088. Thorn Grasslands (4)
088. Thorn Grasslands (4)
The previous day.
After the party launch ceremony ended, Shin Se-hee finished registering the party with the Hunter Management Bureau and called me right away.
"......Joo Tae-rin?"
─ Yes. That woman must hold considerable ill will toward me. She's bound to try something....... Do you really have to go with Thorn Grasslands......?
"Isn't this the perfect place to test where we stand right now? And you said every other available reservation was a waste of time."
─ Well, that's true, but.......
I let out a dry laugh at Shin Se-hee's hesitant voice.
"You don't need to worry. I may not know this Joo Tae-rin, but I do know the Darkness Guild. And I've got a pretty good idea how those bastards are going to come at us."
The Darkness Guild.
In terms of scale, they're a notch below the Shin family, but they're still a pretty sizable trash guild.
They were villains who would pop up while a Player-controlled party was clearing dungeons—disrupting, sabotaging, getting in the way.
Back to the present.
I looked coldly at the ponytailed woman in front of me and the horde of Black Hedgehogs swarming in behind her.
'Damn, she dragged in a shit-ton of monsters.'
Might as well hear what she has to say first.
"Who the hell are you people? This is our reserved route. And what's with the parade of monsters?"
The ponytailed woman, Joo Tae-rin, who'd been staring at me with a dumb expression, twisted the corner of her mouth and shrugged.
"I heard this was a new party managed by Cheonhwa. I got curious how impressive you people really were, so I came."
"You must've been pretty damn curious about our party's skills, huh? Seeing as you brought a whole audience."
I gestured with my eyes toward the Black Hedgehogs standing behind her like zombies.
"Hmm....... You're not too stupid to figure out what's going on, and I guess that's what you'd expect from a man Cheonhwa's backing. Got some nerve, and you're awfully relaxed."
Joo Tae-rin's voice dripped with scorn.
"Yeah, take away the nerve and I'm a corpse. Organ traffickers would probably love me, actually."
The party members around me twitched their eyebrows and shot me sidelong glances. Looks that said, You're joking about that?
Pfft!
But Joo Tae-rin burst out cackling, like my sense of humor was exactly her thing.
"You're good-looking, and I like your nerve. Seems like a waste to end it here. How about ditching Cheonhwa and joining our side?"
Out of nowhere, she threw out a recruitment pitch.
"Wouldn't I be better than a woman as rotten inside as Cheonhwa?"
An ugly gleam of desire flickered in Joo Tae-rin's eyes.
"If I cross over to your side, do the rest of my party members get to live?"
"Ah, that's a problem. I need to screw Cheonhwa over today."
"Yeah? Then I'll pass."
When I shot down her offer in one stroke, Joo Tae-rin's face went blank.
"......Are you actually stupid? Or is this some pathetic hero complex? I'm giving you one last chance, and you're picking suicide?"
"Well, whether it's suicide or not, guess we'll see......."
I looked squarely at her and grinned.
"I prefer a woman who's dark on the inside over a woman who's dark on the outside."
At the comparison between her and Shin Se-hee, Joo Tae-rin's face hardened, and the Damage Dealer beside her raised a weapon.
"You little shit......."
"Enough."
"......But, Boss!"
"Did you forget why we dragged these things here?"
After snapping coldly at her party members, Joo Tae-rin turned her head back and sneered.
"I'm very curious how long that pretty face you're running your mouth with will last."
I looked at her and sorted out my thoughts.
'If this were the game, I could've just taken them out right here.......'
Today was the Utopia Party's first official engagement.
I couldn't have us getting tangled up with a trash guild like this and getting dragged into something ugly.
Which is why what I picked was the Unknown Route.
A route I'd already experienced once before with Gukbap in Camela Forest.
If the standard set routes are Normal Mode, then the Unknown Route is Hard Mode.
And the Unknown Route connects to all the other routes.
Meaning, you can use the Unknown Route to move to any other route at any time.
So why'd we flounder around in Camela Forest if I knew all that?
It's basically an unwritten rule to skip the Hard Mode of those low-level dungeons.
Clearing it doesn't give especially good rewards, and the EXP bonus is a pitiful trickle—you're way better off spending that time running another dungeon once.
Sure, I'd run them once or twice back when I was a newbie, but I never bothered memorizing the E-Rank Unknown Route with nothing but trash-mob goblins.
'But from the B-Rank Thorn Grasslands on up, that's a different story.'
It's no exaggeration to say I've got every single route thoroughly mapped and every possible shortcut burned into my brain.
When your wallet was thin, you learned to grind like hell.
"Gukbap. Start it."
Once my thoughts were sorted, I spoke to Lee Yu-ri.
She'd been standing there from the start with her shield up in a rock-solid stance. She nodded.
Lee Yu-ri drew a dagger from the holder on her thigh and struck her shield.
Clang—!!!
A clear, ringing echo.
Ripples of Mana spread out from the shield, and the Black Hedgehogs, standing corpse-still with stupefied expressions, twitched.
"......Grrr?"
"......Grrrk!?"
The light returned to the eyes of the monsters behind her, triggered by Lee Yu-ri's Taunt Skill.
Joo Tae-rin spun around, her face aghast.
"......What—y-you—what is this!?"
Seeing the bitch's panicked expression, I let out a snicker—it felt like something that'd been sitting heavy in my gut just slid right out.
Clang—!!!
"ROOOOAR—!!!"
"SKREEE—!!!"
"SKREEE!!!"
Soon, the intoxicated monsters let out howls that thundered across the grasslands.
"Ga-eul sunbae, is the full-party Acceleration ready?"
"......Yeah!"
HUMMM—
The skill Im Ga-eul had drawn out at full power settled over every party member.
"All right then. Shall we run?"
I turned to bolt—then twisted my head back and shot a mocking grin at Joo Tae-rin, who was still standing there with a stupid look on her face.
"You'd better run like hell. Otherwise you'll get trampled to death by the friends you brought along."
Claaang—!!!!
With the sound of Lee Yu-ri's shield as our starting gun, we broke into a sprint.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud
"SKREEE!!!!!!"
And the horde of Black Hedgehogs, bewitched by the shield's sound, surged forward in a mad frenzy.
The Darkness Guild party, caught between the monsters and us, had no choice but to chase desperately after us if they didn't want to get crushed.
* * *
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—!!!
"SKREEE!!!!!!"
From behind came the cries of the Black Hedgehogs and the mass pounding of their feet.
The creatures that had been placidly following along, drunk on Bewitching Incense, were now raging as if they'd been shot full of some kind of aphrodisiac.
Joo Tae-rin and her party members' faces had gone deathly pale.
"Oh, sh-shit!"
"Run!!!!"
"Fuck!!! Run for it!!!!"
'How...... did this happen......?'
Even as she moved her legs, Joo Tae-rin was mired in confusion.
Her original plan had been to confront the Utopia Party,
then get them to attack the Black Hedgehogs first.
Their attacks would wake the monsters from the Bewitching Incense, but residual traces would still cling to her and her party members' bodies, so they'd draw less aggro by comparison.
All she'd have to do was slip away in the meantime. Simple.
But the moment she confirmed who that rumored party leader was,
greed rose up inside her.
A new plan branched off from it, and she made him the recruitment offer.
She'd been aiming for the title of the one who saved the party leader after Cheonhwa's party failed and barely escaped.
That way she could screw Cheonhwa over and earn the Shin family's favor. Killing two birds with one stone.
That was the calculation, so she'd never expected Jin Yu-ha to reject her so flatly and immediately.
In this situation, there was nothing he could do, after all.
But this lunatic had dumped an entire drum of oil onto already-igniting straw.
She couldn't even peel off to the side if she wanted to.
All around them, monsters in a frenzy were stamping and churning, and from above, a rain of poison thorns kept pouring down.
They were struggling just to keep themselves alive.
There was no choice but to chase after the heels of the Utopia Party running up ahead.
'Why the hell are those bastards so fast!!!'
Jin Yu-ha was in the lead, with the Tank in the very back running and beating her shield.
Even the woman in the middle, who looked like their Support, seemed to be struggling, but the speed she was running at was no joke.
Fast enough that the arrow-rain shooting from above couldn't even reach them.
"......Guhk!!!"
At that moment, a thorn buried itself in the body of one party member running beside her.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck......!!!"
The party member spat curses, clutched the spot where the thorn hit, and kept running.
They ran for a long time.
Then Jin Yu-ha's party came to a stop.
Huff—
Huff—
Huff—
The arrow-rain had stopped falling from above—the creatures must have shot off a volley—
but Joo Tae-rin's party was already battered to pieces.
Her party members' bodies were covered in puncture marks from thorns, discolored a sickly blue,
and though Joo Tae-rin herself had no thorns embedded in her,
she hadn't been able to dodge everything—gashes all over her body were weeping blood.
The Black Hedgehogs weren't charging right now because their thorns were depleted,
but that was only a brief reprieve.
It was obvious the creatures would reload their thorns and come lunging soon.
"......Goddammit."
In Joo Tae-rin's field of vision, she saw the man up ahead wiping sweat from his forehead, like he'd just had a decent workout.
A thick vein bulged on her forehead.
"You insane bastard....... How dare you pull this shit!!!!!"
Joo Tae-rin screamed at him, her voice laced with fury.
The man's icy gaze turned toward her.
"What's she on about? Aren't those the guests you invited? You dragged them here on your own, and now you're spouting shameless bullshit?"
"You think you'll come out of this unscathed?! You think you'll be safe from the Black Hedgehogs either, is that it?!"
"Uh, hmm....... Well, yeah, we'll be fine."
The man scratched his cheek and spoke in a casual voice.
'More insane than I ever imagined.......'
Joo Tae-rin chewed her lips.
'If I provoke him any further here...... I'll really get myself killed for nothing.......'
Right here, right now, she had to somehow win that man over.
Honestly, just looking at that brazen face made fury boil up inside her, but Joo Tae-rin swallowed it down hard and spoke.
"......We have to join forces."
"Join forces? Why?"
Jin Yu-ha tilted his head like he genuinely had no idea what she meant.
"Because otherwise, you won't come out unscathed either. And, if you help us now...... I will compensate you generously afterward."
Joo Tae-rin bowed her body, putting on the most obsequious expression she could muster.
Of course, inside, she was thinking something entirely different.
'......First, get past this crisis. Then on the way back, I'll find an opening and deal with them.'
However.
Pfft—
The man let out a laugh.
At that laugh, Joo Tae-rin raised her head with a puzzled expression.
"Seems like you're under some kind of misconception."
"......?"
"Look around."
At his words, Joo Tae-rin looked around.
And her eyes flew wide open.
'When on earth......!? No, how......?'
An impossibly familiar landscape.
Before she knew it, they had entered the route she'd originally planned to clear today.
She felt like she'd been bewitched by a ghost.
"Seems fair that the ones who shat should clean up their own shit, don't you think?"
The man said that, then gave an order to his party members.
"All right. Everyone, take out the Monster Perfume from your emergency kits."
Monster Perfume......?
That stuff, for shedding aggro......?
Isn't it expensive as hell......?
'And, that's...... a Subspace Tattoo......?'
Joo Tae-rin could only watch with a dazed expression as they sprayed the perfume onto their bodies.
Pshht—
Pshht—
The smell of the perfume on his body must not have been very pleasant—the man scrunched up his forehead hard.
"Ugh, that's a nasty smell. Anyway, we'll be off now. You guys work hard cleaning up the shit you shat."
The man waved brightly at Joo Tae-rin.
"This is what you were gonna do to us anyway. No complaints, right?"
Deep despair settled over Joo Tae-rin's face as she stared at him.
From her hand, the already-spent Bewitching Incense slipped and fell.
Plunk.