When I came to, the first thing I registered was the sound of something scraping the ground, like hundreds of thin, rod-like things dragging across it.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Yes, like the noise insects might make as they crawled through the narrow gaps in the thin walls of our house… No, wait. This wasn’t the time for me to be lying around like this, was it?
My mind snapped fully awake. I remembered the last scene I had seen. Before losing consciousness, I had clearly been caught up in a Dungeon Break!
“Grandma!”
I immediately opened my eyes and looked around. Something damp and warm was surrounding me. It didn’t take much effort to guess what it was.
“A cocoon made by a monster…?” If that was the case, then the monster was most likely an ant or possibly some kind of spider.
I reached out and touched the pale, cloudy membrane surrounding me. The moment I made contact, it felt soft and sticky, like a thick liquid. And the instant that substance touched my skin—Psss! The surface of my skin slightly melted. Judging by the faint smell of cooking meat, it probably contained acid.
But this was different from the past nineteen years, when I couldn’t circulate mana without being detected by the system. My body might be that of a fragile girl, but the magical knowledge I possess hasn’t gone anywhere. And since I didn’t have the luxury of lingering here any longer, I immediately channeled mana into my fingers and extended it. Mana surged over my nails, rising like blades.
Fshhk! The cocoon’s membrane split open.
“The boss… she’s not here.”
I looked around, but there was no one in sight. It was dark in every direction, and when I ran my hand along the wall, chunks of hard-packed soil crumbled away. Just as I suspected, this was an ant nest.
With no time to waste, I pressed my hand to the wall and began a search. For now, I could only cast basic detection magic, but even that was enough to sense life reactions within roughly a one-kilometer radius; useful enough.
In an instant, mana drained from my body, and a mapped image rose up in my mind. A tangled network of ant tunnels came into view.
There are more life reactions than I expected… no, for an ant nest, is this actually fewer than normal? There are no reactions from young ones… that’s strange too.
I had a rough grasp of the structure, but the problem was that I couldn’t distinguish between human and monster life signatures. That was only natural. My magical abilities had leaped forward when I became a Demon Lord in my previous life, and back then, there was no need to differentiate between human and monster life at all.
“First of all, this place I’m in is a food storage chamber… specifically, one for long-term reserves.”
The primary food source of invaders, monsters, is usually human vitality, in other words, mana. So naturally, this body must have looked like food worth storing for later.
But the old lady boss was different. If she had truly been caught up in the Dungeon Break with me… then as an ordinary person and an elderly one at that, from the ants’ perspective it would be far more likely they’d paralyze her and eat her right away, rather than bother storing her as long-term food.
Which meant there wasn’t much time.
I roughly memorized the map and kicked off the ground, bursting forward. It wasn’t that I was genuinely worried about her out of heartfelt concern, or that a former Demon Lord had suddenly developed a noble urge to save an old woman.
It was simply that if my brother found out a nearly seventy-year-old grandmother had been swept up in a Dungeon Break, he would obviously be utterly devastated. And if she ended up dying and we had to hold a funeral because she’d been dragged into it because of me, he might actually collapse. I couldn’t bear to see that happen again.
The moment I burst out of the chamber where I’d been trapped, a massive ant passing by the entrance spotted me.
Kiiiek!
It was about the size of a mid-sized car. Judging by the fact that its mandibles weren’t particularly sharp, it seemed to be a worker ant. Its sharp legs and antennae aimed straight at me, ready to strike at any moment.
I swung the edge of my hand toward the giant ant.
Fshhk! A blade of sharp mana flew out like a sword, slicing through the joint between the ant’s head and torso. It all happened in an instant. Green blood sprayed everywhere.
It wasn’t a soldier ant, just a worker, so even a blow like that was enough to tear its exoskeleton apart. The ant’s compound eyes, like countless tiny lenses clustered together, flickered with disbelief before its body collapsed to the ground.
User “Jeong Daon” has defeated a monster for the first time.
The system has identified the monster’s name and rank.
Monster: Worker Ant (Rank D)
The system sent an alert. It seemed this was the first appearance of this type of monster to ever appear on Earth. That said, the naming sense was painfully lazy. “Worker Ant,” really?
More importantly… it looks like it released pheromones.
With my senses sharpened from casting detection magic, I caught an unpleasant smell.
If it calls its comrades, that’ll be annoying.
My decision was instant, and I clenched my fist. Crack! The surrounding air compressed into a single point, and the massive ant’s corpse crumpled inward along with it. If an enemy had still been alive there, they would’ve been suffocated as the air was sealed off, so you could say this was a relatively merciful death. I froze the ant’s body, now crushed like a wad of paper trash, and quickened my pace.
It had been a long time since I’d used magic, but it didn’t feel awkward at all. If anything, I felt freer than ever, like escaping from a fishbowl into the open sea. Even though my mana was still limited, around level 12… for a mage of my caliber, that wasn’t really a problem.
Things would be different if I tried large-scale magic, but still… something about this feels off.
I’d pushed the thought aside while searching for the old lady boss, but the situation itself was fundamentally impossible.
That man who had entered the supermarket so casually; the fact that he’d broken through my unique magic to get inside, and the fact that he’d somehow triggered a Dungeon Break, everything about it was strange.
There are only two ways to break my unique magic. Either you already know how to enter it from the outset, or you overpower it with such overwhelming force that you shatter the barrier entirely. But it wasn’t the latter. If he’d exerted that level of power, my magic would’ve been completely destroyed, and I would have noticed immediately. Which meant that the unknown man knew how to enter my unique spell, “Spine of the Waterwheel.”
But that made no sense as there is no one in this world who knows about my unique magic.
No, there must not be.
Even if such a person existed, that would mean they knew who I really was and had come to eliminate me… but even then, my identity had only been exposed to the system half a day ago. The timing didn’t add up. And forcing a Dungeon Break on top of that? If such a method existed, it would be fascinating in itself, but more importantly, even if someone wanted me gone, that wasn’t something a human on Earth would come up with. Once a dimensional rift forms, it doesn’t disappear even after the dungeon closes. It would be tantamount to courting self-destruction.
No matter how I looked at it, nothing about this situation made sense.
Crunch!
As I crushed yet another ant, I fell deeper into thought.
“Who on earth was that?”
“Oh no… what is this?”
“We came here to cover a story, what the hell happened…? Does anyone have a way to contact the outside?”
“I didn’t bring any high-grade items like that…”
They had come chasing the biggest scoop to appear on an ability test day in years, so what was this supposed to be?
Among the reporters lying paralyzed by ant venom, tension and despair flickered.
A sudden Dungeon Break had occurred, and before they could even resist, they’d been dragged here and immobilized by the ants. In a situation like this, having hope would have been stranger. There were no monsters visible nearby at the moment, but having seen those gigantic ant monsters earlier, everyone was visibly shaken. To make matters worse, among the reporters there wasn’t even a single E-rank or F-rank Hunter.
Rushing out so hastily and failing to bring along a colleague with a Hunter license had been the fatal mistake.
“Still, there should be rescue Hunters somewhere nearby. If we just hold on a little longer, won’t they come in?”
“A dungeon isn’t something you can enter right away… and a Dungeon Break is an emergency situation. Do you really think rescue will arrive that fast?”
“Being this pessimistic won’t change anything.”
“That’s right. In the first place, it’s not just us here. Hunter Jeong Daon should be somewhere in this dungeon too, shouldn’t she?”
At those words, everyone’s attention turned to a single person. Their gazes fell on the elderly woman who owned the supermarket and had employed Jeong Daon as a part-timer.
Someone urged her on. “Ma’am, please tell us. What about Hunter Jeong Daon? Wasn’t she dragged in here too?”
“What Hunter are you talking about?!” The grandmother, who had been lying there as still as if she were dead, finally erupted in anger, “I don’t know anything about Hunters or whatever! Have you no shame? Do you think it’d be good for a child to get dragged into this too? She hasn’t even graduated high school yet!”
“That’s not what I mean, ma’am. Jeong Daon awakened as an S-rank today, so if she’s here, she could help—”
“I said I don’t know! If she’s not here, then we should just hope she’s safe outside. What does a child know that she should come rescue us?!”
At that, a silence like pure despair settled among the reporters. The one remaining sliver of hope had been Jeong Daon, who might have been inside the supermarket, but now it seemed they would have no choice but to lie here and wait for rescue that might or might not come.
A curse slipped from someone’s mouth. “Damn it, seriously. She’s no help at all.”
“If she’d just let us do a quick interview, we’d have gone home already!”
“What’s so hard about saying a few words? Why make such a big deal out of it, grandma?”
They were only saying this because they were paralyzed by venom. If they hadn’t been immobilized, they might have even turned violent against a frail elderly woman. Sudden misfortune, the despair of having no one to save them, and the urgency of being in mortal danger, there were more than enough reasons for people to lose their composure.
“Aren’t the ones closest to the entrance going to get eaten first? Try to move back a little!”
“We’re paralyzed! How are we supposed to move?!”
“You’re just not trying to move! Ever since you got your big break, you’ve been looking down on people from the same batch—!”
“Why the hell are you bringing that up now?!”
Amid the escalating shouting, the grandmother simply kept her eyes tightly shut. There was nothing else she could do. That was when—
Sssshk!
The sound of thin, chitinous legs brushing against the floor echoed through the room. As if they’d never been arguing, everyone held their breath. But the silence didn’t last long.
“Hiiiii!”
“Aaaah! Help, help me!”
How many ordinary people could keep their sanity in front of dozens of ant monsters?
The ants had swarmed into the room where the people lay helpless. Overwhelming terror crashed down on them.
Menacing antennae twitched, and the ants’ eyes folded and unfolded like mechanical devices as they stared at the humans. Drool dripped from their mandibles, and wherever it hit the floor, it hissed as toxic fumes rose.
With a click, click, the ants lowered their heads toward their prey.
“Help me! Help me! Aaaah!”
Just as one reporter lying closest to the entrance was about to be torn apart between those jaws—
Crunch!
Splatter!
The sounds of something being ripped and bursting apart rang out, and something cold splashed everywhere. The people lying there, unable to move, were all sprayed with that sticky substance at once. But none of them had the luxury of complaining about it.
“Boss! You were here after all.”
The swarm of ants that had been threatening them moments ago now lay scattered across the floor like a slaughterhouse, and standing among them was a single girl in a school uniform. She had glossy black hair worn long and straight, a gray uniform knit vest over her shirt, with a few buttons undone as if it felt stifling. But overall, she looked neat and pretty. It was a truly bizarre sight. On the street, she would have looked like nothing more than an ordinary student.
But this was a dungeon.
And that uniformed girl was holding not tanghulu or bubble tea, but the severed head of a giant ant in one hand, and in the other, she was tearing apart an ant’s wings with her bare hands.
“Hic!” One of the reporters let out a hiccup from sheer shock at the sight. It was that unreal a scene.
Everyone there knew the girl’s name: Jeong Daon.
It was the moment when Korea’s 11th awakened S-rank Hunter revealed her name to the world for the first time.