“Seduce my ass. He has a face that pisses people off.”
“Aw, that’s not true. His face is handsome, that’s for sure. What pisses people off is probably his personality?”
“……Fuck, so you knew and were doing it on purpose?”
“Huh? Anyone who does it knowingly is a jerk. A friend I used to be close with said they got angry whenever I opened my mouth. But I really didn’t understand why they got angry.”
“Ha, not knowing is a talent too.”
“Thanks. Anyway, I’m going to stay loyal and only like one person my whole life. I’ll date a bit, then get married right when I become an adult.”
“Whatever.”
“What style do you like, hyung? Whenever I play games, tsundere characters are always my favorites. So my ideal type is also a beauty with that style…….”
The man gave up on shutting Pyeonghwa’s mouth. Thinking of it as TV noise made it bearable. The man replied half-heartedly to Pyeonghwa’s words and advanced toward the boss room.
After a while, a wide plaza appeared. Since it was where multiple paths converged into one, even monsters from other paths heard the sounds of fighting and swarmed toward them.
The man who had been dealing with monsters one-handed in the narrow paths retrieved the dagger Pyeonghwa was holding and gripped it in his other hand. Then the speed at which he dismembered monsters became several times faster.
“Hyu, hyuuung, you can protect me, right? Eek! I’m scared. Mommy! Aagh!”
Splat, splat! Pyeonghwa screamed while dodging monster corpse pieces that poured down like rain. He couldn’t dodge them all, so he got hit thwack thwack here and there. His shoulder and side throbbed as if bruised.
If his head collided with those hard and heavy corpses, he might pass out. Pyeonghwa unconsciously widened the distance from the man.
“Noh Pyeonghwa, stick close.”
“It hurts, I can’t go……!”
“Stay there if you want to die.”
“Shit, how close?”
“As close as possible.”
“Then… I’ll do it like this!”
Pyeonghwa hurriedly ran over and clung smack to the man’s side. When he hunched his shoulders and pressed his head right against his chest, the man’s embrace became the safest place here.
“Won’t you get lost? I can’t move like this!”
“You just need to swing your arms, hyung! When you move somewhere else, I’ll stick like this and follow you! Please, hyuuung!”
“You little shit puppy……!”
The man, who was about to roughly push Pyeonghwa away, hesitated. What did he resemble—he resembled a canid animal. He looked like a baby fox, but his actions were exactly like a disobedient puppy.
The man let out a deep sigh and moved slowly with one shit puppy tucked at his side. He’d planned to finish early and go close other Gates, but today he had no choice but to end with just one. Having his plans disrupted like this was a first for him, a perfectionist.
The man irritably swung his arms. The black energy rippling at the dagger’s tip extended toward the monsters.
“Uh, hyuuung… I suddenly feel dizzy…….”
Pyeonghwa moaned softly and swayed. The man wrapped his arm around Pyeonghwa’s shoulder to support him and reined in the black energy.
It seemed a non-awakened person was struggling to endure this power at close range. But he couldn’t use the other power he possessed. If his eye color changed, there’d be no way not to know his identity.
Killing D-rank monsters wasn’t work at all for the man, but there were too many of them. Since he couldn’t use the power of either of his two Constellations, it inevitably took more time.
“You have no idea how much I’m going easy on you. You know that?”
“Yes, of course. Obviously I know. Hehe…….”
“Don’t smile. What did you do right to be smiling?”
“It’s better than crying, right?”
“I hate both.”
“Hyung, people tell you you’re sensitive a lot, right?”
“No.”
“Liar-ping. You’re a prickly-sensitive-boss.”
What ping? The man contorted his face at the powdered milk smell tickling his nose. It felt like he was taking around a seven-year-old kid, not a seventeen-year-old.
“Hold on tight. I’m going to run.”
“Huh? Aagh!”
The man wrapped his arm around Pyeonghwa’s waist and ran toward the wall at high speed. As the high wall instantly approached right before his nose, Pyeonghwa squeezed his eyes shut thinking they might crash.
The man used the momentum of his speed to step once on the perpendicular wall and jumped even higher.
“Woooow……!”
Pyeonghwa looked down and exclaimed in admiration. Coming up high, he could see the dungeon’s structure in detail. Countless branching paths were tangled like a maze, and all paths converged on the central plaza.
On the plaza floor, smooth as marble, geometric patterns were drawn. Pyeonghwa carefully observed those irregular patterns and tilted his head.
Kiiiii!
Kiiiiiik!
Kiik!
When he turned around, the swarming monsters were trying to climb up using each other as stepping stones. Pyeonghwa clung smack to the man like a koala.
“Hyung, where’s the boss room?”
“Here.”
“Huh? There’s no boss monster though.”
“It’ll come out when the conditions are met.”
“Conditions? Ah! Is it that? The pattern on the floor.”
Pyeonghwa pointed at the geometric pattern drawn on the floor. The pattern was in the form of irregular shapes overlapping to form a large circle.
There were often times when dungeon breaks couldn’t be prevented because boss monsters were hidden like this.
This was why each Hunter guild had a separate Gate analysis team. The guild that owned this place must have already finished interpreting the pattern.
But the man had no intention of going through the headache of interpretation. From long experience, he knew that the lower the Gate rank, the simpler it was.
Especially in the case of patterns like that…….
“Just kill them all and it’ll crawl out.”
“If we kill forty-two, it’ll come out.”
“What? Forty-two?”
“No way, how are we supposed to kill all of them? It’ll take half a day!”
“How did you know it was forty-two?”
“Why wouldn’t I know that? I can just see it.”
Pyeonghwa explained to the man that there were ten paths connected to the plaza, and ten identical shapes.
The shapes were seemingly irregular at a glance, but assuming one shape was paired with each path, a consistent pattern was visible. One vertex of every shape was invariably pointing toward the center of each respective path.
Three in the path the triangle pointed to, five in the pentagon path. Pyeonghwa thought that if monster corpses were piled at the path entrances this way, the boss would be summoned inside the circular pattern in the center.
“Minus the monsters you killed at the entrance earlier, hyung, there are forty-two left now.”
“…….”
“It seems like the condition will be met even if we kill them all like you said, hyung. But why do it that way? I saw earlier you weren’t even picking up magic stones, so your purpose is… ah, never mind.”
“Say more.”
“No, well…… You don’t look like a thief trying to steal resources.”
“So?”
“If closing the Gate itself is your purpose… it’s better for you too to use less energy and finish quickly, hyung.”
The man looked at Pyeonghwa with coldly cooled eyes. He was clearly non-awakened, but seeing how his mind worked, he didn’t seem like an ordinary kid.
Killing him would be trouble-free and clean. He just had to drop him down from here. No one could know what happened inside a Gate…….
When the man said nothing, Pyeonghwa blinked and looked up. It was an innocent face that didn’t know how the world worked.
“Hyung?”
“……Put your arms around my neck and hang on. That’s easier to move with.”
“Ah, okay.”
The man jumped down from above the path entrance. Immediately, a horde of monsters rushed at him.
When Pyeonghwa shouted that he had to kill five, the man killed exactly five and turned around to jump toward the wall.
The man kicked off the wall surface, changed direction, and moved to the front of the next entrance in one go.
“This is a triangle, so three!”
The man circled once around the large plaza with Pyeonghwa hanging from his embrace.
At the entrance of every path, Lion’s Mane Silver Wolf corpses were piled according to the number of angles in each shape.
When the pattern on the floor was dyed blood red, the monsters that had been swarming like ants lowered their bodies as if frightened and backed away.
A chilling sensation rushed through him enough to make all his body hair stand on end. Pyeonghwa buried his face in the man’s neck and trembled.
“Hyu, hyung… are boss mobs originally this scary when they appear……? Crazy, I feel like I’m gonna piss myself….”
“Hold it. If you piss yourself, I’ll kill you.”
“No, I don’t really have to pee…!”
“Fuck, I said hold it.”
“Are you nervous too, hyung……? How long will it take to kill it……? Will it take long……? How much stronger are boss monsters than regular monsters……? Holy shit, it’s fucking huge…….”
Pyeonghwa lifted his trembling eyelids and looked at the boss monster that appeared in the center.
A Lion’s Mane Silver Wolf as big as a house was looking down at them, dripping drool.
The moment he met eyes with the boss monster’s red pupils, Pyeonghwa’s body stiffened rigidly.
When he’d made eye contact with regular monsters, he could escape the status ailment after 3 seconds, but this time no matter how much time passed, his stiff body showed no signs of loosening.
When Pyeonghwa, who’d been running his mouth ceaselessly, suddenly fell quiet, the corners of the man’s mouth under the mask twitched.
“It’s finally a bit quiet.”
“…….”
“The way to kill it is the same. It would’ve been easier if I could use skills, but…… can’t be helped.”
Kiiiiiiik—!
When the man kicked off and charged, the boss monster screamed and swung its front paw.
-ping (핑) – Slang suffix (e.g., “liar-ping” = “you’re lying”)
