Dungeon Practical Training (2)
I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling.
"Ugh. It's freezing."
I pushed myself up off the icy cave floor. Beside me, Baek A-young tossed and turned, a low groan slipping from her lips.
She seemed to come around as well. She sat up and swept her gaze across our surroundings.
"W-what is this... An all-out war? This rampage is on a completely insane scale..."
A deep rumble rolled through the stone. The dungeon itself had swollen in size, and the mana density had spiked. The monsters that spawned here would be stronger for it — that much was obvious.
"A-young, just calm down for now."
I met her eyes. She was trembling like a rain-soaked puppy.
"U-ung. I'm here, so don't worry, Hoyeon."
"A-young, you can't fight."
"Th-that's true, but...! I can heal you just fine!"
She couldn't hide the tremor running through her. Honestly, I'd have been just as lost if I'd been dropped into a dungeon with a single cadet. And with zero combat ability of her own, the fear had to be that much worse.
"Let's start moving. I may not look like much, but I'm pretty strong. You saw the news about me taking down a Demon, right?"
"Of course I did. We even received the award together. But wouldn't it be better to stay put than wander around? It could be dangerous."
If we wanted to quietly ride out this rampage, staying still would have been the smartest play. I already knew a rescue team would arrive in two days.
But I needed to take Baek A-young's virginity before then. To create the right situation, we had to be on the move.
"We don't have time to sit around waiting for a rescue. Linking up with other cadets or a healer team would be the better call."
"Mmm... alright. We'll do it your way."
She looked reluctant, but she went along with me. I was the one with the combat power, so she deferred to my judgment.
Even so, she couldn't quite hide the unease lingering at the edge of her expression. It felt like she didn't trust my strength. Or maybe she didn't trust me as a person. The Baek A-young I'd known from the game felt familiar, but the woman standing in front of me was someone I'd only recently gotten involved with.
I needed to build some trust with her first.
I took the lead while she watched our rear, and we began a slow exploration of the dungeon.
"Hold on a second."
"Yeah."
A tremendous sound of flapping wings erupted from the passage ahead, a frantic, leathery roar that filled the corridor.
"That sound... it's a swarm of cave bats. Let's fall back."
"It's a straight corridor. There's nowhere to run. I'll just handle them."
"We have to run. From the sound of it, there are more than twenty."
"I'm seriously fine. Just watch."
I soothed her. She was anxious because she had no idea what I was actually capable of.
I drew out a thread of mana, shaped it into a fireball, and sent it drifting slowly down the passage.
The sphere of flame advanced with a faint glow — then slammed into an enormous swarm of bats and scattered into motes of mana.
Twenty? There were more than fifty of these things.
"Th-there's way more than I thought! Run!"
The cave bats boiled into view, a shrieking black tide. There were far more of them than I'd expected. Burning them all one by one would have been a waste of mana.
This isn't going to work. I'll have to go all out.
The only person watching was Baek A-young. It should be fine.
Might as well use this chance to raise her trust a bit.
"Haa... I guess I don't have a choice."
"Hoyeon! I'll hold them off — run!"
She stepped in front of me, threw her arms out in a cross, and squeezed her eyes shut.
What was she doing all of a sudden?
The bats charged.
At the same instant, I spun a whirlwind into existence in my palm. A small storm shot forward from my hand. The oncoming bats couldn't bleed off their speed in time and were sucked screaming into the vortex.
With my other hand I conjured a dozen fireballs and shoved them into the whirlwind.
Double Casting.
The bats caught in the spiral became a single towering pillar of flame. The one or two that managed to slip free, I sniped with spears of fire.
"Huh...?"
Baek A-young, still standing in front of me with her arms spread, opened her eyes wide.
The thought of taking a hit for me was genuinely admirable — but the bats never even got close. They all burned to death.
What had shocked her, though, wasn't the sight of the charred corpses. It was my magic.
The public knew me as a fire-attribute mage. I'd deliberately used nothing but flame until now. On top of that, the Double Casting I'd just performed was a dream technique every mage wanted to master — an advanced art that plenty of active professional mages had never properly learned.
These were secrets I'd been hiding from everyone. Only a tiny fraction of what I was actually keeping buried, of course, but from Baek A-young's perspective even this much would be enormous. Learning it all at once would naturally throw her off.
If I'd been a truly terrible person, I might have killed her to keep her quiet.
I had absolutely no intention of doing that.
"A-young. I told you to trust me, didn't I?"
I gave a smile to the woman who was still too stunned to speak. Only then did she relax and find her voice.
"Hoyeon, you...! At this level, we can actually make it!"
Having realized I was stronger than she'd thought, she smiled as if she'd found hope.
Good. She'd placed her hope in me. In other words, she trusted me a little more now.
"A-young. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention what you just saw to anyone on the outside."
I let my expression harden as I looked at her.
Honestly, a secret of this level wouldn't matter much if it got out. It wasn't as though people would learn I could use every attribute — two elements weren't that unusual. Double Casting was a bit riskier... but Lim Sol could cover for that if she stepped in.
Regardless, sharing a hunter's secrets was never a light matter. Unique skills, innate authorities — ability users did not share the kinds of things that could become weaknesses in someone else's hands. You never knew when a person might put a knife in your back. You had to keep at least some of your power hidden.
And right now, Baek A-young knew my secret.
"I trust you, A-young. I haven't known you that long, but I can tell you're a good person."
She listened quietly, her eyes on mine.
"I'll do everything I can to get us out of here. So... let's survive this together."
"Yeah. Don't worry. I'll do my best too."
She looked at me with bright, earnest eyes. She seemed to trust me a little more than she had at the start.
How long had we been walking? Even after quite a stretch of exploration, there was no sign of other people — let alone an exit.
Fuck. Is it supposed to be like this?
I only knew we'd been transferred because of the terrorist attack. I didn't have the details, so a thread of unease had started to work its way through me. But there were no monsters in this dungeon that could actually threaten me, so I kept pushing forward.
"Huff... huff..."
The sound of Baek A-young's breathing behind me grew increasingly ragged. Healers were naturally weak in stamina. I had no choice but to stop in a clearing so we could rest.
"A-young, you look exhausted. Mind if we take a break here?"
"Yeah, thanks. Haa..."
"Don't mention it. I'm tired too."
I sat down in the middle of the clearing and began to meditate. There had been several fights on the way here, and I'd burned through a fair amount of mana.
The moment the meditation ended, as if they'd been waiting for it, goblins came creeping toward the clearing — a wet, guttural chorus of kekekek and krrrk.
"Great. There goes all the mana I just recovered."
They were reduced to ash before they could even get close.
"Hoyeon, are you okay? You're not pushing yourself, are you?"
"I'm fine."
The dungeon had been strengthened, but there was still no opponent here that posed a real threat to me.
And that was the problem.
Baek A-young's tastes were... particular.
The scenario required a gravely wounded man whom she had personally treated — so drained from the healing that he couldn't move a single finger — to then force himself on her. On top of that, the setup needed him to be unable to restrain the lust rising in him despite her treatment, acting purely on instinct.
Setting aside the psychological issues, there was a physical problem. I needed to take a wound severe enough that she'd pour every last bit of her strength into healing me. That would probably mean most of my internal organs rupturing.
Fortunately, walking through the dungeon had already worn her stamina down quite a bit, so a single serious wound might be enough... but suddenly getting hit by the same bats I'd been incinerating with a single spell would look bizarre. I needed to think this through.
"How did things end up like this...?"
Baek A-young hugged her knees and spoke in a gloomy murmur.
I knew we'd be rescued in two days at the latest, but from her perspective this was genuinely terrifying. We didn't even have any food. We'd have to go hungry. I'd planned to bring rations for a situation like this, but there'd been a belongings inspection, so I couldn't.
"It's alright. You've got a future archmage right here. We'll find a way out."
"...Heh. Yeah. I'll trust you. Sorry for showing such an un-adult side of myself."
"Don't be. If I'd been dropped here alone, I'd have been terrified. Thanks to you, A-young, I'm not lonely."
Her breathing still hadn't evened out. She looked worn. But I couldn't let her fully recover her stamina here. She needed to treat me and then collapse from exhaustion — and for that, I needed to wear her down a little more.
"Shall we get going? I don't have a watch so I don't know what time it is, but we should get out of here soon. Monsters are starting to find their way to this spot, too."
"Yeah. Let's go."
She stood up without showing how tired she was, and we started walking again.
The further we went, the more we found nothing but the same cave walls. I didn't know the exact time, but we must have been walking for hours. Was it even possible we hadn't run into anyone? Either the dungeon had swollen to a ridiculous size, or there was something going on that I didn't know about. I couldn't say for sure.
Even the occasional conversation between us died away. The cave imposed that kind of stillness on us.
And then, when the only sound left was our breathing—
"KRAAAAAAAAH!"
A human scream tore through the dark from far away. I turned my head, locked eyes with Baek A-young, and sprinted toward it.
"KRAAAH! AAAAAAH!"
A horrific scream, accompanied by the wet, crushing sound of something being pulverized.
"KRAAAAAAH!"
A moment later, the screaming stopped.
But another sound took its place.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A massive creature's footsteps reached my ears. The measured, heavy gait told me it was a humanoid monster. It was coming from dead ahead, and the distance was closing fast.
Baek A-young, now able to hear it too, pressed herself right against my back.
"KUUOOOR—!"
"An o-ogre!"
An ugly, enormous bulk filled my vision. It was a high-tier monster — dim-witted, but possessed of tremendous strength and vitality.
In one hand it held the body of a cadet torn in half. It was the first time I'd seen a corpse this brutal, but my mental fortitude wasn't that fragile.
"Grrrr—!"
The ogre's crude killing intent poured over me. It hurled the cadet's corpse straight at my chest.
Cotton Guard
I blocked the filthy corpse and looked back at Baek A-young.
"H-Hoyeon. Are you okay?"
As an active hunter, she wasn't shocked by the body. She was more worried about my mental state.
But my mind had never been clearer.
Thump.
A familiar sensation.
Thump.
Authority Activated
Combat Sense flooded my body, and it was telling me one thing: the ogre in front of me was disgustingly strong.
Thump. Thump.
My body burned as hot as when I'd faced Felix — no, even hotter. The ogre was stronger than Felix, the two-horned Demon.
In the game, ogres were always portrayed as strangely powerful. Honestly, how strong could a dumb brute with nothing but raw strength possibly be? Meeting one in person was a complete pain in the ass. The pressure radiating from that massive frame and ugly face was no joke. I wasn't kidding — one hit and I'd be flattened like a pancake.
Fuck. Why did they have to make it this strong? Just make the damn thing weak.
"H-Hoyeon. This time we really have to run. I mean it!"
"And if we run, will we actually survive?"
"I'll hold it off. You run. You're younger than me — you have to live!"
"Forget it. How much of an age gap is there even?"
This woman really wanted to act like the mature adult. She wasn't even that much older.
I pushed her behind me and stepped forward.
"H-Hoyeon...!"
I had no idea why a monster like this was in this dungeon. The higher mana density had probably spawned something stronger. I couldn't run and leave Baek A-young behind anyway. If she died — a heroine — I'd fail the main quest and die myself.
So I had no choice but to fight.
"Just wait a moment. I'll take care of this quickly."
Thump.
Insight
I drew mana through my entire body.