?
“Leader, work's piling up. Time to leave the monitoring room.”
Reluctantly rising at her chief secretary's urging, she suddenly felt a strange prick in her chest.
‘No way, am I feeling...’
Facing this sensation for the first time in her life, Lee Hyun quietly furrowed her brow.
“What's wrong?”
“Hm? Nothing.”
It was the moment the woman who felt nothing for others' pain experienced 'pity' for the first time in her life.