Yuliena (1)
A repellent voice rang out.
-Aaaah....
I didn’t know why, but my legs had started shaking for no reason.
In truth, the dungeon boss of the Rare-grade dungeon, the Garden of Terror, was hardly what you’d call a proper dungeon boss.
The owner of the garden was only big-bodied, and even the one trait that could be called an advantage, its regenerative ability, was nowhere near enough to withstand the party’s attack power.
But the woman before me was different. Even to someone as clueless as me, the feeling that something was deeply off came through loud and clear.
Her priest’s robes gave her the unmistakable appearance of a saint, but the atmosphere she carried was the exact opposite.
An instinctive sense of being overwhelmed.
I realized that woman was the predator, and I was the prey.
For a moment, I found myself longing for Kim Hyunsung’s warm back.
Hyunsung... you’re really okay, right?
-Aaaah... Gedrick... my Gedrick! So you finally came to meet me....
What the hell are you talking about?
-You’ve finally come to find me. My lovely Gedrick!
Her neck bent at an unnatural angle as she reached out toward us.
I did consider pretending to be Gedrick for a moment, but taking the lead in a place like this was clearly dangerous. The safest option was to stay quietly in the rear, tucked in among the vanguard.
Is she blind?
The very moment Kim Hyunsung took one more step, it happened.
-Aaaaaaah.
...
-You are not him. You are not him.
She screwed up her face, then opened those tightly shut eyes wide.
I hadn’t expected her eyes to be normal, but what lay beneath her eyelids was nothing but pitch-black darkness.
I didn’t know whether they had been gouged out or whether they were simply invisible to me, but it felt as though they could suck me in.
The physiological revulsion made gooseflesh ripple down my back.
Damn...
-He’s not here. He’s not him!
The floor beneath our feet trembled, and with a rattling crash the dungeon’s interior shook.
That strange force, something that couldn’t even be called mana, spread in every direction, and the voice kept echoing again and again until I caught myself clamping both hands over my ears.
Just as hot blood threatened to surge up my throat, a barrier appeared around the expedition as a whole.
Sun Heeyoung was blocking the force with divine magic.
-He’s not here!
“Prepare for combat. Mages, start your chanting, and priests, keep divine power flowing. It’s a monster that can’t be properly aggroed, so we’ll run this as defensively as possible. This is going to be a long fight.”
“Yes.”
Lee Sanghee was calmer than I expected as she lifted her large shield and covered the rear.
Reassuring, in its way.
The instant the incantations began, mana started to rise here and there.
Buying time until casting finished was the vanguard’s job.
Of course, we weren’t just standing there either.
With Kim Hyunsung at the head, several of the others shot toward Yuliena.
Hang in there, Kim Hyunsung.
Forces that couldn’t quite be called magic or divine power exploded in all directions. Whoever they belonged to was probably obvious.
Yuliena.
“Please prepare defensive magic.”
-Those filthy things... those filthy things dare! To invade this place... this place!
With a thunderous scrape, a black sphere rushed forward, gouging the floor as it came.
The sight of that unidentified force bearing down on me like it would swallow me whole was anything but pleasant.
Before I knew it, Lee Sanghee had moved to block the path, raising her shield to absorb the heavy blow.
She managed to block it, but it didn’t look easy. As her face twisted in pain, I could see holy magic pouring into her.
This is going to be rough....
This wasn’t quite the same as hunting a normal monster.
In the case of the Garden Lord, aggro had been drawn toward the front-line vanguard, but Yuliena wasn’t focusing on any specific target at all.
She was raging like a madwoman.
To protect the rear, whose defenses were relatively low, the front line had no choice but to stay attached to this side, which made dealing with her all the more difficult.
The time needed for magic to cast stretched longer and longer.
Since this was a long battle, we couldn’t let the priest corps take any damage, so the tanks had to stay even more on edge for the possibility.
As for the agile archers, they could hardly expect much outside help.
When Jung Hayan and Hwang Jeongyeon opened their mouths, what burst out at once was magic packed with enormous mana.
For an instant it seemed to wrap the madwoman in place, but soon enough the black sphere began to envelop her body again.
That was when I finally spoke the spell I’d been chanting myself.
“......!”
A giant arm spawned in midair and dropped, as if it meant to crush Yuliena, black sphere and all.
CRACK-BANG!
For a brief moment, the party members looked startled.
Then the dust settled, and Yuliena came into view, staring this way.
-How dare you... how dare you!
My magic was officially classified as physical. Maybe that was why it felt as if some damage had gone through. But the news wasn’t all that welcome.
We’re screwed.
Whether by coincidence or not, it felt as though the black sphere was dropping toward the area where I stood.
That unidentified force kept falling around us.
Kim Hyunsung also couldn’t easily press closer, worried I might take damage, and was forced into a situation where he was blocking the attacks with his sword.
Honestly, I thought it might be easier to keep hunting if I weren’t here at all.
Are Heroic-grade dungeons always like this?
I hadn’t expected it to be easy, but it was harsher than I’d imagined.
Roars and crashes rang out everywhere, the ground tore open, and the entire dungeon shook.
Deokgu can’t handle this.
That was probably why Kim Hyunsung couldn’t move properly.
Lee Sanghee was undoubtedly pulling her weight, but Park Deokgu, whose low mana left him with weak resistance, wasn’t much different from me.
He was doing his best, but all he could really manage was blocking the smaller attacks.
The only reason we could endure at all was that she still hadn’t unleashed her curses.
I had assumed that, since it was an off-the-books technique that couldn’t be dispelled by divine power or mana, there would be some kind of limit or cooldown, but it didn’t seem like a skill she could use as often as I’d feared.
If hallucinations got added to this situation, it would become even more dangerous.
I had to make some kind of decision, and fast.
I wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and any danger. In the end, I had to admit that slipping in a word or two was the more rational choice.
“Aaaah. My Yuliena!”
To my surprise, her body twitched in view.
-G-Gedrick?
The moment my voice burst out in the middle of the battle, everything briefly settled into a lull.
The expedition members shot me looks as if to say, what the hell are you doing, but I had no obligation to answer.
Soon enough, they’d all understand.
“Yuliena! My Yuliena!”
-Gedrick! Ah, you’ve come. Gedrick! You came to me.
“Yuliena! I searched for you through the long eternity. This shrine....”
-Gedrick, finally, you finally....
“Yuliena!”
-N-No. You’re not Gedrick.
Damn it.
“Countless years have passed, Yuliena. While you were bound to this shrine, I underwent many changes. Time beyond reckoning. My way of speaking, my existence, everything about me has changed greatly since then.”
-No. You’re not Gedrick.
“Yuliena! My beloved Yuliena!”
-You are not Gedrick!
“Yuliena, I have changed, but I still remember that day. I keep the memories I shared with you, Yuliena, always within this body.”
-Ah....
“Those precious memories....”
-Ged... rick?
I had no idea what happened on that day, but something must have come back to her.
Black tears flowed from those hollow eyes.
It was grotesque to look at.
I frowned at the grotesque sight, but there was no way I could show that in my voice.
For now, it seemed better to keep working her over.
If she started demanding more explanation here, I’d naturally be out of ammunition.
-That day....
I grew needlessly uneasy at the thought that she might ask again.
“We... were together... Aaaah! Yuliena!”
-Gedrick!
“These people are oppressing me, Yuliena! Aaaaah!”
Lee Sanghee, Park Deokgu, and Sun Heeyoung were staring at me wide-eyed as if wondering what I was doing, while Jung Hayan was sending me jealousy so blatant it practically had teeth.
Everyone’s so dense....
Not.
At this point I was even starting to miss Lee Jihye, who was probably out there diligently doing whatever I’d ordered her to do.
I kept glancing toward Hwang Jeongyeon, the one person with enough brains to follow the situation, and at last I saw her nod.
But....
“Foolish Yuliena! Foolish Yuliena! Y-yes, the Gedrick you love is in our hands!”
What a godawful performance.
I’d had some expectations after seeing how obsessed she was with daily dramas, and somehow I was still floored by how absurd it was.
It was so bad I was actually worried Yuliena might see Hwang Jeongyeon’s acting and change her mind.
Even Hwang Jeongyeon looked embarrassed, her face reddening, but fortunately Yuliena didn’t seem to doubt her performance.
“Yuliena! Do not save me. Yuliena! Run now at once... keugh, these people....”
-Gedrick!
“Keugh... run! Yuliena!”
-How dare you! How dare you! Gedrick!
Whether it was Gedrick or a bad line delivery, I didn’t care.
But it was working better than I’d expected.
Of course, she might still have her suspicions.
Still, there was no way she could keep holding onto that thought forever. The Gedrick she had waited for her whole life was about to die.
It was only natural for her to react like this.
The problem is that she’s going berserk like a lunatic....
She wouldn’t be throwing power toward the rear.
After all, that was where her beloved Gedrick was being held.
Unlike the others, who still seemed a little dazed and were just trying to grasp the situation, Kim Hyunsung immediately surged toward Yuliena and swung his sword at once.
Kim Hyunsung still wasn’t at the level where he could run wild in a Heroic-grade dungeon.
To be honest, it was more accurate to say he was still in the middle of growing himself.
And yet the fight between Yuliena, who kept charging toward us, and Kim Hyunsung, who kept trying to stop her, was impressive even to me.
Kim Hyunsung held back the black forces pouring out from every direction with nothing but a single sword.
Even though her attack range was limited, Yuliena rained down attack after attack on the man blocking her path.
CRACK-CRUNCH!
Not only did the same sounds keep echoing again and again, but they were exchanging blows that I could not make sense of by any ordinary standard.
Heh....
Kim Hyunsung thrust his sword forward, only for it to be stopped by the black force.
Yuliena’s black energy, which looked almost like tentacles, lashed at Kim Hyunsung, but our beloved regressor blocked it as if nothing had happened.
Just from the looks of it, the exchange was so dazzling that not only our party members but the remaining Blue party members had their mouths hanging open.
Frankly, it seemed hard to find the timing to step in.
-You filthy maggot... won’t you move already?
“......”
-Gedrick! Gedrick!
---