Night Dungeon Exploration (2)
A sudden, wholly unexpected night dungeon exploration.
Swept up into a strange atmosphere neither of them had planned, Han Sora was glancing around warily in a way that was completely unlike her usual self.
“Seonho, junior~? It's here~? You're sure it's here~?”
“I told you it is, senpai. We came by earlier this afternoon.”
“Bringing your poor senpai out to a lonely little spot like this… you must be absolutely brimming with ulterior motives~?”
“Sora's standing right here, so please don't say weird things. What if she takes it the wrong way?”
“Heh heh, sorry, sorry~. But how can I help it when my junior reacts so entertainingly~?”
“…….”
Han Sora had come out half-hoping for an answer to the surprise kiss from that afternoon, or maybe even something like a proper night date. Instead, she found herself trailing after the two of them, her feelings tangled in a knot, in an atmosphere quite different from anything she'd imagined.
He told me she was 'just a senpai.' No matter how I look at them, there's nothing 'just' about a senior-junior relationship like that.
They were laughing and chatting away with each other so freely—was it really plausible to call them an ordinary senior and junior? At a glance, they seemed even closer than she was with Seonho. She'd considered herself reasonably intimate with him too, but she couldn't remember ever talking with him that unguardedly, without a shred of distance between them.
…And on top of that, as a man and a woman, they were even casually touching each other without a second thought.
“Oh? What's this? Seonho, junior, come take a look at this!”
“What is it this time.”
Fwoooosh—!!
“THIS! Look at this! Anyone can see it's a mana vine that was cut recently! Don't tell me someone actually fell for a trap this elementary? I only taught you about these a few days ago!”
Boom, boom, BOOM!
“Ah, that's probably the other party that was following behind us. Naturally, I scouted ahead and avoided all of these.”
“……R-right?”
“What exactly do you take me for, senpai? Did you hold me in such low regard that I'd forget everything you taught me?”
“…W-well, I did trust you? Whoopsie, I knew there was a reason you're my favorite junior!”
“Just get your butt over here, senpai. Where do you think you're going, wandering off and poking at things by yourself.”
“Kyaaah?! Th-that's sexual harassment, junior~!”
“…….”
The jade-haired senpai carrying on with easy, shameless skinship as if she'd entirely forgotten anyone else was even present—and Lee Seonho, who despite a show of reluctance was playing along with evident enjoyment.
If it were simply a matter of flashy, sparkling energy, Sora could have muscled her way into the conversation and kept up well enough… but Lim Yujin's way of talking, which threaded through so many things in ways Sora found hard to follow, was proving difficult to adapt to.
Seonho's talking with her just fine, so are the two of them actually a good match…?
Until now, she'd believed she was the person closest to him.
She'd never dreamed she'd feel a pang of alarm from somewhere so utterly out of left field.
Her mind grew so tangled that she found herself doubting her belief that she was the one closest to being Lee Seonho's lover.
…Not that she had any intention whatsoever of giving up, of course.
If anything, this is exactly when I have to make him look my way.
She couldn't afford to dither and end up losing him to a senpai whose face she'd barely known.
She still needed his answer to that kiss from this afternoon, too. Granted, her vague expectation of a good answer had shrunk a little—but if he had taken her kiss as a confession, the odds still looked promising enough.
Whoosh!
“S-Seonho!”
“Hm? Han Sora?”
“H-how do you tell trap vines apart again…? I-I heard it earlier, but I forgot….”
“Ah, trap vines? You can identify them well enough just by their appearance. Basically, they have mana flowing through them, so they give off a faint bluish glow—”
Clutching onto Lee Seonho's arm with an excuse that even she recognized as a little clumsy, Han Sora pressed herself close.
Right now, she had made up her mind to do whatever it took to make him focus entirely on her.
The strange rivalry between Han Sora and Lim Yujin—or, to be precise, a rivalry in which only Han Sora was invested one-sidedly—continued the entire way along the root forest path.
Every time Lim Yujin struck up conversation as though something had delighted her, or indulged in the casual skinship she liked to visit on close juniors, Han Sora would try to pull me into talk of mundane everyday academy life while pressing her chest a little more diligently against the arm it was wrapped around.
It was a rivalry that could only exist between Lim Yujin, who was comically, almost offensively dense about romantic feelings, and Han Sora, who was exactly the opposite—far, far too sensitive to them.
Probably because of that kiss—she definitely does look pretty anxious.
Dramatic as the moment had been, Han Sora was the first heroine to take the initiative all the way to a kiss. That was natural enough, I suppose—in the first place, obedient Cha Eunju and Kim Isabel weren't the type to act boldly on their own.
The curious thing was that in the original story, she'd never been this forward even with Seo Woojin… though that was probably the product of several factors working together.
For one, the original story's Lee Seonho, while no prize, hadn't been as grotesquely pathetic as today's Seo Woojin. On top of that, he'd been written as a timid character who read the room constantly—even pulling villain stunts, he never took bold action.
Where his early role had amounted to nothing more than occasionally appearing alongside Lee Seonho to show off pitiful Cha Eunju, this world's Seo Woojin was bothering me at nearly main-villain levels.
I guess it takes real potential to be a protagonist, even a fallen one.
Seo Woojin, dumped into the Student Affairs Office leaving behind only a vague question—do protagonists retain their potential even as villains?
All the same, I was grateful to him in many ways. Thanks to him, things with Han Sora had progressed a good deal, and her attitude had turned this proactive to boot.
“We've come in pretty deep, haven't we, Seonho, junior? Isn't this too deep for three first-years to be exploring?”
“We're three department valedictorians, though. The top of the Swordsmanship Department, the top of the Archery Department, and the top of the Combat Support Department.”
“Well, that's more than enough to conquer a D-Rank Dungeon. Hold on—Sora was the valedictorian of Archery? Then doesn't that make her the top scorer of the entire freshman class?”
“Th-that's right? B-but Seonho gave up his top spot, so I ended up with it by accident! Everyone who was there said Seonho was the one who deserved the credit, but he flat-out refused to take the core material, and…”
“…Hm? That's a little different from what I heard from Seonho, junior.”
“What? What did he tell you?”
“I believe he said he just got lucky and ended up partying with some talented people, and that they were considerate enough to hand him second place….”
“……Seonho.”
“…Well, it's not exactly wrong.”
A small conversational gap that had opened up thanks to Lim Yujin bringing up the entrance exam at just the right moment.
I'd been counting on this topic surfacing like this sooner or later. Set it up this way, and when it came out, it would show everyone that I made a habit of modesty.
“Not exactly wrong?! If it weren't for you back then, Seonho, all of us might have been in serious danger!”
“Oh? What on earth happened that has Sora this worked up?”
“An Owl Bear showed up during the entrance exam, and we happened to have no tank to hold the front line, so Seonho—”
From there, Han Sora regaled Lim Yujin with a vivid account of the entrance exam as though it were some legendary war story of mine.
And the more of it she heard, the more Lim Yujin's gaze drifted toward me over a curling, knowing little smile.
“Wait, so you earned second place on your own skill after all~? Honestly, the way it sounds, our Combat Support Department could have produced the overall valedictorian~?”
“That's what I keep saying, senpai?! If he just hadn't done that weird concession at the end, the top spot was his from the start! But since I landed the finishing blow, he insisted he absolutely couldn't take it….”
“Why dwell on the past? Besides, at the academy, it's better that you're the valedictorian rather than me. Think of how people would look at us if the Combat Support Department took top honors.”
“That's not the point right now~!”
“Monsters about, Sora. Keep your voice down.”
“…….”
Perhaps the memory of the entrance exam had resurfaced after so long, because Han Sora shot me a look brimming with wounded indignation.
“……Hmm.”
Lim Yujin, meanwhile, was studying me through a gaze of her own—one of genuine, simmering interest.
She'd already seen an unexpected side to the junior who played along so smoothly with her bits and matched her energy, and now this had only deepened her curiosity.
Bringing Lim Yujin along on tonight's dungeon run had, without a doubt, been an excellent choice.
“Ah, here it is.”
While we talked, we arrived at the scene in question before I realized it.
At the sight of a dozen-plus Poison Spike Wolf carcasses and the traces of a savage battle, the perpetual smile on Lim Yujin's face stiffened slightly.
“Wow, this is no joke. How viciously did they fight here?”
“From what I heard, they came within a hair of total annihilation. The archer lost an arm, and the mage had both legs severed outright.”
“Poison Spike Wolves don't normally pack together in numbers like this in the first place…. Unless they cast a large-scale spell or ran around screaming their heads off, I can't see how….”
All of Lim Yujin's earlier ease had vanished; she surveyed the scene with a faintly grave expression.
Beside her, I quietly drew my knife and began preparing for the dissection in earnest.
“Let's sort out the materials first, senpai. Sora, you watch how the senpai does it and then give it a try yourself.”
“…Right. Sora, would you come over and try dissecting this one?”
“Ah—yes, senpai!”
Lim Yujin's and Han Sora's feelings for me aside, we still had to resolve the official 'reason' we'd entered the dungeon tonight in the first place.
Watching from a slight distance as Lim Yujin taught Han Sora the basics on a wolf with plenty of wounds—one where damaged hide wouldn't cost us much—I set about skinning a wolf of my own.
Minimizing cuts, preserving as much as possible.
Unlike the clean kills Han Sora or Do Yoonchae delivered, these had been hacked apart mid-fight, so the best I could realistically hope for was B-Grade Material. Still, with Delicate Touch attached, even deliberately botching the work was difficult.
After all, the three of them had gone to the trouble of outsourcing material acquisition to me—I needed to recover everything as intact as I could, because I had a thing or two to say to that trio. Keeping the goods pristine would also make them far more convenient to use exactly as I pleased later on.
Squelch, squiiish!
With one pelt peeled off whole and stored in my monster-material pouch, I pried the wolf's jaws open to extract its fangs—and the moment I looked inside…
“……Ah.”
There, lodged deep in the beast's throat, was the mage girl's 'leg.' My feelings on the matter were, to put it mildly, complicated.
Well. That's certainly grotesque.
…Still, I suppose I'll collect this separately too. With severed limbs, as long as the body part itself survives, recovery time shrinks dramatically—and the treatment costs drop considerably as well.
“Seonho, come look at this! This one I just skinned—KYAAAAAAAAAK?!”
And the cherry on top was Han Sora, who shrieked as though she'd stumbled upon a corpse at the sight of me calmly pulling an entire woman's leg out of a wolf's gaping maw.