Second City (3) – The Blue Pillars and the Shadow of the Werewolf
Blue pillars can only be touched if your stats exceed a certain threshold. I had come to that conclusion. ‘Even that isn’t enough.’ Level 10 mana would take care of the rest on its own. There was no need for Yoo Dahui to handle the blue pillars personally. As long as we could enter the Sea Temple, that was all that mattered. We were just doing all this nonsense for that. We let go of the blue pillars and kept hunting.
There was another pillar nearby, so I didn’t expect more to show up around here. The sun was sinking. Hunting outside all day required more stamina than I’d imagined. I didn’t fear death much, but I could only imagine how much more exhausting it must be for other players who stayed tense the whole time. Players in the novel shouldn’t have been rushing out in pairs like this. They needed to rest at least a day to recover their strength.
“Ugh… I’ll take it easy tomorrow and meet you the day after.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Man, doing it properly is way harder than I thought.”
To dodge the approaching toads, Elysha sometimes rolled on the muddy ground. I wondered if her armor would come off. ‘No traction at all.’ It never slipped. It felt like it was glued to me.
“Why, what?”
We were about to leave the elves when Elena started fidgeting in front of me. I realized she’d been using the vibrator all day. “I-I wish you’d turn this thing off…”
“Alright, I’ll turn it off.”
We should rest when we rest. I couldn’t stand watching her like that while hunting, so I turned it on as punishment. When I canceled the command, Elena shook violently and shut the vibrator off. After getting what she wanted and turning away, she looked like she had no regrets left.
“When are they coming back?”
“Yeah. Why aren’t they here yet?”
After saying goodbye to the elves, we waited for the Horin party. Yoo Dahui had ordered Horin to come this way, so she should be here. But after a long wait, she didn’t appear.
“What’s going on?”
The sun set and darkness fell. Torches automatically ignited and lit up the village. By now you’d think something bad had happened, and realizing it was death didn’t take long.
“Tsk… Too bad.”
Yoo Dahui said it bluntly. I felt the same way. The next starting point was the 5th floor. We’d meet again anyway. Thinking about how many regressions we’d need until then, Horin’s party hadn’t really died. At that time, a beastman one entered First City. Horin, missing one arm. We approached the staggering Horin.
“Ugh… Who did this…?”
Horin looked worse than I expected. Blood dripped from the severed arm, and both eyes were gouged out so she couldn’t see. She walked here using only her sense of smell. “H-Human male…”
“Yeah. Hold out your arm first.”
Recovery potions don’t heal everything. The amount healed varies, so relying only on them is dangerous. ‘The eyes…’ In cases of body loss, some parts can be healed and others can’t. It’s super ironic, but that’s how the novel does it. Horin shook and extended her severed arm. Her complexion wasn’t great.
Chiik-
“Ugh…”
I poured a recovery potion directly on the arm stump. The wound looked like it had been torn rather than cut—brutal. The wound area bubbled and began to recover. The arm would probably heal. ‘It worked even in the novel.’ I used the premium recovery potion I’d bought as a precaution. This should leave minimal aftereffects. But the eyes were another story. Same body part, why does one heal and the other not? Yoo Dahui the novel concluded it was due to sensory differences. Since it’s a high-level organ like the eye, it requires something more advanced. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue—most unique senses recover slowly. Often impossible with potions alone. Slowly—
The arm grew back. A chilling sight.
“Horin. What happened? Where are the others?”
“T-They died…”
At Yoo Dahui’s question, Horin hugged her severed arm and muttered. I couldn’t read her eyes, but I could guess her emotion. She was terrified. ‘Who did this to her?’
First floor has no main villain. The facilities are just inconvenient, and SodaHui is growing peacefully. Because we’d come out a month early, novel information was useless. Frustrating. Annoying.
“Was she ambushed? There aren’t supposed to be people like that on the 1st floor.”
Yoo Dahui swept her hair back. She seemed genuinely angry. Probably thought she was responsible for everyone’s death. But even now, Horin’s party would die soon. They didn’t know me. They weren’t that different from Elysha’s group. From this point, they would die before SodaHui graduated the academy. But Yoo Dahui didn’t know that. She couldn’t know. That’s why she was angry.
“Who attacked you?”
“Werewolves…”
Werewolves are like beastmen but different. The biggest difference is head versus face. Beastmen have heads, werewolves have muzzles. Basically the same as a dog’s head game. But their physical stats and specs are on a completely different level. Their savage nature doesn’t fit groups, but they have power rivaling player groups. ‘But there were no werewolves near the 1st floor.’ Crazy werewolves who PKed and didn’t encounter SodaHui? Ridiculous. Like Horin’s party, this werewolf probably died from some event. “W-Werewolf ambushed us. Found the blue pillar but…”
“Found it?”
“One. After finding a direction the pig knew and going the opposite way, we were ambushed…”
The werewolf was merciless, and four beastmen couldn’t fight it. “I’d never seen it here. Probably lives near Second City.”
“Eh? Second City?”
Yoo Dahui knew nothing about Second City. She was still a baby who’d only been in First City for a week. “I don’t know why it attacked us, but…”
Horin shook with rage but soon slumped. She couldn’t speak anymore, buried in fear. The torn arm and horrific battle were running through her head.
“For now…”
Yoo Dahui checked Horin’s condition and sighed. No matter how I thought about it, I didn’t know what to do with her. “It might be better to keep her with us.”
“Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”
Yoo Dahui decided to keep Horin. Since we’d regress soon, it didn’t matter much. With this flow, tonight might be the last of this round. Supporting the sightless Horin, we headed to the mud hut. Her excellent sense of smell was useless inside First City. It was lucky we found the village using her nose to trace my scent.
“Uuu…”
We laid Horin on the bed. The moment she lay down, she quickly passed out. Zzz-
After Horin fell asleep, Yoo Dahui pulled me outside. Standing outside the hut, she waited for me to speak first. “Tomorrow, excluding the elves, how about just the two of us?”
“Where Horin said? I don’t even know where it is yet.”
I roughly knew the blue pillars’ locations. ‘Based on the Sea Temple, the pentagon vertices, Second City or Third City feel appropriately placed.’
“Tomorrow, after waking up, ask and head out right away. I think we’ll regress tomorrow anyway.”
Yoo Dahui, who learned how to look at her regression window, was amazing. Regressions usually came out of nowhere, but now she was using them deliberately. “Not bad. Probably can’t beat the werewolf, but let’s confirm the second pillar and return.”
“No. First we have to fight.”
I thought there was a 99% chance we’d end up like Horin. Even so, Yoo Dahui’s eyes burned with determination. “I don’t care what happens.”
She’d tried so hard, but she never expected to regress this soon. The next day.
“Ugh…”
Horin groaned in pain and stood, clutching her arm. “Healing is slow.”
“This is enough. N-No need to worry about this human female!”
“Why worry? Just seeing it once.”
Yoo Dahui examined Horin’s arm from every angle. The severed section was already covered in skin. Horin’s arm wasn’t perfectly healed yet. By percentage, only about 20%. Pouring potions steadily would restore it to original. But before that, we’d regress and reset. Yoo Dahui let go of Horin’s arm. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“…You told me to find the blue pillar. So I was thinking where to go, and I went the opposite direction from the pig’s known way. There was one, so I thought there wouldn’t be more there.”
Horin’s party had brains. They thought. They hypothesized the blue pillars wouldn’t be clumped together. Correct. “We kept hunting toads and moving. We changed direction when Second City came into view.”
Then we found the blue pillar.
“Finding it was good, but then we started fighting over who would get freedom.”
Cancel the brains comment. These guys are animals. “Ah, Dua…”
“What did you do?”
Yoo Dahui laughed mockingly and grabbed her head. I asked instead. Horin smiled shyly. “They said to do it with strength. So all the male guys ran away.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, only the corners of her mouth lifting, it was terrifying. Chilling. Horin’s smile quickly dried up. She’d forced it. “The moment I tried to return, it appeared. A werewolf. I tried to fight, but the skill gap was too overwhelming… One eye, one arm… If you think of it as paying for my life, I got eaten cheap.”
Seeing her speak weakly, I felt bad. They’d used her in a duel too much. ‘I just sucked my stats, but this werewolf sucked out her eyeballs.’ Unbearable. “Okay. Here, take this.”
Yoo Dahui pulled coins from her inventory. Our total savings. “This, this is…”
“Around 700,000 coins. I’ll free you from being a slave too.”
Horin touched the coins in her palms. The sensation on her palm and fingers. “N-No… Don’t free me. I’ll work hard. Don’t throw me away…”
Ignoring the falling coins, Horin clung to Yoo Dahui. Yoo Dahui stared at her gently. “Yeah, I won’t throw you. Instead, wait inside the village.”
“I can hunt too.”
“Be good and wait today. Understand?”
Horin let go of Yoo Dahui’s sleeve with effort. Not a slave, and with her overly voluptuous body, it felt awkward. ‘Nice to look at.’ Breasts were always good. We left Horin in the hut and stepped outside. We roughly knew the direction. She might show up again if we went today. ‘We’ll see when we try.’ For now, we move and think. We told the elves to move separately. No vibrator. I figured she’d be fine. Since we’d regress anyway, we did things roughly. —- [Battle settlement in progress…….] [2,000 coins acquired!] —-
With only two of us, the difficulty rose. Every battle was tough. We gained gaps and wounds. Chiik-
We roughly healed with potions and kept moving. How many hours had passed? “There it is.” One blue pillar exuded a sharp aura. Each blue pillar had a number engraved. I casually told Yoo Dahui the number engraved on this pillar. “Four…? Number 4 is there?”
“Where?”
Yoo Dahui checked the number. From now on, blue pillars would be managed by number. At that moment. “Kshit!”
Yoo Dahui pushed me aside and raised her shield. Kwaang-!
Mottled brown fur, bipedal wolf muzzle, werewolf bared its fangs at Yoo Dahui. Awoooo-!