“Jaehee, is your body okay?”
“Uh…? Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”
Jaehee answered while slyly avoiding Jeongwoo’s gaze.
Though the scene he saw in the pond couldn’t have been real, the wailing Jeongwoo kept coming to mind, making it hard to face Jeongwoo directly.
“…So I was thinking we could wait a bit while looking around the area, would that be okay?”
“Huh? Around the area…? Why…? Ah, ah, right. Kang Mingyu-ssi…”
Jaehee barely recalled the story he’d just heard from Jeongwoo. Because he kept thinking about the Jeongwoo he saw in the pond, he couldn’t properly remember what he’d just been told. When he turned his head slightly and his eyes met Jeongwoo’s displeased expression, he flinched and turned away.
“But why did Kang Mingyu-ssi enter the pond on his own after we barely pulled him out? Was he trying to swim or something…? Then don’t we have to go rescue Kang Mingyu-ssi again?”
He couldn’t describe how shocked he was when he woke up today.
In his dream, he kept seeing Jeongwoo sobbing while embracing him. But when he opened his eyes and Jeongwoo was right in front of him, he couldn’t tell if it was a dream or reality. He stared blankly at Jeongwoo for a long time, and only after Jeongwoo opened his eyes did he barely recognize this was reality.
The Jeongwoo in the dream hadn’t looked at him. But the Jeongwoo in front of him kept gazing at him constantly.
“Are you really sure your physical condition is okay? If it’s bad at all, tell me. I have potions.”
“No. I don’t need a potion. I’m just out of it because I had a strange dream.”
“A dream? What kind of dream?”
“Well… I don’t remember. Who remembers all their dreams?”
“You mean you can’t get it together like this because of a dream you don’t even remember?”
“Ah, I don’t know. My head just keeps feeling foggy. But Kang Mingyu-ssi, then do we have to enter the pond again to rescue him?”
Even though Jaehee brushed it off saying he didn’t remember, Jeongwoo seemed unconvinced. But when it seemed Jaehee had no intention of talking about it, Jeongwoo eventually gave up. What could he do when he said it was because of a dream? Jeongwoo let out a light sigh and shook his head.
“Who knows. This time he went in on his own, so it might be different. But whatever the case, there’s no way for us to go in and pull him out until he comes out of the pond on his own. So let’s look around the area for now.”
“The area?”
“Don’t you remember? We didn’t come to the Bukhansan dungeon just because of Kang Mingyu alone. We have to find the other people too, and we should look for the amplifier we saw before entering the dungeon.”
“Ah…”
At Jeongwoo’s words, Jaehee belatedly remembered the Guild Sahae people who had entered this place with Kang Mingyu. He’d completely forgotten because of what he saw in the pond.
Good grief. For him to forget like this when he was the guild master. His face flushed with embarrassment.
“Since we found Kang Mingyu at least, the Management Bureau won’t be able to say anything. They didn’t send us hoping we’d rescue everyone from the start anyway. Still, since we have to wait for Kang Mingyu anyway, I was saying let’s look around this area.”
“Ah, uh-huh. Okay. Let’s look around nearby.”
“Jaehee, if your physical condition isn’t good, you don’t need to push yourself. As you know, when we leave, the next Global Mission will probably start almost immediately, so it’s important to regulate your condition before that.”
“No. I’m fine. Let’s lightly look around.”
Jaehee got up from his seat first.
It was something he’d said he would do, yet he’d completely forgotten about it. As Jaehee moved hurriedly, Jeongwoo followed behind him.
“Haa, the Bukhansan dungeon really is… huge. It seems even bigger than Bukhansan itself.”
“To go around this entire size might take several months… It was lucky. To discover this in such a vast place.”
“Right. We really were lucky.”
Jaehee nodded while looking at the small statue Jeongwoo was holding.
After deciding to look around the area with Jeongwoo, they discovered an altar hidden in the grass before long. Because it was completely different from the amplifier they’d found at the dungeon entrance, at first he didn’t even think this was an amplifier. At first he was just curious that there was such an altar in the dungeon, so he examined it with Jeongwoo. But then Jeongwoo said the small statue on the altar was an amplifier.
Taking the statue from the altar felt uncomfortable somehow, but since it was an amplifier, there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t even tell what the stone statue was supposed to be. It had an elongated shape with indecipherable patterns carved into it.
“But Jeongwoo, how can the Guild Sahae people have left no traces at all? Did our paths completely miss each other because the dungeon is too big? If they entered the dungeon, they should have left some traces somehow.”
“The dungeon is big, but the entrance is the same. If they moved from there, our routes would have to overlap to some extent. Besides, we found Kang Mingyu in the pond. That means they passed through this area. Even if they were eaten by monsters, there should be battle traces, but it’s too clean.”
Starting with the statue, something kept feeling unsettling. Come to think of it, whoever left the amplifier in the training dungeon hadn’t been caught either. Could it be the same people who left the amplifier in the Bukhansan dungeon? If so, what on earth was their intention in doing such things?
“Phew, we’ll be really busy once we leave this dungeon. I’ll have to work diligently to feed our Jaehee so he doesn’t get sick.”
“Hm? What’s that, all of a sudden…?”
At Jeongwoo’s sudden words in the serious atmosphere, Jaehee’s eyes widened.
Jeongwoo looked at Jaehee and lightly shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyway, let’s just let go of things we can’t do anything about even if we worry about them now. But what’s certain is that we’ll be incredibly busy once we leave this time.”
“Ha… Right. I think we’ll be incredibly busy once we leave. The Global Mission will start right away, and we’ve just created a guild too. There’s more than one or two things to do.”
“You’ll probably get tons of calls from everywhere. Be prepared. Even if Awakened Ones have better stamina than ordinary people, there are limits.”
“But, you said Kang Mingyu-ssi is a Prophet…?”
“Yeah. But this is really a secret. Don’t tell others. Prophets are really rare beings to encounter. For Kang Mingyu’s sake and for our sake too, it’s better not to know that Kang Mingyu is a Prophet.”
“Wow… A Prophet. Wow… Even thinking about it again, it’s hard to believe.”
Even after hearing that Kang Mingyu was a Prophet, Jaehee found it hard to believe.
Though he’d accepted Kang Mingyu as his subject, he had no favorable feelings toward the human called Kang Mingyu. Kang Mingyu couldn’t be called a villain, but he was a human who wasn’t likable as a person, someone he didn’t want to get close to.
He still couldn’t forget how he’d constantly swaggered frivolously.
So when he heard that such a person was a Prophet, he felt like he’d been hit on the back of the head.
Until Jeongwoo told him, he didn’t even know there was a classification called Prophet, but even if he had known, he wouldn’t have thought Kang Mingyu was a Prophet.
Kang Mingyu was, so to speak, the person least suited to be a Prophet, wasn’t he? But such a Kang Mingyu is a Prophet, and moreover a Grand Prophet who can divine the rise and fall of stars…?
It was as hard to believe as when Jeongwoo first told him about the tutorial.
“I really never thought I’d say this, but Jaehee, treat Kang Mingyu-ssi well.”
“Puhaha… Woo Jeongwoo, are you serious?”
Looking at the giggling Jaehee, Jeongwoo nodded heavily.
“Accepting Kang Mingyu as a subject was truly unexpected good fortune. It’s just that Kang Mingyu’s stupid and doesn’t know what value he has, but in fact, a Prophet isn’t something you can see so easily. And he’s not just a Prophet but a Grand Prophet. Right now Earth is playing a game with destruction at stake, and a Grand Prophet can divine a star’s fate. So Kang Mingyu is… one of the strongest cards we have.”
“Haa. You’re right, but really… I can’t believe it.”
When it comes to Prophets, there’s a commonly imagined appearance. Some wise and sagacious sage. But Kang Mingyu is a human who doesn’t fit that at all. If you were asked to find the person most distant from being a Prophet, let alone being one, wouldn’t that be Kang Mingyu? Kang Mingyu was more accustomed to using his body than his brain, his actions were frivolous and his thoughts were childish.
…But such a person is a Grand Prophet. He’d rather believe Kang Mingyu was a Prophet if he’d been told Kang Mingyu had acted that way to hide himself all this time, but that wasn’t the case either.
“One thing I can guess is… Kang Mingyu didn’t awaken as a Prophet from the start, but after buying and using a one-time prophecy item, his classification was forcibly changed. But he didn’t stop there—he became a Grand Prophet on his own.”
“What… significance does that have?”
“A little, I think I know what they want.”
“What?”
“If you think about why Kang Mingyu could become a Prophet, I think you can see the direction the system wants.”
“The direction the system wants…?”
“Yeah. Kang Mingyu said he saw Earth’s destruction countless times. He must have seen it and heard it too. Even though he repeatedly saw scenes of destruction like that, Kang Mingyu thought to resist it. Actually, when most people see such things, it’s easier to just give up and accept it. But Kang Mingyu kept resisting destruction no matter what. It’s not exact, but I think Kang Mingyu’s attitude like that was important in becoming a Prophet.”
Hearing the story, it did seem that way.
There were people who committed suicide saying Earth would be destroyed just from monsters appearing. But Kang Mingyu, while repeatedly seeing destruction like that, didn’t give up his will to live.
