2nd Year Dungeon Practice (2)
2nd Year Dungeon Practice (2)
"Never been slapped like that in my life..."
[I'm sorry]
Aiden rubbed his stinging cheek, looking dumbfounded. The wingbeat had been feather-light, leaving no mark behind.
"What on earth did you do to get slapped?"
"I didn't do anything. Does keeping a perimeter watch inside a dungeon deserve a slap?"
"Hmm, maybe there was some other reason..."
"Oh, screw off."
Aiden's face crumpled as Nam Yeon-jung teased him from behind.
They were trading jabs, but no one had dropped their guard. Their vigilance remained sharp enough to react instantly if needed.
"...Good. No ambush right after entry."
The rest of the team filed in through the vortex. Yoo Se-i, who had already drawn his standard-issue sword, scanned both ends of the cave.
"It's wider than I expected. No problem swinging a sword right away."
"But we don't know what the path ahead looks like. It could narrow."
"Exactly. We should adjust the formation with that in mind."
Yoo Se-i finished speaking and turned to look at me.
[All members have entered. Operation begins now.]
I folded my wings neatly and nodded at her gaze.
[As discussed beforehand, I will serve in a support role—mage and healer.]
Tap, tap— I struck the ground with the standard-issue staff I was holding. Everyone nodded at the vibrations spreading through the floor.
"Honestly, shutting my eyes and getting carried would be the easy way out..."
"But then forget individual or teamwork evaluations—we wouldn't grow at all."
Dropping your guard inside a dungeon was forbidden, but a Grade 2 dungeon was something I could rampage through solo at my current level.
If I did that, though, my teammates would have nothing to do. This was explicitly a teamwork assignment, so distributing and performing our roles mattered.
'If this were real combat, I wouldn't care. But this is an exam.'
I raised my left arm slightly. A purple wristband was tied around it—the safety device prepared by the Vice Headmaster.
As long as you wore this band, you'd be emergency-evacuated from any life-threatening crisis.
Thanks to such excellent insurance, Siyoram cadets could accumulate practical combat experience in the dungeons on campus. And I could grow by performing my role like this, or even work on other training on the side.
[Loreine, what's your detection report?]
"...No contacts nearby. Traps as well."
Loreine, positioned with me inside the formation, gave his report.
Loreine was a superhuman with a detection-type unique ability, in charge of scanning and reconnaissance for this operation.
...Though she kept glancing at me while reporting. She seemed to be tiptoeing around me quite a bit.
[Understood. Please maintain detection and reporting.]
"Got it."
[Then, we'll proceed as discussed.]
Our team's assignment for this dungeon practice was reconnaissance and mapping.
Essentially, it was like a dungeon advance party's mission—not active monster subjugation, but careful scouting of hazards and conditions.
The group started walking.
The formation placed Nam Yeon-jung and Yoo Se-i at the front. Loreine and I followed in order, with Aiden taking the rear.
— Step... step... step... —
With every footfall on the uneven ground, the sound echoed through the cave.
"...Ahead, trap on the floor."
"Confirmed."
It was Loreine, mapping while performing detection from the center.
Nam Yeon-jung nodded and slowed his pace. At the same time, he took a metal ball from his subspace pocket, infused it with mana, and tossed it onto a patch of floor further ahead.
— Whoom! —
A brief vibration rang out. Crunch! A spike shot up, piercing the metal ball. The spike didn't stop there—it drove straight into the ceiling.
Thud! A heavy tremor rippled out and slammed into us from every direction. Aiden's body shuddered, and his face stiffened.
"...The traps are still here?"
[It's a Grade 2. Even if a team disarmed them before, the respawn cycle is short, so they've probably regenerated.]
Traps auto-generated by dungeons. In the Grade 4 dungeon from last year's practice, there were only a few, but in a Grade 2, you ran into them more often than expected.
We moved past the protruding spike.
As Yoo Se-i had noted earlier, the cave was wide enough. Even five people walking side by side would have plenty of room, and the ceiling was high.
"...It's narrowing."
As we walked on, the cave gradually constricted. Nam Yeon-jung, who'd been holding a long spear, furrowed his brow.
"It gets even narrower ahead. There are wider sections that repeat because of how rough the walls are, but..."
"Too annoying to keep stowing and pulling it out while accounting for that. I expected this from the moment we saw it was a cave."
In the end, Nam Yeon-jung stored his spear in his subspace pocket and drew a shorter sword.
"Yoo Se-i, will you be fine as you are? That curved blade looks a bit long."
"No problem. I've trained to use it proficiently in narrow spaces like this."
"Ah, I see. I received that training too, but not to that deg—"
"Ambush!"
Loreine's sharp voice cut through the chatter. Ambush. At that word, everyone already on alert swept their eyes in all directions.
"Floor, walls, ceiling!"
A concise string of words. No one failed to understand.
Monsters shot up, aiming for the vanguard's legs. Yoo Se-i and Nam Yeon-jung stepped back lightly and flashed their blades.
Crunch! The monster's body was severed. Nam Yeon-jung's brow furrowed.
"Rock?"
What had shot up was a worm. But it was as thick as a human torso, and its surface was encrusted with rocks like cracked, broken earth.
Perhaps because of that, the cut wasn't clean. In truth, it was closer to being hacked apart like someone swinging an axe.
The ambush hit the center and rear as well. Worms burst out not only from the floor but from the walls and ceiling. Their round mouths were packed with yellowish, pointed teeth.
"Hup!"
The first to react was Aiden, who had the rear-guard role. Slice! His flashing blade slit the throats of two worms in a single stroke.
I didn't stay still either.
I was in a support role now, but being support didn't mean standing idle during an ambush.
Indeed, Loreine had also drawn his sword and was swinging at the worms.
Whack! The body of a worm struck by my staff bent.
I didn't burst it to death; I just deflected them appropriately. I batted away the ones trying to swarm Loreine too much, and for several, I even popped them up so Aiden could slice them more easily.
Whether he understood that, Aiden's sword accelerated. Cutting paths streaked through the air in an instant. The worms' bodies overlapped beneath them.
Thud-thud-thud! The dismembered worms spilled onto the floor.
[Oh]
My mouth opened a little. I had served them up nicely, sure, but even accounting for that, his attacks were quick and precise.
I lightly tapped a severed section with the tip of my staff. Rock-encrusted surface. The sword had driven into the gaps between the rocks.
[Aiden, you've grown tremendously.]
"...Hearing that from you feels really weird."
[Oh, I didn't mean it sarcastically.]
"No, I know you didn't mean it that way... Hm."
The ambush was over. Shlick! Aiden flicked the sticky blood off his sword, wearing an odd expression.
"It's been a whole year since we enrolled. Obviously I've grown."
"Bastard, say that without the twitching corners of your mouth. It's creepy."
"Oh, screw you. Shut it."
Aiden ground his teeth at Nam Yeon-jung's teasing.
"What kind of monster is this?"
Meanwhile, Yoo Se-i, looking at the monster sprawled on the floor, narrowed his eyes. He tilted his head, prodding a severed piece with the tip of his sword.
"Did the advance dungeon intel mention a monster like this?"
"...One moment."
Loreine tapped at his hologram. The external connection was severed, but some built-in programs were still usable.
"...No, it didn't."
"So the intel didn't have it after all."
"More than that, it's not a specimen registered in the monster encyclopedia."
"What? It's not in the encyclopedia either?"
Nam Yeon-jung, who'd been awkwardly rubbing his sword's grip, approached with wide eyes.
Loreine, who'd been searching the encyclopedia displayed on his hologram, nodded.
"The closest thing is a Rock Worm. A standard 7th-Rank Monster."
"So this is a variant..."
"Could variants appear in hordes like this instead of just one or two?"
"Who knows. Maybe the dungeon itself mutated and the variant became the average... Ah, did they send us to figure that out?"
"Hmm..."
Encountering variants inside a dungeon was more common than people thought. But having them surge out by the dozens like just now was strange.
An anomaly. The most critical contingency to watch for inside a dungeon.
"...We're barely past the dungeon entrance, so what we can figure out is limited. More than anything, this is a Siyoram dungeon—there's no reason to retreat with our lives on the line."
After a moment's deliberation, Yoo Se-i shrugged and ran a hand over his purple wristband, then turned his gaze to me.
"Team leader, your decision."
[Didn't you all just decide?]
Hadn't we all gathered around and reached a conclusion? When I tilted my head, Yoo Se-i gave a wry grin.
"Final authority always lies with the leader."
[You just said there's no reason to retreat... Fine, let's keep going.]
"Good call."
When I shook my head in disbelief, everyone laughed.
"By the way, those wings. Any idea why their color changed?"
Before we finished sweeping the cave, Yoo Se-i, while adjusting his stance, suddenly pointed behind me.
Behind my back were three pairs of neatly folded wings.
The difference from earlier was that the pure-white wings were now dyed a dark brown.
[My wings? Ah, a spirit is inside them. I stored some earth spirits in there just in case.]
"...A spirit can enter an artifact?"
Not just Yoo Se-i—everyone who heard my answer blinked, eyes wide.
— Flutter —
The wings rustled once. The Sky Wing Feather, saturated with earth spirits and earth energy, rippled with waves.
* * *
"Ellia? Are you feeling sick? You look a little down... I knew the dinner was off, right? Hey, Yu-seol. Look at this. I told you not to touch the cooking."
"Bullshit. It was a ready-made meal—I just heated it up."
"Your disaster hands make that possible. That's genuinely the realm of innate talent, I swear. How are you that useless with your hands?"
"Why are you suddenly picking a fight? You want to get kicked outside the barrier?"
"What the hell, no matter how mad you are, kicking me outside the barrier is basically telling me to drop dead, isn't it?"
"So what? You want me to kill you myself?"
In the center of the temporary camp, Ellia blinked at the sudden squabbling of her teammates huddled around a heating magic tool. But she soon realized it was playful bickering meant to cheer her up—she'd been looking a bit droopy—and she laughed.
"...Ahaha. It's not like that. I just spaced out thinking about something for a second."
"Hmm... Ellia, spacing out... Then it's about him, isn't it?"
Him. At the question implying something grand and secretive, Ellia shrugged.
"Wow, you're thinking about him even out here? That's real devotion."
"But is there anything to worry about with him? I'd genuinely believe it if someone told me he could clear a dungeon and walk out in a single day."
"Right. Feels like he could walk into a Grade 1 dungeon alone and clear it with room to spare."
The joking continued. All of it was banter based on thinking about the publicly known prowess of Lee Ha-yul.
But there was sincerity in it, too.
And why wouldn't there be? This was Lee Ha-yul, after all.
Looking at major achievements alone, he'd single-handedly subjugated the undead Twin-headed Poison Dragon and swept through the entire student body at the Birth Festival.
There was also his recent performance during the Reverse Side catastrophe.
He was no longer at a cadet's level. Even by active-duty standards, he stood at a far-off summit, so there was simply no room for worry.
But the part Ellia was worried about wasn't his combat ability.
'...I wonder if he can sleep well.'
If she had to put it precisely, it was his mental state.
Ellia swept her hair back, unable to hide the concern in her eyes.
* * *
A tent spacious enough for one person.
It looked modest but was a special product condensed with all manner of magic. Something from Aerus's era could claw at it for an eternity and barely scratch it.
[......]
Inside, I sat on a sleeping bag, hugging a pillow, blinking vacantly.
Sleep wouldn't come.
A soft embrace, a gentle touch, a warm body, a sweet scent of skin, an affectionate gaze... None of it was here.
I revised my earlier statement.
I didn't want to sleep alone.