The Stronger the Adventurer, the More Dangerous the Monster
Jigoku brimmed with confidence.
"Gyahaha! Look at you, coward. We made it all this way, and now your courage suddenly evaporates?"
"How do you know what kind of demonic beast is locked inside before cracking it open?"
"A demonic beeeast? Who in their right mind locks up demonic beasts in an ordinary storage container, you idiot! It's not like they're rare exotics."
"This is Gift Academy, you know."
"...Point taken."
Wild and unhinged as Jigoku was, even she had to admit that an academy this demented could easily have a demonic beast warehouse floating around.
"Fair enough. Even back on the high seas, scholars would constantly bother pirates with commissions to capture rare maritime monsters or bizarre beastfolk from uncharted archipelagos."
High-ranking nobles occasionally dangled enormous sums of money before pirates who routinely traversed danger zones that sovereign nations avoided like the plague.
"Jigoku... Did you do wicked things like that too...?"
Pirates fell into distinct categories.
There were subsistence pirates who raided merchant vessels merely to feed their starving coastal villages, and there were demon-like pirates who reveled in cruelty, trafficking in slaves without batting an eye. Then there were privateers—corsairs who colluded with royal governments to hunt rogue pirates while legally raiding hostile merchant convoys.
Jigoku was supposed to be a privateer. At least, that was how her profile read in the original lore, but the tricky charm of Graduating the Academy on Pure Luck was that unexpected variables could easily twist a character into a demonic pirate on a whim.
"What kind of monster do you take me for?"
Thwack!
"Ow!"
"You need some sense knocked into you. How dare you lump me in with that absolute scum!"
"Hmph. I'm sorry..."
"Sure, I might fire off a few rounds when I'm bored, kick the shins of random weaklings who cross my path, or shoot between the legs of Lower Class runts just to see them tap dance, but I draw the line at slaves! Got that?"
"Yes..."
Wait, am I really the one in the wrong here? Isn't what you just described still horrifyingly unhinged, or is that just me?
A mountain of retorts rose to my throat, but I bit my tongue. Jigoku was far stronger than she looked—strong enough to hold her own in a contest of raw strength against Son Ocheon. To be fair, Son Ocheon was built more for endurance than brute power, but he was still an absolute juggernaut. For Jigoku to outmuscle him despite having far less bulk could only mean one thing.
She was a master of the Mana Body Refining Method, a technique that shattered the natural physical limits of muscle tissue!
Maritime variants of the technique were exceedingly rare compared to terrestrial versions, meaning that when it came to water-attribute combatants, finding someone who surpassed Jigoku across the entirety of Gift Academy—let alone among the 981st cohort—was a nearly impossible task. On a naval battlefield, she ranked solidly in Tier 0, among the top five.
"Alright, I'm opening it!"
"Wait, no!"
And yet, the very reason Jigoku hovered around Tier 1—ranked eleventh through fifteenth—rather than dominating Tier 0 or Tier 0.5, even on the open seas where she shone brightest, was about to rear its ugly head. Her wildly unpredictable, self-centered, chaotic streak was on full display.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out, the shattered lock gave way, and the heavy door creaked open. From the murky depths of the beast warehouse, a tide of Sludge Crawlers slithered across the floor, voraciously devouring filth as they spilled outside.
"Hey, is that it? You were wetting your pants over this junk?"
"There's more coming!"
Scuttling along the walls behind them came a horde of Clawmen—small, vicious creatures wielding sword-length talons.
"Ha! Those things still go down in one hit. Quit making a fuss."
Adventurers were ranked by badges: Stone, Copper, Iron, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Sludge Crawlers were the most trivial pests imaginable, usually left for novice Stone Badge adventurers to clear out while cleaning sewers. However, beast warehouses almost always kept a baseline population of them, as they consumed monster waste and maintained sanitary conditions inside the pens.
The problem was the Clawmen.
Those things tear into other monsters on sight. Nobody keeps them in an open holding pen with other creatures!
Though typically subdued by Copper Badge adventurers, their relentless aggression made total isolation mandatory. Yet they had been tossed into the exact same warehouse without any dividers. There was only one reason that would ever be possible: something inside possessed the sheer dominance to keep the Clawmen's bloodlust entirely in check.
Another monster deeper within the shadows.
"Skreeeech!"
"Huh?"
Jigoku's smirk vanished, her face freezing into a mask of pure dread as a ferocious shriek echoed from behind the Clawmen. A creature infamous even among oceanic buccaneers stalked into view.
It was a nightmarish combination of attributes: Fungus, Man-Eater, Parasite, and Gas. Sprouting from a fibrous stalk, rows of shark-like teeth gnashed hungrily at the air—a Red Teeth Mushroom.
"Get back, Orknodi! I'm blowing that thing away right now!!"
"No, don't! If you slash or shoot a Red Teeth Mushroom without sealing it, it'll violently erupt into a cloud of spores!"
That was precisely what made fungal monsters so terrifying. If you struck them down haphazardly, you would instantly inhale their biological aerosol, causing microscopic fungi to sprout inside your organs and through your pores. Anyone who had ever heard horrific accounts of a felled mushroom devouring the flesh of nearby bystanders could only nod in solemn agreement: among all the common horrors of this world, fungal monsters were by far the most grotesque.
And that wasn't even the worst of it.
"Skreeeech!"
"Kreee! Kreeeech!"
More Red Teeth Mushrooms came pouring out in a gruesome cascade.
Thud. Thud.
Shoving its massive bulk through the warehouse doorway, a colossal fungal abomination squeezed into the rain.
A Mother-grade Red Teeth Mushroom.
It was an apex variant capable of propagating its species by expelling spore clouds at will, even when unprovoked. And now, a full-grown one stood right before our eyes.
"Run, Jigoku! Go find an instructor!"
"What about you?!"
"I know the call that keeps mushrooms docile!"
Just as a Giant King Crab cowered at the cries of an octopus, a Red Teeth Mushroom had a natural predator whose voice struck terror into its core. Even parasitic fungi, which spitefully colonized the bodies of their attackers, were helpless against creatures they could never infect: Flame Spirits.
A Flame Spirit incinerated spores on contact. Even if a fungus managed to cling to one, a spirit had no flesh to feed upon—only pure, blazing heat. They were the ultimate hard counters. And the most common, ubiquitous Flame Spirit in the world was the Flame Hound!
"Blaze-bark! Blaze-bark-bark!"
Startled by the furious barking of a fire-attribute dog, the advancing mushroom monsters flinched and recoiled. Realizing my words were not just a desperate lie to let her escape, Jigoku gritted her teeth and spun on her heel, sprinting full tilt into the deluge.
"If you die before I get back, I'll kill you myself!"
"Woof-blaze!"
I gave another hearty yip in response. Biting her lip so hard it nearly bled, Jigoku sprinted furiously toward the academy's Main Building.
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds.
Once she was thoroughly out of earshot, I stopped barking.
"Whew. Almost scared myself there!"
Taking a closer look, the mushrooms were actually fitted with fungal suppression collars. The organs responsible for aerosolizing spores had been mechanically locked down; so long as no one attacked them first, they couldn't discharge a single spore, and their aggression remained completely suppressed.
The Clawmen, clacking their talons like shears, were similarly pacified. They were under the mental thrall of the Red Teeth Mushrooms, meaning their vicious instincts were entirely leashed by the fungi's subdued state.
Tremble...
In fact, every time our eyes met, the poor things shivered in terror. Captured by humans, surgically altered to prevent spore discharge, and locked inside a pitch-black holding container—if they felt anything toward humanity, it was pure, unadulterated dread. They wouldn't dare initiate an attack.
So why did I stage such an over-the-top crisis?
"Hmph. Jigoku needs to learn a lesson."
Her reckless, itchy trigger finger needed serious discipline. Prying open a secure monster container could have easily triggered an absolute catastrophe. We were lucky these specimens were docile and well-contained; if true apex predators had been lurking inside, it would have been a bloodbath.
Even here, disaster was narrowly averted only because I recognized their restraint collars and stopped her from firing. If someone charged in with a one-track gamer mind thinking every monster was meant to be slain, they would have been thoroughly contaminated by spores long before faculty could arrive.
Dying before rescue meant an instant Dead End. Even surviving meant waking up in the intensive care unit, bleeding points by the thousands for emergency treatments and piling up demerits for missed lectures. Considering I had just saved her credits and her schedule, letting her sweat bullets for a few minutes was a bargain!
Jigoku had never cursed her maritime upbringing as fiercely as she did right now.
I thought it would just be a mimic or something!
Sea monsters were helpless when dragged onto dry land. She had foolishly assumed, based on her own maritime experience, that land beasts would be equally trivial to handle. Her reckless arrogance had caused this catastrophe.
A lethal fungal monster that could never be attacked directly, surrounded by a swarm of bloodthirsty Clawmen—Orknodi was forced to mimic the cries of a predator while fending off razor-sharp claws from every direction. All alone. In this driving rainstorm, at the threshold of a dangerous dungeon zone, holding out until help arrived.
"Help! Somebody, please help me!!"
She sprinted madly through the downpour, screaming at the top of her lungs. The Main Building was too far. Navigating through the flooded campus had taken thirty minutes on foot. Even sprinting flat out might only cut it down to three minutes, but three minutes was an eternity.
Could Orknodi hold out for five minutes? Three minutes? What if a single misstep brought her down in sixty seconds? On a real battlefield, nothing was guaranteed.
Who am I to pity anyone? I'm absolute scum!
Just last week, she had felt so much sympathy for Orknodi's harsh childhood training that she had gifted the girl a lucky bullet. And now, by her own hands, she had shoved that very same child into the jaws of death.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to drop dead on the spot. But right now, Orknodi had no one else. If she faltered in rallying a rescue team, the girl would truly die—or worse.
"First, compose yourself."
A calm, crystalline voice cut cleanly through her panic, settling her frantic heart.
"You're... the proctor from the first entrance exam!"
"You remember this humble monk?"
"Baldy!"
"...Close, but no. My name is Monk Myeongho."
"Orknodi is in danger! A monster warehouse washed down toward the dungeon entrance, and she's trapped by fungal monsters and Clawmen!"
Monk Myeongho offered a gentle, reassuring smile.
"Leave the rest to this humble monk. Cadet Jigoku, proceed to the Main Building and request medical reinforcement, just in case."
Dressed in wide-sleeved monastic robes, the monk radiated a peculiar aura that blurred the line between Taoist immortal and Buddhist ascetic. With a single stride, he seemed to fold the earth beneath his feet, vanishing dozens of meters into the distance before slipping out of sight entirely.
Jigoku stared in a daze, then snapped back to reality and resumed sprinting toward the Main Building. Hope and relief swelled within her chest.
Orknodi will make it!
Yet contrary to her optimism, Monk Myeongho's expression turned grim as he hurtled through the storm.
This could lead to an unspeakable tragedy.
Ironically, when encountering fungal monsters, the stronger an adventurer was, the higher their mortality rate became. Weak adventurers fled without daring to fight. Average adventurers retreated cautiously, knowing victory was uncertain. But the strong—those accustomed to overwhelming might—instinctively fought back whenever they believed a foe was conquerable.
Those who knew the infamy of fungal monstrosities would never commit such folly, but what of those who were ignorant? They were showered in parasitic spores, meeting a far quicker, more agonizing demise.
And tragically, among the first-year class, Orknodi was remarkably, visibly, vastly, overwhelmingly strong. A single punch from her could burst a fungal monster into pieces, drenching her small body from head to toe in lethal spores.
If that happened, she could perish in the mere tens of seconds it took for him to arrive.
Monk Myeongho pushed his footing even faster, streaking across the flooded ground like a gale.