“To be honest, Hunter Kang, you really are strong.”
“What are you...”
“And you’re even so passionate about world peace that you’ll go so far as to capture the same person over and over and torture them. Enough. It’s all over now.”
A bitter grudge that had dragged on for an entire year since last summer.
Now that I had the chance to settle it so easily, shouldn’t I take the opportunity to vent all the resentment I’d built up?
“Ha... seriously. Anyway, why did you have to be so distrustful of people out there?”
“What?”
“Like I said, I really have nothing to do with monsters. I never imagined I’d have to prove that through a gate of all things.”
Heh heh.
I barely suppressed the sneer threatening to rise to my lips and threw myself wholeheartedly into the performance.
I pretended that I was willing to sacrifice myself for the loser trapped before me.
In reality, I was planning to mercilessly choose the pillar that would take his life.
For once, let him experience the torment of false hope.
“But no matter how many times I think about it, this is the right thing to do. Unlike certain lunatics, I’m not the kind of person who gets what he wants by killing others.”
Good.
That should have made it sufficiently clear that I thought he was trash.
No need to drag this out any longer. Let’s end it cleanly.
“If you make it out safely, apologize to the Association staff. Accusing an innocent person like me was obviously a mistake, so use this opportunity to reflect on what you did.”
Crack.
I was just about to turn toward the right side of the room and choose the pillar when a tearing sound came from Kang Changho’s direction.
‘Damn.’
Had he somehow instinctively realized what would happen if the victor chose the Blue pillar?
Kang Changho struggled so violently against his restraints that, for a moment, I wondered if he intended to sacrifice part of his skin and bone just to regain his freedom.
“That won’t work.”
But it would be much faster for me to reach out and touch the pillar in front of me than for that sturdy prison to release its loser.
And soon enough, it was over.
‘Ha! Goodbye, Kang Changho!’
Bang.
I slammed my arm against the Blue pillar in the final room, only a few steps away.
The mechanism registered the impact, and its color immediately intensified, signaling that the victor’s authority had been successfully exercised.
Bam!
A few seconds later, it happened.
Flesh scattered across one side of the dungeon.
Blood sprayed through the air in a violent burst, accompanied by fragments of torn vessels and tissue.
An execution device had suddenly manifested between the two pillars—one Yellow, one Blue—and a magical cannon had fired upon one of the challengers.
The Earthling struck directly by the powerful magic suffered catastrophic damage.
His chest had been blown open by a massive spell.
There was no way a body like that could remain standing.
“Huh?”
But...
What?
Why had the attack been aimed not at Kang Changho...
but at me?
Tilt.
Just before my miserable body collapsed to the floor, a thought flashed through my mind.
‘No, wait!’
The sudden reversal left me disoriented for a moment, but as I fell, the muzzle of the dungeon’s weapon came into view.
That alone was enough to make the situation clear.
‘I really was chosen for execution. My body!’
How—
How could the dungeon’s very design dare betray me?
Setting aside the fact that my chest had just been physically blasted open, I was so stunned that for a moment I couldn’t even speak.
This trap.
This feeding box.
At the final question, it was supposed to reward the one who chose self-sacrifice.
As though moved by the altruism of a being willing to give up its own life, the dungeon would normally reverse the result and grant survival to the one who offered themselves as the sacrifice.
The apparent loser would become the true victor.
“Why?”
The insane dungeon had finally betrayed my trust.
Every stage of the strategy until now had played out exactly as it had in the past.
And yet the single most important part—the final result—had changed.
Worse, the power of the trap triggered by the supposed sacrifice remained just as absurdly lethal as before.
“Heuk...?”
Then came the near-instant death blow.
A deadly attack spell powerful enough that only a perfectly healthy S-rank could hope to withstand it tore relentlessly through the mage’s vital organs.
‘Thud.’
My lungs were destroyed.
Soon afterward, I collapsed helplessly to the floor.
And it was here that the reason behind the dungeon’s 48% mortality rate—an oddly imprecise number just shy of half—finally became clear.
“Agh...?”
Normally, once a mage’s lungs are completely destroyed, casting magic becomes nearly impossible even if consciousness remains.
However.
If the healer happens to be an exceptionally skilled manipulator capable of extending recovery magic down to the smallest units of tissue, there is still a chance to seize the organs before they completely collapse and reconstruct them.
Relying on reflex alone, I hurriedly pieced my shattered lungs back together and cast recovery magic as quickly as I could.
But judging by the result, I had done no more than cling desperately to life.
I was completely incapacitated.
“No, how...”
How in the world could something like this happen?
“This is unfair.”
The original blueprint for this place was not supposed to work like this.
To me, the situation felt like the mountain spirit from the story of the Golden and Silver Axes suddenly flying into a rage and striking down the woodcutter for throwing his axe into the water and disturbing his sleep.
In other words, this was far beyond anything I could have predicted.
If I had been inhabiting the body of an ordinary S-rank Hunter...
Would I have been able to detect all the hidden traps that had not yet fully manifested within the dungeon and realize that something had changed?
I wasn’t sure.
Looking back, it felt as though this had not simply been the result of insufficient mana or exhaustion from the previous trials.
Even a stone bridge should be tested before crossing.
But who has the leisure to cautiously test every step when a muddy flood is surging up behind them, ready to sweep everything away?
I was certain Kang Changho had been prepared to rip himself free of those restraints and charge forward even if doing so meant twisting or breaking one of his limbs.
‘One mistake, and everything falls apart.’
But when I thought about it more carefully, I began to wonder whether this, too, might have been the karma of Alphauri.
Before coming to our planet, the Gisimche had already reached some kind of conclusion among themselves.
How could fragile, easily broken intelligent beings safely preserve their species across generations?
They seemed to have arrived at a rather crude answer to that question.
And of all possible times, the Gisimche began to emerge precisely when my homeland was entering that era.
‘An age when reproduction had been completely analyzed through magic, and life could be created whenever necessary....’
Come to think of it, very few people on our planet ever chose the Blue pillar.
That was why the hidden condition of this trap had been discovered so quickly.
‘If there’s a tie, the one who chooses the pillar first wins...’
Blood trickled continuously from my ruined upper body.
Collapsed on the ground, I stared silently at the pool forming beneath me.
It reminded me of the time I had attempted the body-exchange technique.
A few seconds later, when I finally raised my eyes, someone was already standing directly in front of me.
“_ _”
“_ _”
Kang Changho was looking down at me.
The gate had been cleared.
An exit had appeared.
And at the same time, the challenger judged to have lost had been released from his restraints.
“Ugh!”
From where I lay, it was difficult to take in the entirety of his massive frame.
But the moment the hem of ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) his pants entered my field of vision, all the color drained from my face.
“Hey, don’t come any closer!”
In the past, I would have threatened him.
Back off, or I’ll hurt you first.
But the situation was far less favorable now.
I was a half-dead victim stripped of every useful possession.
Even the Pyromancer’s Necklace, once my dependable last resort, was nowhere within reach.
Come to think of it, it had been a very long time since the back of my neck felt this bare.
I had never missed the weight of those 37.5 grams—the place where that necklace used to rest—more than I did today.
But really, what good would it do to mourn a shattered necklace now?
“_ _”
Thud, thud, thud.
My body struggled to regenerate in time with each sluggish beat of my heart.
Still, reddish, half-coagulated fluid continued to seep endlessly from the front of my body.
‘So this day has finally come.’
As I felt my body temperature dropping, I finally resigned myself to the inevitable and closed my eyes.
At least I had cast enough recovery magic to keep my damaged lungs from straining themselves further.
But by the time those holes fully closed...
Someone would probably already be dead.
Possibly me.
“Damn it...”
Yeah, Lemming.
I suppose I’ve enjoyed my time on Earth long enough.
With too little blood reaching my brain, my blood pressure eventually plunged toward the point of collapse.
My flickering consciousness was soon swallowed by deep darkness.
“_ _”
Some time later.
“_ _”
A certain landscape came into view.
White.
Not very different from the white of the dungeon.
“_ _”
I slowly lifted my heavy eyelids and stared at the ceiling for a long while.
Then I noticed the strange patterns across its surface and realized that what I was looking at was an ordinary plasterboard ceiling.
The place I was in now was not the dungeon.
“_ _”
And when I belatedly tried to sit up, I discovered that I was in an expensive-looking room, complete with freshly laundered bedding and subtly fragrant air-purifying plants.
“Huh?”
What the hell?
The instant I regained full consciousness, I instinctively began checking my body.
Contrary to what I had feared, my overall condition was remarkably good.
Most importantly, the enormous wound in my chest had been almost completely healed.
I could only stare blankly, utterly unable to understand what was going on.
It was then that I suddenly sensed someone nearby.
“Huh.”
“Huh?”
A human dressed in a style rarely seen on the street stood behind a table filled with medical equipment.
She was clad from head to toe in bluish-green clothing.
The moment she noticed me, her eyes widened.
Without saying a word, she hurried out into the corridor and disappeared from sight.
This entire situation was confusing enough already.
But if aliens dressed like that were wandering around the building, then this place was almost certainly what I thought it was.
“Huh.”
The scenery was different enough from Kim Goryeo’s previous hospitalization experience that I had been momentarily confused.
But as I slowly looked around, I noticed a booklet in the locker beside the bed.
[Neo Seoul Hospital]
[Building Amenities Guide]
[B1 Floor: Bakery, Coffee Shop, Restaurant, Porridge Stall.]
[1st Floor: Book Cafe, ATM...]
I had just begun reading the guide for the second floor when—
“Patient, you’re awake!”
A doctor appeared.
I remained silent as the new Earthling entered through the corridor with a bright expression and immediately began talking.
“There are quite a few injuries.”
He rattled off terms such as hemothorax and thoracic vertebral fracture—words the alien still did not properly understand—and explained that while my condition had been critical when I was brought in, I had now improved significantly.
“The treatment worked extremely well, especially the trauma solution containing magical energy. It seems your body responds very well to the medication.”
“Containing... what did you say?”
“Oh, potions. That’s what Hunters usually call them.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“We’ll perform one more simple examination later. From what I can see, extensive rehabilitation shouldn’t be necessary. Just concentrate on resting and recovering for the next few days.”
The doctor in the white coat continued explaining several other things, but I barely heard any of them.
Then, even though the medical briefing had clearly ended, the doctor lingered beside the bed for some reason instead of leaving.
“Why is that?”
I eventually asked when I noticed how uneasy the medical professional had become.
“That...”
The bespectacled doctor hesitated.
“But... I’m terribly sorry to bring this up immediately after you regained consciousness, but...”
“Hmm?”
“There’s actually something I personally need to apologize to you for...”
If he wanted to thank me, that would be one thing.
But what kind of situation required someone whose profession was saving lives to lower their head to a patient?
“Apologize?”
I remained silent, unable to understand what the doctor meant.
Then he pulled a crumpled document from his pocket and abruptly held it out to me.
“It’s a medical certificate.”
A particular phrase was printed at the top of the paper the bespectacled doctor handed me.
“The patient was still unconscious, but in addition to the trauma examination, I also performed a separate CT scan.”
“A scan?”
“The Hunter who brought you in insisted that we examine your lungs very carefully...”
Pause.
At the mention of the person who had accompanied me, my shoulders stiffened.
Just as I had expected.
“I don’t know the full circumstances, but from what I was told at the time, that Hunter claimed he had personally seen something unusual about your lungs...”
But the doctor kept talking.
His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, like a child bracing himself for a scolding.
“Your fellow Hunter was extremely insistent... So in the end, I had no choice but to perform several additional examinations...”
“Wait—then this is a medical report about my body?”
The gray-haired doctor abruptly bowed his head.
“I’m sorry.”
Another apology.
But now that I had heard the explanation, I could more or less understand what had happened.
“Yes. These really are your medical records. I conducted the examinations without your consent, and... I also gave a copy to Mr. Kang Changho.”
“_ _”
“B-because that S-rank Hunter threatened me...”
I had happened to learn this while reading a book about Earth’s laws.
Apparently, medical professionals here were legally forbidden from disclosing a patient’s private information to other people.
“Since your personal medical information was leaked, I believed you absolutely had the right to be informed.”
“_ _”
“Of course, regardless of the circumstances, giving someone else access to your chart without your consent was wrong. I sincerely apologize once again. So even if you decide to file a formal complaint, I have no intention of disputing it...”
The doctor continued speaking beside me.
But I never took my eyes off the white sheet of paper in my hands.
No matter how many times I read it, parts of the document remained difficult to understand.
“Wait a minute.”
“Yes?”
“What does this mean?”
Unspecified malignant neoplasm of the bronchus or lung.
I pointed to the phrase printed in the center of the document.
“Ah, that’s...”
I had assumed it referred to some kind of microorganism coexisting with mammals.
But according to the doctor, the expression actually meant something else.
“Cancer.”
That was a word Kim Goryeo knew.
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