We Will Be Together Forever (3)
It wasn’t just Jung Hayan, after all.
I was doing slightly better than most, but it was easy to see that others were still showing signs of anxiety. For example, Kim Yeri was one of them. The way she clung to Kim Hyunsung like a barnacle was nothing like the little girl who always wore that calm, expressionless face.
She was still young, so it made sense that she’d react like that. I had no idea what she’d seen, but judging from the situation, it had to have been something horrific—something traumatic enough to leave a deep scar.
Jung Hayan was the same. I couldn’t be certain, but whatever image had been forced into her mind must have been the scene of me abandoning her. Once again, I was reminded that this curse knew exactly where a person was weakest.
Still, people were gradually coming back to their senses.
Most had already shaken off the curse’s influence, but not a single person spoke first.
I kept stroking Jung Hayan’s hair as she held me in a desperate embrace, and after a while, a voice finally broke the carefully restored silence.
It was Lee Sanghee.
“P-please report the damage.”
“None. The curse seems to be a type of mental affliction, and there don’t appear to be any other effects. It looks like it induces auditory hallucinations and illusions.”
“Is anyone unable to move?”
“No one has suffered any physical injuries.”
There was no bodily damage. That didn’t mean there was no damage at all, though.
They must have been worn down mentally far more than they looked.
Now I understood, at least in part, why Blue’s party had been wiped out here.
If this dungeon’s curse could stack or intensify, just as its name—the Cursed Shrine—suggested…
It would get bad.
The situation could become uncontrollable before long.
Lee Sanghee brushed a hand through her hair and spoke again.
“Is anyone hearing voices?”
No one answered.
They were probably all hearing them, little by little.
I answered her question slowly.
“I am.”
“I see.”
“I think the others probably are too.”
“It doesn’t seem to be dispelled by Holy Purification either. This may be a curse built into the dungeon itself. It’s likely one that falls at set intervals, perhaps every time you enter a certain area or after a certain amount of time passes.”
Not a bad deduction.
Her conclusions matched mine.
When I glanced at Kim Hyunsung, I saw him give a small nod. It wasn’t a perfect answer, but we’d found something close enough to work with.
“Or the symptoms may worsen gradually from here. If this kind of curse is unleashed while undead are present as well….”
It was obvious what would happen next: devastating losses.
But the truly dangerous thing, I thought, was the curse itself.
Undead and specters were just the appetizer, no matter how you looked at it.
As the dungeon’s name implied, the key to conquering the Cursed Shrine lay in dispelling the curse.
-In the end, you’ll be left alone.
Shut up.
Without a doubt, if this curse couldn’t be lifted, things would spiral out of control. Lee Sanghee and the Second Unit might be able to resist the voices they were hearing, but for the Seventh Unit—Kim Hyunsung excluded—the story was different.
It was a little embarrassing to say it myself, but Kim Hyunsung’s party was growing fast. So fast, in fact, that “impossible to comprehend” would not have been an exaggeration.
Even I was only keeping pace because of our massive supply of resources and Rasmus Tucker’s Introduction to Alchemy.
As for those who already possessed talent beyond Legendary, there was no need to even mention them.
But high specs didn’t automatically make a party strong.
Our party had plenty of people with mental problems. In other words, our physical growth was outpacing our psychological growth.
Was that what he was aiming for?
For a moment I wondered whether Kim Hyunsung had intentionally dragged us into this dungeon after anticipating that possibility, but the chance was slim.
He didn’t weigh lives on a scale. If this had been an ordinary dungeon, I might have nodded along with that theory…
But this situation is serious.
That was the plain truth.
It wasn’t just our party. The others were in similar shape.
In a situation like this, the expedition had three choices.
The first was to return.
There simply wasn’t enough information about the dungeon. Even though the mission was focused on rescuing survivors, that didn’t mean there were no risks. If the expedition leader were the cautious type, this would have been the obvious choice.
The second was to press deeper inside.
I wouldn’t recommend it, but with the survivors’ condition still unknown, and time of the essence, this wasn’t an unreasonable option either.
And the third…
“I think we should set up camp here first.”
Exactly.
“Those in close-combat roles should divide into teams, search the surroundings, and look for any clues that might help us with the strategy. Everyone else will build the camp here. Please prepare food as well. We need to rest for now. For the moment, I’d like the Second Unit to take the lead….”
“I’ll go with them too.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t seem like the curse has affected me much. I can hear the voices, but… not enough to be distracting.”
“Ah. In that case… I’d appreciate it, Kim Hyunsung.”
By my own standards, this was clearly the best course of action.
Setting aside the fact that we’d been cursed, the expedition as a whole was already exhausted.
We’d marched for well over half a day, and another six hours had passed since we entered the shrine.
If we kept pushing forward and searching in this condition, we’d hit our limit before long.
The priests and mages, especially, were already approaching their physical breaking point, so they absolutely needed time to rest.
“We’ll sleep here and be ready to start at dawn tomorrow. If there’s no improvement after staying here for exactly three days, we’ll withdraw from the dungeon. And also….”
“Yes.”
“If it turns out this curse can’t be dispelled, we should look for another way.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
More than possible.
It was almost guaranteed.
Curse-type effects were generally close to semi-permanent, after all.
“Yes. For now, please focus on recovering your strength. We’ll look for a countermeasure after the search team returns.”
Once Lee Sanghee finished speaking, several people with high agility—including Kim Hyunsung and Kim Yeri—were selected and headed outside.
The frontliners, whose movements were slower, were doing their best to set up camp.
And given that he insisted on going out as well, it seemed Kim Hyunsung had a plan of his own for dealing with this shrine.
He might even bring back another clue.
When the people outside went off to do their job, it was obvious what those of us left behind were supposed to do.
Our job was to manage the kids’ fragile little minds.
I wasn’t directly asked to take care of anyone else, but I could feel that they trusted me.
Park Deokgu, who still had a dazed expression on his face despite having recovered relatively quickly, was the first patient for my impromptu counseling session.
Just being near me was enough for Jung Hayan to start healing on her own.
Seeing everyone else around us talking in small groups reminded me once again that conversation was, in fact, the answer.
“Deokgu.”
“Ah, hyung.”
His face was visibly haggard, and he even gave Jung Hayan, who was standing next to me, a greeting.
“Feeling any better?”
“O-of course.”
“I’m asking seriously.”
“D-don’t worry about me, hyung. Take care of noona instead. I’m fine.”
This pig….
“What did you see?”
“N-nothing much.”
He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
Maybe he thought saying it aloud would make him a burden.
As I silently looked at him, I saw the trace of unease on his face.
“I heard the voices of the people I killed, and the people who died in front of me.”
“Ah….”
“Yoo Seokwoo, the girl I couldn’t save, and Park Hye-young’s corpse, too. Of course, Jung Jinho and his lackeys showed up as well. They told me I’d be dead soon. They’re still cursing at me now. They kept shouting at me not to rationalize their deaths.”
“…….”
“What about you?”
He looked like he was agonizing over it.
He was torn between whether he should say it or not, hesitating like someone standing at the edge of a cliff.
Maybe it was about a weakness or trauma of his own, so caution was only natural.
Still, because I’d spoken first, it seemed to help. At last, he opened his mouth again.
“I-I saw you, hyung, and the rest of the party dying. You were fighting some huge monster, and I… I just couldn’t hold out, so I—I didn’t mean to, but I flinched for a second, and then hyung got hurt, and noona got hurt too, and I don’t even know what to say, and then… I mean, I… uuuurgh….”
It must have hit him pretty hard.
Even while speaking, tears were welling in his eyes, and his voice kept catching in his throat.
I knew Deokgu was soft-hearted to some extent, but I hadn’t realized it was this bad.
Back when he killed Yoo Seokwoo…
Park Deokgu had deliberately looked away from that scene.
“A-and after that, I saw hyung and the noonas blaming me. Saying it was because of me that they died… that it was all my fault… I just stood there trembling and didn’t do anything, and even when the same situation came up again, I couldn’t move. I kept not being able to move….”
“And after that?”
“After that it was the same… I couldn’t save anyone even once, and it just kept going….”
“Are you still hearing the voices now?”
I saw him nod.
“What are they saying?”
“That I’m a coward. That it’s all my fault. They keep saying things like that.”
“Who does?”
“Hyung and noona’s voices. I can hear Hyunsung hyung’s voice too, and Hee-hyung noona’s voice, and even the little one’s voice a bit. Is it the same for you, hyung?”
“Of course. I hear the same thing. Just like I said earlier, I still do. But it doesn’t really bother me.”
“As expected, hyung is….”
“Cut the ‘as expected, hyung is…’ crap. What you saw was nothing more than a hallucination or a voice.”
That was directed at Park Deokgu, but it was also meant for Sun Heeyoung and Jung Hayan standing nearby.
“There’s no reason to be shaken by it, and no reason to pay it any mind. It’s bullshit, plain and simple. Let it go in one ear and out the other. Focus on what you can actually see right now.”
“Ah….”
“If I can do it, you can do it too, Deokgu.”
“A-alright.”
“Keep that in mind. If I can do it, you can do it better.”
Needless to say, I didn’t think that alone was enough.
But he was the type who tended to sway easily when I spoke to him, so it would at least have some effect.
The slightly brighter look on his face told me I was right.
I spoke with several others as well. I had a brief conversation with Sun Heeyoung, then discussed what to do next with Lee Sanghee, Hwang Jeongyeon, and Kim Hyunsung while we ate.
And naturally, every spare moment I had went straight to Jung Hayan.
I thought that as long as we kept talking, I could keep her mind anchored.
I did wonder whether I should try the same approach with Jung Hayan that I’d used on Park Deokgu, but the problem was that she simply didn’t respond properly to me.
In truth, she probably didn’t even want to voice the worst thing she’d seen.
…….
When I saw her biting her lip hard enough to almost break skin just from being asked what she had seen, I had no choice but to give up.
Her circumstances were different from Park Deokgu’s forced act of pretending to be fine.
Everyone was on edge, but for the time being, they could still hold on.
At worst, all they had were auditory hallucinations, and no one had yet reached a point where their condition was truly deteriorating.
Even though Holy Power couldn’t dispel the curse, it did help keep things from getting worse.
Taking that short break was…
I could call it the best decision we’d made.
Everyone except the night watch managed to close their eyes for a little while, and I was no exception.
It wasn’t an environment where anyone could sleep properly, but we were all exhausted from the long journey, so I drifted off faster than expected.
Of course, I couldn’t keep my eyes closed forever.
Ah….
At some point, I realized Jung Hayan was staring at me with wide eyes.
“We’ll be together forever. Mm… no, that’s not it. Oppa would never do that. What you’re saying is stupid. Oppa told me to ignore what you say. So you don’t exist.”
I couldn’t tell who she was talking to, but I could hear her whispering to someone—whispering right into my ear.
“I’m not listening to you. You stupid idiot. Oppa can’t die. I’ll live with Oppa forever.”
Damn it….
“We’ll be together forever. We can live together. Let’s stay together here, forever. Oppa. Heeheehee.”
It was a voice that made my skin crawl.