Bewitched by a Fox (1)
The area in front of the Kkotsan Dungeon bustled like a miniature forward base.
The clatter of hunters' gear mixed with the shouts of merchants hawking every kind of wares, each of them angling for a piece of the action.
"Warming stones for sale! Hold one in your hand and the heat seeps right in!"
"Heatweave cloaks! Wrap yourself in one of these and you won't feel the cold for a second!"
"Ginger tea, D-grade ginger tea! Sold in thermos bottles! For just a few—"
"Buying frost bear pelts!"
Through the din of raised voices, Choi Yeon walked toward the prefab container building set up across from the dungeon entrance.
The temporary dungeon management office.
A sign hung on the outer wall alongside a brief notice about the C-class dungeon.
Valley terrain. Frost rabbits, ice-paw wolves, frost bears, and more confirmed. Exploration incomplete!
Through the window, a manager visible from the waist up flipped through a ledger while talking over a radio.
From what Choi Yeon could overhear, twenty-three hunters—including those from the Dong-gu district office—had already entered the Kkotsan Dungeon.
Inside the prefab, a folding table and chairs had been set out, along with a first-aid kit and a tidy assortment of basic recovery supplies.
"…You're a solo hunter?"
"Yes. Oh—has entry clearance not been issued yet?"
"It has. It has, but…."
The manager trailed off and glanced around. With the crowd packed only around the entrance, the office itself was comparatively quiet.
"Well, the Ice Crows have their eyes on this place. Other hunters have been steering clear."
"Ice Crows?"
"Come on. The C-class guild Frost Raven. Their guildmaster is right on the edge of making B-class, you know."
"Frost…?"
It was a guild name he'd never heard before.
Seeing him ask again, the manager seemed to catch on and continued.
"…You're not a hunter who operates out of Dong-gu, are you? From Daedeok-gu up north, maybe?"
"No, I came from Jung-gu."
"What? Why come all the way out here from Jung-gu?"
"What else would a hunter come to a dungeon for?"
With that, Choi Yeon handed over his hunter's license. Even hearing that a guild was being greedy about the place didn't make him want to turn around and leave.
If Dong-gu had fully transferred the rights, that would be one thing—but they hadn't, had they?
While the guild was busy being greedy, he could just quietly harvest some Eunseolcho and be done with it.
And if things went sideways?
…That was a problem for future him to figure out.
"Choi… Yeon? Squinty eyes, and from Jung-gu…. Wait—are you with the Seonhwa Dongdae?"
"Huh? You know me?"
"Of course I do!"
The manager shot to his feet and clasped both of Choi Yeon's hands in his own.
What is this, a fan meeting a celebrity?
Caught completely off guard, Choi Yeon had no idea whether to pull his right hand free or just let it happen.
"I heard about you several times when I went down to Mokcheok Market!"
"At the market? You heard stories about me… several times?"
"Yes! How you shut down that B-class hunter Yang Dae-geun when he was causing a scene, how you rescued a little girl all alone in the middle of dozens of orcs! And then—"
The manager rattled on with a face lit up with excitement, covering every angle.
How to put it?
The core of his stories was accurate enough, but somehow every situation had been inflated to absurd proportions—as if Choi Yeon had breezed through it all single-handedly without breaking a sweat.
By the time the man finished, Choi Yeon felt less like he'd been listening to tales about a C-class Dongdae hunter and more like he'd heard about some A-class city hall elite.
Wow, there was a hunter who did all that incredible stuff?
—was the kind of reaction he almost wanted to give, because it genuinely didn't feel like his own story.
How does he even know all that? No—more importantly, why does he know it in such an exaggerated version?
The moment he wondered, Park Choong-jae's laughter somehow echoed in his head. Old Man Song from the workshop's laugh, too.
Just what the hell do those guys talk about over drinks….
"Oh, but you're not in your Dongdae uniform. Are you on leave, by any chance?"
"…Yes, that's right."
"So you came to explore a dungeon while on vacation?"
"Yeah, well…."
"Don't tell me—is that what this is?"
Is what what?
Choi Yeon found the manager's intent stare deeply uncomfortable.
Given everything the man had just said, he had a pretty good idea that some kind of misunderstanding was already in progress.
"No wonder the old-timers can't stop praising you. Hunter, you truly are a model for all Dongdae hunters."
Me? I am?
Choi Yeon was so flustered he nearly blinked his eyes wide open.
A model.
If any Dongdae captain overheard that, the veins on his broad forehead would pop—and rather than feeling good about it, Choi Yeon just felt bewildered.
"To think you'd come study another district's dungeon while on leave…."
Ah. So that's the misunderstanding.
Choi Yeon, who had come for the perfectly ordinary reason of gathering dungeon resources like any other hunter, had no idea what to do with himself.
Those bright, sparkling eyes were both awkward and embarrassing to face head-on.
That wasn't it at all—but telling the truth would clearly disappoint the manager, so he couldn't bring himself to come clean.
Left with no choice, he decided on a white lie.
"…Can we keep this between us?"
If you go around saying that in Jung-gu, you're the only one who'll end up embarrassed. Nobody would believe a word of it.
Choi Yeon was genuinely worried for the man.
Even he himself couldn't believe it, after all.
"Don't you worry! I'm not the kind of uncool guy who'd go blabbing about something like this!"
"I see."
He didn't understand what made that "uncool," exactly, but either way Choi Yeon had achieved his goal and steered the conversation elsewhere.
"Where can I find the Eunseolcho?"
"Huh? Eunseolcho? Not the frost bears or ice-paw wolves?"
"That's—"
"Ah. I get it."
The manager nodded as if he'd just had a revelation.
Curious what wild misjudgment he'd land on this time, Choi Yeon simply watched.
The man grinned with complete confidence and launched into a surprisingly plausible explanation.
"Those things are already being hunted over and over by other hunters. That means there's plenty of intel already—no need for you to waste your time piling on, right?"
"Oh…."
"Nailed it, didn't I? I knew that was it."
The manager kept nodding vigorously.
He wasn't done yet, either—he added that compared to the bears and wolves, there was still relatively little information on the glacial crystals and Eunseolcho.
Just as expected.
Resources from a C-class dungeon always got pushed down the priority list.
That was exactly why Old Man Song had asked him personally. If he'd simply waited, it would have taken quite a while for any of it to reach his hands.
"The Eunseolcho is inside the frost cave on the eastern cliff."
"Eastern frost cave. Got it. Thanks."
"Oh, and you won't run into any monsters on the way. There weren't many to begin with, and the hunting's already wrapped up."
"Perfect."
He'd only come to pick Eunseolcho anyway.
If he could get in and out without hunting a single monster, so much the better.
"And just so you know—though I doubt you'll go that way—the frozen waterfall to the north and the western ravine are frost bear and ice-paw wolf territory, respectively."
"What about the south?"
"A hillside where D-grade glacial crystals are practically tripping you up. No notable monsters spotted there."
"So no people either, then."
"Not yet, anyway. Once the mages show up, that'll change a hundred and eighty degrees."
The manager agreed and handed back the hunter's license. Then he clenched a fist and pumped it in encouragement.
I'm going to pick some C-class weeds. What exactly is there to cheer for….
Despite the absurdity of it, Choi Yeon just laughed it off. Those sparkling eyes were too much pressure to do anything else.
…He sincerely resolved that from now on, he needed to stop the exaggerated stories about him from coming up over drinks.
Not that he had any confidence it would work. How was a twenty-eight-year-old supposed to control what a bunch of seventy-somethings talked about?
Choi Yeon let out a long sigh and entered the dungeon.
"…Maybe I should've bought a heatweave cloak after all."
A frost valley stretched out before him, cold radiating through it in long, endless waves.
Cliffs swirled with snow flurries, sheathed in walls of ice that fractured the sunlight into shards of blue wherever it touched.
Glacial meltwater trickled through the cracks, freezing the already slick path even further.
Crunch. Crack!
Every step sent a shattering sound echoing out, and from far away came answering cracks, as if the valley itself were responding.
And then—
"……."
—among the twisted, frozen scrub that stood here and there, a gaze was watching Choi Yeon.
It wasn't the gaze of ice-paw wolves, which traveled in packs. Nor was it a frost bear's, which wandered alone but stayed in the deep reaches.
There was none of the raw animal quality unique to beast-type monsters. The owner of that gaze was definitely human.
Or perhaps "crow" was the right word.
Crunch.
Choi Yeon took a step with his left foot. Whether someone was watching or not, what he had to do didn't change.
He'd already made up his mind—any answer would have to come from beyond the valley.
"Man, if nobody was looking, I would've gone back out and bought some ginger tea…."
Choi Yeon grumbled.
Honestly, with nothing better than E-grade cold resistance, the chill was hard to endure.
Beneath the ice cliff, a cave that looked almost artificially carved led upward, cold glacial water running down its walls.
Thanks to the temperature difference, the interior was ever so slightly warmer than outside.
And perhaps because of the shattered fragments of light filtering in?
Unlike ordinary caves, the frost cave wasn't particularly dark. The grass growing between ice and rock—the Eunseolcho—glowed faintly, making it easy to spot.
"Oh. Easier to find than I expected."
It wasn't dense, but there was enough scattered about to pull up by the handful.
Choi Yeon yanked the Eunseolcho out by the roots and stuffed it into his magic bag.
Unlike when he'd been filling it with spiders, the bag filled slowly—but the quantity was by no means small. Spiders and Eunseolcho had a massive difference in volume, after all.
"That makes… one hundred stalks…."
Choi Yeon dropped the stalk he'd just pulled into the bag, then peered at the pile of Eunseolcho that had accumulated into a small white hill of snow.
Is this enough?
He paused to think, recalling what Old Man Song had told him.
Generally, a single stalk of grass collected from a dungeon yielded about two to five grams of pure fiber.
Special processing varied depending on the method, but ordinarily one roll of wire took twenty-five to fifty grams.
So, calculating generously….
"…Alright. Let's grab a hundred more."
Choi Yeon finished the math quickly.
With ordinary processing, one roll of wire needed ten to twenty-five stalks—so factoring in Old Man Song's skill, a hundred stalks already more than covered it.
But he had no intention of stopping there. This was a free chance at that special processing. Of course he should go for the premium grade, right?
He set off again. Silver grass here, silver grass there….
Unable to suppress the grin spreading across his face, he climbed deeper into the cave. It grew steeper and steeper, until a single misstep would send him sliding down like a playground chute—and that was when it appeared.
A large hole punched through the ice wall. He must have climbed quite high; the entire valley spread out beyond it at a glance.
It looked like another world.
The long valley below the ice wall lay blanketed in silver snow, frozen river channels winding between like serpents.
In the distance, ice spires jutted up jagged and uneven, as if trying to pierce the sky. Every time the wind passed, the frost on their surfaces crumbled and scattered.
That might not be mere wind. It might be the lingering breath of some presence, revealing itself.
"……."
A fierce frost wind brushed his cheek as he murmured inwardly, then swept on past.
His body was stiffening like a slab of ice, and every breath scattered white vapor.
Spotting Eunseolcho growing beside the hole, he reflexively grabbed a fistful of leaves and yanked—and in that instant,
Cold Resistance D
A subtle change rippled through his body as the skill ranked up. Prolonged exposure to the cold—it made sense.
"Tsk…."
The unexpected stroke of luck left Choi Yeon a little unsettled. It had gone up just from yanking weeds, after all. Or maybe it was because of the presence he'd sensed from above.
Through the hole, he thought he heard the cry of a crow.