Sorry, I Wasn't Honest (1)
"Let's move out."
7 a.m. the next morning. Kang-jun gave the signal to his prepared team to set off again. Everyone looked haggard after a single night of it. Zixu couldn't even tell anymore whether they were in a labyrinth or a walk-in freezer. He could almost feel the slow, creeping numbness of a frozen pollack.
The corridors in Zone 7 were narrow — uncomfortably so. Two people standing side by side could stretch their arms out and touch both walls. Maybe that was why the cold felt even more oppressive. For Zixu, monsters and all that had stopped being the problem. She was focused on one thing: finding any way to feel even a little less cold.
After another hour of walking, they finally reached the end of Zone 7. Another fork in the path appeared. Kang-jun pulled out his phone, checked the route, and pointed. Right. A sign reading Zone 9 hung on the wall, dripping with icicles.
"From here on out, you'll want to be careful. Even the day-trip teams don't come this far."
A polite way of saying there were a lot of monsters ahead. Hye-mi, who had already experienced the terror of these creatures firsthand, went pale with tension.
As soon as Kang-jun's guard dropped, a monster appeared. The narrow corridor meant it wasn't a huge one, but it wasn't alone.
One, two, three.
He counted quickly. Three monsters, each the size of a lion.
"Stay sharp. Move like we trained."
Kang-jun spoke in a calm, measured voice — not too loud, not too soft. His tone eased some of Hye-mi's anxiety. Right. Do what we practiced. She gripped her ten-million-won staff until her knuckles whitened.
The monsters didn't charge right away. They paced back and forth, eyeing the group. But they showed no sign of backing off.
Kang-jun glanced sideways at Zixu. This was her first time seeing a real monster up close, and she was clearly tense. Still, she held herself together. She hadn't fainted or wet herself on the spot — which, honestly, would have disappointed him more than a little.
Oganeam positioned his shield to block their line of sight, drawing aggro toward himself as much as possible. Not bad.
Then one of them suddenly kicked off the ground and scrambled up the wall to flank them. Its target: Zixu, standing awkwardly at the back. Caught off guard, she couldn't even scream — she stumbled backward and fell.
The monster's jaws unhinged wide. A spray of hot blood splattered in front of her. Kang-jun had moved fast enough to sever its neck. The severed head flew through the air by inertia and dropped at her feet, its mouth still twitching. She shrieked and scrambled backward on her hands and knees.
Kang-jun immediately turned his attention to the remaining two. Fortunately, both were focused on Oganeam, who was taking the brunt of their attacks. Hye-mi was swinging her staff, pouring healing magic into him.
"Agh—!"
One monster clamped its jaws onto Oganeam's shoulder. It shook its head viciously, and the pain was so severe that Oganeam's stance collapsed. The second monster seized the opening and lunged for his torso — but Kang-jun moved, splitting the leaping creature's skull in one strike.
Hot blood rained down over Oganeam's body. The monster still had its jaws locked onto his shoulder, shaking its head, but Hye-mi kept the healing flowing and somehow held him together.
Groaning in pain, Oganeam jammed his intact left hand into the creature's eye. It was a killing blow — the monster finally released his shoulder. Kang-jun didn't waste the opening; he swung his sword again and cut its neck. The headless body crumpled sideways with a thud, and ragged breathing filled the air.
Hye-mi rushed to Oganeam and poured healing magic into the bitten area. The flesh hadn't torn away, so it healed cleanly without scarring. Still, the pain had been so intense that even after full recovery, he lay sprawled on the ground, gasping for a long while.
Kang-jun wiped the blood from his blade with a rag and slid it back into its sheath. If there had only been one monster, this wouldn't have turned into such a mess. Three of them had thrown their formation off. If Zixu had handled her damage role properly, Oganeam never would have been bitten.
...I shouldn't expect that from her this early.
It would be too much to demand proper DPS performance from someone who had never even been in a labyrinth before. He'd just have to be satisfied with driving home the point that this place was genuinely dangerous.
"Hey, Kumba. You good to move?"
"I'm fine now."
His eyes were bloodshot, but his high stamina let him shake it off quickly. Hye-mi, having dumped all her mana into healing during that short fight, looked slightly drained.
"Still, you all did well. Not a hundred, but I'd give it an eighty."
In Kang-jun's honest assessment, it was barely a fifty. But considering they were all newbies, he figured a little extra credit was warranted.
"Hye-mi, good work. And... Zixu, you okay?"
"...Y-yes. I'm fine."
"You looked scared."
"I was, a little. It just... charged suddenly..."
"That's why you need to stay sharp. They can attack from anywhere, at any time."
Kang-jun and the troll woman were the only ones who had come through relatively unscathed. While the other three caught their breath, the two of them dismantled the monsters, scraping as much meat off the bones as possible and stacking it neatly into a box.
"Once you've recovered, let's keep moving."
The three who had been resting got to their feet. They'd taken about thirty to forty minutes — enough time. Hye-mi's mana exhaustion was a slight concern, but she didn't look like she couldn't walk.
The five of them resumed trudging down the corridor. Kang-jun spotted more monsters nearby. Two of them this time. These creatures seemed to live in packs. They could push through, but it was a burden.
"Let's take another route. ...This one's too much."
"Huh?"
"Too many to fight through. And we can't just avoid them either."
Hye-mi nodded. At this point, she'd believe him if he said beans were soy sauce.
The team turned back. The monsters, smelling the blood of their dead kin, approached slowly. Kang-jun picked up the pace. The creatures stopped following once they reached the corpses — apparently they ate their own dead.
The team emerged from Zone 7 and reached Zone 6. That had eaten up a fair amount of time. It was a three-to-four-hour stretch, so they'd made it back. If it had been longer, they would have just pushed through regardless.
They took a short break and ate lunch. Zixu used a heat pack to thaw her numb, frozen toes while she ate. It had barely been a day, but she felt like she'd been here a week. She'd be decent at this if she were a little stronger — but her stamina stat was just too low.
While Zixu rested, Kang-jun approached her quietly. He asked if she'd like to try dealing some damage in the next fight.
"D-Damage?"
"Yeah. You're a fire mage, so that's your role."
"Isn't that... dangerous? I've practiced standing still, but moving targets are still..."
"You learn by doing."
It was a bit of a rough approach, but she agreed to try. She'd been feeling awkward just trailing behind with nothing to do. Even if it was temporary, they were a team, weren't they? For someone whose only contribution so far had been lighting fires without a lighter, his suggestion actually eased some of her discomfort.
After lunch, the team moved into Zone 8. Unlike Zone 7, the space here was wide open. There were patches of thin ice on the ground, but as long as they were careful not to slip, it wasn't a real problem.
They found traces of a campsite from the night before — another team had already passed through. That meant there probably wasn't much to scavenge around here. Rather than waste stamina exploring, they headed straight for Zone 10.
"This stretch is long."
Kang-jun showed the team the map. Zones 7, 9, and 10 connected in a line, meeting at Zone 17 — a massive cavern. The warning noted that the large space meant many monsters.
Average level: 150.
A bit high. They could certainly handle one or two, but if more showed up, retreating would be wiser.
Zone 10's average level was 130. The creatures they'd fought earlier were around that level. One or two of those, they could handle easily.
After a short rest, they entered Zone 10. It was nearly 4 p.m. The corridor was winding and twisty — roughly a six-hour trek. A normal person could cover 5 kilometers in an hour, but in the labyrinth, that converted to about 3 kilometers. The reason was simple: you couldn't just power through while keeping watch for monsters.
Six hours was still a long way. In military terms, it was nearly a 20-kilometer march. Kang-jun could cut that time in half, but with the team trailing behind him, arriving before dark was looking impossible. They'd probably need to camp somewhere in the middle of Zone 10.
Along the way, they encountered a monster. It looked like a spider — fast, and able to cling to the ceiling. Oganeam fumbled a bit trying to deal with it.
Zixu followed Kang-jun's instructions and fired several fire spells. But the creature dodged them every time. Her intelligence was still too low to track and hit it. A genius might have figured out a workaround, but she wasn't at that level yet.
In the end, Kang-jun handled it again. When the creature, skittering across the ceiling, locked onto its target and leaped, he rushed in and split its body in one strike. Unfortunately, it was an arthropod type — nothing worth selling.
Just as Kang-jun was deciding they needed to camp, another monster attacked. The same spider-type creature from before. Zixu, determined to land at least one hit, fired her confident spell — and missed again. ...She really needs to raise her intelligence stat. Kang-jun made a mental note after watching her performance.
And so, the team spent another miserable, freezing day, and welcomed the third.