The Sea of Solitude (2)

The heroes had gathered in secret to investigate the dungeon. Twenty of them in all — a little rich to call a small elite force, but more than enough to clear a single dungeon.

A simple dungeon, that is.

"Eun-bi, do you know what kind of place the Sea of Solitude is?"

"Me? I haven't even been here a few months, so I don't really know. What I do know is they're incredibly unkind to anyone fat or ugly. That's all because of a man named Kim Jae-guk."

"Kim Jae-guk?"

"Yes. He's the guild master's son — and a man. So of course he likes beautiful women. At first they acknowledged me for my abilities, but the moment he decided I was ugly, I started getting frozen out."

"Hmm. I see."

"You said you knew him too, Seonghun?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of relationship?"

"Well. I was minding my own business, he picked a fight, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I wrecked him, and his girlfriend went and impaled herself on my cock all on her own?"

"What kind of insane situation is that?"

"Anyway, I only told you the truth."

The heroes swept the area, but the dungeon entrance was nowhere to be found. I waved them back and scanned the surroundings with the Eye of Truth.

The beasts were tightening a encirclement around us. A barrier of this magnitude was far beyond anything monsters should have been able to raise.

I looked toward a heap of boulders piled atop a stone rise. Through the rock, a blue orb shone in my sight.

"That's the spot."

I broke into a run toward the rise.

"Seonghun!"

The heroes pounded after me. My physical ability sat absurdly high for my level; one kick sent most of the boulder pile tumbling down the slope. A few of the stones, though, were heavy enough that you'd want heavy machinery to move them.

"Flower Disruption!"

I put a technique from the Taiyu Extreme Way through the pile — a move meant to scatter an opponent's center — and the remaining boulders thundered down with a roar that shook the ground.

Fishmen burst into view, weapons already in their hands.

"Seonghun!"

Nam Eun-bi came running, her enormous breasts heaving with every stride. She flicked a military knife; it buried itself in the throat of a fishman lining up on me, and the creature dropped.

"Are you okay?"

"Give me those tits for a second so I can calm down."

Squish.

"Can you not be serious for once?"

"What? We've got a perfectly reliable bodyguard on our side. Why would I get serious?"

There had to have been nearly a hundred of the fishmen. In less than a minute, every last one of them had been cut in two. At the center of the carnage, Ryu Su-gyeong flicked the blood from her blade.

"I have grown dull from so long at rest. To think blood would even cling to my sword."

"Strange, isn't it?"

"Yes."

I kept a hand on Eun-bi's chest while I talked with Cheon Yu-ha. She grimaced at the habit, then decided to let it go.

"This place was confirmed as a small E-Class dungeon with low-grade monsters. And yet more than a hundred Grade-3 fishmen just came out of it. On top of a high-grade barrier like that. It shouldn't be possible."

"Hahhn—!"

"That has to be the entrance."

"Nngh—!"

"We're in the middle of a fight. Do you absolutely have to grope her chest right now? And Eun-bi, that lewd, that…"

Cheon Yu-ha looked at Nam Eun-bi's breasts and lost the rest of the sentence. That was how spectacular those things were.

"My apologies."

I licked the breast milk off my fingers and smiled. Color flooded Cheon Yu-ha's face. I may have poured a few too many S-Points into my looks. People kept falling for me over the strangest things.

"Let's head for the entrance."

The party started walking.

"We seize the initiative before we go in. There could be traps."

Cheon Yu-ha thrust both hands forward.

Cheon Yu-ha's red hair became actual flame. Three fox tails of living fire bloomed from the base of her spine, and fire poured off her body in a torrent that scoured the dungeon entrance and the stairwell beneath it down to slag.

A full minute of that festival of flame left a heat so savage it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠radiated from the mouth of the dungeon in waves. It wasn't the entrance that was unbreathable. It was the air around her.

What a fire-cunt.

I admired the view of Cheon Yu-ha's ass from behind while my hand worked over a breast. Soft. Wait. The feel was a little different — fresher, firmer. If Eun-bi's chest was warm, yielding mochi, this was a perfectly steamed bun: plush within, taut and springy on the surface.

I glanced sideways.

The breast in my hand was not Eun-bi's. It was Ryu Su-gyeong's. She stood exactly as she had been, eyes closed, expression perfectly still, as if nothing in the world were happening.

I squeezed again.

"Ah. Sorry."

"It is quite all right."

She had pressed herself so eagerly against my side that I had mistaken her for Eun-bi.

"We'll wait five minutes, then go in. It's too hot inside right now."

Five minutes felt optimistic, but we couldn't afford to linger any longer than that. When the time was up, we entered the dungeon.

Hot steam still curled from every surface. Things that looked like traps sat melted or otherwise wrecked, abandoned where they had died. Here and there, shapes that had been people and monsters were left blackened into the stone like fossils.

"Look at that."

"Are those people?"

So this was what a hero around rank twelve could do — half-gut a dungeon in a single breath. How strong did that make Selectio, sitting unchallenged at number one?

A few monsters still thrashed when they saw us, half their bodies already melted into the floor, unable to tear themselves free. I groped Su-gyeong's chest by accident again. Apologizing had already become too much work, so I left my hand where it was.

"Look over there."

A massive iron door. A security camera mounted in front of it.

"I'll handle this one too."

Cheon Yu-ha started forward, and Ryu Su-gyeong stepped into her path. The woman who did nothing except protect me put a hand on her sword. She almost looked like she was in a good mood.

A single cut. An iron door as thick as a human head split cleanly in two.

People were waiting for us on the other side. A machine gun that belonged on an armored vehicle swung toward us and opened up.

Ryu Su-gyeong walked forward at a stroll, batting every round out of the air.

"Shit! What the hell is that monster?!"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Her blade flicked. The machine gun came apart in two pieces.

"Open fire!"

"Tsk."

Cheon Yu-ha started forward.

"We need to see what's inside. Do not just spray fire everywhere."

She nodded and charged. The enemies were not beasts. I checked carefully, just in case — they were not even the dungeon's humanoid monsters. They were people.

"They're from our guild."

Nam Eun-bi looked down at the dead faces, her voice gone grim.

"Why are they with the monsters?"

"It's hard to call this just an illegally operated dungeon when the monsters were standing guard outside like comrades."

"If they betrayed humanity, it all adds up. Seonghun was right."

Every woman there turned to look at me.

"Hahhn—!"

I yanked my hand back out of Eun-bi's top. Humiliating. Genuinely, deeply humiliating. I watched, in real time, as the look on those women's faces slid from respect to you poor bastard.

Times like this, you lean into it.

"A man can grope a pair of breasts now and then, can't he? I'm the medic. Is anyone hurt? What? You wanted a show? Then… you're welcome to watch."

The thought of those beautiful heroes observing me put a thick, heavy ache in my groin. They huddled together and ran through a quick council. On the face of it, none of this made sense. Betray humanity? And throw in with whom? They would be found out and they would die. Had there been anything in the last hundred years with the weight to stand against the human race?

"If we push the investigation deeper, the answer will turn up."

Further in, the party stopped cold.

"This is not the size of an E-Class dungeon. This floor area is almost A-Class."

"From the outside, a place nobody would give a second glance. Inside, enormous, and perfect for getting work done. Exactly the kind of hole you'd pick for something filthy."

"Before Seonghun pointed us here, I don't think anyone would even have thought to look. No — even if a war broke out, this place wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind."

The heroes gazed at me with something close to worship.

"Seonghun, you're really as smart as you are handsome."

"You're nothing like the other men I've met."

"You said there's a hospital that gets you pregnant, right? Would it be all right if I went too? I want a child as clever as you."

All that heat in their eyes put the tension right back between my legs.

"Heh. Let's keep moving. When this is over, we'll throw a party."

"Yes. I'd love that."

Ryu Su-gyeong's expression tightened, just a fraction.

We went in and took stock of the chamber. The space ran to hundreds of square meters, and it was packed with enormous vats of chemical reagents.

"These are narcotics already circulating on the open market. The side effects are vicious, but the addiction is distinctive enough that they move at a fortune."

"Honestly, is there anything you don't know?"

Cheon Yu-ha slipped her arm through mine. Blazing Fox Lotus. Her chest pressed against my arm. After weeks of nothing but Eun-bi's enormous SSR-rank breasts, the feel of an ordinary woman's chest was almost novel.

"Producing this volume would take enormous manpower and resources. How did they manage it?"

"We'll find that out in due time. This place is built in multiple floors. See that large elevator? This dungeon is on a far bigger scale than we assumed."

I photographed the narcotics and swept them into my inventory.

"You can use spatial storage magic as well?"

"Yes."

"Truly, is there anything you can't do?"

The heroes looked at me with naked greed.

"I'm going to have Seonghun's child. I mean it."

"That's the seed even the President of the United States was after."

"I'd settle for just one taste."

At some point Ryu Su-gyeong had glued herself to my side, her chest pressed against me as if that were the most natural thing in the world. I no longer bothered reading her face or apologizing.

I swept the lower floors with the Eye of Truth. An enormous force was waiting below. The levels that came back through the scan were nothing to take lightly. If we had come without Ryu Su-gyeong, the number of us who walked out of here could have been counted on one hand.

Plenty of them sat at levels you couldn't shrug off. My proficiency with the Eye of Truth was still too low to pull their finer details or their faces, but the essential numbers came through clearly. I checked Crimson Flame Wolf Cheon Yu-ha.

A Diamond-grade hero sat in the high seventies, brushing the eighties. Compared to Ryu Su-gyeong the gap was only ten levels — but past seventy, a single level was a several-fold difference in combat power. The higher you climbed, the harder each realm became, and the gulf in strength grew brutally clear.

"We should head to the lower floor. An enormous number of enemies are standing by."

"I don't suppose you know how strong?"

"Well. Roughly…"

I pointed at one of the heroes. Shaft Air, Platinum-grade. She wore a special suit of armor bristling with blades over every inch of her body, and her specialty was tearing across a battlefield inside a storm of cutting edges — a top-tier hero by any measure.

"Their captains look to be about Shaft Air's level."

Ryu Su-gyeong heard that and slid her sword back into its scabbard. With a look of mild disappointment, eyes closed, she walked ahead in that cool, lofty way of hers.

"Lady White Plum Sword Flower, could I ask you to help a little?"

When I called to her, she turned with a look of genuine surprise.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If they hit us all at once, some of us may not walk away. The Silver and Bronze-grade heroes in particular will take critical wounds. No — most of them will be at death's door."

"You need only heal them, can you not?"

"The power I use to heal is carved out of my own life. I would rather spare myself as much as I can."

Her hand closed on the scabbard, her expression gone uncomfortable.

"Very well. Then I shall make a request of my own."

"If it's money, I'll pay any amount."

"I have no need of money."

"Then what do you need?"

"What?"

"Stop standing on such excessive ceremony with me. ……like…"

I couldn't catch the rest. She turned her back on me. In the instant before she did, her face had gone as red as a pot of spicy tteokbokki. Those long ears of hers twitched, once, then again.

"That kind of request I can do anytime."

"And when you touch my chest, stop apologizing every single time. L-like the other women…"

"Sorry? The last part was too quiet. I couldn't hear you."

"And l-like the other women… me…"

"I really can't hear you. Your voice is too small."

"Hah. Never mind. Simply treat me a little more comfortably. As you would a close noo— a close noona. I am well and truly weary of being set apart."

"Yes! Got it, Noona!"

Hm?

She froze like a statue. As if time had stopped for her alone. If her eyes had been open, the look on her face would have been something to see.

"………"

Did she just die?

"H-hurry. Let us go!"

She covered her face with one hand and strode out in front. We descended to the lower floor.

"Squad One! Attack!"

The moment the elevator doors opened, the enemies who had been waiting poured ranged fire down on us.

"Thalia."

A massive slime succubus bloomed into being in front of me. The sexy, semi-transparent figure bearing a womb tattoo began to swell in midair, her body inflating to fill the corridor. Flame and water attacks alike sank into her and vanished. Projectiles punched through, but their force dropped off sharply on the way out.

"How the hell were they ready for this?!"

"Dump everything you've got!"

"We're already at our limit!"

"Damn it! Pour it on until you're dead!"

Ryu Su-gyeong stepped forward, turning the barrage aside, and began cutting the enemy down at a leisurely pace. Her face was as calm as if she had come out for a stroll.

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A whisper of steel. A scream. Two more flashes.

"Kraaaah! A strong one!"

In the space of a breath, the heads of two level-fifty officers hit the floor.

"Su-gyeong!"

She locked up like a videotape with the tape snapped. A bullet struck her arm and bounced off as if it had hit stone.

"Do not call my name in the midst of battle!"

Her face was scarlet.

"Okay! Noona!"

Thud. She caught her foot on a jut of cave rock like a complete beginner and went down on the floor.

For heaven's sake. A crusty old Murim veteran standing at the very brink of the Flower Realm, tripping over a rock. It was a rarer spectacle than an elephant sitting down to grill its own pork belly.

"I told you to stop calling me like that…"

Su-gyeong's voice trembled, so pitiful she sounded on the verge of tears. And here she had just asked me to address her comfortably.