The Pathfinder
“...Are you okay?”
The words that reached me the moment we stepped into the dungeon were careful, almost hesitant.
I turned my head just enough to glance back at their owner—Shirogane Rui. The bright, smiling face she had worn only moments before was gone, replaced by a cool, serious expression that still carried clear concern for me.
The twisted smile that had lingered on my lips faded, leaving only a blank mask behind.
“We proceed exactly as I said from the start.”
“Mm... still, this doesn’t feel right. If you’re doing this just for my sake, we should find another way...”
She had started second-guessing herself now. I answered with a simple shake of my head. This isn’t for you. This is entirely for me.
I wasn’t looking at the immediate path ahead—I was looking much farther down the road.
At first my anger had climbed all the way to my throat. I had seriously considered summoning Kallion and flipping the entire exam on its head, grinding my teeth with the intent of proving exactly why the title The Incinerator sat among my honors. Yet the moment we entered the dungeon, that righteous fury vanished as if someone had flipped a switch.
Right before combat, every petty emotion shut off so I could focus on the objective. It was a habit born after my brain had been... adjusted in my previous life.
No matter what happened, no matter how violently my feelings surged, the instant I recognized a situation as “combat,” everything else dropped to the bottom of the priority list.
It had been forced on me back then, but the tendency remained even in this new body. Of course, without the same surgical meddling my emotions weren’t completely erased—yet the memories of those days were simply too vivid.
Trauma exists for a reason. People lean heavily on memory. Stories of someone whose body is perfectly fine yet collapses the moment a certain recollection surfaces have become almost commonplace.
I was still human, so those mechanisms worked on me too. Especially with anger. That particular emotion triggered the shutdown harder than anything else. Being able to control myself that well wasn’t exactly a problem, though.
So I coldly switched my thinking. I even activated Combat Focus, accelerating my thoughts until I arrived at the answer.
Let it go. Same as always—because it’s a pain in the ass.
There was calculation mixed in as well. This was a foundation for the future, a debt I would place on her shoulders. With this opportunity I would create a debt of the heart. Over time I would make that debt heavier, little by little, until she had no choice but to move faithfully as my piece.
Of course, that assumed she was a proper human being with a decent character.
At least the Shirogane Rui I’ve seen so far doesn’t seem the type to betray easily.
If I couldn’t trust her, I would trust the version of myself who had read her well enough to weave her into the plan. I had repeated that to myself countless times. This was simply the next step.
Kill the emotions. Don’t waste strength on trivialities. Just do what I have to do, the same as back then.
Keep the blank face. Set aside every petty feeling and useless thought, and walk the path I had already laid out. This was labor, nothing more.
Of course it would be hard. Precisely because of that suffering, the rest waiting afterward would taste sweeter than anything else.
Conversation over.
I raised my mana and concentrated it into my fingertips. What I called forth was a lantern—the guide who would light my way.
“Shiz.”
Snap!
The moment I spoke her name and flicked my fingers, a wave of mana rippled outward. From beneath my shadow a black cloth and a lantern slowly rose, the very image of a ghost arriving.
The faintly translucent black fabric settled onto my shoulders as if it belonged there. I wrapped my entire body in shadow to match. At the same time I reached out and took the lantern floating in the air.
Hoooooo...
That alone made the air feel as if the temperature had plunged below freezing. It hadn’t actually dropped, but the eerie presence was strong enough to create the illusion. I couldn’t tell whether the sound in my ears was the wind or the wailing of the spirits Shiz kept stored inside her after devouring them.
“Haa...”
I exhaled to shake off the chill. White breath spilled out and scattered quickly through the air, as though winter had claimed only the space around me.
No—if I wanted, freezing the surroundings in an instant would be trivial. Shiz had more than enough power for that.
Good.
My head cleared at once. The overheated thoughts cooled, and I finally felt like I could breathe again. The lingering heat had settled enough; now it was truly time to clear the dungeon.
Chime!
Shiz’s lantern swayed with my movement, ringing softly. I offered her silent thanks, then turned my face fully forward, cutting Shirogane Rui completely out of my view.
The shadow clothing shifted into a form that wrapped my body rather than one built for free movement—like a heavy robe thrown over me. At a glance I could easily be mistaken for a mage.
“I’ll take the lead.”
With those words I started walking. In this dungeon my role was nothing more and nothing less than a guide. I made that crystal clear.
“...Alright. If that’s what little brother Sinwoo wants, then as your big sister I have to live up to those expectations.”
Apparently deciding she couldn’t change my mind, Shirogane Rui gave a bitter smile and steadied her mana. Rough flames flared up behind her and vanished just as quickly—yet the heat itself remained, continuing to boil.
I didn’t need to look back to know her expression. The same blank face as mine. Even while carrying flames fierce enough to make the air shimmer, she was utterly still.
Her presence felt exactly like a volcano on the verge of eruption.
The moment she fell into step behind me, my stride lightened as if it had been waiting for her. A soft stream of light settled gently into my vision, guiding the way through the dark cavern ahead.
Even without using Hive and Haze to map the dungeon’s space, I naturally knew which direction was correct.
It was the effect of Shiz’s skill, The Guide.
Its essence was closer to “pathfinder” than “leader.” To lead someone meant walking ahead first, and that in turn meant knowing the road. Whether that road ended at the gates of a nightmare hell or a longed-for paradise rested entirely in Shiz’s hands—and therefore in mine.
Keep your head straight.
And I deliberately chose the hard paths. Only then would she shine brighter.
Since we had opened the first act, plenty of eyes would be watching our little performance.
Those watching would shudder once or twice at the vicious difficulty of the dungeon. But after the third time, the fourth... after it kept repeating all the way to the end, they would start to sense something off.
That doubt would turn into certainty the moment they walked the dungeon themselves.
We chose the brutal routes on purpose. Planting that idea alone would make Shirogane Rui’s value skyrocket.
Heroes weren’t praised for nothing. They earned cheers by conquering the harsh, impossible things no one else could manage.
Breaking through such a brutal journey alone—and solving her chronic weakness in the process—would create a spectacle hotter than anything else.
Therefore, fierce battle was not optional for her right now. It was mandatory.
Burn more brilliantly. Incinerate the enemy more fiercely. This was her true power. Brand it into their minds and make them revere it.
Fwoosh!!
Hot flames flickered inside her crimson pupils.
The dungeon’s overall setting was a forest.
A forest so choked with rocks and tree roots that simply moving was exhausting. The slightly dim atmosphere and the constant monster noises that promised an ambush at any moment scraped at the nerves. It was a textbook recreation of a deep woodland hinterland.
What irritated me most was that despite all the trees, the oxygen was as thin as if we had climbed a high mountain. Breathing felt laborious. Just walking drained both stamina and mental strength—an annoyingly designed dungeon.
I hadn’t even met the maker, yet I could already see the sly intent behind the design. A sigh escaped me on its own.
...Well, to be honest, ordinary paths existed too. We had simply chosen the hard ones on purpose.
There had not been a single easy moment on the journey. Despite my initial resolve not to cooperate, we quickly fell into the habit of covering each other’s backs and sweeping the enemies away.
Since she was the star, I sealed nearly eighty percent of my power and focused purely on support.
Perhaps because I had attached one of Hive’s clones to anyone who held hostility toward me, the effect of Subjugator strangely refused to cut off no matter how much time passed.
I had already noticed when we imprisoned the vampire boss with Shiz’s Hell Path that the conditions for Subjugator were far looser than I had thought.
It was such an obviously intrusive skill that I had been using it only as a crude stat booster and half-ignoring it. I would have to study it properly soon.
There were countless vicious obstacles that words alone could never fully describe, yet within an hour of entering the dungeon we had reached the end—the threshold of the boss room.
“Hah... hah...”
She was panting, but her eyes remained clear. There was no sign of the heat-induced collapse she used to suffer. She still had enough strength left that, if she wanted, she could charge straight into the boss room and carbonize the enemy on the spot.
The old her could never have cleared a dungeon this quickly. She would have chosen the shortest possible route and advanced slowly, carefully, just to vent the heat.
Yet here she was, showing a completely different side and smiling as if she were enjoying herself. All of it was thanks to the Flame of Tranquility burning across her body.
She condensed flame onto the surface of her skin and then layered the Flame of Tranquility over it, immediately siphoning away the heat that built up. She had rearranged the demonstration I once gave through Kallion into a method unique to her—the absurd power of a Descendant of Fire.
An ordinary human would have holes burned straight through them the moment such high-temperature fire touched their body. The blood wouldn’t even have time to seep out before the flesh cooked and a whistling wind-hole opened. Only she could pull this off.
Because she had maintained that process from the very beginning, the air around her felt cool rather than scorching even after the fierce battles we had just fought.
If she kept developing this way, she might eventually create ice with fire alone. A kind of advanced stage.
Cool the already-chilled air even further, condense the moisture in the atmosphere. Water in a vacuum slowly boils and then freezes solid.
It was a patchwork of half-baked scientific knowledge, but add mana and magic and it became surprisingly easy to realize.
Of course, simply using a related spell would be faster and simpler. The point here was the result: creating ice using fire alone.
I had aimed for that from the start when I added the “refrigerator” example.
Kallion could do it—though he mixed in a little wind rather than pure fire. Whether she could achieve what even Kallion needed help with depended entirely on her own effort.
In that sense, the theme we had been given was remarkably lucky.
If the subject had been anything other than temperature, I never would have devised the Flame of Tranquility, and she never would have pushed herself this hard.
The right theme, a coincidental match of specialties, and mutual need—the result spoke for itself.
“Hwaa~ It’s been ages since I moved hard enough to get this soaked.”
Once her breathing had fully settled, she brushed the hair stuck to her face back. Moisture fell with a soft patter. Instead of the sour smell of sweat, a thick mix of hot flame and the clean scent of fabric softener drifted from her.
“How do you plan to handle the boss?”
“Mmm, honestly I’d love to brawl it out in close combat and take my time learning the feel, but my body’s at its limit. Maintaining this has almost drained my mana too.”
She patted the blue flame resting on her shoulder as if it were something precious. I nodded in acceptance.
I had no intention of scolding her. If anything, I was impressed. She had kept the unfamiliar Flame of Tranquility active throughout combat and still closed half the gap on her previous measured values.
In other words, once she grew accustomed to it, she would reclaim her old maximum combat time and then some.
Still, it’s a little disappointing.
Longer combat endurance was clearly a good thing. But in proportion, her raw firepower had died.
Her trademark—the single-point explosion of heat that wiped enemies out in one satisfying burst—had been a specialty worth watching just for the catharsis. The only downside had been the damage it did to her own body. That spectacle was gone now.
Unless she was a masochist who got off on wrecking her own body, there was no reason to cling to a technique that hurt her. How she filled the gaps left by the technique’s absence would determine whether she could climb to a higher realm.
“Sss... haah... I’m ready now.”
She took one deep breath and her expression sharpened again. She had clearly noticed that I had deliberately stopped for her sake.
Since we had reached the boss room, I no longer needed to hold Shiz. I released her into the air and shifted my shadows into combat attire.
At the same time I gathered mana into my hand and flicked my fingers.
Snap!
What I called forth was a loyal servant—one ready to tear into any malice directed at me and gladly bathe in blood.
“Growl.”
“Kung!”
Light burst, and a massive wolf appeared behind me. He immediately shoved his face against me, fawning. I roughly stroked the fur around his neck.
I had no idea what enemy would appear, so I summoned Growl—reliable as a bowl of hearty soup. Everything we did here would be recorded, so it was best to hide as much of my full strength as possible.
Hive, Growl, and Kallion had already been shown openly; that couldn’t be helped. The rest I would keep hidden whenever I could.
Given the nature of this world, there was no telling how many enemies had infiltrated the academy or what their goals were.
Lee Se-rin probably already knew, but she enjoyed my raw reactions too much to ever tell me.
As long as my life wasn’t in danger, she remained a pure spectator, content to watch and amuse herself. The fact that she had been appearing more often lately was the strange part.
Looked at another way, it meant there were enough threats to my safety that she felt the need to show herself in person.
Therefore, until I killed the god who treated the entire world as a playground to mock, I could never truly relax.
Not now. Not later. Not ever.
“Let’s go.”
Shirogane Rui accepted my words in silence, and together we followed the passage inside.