Chapter 15
Collecting C-rank Layer Wood.
Collecting C-rank Layer Wood.
Collecting C-rank Layer Wood.
100 C-rank Layer Trees collected. Collection speed has increased.
Collecting C-rank Layer Wood...
Thanks to the increased speed, I gathered the trees much faster.
What had taken three seconds now took only two.
That made it easy to yank the trunks free and push deeper into the grove.
The people who had been staring at me in dumbfounded silence followed after me, dragging the uprooted trees back behind us.
One by one, the trees were piled into a barrier that blocked the skeletons.
These were the same trees that had even withstood the attacks of O Ju-han, an A-class hunter.
There was no way they’d have trouble stopping the attacks of B-rank monsters like skeletons.
“Hold them! Don’t let them climb up!”
“You idiots, thanks for climbing up here just to die!”
The skeletons seemed to realize that their attacks weren’t doing a thing to the trees.
They tried to scramble over the heap of trunks, and some even attempted to climb the cliff itself.
Useless.
If they were coming at us from every direction like before, that would have been one thing. But now they were charging only from a single direction, weren’t they?
For A-class hunters, fending off an assault from one direction was nothing difficult at all.
That let Woo Yeon-hoo leave the defense to his team and study the map, thinking over which direction they should flee.
“…Huh? Hm?”
Actually, the most relaxed person in this place was me.
All I had to do was touch the trees with my finger, and they’d come free on their own.
Thanks to that, I also got to watch Woo Yeon-hoo stare at the map with a baffled expression.
He kept tilting his head, as if he had no idea what was going on.
What’s his problem?
“Mr. Yeon-hoo! Is something wrong?”
“Ah, Mr. Ji-on. Well, according to the markings here....”
“……?”
“Udamhwa is nearby.”
“What? Why would it be nearby?”
Didn’t it take three full days just to get there?
We had run hard, sure, but not so hard that we could cover three days’ worth of distance in half a day.
And yet it was nearby?
I wasn’t the only one confused. The combat team and the support team were all staring at Woo Yeon-hoo too.
Feeling everyone’s eyes on him, he scratched his neck awkwardly.
“It seems we crossed the valley directly.”
“Ah....”
Everyone, including me, let out a murmur of understanding.
The reason we had expected it to take three days was because we’d have to go all the way around this valley.
But now we were ripping out the Layer Trees that had blocked the valley and cutting straight through.
We were making a shortcut that would get us there in half a day.
Ha. So this was what they called a blessing in disguise.
“Which is why I’m hesitating. In our current situation-”
“Let’s go!”
What was there to hesitate over?
The others seemed to agree with me, because they all nodded.
He went on in a calm voice, as though trying to get us to settle down.
“But with those skeletons over there-”
“We’re fine. We’re not dying!”
“We’ve been able to relax because the Skeleton Lord hasn’t shown up yet. If it comes even now, then-”
“Ah, what more is there to do but die!”
“That’s literally one of the most common last words men use-”
“Ah, let’s go!”
“…….”
He took a moment to think it over.
That was only natural, as the one leading the expedition. He had to avoid danger.
We might have been able to breathe a little easier, but the fact remained that we were still being chased by skeletons.
If the Skeleton Lord, which had been standing by and watching, came now, the situation could change in an instant.
Still, Udamhwa, the target of this expedition, was right in front of us.
If it had been far away, that would have been one thing.
But if it was close, we at least had to look at it once.
As though making up his mind, Woo Yeon-hoo gave a single nod.
“All right. Let’s go. But we’ll move in a small group.”
Since we’d built a barricade with the Layer Trees, he meant that while the rest of us held out here, two or three people should go quickly and come back.
The Layer Tree suddenly sprang upward, then flopped backward with a heavy thud.
Until now, the empty space had always been on our side, so when the trees fell, they had fallen forward.
For one to topple backward meant....
“That was the last tree.”
At last, we had uprooted every tree that had been blocking the way.
I stepped through the passage I’d made and looked back over my shoulder.
The tunnel was wide enough for about three people to pass through side by side.
Across from me, Woo Yeon-hoo was looking at the combat team members and asked, “Who’s coming?”
“For now, you and I have to go. I’d like to take one more person with us.”
He was the one who had organized this expedition, and I was the one who had to gather Udamhwa.
O Ju-han looked like he wanted to go, but neither the guild master nor the deputy guild master could leave their posts.
The escort hunters from the support and gathering teams couldn’t come out of the portable mana generator, so they were out by default.
In the end, we had to take one hunter from the combat team.
That was why he was looking over them.
Aside from Woo Yeon-hoo and O Ju-han, the combat team consisted of one tank, two ranged damage dealers, and one mage.
There wasn’t a healer in the party, even though an A-rank hunter party needed one, because they drank healing potions like they were ion drinks.
The capital power of the Ildae Group was truly terrifying.
“Then Jiyun would be best. Kim Jiyun.”
“Yes, I’ll go!”
The one who answered was the female archer of the two archers.
I guessed they were leaving the tank with the strongest burst damage, the ranged fighter who could keep steady pressure up, and the mage who was useful in all sorts of ways.
The female archer called Kim Jiyun fired a wide spread of magical arrows, then climbed down from the heap of trunks.
Apparently she had been listening from above, because she didn’t ask a single question and crossed the passage immediately.
“Ju-han, I’m leaving command to you!”
“Got it!”
After asking O Ju-han to take charge, Woo Yeon-hoo came across the passage as well.
And just like that, we set off toward where Udamhwa was growing.
Udamhwa was really close.
By distance, it was about five or six kilometers from where the Layer Trees had been growing.
To think we had planned to take a full three days to cover such a short distance.
Who could have guessed that a skeleton ambush would become our good fortune?
If there was any problem, it was that we had to go over the top of the valley, but even that wasn’t much of an issue because the cliff wasn’t especially high.
Kim Jiyun threw several daggers at the cliff face, making footholds to climb on.
The cliff was low enough that that alone was enough to scale it.
When we got to the top, there was another low cliff beyond it.
Below that cliff was a pool, and in that pool a single flower bloomed alone.
Udamhwa.
Like a flower that fed on yin energy, it grew where no sunlight touched at all.
“At last....”
Woo Yeon-hoo stood in place, trembling with emotion.
The cure he had searched so desperately for, the medicine to save his younger sister from her illness, was right in front of him.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much joy he must be feeling right now.
At this rate, he might start crying.
“……!”
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, the yin energy began to surge violently.
Along with that trembling yin energy, the ground itself shook.
It came from the giant teleportation circle that had appeared on the cliff one level above.
“Yeah. It was never going to go this easily.”
“The Skeleton Lord....”
Woo Yeon-hoo muttered under his breath in a bleak voice.
A Skeleton Lord even more desolate than his voice stood on the cliff above us.
Clothed in a cloak that seemed to swallow darkness itself, it stared down at me with two glowing red eyes.
Why was it that, even though there were three humans here, it felt like it was looking only at me?
I was so unsettled by how angry it seemed to be at me.
What had I even done?
“This is better, actually. If it came alone, then we could just-”
He stopped in the middle of the sentence and bit his lower lip.
Honestly, talk about jinxing it.
Before he could even finish speaking, skeletons were arriving behind the lord.
There were two general-class ones, four captain-class ones, and several hundred soldiers.
There was one thing different about them from the ones we had seen until now: black smoke rose from their bodies, just like from the horn growing from the lord’s skull.
It was probably a basic buff effect of the gate boss.
Usually that kind of thing made them about twice as strong.
I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but I had heard plenty of stories, since there were so many A-class hunters around me.
“Run. We can’t handle all of them.”
This time I nodded without a word.
There was no way three people could stand against the evolved Skeleton Lord and several hundred subordinates.
I had said that dying wouldn’t be any worse, but I had no intention of actually doing it.
Even with Udamhwa right in front of us, the best move here was to give up and run.
Just as we were about to flee,
“…Run?”
His words flashed through my mind.
He hadn’t said, “Let’s run.” He had said, “Run.”
Which meant he had no intention of leaving himself.
It was easy enough to guess why he’d said it.
He meant to stay behind and buy time for me and Kim Jiyun to escape.
“Are you crazy?”
“Crazy!”
My calm question was buried beneath Kim Jiyun’s shout.
I was going to say the same thing anyway.
Leaving it to her, I looked up at the cliff.
The skeletons were staring down at us from above with leisurely expressions.
We had several hundred skeletons in front of us and a sheer drop behind us.
They were acting arrogant because we were in a situation where we had no choice but to give up.
Then they opened and closed their jaws at us, clacking them in mockery.
They were getting more and more annoying, these damned skeleton bastards.
“What about the chairman and your little sister?”
“...I’m the one who organized this expedition. I’m responsible for keeping you alive.”
“What nonsense. I’m responsible for my own life. Chae-yeon asked me to look after you, and if you’re going to die here, then I’ll die with you.”
“Kim Jiyun!”
While the skeletons laughed at us, the two of them were busy starring in a melodrama.
Damn it. Seriously.
I dragged a hand down over my mask and let out a long sigh.
I really meant it.
This kind of thing is poison to me.
“Ah... I wasn’t trying to drag you into this.”
“Right. Mr. Ji-on, you should run-”
“No. I’ll fight with you too.”
I cut in, stopping them before they could misunderstand any further.
The two of them widened their eyes in shock.
“What? What do you mean? Why would Mr. Ji-on-”
“Look at that bastard.”
I pointed at the Skeleton Lord.
The man and woman followed my finger and looked at it.
It suddenly lifted its right hand and summoned a giant sword into its grasp.
Apparently it had taken my pointing at it very badly.
It was furious with me.
I had no idea why.
“That look it’s giving me. Doesn’t it seem exactly like a teenager who’s fallen in love?”
“Love.... It seems a little different from that.”
“Anyway. I don’t think it’s going to just let me run. Honestly, I feel like it’s going to chase after me alone, the bastard.”
As if agreeing with me, the two of them slowly nodded.
So it wasn’t just my imagination; the Skeleton Lord really did seem angry at me.
Come to think of it, that was unfair.
What exactly had I done wrong?
Was it because I was wearing a white mask and it felt a sense of kinship?
“So let’s do this together.”
Then I shrugged.
He let out a snort at the sight of me acting like it was no big deal.
Kim Jiyun shook her head too, but she had a faint smile on her face.
At that moment, a hologram system window appeared.
The World Tree Sapling has been moved by the sincerity with which humans care for one another.
The sapling transfers the surrounding soil to Manager Baek Do-woon.
Moved? Soil?
What the hell was that supposed to mean all of a sudden?
More to the point, the World Tree....
Are you watching this situation right now?
Just as that thought crossed my mind,
Thud.
Armor suddenly burst out.
Why was armor coming out now?
“Ah.”
Something flashed through my head.
The memory of when the Fruit of the Previous World Tree had burst out of my smartphone.
No way....
“Mr. Ji-on? The armor-”
Bang!
With a sound like an explosion, the armor was pierced clean through.
Woo Yeon-hoo’s eyes went wide at the sound.
No, it wasn’t because of the sound.
Something far more shocking was happening in my chest.
Through the hole in the armor, soil gushed out in a violent spray.
So violently that it sent me toppling backward because I couldn’t withstand the force.
And just like that, I became a soil fountain vomiting dirt.
Do-hee. Tae-cheon. They say the moment you leave home, life turns into hell, and I guess that really is true....
I miss you guys so much....
The soil shot high into the air, then came pattering down like tears spilling from my heart.