Hunter: Baek Jaeseong — 3
Yohan, holding point at the head of our formation, came to a sudden stop. We all felt it — a presence ahead — and dropped into combat stance. I was the healer, so I readied a heal.
"Poison Centipede."
A grotesque centipede with over a hundred legs dragged itself into view. The Poison Centipede was a staple of cave dungeons, as varied in size and appearance as any slime. They ranged from fodder that hunters of our caliber could put down, all the way to boss specimens that demanded a Rank 5 Dungeon Hunter or higher. Naturally, the one in front of us was a small one — not even two meters long. The bosses ran to dozens of meters.
"Watch the poison. Jaeseong, prepare a healing technique."
Go Yohan, issuing orders. That arrogant bastard was trying to play party leader. Still, he was talking sense, so I couldn't exactly argue. What an infuriating prick.
No — was I just that twisted? I think I was getting antsy because I couldn't afford to let Lina fall for a guy like him. This was a dungeon. Keep it together.
"Understood."
I prepared Light Cure. It was one of the techniques under Light Control — a skill for treating status ailments, and one of the techniques I'd spent last week drilling until it stuck. Once I'd learned it, Light Cure had been added as a Branch Skill under Elemental Mastery.
"Its weak point is the tail. I'll draw aggro. Dealers, hit the tail."
"The cave's too narrow, though. I don't think we can circle around."
The passage was tight enough that three people standing abreast would fill it wall to wall. Flanking a Poison Centipede in here was not going to be as easy as it sounded. And even if the tail was the weak point, the thing carried a venomous stinger back there, same as a scorpion. Catch that in a space this cramped and you'd be crossing the river in no time.
"I'll make it work."
Yohan said it with real confidence and stepped forward. The Poison Centipede took one look at him and charged. I'd been taught that even among fodder, these things were unusually aggressive, and that was no exaggeration. The upside — for a rookie party like ours, anyway — was that they were also stupid. A tank didn't even need a proper technique to hold their attention.
Yohan slipped and weaved through the narrow cave, pulling the thing's focus this way and that. Some Poison Centipedes could spit venom at range, depending on the specimen. This one, thankfully, did not seem to be that kind.
The centipede heaved its bulk after him like a length of heavy chain, two-plus meters of armored segments moving with unsettling flexibility. Yohan was faster, and smarter. He used every inch of that cramped space and let the attacks slide off into nothing.
The thing had forgotten the rest of us existed. It wanted Yohan and only Yohan. The database had been right about the brains.
Yohan vaulted over its body and bolted deeper into the cave. The Poison Centipede, still chasing, wrenched itself around a full hundred and eighty degrees — forcing a turn in a passage that had no room for one.
"Yes! The tail's exposed!"
Lina thrust out her hand. Her ability was Chain Disaster — a Material-type that summoned crushing chains and hurled them like weapons.
Space split open around her outstretched fingers, and a chain of pure black burst from the rift. It shot toward the Poison Centipede's tail like a loosed arrow. For a moment it looked as if a small centipede were pouncing on a much larger one.
The chain punched into the tail with a wet shunk, like a bullet finding flesh. The thing that had been chasing Yohan shuddered, then curled in on itself the way a worm does when it's been left too long in the sun. The corpse crumbled to dust and vanished.
I found myself thinking of Real Mirage — the ability the examiner had used during the Hunter test. An astonishing power that made illusions real; he'd summoned a monster with it. This, too, had the feel of a Real Mirage phantom.
"It's dead. Well done."
Yohan came back dusting off his hands. He'd been the one who'd actually carried the fight, but he didn't make a show of it. The skill was real, and the character didn't seem half bad either. Which was exactly why I was worried. Every decent man was a rival. Of course, with Power of Sex in my corner, I will never lose a contest of male appeal. Not in this lifetime.
"Let's keep exploring."
He said it and took point again.
The exploration ran about two hours. A real dungeon raid routinely ate a full day, and some stretched on for months — in which case you camped in a Safe Area, one of the dungeon's designated safe zones, and pushed on from there. Our two hours were child's play by comparison.
We dropped the last thing we ran into, a swarm of Evil Bats, and the cave dead-ended. Set into the rock was a door of metal that had no business being in a cave. We opened it, and bright light spilled through, and beyond it was the world outside.
"Hah… we're finally out!"
Sujin whooped and hurried into the open, clearly thrilled to be free of that cramped tunnel. The cave had narrowed the deeper we went, until at the end a single person could barely squeeze through. I didn't have claustrophobia, exactly, but I had no interest in spending any more time in a space that tight.
"Good work, everyone!"
A few Association staff were waiting outside with snacks and drinks. We tipped our faces to the blue sky and gulped mineral water like we'd never tasted it before. Water had never been this good. When we hit a real dungeon, I was packing as much of this as I could carry.
After a short rest, the debrief started. Nobody had been hurt, and the monsters had been handled well enough, but nothing is ever perfect. A Rank 5 Dungeon Hunter — a senior, in the flesh — walked us through every mistake, point by point. We learned more efficient movement. Smarter calls.
Dungeon exploration ran like that every day. The training site was always the same container building, but the interior changed every time we stepped inside.
Sometimes it was dense jungle. Sometimes an abandoned city. The Association's intent was obvious: put us through as many environments and as many monsters as possible. We trained in the Artificial Dungeon for six days, and then the last day of dungeon-training week arrived. Today, we were going into a real one.
The dungeon we'd be entering was a beginner-difficulty site managed directly by the Association. The difficulty itself was lower than the Artificial Dungeons we'd been practicing in.
But live combat always carried variables you couldn't account for, and there was no room to get sloppy. Unlike an Artificial Dungeon, which could be controlled down to the last detail, a real dungeon was a nest of unknowns. Even our gear was a step up from the practice runs.
We all suited up in combat uniforms made from monster byproduct. The jade-colored suits were bulletproof, blade-proof, fireproof, and waterproof — serious pieces of kit, priced at over seven thousand dollars apiece. Ordinary soldiers and cops couldn't even dream of equipment like that.
The boots and gloves were the same: high-durability monster-byproduct gear. We slung packs loaded with rations and equipment. Mine was packed with potions and medical supplies. A healer might have treatment techniques, but you still carried medicine for emergencies — and you learned how to use every last vial.
"We've arrived. This is the Rounded Nest."
Fully armed, we rode a minibus about thirty minutes from the training center. The dungeon entrance looked like a hiking trail. The Dungeon Gate installed near the mouth of it made it very clear this was no ordinary path.
Dungeon Gates were facilities installed and managed by the Hunter Association. They kept civilians out and stopped monsters from spilling into the world.
Unawakened people who couldn't handle mana had a hard time even approaching a dungeon, so civilian trespassing was rarely the issue. Monsters wandering out and hitting nearby homes, on the other hand, happened more often than anyone liked to admit. Some dungeons had multiple entrances depending on type, which made it effectively impossible for the Association to lock down every opening of every dungeon.
Unless a dungeon was fairly large, a Gate was rare. Multiple exits made a Gate almost pointless, and even with a single entrance, a Gate alone couldn't guarantee total containment. The fact that one was here meant the Association was managing the site directly. The Rounded Nest wasn't a large dungeon, but it was used to train rookies — which explained why the Association had taken it in hand.
"Just standing here, I can feel the pressure. Present your Dungeon Hunter IDs as you were instructed and enter through the Gate. Stick to what you've been taught and you shouldn't have any major problems. Come back in one piece."
The staffer who'd brought us this far was Unawakened, and couldn't enter the dungeon. We'd already learned the entry procedure at the training center, so we thanked him and approached the Gate.
Two hunters were posted there. They checked our Dungeon Hunter IDs and opened the inner door. The door was heavy metal, the kind you operated with machinery, like a dam sluice. Rare metals recovered from dungeons, most likely.
"Rookies. Good luck out there."
The hunter who looked to be on overwatch grinned as he said it. Fuck, that's creepy. We formed up the way we had in the Artificial Dungeon and stepped through.
I'd heard popular dungeons were packed with hunters from the entrance in. This place was quiet, and grim. Fair enough. Walk into a dungeon weaker than the Artificial ones and you wouldn't even cover a day's pay. Besides rookies like us, nobody was coming here to explore.
"The forest is incredibly dense."
Lina, watching our rear, studied the vegetation as she said it. She wasn't wrong. The broadleaf canopy was unnaturally thick, and the undergrowth was crowded with flowers and wild grasses in colors that had no business clashing this hard with the chill in the air.
"So this is a dungeon, huh? I heard it's pretty common for the environment inside to be nothing like the outside."
That dyed-hair little prick started running his mouth. He'd been throwing glances at Lina for days now. No sense of territory, this bastard. I'd already claimed Lina. Marked her. She was mine.
"My little sister would love a place like this."
Yohan muttered it and took the lead. We moved forward slowly. In a dungeon, attention wasn't optional — it was the first rule. We hadn't taken more than a few steps when the sound of wingbeats tearing air came from up ahead.
"Harpies!"
Yohan stabbed a finger at the sky, voice sharp. A flock of gaudy, pink-feathered monster-birds swept into view in formation. Six of them. One more than us.
We'd run this enough times that we didn't even need hand signals. The formation locked in. When the enemy outnumbered you, the tank had to hold a little off from the rest of the party. If the aggro split, the dealers and the healer were the ones who'd eat it.
"Over here!"
Yohan's body shot forward like a bullet. The harpies, pulled to him, tore the air with a racket of wings and screamed.
SKREEEEEEE!
It was a hideous noise, like nails being dragged down a chalkboard. Harpies, like Dire Wolves, were one of the monsters that raided civilian settlements with ugly regularity. That siren-like shriek was a symbol of terror for ordinary people.
"You crazy bird-brains!"
The blonde little prick clenched both fists and fired his ability. Acceleration — body acceleration, plain and simple.
His combat chops were decent enough. He wasn't in Sujin or Lina or Yohan's league, but he wasn't trolling either. That was probably what an average Dungeon Hunter looked like.
The nature of the ability meant he had to fight up close, so he moved toward Yohan. Sujin loaded a Water Arrow. Lina summoned her chains. Yohan held aggro with real skill, but six was six, and he was starting to feel it. Until now, we'd never faced more than three monsters at once. Double that, and the formation began to show cracks.
"That's one down!"
Lina bound it in chains. Sujin drove a Water Arrow through it. The combo landed clean, and one harpy went down.