The Calculating Killer (1)
In the first place, I’d never had a choice. If Park Deokgu’s scheme was anything to go by, Jung Hayan would already be rejecting the very first option on instinct.
No—more than that, no matter what either of us was thinking, there was a good chance Jung Hayan was already sprinting headlong toward the second option on her own.
“Krrrroooor.”
Looking at Park Deokgu snoring beside me made my mood curdle for no good reason.
There was no way I had come here intending to fall in love.
In a place where you never knew when you might die, harboring those kinds of feelings in the first place was irrational.
It was a completely different matter from simply being involved with someone.
I wasn’t eager to get any closer to a woman who might decide to slice my body apart at any moment, but…
I have to.
Ironically, the only way to avoid the ending where I got torn limb from limb was to grow closer to her.
She was the most dangerous person here and, at the same time, the one I could trust the most.
I didn’t enjoy gambling, but if the situation demanded it, I was prepared to throw the dice.
I gave a short nod to that reality I hated accepting, then called out to Park Deokgu, who was still snoring away.
“Wake up.”
“Grrrr….”
“Wake up, Deokgu.”
“Grrr… what is it? Is it morning already?”
“We’re leaving a little early.”
“Hey, ma’am. Wake up, will ye?”
“……”
“Looks like she’s sleeping pretty deep… ma’am, time to get up.”
“……”
“Grr… looks like our lady here’s turned into Sleeping Beauty. Ain’t this the part where she needs a prince’s kiss?”
That bastard.
He was clearly teasing me without having the slightest clue what was going on.
I was close to stuffing a fireball down his throat.
My mana had mostly recovered by then, too. I had no idea why such a trivial line sounded like it was driving me straight to the gallows.
Still, since I had to wake Jung Hayan, I could only take a reluctant step forward.
“Hayan.”
“……”
“Hayan, you need to get up.”
“Mm….”
I gently brushed her hair aside, and only then did Jung Hayan come into view, rubbing at her eyes as she sat up.
She still looked half asleep.
She jolted when she saw me and fumbled in a flurry, but for some reason even that looked a little frightening.
“Ah… a-ah. Yes, Oppa.”
“We’re heading straight back to the Shelter.”
“Understood.”
“Let’s eat something simple and get moving.”
“Ahem. Leave the preparations to me.”
It didn’t take long to finish a truly simple meal and get ready to move.
Someone had once said that humans were creatures of adaptation, and watching everyone greet the morning in their own way made me realize how true that was.
“It’s not just about Kim Hyunsung, either. I’m not sure the Shelter’s okay. We’ve been gone for a while.”
“It should be fine. As long as the fools in there don’t get carried away and go hunting on their own….”
“Wouldn’t it be better if they could do it properly? We need more people who can fight anyway….”
Of course, if they could actually hunt properly, I had no reason to stop them.
“Do you really think the people who’ve been hiding in fear until now are suddenly going to change because they had some emotional revelation? The chance of them banding together to hunt is low enough already, and even if they do go out, if they can’t handle it they’ll all end up dead. Frankly, that would be better.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying we should hope nothing like Park Hye-young happens again.”
The odds of the people inside the Shelter going out to hunt were low.
But if they formed their own party, went outside, and started searching for monsters, there was one worst-case scenario I could imagine.
Of course, I couldn’t claim my judgment was infallible….
“The worst scenario is that they panic, scream, draw every monster around them, and then stagger back to the Shelter.”
“……”
“……”
“There probably isn’t a single idiot in there who thinks the Shelter itself might become a target. Everyone’s just trying to survive. A human gripped by terror can’t think rationally…. In the end, once the monsters start coming in waves and they can’t hold them back, the entrance gets breached, and that’s the end of the Shelter.”
“Just imagining it sounds dreadful.”
It really was dreadful.
“That’s probably why Hyunsung told us to take the long way around. There might still be monster bastards chasing after us.”
“The more I think about it, the smarter that man seems.”
I was definitely not smart.
“It’s not like that.”
I only ever thought through the worst possible outcome and acted accordingly.
Even while we kept walking, I found myself growing uneasy for no reason. Just imagining the situation I’d described actually happening made my mouth go dry.
Honestly, I didn’t care what happened to the humans in the Shelter, but losing the resources and assets I’d left there was another matter entirely.
It was a place I’d finally managed to stabilize.
As long as there was still no clear path to clearing the dungeon, the Shelter remained a necessary place for us.
As I walked with all sorts of thoughts in my head, the area around us had grown strangely quiet.
That silence was a little hard to bear, so after talking with Park Deokgu and Jung Hayan for a while, the Shelter finally came into view.
The entrance was sealed shut, unlike usual.
As though she’d spotted us, Lee Jihye was seen hauling away a pile of rubble and stepping outside.
It looked like it had taken quite a while, given how firmly packed the barrier was. Lee Jihye slowly approached, wearing her usual smile, and opened her mouth as she came closer.
“Kiyoung Oppa, Deokgu Oppa, you’re back? What about Hye-young and Hyunsung….”
“Park Hye-young is dead, and Hyunsung will be back soon.”
“Ah, I see.”
At my matter-of-fact answer, Lee Jihye closed her eyes for a moment, nodded, and then continued from where she’d left off.
“How did that happen…?”
“It’s a long story. More importantly, did anything happen at the Shelter while we were gone?”
“Mm… could I talk to you in private?”
She clearly meant that she wanted to speak comfortably.
Lee Jihye didn’t look pleased. Something had happened, all right.
I had no idea why bad premonitions were so often right on the money.
Glancing back, I saw Park Deokgu nod as if it didn’t matter.
He’d probably want to hear it from me later anyway, but what bothered me was Jung Hayan’s reaction.
Still, talking to Lee Jihye was something I needed to do as well, so I could only give Jung Hayan’s head a light pat and speak.
“Why don’t you go inside first and wait? I’ll be right there.”
“Ah! Y-yes. Okay, Oppa.”
She must have been worried I’d also tear Lee Jihye apart.
Even as she headed into the Shelter, she kept glancing back over her shoulder, watching us, and for some reason that reminded me of Park Hye-young.
Once the two of them were out of sight, Lee Jihye finally spoke slowly.
“How did Park Hye-young end up dying?”
“She had it coming. She screamed in a place full of monsters. That’s also why Hyunsung isn’t with us right now… do you want the details?”
“No. I can roughly imagine what happened.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, and I could see at once that she was looking in the direction Jung Hayan had gone. I couldn’t tell whether she was staring after her or simply piecing things together, but somehow it felt like she had already grasped the situation.
It was only a rough inference, but I could tell Lee Jihye was quicker on the uptake than I’d expected.
“Then we should keep this short.”
“What happened?”
“A few people, including Yoo Seokwoo, went outside.”
I knew it.
“When?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“You….”
“I know. We weren’t supposed to let them go out so carelessly.”
“Then why…?”
“Honestly, ever since right after Kiyoung Oppa went out with Hyunsung Oppa, they’ve kept telling me they wanted to go hunting. I don’t know whether they saw the magic Kiyoung Oppa showed them and got ideas, or whether they were just unhappy with their situation, but they said they were going out to hunt with a few guys who agreed with them. Idiots…. At first I naturally tried to persuade them that it would be more reasonable to wait until you and the others came back, but….”
“……”
“I’m just a powerless woman, aren’t I?”
I could roughly see what had happened.
Showing magic to people had apparently backfired.
On top of that, Yoo Seokwoo was already suffering quietly for the trouble he’d had with Jung Hayan.
When your position had already been undermined, it wasn’t strange to start thinking you needed to do something about it.
He probably believed that if he could gain this bizarre power too, he might become like us. And it had likely occurred to him more than once that he wanted to become one of us.
Aside from Lee Jihye, who seemed to function as an administrator of sorts, my power, Kim Hyunsung’s, and Park Deokgu’s were absolute in this place.
I let out a brief sigh and continued.
“Wasn’t it your job to stop that?”
“I stopped them as much as I could. People were getting anxious because Kiyoung Oppa was taking a little longer to return… and how was I supposed to refuse when they kept saying they wanted to send out a rescue team?”
“A rescue team, my ass… a bunch of trash who never cared about anything before… So that’s why you sealed the entrance?”
“Yes. We can’t die together, can we?”
That was why the entrance was completely blocked off.
She must have been thinking about what would happen if Yoo Seokwoo and the self-proclaimed rescue team got chased by monsters and then tried to seek help from the Shelter.
The fact that she’d even considered the possibility of refusing to open the entrance showed Lee Jihye had her own ideas about protecting the Shelter.
“I was hoping the stupid bastard who only ever caused trouble would just die already… but instead, it was someone else who died and came back. What a mess… people are going to be scared. Do we still need more people who can fight?”
“The more, the better.”
In truth, the one clearing this dungeon was not me, but Kim Hyunsung.
The person who thought we needed more combat-capable people was not me either, but Kim Hyunsung.
He seemed to think we absolutely had to increase our numbers before going below.
“What about you?”
Lee Jihye was still a piece of trash according to Mind’s Eye, but she was at least better than a woman like Park Hye-young.
She wasn’t the type to recklessly thrust a spear wherever she pleased, and she wasn’t the type to scream in the middle of things either.
More likely, she’d calmly do her part from behind Park Deokgu.
“I’ll pass.”
“……”
“I’m scared, and I’d rather not get dragged into some useless incident and die. The power Kiyoung Oppa showed us is definitely fascinating… and tempting, too, I suppose, but greed without reason is the shortest road to dying out in the wilderness.”
“……”
“What, is it really so easy for a sparrow to try to follow a stork? A sparrow has its own way of living.”
I think I understood what she was saying.
For some reason, it felt like she was talking about me too, which left a bitter taste in my mouth, but Lee Jihye’s thinking was also reasonable.
“Wouldn’t it be better to live quietly, with a capable man, than to die on a battlefield where you never know when you’ll be killed?”
It was right about then that I sensed someone’s presence from somewhere nearby.
Turning naturally, I saw several figures walking toward us from ahead.
Yoo Seokwoo?
The one in front was unmistakably Yoo Seokwoo.
But the three figures following behind him were people I had never seen in the Shelter before.
“Looks like the only bastard I wanted dead the most made it back alive. And with a few new burdens on top of that….”