Catching the Tail (1)
1.
If I've got a lead, I ought to press the advantage.
Never mind how mortifying the dream itself had been. What mattered was that I finally had information on it.
Whatever was meddling with my dreams was pouring a considerable amount of power into the interference — and if it was spending that much, there had to be an opening. A weak point I could seize.
The incubus seems to be reading the situation from inside Sung-jun, same as he is.
Which meant that if I wanted to catch it before it could pull anything, I had to do it before nightfall. So I'd finish this today, fast and clean. Leave it room to scheme and it would burrow deeper, cockroach-tough, vanishing into places I'd never dig it out of.
Better to crush it in one stroke.
I finished getting myself ready and headed for the training hall.
Crushing it in one stroke didn't mean I was about to march in and thrash Sung-jun, of course. Digging a parasite like an incubus out of someone's consciousness required massive magic, and massive magic required reagents — and reagents required money I didn't have. Which was why I planned to drag Sung-jun outside under the pretext of "practical combat training."
I'd force the issue if I had to.
"…Whoa. You've gotten huge."
"Oh. You're here?"
Sung-jun's height, which had already been edging past mine, had shot up to somewhere around a hundred and eighty centimeters. His shirt no longer fit the sudden growth, so he'd stripped it off and was tearing through sword drills half-naked, blade flashing every which way.
Back when he'd first been reduced to a kid, he could barely manage the weight of a sword and had been limited to the most basic forms. Now he was flying across the training floor. The ground was a mess of deep gouges where his feet had ground and scraped through countless landings, and heavy footprints were stamped into the walls and even the ceiling — marks left where he'd launched his full weight in a single explosive push.
This was almost certainly the top-grade training hall Sung-jun had poured a fortune into building. Factoring in its self-repair function, those marks had to be fresh.
He looked well over a hundred and eighty now. His height had exploded in the span of just a few times. Two more level-ups and his build itself might fully recover.
"Don't you think it's about time you got some real combat?"
"…Yeah. Feels that way, honestly."
He looked at me with a face that clearly said, Why the sudden interest? Fresh from intense training, the broad plane of his chest rose and fell hard, every line of muscle laid bare.
Those muscles… how do I put this. They're so ridiculously masculine.
Nothing like my own soft-looking chest. Beyond merely hard — solid, immovable. Even compared to the body I'd had as a man, the dense musculature put me to shame. All I had hanging on me now was a pair of soft, yielding breasts that bounced with every step.
…Right. Not the point right now.
"Perfect timing. I need money."
"Money?"
"I have to buy materials for a spell."
"You…"
Sung-jun gave me a look of pure exhaustion — the kind that said, After you already blew through twenty million won? Twenty million wasn't even that much for magic expenses, honestly.
This from a guy who owns swords worth over ten billion. What a drama queen…
The difference, I supposed, was that magic reagents were single-use. Still, I had milked his fortune, so I just smiled sweetly and said nothing. Any line like "it's for your own good" might tip off the incubus. Better to keep my mouth shut.
"Fine. Whatever. You've got your reasons. You really need it?"
"I do."
He read the situation fast and cut to the point, so I simply nodded. Nothing more needed saying.
"Alright. I'll get ready and we'll head out."
Maybe it was because he'd recovered a decent amount of his build, but Sung-jun walked off to prepare without a word of caution. That ran completely counter to his original plan — hole up, train, climb levels, because the one who'd cursed him, that "Maou," was still after him.
…Well. It wasn't as if he was risking it just because I'd asked. He'd simply gotten some of his confidence back. That was all.
2.
The only people who knew Sung-jun had been cursed were the ones who'd cast it and the ones who'd been hit by it. Which meant the Hunter Association he belonged to had no idea.
Why is Han Sung-jun hitting a dungeon this low-tier…?
The Association clerk managing dungeon entries took Sung-jun's ID card with that question in mind, but didn't bother voicing it. And then there was the woman trailing behind him — she was distracting, too.
Is she stolen goods or what?
The thought crossed the clerk's mind, but before anything could be said, Han Sung-jun and the woman behind him had already stepped through the portal.
Stolen goods? Not the clerk's problem. The person who lost them was the one at fault. With barely an hour left until the end of the shift, there was no reason to go looking for extra work. That was the whole point of being a civil servant.
The clerk adjusted their posture and went back to waiting out the clock.
3.
"They didn't even blink."
"I cast a spell to minimize the sense of wrongness."
Answering Sung-jun, I also set up a barrier at the dungeon entrance — one that would ping me if anyone approached. Notification only, nothing else. The fewer functions, the harder it was for anyone to notice.
Barriers weren't efficient for flexible offense anyway; they relied on brute magical output to smother threats, and the upkeep was terrible. With my mana as tight as it was, slapping one down casually wasn't something I could afford. If I just beat something down myself, I could manage it on a tenth of the mana. Barriers were the opposite — pure wasteful force.
"Recon?"
"Starting now."
Barrier done, next was scouting. I spun up a chain of transparent scouter drones and sent them out. Mana efficiency wasn't great, but given that this dungeon was a cave system, the time saved more than made up for it.
"Found it. This is an Orc Cave."
Through the scouters' feed I confirmed goblins tagging along as foot soldiers. A pretty beginner-level dungeon.
"Orcs. Should be simple enough."
"Yeah."
Confirming the recon results, Sung-jun took the lead with his sword drawn.
…Had his back always been that broad?
He hadn't even fully recovered his build yet, and still that wide back snagged my eyes and wouldn't let go. The rough cave walls, the sharp stalactites — none of it registered. All I could see was Sung-jun's back, rolling lightly with each step as he walked ahead.
"Have you gotten bigger than you used to be?"
Had I been feeding him too much? All those lavish spreads I'd cooked because I figured the ingredients would just go bad in storage — maybe that had backfired.
"Not really? I don't think so."
"…Yeah?"
Then maybe it was the angle. Moving through a dungeon like this — him as vanguard, me as rear support — was something we hadn't done since we were rookie hunters, ages ago. Back then I'd been a man. Now I was a woman, shorter, looking up at him from below. That had to be it.
…He somehow feels so solid. Reliable.
His level was still low; he wasn't nearly as strong as he'd been back then. And yet that broad back alone made me feel like I could lean on him.
I couldn't say why.
"Buff me."
"Got it."
A little farther in, a guttural snarling rolled toward us from the distance — the rough, half-open sound unique to orcs, mouths that never quite closed around those massive tusks.
My biggest weakness as a doll was the pathetic dregs of mana I had left. With this little, buffing Sung-jun made far more sense than hunting monsters myself. And if the goal was raising his level, all the better.
Two birds, one stone. I'd support him with magic; he'd kill the monsters and gorge on the experience.
Clearing the Orc Cave was almost trivial. Nothing worth mentioning — it was just an orc den, after all. No surprises. The dungeon boss was an Orc Shaman; I pinned it under raw magical pressure so it couldn't do a thing, and Sung-jun finished it off. No room for carelessness, start to finish.
"Body still won't move the way I want it to."
"So you've only recovered the frame?"
"I figured with a buff I'd get back to maybe half of what I used to be. Guess even that's a stretch."
Sung-jun flicked his sword through the air, shedding the blood, then rinsed what remained with a simple water-stream spell. He was past 2-Circle now and closing in on 3-Circle, so his casting had gotten reasonably quick. In a real fight, though, the sword was still faster and more useful — he probably had no intention of relying on magic in combat anytime soon.
"Let's head back."
With a clean click, he sheathed the blade, signaling the end of the clear.
"Yeah."
Now all that was left was to buy the reagents — and cast the spell on Sung-jun.