The Snowy Mountain of the Valley

I stared at Lee Eunha's face for a moment, flushed crimson.

"……."

Of course I knew. I'd known for some time now that she no longer saw me as just a 'support character'.

I was a man too, and the truth was, it pleased me plenty. Her looks were, honestly speaking, exactly my type, and her personality and disposition matched mine well.

And yet.

Her trajectory was changing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her universe faintly washing over in bright pink, translucent like an overlay hovering before me.

An uncontrollable variable.

I couldn't gamble with her life on the line.

'Fail here, and there's no new game in hardcore-mode reality.'

Doing my best to ignore my pounding heart, I took a deep breath and pushed Lee Eunha's pink-rippled trajectory out of my field of view.

Then I slowly raised a hand and thoroughly ruffled her neatly combed hair.

"What do you mean, position changes? You think tossing random ingredients into a pot makes a tasty meal? Just walk the path I've set out for you, nice and quiet."

"You know I'm not talking about stigmata, Oppa."

The hand gripping my collar trembled, ever so slightly.

I gently laid my hand over hers. Sure enough, I felt her grip loosen and slip away.

With a soft chuckle, I lightly flicked her forehead away with a finger.

"I know you're not talking about stigmata. And I'm not trying to dodge the question, either. Honestly? I like it. A lot."

"Then……"

"But there's a time bomb I need to defuse right now, and you're still in your growth phase."

"……."

Apparently it had sounded like a roundabout rejection, because Lee Eunha's mood plummeted in an instant.

I pulled her in by the shoulders and wrapped her in my arms. Her body flinched and shivered against me.

Lee Eunha, who had been so bold just moments ago, went astonishingly quiet — fear of rejection, maybe.

"Not right now. Let's talk again when you're ready. How's that?"

"……I'm already ready."

"Nope. You're not."

"Ready for what, exactly?"

"At the very least, the 14th Floor."

By that point, her build would be more or less complete. Which meant she'd be comparatively far more stable than she was now.

When that time came, there would at least be room for a much deeper conversation than this one.

"The 14th Floor,"

Lee Eunha murmured my stated goal under her breath.

"So what you're saying is, if I climb to a higher floor than that woman… you'll see me properly. Right?"

A chill crawled up my spine at her words, and I flinched. I looked at her — her eyes were utterly hollow.

"N-no, wait, Eunha, that's not what I meant—"

Tap.

She reached out and pressed a finger over my mouth.

"Got it. Watch me."

Heat began to smolder slowly in those hollow eyes, in place of any life.

"If you dodge me again when I clear the 14th Floor… then don't blame me for whatever I do to you, Oppa. Understood?"

"……You're not going to kill me, right?"

"I won't kill you. Why would I kill you, Oppa? You've done so much for me."

"Haha. Right, exactly?"

"I'll treasure it my whole life."

…That means she's not killing me, right? Right?

Jung Hayul looked down at the reply attached to the comment she had left.

"……."

After parting with Kang Hyunwoo the day before, unable to guess how long her treatment would take, she had asked the Guild Master to clear her schedule for about a month.

That was all it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was. The public roadmap had simply been updated accordingly.

Still, she hadn't expected the high-floor raid schedule to be canceled in its entirety.

And as a result, the gallery was, once again, burning itself up over nothing.

'If they get their hopes up like this, Sia will push herself too hard again.'

A particularly tender-hearted colleague flashed through Jung Hayul's mind.

But she quickly shook the thought away and straightened her clothing in the elevator's mirror.

'Either way, for anyone to help me, my symptoms need to show improvement first.'

Ding—

The elevator stopped on the 7th floor, and the doors slid open.

Lee Eunha was standing there.

A loot-recovery backpack. A form-fitting combat suit. Even a battered old sword hung at her hip — dressed to head straight into a dungeon.

Just as Jung Hayul brushed past her toward Unit 701, Lee Eunha spoke up.

"……Hey. You."

Lee Eunha fixed Jung Hayul with a look threaded with a strange, guarded wariness.

"Don't you dare push Hyunwoo Oppa too hard."

Jung Hayul regarded her in silence for a moment, weighing the true meaning behind those words.

"Did he tell you to say ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that?"

How troublesome. Truly.

Kang Hyunwoo was the only hope she had left now. If even he declared that this was too much for him, she would have nowhere left to lean.

"……Hmph."

Instead of an answer, Lee Eunha gave a small scoff, boarded the elevator, and was gone.

"……."

Jung Hayul turned and gazed for a while at the front door of Unit 702. Then she pressed the doorbell of Unit 701, where Kang Hyunwoo stayed.

Ding-dong!

That was fast.

The doorbell rang just as I was wrapping up my spreadsheets, and I rose from my seat at once and headed for the entrance.

I opened the door, and there stood Jung Hayul, exactly as expected.

"Come in."

"Thank you for having me."

She bowed her head politely, then removed her shoes — lining them up neatly by the door before stepping inside with careful, measured steps.

…The complete opposite of Eunha, huh.

I shook my head to clear away the stray thought.

"Have a seat. Still tidying up, so I've got nothing to offer you."

Jung Hayul settled quietly onto the sofa I gestured to. Her gaze found me immediately.

"Shall we begin, then?"

No small talk at all. Getting straight to business suited me fine.

I sat down beside her and nodded.

"From this moment, I'm going to adjust your stigmata. Do you consent?"

"Of course."

In that instant.

Flash—!

Bit by bit, the scenery of reality receded. The familiar sensation of drifting through empty air. A vast darkness swallowing my vision.

And then.

…….

"Hm?"

By now, the stars should have appeared. Countless points of light filling the dark, linking into constellations until a whole universe unfurled — that was how it always went.

But there was nothing.

No constellations. No shards of light.

Not even the faintest trace of a stigmata.

"Jung Hayul?"

I called out, but she didn't answer either.

Only an endless black expanse, stretching on forever, surrounded me.

This had never happened. Not once.

And just as the question began to form—

In the very center of that black void, a single small light bloomed. It wasn't a star.

It resembled a dungeon gate — a portal, connecting to somewhere beyond.

"Well. I suppose that's the only clue I've got."

I stepped forward, and the moment I reached out my hand—

"……."

I froze, hand suspended in midair, staring at the system message — vivid, blood-red, a color I had never once seen before.

So it's practically begging me not to come in, huh.

Grin.

An irrepressible smile curled up the corners of my mouth.

The single greatest joy of the ARPG genre has always been doing exactly what the developer tells you not to do.

"Screw it."

A curt reply to the status window, and the instant I thrust my hand through the portal—

Chomp!

Along with the sensation of my wrist being seized—

"Guh—?!"

—the portal vacuumed me in like a Hoover.

And at the same moment, an overwhelming wave of cold came rushing in.

Whooooosh—!

I raised a hand to shield my face from the violent gale tearing at my skin like it meant to flay it, and gazed down, dazed, at scenery that had changed completely in the space of a heartbeat.

Snow-capped peaks, stretching on without end. A collapsed cliff face.

And I stood alone on the mountainside at the center of it all.

"……."

I looked around, at a loss for words — and then spotted a massive stigmata perched atop the tallest peak.

"This thing's insane."

The first line was the effect that leapt out at me.

A corpse-explosion effect — conditionally gated behind freezing, sure, but carrying a deranged 500% multiplier.

Get the area coverage right, and the butterfly effect alone would set entire dungeons chain-detonating. An autobomber build, assembling itself right before my eyes.

"So what about the penalties…"

Fixed cold damage of 10% per second — which presumably meant no way to mitigate it through other means. And the second was the restriction on HP recovery.

To get a precise picture, I pulled up Death Deferral's tooltip.

"……So it's an invincibility button."

"I die several times a day," she'd said.

Given that, the cooldown probably wasn't all that long either.

Low-Life builds that maximize damage near death, triggered-on-hit mechanics turned into monster engines — a whole parade of absurdly broken builds queued up in my head.

But.

"Ha. No. Not an option."

What Jung Hayul wanted was escape from pain.

Pursuing the builds I'd just dreamed up might let her chew through dungeons, but it would never solve the pain — because all of them burned suffering as fuel to stoke their destruction.

I gazed for a while at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the effects attached to Death Deferral.

Bodily shattering. That was probably what she meant — the skin sloughing away until bone showed through.

"The goal, then: make it so Death Deferral never triggers."

In other words, I had to build her a life where Jung Hayul would never taste death again.

"Alright, then. Time to read the menu."

As befit an S-rank hunter, the number of active stigmata looked to be at least double Lee Eunha's. I swept my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gaze quickly across the core stigmata ringed in golden borders.

"……Damn it all. This isn't a build. It's a suicide squad."

In a game, I'd have laughed it off. But this was reality.

Something like this wasn't a build. It was nothing but abuse.