The Smile Never Left Hong Yeji's Face
The smile never left Hong Yeji's face.
Coming here really was the right call.
She watched Yujun from behind as he moved about the room.
That man. What is he, exactly?
Strength that had no business belonging to his level. A calm that never cracked, no matter the situation. And yet he wasn't all stiffness—there was a softness in him, too. Selfish in just the right measure, and inclined to move as the moment demanded. For surviving the merciless Tower of Infinity, that temperament wanted for nothing.
He has to belong to some group, the way I do. Otherwise none of this adds up.
He seemed stronger beyond any comparison to the man she had seen at the Species Tournament. She couldn't quite call them fully on the same side, and still, being beside him settled her heart and left her feeling steady.
Don't tell me he's something like a regressor.
Before she was summoned here, she had devoured web novels of every genre. When the situations from those stories happened to her in the flesh, that reading was what let her adapt so quickly. She had played War of the Gods, too, and so she arrived at a guess that was a little off the wall.
He could be a regressor.
In the Tower of Infinity, what couldn't happen? A regressor, a returnee—neither would be strange. The present, in which a game had become reality, was already the less believable of the two.
Anyway. He is someone I must never turn into an enemy.
Hong Yeji fixed that fact in her mind. Then she fixed it there again.
Yujun broke into a bright smile.
Effort never betrayed you. He had found a mechanism that still worked—more precisely, a wall that had been worked with magic. A search item from his inventory had done most of the finding, but he had put in the effort all the same.
"Yujun, what are you doing over there?"
"Just looking the wall over. I thought there might be something about the plague."
"Is there?"
"I was wrong. Figures."
He did not tell the others what the magical mechanism really was.
Whatever's in there, I'm keeping for myself.
There was no guarantee an item waited inside. He hid it anyway, just in case.
"Shall we head out, then?"
"Go see the dwarf kids first."
Hong Yeji cocked her head.
"Huh? You're not coming with us?"
"I'm going to bring this place down. Better if no one can tell it was robbed. The evidence has to disappear. Go on ahead."
"Thorough. As expected."
Hong Yeji shot him a thumbs-up. Yujun, pricked by a small stab of guilt, scratched his head.
"Go. Quickly."
"Yeah. Jiwon, come on."
"O-okay."
The moment he saw the two of them leave, Yujun set his hand against the wall. Mana spilled down his arm and seeped into the stone. A soft hiss, then a grinding groan—ssssk, sssss, grrrk, grr-grrrk—and the wall began to move. Slow at first, then faster, until a passage opened that looked as if only a dwarf could pass through it.
Of course. A hidden space like this would be built for dwarves.
It wasn't impossible to enter. Yujun dropped flat and crawled in. Dwarves ran broad through the body, so once he was on his belly the way didn't feel all that narrow, and with his stats even a crawl was quick.
Doing this, I feel like I've turned into a bug.
He reached the end in an instant, pulled himself free, and looked around.
Nothing much here.
Dark gray walls. A damp floor. The space wasn't even large. Disappointment had just begun to settle when something caught his eye.
That...
A sack sat in the corner, worn and stuffed with gems that called rubies, emeralds, and sapphires to mind.
Those are gems!
Yujun's eyes flew wide. This many? Gems that precious? He forced the surprise down and checked their information. Unfortunately, they weren't items at all—just finely cut ore, or ordinary jewels. His face was on the verge of twisting when one gem brought up an item window.
◈ Can be equipped to a trait.
◈ Increases the power of the equipped trait.
A skill gem. To find one here, of all places. The unexpected discovery lifted the corner of his mouth.
And medium grade, at that.
The sack of gems couldn't go into his inventory. They weren't items. With no other choice, he set it back on the ground, then felt along the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. There was nothing more.
He crawled back through the cramped passage and returned to the palace storeroom. Fortunately, he could sense Hong Yeji and Shin Jiwon some distance off. The moment he stepped out, Hong Yeji came at a run.
"I thought you were going to smash it."
"On second thought, that would have brought everyone running. I dropped it."
"Oh? Right—we've already hit our original goal, so all that's left is to head back..."
Hong Yeji trailed off. She hesitated a long while before she spoke again.
"Actually, there's something I haven't told you."
"What is it?"
"Before I came here, I took a commission. For an insane amount of money."
"A commission?"
"Someone asked me to rescue a person in the Kingdom of Sitahel. I'm sorry I didn't say so sooner."
"Hm? That doesn't sound like something you needed to tell me."
"I just felt bad. Hiding it."
"Don't worry about it."
It was a job she had taken on her own. There was no reason at all to apologize for keeping it to herself.
"You're forgiving me?"
"Forgiveness has nothing to do with it. You didn't do anything wrong."
Shin Jiwon, it seemed, hadn't known either. Her eyes went round, and she tapped Hong Yeji on the shoulder.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Uh, sorry. I was afraid you'd say we should split the money..."
"H-hold on. Isn't that a bit much? If it weren't for Yujun, you wouldn't have said a word."
"Probably not. I needed to keep the reward all to myself."
"There's a limit even to being honest! If you're going to lie, lie all the way!"
"My conscience was too awkwardly sized for that. About a kidney bean?"
"......"
That was when Yujun spoke.
"So?"
"Huh? So what?"
"You said someone needs rescuing. Who?"
"Why do you ask? Are you offering to help?"
"No."
"......"
"How much is the payout, if you don't mind?"
"...Mmm. A hundred million points."
"I'll help."
"Y-you'll help? Just like that?"
"On the condition we split it down the middle."
"...What?"
"The commission fee. We halve it. I'll be the one doing nearly all the work."
"......"
"Or would you rather handle it alone?"
"I'm sorry. Should I give you more of the fee?"
"It's fine. Half is plenty for me."
Raising his level and getting paid on top of it would be icing on the cake.
Just as the Storyteller said, the experience from these dwarf zombies is fat.
There was no need whatsoever to pity them. Shin Jiwon's purification skill did nothing to dwarves who had already turned into monsters. If an S-rank Purification failed, the odds of a dwarf returning to normal converged on zero. In short, they could be treated as monsters, not precious lives.
Even using my inventory, I can't think of a way to turn them back.
With a plague like this, even an elixir was likely to do nothing. Laying those hideously transformed dwarf zombies to rest would be the kindness owed to them.
Yujun and the others slipped out of the palace through a window, the three dwarf brothers trailing after them. They were players too, so they weren't a complete burden...
Honestly, though, they won't be any help at all against the dwarf zombies.
Seeing the dwarves safely delivered somewhere came first.
"But where did all the dwarves run off to? There were plenty of zombies when we looked down from the wall earlier, but that couldn't have been the whole kingdom."
Shin Jiwon, who had been quietly watching, was the one who said it. Yujun had been wondering the same thing. Then the eldest of the dwarves came up to him.
"U-um."
"What?"
"I think I heard the nobles saying everyone had to go somewhere."
"Where?"
"When we were hiding in that room, I heard them shouting it while they ran down the hall."
"And where did they say to go?"
"I heard them say underground... but I don't know what underground they meant."
"Underground...?"
Yujun's eyes widened. Of course. He had already thought it strange that living dwarves were so conspicuously scarce. They might well have hidden underground.
They're not even thinking of fleeing the kingdom?
The gates were shut tight.
Planning to wipe the dwarf zombies out in one sweep later?
There was no way to know yet.
"I should meet those dwarves."
"Do you know where this underground is?"
"Underground. Literally."
Somewhere there would be a passage leading down. Somewhere that didn't catch the eye.
"Could it be the underground waterways? A sewer, something like that. I saw an iron disc on the way in. Maybe they opened it and went down?"
Hong Yeji offered the thought, and Yujun shook his head.
"There's another passage—. No. There will be one."
The dwarf zombies would never have stood idle while the dwarves hauled that heavy iron disc open and vanished underground.
"What? There will be? How would you know that?"
"I have a fair idea where that passage is."
Yujun had played War of the Gods. He was as deep an old hand as any player alive, and there was almost nothing in the Tower of Infinity he hadn't already done. More than that, he had walked the underground passages while clearing the dwarf quests.
...I think I was given a map back then.
The memory surfaced. The dwarf king had commissioned him to slay a corrupted monster lodged underground, and with that commission had come a map on which every underground path was drawn.
Lucky.
He searched his inventory and found it: the map of the dwarven kingdom's underground passages.
"Follow me for now."
"You really do know the way, right?"
"Yes. I'm certain of it."
There had been no plague in the dwarven kingdom when he played War of the Gods, but the land here was unchanged, and he remembered the way down without a doubt. The three dwarf brothers followed, only half convinced. A human knew a path underground that even they—princes—did not. It seemed a little strange, but he was the one who had saved them. Doubt stirred. They simply didn't let it show.
And Yujun really did find the stairs leading underground. Darkest beneath the lamp: the passage sat near the palace entrance, only it had been cleverly draped in cloth and dressed up like a makeshift tent, easy to miss.
"Whoa. Chills. This was a passage? I never even thought of it."
"Let's go in."
He wanted to meet the dwarves and hear them out. He was curious how things had come to this pass, and if he solved the matter and took a reward for it, so much the better.
Yujun's party took the three dwarf brothers and entered the underground passage, their strides so sure that no one would have taken them for thieves who had just turned the palace storeroom inside out.