You Say Only I Regressed? 75

# Chapter 75

Lee Hwan belatedly twisted and deflected all the falling stones, then quickly kneeled down and shook Taesung who was lying beneath him.

“Ugh, Kang Taesung…!”

His head was submerged in water, turning it red. Lee Hwan’s heart sank at the sight of the blood spreading across the water.

Could he have hit the floor hard? Unless he fell headfirst, he shouldn’t be badly hurt. Just like how Lee Hwan had quickly recovered after being hit by a stone before.

Upon urgent inspection, fortunately, Taesung only had a cut on his forehead. Nevertheless, anxiety came before relief. Looking at Taesung with his forehead completely red, Lee Hwan felt his vision spinning.

The sudden accident. The surroundings turned to ruins by collapsed stone pieces. And Kang Taesung bleeding.

‘…No.’

His vision blurred, and suddenly the battle right before the regression overlapped before his eyes.

‘You’re not in good shape. Take a rest for a moment.’

‘…No. I’m fine.’

‘I… I’ve never seen you coughing up blood like this before.’

“Taesung, Taesung… Kang Taesung!”

But his loss of reason was brief. As Lee Hwan shook his chest, the closed eyes suddenly opened wide as if he had never collapsed. The unfocused pupils alternated between examining Lee Hwan and their surroundings before gradually regaining their clarity.

“Kang Tae…”

A hand reddened from consecutive use of abilities firmly grabbed Lee Hwan’s clothes. A wound that hadn’t fully healed yet was revealed above the white, thin waist. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be injured from the fall, as the wound remained well closed.

“What, what are you…!”

“Get off.”

Taesung swallowed his groan and released him without resistance. Only then did Lee Hwan come to his senses and quickly moved aside, gently wiping away the blood flowing down his mouth. His mask must have flown off earlier, as it had disappeared at some point, leaving only the sensation of his soft lips.

While Taesung shook off the blood droplets on his eyelashes and searched through his bag, Lee Hwan felt some relief at seeing he didn’t appear to be seriously injured and stood up, though his body felt like it might collapse. His hands were still trembling slightly.

“Haaah…”

He had been too flustered just now. To think that abnormal reaction, which had been quiet for a while, would appear again. When he saw blood—no, when he encountered blood while with Taesung—he kept losing his reason and his body froze.

Perhaps it was because Taesung had been seriously injured during the last moment before the regression. Despite having returned to the past a long time ago, the anxiety and worry from that time kept vividly reviving now.

Lee Hwan looked at Taesung once more and felt some relief upon seeing him get up soundly and apply pressure to his forehead. Only then did he catch his breath and deliberately turn his head to examine the dark surroundings.

‘Where… is this place?’

Just moments ago, he and Taesung had fallen underground as the path in the gate collapsed. Due to the darkness, he couldn’t gauge the height, but recalling the moment of falling, it felt like they had dropped well over 20 meters.

Click.

Taking out a small flashlight from his bag and pointing it upward, he confirmed that this place was indeed dizzyingly deep. If they had been unlucky, they might have died right there. Fortunately, thanks to using his ability to the maximum, Taesung seemed to be safe. He had been worried that he might have crushed him, but there didn’t seem to be any additional injuries.

And he himself, although he had coughed up a little blood, wasn’t in bad physical condition apart from being tired.

‘Could this be… a hidden room?’

No, it didn’t seem so. Looking closely, this place was more like an elongated hole rather than any kind of path or location. Even though the floor had collapsed, it didn’t particularly look like a trap, nor did it seem like any conditions had been met.

Moreover, it just felt like… somehow they had destroyed a perfectly intact path.

‘Then are we screwed…?’

Thinking about climbing back up, he directed the flashlight beam higher and saw a completely blocked ceiling in the distance. It seemed that not only had the floor collapsed, but the surrounding walls had also collapsed and blocked the hole.

Lee Hwan’s heart sank. Suddenly, the worst-case scenario crossed his mind.

Am I trapped underground in the gate?

“What did you do?”

In a space where bioluminescent insects flickered and flew around, and the cave walls faintly shone in the flashlight’s beam, Taesung asked while wiping the blood from his eyes. When Lee Hwan didn’t respond, he glanced up briefly and changed his question.

“No, what accident did you cause?”

While he was grateful that Taesung acknowledged there was no intent, if one considered how the crack had started in the first place, this wasn’t the right time to ask such a question.

“Me?”

“Us.”

Fortunately, Taesung quickly detected the unpleasant expression that appeared on Lee Hwan’s face. Only then did Lee Hwan furrow his brow and concisely began to summarize the situation.

“I’m… not sure how to explain this. Roughly speaking, I heard there might be a hidden room in this gate, so I came to look for it, then someone suddenly interfered, and thanks to someone, the gate was impacted, causing the walls and floor to break and end up like this. The hole we fell through is blocked, making it difficult to escape upward.”

“Hidden room? I doubt a hidden room would open just by breaking a wall.”

“I never said this was a hidden room.”

“Then…”

“We just unluckily fell into a cave crevice.”

In a word, we’re stranded. Lee Hwan heaved a deep sigh.

Hidden room my ass. He had assumed too much without knowing properly. The exploration method added in those four years was simply about investigating whether there was a deep cavity created by groundwater below.

Only after falling did he roughly guess why such a space hadn’t been discovered in this rather old gate. Since the area above wasn’t a section where monsters appeared, no one would have used abilities strong enough to destroy the walls.

Then, by some accident, someone discovered this underground area, and for unknown reasons, Naru thoroughly concealed that fact.

Taesung, having heard Lee Hwan’s explanation, seemed to have much to say. His expression suggested he wanted to criticize point by point, from what basis Lee Hwan had to believe there was a hidden room to why he thought he could open it alone.

However, wisely, instead of wasting time questioning all that, he asked the one most necessary thing.

“Haah… So, what’s the way out of here?”

“Since going back up seems absolutely impossible, our best bet is to walk along the wall and see if there’s another opening.”

“…I knew something was off from the beginning.”

‘Who was the one who suddenly had an episode after I mentioned the ginseng promotion association…?’

Lee Hwan felt a bit wronged and grumbled internally. Did he ride the gate just for his own benefit? Without knowing what kind of hardships he was going through to unravel the terribly tangled events.

However, he chose not to voice that thought. Not only was it something he couldn’t explain, but it was also clear that starting another fight here would only deplete the energy they needed to escape.

“Let’s move then.”

Of course, it wasn’t just Lee Hwan who was holding back his irritation; Taesung also had a vein standing out on his neat forehead. Lee Hwan felt somewhat gloomy as he walked alongside him.

Why did accidents always happen when he was with Taesung? He had prepared himself to be disliked for the many things he planned to do in the future, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be seen as a walking disaster like this.

“Cough…”

Whenever he coughed, a fishy smell of blood rose from the back of his throat. Having suddenly overexerted himself, he felt like his insides would turn over for a while. But he didn’t particularly want to rest in this situation.

‘It’s chilly.’

Both the atmosphere and the cave air. Lee Hwan didn’t even notice Taesung turning his eyes to check on him from time to time, as he pressed and wiped away the slowly flowing nosebleed.

* * *

The space that had seemed like a simple crevice or hole was more intricately twisted than expected. They would proceed south, but then at some point, looking at the compass, they would find themselves walking north again. Even after climbing along a wall, they would walk for a long time only to find themselves going downhill.

And the more they walked, the colder the air became. At some point, they started to shiver, and their fingertips gradually became stiff.

‘This is strange.’

He had started feeling the change in earnest about 10 minutes ago. As he walked, sometimes ahead of Taesung and sometimes behind, his toes suddenly started to feel numb. Until then, he had just thought it was a unique section and moved on, but as it got this cold, he couldn’t help but pay attention.

“Haah.”

When he exhaled a long breath, white vapor puffed out in a cloud. For such a clear vapor, it had to be at least below freezing. While this cave environment was naturally damp and cool, this gate wasn’t supposed to be this cold.

Sensing something odd, Lee Hwan looked to the side and saw that Taesung had also stopped walking with a stiff expression. He suddenly struck the wall, and a translucent chunk of ice fell right in front of them and shattered with a crackle.

‘What… is this?’

The things attached to the wall, which they had thought were stalactites, were actually all icicles.

Taesung opened his bag, making a rustling sound. Lee Hwan turned to him and couldn’t help but groan. The water in the bottle he took out was completely frozen.

Taesung poured the melted water into his hand, heated it up intensely, and then flung it into the air. The steam seemed to rise for a moment, but then ice pieces, not water, fell clattering to the ground.

“It seems to have dropped below… minus 20 degrees Celsius.”

It was a shocking sight. If they hadn’t been Awakened persons, their bodies would have frozen and stopped moving long ago. What kind of gate had such a temperature difference between the inside and outside? Even for Lee Hwan, who was resistant to cold, this environment would be somewhat difficult to endure with just a light combat suit. Especially after coughing up blood.

“…Let’s rest a bit before continuing.”

Perhaps because his expression had visibly hardened? Taesung timely suggested a break first. It was fortunate as his energy was already starting to wane. As Lee Hwan gladly prepared a place to sit, Taesung lit a fire on the bare ground. However, for some reason, he quickly extinguished it.

Even before Lee Hwan could wonder why, he glanced up at the ceiling and asked.

“Is that… what I think it is?”

The ice hanging from the ceiling looked quite threatening. If it melted and fell, it could be quite dangerous.

“I guess lighting a fire is out of the question.”

Taesung muttered and tossed his water bottle to Lee Hwan. Somehow he had already warmed it, and the cozy warmth thawed Lee Hwan’s frozen hands.

“Staying too long will drain our body heat, so let’s rest for 30 minutes at a time and then continue.”

“Let’s do that.”

Lee Hwan answered as he took a sip of the steaming water.

He said that, but the only one whose body temperature would drop would be himself. Taesung was a person who could maintain a fire for a long time without fuel, using his stamina and abilities as fuel.

Then all he could do was to not become a burden.

Lee Hwan rummaged through his bag and took out the provisions he had brought. The beef jerky and biscuits were hard frozen. As he broke them into small pieces and put them in his mouth, chewing slowly, Taesung stared at them blankly.

“My stamina has been really low lately.”

Given his personality, he probably wouldn’t feel left out for eating alone. Or maybe he was going to criticize him for being able to eat in this situation? As Lee Hwan muttered an excuse and tossed a piece of jerky into his mouth, unexpectedly, Taesung reached out his arm.

Lee Hwan instinctively flinched and was about to put up his guard when he realized that Taesung was simply holding out his hand. With a bewildered expression, he handed over what he was eating whole, and the once neatly rectangular jerky twisted slightly as steam rose above it.

With a soft thud, the warmed jerky returned to Lee Hwan’s hand.