Unlike Cheon Shin Woo, I liked his honest demeanor. It wasn’t reassuring, but strangely comforting.

Unaware of my thoughts, Baek Yi Hyun began to devise a simple plan.

“First, Baek Yi Hyun, you’ll be the tank. I’ll handle the damage. And you, Cheon’s younger sibling. You support from the back. That’s it!”

It was indeed a simple plan.

Knowing only useless information and ignorant of the real hunter ecosystem, I cautiously asked.

“Is this how it usually goes?”

“……As if. Our guild leader is just unique.”

I see. Well, if one had their wits about them, they wouldn’t do something as reckless as entering an S-class gate alone.

Regardless of what others said, Baek Yi Hyun just grinned nonchalantly.

“Do you know what kind of monster the boss is?”

Baek Yi Hyun asked.

“Hm? I don’t know?”

Baek Yi Hyun replied. My sigh deepened.

“What? Why are you like that? Isn’t it obvious? Seeing those spectres and rattling skulls wandering around, it’s 1200 percent a lich. The question is what kind of lich, but it’s definitely a lich, right?”

Baek Yi Hyun hurriedly added as Cheon Shin Woo and I sighed.

It sounds plausible, but… isn’t the problem what kind of lich it is? Like most liches, it’s probably a mage who dabbled in darkness and eventually meddled with the realm of death.

I wonder if those two have decent magic defense.

“So just be careful of curse-type attacks with death attributes. Oh, do you perhaps have that? A cleansing skill.”

“I do have a debuff removal skill, but I’m not sure. The description isn’t very detailed…”

“Well then, we just need to take it down before the effects stack up.”

That probably won’t work normally. I don’t know. If an experienced S-class hunter says so, I guess I’ll have to believe it and give it a try.

Seeing my doubt, Baek Yi Hyun smiled.

“It’s okay. My job class is paladin, so I can endure quite a bit. Just support simply from the back without overdoing it.”

He whispered, adding this:

“You don’t even have to support. Just don’t get hurt.”

“Hey now. I can hear everything. Youth is good and all, but save the flirting for after we get out.”

“……It’s not flirting.”

“How dare you youngsters whisper in front of adults!”

I sighed softly as I looked at the two of them.

“……You both have light attributes, right?”

“Yeah, I only have the light attribute.”

“I have light and speed. The other one is a secret.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I won’t tell you my attributes either.”

In truth, it’s more that I don’t know what the four seasons and illusion attributes do, so I can’t explain them.

“What else would a buffer have besides light? Is the meeting over?”

I don’t have the light attribute though.

Unable to say otherwise, I nodded slightly.

“……Yes.”

“Let’s go!”

I’m really not sure if we should go like this.

[This is the timeline separator]

Perhaps due to the unusually red sky, the air felt unsettled. Corpses of people who couldn’t escape in time were strewn about the streets.

‘A gate most resembling the day of ruin…’

The sight of the gate, expected to have caused the most casualties since the day of ruin, was horrific.

“……Wouldn’t it be better to save at least some people before going straight to the boss?”

I asked while closing the eyes of someone who had died with their eyes open.

“It seems like you could save people right away that way, right? But what about the people we can’t save immediately? They’ll keep dying. In that case, it’s better to take down the boss first.”

Came the reply. I wanted to object, but couldn’t find the right words.

He has no obligation to clear this gate in the first place. He only came to rescue me at Min Yu Shin’s request.

As I walked looking at the ground, a hand roughly patted my head.

“Are you dissatisfied?”

“……No.”

“What do you mean no? It’s written all over your face. Geez, the more I look at you, the less you resemble Cheon.”

“……”

Despite his seemingly cheerful words, I sensed uneasy emotions from him. A deep displeasure, and extreme anger towards the being that created this devastation.

Ah, this person is just enduring it. Though his expression is clumsy and rough, he’s fundamentally a good person.

As we moved through the area, Baek Yi Hyun kept talking incessantly. He gave me some basic supplies.

“These are supplies provided by Amwol anyway, so you don’t need to pay them back. It’s enough to put the debt on Cheon.”

He also explained precautions for dealing with liches. Most of it was information I already knew.

“And you need to be careful of the surrounding minions. For a gate of this scale, there will be at least three or four small fry. Skeleton monsters only need to watch out for physical attacks, but darkness attributes constantly make mental attacks, so you can’t lose focus even for a moment. I’ve seen several guys who got careless trusting their skills and ended up dead.”

Is he perhaps deliberately talking to me to ease my tension? As I looked up from the ground, I met his grayish-blue eyes.

“I’m talking to you.”

“……But I have an immunity skill?”

“Did you hear with your ears turned backwards when I said I’ve seen several guys who got careless trusting their skills and ended up dead? There are ones that amplify uneasy emotions by slipping through the gaps when you receive a big shock. You need to stay sharp.”

“I have a mental barrier too.”

“……You’re just like Cheon, not backing down an inch.”

I briefly imagined the relationship between Cheon Shin Woo and Baek Yi Hyun before stopping myself.

Finally, we reached the front of a lake.

“Hey, skull head. We came when called. Don’t be stingy and open the way quickly?”

Baek Yi Hyun, who had a natural talent for aggro despite not being a tank, suddenly said this. Surprised, I looked at him as the lake water parted in half, smoothly opening a path.

“……This works?”

“This actually works……”

“Yeah, from S-class onwards they’re quite intelligent, so this kind of talk usually works.”

I don’t think I saw that information during training. I nodded at the information that can only be known through actual experience.

We descended stairs that shouldn’t normally exist in a lake. It was damp and gloomy.

A short exclamation was heard.

“Huh, erosion and a dungeon. This has everything.”

“A dungeon?”

“Don’t you know? A dungeon is……”

“I do know, but this is a dungeon?”

“Don’t interrupt, you rude sibling. It may be simplified, but it’s still a dungeon. There might be traps and such, so be careful going down.”

Hearing that, the path surrounding us suddenly felt new.

A monster’s lair where you have to clear floors.

Even on cleared floors, monsters except the boss constantly regenerate, and with different environments and difficulties on each floor, many people come to farm items or die while trying to clear it – that’s what a dungeon is known to be.

I heard there are only two dungeons in the whole world: ‘The Endless Labyrinth’ and ‘The Tower of the End’.

The place where the boss monster resides seemed quite different from the known dungeons, perhaps because it was simplified, but the traps were similar to what I’d heard about.

“Ah, this is really annoying.”

And Baek Yi Hyun and Baek Yi Hyun crudely walked through the path that might have traps.

“Is it okay to go like that?!”

“What’s the problem? We can just dodge.”

“It’s fine, Shin Ah. The traps in dungeons inside gates like this aren’t that sophisticated, so it doesn’t hurt much even if you get hit.”

A shower of arrows passed by. It looks very painful.

“Well well, if an A-class can dodge it, how can an S-class not?”

“My agility stat isn’t that high!”

“That’s bragging, bragging.”

Baek Yi Hyun, who crushed an incoming iron mace with his bare hands, clicked his tongue. It’s unfair. That I’m abnormal for not being able to do something like that.

The reckless behavior continued after that.

“……Are all high-ranking hunters like this?”

Baek Yi Hyun, who had just leapt over a split floor, answered cheerfully.

“Not all are like this, I’m just a bit strong.”

Baek Yi Hyun, who was carrying me, also answered.

“I’m a special case too. Um, not everyone, but S-classes probably are like this?”

He jumped over what looked to be at least a 5-meter distance while carrying me…….

Is this what it feels like to be mentally exhausted?

The two of them lightly overcame traps and monsters, even humming tunes.

Even in sections where traps and skeletons appeared simultaneously, they only got a few scratches, easily passing through in a manner that seemed almost like a sightseeing trip.

The two worked together extremely well. Baek Yi Hyun, wielding a shield and one-handed sword instead of a greatsword, charged forward with his shield, while Baek Yi Hyun who ran out from behind shattered monsters with a single strike. There was no room for me to intervene at all.

If it’s like this, why did they bring me along? I wondered if I was still a burden even after awakening.

Before long, a large door came into view.

“Oh, a door?”

Baek Yi Hyun exclaimed, placing his hands on his waist. Strange letters were engraved on the front of the door.

“[Those driven to the end of life, yet refusing death.]”

Strangely, I could read it. Two pairs of eyes lingered on me before quickly looking away.

“Hmm. How do we open this?”

Baek Yi Hyun knocked on the huge stone door with his fist, wearing a serious expression.

Creeeeak. The door opened by itself.

“Hooh.”

“Huh?”

And behind it was a giant, one-eyed cyclops.

Bang-!

A massive club struck the ground.

Baek Yi Hyun, who had already picked me up and dodged the attack, smiled awkwardly.

“Well, this is a fiery attack right from the start!”

“Grooooar.”

The one-eyed giant was half-rotten. Chunks of flesh were falling off, and bones were visible in places.

In other words, this isn’t the boss.

“Pretty flashy for a mid-boss?”

Is flashiness the problem? The stench of decay makes it hard to breathe. The bodily fluids dripping along with the flesh pieces gave off a terrible smell.

“Hey, Cheon’s sibling! You stay back!”

“I have a name too!”

As I covered my nose with my sleeve and moved to the back, Baek Yi Hyun and Baek Yi Hyun nimbly attacked the one-eyed giant.

I should do something, but I can’t do anything because of the smell. I tried using one skill that I could see.

[Skill Used – Illusion of Enchantment (S)] [System:: Incorrect target.]

Huh?

“Hey, temptress! What did you do? It’s starting to get excited!”