Chapter 41 – A Sudden Dungeon Entry

Woo Min-ah ruffled her hair and groaned, “Ugh.” Then, someone answered.

“Can’t an S-class hunter clear a single dungeon alone with a civilian?”

“Ah… I suppose so, right? Since he brought her out safely last time, he’ll bring her out without a single scratch this time too, right?”

“Even if it’s random, they’ll fall into a B-class dungeon, so for an S-class, it’ll be easier than chewing gum.”

Hearing that, it made sense. Woo Min-ah set aside her worries about Hee-na for a moment and shouted at the team members under her command. Her eyes burned.

“Instead of slacking off here, go shake down the bastard who was experimenting with activating the gate stone!”

If Hee-na did not come out of the dungeon within two days, she planned to hunt him down and kill him.

* * *

“Ugh.”

Overwhelmed by the rushing dizziness, Hee-na screamed, unable to compose herself.

It felt like she was inside a spinning barrel ride. The world spun 360 degrees. She felt like she was being sucked into a vacuum cleaner.

That strange dizziness lasted for about ten seconds and then stopped completely.

“I-I’m dizzy.”

Hee-na groaned, clutching her throbbing head. She was so dizzy that her vision went in and out as if she were anemic.

Kang Jin-hyun set Hee-na down on the floor to let her sit.

“Hee-na, are you alright? Are you very dizzy?”

He knelt on one knee and examined the sitting Hee-na, checking her over.

Kang Jin-hyun confirmed that there were no visible external injuries and took his hands off Hee-na’s shoulders. Then, he quietly waited for her to regain her senses.

Once Hee-na regained her senses, the first words out of her mouth were:

“…W-what is this?”

Kang Jin-hyun answered calmly.

“This is a B-class dungeon.”

Though omitting all context was the problem.

“No, I don’t mean that.”

Hee-na massaged her temples as she pressed him.

“…Hunter Kang Jin-hyun and I were just eating lunch on the company rooftop a moment ago.”

“That is correct.”

“Then why did the scenery suddenly change to a dungeon?”

It felt like a dream. It took less than a few minutes—no, a few seconds—for her peaceful daily life to turn into the extraordinary.

“I didn’t even polish a coin or anything this time! Don’t tell me another dungeon gate opened? Is the Blue Dragon Guild going to disappear? It can’t!”

It was the moment when Hee-na’s trauma of losing her job was about to be triggered.

“A dungeon gate did open, but it is not a normal gate opening. It is an artificially created gate.”

“They make gates artificially?”

“It seems the gate mana stone went out of control.”

Kang Jin-hyun explained briefly to the bewildered Hee-na.

He said that someone had overloaded the artificial gate mana stone while experimenting with it, and it seemed they threw it into an empty area to dispose of it.

He also added that while not frequent, this sort of thing happened very occasionally in the guild.

Hee-na could not hide her shock and asked back:

“They’ve been handling it like this? By throwing it onto the rooftop garden?”

It was so slipshod that it was hard to believe it was how a large guild handled things.

“There have been no major issues so far.”

“Isn’t this a matter of whether a problem could occur or not?”

Hee-na was dazed, unable to adapt to the Hunters’ unusual way of thinking. At that, Kang Jin-hyun replied as if it were nothing.

“Of course, we only use this method when there is no one in the rooftop garden. It is just that Hunter Woo Min-ah failed to detect my presence this time.”

That made sense. They were an S-class hunter hiding his presence and his companion. Thus, Woo Min-ah’s mistake in throwing the gate mana stone into the air, judging that no one was on the rooftop, was not that significant.

“For your information, artificially made gates are small in scale, and the time they remain open is extremely short.”

Kang Jin-hyun kindly provided even useless gate trivia.

Hee-na listened to his explanation carefully and organized her complicated thoughts.

“So you mean we had the bad luck of being sucked into an artificial gate and falling into a dungeon?”

“Correct. You understood well.”

Kang Jin-hyun curled the corners of his mouth and praised her like a smart student. However, she was not pleased at all.

Hee-na cried out.

“It feels like it hasn’t even been a month since I went to a dungeon, and I fell into one again!”

She was not even a Hunter, but this was already her third dungeon. A dungeon, which other people might fall into once in a lifetime, if at all, for the third time already!

‘If it’s going to be like this, I’d rather just join the dungeon raid team and get a hefty base salary!’

Out of a sense of unfairness, Hee-na even had such a ridiculous thought. If it were the Kang Jin-hyun from before he tasted Hee-na’s food, he would have welcomed the idea with open arms.

“Do not worry. This dungeon is on the easier side to clear. It was a dungeon scheduled to be cleared by the Blue Dragon Guild in two weeks, but we ended up entering it early like this.”

Kang Jin-hyun seemed to know where they were. He helped Hee-na stand with a familiar expression. The firm hand holding hers felt exceptionally reassuring.

Hee-na looked around.

Huge pillars that looked to be about three meters tall were scattered here and there. Seeing as they had no branches or leaves, they did not look like trees.

Instead, something like a wrinkled flower bud hung from the top of the pillars with its mouth closed. The sizes of the pillars varied slightly, but their shapes were all similar.

“Have you been to this dungeon before?”

“Yes.”

His answer came without hesitation. Hee-na looked up at him as if seeing him in a new light.

“Because the clear is not difficult, I do not step forward now, but I remember entering it during the first subjugation when there was no information.”

Kang Jin-hyun calmly explained the dungeon to her. His relaxed manner, which showed not a hint of agitation, appeared fresh to her.

“This dungeon is formed of colonies of mushroom-type monsters. In this case, if we only catch the boss monster in the dead center of the colony, the rest will all wither and disappear.”

“Mushrooms are… monsters?”

Hee-na recalled the oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms she put in the soybean paste soup today.

‘To think that such mushrooms could be monsters…’

Whether he read her expression or not, Kang Jin-hyun explained in a bit more detail.

“The mushrooms themselves cannot move. However, they can attack enemies by emitting spores.”

“Spores?”

“Yes. The spores move like a swarm of bees.”

“Ugh… I can’t quite imagine it, but it sounds gross and dangerous. Should I wear a mask or something?”

Hee-na took out a disposable mask she used when cleaning and handed it to Kang Jin-hyun.

Kang Jin-hyun politely declined the kindness.

“It is fine. Unless we attack first, the spore attack will not occur. Except around sunrise, it can be considered completely safe. Above all, I will protect you, Hee-na, so you do not need to worry about anything.”

Then he explained further.

“The strategy is simple. For an hour after sunrise, the buds of the mushroom colony open and begin to act. The boss monster’s bud will also open at that time, so we just need to take advantage of that gap to stab and eliminate the center.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Hee-na looked down at her shadow. Whether the sun was directly overhead, her shadow was pooled beneath her feet.

“It’s only noon, so we have to wait until dawn?”

“Yes. However, since there is no need to fight while waiting, the clear can be considered relatively clean and simple.”

He answered quietly while gathering the items swept into the gate along with them. His touch was very careful, as if handling luxury goods.

‘What is it?’

Stretching her neck to take a closer look, she saw it was none other than Hee-na’s insulated lunch box.

“The lunch box seems to have been swept along as well. I thought it would be broken, but it’s surprisingly intact.”

Hee-na squatted beside him and spoke. Since an S-class hunter was recovering the lunch box, she felt like she should do something.

“…Only the lunch box is intact.”

However, the vibe Kang Jin-hyun exuded was somehow unusual. Hee-na turned her head and examined his expression.

‘Uh?’

His eyes, which were usually just indifferent, were a bit different from usual. He was casting a moist gaze—so-called ‘melodramatic eyes’—toward the lunch box.

‘Heavens. My heart is fluttering.’

Hee-na’s heart was vulnerable to a handsome face. Hee-na tried to calm her pounding chest.

“Is something wrong?”

When she asked, Kang Jin-hyun slowly opened his lips.

“The lunch box…”

“The lunch box?”

“I couldn’t even eat half of the lunch box you personally packed for me, Hee-na, but it has all spilled.”

He was indeed. He was grieving as he looked at the ruined contents of the lunch box.

He looked as despondent as a raccoon watching its cotton candy vanish after washing it in water.

Since he held onto the lunch box, not knowing what to do, she stepped in and snatched it.

“It’s just one meal’s lunch box.”

With that, Hee-na shook the dirt-splattered rice and side dishes onto the dungeon floor and discarded them.

Every time food was mercilessly discarded on the floor, Kang Jin-hyun’s pupils shook.

Hee-na had to briefly ponder whether it would be rude to tell him, ‘Hunter, you shouldn’t eat what has fallen on the floor.’

“I’ve tidied it all up roughly.”

Fortunately, Hee-na recovered the lunch box without any major incidents. Kang Jin-hyun could not let go of his attachment to the food discarded on the floor and kept glancing at it.

“When we get out of here, I’ll pack you a lunch box with even tastier things. Don’t be too sad.”

“But this was special…”

“Shh, Hunter.”

Without realizing it, Hee-na ended up making a clicking sound with her tongue, ‘Tsk!’, just like she would to a puppy.

Fortunately, Kang Jin-hyun did not mind Hee-na’s treatment. Instead, he tucked his tail and nodded.

“Understood. I am sorry. I suppose I had a lot of lingering regret because I thought of it as food and an item touched by your hands, Hee-na.”

At any rate, watching an S-class hunter look like a street beggar was a very painful thing.

Hee-na asked something else to divert Kang Jin-hyun’s interest.

“So where should we go? Do we just stay here?”

The Homemaker of the Dungeon