Sit Down!!!
Lee Gyeon had weathered countless crises over his career as a field Hunter.
And yet, it had been a long while since a situation had given him such a splitting headache that he actually wanted to run away.
It hadn't been like this even when he was dodging the avalanche that had swept down across the entire sector while pulling people out of the rubble….
“…….”
Why did this feel exactly like the time of the joint operation with Field Team Na….
No. He shouldn't be dredging up those horrific memories right now.
First things first. Think about what I need to handle before anything else….
Instead of tearing at his hair, he pinched the bridge of his nose, smoothed it out again, and looked ahead.
Amid the overheated atmosphere, a shouting match had broken out.
“People are injured! Hand that kid over, now!”
“Hand over a child? Does that even make sense to you? Stop being so high-handed and just wait a little!”
“I'm in agony here! If it were you, would you be so patient and composed? Get out of the way and give me the kid!”
“Do not treat a child like an object. And I'm not going anywhere, you bastard!”
Well then…. Someone has to step in.
Lee Gyeon wedged his arm between the men who were on the verge of lunging at each other and barred the way.
“……Calm yourselves, please. In a situation like this, all the more reason to stay composed and adhere to the company regulations and dungeon safety protocols….”
“He's the one who started acting all threatening!”
“This is getting us nowhere! Easy for you to say—you're not the ones in pain, are you?”
He resented the way circumstances had spiraled out of control so suddenly… but he accepted it quickly enough as well.
Wasting time on emotions would be less productive than moving my head and my body.
So Lee Gyeon thought as he shoved himself between people butting heads and puffing out chests at one another.
At some point, things had slipped clean out of his control and descended into chaos…. But when, exactly?
About thirty minutes ago, to be precise.
From the depths of the mine's inner passages, a jumble of footsteps had come echoing toward them.
He had swallowed dryly and fixed his gaze on the source of the noise.
Just before the landslide, a group message had been sent out via watch to everyone in the dungeon from Zone B.
The Elumis seem to have suddenly grown agitated.Strange noises coming from beyond the Zone B mine.Send a rescue request immediately.
But it had been too late.
The landslide had struck before anyone had even read the messages, let alone responded to them.
As of now, nothing had been confirmed with his own two eyes.
Was the one who triggered this landslide truly the Elumis?
He was building up worst-case assumptions, suspicion and wariness stacking layer upon layer, when—
The footsteps grew louder, and the figure walking out from deep within the cave began…. to reveal itself.
“……!”
A person bleeding from the head.
A person carried along, unconscious.
Even a person limping on a bad leg, barely staying upright.
The survivors from Zone B, then.
He hurriedly called out to the man leading the group.
He recognized the face.
“Hunter Lee Jooshin of the Product Development Appraisal Team, I presume?”
“……Yes! That's me.”
“Report. What happened?”
“The Elumis near the Zone B mine suddenly lost control and went on a rampage. Every attempt to restrain it failed, but…. thankfully, no one died. We all evacuated into the mine and walked out here on foot…. There are a lot of wounded.”
Lee Gyeon's eyes went to the injured people visible behind him.
A mess.
No one appeared to be teetering on the edge of death, but their conditions were still serious.
And the moment he registered that, one person rose to his mind reflexively.
He made a deliberate effort not to glance behind him.
Or more precisely—not to look at the child who should be waiting behind his back…. together with his guardian.
Nam Taejae.
A-rank healing Hunter.
Hardly a sight a child should be seeing. But right now, Taejae's help is indispensable.
According to the reports he'd received beforehand, Taejae was the only healing Hunter currently inside this dungeon.
….Given the circumstances, Lee Gyeon had no choice but to fall into a dilemma.
Going strictly by dungeon safety protocols and company regulations, Nam Taejae—a healing Hunter under BOND's employ—was duty-bound to faithfully carry out his assignment the moment casualties occurred.
Namely, treatment of the injured.
Except that this healing Hunter was a seven-year-old child….
What if seeing the wounded up close to treat them leaves him traumatized?
Their injuries were nothing like the scrapes and minor wounds carried by the people who had evacuated from Zone A earlier.
….Fortunately, Teacher Na Hwiyeon had swiftly covered the boy's eyes and ears, so Taejae had no idea what was happening.
“…….”
But there's no way around it, is there.
Because, in truth, there was a far bigger problem than this.
How long ago was the rescue request submitted—and still not a word back?
That single fact alone was already giving Lee Gyeon a headache, and now, on top of it, another dilemma had landed in his lap.
This means asking the wounded to just endure their pain indefinitely, with no telling when rescue will even begin.
….In that case, the best course would be to ask the teacher and Taejae for their understanding, arrange things so the child felt as little distress as possible, and request the treatment….
And so, just as Lee Gyeon was arriving at a conclusion after agonizing over it—
The appraisal team Hunter, Lee Jooshin, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“We heard there's a healing-type Hunter here! Healing Hunter! Are you here? Come help treat the wounded, quickly!”
“……!”
“…….”
Every gaze in the room snapped toward Taejae, glued to Na Hwiyeon's back—then jerked away in a hurry.
But the awakened Lee Jooshin didn't miss those darting, guilty eyes.
“Don't tell me…. that child is a healing Awakened?”
“…….”
“…….”
The silence stretched on.
And that silence was answer enough.
Lee Jooshin looked back at the wounded behind him, then nodded as if he'd made up his mind.
“……I don't care. Please, just see to the injured. Quickly.”
With that, he reached out blindly toward Taejae.
And then it began.
This whole fiasco.
“Give the child time to have the situation explained and to give his consent.”
The woman who politely blocked the man's outstretched hand spoke up. She was the one who'd been slipping snacks from her own pocket to Taejae all this while.
“……There's no time for that. Do you have any idea what kind of pain these people are in right now? They barely made it here on their own two feet.”
“I know it hurts. But does it really make sense to force a child into healing you the instant you want relief from your own pain?”
“Nobody's forcing anyone! That boy is simply doing what a healing Awakened is supposed to do!”
Then one or two more people piled into the argument, factions split down the middle, and it turned ugly fast.
The brawl that followed was what had produced the disaster unfolding now.
“It hurts! I'm in agony here! You said he's a healing Awakened—we're asking for treatment, so what business is it of yours?!”
“You lose your mind along with your composure the second it starts hurting? Get a grip—Taejae is a seven-year-old child. Wait your turn, and if he offers to treat you, then you get treated!”
“Forget all that, just drag the little brat over here!”
“Shut up. Don't swear at a kid. Honestly, you'd be better off dead.”
As the situation hurtled beyond anyone's control, Lee Gyeon reached a swift conclusion.
He was not the right person to bring this situation under control.
If everyone present were Awakened, I could simply subdue them by force and be done with it.
But the majority here were civilian researchers and miners.
And silver-tongued I am not. That slacker Kang Howon of Team Na would be far better suited to this sort of thing….
While Lee Gyeon racked his brain to squeeze out some workable alternative, some miracle plan to break the deadlock—
“Everyone, step aside. We don't have the luxury of waiting.”
Hunter Lee Jooshin finally exploded, shoving through the crowd by brute force and grabbing hold of Taejae's arm, come what may.
“……!”
The people screaming at each other were caught off guard by Lee Jooshin's sudden eruption.
Lee Gyeon, who had been trying to shield the wounded's interests as best he could, was startled too, and flung himself forward to stop it—
“SIT. DOWN!!!”
-THUD!!
With that thunderous bark from a grown man, the knee of the appraisal team Hunter who had yanked the child's arm slammed into the floor at terrifying speed.
“…….”
In an instant, the cavern fell so silent you could have heard a cricket's heartbeat.
What…. what just happened?
Without even the presence of mind to withdraw his reflexively outstretched hand, Lee Gyeon turned, dazed, toward the person who had barked the order at the Hunter.
…Teacher Na Hwiyeon?
He wasn't sure he'd seen it right.
Lee Jooshin, kneeling on the ground, his soul knocked clean out of him.
The crowd, thrown into confusion right along with him.
And a…. very angry teacher.
“???”
I'm the kind of person who watches a situation unfold before acting.
Meaning: I'm an outsider who doesn't understand what's going on, and given that I don't know the first thing about company regulations or any of the rest of it, I don't act rashly.
….But watching a pack of grown adults brawl like animals over a single child made my temper blow straight through the top of my head. Couldn't be helped.
The moment I saw that man roughly yanking Taejae's arm, I saw red.
Has he lost his mind?
I used my ability on instinct—and at a speed that was unusual, even for me.
I brought up the status window, and outside of Lee Gyeon and Taejae, there was exactly one Awakened present.
This guy's the Awakened one, right?
Lee Jooshin, C-rank appraisal-type Awakened.
『 Register the target officially to unlock greater access! 』
『 Would you like to register? 』
『 Lee Jooshin (C) has been officially registered! :D 』
『 Lee Jooshin (C) : Awaiting command/education. 』
“SIT. DOWN!!!”
『 Lee Jooshin (C) has received a command. 』
-THUD!!
In a swirl of dust, a grown man crumpled to the floor like a reed.
“…….”
“Hoo….”
Still not satisfying.
When the man's hand naturally peeled away as he hit the ground, I turned and examined Taejae's arm.
Th-that lunatic—there are marks on him…!
“Taejae, are you okay?”
Good grief. Gripping a child hard enough to leave bruises.
Is this psycho even in his right mind?
It wasn't as though anyone couldn't see that the situation called for Taejae's help.
But the man's method was flat-out wrong.
In a disaster like this, what you need is an attitude that looks out for the most vulnerable first.
Never mind that his whole body was wracked with pain.
Grown adults, honestly….
I let out a sigh and addressed the man staring up at me blankly from the floor.
“You were so very attentive to the suffering of the wounded—did you simply not have the presence of mind to consider the shock and confusion a child would be put through?”
Get a grip, and stop spouting nonsense at a kid.
“…….”
“I'm not injured, and I am fully prepared to do my utmost to help the wounded, for your sake. But if this child's help is truly so desperately needed right now…. then ask. Request his consent. Do not dismiss his opinion just because he's a child.”
“…….”
“A child is a person who thinks, just as we do. And not a single soul here has the right to exploit this boy's ability.”
Somebody has to teach them these things, right?
Isn't that something you're supposed to just know once you're an adult?
Did you all skip childhood and jump straight to adulthood?
My head was burning hot, but at the same time I understood how grave the situation was, so it cooled quickly enough.
…I knew perfectly well, even without being told, that they were in terrible pain—and I had been planning to ask Taejae myself.
But before I could even open my mouth, a full-blown brawl broke out…. Ugh.
Still, if the boy says no, there's nothing I can do about it.
With a sigh rising unbidden, I forced my expression back into something gentle and called for Taejae.
“Taejae.”
“…….”
But there was no answer—only a gaze, fixed clearly on something ahead.
And in that moment, I realized.
While I'd been checking his arm, the hand covering the boy's eyes had come away.
In a flash, the small hand I held slipped free.
“……!”
And Taejae, wrenching himself out of my grip, broke into a run.
Toward the wounded, bleeding out on the ground.
“I have to heal them…. I have to help them.”