We Will Be Together Forever (1)
When I was reading the letter Lee Jihye had sent through Kim Yeri, Lee Sanghee’s voice came from beside me.
“Then we’ll depart now.”
“Yes.”
I gave a slight nod, as was only natural.
I shoved the letter back into my pocket and rose to my feet.
By the time we came back out of the dungeon, the plan would probably already be in motion.
For now, it was best to focus on getting into the dungeon.
A total of fourteen people.
Six from Kim Hyunsung’s party, seven from the party managed by Hwang Jeongyeon, and Lee Sanghee, who was leading the expedition.
We were short-handed, but the composition itself was excellent.
What mattered first was that Lee Sanghee was a paladin with 90 in her attributes.
She lacked the qualities of a leader, but as a combatant she was far too capable to dismiss.
She was the most ideal tank I had ever seen among all the front-liners I’d met.
Her agility was low, but her mana was 77, and the fact that she could heal herself was something no tank in Lindel could match.
Hwang Jeongyeon’s side is the same.
Party Two’s overall stats were also quite solid. They were holding steady in the 70 to 80 range, and their potential wasn’t bad either.
With specs like those, they were probably the sort of people suited to stepping into a Heroic-grade dungeon.
“Since time is short, I’ll do the briefing while we move. Let me say it again: our objective is not to clear the dungeon.”
“Yes.”
“Our goal is strictly to confirm whether survivors are present and rescue them. If we determine there are none, we’ll withdraw immediately. Rescue is important, but your safety comes before everything else. I’d like you to keep that in mind at all times.”
“Yes.”
“The dungeon we’re entering is Heroic-grade. Its name is the Cursed Shrine. The monsters that appear are wraiths and undead, and no further details have been confirmed. Until support arrives, we’ll search for survivors while minimizing risk as much as possible.”
“How long will it take?”
“The dungeon was discovered in the undead hunting grounds in western Lindel. It should take about eight hours to reach the destination.”
“That’s not too bad.”
It definitely felt like they had prepared for the dungeon in a hurry. But even so, the fact that this was all the information they had was surprising.
Now I understood why so many parties had gone in and still ended up with a situation like this.
No matter how I thought about it, only having confirmed the dungeon’s location and the type of monsters inside was absurd.
If the dungeon had been Rare-grade, I would have nodded along without complaint.
Was there a reason they had no choice but to go in?
I also thought it was possible they had forced their way in with a reckless, “With this much firepower, what could possibly go wrong?” mindset, and that had been the cause of the failure.
My curiosity got the better of me, so I spoke up a little. In response, Hwang Jeongyeon nodded and opened her mouth.
“It does seem like the information is a bit lacking.”
“I think we went in rather hastily at the time.”
“Was there a reason?”
“Yes… We didn’t have enough time to prepare the expedition. It was a dungeon run that involved nearly all the guild’s strength, so we made the mistake of thinking nothing too serious could happen in a Heroic-grade dungeon. You know the Blue Guild Master was cursed, right?”
That was news to me.
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Ah. Well, it was supposed to be a secret from the outside world. Though I suppose everyone around us had already guessed, so calling it top secret would be a stretch. Lee Sanghee-nim was probably going to tell you at an appropriate time as well.”
“Hmm…”
“This happened before Kiyoung joined the party. The guild master was struck by a curse of unknown origin, and to lift it, we forced our way into the Cursed Shrine. Honestly, we didn’t think of it as forcing ourselves in at the time. The guild members who went on the expedition were veterans specialized in Heroic-grade dungeons and large monster hunts.”
I might have thought the same way too…
If you imagined a party with Hwang Jeongyeon’s level of composition, five such groups could probably have a real shot at a Legendary-grade dungeon.
No one would have expected to get tripped up by a Heroic-grade one.
“So there’s a clue in the Cursed Shrine that can break the curse?”
“Even that wasn’t certain. The curse the guild master suffered was obtained while discovering the Cursed Shrine, so naturally we thought there might be a way to solve it in the dungeon that caused it. He reached out to open the entrance to the dungeon, and then…”
“I see.”
To put it simply, the Blue Guild Master was cursed during the process of discovering the dungeon, and the rest of them entered the dungeon in order to break that curse.
It felt as if the dungeon itself had lured humans inside.
It was a dungeon people had no choice but to enter.
For some reason, a sense of unease started creeping in.
It reminded me far too much of the pattern in horror films.
In stories like that, the people who go charging in to save a friend usually end up in a very bad way.
All I could do was hope we wouldn’t end up like that this time.
“You don’t seem very surprised, Kiyoung.”
“No. I’d actually expected something to have happened to the Blue Guild Master to some extent. I was curious, but I didn’t think it was something I needed to pry into. I was busy trying to grow, after all.”
“Ah… yes. I suppose Lee Sanghee-nim didn’t want to burden you with anything else.”
“Right. That would make sense.”
“Oppa…”
“Ah, Hayan.”
I must have spent too much time talking with Hwang Jeongyeon.
Jung Hayan’s voice called for me, so after a brief greeting, I matched my pace to hers.
Her unpleasant mood seemed to have eased in the meantime, because a faint smile had returned to her face.
Since the march had begun in such a heavy atmosphere, I had been keeping physical affection like holding hands to a minimum, but it seemed Jung Hayan understood me to some extent.
At the very least, she wasn’t sneaking in to tug at my sleeve the way she usually did.
The road was too rough for a carriage to come through.
Actually, for someone like me, whose stamina was weak, the walk was a little grueling, but the party pushed forward at a brisk pace toward the destination.
Time was against us.
I could understand why they couldn’t afford to consider those with lower stamina.
So for the moment, all I could do was gulp down one of the stamina potions I’d brought and keep marching along.
Since our enemies were undead, they probably wanted the priests to conserve as much divine power as possible.
In the end, before even half a day had passed, we arrived in the area where the undead were said to be, and our party found itself in territory none of us had ever entered before.
It was the first undead monster I had ever seen as well. Curiosity made me glance around at everything.
“Ugh…”
The priests were openly grimacing.
Sun Heeyoung, who had the class of a dark priest, didn’t seem to be suffering as badly as the others, but it was clear the place still affected her.
Kim Yeri seemed more timid than I’d expected and had glued herself to Kim Hyunsung’s side, while the naturally fearful Park Deokgu had already been cowed by the grim atmosphere.
The only members of our party who still looked more or less normal were Jung Hayan and Kim Hyunsung.
Leaving Kim Hyunsung aside, since he knew this place already, Jung Hayan smiling brightly made less and less sense the longer I looked at her.
The deeper we went in, the darker it seemed to become.
It wasn’t just because night had fallen. The atmosphere of the place itself was dim and oppressive.
Disgusting.
The ground was wet and squelchy, the air thick with damp, and some unseen undead sound kept ratcheting up the tension for no good reason.
To be more accurate, it was the kind of place that made irritation bloom in your chest. And the closer we got to our destination, the stronger that feeling became.
A curse?
I couldn’t say for sure.
It was probably just the place itself radiating discomfort.
“This really is a damn annoying place, isn’t it? Hard to explain, but…”
“I feel it too, Deokgu. It’ll probably get worse once we reach the destination.”
“Ugh.”
“I never wanted to deal with bastards like undead in the first place…”
“Can’t be helped.”
While we whispered among ourselves, we reached the destination in no time.
What we found was a small room inside the shrine.
It was only natural that I felt vaguely unsettled.
When a bookshelf in the small room was pushed back, the entrance to the dungeon came into view.
There had been another hidden entrance inside the room. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was for, but there were unsettling decorations, including a pendant shaped like a beast hanging upside down.
It didn’t feel like a shrine so much as...
A place that had been used for devil worship.
Looking at the entrance leading underground, I understood what had happened when the Blue Guild Master discovered this place and ended up cursed.
Honestly, it looked like a place where you’d get cursed just for standing there.
I had no idea how carelessly he’d gone in, but the Blue Guild Master must have been terribly overconfident in his own abilities.
You could probably get cursed just by breathing here...
Reaching out with courage was, in its own way, a talent.
People like me, who were inclined to hold back, would never even come close to a place like this until something had been thoroughly confirmed.
While I was looking around and taking in the atmosphere, Lee Sanghee’s voice rang out.
“I’ll enter first. Party Seven will go in ahead of us, then Party Two will follow after them. Priests, please begin the purification spell.”
“Yes.”
I saw Sun Heeyoung and the man from Party Two begin chanting.
The moment light poured down over us, it felt as if my sluggishly settled brain floated back up to the surface.
It works.
Maybe this place was, by default, spewing out negative emotions.
The others all nodded too, and Lee Sanghee turned her back on us and started forward.
“Let’s go, Kiyoung.”
“Brother.”
“Yes.”
Of course we followed as well. The moment we stepped inside, familiar information spilled out before my eyes.
System: You have entered the Heroic-grade dungeon, Cursed Shrine. Confirmed party size: [??/??].
I had expected combat to begin immediately, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
Unlike the Garden of Terror, which had looked as if the entire scenery itself had changed, the dungeon we were in now, the Cursed Shrine, didn’t feel especially disconnected from the outside world.
It was exactly like descending into a huge shrine beneath the shrine above.
Considering how tense everyone had been, the interior felt oddly empty.
As expected, the people who had gone ahead were already visible in the distance.
The busiest among them was, unsurprisingly, the archer.
The moment she looked around, she began pouring out information.
“It doesn’t seem like anything is nearby. I can’t say for certain yet, but at least the traces around here look old.”
She was right.
At the very least, this area was safe.
It would be fair to say this section had already been cleared.
My head throbbed a little, but unlike earlier, that disgusting sensation wasn’t wrapping itself around my body.
“Overall, it seems like we’re moving a little faster...”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I think we can keep up the pace.”
“Then let’s do that. Priests, stay ready to cast the spell at any moment.”
“Understood.”
The party’s pace was a little faster than I’d expected. That didn’t mean they were being careless, of course.
There was still no sign of undead shadows, but everyone knew that this dungeon had swallowed many parties already, so they all understood the need for caution.
Looks like the opening section was handled without much trouble.
You didn’t even need the archer’s eyes to tell that much.
The deeper we went, the cleaner the interior looked.
There were barely any visible traces of battle, which made it easy to tell how smoothly the parties that came before us had broken through this section.
“Next.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll move into the next room.”
“Yes.”
“Then into the room after that...”
“Yes.”
It was right then that a voice I had never heard before reached us.
Curse upon you.
What was that...