Fortunately
“Jung Hayan?”
“O, Oppa.”
I knew this would happen….
The scene before my eyes was even more horrific than I had imagined.
Jung Hayan stood there with a quiet smile on her face, while Park Hyeyoung rolled helplessly on the floor, her arms and legs severed.
The sight of her twitching around nearly made me retch, but I forced it back down.
I’d caught sight of the wild, unsteady look in Jung Hayan’s eyes.
When I’d seen the wall made of mana, I’d felt a strange unease, but this was beyond anything I’d pictured.
What… am I supposed to do?
It was painfully hard to decide how to steer this.
I’d rushed off to find Jung Hayan, thinking the best solution was to stop things before they spiraled out of control, but it was starting to feel like a waste of effort.
If only Park Deokgu were here.
He couldn’t sense mana.
Asking him to check the left path and then coming here alone had been my one fatal mistake.
“Mmph… mmph!”
Even now, Park Hyeyoung was desperately calling for help, her mouth sealed by some unknown spell, and the whole thing was ridiculous enough to make me laugh from sheer disbelief.
I had no idea how Jung Hayan was going to react.
Stealing a glance at her, I saw a face that looked as though her soul had been ripped clean out of her body.
Faced with this sudden disaster, she’d frozen up too.
Truthfully, I wasn’t much better. I’d been wavering between two choices this whole time.
Should I run?
Or—
Should I pretend not to know?
It was the kind of question I had no choice but to think through at least once.
My body was screaming at me to turn and flee, sensing danger, but my brain had betrayed that instinct.
It had started calculating costs and benefits.
Jung Hayan clearly had affection for me.
In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that feeling had long since crossed a line years ago.
The reason she’d tried to kill Park Hyeyoung was probably related to me, too.
No, it definitely was.
You could think she simply bore Park Hyeyoung some personal ill will, but if I judged this by the reactions she’d shown so far, there was really only one answer.
If I showed even the slightest sign of avoiding Jung Hayan here,
her arrow might turn toward me.
I had no interest in tangling with a lunatic who flung around magic I didn’t even understand.
Dragging this out any longer already felt unnatural enough.
In the end, I had no choice but to speak carefully.
It was the most reasonable option.
“Wh-what happened to Miss Hyeyoung?”
“Huh?”
I prayed she wouldn’t betray the opportunity I was giving her.
I prayed she’d give me the right answer.
There was nothing else I could do to help her now.
“Wh-why are her arms and legs… What happened?”
I even remembered to cover my mouth with my hand. Of course, I didn’t forget to look horrified, either.
That was when Jung Hayan’s expression brightened just a little. My reaction had clearly been different from what she’d expected, and she seemed to think the worst-case scenario she’d imagined wasn’t coming true.
There was no doubt in my mind that she thought I still hadn’t realized she was the one responsible for this.
The answer I could give was very simple.
She would find it.
“I don’t really know the details either, Oppa… I-it happened so suddenly….”
Her trembling hands and feet, her quivering lips, her shaky voice.
She wasn’t terrified.
She just didn’t want me to know she had done this.
Maybe it was simply the reaction of someone who wasn’t used to lying. Even so, Jung Hayan kept talking.
“When I opened my eyes, I was, um, separated from everyone, so I don’t know exactly wh-what happened. When I came here, Miss Hyeyoung was… l-like this.”
Not bad.
It wasn’t a bad excuse. With a trembling hand, I took hers and pulled her into an embrace.
“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
“O-Oppa.”
I was the one who should have been worrying about getting hurt.
My heart was pounding like mad.
I kept checking, just in case she had some spell memorized and ready to go, and my grip tightened around the spear in my hand.
Even then, Park Hyeyoung was staring at Jung Hayan in abject terror.
“Mmph! Mmph! Mmph! Mmph-mmph! Mmph!”
I could roughly guess what she was trying to say.
Run.
Or maybe—
Please save me.
The latter was probably more likely, but unfortunately, there was nothing I could do.
Right now, antagonizing or dismissing Jung Hayan would be tantamount to suicide.
Her mind was definitely fraying, and she was far more broken than I’d expected.
She liked me, yes, but that obsession had already curdled into hatred and murder toward other people; if I ever rejected her, there was no telling how she’d react.
That rage would probably spill over here.
She was a volatile bomb, impossible to handle, but the choice was obvious when weighed against a useful talent who liked me and a worthless piece of trash with little potential.
Anyone could see that siding with Jung Hayan was the rational move.
But that wasn’t the only problem.
I can’t save her.
I had no way to save Park Hyeyoung as she slowly bled out.
Even if she’d been a card worth keeping, right now she was one I had no choice but to throw away.
I understood her feelings, but I was desperate too.
“Mmph! Mmph! Mmmph! Mmph-mmph-mmph! Mmph!”
It was hard to ignore the pleading eyes begging me not to abandon her, begging me to save her.
I hurried over and started binding the wound with my clothes.
I caught a glimpse of Jung Hayan’s startled expression, but she would know it too.
Park Hyeyoung is going to die. Probably soon.
The bleeding was already far too severe. She was gradually losing consciousness, and the focus in her eyes was going.
“Maybe some trap in the dungeon triggered. Hayan probably didn’t notice it, but we passed through a wall made of mana to get in here.”
It was a wall Jung Hayan had created.
“…….”
“Thinking back to the mana I felt near the entrance to the stairs leading underground, there could be a trap-like mechanism somewhere around here. I didn’t consider that possibility.”
There was definitely no such device on the first floor. I could say that with confidence.
“Maybe the trap was triggered while I was casting the spell. And the magic sealing her mouth now is probably some other trap we don’t understand… fortunately, I don’t sense any other mana nearby, but….”
It was Jung Hayan who had activated the spell.
“Y-yes… yes….”
“Mmph! Mmph!”
An acceptable story for Jung Hayan had already been made.
The real question was whether this bullshit would also work on Kim Hyunsung.
He’d already been here once, so he must have noticed by now that there were no traps on the first floor.
If I started spouting nonsense that didn’t hold water, I’d be the one under suspicion.
I had no idea what to do about Park Hyeyoung, lying here in this state.
What would happen when he found her?
That she’d fallen into a trap?
There weren’t any traps here in the first place, and he knew it.
That she’d been attacked by a monster?
The cuts were too clean. Anyone could see Park Hyeyoung hadn’t been mauled by a beast.
The faint scent of mana lingering around her body, and the unknown spell still sealing her mouth, both clearly said that she had been killed by some strange force, not a monster.
If it were Kim Hyunsung, he would definitely notice.
Definitely.
I kept pressing the wound closed, but this wasn’t going to amount to emergency treatment, not in any meaningful sense.
I had never learned basic first aid, much less proper treatment for injuries like this.
At best, I could make it look like I was doing something.
Damn it.
At last, Park Hyeyoung’s twitching, desperate struggle began to weaken little by little.
She can’t be found.
Kim Hyunsung couldn’t be the one to find her.
The best outcome would be for the monsters to find her, but there was too much to think about already.
And more than anything—
I don’t want to.
I just didn’t want to.
Maybe that was my last shred of conscience.
Her breathing had become ragged, and I could see it plainly now. She was dying.
Quietly, I began to recite a prayer.
“Lord. Power to withstand the burning flames.”
Jung Hayan watched me with a troubled expression.
“Fire Wall.”
I was pulling mana out of nowhere to cast the spell.
For a moment, my head swam, but I bit down hard on my lip and forced my focus back into maintaining the magic.
“O-Oppa.”
“It’ll be hard to take her with us. She’s already lost too much blood. If we try to drag her along, we’ll die too. I can’t lose you as well… so for now, we need to get out of here as fast as we can. We can’t recover the body, either. This is the least I can do. Yes, this is the right thing to do.”
The flames had started gnawing at Park Hyeyoung, whose breathing was already gone, and continued to consume her.
The way the fire rippled and swayed looked almost as though it were hosting a party.
I stood there, staring blankly at the sight.
This was the best choice.
It was the most reasonable choice.
When I glanced at Jung Hayan’s face, she looked like she was barely holding back a smile. A curse nearly slipped from my mouth, but she wasn’t the only monster here.
I was the same.
For some reason, I felt a little self-loathing.
I wanted to keep watching the fire for a while longer, but staying here any longer would be suicide.
Maybe because of the flames I’d made, the mana wall Jung Hayan had created came apart.
As soon as I started moving, I saw Park Deokgu waiting for me.
“Where did Miss Hyeyoung go? Is the lady safe…?”
I didn’t bother answering, just shook my head, and his face entered my view as he nodded as though he understood what had happened.
He had been smiling a little after he spotted Jung Hayan, but when I implied that Park Hyeyoung was dead, his expression stiffened.
“What about the other monsters around here?”
“There don’t seem to be that many, so I think Kim Hyunsung hyung took them and headed the other way… he’s a quick one, so he’ll probably survive somehow.”
“That’s a relief.”
It really was a relief. The fact that he’d been far away from here was truly a blessing.
“Anyway, wh-what happened?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later. It’s… not exactly something easy to talk about, either….”
“O-okay, hyung.”
I figured it was fine to give Park Deokgu the gist of it and leave it at that.
Better not talk about Jung Hayan unless absolutely necessary, I thought, as I kept running, only to see several monsters charging toward us.
“Hyung, are you all right?”
“I’m low on mana.”
“Don’t push yourself too hard.”
As Park Deokgu shoved them back and kept running, we managed to put some distance between ourselves and that place.
It felt like my lungs were about to burst.
Park Deokgu and Jung Hayan didn’t look much better. Everyone was clearly exhausted.
Honestly, I felt like I might collapse any second.
Still, I knew I couldn’t lose consciousness.
I had to finish this.
When I looked back with a slightly dark expression, Jung Hayan cautiously opened her mouth toward me.
“A-are you… s-sad?”
Her face and tone both seemed uneasy.
Of course, I already knew the answer to that question.
“I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
At my words, the corners of Jung Hayan’s lips lifted. Her face, blooming into a broad smile, came clearly into view.
“O-O-Oppa.”
“I’m really glad you’re safe.”
That was, more or less, sincere.