The Ant and the Grasshopper (1)
"Hhh… haaah."
Lee Jun took a deep breath.
The dungeon's distinctive musk filled his lungs for the first time in a while. The scent of monster blood drifting from every direction—it was a sensation as familiar as his own heartbeat.
"All right, then. Ms. Seo Yoon, let's push a little deeper."
"Understood."
Even now, Seo Yoon still seemed to have stamina to spare.
And she'd already spent over two hours straight cutting down monsters.
Well, the monsters in the Seoul Dungeon aren't exactly demanding.
He had been tempering her steadily through the dungeon and the training hall back at the lodging. She'd started with high base stats to begin with, and she worked hard on her own—gains like this were only natural.
Besides, today Lee Jun had joined the hunt himself.
Double the manpower naturally meant half the burden.
Though sometimes doubling the headcount just makes everything twice as hard….
He quickly shoved the unpleasant memory trying to surface back down where it belonged.
Anyway.
There was a reason Lee Jun had stepped onto the field himself today, unlike usual.
To test Styx's Shard and Silhouette's weapon-manifestation in live combat.
And the results were….
"Excuse me, sir… did you hunt all of those yourself?"
"Haha… I suppose I got a little carried away."
Some twenty ogre corpses lay piled near Lee Jun.
He had killed twenty ogres in a little over two hours.
Granted, he hadn't fought alone—Seo Yoon had been right there beside him—but honestly, even she could feel she hadn't done much of anything. It was fair to call this almost entirely Lee Jun's doing.
"…."
Seo Yoon stared at the ogre corpses as if seeing something unbelievable.
The wounds were clean.
One slash across the back of the neck. One thrust beneath the ribs.
Exactly two strokes of the blade to bring down a large monster the size of an ogre.
"…Astonishing."
Seo Yoon was genuinely impressed.
Just a few months ago, she hadn't been able to handle this many ogres at all and had been forced to disengage and retreat.
Not that she knew he'd simply tossed them her way over at Taesan… but still.
To be fair, killing a single ogre had never cost Lee Jun much effort.
They weren't particularly intelligent monsters, nor did they possess any standout abilities.
But this was the first time he'd mowed down such a swarm this effortlessly.
"I'm… rather amazed myself."
Through Silhouette, he could swap weapons without a moment's delay.
He could wield the spatial distortion of Styx's Shard like a suit of gravity armor.
Both were, for now, only support-tier in power—but for Lee Jun, whose fundamentals were rock-solid, they delivered enormous effect.
No—calling his fundamentals "rock-solid" was underselling it.
Fundamentals were practically all Lee Jun had.
Hand a man like that a set of abilities, and this was the kind of change you got.
{How's that? This isn't even a hundredth of my power yet. Impressive, right?}
"It's impressive."
{…Really?}
"Yeah, honestly, I'm a little surprised. I didn't expect it to be this useful. If this is day one, I can't wait to see how much it helps once I get the hang of it."
{Ah, um… ahem. Of course, is this not exactly the sort of excellence you'd expect from me? Fufufu, you may compliment me further.}
….
I should probably fix that habit of puffing up the moment someone throws her a scrap of praise.
Then again… it was performance charming enough that he couldn't quite resent it.
He'd let it slide for today.
Lee Jun rested for a moment, gazing off into the distance.
A little farther from here lay the Ant Nest.
Today's goal: clearing the third floor of the Ant Nest.
To that end, he had spent two hours herding ogres along the most inefficient route imaginable, driving every other hunter out of the area.
Now, only the two of them—Lee Jun and Seo Yoon—remained nearby.
So then… time to get moving.
"Now that you mention it, there aren't any monsters left nearby."
Lee Jun opened the conversation as a segue toward the Ant Nest.
Seo Yoon swept her gaze around them.
"So it seems."
"It's only six o'clock, so we've got plenty of time today. I was thinking of running a bit more training—how does that sound?"
"I am fine with it. You handled most of today's hunt yourself, sir. Thanks to that, I still have plenty of strength left."
"Good. Oh—how about a spot only I know about? It's quiet, and honestly a pretty great place."
"…A place known only to you, sir?"
Seo Yoon tilted her head as she asked.
No, actually, she didn't tilt her head.
That would've been far too cute for someone so committed to a serious image.
Either way, Lee Jun counted it a success simply for piquing her interest.
She'd been starting to regard the Seoul Dungeon's monsters as beneath her anyway.
So long as he wasn't throwing her into an environment impossible even in theory, the Seoul Dungeon would likely be easy pickings at her level now.
Of course, a B-Class hunter should find this place easy—that much was true.
When you think about it, it is a bit odd.
Objectively speaking, Seo Yoon fell short of B-Class standards for reasons beyond her multiple mana overload.
Her judgment and theorycrafting were superb, but her physical attributes—stamina above all—were far too weak. Her stamina lagged well behind his, and her strength was roughly on par with his.
For a rogue-class assassin, no less… that was genuinely severe.
Maybe there's something else going on with her.
But there was no way to investigate that right now.
First, he'd fix her mana overload—then worry about the rest.
That opportunity was coming soon enough.
With that thought, Lee Jun set off.
Toward the Ant Nest.
"Yes. It's a place where only moderately challenging monsters spawn."
"I see. I look forward to it."
Not that a dungeon was supposed to be something you looked forward to.
Still, enthusiasm was a good thing.
"Then let's go."
How deep would they make it today?
The first floor of the Ant Nest went smoothly.
The lower floors of the Ant Nest were nearly identical in difficulty to the Seoul Dungeon proper.
Clearing the first floor—which was on par with a small B-Class gate—and locating the door took all of forty-five minutes.
On his previous solo run, the clear had taken one hour twelve minutes, and finding the door another thirty beyond that. This time, it was exactly half.
One could chalk it up to having two people instead of one, but good was good. Best to think positively.
"Ms. Seo Yoon, let's head down to the next floor."
"…."
"Ms. Seo Yoon?"
She'd been silent for a while now.
Puzzled, he looked over—she was scanning their surroundings, apparently not having heard a word he said.
What was wrong?
"Ms. Seo Yoon, is something bothering you? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No, sir. My condition is fine. It's just… I find it fascinating that a place like this exists beneath the Seoul Dungeon."
"Fair enough."
He could agree that it was fascinating.
But what caught Lee Jun's attention was something else entirely.
Well—surely a place like this could exist inside a dungeon.
It was a dungeon, after all.
A fantastical space where monsters spawned and everything reset at midnight. Nothing in it could be called strange.
What struck Lee Jun as odd was something else.
Why… has no one ever found this place?
The Seoul Dungeon's foot traffic was, naturally, the highest in Korea.
It was the only large-scale public dungeon in the entire metropolitan area—which meant it drew a constant stream of hunters, from raw rookies to grizzled veterans.
Hence the problem.
"The Seoul Dungeon has been open for two years now. Two years and eight months if you count from the moment it formed—practically contemporaneous with the gate crisis itself."
"So it's one of the very earliest dungeons."
Exactly.
The most heavily used dungeon in all of South Korea, and one of the oldest in existence.
That was the Seoul Dungeon they were standing in.
"And yet, why do you suppose no one's ever found this place?"
It was the question that kept nagging at him.
In his last run through time, he'd been the one who stumbled onto it, so the thought never occurred to him—but looking back now, it made no sense.
This place wouldn't be discovered for another two years at least.
Which meant it would sleep in the deepest, most forgotten corner of the Seoul Dungeon for five full years.
"Doesn't that strike you as strange?"
But Seo Yoon's reaction was lukewarm.
Her reactions were always like that, granted—but this time it was an especially heartfelt non-response.
"Hmm… perhaps simply because it's an area few people visit? I myself have never once come this deep…."
To someone with only one lifetime's worth of memories, the answer was obvious.
Lee Jun was a regressor, already familiar with the Ant Nest's existence—of course it seemed strange to him.
Anyone seeing it for the first time would naturally assume it had simply gone unnoticed because it was tucked away in a backwater corner.
If anything, he should be grateful to Seo Yoon for earnestly humoring his odd question.
Still… that doesn't make the question go away.
It wasn't as if he could just come out and say he'd regressed through time.
That particular frustration—the friction of living between two timelines—had been visiting him often lately.
And it wasn't limited to Seo Yoon, either.
It was… everything, really.
{Hehe. Then why not talk to me instead? I know you regressed, and I know all about your past.}
"I'll pass. Talking to you just leaves me irritated."
{…Tch.}
With that thought, he stepped through the door.
Whoosh—
A single ripple of sensation, and the scenery before his eyes changed.
A peaceful, rolling field.
This inside a dungeon—it was the kind of place that never stopped feeling surreal, no matter how many times he saw it.
"Now, then…."
Lee Jun drew a pistol from his Pocket.
His plan for this floor: draw pre-stored weapons from the Pocket with his left hand while simultaneously manipulating Silhouette with his right.
Firearms recycled from his prepared stock for convenience; blades freely reshaped through Silhouette on demand.
Once he mastered this style, no enemy would find him easy to counter.
And this was—above all—a method of combat designed for facing intelligent opponents. Opponents capable of psychological warfare.
Say… humans, for instance.
According to the intelligence Yelena had gathered, he would almost certainly clash with Liberation within three months.
The most likely opponent: Hecate.
A magic-focused fighter—which made psychological warfare all the more critical against her.
I have to make this second nature starting now.
Lee Jun had always used both hands, though naturally he favored his right, his dominant one.
But now each hand had its own distinct role.
If he couldn't wield both hands freely within a single battle, this style was worse than useless.
So he had to make it flawless.
As if he had lived his entire life this way.
Falling short of that… might well mean dying soon.
He meant that completely seriously.
With that thought, Lee Jun's gaze swept across the field.
"About time they showed up."
Beyond the horizon, where the sky met the grass.
He stared at that point alone, waiting for the battle to come.
"Sir, what kind of monsters spawn in this dungeon?"
"Ants."
"…Pardon?"
"This floor is a single-species floor too. Giant Ants, specifically."
The second floor's monsters were ants.
Monsters in the literal shape of ants—Giant Ants.
The baseline six-legged breed was standard; mutant individuals walked on two legs and used their remaining four as arms.
Up close, the way they moved was genuinely unsettling.
Lee Jun kept every nerve in his ears trained on the field beyond.
And before long—
"Here they come."
"…?"
At his murmur, Seo Yoon cocked her head.
Wow, she actually tilted it this time.
Guess I've gotten more comfortable around her than I realized.
Taking it as a good sign, he pointed out across the field.
"They'll swarm us any moment now."
That was simply what ants did.
And sure enough, a horde of black ants materialized on the far horizon, boiling up out of the earth in a dense mass.
Perhaps twenty of them.
They'd be the vanguard—likely a twentieth of the floor's full force.
The second floor held just over five hundred monsters, so the math fit nicely.
Two hundred meters or so.
Close enough now that he could make out their forms in detail.
Watching the ants come charging, Lee Jun stole a brief glance at Seo Yoon.
"From here on out is the real training."
She had almost certainly never fought insect-type monsters before.
They were rare even in ordinary gates, let alone public dungeons.
Which meant today's hunt would make excellent groundwork for her.
"Whew…."
He exhaled one long, slow breath.
A ritual as ingrained as any habit—by now, this was simply his routine for focusing.
An automatic pistol in his left hand. A dagger of moderate length in his right.
Over his combat suit, the blood he'd soaked through wrestling monsters on the first floor clung thick and dark.
But not a wound on his body.
The Shabel Tigers of the Ant Nest's first floor were the very beasts he'd hunted to the brink of death in his last lifetime. Getting beaten around by them at this point would be laughable.
That's what being a veteran means.
And then—
Scritch—
A single Giant Ant came barreling straight toward Lee Jun.
He watched its approach with perfect composure.
"You'll only see this once, so watch closely."
Locking eyes with the ant bearing down on him, Lee Jun reversed his grip on the dagger in his right hand.
The hunt was on.