Chapter 239: No.88 Gathering of Villains (3)

We had come to a complete halt in the middle of Floor C, and with the Disciplinary Committee still running ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠its patrols, dawdling would do us no good.

Guess we're going with Plan B.

I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but I'd prepared for the eventuality all the same. I leaned in and whispered to Dang Gyu-young.

“I'm afraid you'll have to make a few round trips.”

“What, four of them?”

C-Rank Shadow Leap could carry two people at a time. For Dang Gyu-young to ferry all five of us alone, that meant four round trips — and a risk that would balloon enormously.

“Two will be enough.”

“How?”

“Because I can use it too.”

Copying Shadow Leap and moving everyone as pairs would improve things considerably.

Overheat was the skill I'd copied off Hong Yeon-hwa, while Shadow Butterfly was essential for keeping the party concealed. Which meant the best move was to overwrite the Thief's Step slot — Thief's Step had come from Dang Gyu-young in the first place, so I could always copy it back later.

Granted, even this plan left Dang Gyu-young making two round trips, so a measure of added risk was unavoidable. Chae Da-bin would surely wonder why my guidance had suddenly gone downhill, too.

Still, better than getting caught.

A little extra risk had to beat being busted before we ever reached our destination. But just as I was about to fire off Copy with that thought—

“!”

The patrolling Disciplinary Committee members stopped dead in their tracks, as though they'd received word of something. Exchanging comms with grave faces, they hurriedly kicked off the ground and headed up and out of sight.

Dang Gyu-young watched them go, then turned my way.

“...Looks like it's shown up. That thing.”

“Seems so.”

Apparently a party raiding a C-Rank dungeon had run into an Ublek and put out a rescue request — and a slice of the Disciplinary Committee had been mobilized to answer it. The rest were still patrolling their assigned positions without wavering, but from where we stood, it felt as if a hole had been punched clean through a security net that had been tight enough to choke on.

Our navigator, Chae Da-bin, perked up at once and led the way.

“This way, please.”

And so we reached the Deep Layer. With the Disciplinary Committee concentrated on Floors C and D, I'd half-hoped its vigilance might have loosened in relative terms — but the Deep Layer was still the Deep Layer: guard posts stationed at every turn, crystal balls embedded at close intervals, Committee members on constant patrol.

Then again, who was it that made up our party?

The Thief Club president and her vice-president, that's who.

The two of them had already punched through this very place once before, during the Black Snake Gang raid. Presumably it would be no different this time.

Sure enough, Dang Gyu-young soon had her mana drawn up to the brim, while Chae Da-bin began hammering away at her tablet at blistering speed, the both of them settling into readiness.

The shadow rising off Dang Gyu-young swelled into an enormous pouch and slurped down all of us first-years in one gulp. Go Hyeon-woo and I had been through this before and didn't so much as twitch; Jang Mu-geuk, for his part, only let his eyes gleam with brief curiosity before holding his ground.

We let the swaying motion carry us for a while, and at length the shadow pouch spat us out right in front of our destination.

Dang Gyu-young waved us hurriedly toward the teleport portal.

“In, in! Quick, quick!”

We piled through with no ceremony about who went first. The view tore itself apart, and we were standing in a forest on the outskirts of a city.

Only then did the party finally breathe easy. The raid hadn't even properly begun, and everyone already looked utterly spent — though alongside the exhaustion ran the satisfaction of having cleared a major hurdle. Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin in particular positively radiated pride.

“Wow. This is a genuine human victory. A human victory.”

“Hard work truly leaves nothing impossible, doesn't it.”

When they'd drawn up the plan just the day before, even they had only half-believed it could work — yet by pooling our strength and desperately hunting for an opening, we had cracked the Disciplinary Committee's ironclad security. Even allowing for the small stroke of luck that arrived at the very end, it was a remarkable achievement.

But the glow lasted only a moment before, as if remembering something, worry climbed back onto Chae Da-bin's face.

“Though I'm not sure we'll manage to punch back up the same way on the return trip.”

“...I'm getting tired just thinking about it.”

Dang Gyu-young's face clouded over in sympathy. To think they'd have to pull the same headache-inducing stunt all over again on the way up.

Keeping the party's morale from sagging was part of my job, so I decided this was the moment to cut in.

“We'll worry about that when the time comes. After we've taken everything here worth taking.”

“Fair enough.”

We had more than enough tasks sitting right in front of us; no sense agonizing over troubles still hours away. Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin conceded the point, and I pressed on.

“First, I think we should contact Paeng Mi-ryeong.”

“Yeah, let's. One moment.”

Paeng Mi-ryeong's fifteen-member expedition had already entered the dungeon. We needed to hear how far their raid had progressed before we could pin down things like time remaining and safe zones.

Dang Gyu-young fished a comm unit out of her inventory — a special item that allowed contact even inside a dungeon, which Go Hyeon-woo had picked up at the student store. Chae Da-bin hooked it into her tablet so the whole party could hear, and before long the line to Paeng Mi-ryeong connected.

Dang Gyu-young spoke into the device.

“Hey, Paeng. We're in.”

“Whoa, how on earth did you get through that? I was sure there was no way you'd make it in.”

Paeng Mi-ryeong's astonished voice rang through. The corner of Dang Gyu-young's mouth curled upward despite herself, but she answered a beat later in a masterfully casual tone.

“Rougher than expected. How far along are you?”

The central rule of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Gathering of Villains was Boss Rush — a boss raid taken one step further. Challengers had to cut down a whole slew of villain chiefs of B-Rank, mid-boss caliber.

Clear condition: slay at least 12 of the 20.

Naturally, those villain chiefs didn't roam about in packs. They shared an objective and nothing else — loners to the last — and so they lay scattered across every corner of the vast dungeon. To hunt that many down efficiently, Paeng Mi-ryeong's expedition had to split up as well: fifteen people divided into three teams of five.

And their progress so far stood at—

“Four down so far. Two from my team, one each from the other two.”

A third of the clear condition, already in hand.

Of course, clearing the dungeon wasn't the be-all and end-all of the expedition's goals.

“So you'll be entering the secret cave soon, then?”

“Yeah. The plan's to take down eight, then head in.”

Investigating the Blood Demon's Secret Cave by way of the treasure map was their other primary objective. But exhausting too much strength inside the cave might stall the rest of the raid ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠afterward, so they intended to bank eight kills early on. I'd flagged exactly that in the strategy guide I'd handed over, too.

Dang Gyu-young nodded.

“Looks smooth so far. Keep at it, then. Give us a shout if anything comes up.”

“Will do. You lot too.”

There the call with Paeng Mi-ryeong ended. In these early stages they appeared to be following the guide without a hitch, but whether variables would crop up in the late game was something only time would tell. For now, at least, there seemed to be no call for us to intervene — everyone could simply tend to their own tasks.

“Let's get moving ourselves.”

Within this dungeon, I had slid into the party leader's seat by unspoken consent — presumably on the logic that whoever wrote and distributed the strategy guide had to know a little more than the rest. And so the whole party began trailing after me wherever I led.

Our starting point was the forest on the city's outskirts, where pavilions stood visible not far off. But we had no business in the city for the moment, so with our backs turned to it, I guided the party deeper into the woods.

As we climbed and descended the low hills, long stalks of bamboo began to appear one by one. The bamboo thickened the farther we went, until at last a full, lush grove unfolded before us. Even at a glance, it looked like something waited deeper inside—

“It should be around here.”

—but before that, there was something modest worth gathering on the way. We turned ninety degrees, walked a short stretch, and a small clearing came into view, wildflowers and weeds grown thick and unruly, a mess through and through.

“Right then, take one apiece.”

What I handed out were F-Rank iron hoes. And there was exactly one thing a hoe was good for.

“Let's get diggin'.”

“...”

The beauty of having distributed the strategy guide was that I no longer had to explain myself at exhausting length and win everyone over each and every time. For the record, the guide contained the following note:

Elixir herbs were the one thing you could never have enough of. And anything that came out of a B-Rank dungeon came with a guaranteed minimum rank, so without a word of complaint, everyone crouched down and set to rummaging through the weed field.

Jang Mu-geuk alone wore a somewhat skeptical air.

“To think I'd live long enough to do farm work inside a dungeon.”

“Haha, and is this not experience all the same?”

“A positive mindset, I see.”

“I hear that said of me quite often.”

Judging that sympathy would be hard to come by, Jang Mu-geuk shut his mouth and threw himself into the hoeing. He kept at it for quite a while before apparently turning something up; ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he yanked it out roots and all and held it out to me.

“Isn't this a poisonous herb?”

Refined, it could be put to use as medicine; eaten raw, it was sheer venom. Beyond it, poisonous herbs from C to E rank were mingled in among the weeds — ratio-wise, I'd put it at roughly eighty percent weed, nineteen percent poison herb, and one percent elixir herb.

“Gather the poisonous ones separately too. It'd be a waste to just throw them out.”

“True enough.”

It wasn't wrong, so Jang Mu-geuk conceded without fuss. In truth, stockpiling poisonous herbs was part of my own quiet objectives as well — for the plans ahead, the more I had banked, the better.

Meanwhile, Dang Gyu-young had hoes clutched in a set of shadow hands and was working several times faster and more comfortably than the rest of us put together. At some point she came sidling up close and tickled my cheek with a foxtail weed.

“Young Sovereign, be honest with me.”

“About what?”

“You know where they are, don't you.”

Repeated experience had taught Dang Gyu-young that my eye for spotting things was downright uncanny. Me — failing to find elixir herbs hiding somewhere in a weed patch, and making the entire party hoe the ground instead? There was only one possible conclusion: I knew perfectly well and was playing dumb.

I owned up to it without resistance.

“You got me.”

“Then why the act?”

“Because I needed the labor.”

Of the five of us, exactly one person needed poisonous herbs. Had I gone ahead and plucked the elixir herbs on the spot, there would have been no reason left to trouble anyone with hoeing — Jang Mu-geuk would have set down his hoe then and there. Left to 'find them myself,' on the other hand, the search might stretch out a bit, but the pile of poison herbs would keep stacking up.

Dang Gyu-young's eyes narrowed to slits.

“Feathering your own nest off your party members, are we? Does your conscience not gnaw at you?”

“A little. You'll keep it secret?”

“Another secret?”

“You're the one who said the more, the better.”

“That's true, but... why do you have to be so infuriating?”

As she inched closer, I withdrew precisely as much ground as she gained.

“Why are you coming closer?”

“Let me give that cheek one good, hard yank.”

“I decline.”

She kept advancing; I kept retreating. And in the middle of our kneeling game of tag, Chae Da-bin's voice carried over.

“Found one.”

I turned to look, and there in Chae Da-bin's hand hung a single thick hasuo root.

“...So they really do grow here.”

Jang Mu-geuk said it at last, sounding thoroughly won over. A C+ elixir would deliver a respectable effect even split five ways.

But that wasn't the end of it. I tossed out one more line, as if in passing.

“There's one more. A five-hundred-year one.”

“...!”

“...!”

Go Hyeon-woo's and Jang Mu-geuk's eyes flashed in unison — and burning with fresh zeal, the two of them set about flipping the weed field inside out.

[240] The Support Ate It All