It was truly unexpected.
I’d thought that if it saw something curious like a human, it would snatch it up and swallow it whole. Like it had done before, in my memories.
I couldn’t guess what it was keeping me locked up for.
To eat later?
Or maybe the electric show had been so entertaining it didn’t want to waste me by eating me right away?
Or maybe it just looked at me and decided I wasn’t edible.
Like I’d cause problems if eaten….
“Ha….”
Thinking about it that way, I managed a laugh.
“Haha.”
What had already happened couldn’t be changed.
Calming myself down, I lightly tapped the wall.
Thunk.
A dull sound echoed. Electricity didn’t travel well through glass. But if I gave it a sudden, powerful shock, I could break it.
So, if I really wanted to, I could get out anytime.
Which meant the right move was to watch the situation for now and decide my actions later.
That’s when it happened.
The monster, which I’d thought was moving away, came dragging back a large bundle. Now that I thought about it, it had been carrying something like that bag when it first came in too.
What’s in there, I wonder.
The monster stood in front of the cutting board and opened the bundle.
With its skinny, bony hand, it pulled out a huge fish tail from inside.
The rainbow-colored scales, which shifted color depending on the angle, were beautiful.
The monster tossed the tail onto the cutting board.
Splat.
The tail landed in front of me, blood streaming from its cut surface.
What had looked like it was only about the size of a chicken leg in the monster’s hand turned out, on closer look, to be quite large.
The middle section had been cut clean off, so it was hard to tell the original size. But just looking at the part that was there, it seemed to be about twice the size of a human. The scales were enormous too.
The monster picked up the Chinese cleaver hanging on the wall.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Every time the blade came down, the floor shook and the tail split into chunks.
By the time the original shape became unrecognizable, the monster pulled out a new tail from the sack and set it on the cutting board.
After repeating that process several times, the surrounding area was soaked in red liquid.
I watched the sight and thought.
I want at least one of those scales.
…….
This was the first time I’d seen that monster cook.
Come to think of it, the dungeon had looked just like a kitchen, with cooking tools scattered everywhere. It wouldn’t be strange at all if cooking happened in here.
If anything, it would be stranger for it to just eat things raw without any preparation.
Then why did Yeom Hajae just swallow it whole before the regression?
That question crossed my mind, but—
Once it finished prepping, the monster put the tails into a pot. The minced meat filled the pot, piling up densely.
Looking around as if searching for something, the monster seemed to find what it was looking for and bent down. What came up in its hand was a piece of broken pottery.
Ah.
I knew what that fragment was.
It was the ceramic bottle Choi Haegang had broken. The one that had spilled out all that water.
Does it need water?
Too bad. That’s all spilled out already.
The monster stared quietly at the fragment.
Then, without any sign of anger, it picked up a wooden bucket and headed toward the door.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!….
The sound gradually grew distant. I rested my hand near my mouth and watched its retreating figure.
Pretty hardworking.
That’s when it happened.
Tok tok.
Someone tapped on the glass jar.
“…!”
When I turned, a short-haired man was standing there.
This person was definitely one of Atlas’s… who was it again? Anyway, one of the guys who’d been tagging along with Choi Haegang.
I’d thought there was one missing, and apparently he’d been here.
But his expression wasn’t great. Maybe he was anxious from being alone, because he was even breaking out in cold sweat.
I expressed my confusion with my face.
“?”
The man, moving his mouth as if trying to convey something, breathed onto the glass.
Then, on the fogged-up glass, he wrote letters with his finger, in jerky strokes.
It was written backwards, but I could somehow read it.
[Use ability, escape]
Ability… was he telling me to escape using my ability?
I moved closer to the glass wall. And, like he had, I breathed on the glass and wrote a question.
[Ability?]
The man pointed at himself with his finger.
It seemed to mean he was going to use his own ability.
I didn’t know what this man’s ability was, but I expressed agreement for now.
[OK]
After a moment’s pause, the man closed his eyes. Then, with hand gestures, he drew some strange formation.
The glass in front of me slowly began to disappear. More precisely, like a cloth rolling up, an empty space appeared from the bottom and gradually grew larger.
A while later, there was a passage between us wide enough for a person to pass through easily.
“Ahh.”
I see. So he could make a hole in the wall.
I didn’t know the exact range of the ability, but it seemed quite useful.
It might be more useful for other covert activities than for dungeon clearing, though. Infiltration, perhaps.
The man spoke with his eyes still closed.
“Come out now. This will only hold while I keep my eyes closed.”
“What happens if you open your eyes in the middle, Hunter? Will my body get cut in half?”
“…I won’t open them, so please hurry and come out.”
The man said, sounding anxious. I obediently climbed out of the jar.
Then I grabbed the arm of the man who had his eyes closed.
“Is that good?”
“No. Don’t open your eyes yet. Um….”
What should I say….
“This would be best.”
“What?”
I shouted, putting on my most shocked expression.
“Gah! A monster!”
Before the startled man could open his eyes, I used my ability.
I shocked him just enough that, presumably, an adult man would faint without any danger to his life.
The current that flowed through his arm made the man collapse limply.
When he woke up, he probably wouldn’t even properly remember why he’d lost consciousness.
Since I’d shouted “monster” right before it happened, wouldn’t he assume the monster had knocked him out?
I could only hope so.
I pushed the man as far into the corner as I could.
His body was hidden behind an obstacle—a barrel filled with some unidentified gray powder.
“Ugh, he’s heavy.”
I kicked his arm, which was sticking out a little, to tidy him up.
The reason I’d knocked him out was simple.
It would be a problem if he got himself killed trying to “rescue” me, or if he actually did manage to get me out.
This much is fine, right, Haegang?
It’s all for your sake. And for mine too.
Thinking that, I patted my aching back.
Looking again, I saw the hole in the jar slowly closing up.
I guess it was the type that disappeared on its own once the caster lost consciousness.
Should I go back in or not.
I hesitated, but in the end I bent down and climbed back into the glass jar.
The moment I let out a breath of relief—
[Karma has increased.]
A red window like a game screen appeared.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Prohibition〉 in effect. (00:15)]
Penalty?
At a word I could never forget, I reflexively froze. The memory of being burned alive while still living surfaced.
A few seconds felt as long as hours.
But even after dozens of seconds passed, the same pain as before didn’t come.
…….
Only after the window naturally disappeared did my mind return.
My heart began to race.
What was that?
Just now, “Karma has increased”….
I checked my status window.
[Quest: Settle your karma.
!If a certain amount of time passes without fulfilling the quest, a penalty will be applied.]
[Penalty triggered: 〈Prohibition〉 in effect. (00:14)]
[Karma: 59,779 (+5)]
My karma had increased. And a penalty had occurred.
But.
Why?
The line beneath the quest.
‘!If a certain amount of time passes without fulfilling the quest, a penalty will be applied.’
Before, the penalty had triggered when three days passed without my karma decreasing.
Naturally, I’d assumed the “certain amount of time” written there meant roughly three days.
But it hadn’t even been an hour since my karma decreased from being grazed by Choi Haegang’s blade.
So why had a penalty triggered this time?
Actually, there was only one possible cause I could think of.
The increase in karma.
It was gone now, but a window had definitely popped up announcing an increase in karma.
Thinking about the nature of this “karma” value, the cause was probably that I’d knocked the man out.
Karma.
Even the word itself brought sin to mind.
Had my karma increased because I’d attacked someone? This seemed like a value related to a person’s suffering.
…It didn’t trigger when I attacked Choi Haegang.
My thoughts grew tangled.
The penalty that had appeared before was “Purifying Flame.”
This time, it was “Prohibition.”
‘…….’
Prohibition, huh….
Ah.
I had a bad feeling about this.
At that moment.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The monster was back.
In one hand, it held a bucket full of water.
Using both hands, the monster poured the water from the bucket into the pot. After checking the water level, it lit the stove.
Smoke rose from the hearth-like stove. The pot, with rainbow-colored scales floating in it, was placed over the fire.
Contrary to my hope that, once its business was done, it would just leave, the monster—for some reason—came closer to me.
Go away. Go away. Go away….
The monster, having finally come right up close, grabbed the lid and lifted the glass jar.
I felt my insides lurch.
While I was trying to bear the unpleasant feeling, the jar shook back and forth.
“Ugh!”
I lost my balance and was tossed around, bumping into things on every side.
For some inexplicable reason, after shaking the jar around, the monster opened the lid and abruptly turned it upside down. I had no choice but to fall onto the monster’s palm.
The best I could do was take a breakfall stance so I wouldn’t end up with something twisted from a bad landing.
My head was spinning. Before I knew it, the monster’s head was right in front of my eyes.
What I could see between the golden ropes wasn’t a mouth or eyes, but a strange black hole.
While I stayed frozen, a finger came right up to my face and poked at my stomach.
As if telling me to perform my little trick again.
…Fuck.
I clenched my fist.
My ability wouldn’t come out.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Prohibition〉 in effect. (00:12)]
