Chapter 38: Is It Wrong to Seek an Erotic Situation in a Dungeon? (7)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 38: Is It Wrong to Seek an Erotic Situation in a Dungeon? (7)
My body felt as if it were floating somewhere.
When I opened my eyes, a completely different scene from moments before unfolded before me.
A pitch-black cave, shrouded in darkness.
[You have entered Kallashu's Trial.]
The message that appeared made me realize I was in a completely different world.
“Tch, it’s darker than I thought.”
Shin Yu-jeong, who had entered ahead of me, clicked her tongue and grumbled.
It was definitely dark.
Not so dark that I couldn't see at all, but dark enough that a careless misstep could lead to a surprise attack.
In many ways, it was a poor environment for a frontliner.
“Please use this.”
Yoon Ji-an, who had entered last, held out a bracelet to us.
“It’s a bracelet with the Light spell embedded in it. It should be good for about three hours.”
“Oh, thanks…”
Just as Shin Yu-jeong smiled and reached for it, I extended my hand and blocked them.
At that, she frowned and glared at me.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“We don’t need something like that.”
I immediately drew in the surrounding mana and created a palm-sized orb in front of her eyes.
Now, if I input the incantation.
“Light.”
The orb, which had been floating gently before her eyes and emitting a soft glow, suddenly flashed, bursting with light.
“Agh!”
Ah, I forgot.
The Light spell is more efficient than you’d think, so even a little extra mana makes the light much stronger.
“Hey, you bastard…!”
I quickly held up my hands toward her as she charged at me, tears streaming down her face.
“S-Sorry! I swear it wasn’t on purpose.”
As I apologized profusely, she stopped in her tracks.
“…Be careful. Next time, there won’t be any mercy.”
“Got it.”
Perhaps she felt awkward about blowing up at me in front of a powerful competitor like Yoon Ji-an, because she let it go more easily than I expected.
“Um, still, wouldn’t it be better to use the bracelet…?”
Yoon Ji-an, who was behind me, suggested gently.
I shook my head, declining her offer.
“Now that we’re in the dungeon, Ms. Ji-an, you must remain a strict observer.”
“If that is your wish, Mr. Do-jin… I understand.”
A pleased smile hung on Yoon Ji-an’s lips as she turned away.
She must have liked my mindset of refusing her help.
I adjusted the position of the light orb to hover above Shin Yu-jeong’s head.
“You can see well like this, right?”
“Uh… yeah.”
This is why mages are so sought after.
In a situation like this, without a mage, you’d have to use a bracelet with an embedded Light spell like the one Yoon Ji-an offered, or if you didn’t even have that, you’d have to make a torch. Both have their downsides.
The former requires you to buy the bracelet and consumes a small mana stone with each use, while the latter restricts your movement since you have to hold the torch.
But with a mage, all of those problems are solved.
As I said, the Light spell is so efficient that keeping it active for the entire dungeon run doesn’t strain me at all.
“Hey, Kim Do-jin.”
Shin Yu-jeong pointed to herself with her thumb, her expression quite serious.
“I’ll hold the front line, so you just use whatever magic you want. Got it?”
She was trying to say, ‘Trust me and give it your all,’ but I could tell from her eyes that wasn’t all there was to it.
It seemed she wanted to see for herself just how good I was with magic.
I’m surrounded by people trying to evaluate me.
“Alright, thanks.”
“Thanks? Come on, no need for that between us.”
She’s casually throwing around the phrase ‘between us.’
What ‘us’ is there?
Weren’t we just a bread shuttle and a school bully for three years, now tangled up again in the real world? The worst possible relationship.
“Alright, I’ll take the lead. Just follow me at a reasonable distance.”
“Okay.”
Shin Yu-jeong, who had been holding her shield loosely, gripped it tightly in her left hand and drew the sword from her waist with her right.
It was a shortsword, not particularly long.
I knew she was formidable just by looking at her physique, but seeing her sword made me think I needed to raise my evaluation of her.
As a frontliner and a tanker, Shin Yu-jeong would likely be in direct physical contact with monsters for most of the fight.
In that kind of situation, a shortsword is far more practical than an unnecessarily long one.
She could use it for quick stabs and slashes to overwhelm her opponent.
Of course, she’d have to switch weapons if she faced a large monster, but against small fry like goblins, there was nothing better.
Kiiieee…!
A crude cry echoed from beyond the winding turns of the cave.
It sounded a bit like a child’s voice, but also like a gurgling noise, thick with phlegm.
“Something’s up ahead.”
I adjusted the intensity and direction of the light source fixed above Shin Yu-jeong’s head, pointing it forward.
The winding cave path and the creature appeared at the same time.
It was small, between 90 and 130 centimeters tall, with dark green skin.
A bald head, long, pointed ears, a droopy hooked nose, and jagged, protruding teeth.
A single goblin, wearing nothing but a shabby leather loincloth, was flailing about, shielding its eyes in surprise from the sudden beam of light.
I immediately drew upon my mana and formed an orb.
A blazing red orb.
“Fire Missile.”
At first, I had wondered.
Why use the word ‘missile’ for an orb that was merely the size of a child’s fist?
Director Park Cheol-su had explained that in the past, the word ‘missile’ simply meant ‘projectile.’
It was only in modern times that it came to refer to a specific type of weapon.
So, ‘Fire Missile’ just means a fire-attribute projectile.
Ah, but that doesn’t mean it’s weak.
“Kim Do-jin! Calmly prepare your spell…”
As Shin Yu-jeong shouted her command and charged forward, the red orb shot past her like an arrow and struck the goblin.
The moment it hit.
Boom—!
A small explosion erupted, and the goblin’s body was engulfed in flames.
“Kiiik…”
Knocked down by the force of the blast, the creature twitched for a moment before going limp.
“I think it’s dead…?”
When I said that to the charging Shin Yu-jeong, her face filled with astonishment.
When I turned around, Yoon Ji-an had a similar expression.
What’s the big deal? It was just a basic spell.
*
Yoon Ji-an thought to herself.
‘What was my first real combat experience like?’
She remembered it being a cave, similar to this one.
A dungeon filled with various types of goblins, she believed.
‘It was the worst.’
The memory that surfaced was so awful she wanted to shove it back into the deepest corner of her brain and lock it away with a key that no one, not even herself, could open.
And it wasn’t just because she had been incompetent.
Every one of her peers who had shared that first experience had been a complete mess.
That’s what monsters were.
Unknown beings, full of mysteries, that imprinted the fear of death onto humans.
Warriors would naturally freeze up, and mages would find their mana twisting, unable to even draw a proper magic circle.
It had taken her an entire hour just to be able to move in front of a goblin, and after she finally cut it down, she had been sick in bed for a full day.
Even then, her professors had praised her for being fast, and her peers had called her amazing.
That’s how it was supposed to be.
‘But that man… just what is he?’
What kind of brain did this man named Kim Do-jin have to be able to whip up a spell without the slightest tremor and blow a goblin to bits?
And that wasn’t the only surprising thing.
“Fire Missile.”
The moment he uttered the incantation, a blazing red orb would form.
Each time one flew, the goblins that had been charging so bravely would lose their lives and tumble to the ground.
The frontliner, who was supposed to be protecting him, was so dumbfounded that she had stopped preparing to charge forward at all.
She glanced at the checklist the Association had given her.
‘Casting Speed.’
The average casting time for a basic elemental spell, for a novice mage, is five to ten seconds.
Factoring in real combat, they said to add about 20%, so that would be six to twelve seconds.
And Kim Do-jin?
“…Two seconds.”
And that was a rough estimate. In reality, it seemed to be one second plus a few fractions of a second more.
‘Is this even possible…?’
Director Park Cheol-su had praised his astonishing casting speed until he was blue in the face, but she never imagined it would be this incredible.
While she was still in shock, another goblin charged.
Two of them this time.
Since he had only created one orb at a time so far, she thought Shin Yu-jeong would have to block this time, but even that was a needless worry.
“Ice Missile, Fire Missile.”
He effortlessly succeeded in casting two spells in a row.
And with different elements, no less.
Crack!
Boom!
Thanks to him, one was encased in ice and died, while the other was engulfed in flames and died.
She looked at another item on her checklist.
‘How many elements can he use?’
Meaningless.
Kim Do-jin was treating the goblins as trivial opponents.
Perhaps because he was bored, he was now amusing himself with a color-matching game.
“This time, Earth Needle.”
Needles made of hard rock pierced the goblin’s vital spots.
“That’s the third element already…”
He was using every single aptitude they had identified through the crystal ball.
The way he hesitated for a moment before each goblin was surely because he was deciding which element to use next.
She checked the very last item on the list.
‘Time required to clear the dungeon.’
Kallashu’s Trial is a small-scale dungeon.
The average clear time, from the entrance to the final boss room, is roughly one and a half to two hours.
So, what about Kim Do-jin?
Their current location was about halfway through.
The time it had taken to get here from the entrance was a mere…
“17 minutes and 32 seconds…”
And that was only because their walking pace was slow. If they had walked with purpose, they could have shaved off another five minutes.
He was breaking through every expectation.
He was shattering all the benchmarks the Association members had written down—the ones they considered ‘amazing’—by an overwhelming margin.
She looked at Kim Do-jin, who, unlike when he first entered the dungeon, now wore an expression of infinite boredom, and thought.
‘I have to get him.’
Even if she had to let everyone else go, she absolutely had to secure Kim Do-jin.