Green Dungeon (1)
Everyone grew curious when Jinwoo pulled out a long, silver bundle that glowed softly. “Alright, everyone sit down on the grass. This tastes better when you eat it sitting on the grass.”
Jinwoo handed out gimbap wrapped in silver foil, one to each person. It was the kind from a neighborhood favorite, packed with plenty of egg. He also gave everyone a roll of tuna gimbap.
“This silver hide smells delicious. Sniff, sniff.” Meni caught the scent from the foil-wrapped rolls and immediately took a big bite, foil and all.
“Ah, no! Meni, that’s not how you eat it. Spit out what’s in your mouth! Come on, spit it out! You’re not supposed to eat that.” Jinwoo shoved his fingers into Meni’s mouth to pull out the foil she was stubbornly refusing to spit up.
“This silver wrapping is just packaging. You can’t eat it. If you peel it off, you’ll find something wrapped in black inside. It’s already sliced, so you just eat it piece by piece.”
Once he realized he could use magic and his inventory, Jinwoo had stocked up on gimbap and other supplies from the market before entering the capsule. He had also packed odds and ends from home. He had worried the otherworld items might not come out of the inventory, but there were no problems at all.
“Sniff, sniff. It smells decent enough, but we’re really supposed to eat this black stuff? It looks like black paper.” Sezanne hesitated, the contrast between silver and black making her reluctant to reach for it.
“The black paper is called seaweed, and this dish is called gimbap.”
When Jinwoo took the first piece, Yanne quickly grabbed the end of a roll and popped it into her mouth. Seeing that, Meni peeled off the foil properly and began chewing happily.
“Ooh! This is a flavor I’ve never tasted before. It doesn’t taste black at all. This is delicious!”
At the sight of Meni munching with rice grains flying everywhere, the others started eating the sliced gimbap one piece at a time. Then everyone froze with gimbap still in their mouths.
“Master! The moment it enters my mouth, all these different flavors spread across my tongue! What is this white stuff? The texture is… I don’t even know how to describe how good it feels!”
“It’s rice. Similar to barley.”
Wheat, barley, and oats could be found in this world’s markets, but rice was nowhere to be seen—probably due to differences in farming methods. That was why the chewy texture of rice wrapped in gimbap was a completely new experience for everyone.
Sezanne also found the subtle vinegar and saltiness blending with the chewy rice incredibly satisfying. The thin black seaweed wrapping the white rice, which in turn enclosed yellow, brown, and orange ingredients, looked strikingly beautiful. She had never heard the name gimbap before, nor seen anything like it, so her curiosity only grew.
“By the way, where did this come from? I’ve never seen it in Iparak.”
At Sezanne’s question, everyone paused mid-bite, wondering the same thing. They had never seen it made, and nothing like it existed in Iparak either.
“It was given by the god.”
It was an absurd answer, yet in this world it worked like a universal trump card.
“G-given by the god? Then Sa—”
“Sadalla!”
Yanne shot to her feet beside him and shouted, “Om Mani Padme Hum!”
“Master! Does that mean this food is from the divine realm?”
“Hmm. Not exactly divine-realm cuisine. The god simply bestowed upon us food from another world.”
“Oh! So it really is food from another world. Om Mani Padme Hum!”
When Yanne chanted the prayer while eating, Meni followed suit, and soon the two Rangers and the mountain-race siblings joined in as well.
“Ooh! Maybe it’s because we offered a prayer of thanks to Lord Sadalla, but this tastes different! There’s some kind of meat in here—strange meat. Is this meat from another world too?”
Yanne had finished the regular gimbap and moved on to the tuna roll. She found the texture of the tuna meat unusual.
“It’s true! It’s meat, but the taste is completely different! This soft, pale-pink meat ground so finely—what kind of meat is it?”
Meni had picked the tuna out of her roll and was now savoring it with her eyes closed, calling it an exotic flavor.
“It’s the flesh of a fish called tuna, caught from the sea.”
“A fish? Then it must have taken an enormous amount of effort to fillet it.”
“Not quite as much trouble as you’d think. Tuna are about the size of a person, so they’re as easy to butcher as pigs or cows.”
“A fish the size of a person?”
Yanne and everyone else looked shocked—they had apparently never seen large fish by the sea. Still, they kept eating the tuna gimbap. The tuna and mayonnaise inside weren’t overpowering, but they had a subtle, captivating aroma that seemed almost blessed by the gods.
“And if your throat gets dry, drink this with it.”
Jinwoo set out paper cups he had brought from home and poured broth made from fish-cake soup tea bags.
“Sniff, sniff. It smells salty. This is delicious too. I’ve never had salty water like this before.”
Meni detected the distinctive seafood brine in the broth, but the savory, strangely addictive umami won her over and she downed the entire cup in one go.
“M-more! This is really good. I want to keep drinking it!”
Whether from the gimbap or not, once everyone tasted the MSG-rich broth, they set the gimbap aside and started drinking the soup first. The stimulating flavor of the fish-cake broth, loaded with MSG seasoning, had completely captivated them.
Though Jinwoo had boiled a large pot of the broth, it was gone in no time.
“Excuse me, Mage. If we believe in Lord Sadalla, can we receive food like this?”
It was Danny, one of the Rangers. Just like churches using candy and ice cream to proselytize children, the gimbap and broth had unintentionally become icons of conversion.
“He said sincere faith is enough. Om Mani Padme Hum.”
At Yanne’s words, Danny, the mountain-race siblings, and even Meni all repeated the chant. Then Yanne launched into an excited recounting of all the strange foods she had eaten so far.
“Alright, everyone’s eaten well, so let’s get moving again! The paper cups can be reused, so put them away, and the silver wrapping can be used to pack other food later too—make sure you keep those as well. Don’t just throw them out. We have to protect the environment. Dungeon environment protection!”
The first floor of the Green Dungeon was wide and long, but the monsters that appeared were mostly Ents and grass traps, with the occasional forest tree-rat sporting beaver-like front teeth. With proper torches, even novice mercenaries armed with spears could probably clear it.
“This looks like the path to the second floor.”
They found the way down after two days. Instead of stairs, it was a sloping descent.
“The Ents must have shaped it this way to move around more easily. Let’s head down. Meni, move slowly!”
As they descended the slope, a breeze heavy with the scent of grass blew up from below. The second floor was probably thick with vegetation as well.
They had been walking down for quite some time when the ground suddenly trembled.
“Everyone stop! Get against the wall!”
“Master! Ents up ahead! Ah, there are forest tree-rats too!”
“They’re in front as well! What do we do?”
Ents could be dealt with easily by setting them on fire, but the forest tree-rats blocking the way and preventing them from getting close were the real problem.
“Wait until they’re within Fire Bolt range. Once the Ents are handled, the rats will run.”
Following Sezanne’s advice, everyone huddled together and waited for the right moment.
“Huh? The, the ground… Kyaaaaah!”
The ground suddenly shook and then gave way with a whoosh. It was as if a sinkhole had opened beneath them—the earth they stood on simply vanished.
Since Jinwoo had been at the very back, he grabbed Yanne and Sezanne and pulled them into his arms, trying to cushion their fall.
[Thud—, Thwack— Crash!]
Fortunately, the fall lasted only a second or two, so the drop wasn’t too high. The floor wasn’t hard stone either, but a grassy meadow, so no one seemed seriously injured. Still, Jinwoo cast healing buffs on everyone just in case.
Looking up, he saw Ents and forest tree-rats peering down at them. The collapse hadn’t been an accident. The monsters had appeared from both sides to increase their weight and send them plummeting here.
Jinwoo felt he would have to burn all the Ents once they escaped this place, but the question remained—why had the creatures dropped them here?
“Aaaah! Help!”
“Hah! What is this?! Let go!”
Suddenly Ranger Danny was yanked upward, upside down, and Pyutel began to be dragged away as well. Something was gripping their legs.
Only then did Jinwoo look around. Towering red flowers, taller than a person, came into view, along with a stench that felt like it could rot their noses.
“Th-this is a dissolving flower!”
Sezanne seemed to recognize the monster.
“Those tentacles grab people or animals and stuff them into the flower. The liquid inside dissolves them!”
The moment he heard Sezanne’s explanation, Jinwoo charged at the flower trying to stuff Danny inside. He figured that since it was a flower, breaking the stem would do the trick, so he simply rushed forward. But the tentacles branching out from the stem proved problematic. He swung his mace at them, yet they wouldn’t cut.
“Screech!”
To burn them, he channeled mana and unleashed a stream of fire from his left hand.
“Huh? What the—?”
The moment the flames erupted, the tentacles clinging to the stem caught fire and burned just like the Ents. However, the flowers lowered their buds and poured out the water stored inside, extinguishing the raging flames.
“So this is why the Ents and rats dropped us here.”
Because the dissolving flowers carried their own liquid, fire alone wouldn’t work. Jinwoo would have to treat his mace like a skewer and stab the base of the buds multiple times to drain the liquid. But with roughly a hundred of the flowers blooming, he wasn’t sure it was possible.
“Move aside! Fire Wind Cutter!”
In an instant, a crescent-shaped boomerang of flame formed in front of Sezanne and shot forward like an arrow.
[Ssshhk— Fwoooosh— Ssshhk!]
The dissolving flowers whose stems were severed collapsed to the ground in an instant, creating a path of fire. Everyone couldn’t help but gasp in admiration at the power of Fire Wind Cutter.
Since Sezanne belonged to the Tulcherus School, an elemental school of fire, Jinwoo had assumed fire alone would be the answer. But seeing it combined with the wind element to produce such devastating force made him covet the technique as well. At the same time, an idea struck him for burning all the dissolving flowers at once.
“I can only use this spell one more time. We need to get somewhere without flowers.”
“It’s fine. Everyone, gather behind me.”
Once Danny and Pyutel—now rescued thanks to Sezanne’s magic—joined the group, Jinwoo channeled mana and unleashed a stream of fire from his left hand.
“Are you planning to set the severed stems on fire and throw them at the other flowers?”
“That would work, but there’s another way too.”
While channeling mana to pour fire from his left hand, he also focused his will on his right. Because his attribute was both nothingness and multiplicity, he wondered if he could manifest fire from his left hand and wind from his right.
At first, flames also erupted from his right hand just like the left, but after several attempts he finally succeeded in manifesting different elements from each hand.
“Got it!”
Normally, a mana stream of fire could only reach two meters before the mana tried to return to nature. But now, with wind pouring from his right hand, the flames from his left rode the wind and spread far into the distance. It was like having a real flamethrower—except he could feel his mana draining rapidly.
Everyone had received healing magic right after the fall, so his mana was already running low.
When the flowers that had been cut down by Sezanne’s Fire Wind Cutter caught fire and grew into a massive blaze, Jinwoo stopped pouring flames. Instead, he channeled wind from both hands, making the direction of the wind rotate. He had felt the air from the second floor blowing upward through the descending slope, so he decided to use that wind.
“Eek!? Master! The, the flames are growing!”