When Five People Gather, One of Them Is Bound to Be Trash (3)
The first time I’d ever heard a voice telling me to get up sound this pleasant was now.
“Yes. Understood.”
Park Hye-young was the first one to rise.
After that, I could hear Jung Hayan shifting in her sleep.
Just as I was wondering when would be the best time to get up, I felt a hand patting my shoulder.
“Hyung.”
Park Deokgu. Nice.
The timing was perfect.
Maybe because I hadn’t slept well, exhaustion came crashing over me all at once, but I forced my eyes open a little and sat up.
“Is it already that late?”
“Looks like we’re planning to move a little early today. We’ll hunt a bit deeper in and head back to the Shelter afterward.”
“Sounds good.”
I deliberately didn’t look toward Jung Hayan. I knew avoiding her would only make things feel more awkward.
When I glanced at her anyway, her face came into view—smiling brightly as she looked my way.
It was so different from yesterday that it was hard to believe she was the same person.
Which one of you is the real one?
I had no idea whether that expression was genuine, or whether the face I’d seen last night had been the real one.
For now, I thought I needed to cool my head a little, so I smiled faintly back at her and then immediately started gathering myself.
Tired.
My mind felt foggy, like I’d barely slept at all.
Once we stepped outside, Kim Hyunsung turned to look at us and opened his mouth.
“You look tired.”
“A little, yes. But I’m fine.”
“I think it would be best to go a little deeper today. Would that be all right?”
“I don’t think it would be a bad idea. There don’t seem to be many of them nearby, and I am a little worried about the people in the Shelter, but at this level I doubt anything will go wrong deeper in. Of course, if we judge that there are too many of them….”
“Yes. We’ll make sure we can return right away.”
That was the sensible call.
“By the way, which direction….”
“I checked the left path briefly last night, and it didn’t seem much different from this place.”
Not only had he stood watch twice, he’d gone out scouting too.
“You’ve been working hard.”
When you have laborers willing to work this diligently, a man like me can do nothing but rejoice.
I’d wondered whether there might be something on the right, but it was still too early to say.
“Miss Hye-young and Miss Hayan….”
“I’m ready too.”
“As for your positions, it should be fine for Miss Hayan to step in for Miss Hye-young if we run into anything, just like yesterday. Then let’s get moving.”
“Yes.”
It felt like it was going to be a rather tiring march.
What worried me most, for now, was Jung Hayan.
I didn’t know what had happened, but the way Jung Hayan had been acting recently was wildly unreasonable.
I couldn’t pin it down cleanly, but anyone could see something was off.
It felt a little distant from the Jung Hayan I thought I knew.
First, I needed to figure out the cause. It wasn’t impossible to guess, but I couldn’t help feeling a little thrown off.
Jealousy?
The problem with blaming jealousy was that Jung Hayan and I hadn’t spent nearly enough time together for that to make sense.
Human relationships were not always proportional to the amount of time spent together, but there was no denying that shared time mattered.
Of course, there was something special about the situation surrounding Jung Hayan and me.
This wasn’t a café or a restaurant.
If I had to make an analogy, it was more like the kind of feeling you saw in a cheap B-movie—man and woman, trapped in crisis, suddenly catching feelings in a short span of time.
Maybe that was what her feelings really were.
What came to mind next was Jung Hayan’s past.
When I thought about her background, a certain logic started to form.
Her parents weren’t around, and she’d lost contact with her sisters a long time ago.
If she believed she’d been abandoned by her family, then it made sense that she’d want to lean on someone else a little more.
The environment around her had probably never been kind.
Just a hypothesis.
But for one reason or another, I’d become the rope she could cling to.
I must have been the person who was always kind, always trustworthy, always reliable.
That emotion might have grown beyond mere affection and turned into obsession.
From the beginning, that was what I’d been aiming for anyway—a psychological bulwark for her.
A human being with a hollow in the heart was easier to draw in.
Should I test it?
Classic, but still worth trying.
As we walked side by side, I gently pulled Park Hye-young by the shoulder and spoke in a calm voice.
“Careful.”
“Ah… yes.”
She looked a little tense.
Probably thought I’d just helped her because she almost tripped over a rock.
She seemed like she was about to say something to thank me, but what I wanted wasn’t her reaction.
I flicked my eyes sideways to Jung Hayan.
And there she was, staring fixedly at Park Hye-young.
Kim Hyunsung and Park Deokgu didn’t seem to care, but maybe because of the trait I possessed, it was obvious to me.
Something difficult to describe was flickering in Jung Hayan’s eyes.
This is usable.
The hostility she carried wasn’t directed at me.
It was a little too much to call it simple jealousy, but considering Jung Hayan’s nature, it was still within the range of something manageable.
If I threw her a carrot and a whip in the right proportions, Jung Hayan would become a loyal family member willing to throw herself into the fire for me.
Lost in thought, I kept walking until, before I knew it, we’d traveled quite a long distance.
“Looks like we’re getting close. From here on out, let’s move a little more carefully.”
“Ahem. Understood, sir.”
This was probably the area Kim Hyunsung had already scouted ahead of time.
The smell was definitely different from before.
It felt like the foul stench from those things’ bodies had soaked into the surrounding area.
But even more noticeable than that was the faint mana drifting from far ahead.
I couldn’t tell what kind it was, but it was unmistakably something alien.
Maybe this was what Kim Hyunsung had been after.
“I think I’m sensing something.”
“What’s that, Hyung? Are there monsters up ahead?”
“There’s faint mana coming from the front. I’m not sure what it is, but… still….”
“I wish I could feel this mana stuff too. It’s a pain when you can’t tell what’s what, sir. Can you sense it?”
“I’m not entirely certain either, but since Kiyoung is a mage, he’s probably more used to that sort of unusual sensation than we are. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check it out. It might give us a hint for clearing this place.”
Kim Hyunsung really didn’t have much talent for acting.
Still, the vague mana up ahead seemed to be connected to the dungeon’s hidden route.
“Well, we were heading that way anyway, and it can’t hurt to be careful. I’ll go check it out first.”
“Careful.”
There wasn’t much need to be careful.
If he had sensed something strange, there was no way Kim Hyunsung would have just stood around and done nothing.
Once I moved forward cautiously, the identity of the mana I’d sensed came into view.
Stairs.
“Stairs leading down to the lower floor.”
Literally stairs leading down. Only now was the way this dungeon worked starting to click in my head.
When I looked at Kim Hyunsung nodding, he seemed to think this artificial setup was actually convincing.
Absurd, but it wasn’t a bad idea to play along.
“It’s a pretty obvious setup, but maybe the lower you go, the harder it gets? It probably has something to do with the dungeon’s clear condition.”
“Hmm, something like that, Hyung?”
“I can’t be certain yet, but probably. There weren’t any real hints to clear this place where the Start Point is. Throwing monsters into a wide-open area and then telling us to clear the dungeon doesn’t make much sense. Odds are, the real beginning is going down from here. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but there should at least be more clues here than there were up there.”
Kim Hyunsung nodded after hearing me out.
“I think so too.”
Bingo.
“We can’t handle it right now, so let’s just remember this place and come back down another time. We didn’t come here today to clear the dungeon. And who knows—there might be something below that helps us even more. The types of monsters may be different too.”
“If even more annoying bastards show up, I’ll hate it for real.”
Same here.
Anyway, Kim Hyunsung had naturally succeeded in alerting us to the entrance to the lower level.
Even that much might feel like a fairly big achievement to him.
But what mattered most right now was Jung Hayan and Park Hye-young’s growth. We needed enough people capable of fighting before we could go below.
“The path is….”
“I’ve got the rough layout in my head.”
“Then from here on out, we just look for monsters centered around this place?”
“That would be best. Let’s start a little farther out.”
“Got it, sir.”
Like yesterday, we didn’t have to hunt with our eyes on fire to run into them. We could find monsters pretty close by.
Apparently, they were spread out around this area.
Three monsters nearby.
When I glanced at Kim Hyunsung, I saw him nod faintly.
“If Mr. Deokgu takes two of them, Kiyoung can quickly handle one of them, and I’ll take care of the last one. I’ll use the final one for practice. Miss Hye-young and Miss Hayan should stay in positions similar to Kiyoung’s.”
“Yes.”
“Aye.”
After clenching my lips shut, Park Deokgu and Lee Kiyoung shot forward.
It looked like they were sending Deokgu first, probably to draw aggro onto him.
I also rushed ahead, placing myself between the tightly strung Jung Hayan and Park Hye-young.
I could see Park Deokgu forcing one monster back with his shield while batting away another with an arm wrapped in leather.
Kim Hyunsung looked almost leisurely as he ran at one of them and successfully sliced off its arm.
He’s incredibly fast.
I’d expected him to be fast, given his high agility, but this was beyond what I’d imagined.
In the meantime, I channeled a little mana into the tip of my spear and thrust it into the monster Park Deokgu was pinning down.
With a wet thunk, blood sprayed out, but I didn’t have time to care.
It’s not dead yet.
Just as I was about to drive my spear in again, Park Hye-young, from the side, thrust her own spear as if trying to do something.
Not bad.
What mattered most was that she had the will to act on her own.
I didn’t even need to look at Kim Hyunsung’s side.
He’d probably keep some of his strength in reserve so he wouldn’t stand out too much.
That left the monster we were going to use for practice.
Before Park Deokgu even had a chance to move his body and lock it down, the somewhat excited-looking Park Hye-young began thrusting her spear.
Stupid move.
It was obviously stupid.
Just as expected, the spear missed, and the remaining monster slipped out of Park Deokgu’s range.
“Ah! S-sorry….”
“You damn—”
When five people gather, there’s always one piece of trash.
Park Deokgu.
An old saying I’d heard somewhere never failed to betray my expectations.
“Kyaaaaaaah!!”
Damn bitch!