The Test
I stopped walking and looked around once.
Solid ground, heavy trees rising thickly, and a sky packed with pure white clouds. Nothing special stood out.
There really was nothing special. I wondered why Ha Seung-hee had chosen this place. I watched her quietly.
Ha Seung-hee set the bag she'd been carrying on her back down on the ground. I'd heard it was an expensive artifact. Its capacity was far greater than it looked, and it reduced the weight of whatever was inside. From what I'd overheard, the price ran over a hundred billion won.
I wasn't envious of her bag in the slightest. I had an inventory far more convenient than anything she was carrying.
She rummaged through it and pulled out a glass bottle filled with green liquid. HB-1. A replica of Hevil's Growth Accelerator. Outwardly, it was indistinguishable from the original.
"You're testing it here? There's nothing around. Planning to use it on the trees?"
"You really don't know much, do you. There's Bellapuric right over there."
"Bella… what?"
She pushed through the undergrowth, found a scraggly little plant, and grinned. Carefully scraping at the dirt, she began digging it up.
"Bellapuric. One of the medicinal herbs you commonly find in dungeons. Excellent fever-reducing properties. The root, in particular, is a potion ingredient."
"…If it's a potion ingredient, it must be pretty expensive."
"Yes. It usually trades for about a hundred and twenty thousand won."
Once she'd harvested the Bellapuric, she shredded the root to pieces and scattered the fragments in every direction. Then she upended a bottle of HB-1 onto the ground.
The shredded root pieces twitched and began to regenerate. The roots sank into the earth while the upper parts grew into stems. Seung-hee and I stepped back to watch. It took less than a minute for the Bellapuric to fully mature.
And it didn't stop there. Fruit dropped from the plants, hit the soil, and sprouted in turn, multiplying.
Three minutes later, the entire area was blanketed in Bellapuric.
"That should be roughly three hundred plants. I'm satisfied."
"A hundred and twenty thousand times three hundred is…"
"Thirty-six million won."
"How much are you planning to sell HB-1 for?"
"Fifty million won a bottle."
"That expensive?"
"It's cheap, actually. Think about it. If you just secure seeds for herbs that cost five hundred thousand won or more apiece, you can make several times that profit. Well—herb prices will drop, of course."
"What if you monopolized HB-1 and grew the herbs yourself to sell? You'd make even more money."
"Monopolies create problems. The biggest one is that you end up making useless enemies. If I have a choice, I'd rather make allies than enemies."
Sssssssss…
A hair-raising sound rose around us.
Seung-hee and I looked around and both went wide-eyed. Every plant other than the Bellapuric—the trees, the underbrush—was withering and shriveling at a terrifying rate.
"The side effects are pretty severe. Did it do this on Earth too?"
"…No. Not to this degree. The Bellapuric is… unharmed. I'll need to figure out whether this only happens in dungeons, or whether Bellapuric itself is special."
She took out a wooden box and stored the Bellapuric inside. I could feel mana coming off the box—some kind of specialized container with unique properties.
"Taking them with you? Fair enough. Be a waste to throw them out."
"I need to research these too. They look fine on the outside, but… there could be problems inside that we can't see."
We moved on. We found another medicinal herb and, just as before, used HB-1 to cultivate it in an instant. The result was identical to the Bellapuric trial. Every surrounding plant withered on the spot.
"…I'll need to run the same tests in other dungeons. You'll help me, right?"
"Sure. It's not hard work."
I looked straight ahead.
A still lake stretched out before us—easily a kilometer across. Pink lotuses floated on the surface.
It was a mystical, peaceful scene. But neither Seung-hee nor I approached the water. Beneath that pretty lake lurked Fogsnakes, D-Rank monsters.
A Fogsnake was a serpent with a frog's head and legs. They attacked with long tongues—the tips sharp as awls, and venomous.
"Sunbae. Do you know what happens if you pour HB-1 into water?"
"Never tried it, so no."
"Diluted in water, the effect weakens. Too much water and it disappears entirely."
"So dumping HB-1 in here wouldn't do anything."
"We don't know that yet. This is a dungeon, after all."
Seung-hee pulled three bottles of HB-1 from her bag and poured all three into the lake at once. The green liquid seemed to dilute—then was absorbed by the nearest lotuses. Change set in. Petals fell away, and the seed pods spat out lotus seeds. The seeds sank straight to the lakebed and grew at a rapid pace.
"Same reaction as the other herbs."
Then the problem appeared. The surrounding lotuses withered and died. Worse, the water itself clouded with pollution. Only the lotuses affected by HB-1 held their proud, elegant forms.
Seung-hee reached out to harvest one. I yanked her back by the collar. A Fogsnake burst from the water and lashed its tongue through the empty air where her head had been. The tongue was over a meter long.
"A Fogsnake?! We didn't even go in the water—why would it suddenly—?!"
"Probably pissed that the water got polluted."
I stepped forward, drew Hwaryeonbido from my belt, and swung. I severed the Fogsnake's tongue and smashed its head. Easy kill. Fogsnakes weren't hard to deal with once you avoided the ambush.
The problem is that the ambush is hard to avoid.
I kept Hwaryeonbido drawn and stayed on guard. There was no rule saying only one of them would attack.
"Yujin sunbae. Please harvest some lotuses for me."
"Alright. One enough?"
"Five. I need them for research. Pull them up by the roots, please."
I approached the lake and reached out with my left hand, pulling a lotus free. Getting the root failed—the stem snapped.
"Make do with this."
"…And the roots?"
Pulling them by the roots meant going into the lake myself, and I had no interest in that.
"Do it yourself, then."
"……You said you'd help. Help properly?"
"I don't want to get in the water."
"Is that so? The hotel I booked for tonight is famous for its excellent bathtub… looks like you won't be getting in that one either."
"……Bathtub play, huh. Not bad."
I stepped into the lake. Several Fogsnakes swam in for an ambush. I swept my blade through the water. Fogsnake corpses bobbed up alongside the spray.
What a pain.
Crackle.
Lightning flickered in my grip.
"Don't use lightning. It could affect the lotuses."
Fair point.
"Got it."
I carefully dug the lotuses out by the roots.
This kind of menial work is what slaves are for…
Annoying, but there was no helping it. The more I suffered now, the better Seung-hee would service me tonight.
She's worked me this hard… tonight I'd better get to watch Seung-hee's heat dance to make it worth it.
Beeeeeeeeeep.
I was harvesting the fourth lotus when a grating sound cut through the air.
It sounded like a flute—not a performance, just someone blowing hard and raw.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!
I pinpointed the source. About three hundred meters away, in the forest.
No monster in this dungeon makes a sound like that. Was the preliminary survey wrong? Or…
Or someone who'd snuck into the dungeon was behind it.
The moment the thought landed, I dumped the lotus in my hand, climbed out of the lake, and moved to Seung-hee's side.
"Sunbae?"
"…They're coming."
I shoved her behind me and thrust a hand forward. Dozens of Fogsnakes burst from the front and charged.
Crackle-crackle-crackle.
I discharged the lightning gathered in my palm. Dozens of electric arcs swept through the Fogsnakes. The electrocuted monsters dropped limply to the ground.
Beeeep, beeeeeeeeeep!
The flute sounded again.
Dozens more Fogsnakes erupted from the lake. Creatures with snake bodies and frog legs could operate on land just fine. Worse still, they didn't slither like snakes—they hopped like frogs.
"…Every time the flute sounds, more Fogsnakes appear. Are they being controlled by it?"
Hunter abilities came in every variety. A power that controlled monsters through flute music wouldn't be strange. Or you could think of it another way—a flute that controlled monsters.
"Looks like someone snuck into the dungeon behind our backs."
"…There were Association staff guarding the entrance."
"They must have slipped through a gap. The Association staff at the entrance were all about the same level anyway."
Crackle-crackle.
I scattered lightning against the dozens of Fogsnakes charging us. Fortunately, they were D-Rank monsters with no electrical resistance. Just spraying lightning was enough to kill dozens of them.
As long as my mana holds out, that is.
Beeeep! Beeeeeeeeeep!
Splash-splash-splash.
More Fogsnakes burst from the lake. They were targeting Seung-hee and me with perfect accuracy. I ran with her toward the sound of the flute.
"…Sunbae. Whoever's playing that flute has to die here."
Seung-hee's face had gone ice-cold. She swept a hand toward the Fogsnakes chasing us. Her ability—invisible claws—carved a Fogsnake into five pieces.
"Ha Jun-soo's doing?"
"No. It won't be him. Big brother already blew his chance. He can't harm me physically. If he did, he'd lose the succession permanently."
"He just has to not get caught by the chairman."
"There's no way Grandfather left him unsupervised. Anyway—that person has to die here. HB-1 can't be known to the world yet!"
"Any idea who it is?"
"…Too many candidates, that's the problem. Mostly rival companies… more than five corporations could pull something like this. Factor in guilds and overseas firms and… it's a headache. Capturing them for interrogation would be easier."
"Then we catch them and interrogate them, like you said. What's so hard about that?"
"Sunbae!!"
Seung-hee shouted. We had no choice but to stop. Before we knew it, hundreds of Fogsnakes had us surrounded.
"Surrounding us like this shouldn't be possible. Fogsnake intelligence is… at the level of ordinary beasts."
"The flute player must be controlling them."
I answered flatly and gripped Hwaryeonbido in both hands. Crackle. Crimson lightning ran along the blade.
Shrieeeeeek!
The Fogsnakes let out sharp cries, jaws opening as one, tongues lashing out. It looked for all the world like hundreds of tentacles reaching for us.
Thunk!
I drove Hwaryeonbido into the ground.
Crimson lightning seeped into the earth, then erupted skyward and spread in every direction. Hundreds of Fogsnakes were electrocuted. Trees and underbrush caught fire.
"Let's go."
"You're not collecting the mana stones? Even bottom-tier D-Rank stones—that many would be a jackpot."
"Not interested in pocket change."
I found him.
He sat on a boulder wrapped in a cloak. His black hair fell in curls to his shoulders, and his eyes were deeply sunken. Seeing us, he lowered the wooden flute from his lips.