Chapter 172

===================

Translated by Pratt

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

===================

Leaving only the rescue team led by Keldara behind, everyone entered the unknown dungeon.

The rescue team guarded the entrance to the dungeon while preparing for any possible emergency.

Zeon’s party also entered the dungeon last.

The moment they entered the dungeon, their senses became disordered and they felt tremendous pressure.

“Kugh!”

“Ugh!”

Levin and Brielle, who had almost no dungeon experience, had their faces crumple.

Their ears rang, and they could not get their bearings due to the confusion of their senses.

With their insides churning and their whole bodies feeling crushed, the two could not collect themselves.

In contrast, Zeon and Mandy, who had more experience, maintained their composure.

After a moment, the pressure that had been crushing them disappeared as though it had never been there.

Levin and Brielle rolled on the ground in a pathetic heap, while Zeon and Mandy barely managed to keep their balance.

Forcibly calming their churning stomachs, Levin and Brielle raised their heads.

“This is inside the dungeon?”

“What the…”

A sinister scene entered their sight.

It was a forest filled with trees that had lost all their leaves and remained only as branches.

Not a single weed grew on the ground, and the earth was dry and crumbly.

Lightning continued to strike from the pitch-black sky.

At the cruel landscape they had never seen in their lives, Levin and Brielle swallowed dryly.

Getting to his feet, Levin carefully touched one of the skeletal trees.

“Is this what’s called a tree?”

“It is! But since it’s a dead tree, I can’t feel any vitality from it.”

“It feels like something sucked out all life.”

“Your feeling is probably right.”

“But why can’t we see the others?”

“Huh, you’re right?”

At Levin’s words, Brielle too realized that the people who had entered before them were nowhere to be seen.

Only Zeon’s party was here. No other Awakened could be seen.

Then Mandy said, “Among dungeons, there are ones where even if you enter through the same entrance, each group falls in a different place. I think this is one of those.”

“Then does that mean we can’t meet the others again?”

“As we proceed with the raid, we should be able to meet them someday. Of course, that’s assuming they’re alive.”

“Ugh!”

“We have to find the core of the dungeon. Everyone must have been heading there too, so if we reach the core, we’ll naturally be able to meet the others.”

“How do we know what the dungeon core looks like?”

“You’ll naturally know.”

“What?”

“When you see it directly, you’ll know right away.”

“What does that mean?”

Mandy did not answer any further.

She meant exactly what she said, that they should see it for themselves and judge.

Then Zeon said, “Let’s move. We have to hurry and find the others.”

“Yes!”

Zeon immediately started walking.

Following behind him, Brielle asked, “Do you know where we’re supposed to go?”

“No.”

“Then are we just walking without a plan?”

“If we keep walking, we’ll run into some kind of singular point sooner or later. Then we can start seriously finding the way from there.”

“Really?”

Brielle tilted her head with an expression that said she did not understand.

Like Mandy, Zeon did not explain any further to Brielle.

If one only kept learning everything by being told, growth inevitably slowed.

There were things one could only know by crashing into them and experiencing them directly.

Right now, the two of them needed that kind of experience.

Looking over the forest full of dead trees, Zeon thought, ‘A forest without vitality like this. This dungeon raid definitely won’t be easy.’

Dungeons were fragments of Kurayan adrift between dimensions.

Some terrain or place that had broken off from Kurayan manifested in the form of a dungeon.

That meant that this place too was surely some era or place of Kurayan made manifest.

‘I feel like I’ve seen a place like this somewhere before.’

Zeon frowned.

This damp, ominous air did not feel unfamiliar.

But he still could not remember where he had ever felt something like this.

‘I’ll know once we go a little farther.’

At that moment, Brielle suddenly cried out in alarm.

“Oh!”

“What is it?”

“That tree…”

“What’s wrong with the tree?”

“I think it moved.”

“The tree moved? How does that even make… sense.”

Levin blinked.

It was no illusion.

Grrrrk!

One of the trees was truly moving.

A gigantic tree moving while using its roots and branches to stand up.

In the middle of the tree was a face like a human’s, with eyes, nose, and mouth.

Its blinking eyes looked just like a real person’s face.

“Wh-what is that?”

“It’s an ent.”

“What?”

“Just think of it as a moving tree.”

Like a High Elf, Brielle quickly recognized the demonic beast’s identity.

Levin calmed his startled chest and muttered, “If it’s a tree monster, it’s nothing special, right? Can’t we just burn it down?”

Bzzzt!

Purple current streamed out from Levin’s whole body and struck the ent.

The purple current instantly burned the ent away.

Kieee!

The ent let out an eerie scream and turned to charcoal.

Levin dusted off his hands and smiled.

“It was nothing much.”

“You idiot!”

“Why?”

“How can you just kill it? If you rashly kill an ent, all the other ents wake up from sleep.”

“What does that mean?”

Kuuwooo!

In an instant, roars from the ents erupted from all over the forest.

They had awakened after sensing their comrade’s death.

Ents were demonic beasts with a strong love for their own kind.

Though they were tree-shaped, they possessed every emotion a living creature had.

The strongest among them was precisely their attachment to their own kind.

The law of the ent race was to pursue and kill, even to the ends of hell, anyone who killed one of their own.

The ents came walking toward the one who had killed their comrade.

Even though it looked like they were walking slowly, because they were so huge, they closed in on Zeon’s party in an instant.

“Why are there so many?”

“Because it’s a forest.”

“Shit! Then if we just burn them all…”

“Who knows how many more ents there are? You’re going to burn them? You idiot! Try thinking a little. Is your head just decoration?”

“Then what do we do?”

“We run.”

The moment she finished speaking, Brielle started running at terrifying speed.

Zeon and Mandy quietly followed behind her.

Levin, who had been standing there dumbfounded, shouted and ran after them.

“Wait for me.”

***

The place Cha Jin-cheol and the West District Awakened had entered was a canyon.

In the dry canyon where not a blade of grass nor a single tree grew, only chilly wind was blowing.

“What an unpleasant place.”

Cha Jin-cheol deeply furrowed his brow.

He too had entered no small number of dungeons.

But this was the first time he had entered a place where a strong sense of discomfort struck him from the very moment he came in.

The dry wind devoid of life felt as if it were corroding even his mechanical flesh.

“Still, is it at least fortunate that everyone got scattered in order of entry?”

At least it was fortunate that the West District Awakened had not been scattered and were all gathered in one place.

If his subordinates had all scattered, then no matter how capable Cha Jin-cheol was, he would have found it troublesome.

‘Hyeonmu!’

Yes! Master.

Fortunately, the support AI Hyeonmu answered.

It was possible because Hyeonmu had been downloaded into his flesh.

‘Can you tell what kind of dungeon this is?’

There is far too little information.

‘Useless.’

I’m sorry.

Cha Jin-cheol looked back at his subordinates.

More than seventy Awakened were waiting for his decision.

“Split the personnel into two groups and search the dungeon. If you discover a place presumed to be the core, contact each other.”

“Yes!”

Cha Jin-cheol instructed the other team to be led by a West District Awakened only slightly weaker than himself.

Since he was nominally a B-rank Awakened, he would be able to respond to any sudden situation.

Cha Jin-cheol set out to search the dungeon with only a handful of his direct subordinates.

That much confidence in his own strength was exactly what he had.

When they came out of the canyon, a forest full of trees with no leaves and only twisted branches appeared.

“A forest after a canyon?”

Just then, “Euratcha!”

“Yaaah!”

With battle cries, a group burst out from inside the forest.

They were Zeon’s party.

Brielle and Levin were gasping for breath, and even Zeon and Mandy wiped the sweat running down their foreheads with their sleeves.

Levin said, “They won’t be following us now, right?”

“Ents don’t usually come out of the forest.”

“Thank god. We almost died.”

“Isn’t this all because of you? You idiot!”

“Still, I’m not an idiot.”

“Then who told you to attack an ent in the forest?”

“That was…”

Under Brielle’s scolding, Levin stuck out his lips. But since he was guilty, he could not make any further excuses.

Cha Jin-cheol walked toward them and said, “You all get along well.”

“Looks like we fell somewhere near each other.”

“It just turned out that way.”

Cha Jin-cheol replied coldly to Zeon’s question.

His gaze was fixed on Zeon’s face.

Zeon’s face was still pale. It was proof that he had not yet recovered his mana.

“Looks like your mana recovery is delayed.”

“Maybe because the dungeon is like this, it isn’t easy.”

“That makes sense…”

Cha Jin-cheol nodded.

The conventional wisdom was that the more mana-filled a dungeon was, the more easily mana recovered.

In a dungeon almost devoid of vitality like this one, mana recovered more slowly.

Cha Jin-cheol’s eyes gleamed darkly.

‘Hyeonmu! If it’s now, we could kill him easily, right?’

According to calculations, yes.

‘Should we do it?’

I do not recommend it.

‘Why?’

Given the sparse mana in this place, it will take Zeon several days to fully recover his mana. Until then, it is far more efficient to make use of him.

‘As expected.’

The brutal aura disappeared from Cha Jin-cheol’s eyes.

His change was so brief that Levin and Brielle did not notice it. But Zeon and Mandy did not miss it.

Zeon’s gaze suddenly shifted to Cha Jin-cheol’s waist.

“That rope around your waist. Was it always shining like that?”

“What? Hm! Why this?”

Cha Jin-cheol made a bewildered expression.

As Zeon said, the rope hanging at his waist was giving off black light.

That rope was an item he had purchased at the White Bear Caravan’s auction.

Its proper name was the Jailer’s Rope.

He kept it hanging from his waist at all times, but because he was a mechanized Awakened, he had never had occasion to use it.

Zeon said, “Apparently this dungeon is a place connected to that item.”

There were occasionally dungeons like that.

An item excavated from another dungeon resonating…

‘No wonder it felt like it was sealed. Does this place contain the key to release it?’

Black light was being emitted even more strongly from the Jailer’s Rope, as if it had come home.