I kept rolling endlessly through the mud. Honestly, if you saw me from a distance, I’m certain you wouldn’t even recognize me as human. You’d probably think a lump of mud was moving around. But this was the only way to avoid the ants with their poor eyesight.
I should’ve exercised more earlier!
This was far too intense for a third-year high schooler who’d spent her life focused solely on college entrance exams. If my stamina and strength hadn’t increased as a reward for defeating the queen ant just before this, I would’ve been dead long ago. My throat tasted of blood from the severe thirst. Still, I was lucky in that the monsters I was dealing with had relatively low intelligence, and that there was terrain nearby where I could mask my scent. Even so, some level of damage was unavoidable.
“Find the enemy! Find the enemy!”
“Secrete poison!”
“Melt it! Melt it!”
"Ugh!" I let out a short cry.
Hiding in the mud to avoid the ants was only a temporary solution. No matter how low-tier they were, the ants still had some intelligence. As soon as they realized I was concealing my scent by hiding in the mud, they took action.
They began spraying poison in all directions.
Drip, drip. Purple poison spread through the muddy ground. The poison seeped into the mud where I was hiding.
Sizzle! The poison-soaked mud burned my skin as if it were melting it away.
The pain of my skin dissolving while fully conscious was bad enough, but the real problem was where the acid made contact. I clamped my mouth shut to keep from screaming, but the smell of burning flesh gave away my position, and the ants swarmed toward me.
"Over here! Over here!"
“Avenge the queen!”
You annoyingly diligent bastards!
I worried about secondary infection, but I had no other choice. To mask the smell of my melting skin, I desperately pressed fresh mud over my wounds and lowered my body as much as I could.
I must have looked utterly pathetic.
How much time… has passed now?
I was barely hanging on through sheer luck, but time was not on my side. My stamina was steadily draining away. Each time I rolled to avoid the ants, my injuries increased, and my movements naturally slowed.
Kiiiiiik!
“I smell it!”
The situation…showed no sign of improving. Not only had no rescue arrived, but there was no system message saying the error had been resolved either.
Damn it.
I tried forcing mana into my exhausted muscles to recover, but with my mana circuits strained from using incantation magic earlier, I couldn’t cast even the simplest spell. I’d boldly declared I’d hold out, but honestly, I was out of options now. Then again, thrown in here unarmed and surviving this long with nothing but my bare body was already a miracle.
“Still… haven’t I done enough?”
As if that weren’t enough, maybe some poison had splashed into my eyes while I was rolling around in the mud as my vision was starting to blur. And because of that, in a momentary lapse of judgment, part of my skin was exposed above the mud.
“There!”
Ziiik!
I barely managed to roll aside and avoid the mandibles aimed straight for my throat. The ant’s jaws plunged into the mud instead. But I couldn’t avoid it completely. Right beside me, the ant’s compound eyes locked onto me, their movement horrifyingly grotesque.
Click, click! The mandibles buried in the mud ground together roughly.
But now, I had no strength left to escape.
Damn it.
I bit down hard on my lip. I tried to stand, but there was no strength left in my arms or legs.
Was this… really it? Was this as far as Jeong Daon, the human… could go?
Just as I truly sensed the end approaching, I squeezed my eyes shut. “Jeong Dajeong… I’m sorry…”
At that moment, a different sound reached my ears.
Crunch!
“An enemy! A new enemy!”
“It hurts! It hurts!”
“Help!”
There were cries of fresh pain. Forcing my fading consciousness to respond, I lifted my head. And when I looked up, the swarm of ants that had blackened the horizon was being torn apart, literally ripped to shreds. Their bodies scattered like ash blown by fire.
“…What?”
And more than anything, the flow of mana in this world was in upheaval. No, not just mana. Even the air itself felt ominous.
At first, I wondered if a new monster had appeared, but that didn’t seem right. No monster that could appear in a low-tier dungeon like this could possibly wield such overwhelming power.
The true nature of this strange vortex was...
A new user has entered the dungeon.
For the first time, I felt pure relief at a system message. It might even have been closer to elation.
The rescue team had finally arrived!
“They’re fast enough, damn it…”
They’d come just in time, right on the brink of death. I was annoyed, sure, but judging by how quickly they were sweeping away the monsters, it seemed a very strong group of Hunters had arrived. Even if the ants were low-tier monsters, displaying that level of overwhelming force meant there had to be at least an A-rank Hunter among a rescue team of a dozen or so. If that was the case, clearing a low-level dungeon like this would only be a matter of time.
“Wow… I lived.”
Once I got out of here, I should message my family right away and tell him to buy some pork belly or something…
I wanted to cheer, but instead I collapsed right there in the mud. I truly felt like I couldn’t do anything anymore. And in truth, I didn’t need to.
“Run away! Run away!”
“Fight back! Fight back!”
The ants that had been bent on avenging their queen no longer paid me any attention at all. More precisely, they couldn’t afford to as an overwhelmingly powerful enemy had appeared at the rear of their ranks.
The sky that had been blackened by ants was instantly dyed green. It was utter chaos, a scene that looked like the end of the world itself. And yet, for humans, it was also a scene of victory.
The dungeon has been cleared.
Then, from among the vanished invaders, a voice rang out, “Rescue team!” This time, it wasn’t a monster’s voice; it was a human’s. “If there are any survivors, please respond!”
I desperately wanted to answer, but I truly didn’t have the strength even for that, so I forced out what little power I had left and lifted my head. I wanted to see the rescue team. And when I barely managed to make out the figures approaching from afar, I blinked.
The rescue force that had displayed such overwhelming might was…just one man.
That was unexpected. Hunters usually avoided solo dungeon runs for safety reasons. But no matter how long I looked, there really was only one man. He held a sword in one hand, and strikingly, he had white hair. Not dyed, but truly gone white. Yet his face was still youthful, perhaps in his early twenties.
“Ah… no way…”
Even if poison had blurred my vision, and even if I was just an exam-taking student with no interest in gossip, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize that face.
Because that man was…the most famous Hunter in South Korea, a man whose face you’d see endlessly on department store billboards and in TV commercials.
“Ah, found you.”
I opened my eyes wide.
The one who had cleared this dungeon alone was the S-rank Hunter, Yu Hanul; a name no one in South Korea could fail to know. Just like the reporters who’d been trapped in the dungeon with me earlier, who praised my achievements yet still brought up Yu Hanul’s name, he was practically a symbol representing Korean Hunters as a whole.
But then why would someone of his stature come as a rescuer to such a shabby dungeon?
Even though I couldn’t respond, Yu Hanul was quick to notice me, befitting an S-rank Hunter. Without wasting any time, he rushed over and supported me as I lay sprawled in the mud.
“Are you okay?”
Then he pulled up my ID photo on a Hunter-exclusive PDA issued by the government and alternated his gaze between the screen and my face.
“Hmm… You’re Jeong Daon, right?”
It was only natural for Yu Hanul to look doubtful. The state I was in was beyond words. I’d been rolling around in the mud for hours, and every bit of exposed skin was scraped and torn.
“Ah, if it’s hard to talk, you don’t have to. It must’ve been really tough.”
I stared at Yu Hanul quietly, intently. He’d looked impressive enough in advertisements and photos, but up close, his appearance was even more like a finely sculpted statue, even his white hair failed to mar that sharply carved beauty in the slightest. But that wasn’t the problem. What shocked me wasn’t admiration for a mere human’s looks.
This was my first time seeing the famous Hunter Yu Hanul in person, yet…
When I still couldn’t bring myself to speak, Yu Hanul seemed to think I was wary of him and smiled gently, his eyes curving as he did. “Ah, I’m part of the rescue team here to contain the Dungeon Break. I’m not an enemy. Have you… perhaps heard of Yu Hanul?”
That was something any Korean with eyes and a functioning brain would know. In fact, any Korean citizen would also know why Yu Hanul’s distinctive white hair had appeared in the first place. After all, the story of how Yu Hanul had gone in alone to stop a Dungeon Break, defeated an S-rank monster, and burned through so much mental energy that his hair turned white had been turned into a documentary and broadcast on public television whenever there was nothing better to air.
When I still didn’t respond despite his efforts, he looked at me with clear concern. “Are you in severe mental shock? Can you talk?”
Mud, ant bodily fluids, my appearance must have been hard to look at, yet there was no trace of disgust or hesitation in his gaze. Only pure worry. He was, quite literally, the image of a kind Hunter concerned for a civilian left behind in a dungeon. Even though just moments ago he’d been wiping out ant monsters as if they were eraser shavings!
“Hm, if you can’t speak, try blinking your eyes at least… Good, you’re conscious. That’s a relief. I’m going to touch you now, Jeong Daon. Don’t be startled. I just want to clean you up. It would be bad if your wounds got infected.”
The hand that had been radiating terrifying sword energy earlier pulled out a handkerchief and gently wiped my face and injured areas.
“Oh dear, your arm is badly hurt. Just in case, it’s better not to use a potion right away. Once we’re outside, you should go straight to the emergency room. Don’t worry too much, though. Injuries far worse than this can be treated easily in our country.”
With power that overwhelming, one might expect arrogance, but his tone was polite and his manner kind, almost gentle, as if reassuring a child. Truly befitting the Hunter most respected in South Korea, despite his young age.
After wiping my face and hands for quite a while, Yu Hanul looked at my slightly cleaner face and widened his eyes. “Huh.” He tilted his head ever so slightly. For the first time, suspicion crept into his gaze. “Have we…met somewhere before?”
I forced out what little voice I had left. "No..." At least in this life.
For an ordinary potential S-rank Hunter, what followed would have been impossible. But for me, a former Demon Lord, there was one thing I could do.
I possessed the Eye of Observation, the ability to peer into another’s soul. That was why I knew the moment I saw Yu Hanul.
He had the color of a soul that could never be mistaken, no matter where it was. Even if the body changed, even if the world one lived in changed, the core of the soul never did. And that brilliantly radiant soul was a light utterly unwelcome to a demon.
Yu Hanul smiled brightly at my answer. “Oh, you spoke.”
Behind him, in a world where all traces of monsters had vanished, the sun was slowly setting. With that backdrop, he almost looked like an angel.
Turning away from that angelic smile, I looked up at the sky.
…I’m screwed.
Why had the hero, who had killed me in my previous life when I was the Demon Lord, reincarnated here?
I had no idea.