Alive, After All
"Bead-nim. Get behind me for now."
"...Alright."
"Attach one butterfly to me... and you said you could summon another, right? Keep it hovering near us and let's watch how this unfolds. Anyone can tell that thing is bad news."
Roughly a hundred meters from where we stood, a pitch-black serpent slithered into view with agonizing slowness.
At first glance, its upper body resembled a lizardman's, right down to the pair of muscular arms. But where a lizardman would have possessed legs, it had none—its lower half was that of an ordinary snake. What truly set it apart, however, was its sheer mass, reducing any standard lizardman to an absolute joke. Even with only a fraction of its serpentine coils reared like a cobra, it loomed at least three meters tall.
"Sss, s-ssss, sssssss..."
Hiss all you want, you son of a bitch.
The noise it produced plummeted straight down the uncanny valley. It sounded less like a beast and more like a human desperately forcing out an imitation of a snake's hiss.
"Do you recognize that monster?" I asked.
"No. It's completely outside my knowledge base."
Apparently, our combined IQ of two hundred—give or take—wasn't enough to identify this black snake. Did we need a third party member just to hit three hundred?
"I'll try an attack first," Poly offered. "It isn't moving very fast, so we have time to set something up."
I agreed. The serpent moved slower than a stroll in the park, which meant we had more than enough leeway to respond.
"Then allow me as well."
"Pardon?"
Leaving the butterfly anchored to Poly in place, I sent the idle one hovering around me fluttering toward the front. With bated breath, both of us watched the fragile glass insect drift forward and settle gently atop the serpent's head.
Deep down, we were probably clinging to the exact same hope: What if Poly doesn't even have to lift a finger? What if the butterfly alone does the job?
That hope was promptly shattered.
Crack, craaack...
Fissures were definitely spreading across its scales, yet the process crawled at such a sluggish pace that you couldn't even tell unless you squinted. At this rate, reducing its massive frame to splinters would take several minutes at the very least.
"I'm moving in!"
"Go ahead."
Poly stepped up. While watching the butterfly, he hadn't merely been spacing out; dazzling blue lightning had already converged along the tip of his greatsword, crackling with violent energy.
"Hraaaah!"
With a thunderous battle cry ripped straight out of a tokusatsu hero show, Poly launched the concentrated lightning from his blade.
KRA-BOOOOM!
A terrifying streak of lightning ripped through the air with ferocious speed.
BANG!
It caught the black serpent square in the jaw—a direct strike followed by a deafening blast.
"Sssss."
"S-S-Shit."
As the smoke cleared, the serpent's face emerged completely unscathed. A faint, hexagonal honeycomb barrier rippled around its massive frame. Given the context, it was an external defense barrier designed to intercept incoming strikes.
"O Lord... why have You... forsaken us..."
"...What did you say?"
Did that snake just speak fluent Korean?
Was there ever a recorded case of a monster speaking human words? Not to my knowledge. If such a video existed, it would have been dismissed as AI-generated clickbait cooked up for views on NewTube. Yet this wasn't fiction; it was unfolding right before my eyes. I had heard it clear as day, and Poly, standing beside me with his jaw slack, had evidently heard it too.
"Snap out of it!" I yelled, raising my voice to break his daze.
"Ah, y-yes!"
Poly hurriedly readied a follow-up attack. But watching from behind, I couldn't muster any confidence. If his initial strike—which took significant charge time and looked suspiciously like an ultimate skill—had been effortlessly deflected, what difference would subsequent swings make?
Evidently, Poly harbored the same doubts.
"Take this," he said, pulling a small pouch from his sling bag and offering it to me while continuing to gather lightning along his blade.
"What is this?"
"An emergency escape orb. You know how to use one, right?"
"Pardon?"
I hadn't asked out of ignorance. I just couldn't comprehend why he was handing it to me. As far as I knew, escape orbs were single-user consumables.
"Since I'm fighting on the front lines, I figured you'd have more of a chance to use it than me, Bead-nim... And besides..." Poly turned his gaze toward me for a fleeting second.
I recognized that look instantly.
"Unlike a hopeless case like me, you have a bright future ahead of you, Bead-nim. That's why I'm giving it to you."
The eyes of someone who had resolved to die.
It was an expression etched far too deeply into my memories. I loathed it. Truly. Both that hollow, self-sacrificing gaze and the suffocating recollections it dragged to the surface.
"...Don't."
"What?"
"Don't look at me like that." I shoved the pouch right back into his chest. "Give me something else."
"Something else like...?"
"Anything. Anything that might actually help us resolve this situation."
Only then did my meaning register. This time, Poly reached not into his sling bag, but directly into his inventory window, tossing a handful of items toward me.
Two distinct types of items landed in my hands.
[Type: Accessory - Bracelet]
◈ When equipped, greatly increases the user's Unique Skill level and mastery for 10 minutes.
◈ The degree of enhancement scales inversely with the current level of the Unique Skill.
⚠ Warning! — This item is single-use. It will be destroyed upon activation and cannot be restored.
Effect: Restores a large amount of the consumer's mana upon ingestion.
"I was saving that bracelet to flip for profit since my abilities aren't unique skills, but... turns out I actually need it," Poly said with a wry grimace. "Gotta preserve our lives before worrying about coin."
"Agreed."
What caught my eye was the clause stating it temporarily boosted unique skill 'levels.' Without an ounce of hesitation, I snapped the bracelet onto my wrist. It hung loose against my slender forearm at first, but within a heartbeat, the band contracted smoothly until it hugged my skin in a perfect fit.
◈ Ally buff values (Durability, Recovery) and enemy damage output have increased.
◈ 'Shared Vision' duration increased to 30 seconds.
◈ 'Shared Vision' cooldown reduced to 50 seconds.
◈ Maximum maintainable butterflies increased to 4.
◈ Mana consumption required for multi-target management has been greatly reduced.
Though temporary, my unique skill had leaped three entire levels in a single breath. Skipping past the fluff about Shared Vision, the crucial takeaways were the spikes in buff and damage potency—and above all, the fact that my summon limit had doubled.
Lend me a hand, little guys.
Without hesitation, I summoned every last butterfly into face-up attack position. Then, uncapping one of the mana potions, I chugged the entire bottle in a single gulp.
It was a pointless observation given the circumstances, but the potion tasted like flat, lukewarm soda. Ugh.
...Can I attach multiple butterflies to a single target?
A fresh hypothesis flashed through my mind. If I stacked several butterflies onto one entity, would their buffs—or their damage—compound as well?
I put the thought into practice immediately. Directing one of the newly summoned butterflies onto Poly, I launched the remaining one toward the black serpent thirty meters away.
"Bead-nim!"
"Yes?"
"Take the one you just put on me and stack it on that bastard too!"
Poly's immediate reaction gave me all the confirmation I needed: the butterfly's effects could indeed be stacked. In total, three butterflies now clung to the black serpent, effortlessly bypassing the barrier cloaking its form.
That observation brought another realization: the 'Shatter' property seemed to ignore enemy barriers altogether. Or perhaps that bypass was an innate trait of the Glass Butterfly itself.
Crack, cra-a-ack!
The fracturing accelerated at a visible pace.
Yet the blossom of hope on our faces proved agonizingly brief.
SWISH!
A blur whipped across the edge of my vision. Before I could even register the movement—
"Bead-nim!"
Poly threw himself in front of me. It was the tail. The serpent, which had remained entirely passive until now, lashed its elongated tail like a heavy whip.
BOOM!
The impact echoed like an artillery shell detonating against solid metal.
"Ghk—!"
Poly met the strike with the flat of his greatsword held up like a shield, but the sheer force launched him backward through the air. He skidded nearly twenty meters across the stone floor.
"Are you alright?!"
"Y-Yes. Managed to block it! Urgh, my shoulder..."
A miraculous stroke of luck. He hadn't taken catastrophic damage. But we needed to pull back—immediately, urgently, as far as possible. Without a butterfly's protection, a direct hit from that tail would leave me critically wounded, if not dispatched straight to the afterlife.
"Sssssss—!"
"Watch out!"
Shrieking an ear-splitting hiss, the serpent unhinged its jaws and spewed forth an attack. A massive, undulating orb of kinetic shockwaves billowed out, broad enough to choke the entire corridor as it churned forward, scraping gouges into the cavern floor at terrifying speed.
The projectile was far too wide to evade. We had no choice but to brace and block it once more.
Poly planted his feet and raised his greatsword horizontally before me. The outer edge of the sphere grazed the steel blade—and in that split second—
"—!"
Poly turned his head toward me, eyes dilated in sheer terror. His lips parted to scream a warning, but the words died in his throat before he could utter a single syllable.
"...Ah."
He had petrified. As though he had locked eyes with Medusa herself, his entire body ossified into lifeless, ash-gray stone.
WHOOSH.
The serpentine tail cleaved the air once more. This time, its target wasn't me, but Poly.
CRUNCH!
The blow caught Poly square in the ribs, hurtling his stone frame across the chamber.
SLAM!
He collided headfirst with the cavern wall, frozen in the exact stance he had taken with his greatsword. The impact shattered his stone skull like brittle pottery, sending fragments raining down to expose the mangled cross-section of his crushed brain.
Ugh.
It was a nauseating, grotesque sight. Yet my stomach didn't even have time to heave.
THWACK!
"Ngh."
A brutal impact slammed into my soft abdomen.
A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears as my vision blanked out into pitch black, only to flicker back an agonizing instant later. That was when reality caught up with me: the serpent had weaponized its own cracking tail. As the appendage broke down under the butterfly's effect, it had whipped the tail and flung one of the splintered shards straight at me like shrapnel.
Slumped against the cavern wall, I watched the black serpent slither languidly toward me.
"Sss, s-ssss, O Lord, sss, O Lord..."
Hey, hold on a second. That hit bone.
No, no. This was hardly the time for gallows humor.
"Cough... hack, ghk..."
I couldn't draw a proper breath. Instead of air, a thick glob of crimson blood spilled over my lips. The pain was blinding—an excruciating agony, as if someone were tearing through my entrails with a rusted saw.
Even so, the situation wasn't entirely hopeless.
Why?
"Sss, s-ssss—"
Because that bastard reached its limit before I did.
SHATTER!
After minutes of continuous fracturing, the black serpent, its entire form covered in a dense web of hairline cracks, finally collapsed into hundreds of glass-like fragments.
"Haaah... haaaah..."
The sudden release of adrenaline pulled a strange, ragged noise from my throat, hovering somewhere between a gasp and a groan.
Thinking about it now, the whole ordeal was absurd. The very first dungeon I ever entered turned out to be a mutant dungeon—a phenomenon that appeared maybe once every few years. And despite walking in completely unprepared, I had somehow managed to overcome it with nothing more than a single support skill.
Butterfly. You really are a dutiful child, a blessing, and a loyal retainer all in one.
Now, if I could just catch my breath and rest for a minute—
...Wait.
My relief evaporated in a heartbeat, replaced by a cold knot of dread.
I had just slain a monster of that caliber virtually on my own. Why hadn't I leveled up even once?
Crack.
"Ssss."
The answer didn't come from my head, but from the serpent itself.
A portion of the shattered fragments coalesced, melding together to forge a brand-new silhouette. What emerged from the shards was a small, compact lizardman.
It stood a full handspan shorter than an ordinary lizardman, let alone the colossal snake from moments ago. Yet the aura radiating from its frame had grown infinitely more lethal. Its entire body was clad in scales as dense and black as plate armor, and its claws were long and razor-sharp enough to put Cardi B to shame.
A completely overhauled form. Phase Two.
That confirmed it beyond a shadow of a doubt: this creature—no, this lizardman—was an A-rank boss monster at the very least.
First... I have to attach a butterfly, somehow...
"Sssss!"
BOOM!
Flexing its pectoral muscles and thrusting its chest forward, the lizardman unleashed a shockwave of inky darkness. The Glass Butterflies darting forward to latch onto its skin were violently caught in the blast, scattered in every direction like dried leaves.
Ah. Of course.
Why had I blindly assumed the butterflies were immune to attacks all this time?
To make matters worse, half of the scattered butterflies lost their form and vanished into thin air. The duration of the single-use bracelet had expired.
A heavy shadow crept across my blurring vision. I didn't have the strength left to twitch so much as a fingertip.
Is this it? Like this? Really? Isn't this... a little too soon?
There was still so much I hadn't done. More than anything, I had never intended to die in such a pathetic, miserable ditch.
"...It appears I have not arrived too late. A fortunate turn, indeed."
The lizardman's razor-sharp claws, raised high to deliver the finishing blow, froze dead in midair.
Simultaneously, through the haze of my failing consciousness, I caught the faint silhouette of someone striding toward us from the distance.
A human? Yes, a person. The tall, imposing figure of a man.
"S-Save... me..." I squeezed out with the absolute last dregs of my voice.
The footsteps came to a halt right in front of where I sat slumped against the wall. With my vision swimming, I couldn't make out his face.
"Ease your mind," the man spoke, his tone calm and grandfatherly. "You are out of harm's way now."
Out of harm's way? But the black lizardman was still standing right there.
No. Something was wrong.
The lizardman had clearly registered the man's presence, yet it made no move to attack. None whatsoever.
"Ssss..."
The emotion governing its behavior was, astonishingly, sheer terror. Trembling violently, the beast took slow, deliberate steps backward, its intention to flee written across every fiber of its being.
"I do not recall granting you leave to depart, wretched thing."
The man spoke just a single, quiet sentence.
THUD!
At those words, the lizardman crashed to its knees with a dull, heavy thud.
...What on earth is happening right now?
"I have no need for idle words."
"...O Lord."
"For the sin of harming mankind, you shall pay with your life."
The man raised the edge of his hand and casually swung it through the air. The movement carried neither sound nor visible pressure.
Thump.
With that single motion, the lizardman's head separated cleanly from its shoulders and tumbled onto the dirt.
You have reached Level 10!
You have acquired the new skill Vitrification (Unique)!
"Ah..."
Only then did the realization wash over me: it was finally over.
The tension I had clung to snapped all at once, and darkness swallowed my vision whole.
"Gasp!"
"Awake, are you? A swift recovery."
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in an immaculate white hospital room.
Looking around, I realized it was a two-bed ward. Lying in the other bed was Poly—Jang Seong-hyeon—his head swathed in thick layers of bandages.
And there was one more person in the room.
Sitting by the head of my bed and speaking to me was a tall man with jet-black hair and luminous golden eyes.
...Where have I seen this person before?
"I am Ga Jin-ho."
Oh!