Chapter 3

Cho-i, yes, she…

“Haa, haa. Haa…”

Thousands of Mantis corpses lay scattered around. All of them had their heads burst, necks severed, or deep cuts in their waists, bleeding green blood as they died. The last Mantis stopped after a brief twitch. Cho-i raised her sword towards the last Mantis at her feet. And then.

Thump. With that sound, the last system window notification was heard.

[You have defeated the last monster! All stats have increased by 1!]

She had won the battle against thousands of Mantises. She couldn’t count how many times she had died and come back to life. But what was certain was that she had grown stronger with time. She gazed into the air with vacant eyes and then spoke.

“System window.”

Her stats appeared in the air.

[Cho-i Hyeon (A-rank) Strength 6873 Intelligence 195 Stamina 12908 Agility 5387…]

She looked at her stat window. Some had increased a lot, some a little, but she didn’t quite understand the criteria. Her head tilted greatly. She stared at her system window for a long time with wide eyes and a closed mouth, then said,

“Inventory.”

Her clothes were all tattered. Her legs, arms, abdomen, and back were all gnawed and bitten, making her clothes messy. She looked through her inventory once.

[D Sturdy Shield+4] [D Dull Sword+5] [C-rank Smooth Armor+1]

Cho-i carried around a bunch of low-grade equipment. She didn’t have enough money to buy good equipment.

“And this, I saved it to wear later.”

The C-Rank Smooth Armor. It was a gift from Hyeonchan and the highest-grade item she had ever possessed. Even so, it was only C-Rank. She scoffed at herself and took out the equipment, putting it on. No more Mantises were visible. Now, she could leave. She walked past the area filled with Mantis corpses and looked back. The large Mantis skeleton still stood there. She stared at the Entity for a long time before turning and heading towards the exit. She didn’t know how long she had endured here. She had lost her watch and her sanity. She headed towards the iron door she had entered through. And she tried to pull the door. Clang! The door still wouldn’t open.

What should I do now?

she thought.

First, I’ll go out…

Go out, what should I do? Cho-i kept thinking. It had been painful for so long. She had finally escaped the pain of having her living flesh torn apart.

It’s no different from getting a new life.

So she didn’t want to listen to people who treated ‘her’ poorly. She didn’t want to protect those who would harm her. She didn’t want to step forward for those who would abandon her and run away. In the end, what protects me is…

The only one who protects me is myself.

She gripped the doorknob tightly.

I should live only for myself.

Cho-i raised her hand just like that.

How?

And then she struck the Entity down.

First, I’ll fucking devour all those goddamn bastards.

Crash! The door was ripped off and flew away.

***

Hyeonchan An was currently in a troublesome situation. It was good that he had fortunately discovered a hidden dungeon, but it was impossible to clear it with the current number of people.

If only there had been one more B-Rank instead of a C-Rank, there might have been a chance.

Hyeonchan frowned. The current dungeon was C-Rank, but the hidden dungeon, as expected of a hidden one, felt like it was of a higher rank.

Are you thinking about something else right now?

A sharp voice pierced his ears. Hyeonchan tried not to frown as he looked down at the person making the current situation more annoying. C-Rank buffer, Nara Shim. She roughly grabbed his shoulder and shouted.

Are you crazy? Why didn’t you stop her? Isn’t she your girlfriend? You always used her as your girlfriend, but you abandon her now? Are you even human?

Hyeonchan thought. Besides Nara Shim, Sangyeop Choi and Suyeon Park agreed with his judgment. He was the one who signaled to close the door, and Suyeon Park and Sangyeop Choi were the ones who actually closed it. So even if he remained still.

“Hey! So you’re saying we should die too?”

“Uh, hey. Yeah. We’re lucky we didn’t all die! Cho-i will understand too!”

Nara Shim’s face contorted with disgust at their shameless behavior. She shoved Hyeonchan and approached the two.

“I’ve tolerated you always doing whatever you want because you’re higher ranked. But I can’t take it anymore. Who knows when I’ll be abandoned? I can’t do this anymore. If I leave here, it’s over. Over! And when I get out, I’m going to expose everything you’ve done!”

At her shout, Hyeonchan An said,

“Expose it? What are you going to do?”

“What?”

“You agreed to abandon Cho-i and run away in the first place, didn’t you?”

“…”

“Well, didn’t you?”

At those words, Nara Shim’s voice softened a little, then…

“Still, still! I didn’t know you’d close the door! I never intended to!”

It grew louder again. Yes, she probably meant she wasn’t as bad as them. Hyeonchan looked at the three of them one by one. The two couldn’t speak carelessly since they were involved, and only Nara Shim remained.

“We could abandon you here and leave, just like you said.”

“You…”

Nara Shim said with a shocked expression. Her face was filled with an exclamation of ‘You’re really not human.’ He was annoyed by the Entity, but with a disgustingly smiling face, he began to persuade her. More precisely, to command her under the guise of persuasion. Just like he had done to Cho-i.

“If you’re going to put us at a disadvantage, we have to find a way to break through. Sangyeop and Suyeon and I are all in the same boat, and you’re the only one acting like this right now. It’s not unusual for people to die in a dungeon anyway.”

“Are you really crazy?”

“I’m saying this because I’m genuinely worried about you. If we betray you and leave, what do you think you can do here? Do you think three B-Rankers couldn’t cut off your legs if they attacked you right now?”

“Why are you threatening me so much? Just do it then.”

“I’m saying we should leave on good terms. On good terms. We didn’t push Cho-i just now. She was just late, and we had no choice but to survive.”

He deliberately spoke as if Cho-i was late, even though he had abandoned her.

“…”

Nara Shim soon fell silent, lost in thought. Hyeonchan sighed inwardly. He had thought they could leave this dungeon quietly. There was a reason he was doing this. Hyeonchan An, the third son of a company that was a bit too big to be called a small or medium-sized enterprise, but too small to be called a large corporation, had never missed first place since his school days. But then he awakened as an ambiguous B-Rank healer. Not S-grade, not A-rank, but B-rank. He chose to be the head of a snake in the mid-size guild his uncle had created rather than the tail of a tiger in another major guild. To grow the guild further, there could be no more trouble. First, if two party members died in a party where he was the leader? Naturally, his reputation within the guild would suffer. Of course, if Nara Shim went outside and talked about this, his reputation would also suffer, but he had a plan. He would shut her up for now, and then eliminate her later in another dungeon. Having finished his thoughts, he smiled brightly and extended his hand to Nara Shim.

“This time it was my error in judgment. That’s what I think. I’m sorry about that. But I just chose the option that would save the most people.”

Nara Shim looked at his extended hand for a moment, then sighed and took it. Just as Hyeonchan An was thinking to himself that Nara Shim was foolish, at that very moment, something happened.

Boom! The door they had blocked with stones and sturdy branches exploded with a loud bang.

Thud, crash! The massive iron door fell far away, and the stones and branches that had been blocking the way rained down from the sky. Hyeonchan An, as well as all the other party members, looked at the entrance of the hidden dungeon in surprise. And there, they encountered an unbelievable sight.

“Cho-i…?”

Cho-i Hyeon, she had broken through the door. She held only a Broken Sword, without a shield, and was wearing brand new armor that had clearly just been taken out.

“Huh?”

Cho-i tilted her head, a bit excessively. She blinked and asked them, a rather abrupt question for her first words to the party members who had abandoned her.

“What time is it right now?”

“W-what did you say?”

“Are your ears plugged?”

Cho-i grinned.

“I said, what time is it?”

Everyone froze for a moment at her reaction. What did she just say? Regardless, Cho-i kept asking them the same question.

“How many times do I have to ask what time it is? Isn’t there anyone here who can read a watch?”

She opened her eyes wide.

“Give it to me. I’ll tell you.”

They couldn’t adapt to the changed Cho-i at all and couldn’t answer.

***

Cho-i Hyeon couldn’t understand this situation. Had her sense of time broken? No, to say that, she had spent too long inside.

‘Did I travel back in time?’

Considering she was having such crazy thoughts, the current situation was not normal. She had experienced death hundreds, no, thousands, maybe even more times in there, and fought a similar number of Mantises before coming out. But then.

“You said it’s five fifteen?”

“Yes, that’s right. How many times do I have to tell you it’s five fifteen!”

Suyeon Park yelled irritably. Cho-i quietly stared at Suyeon Park, who had yelled at her. Suyeon Park flinched and avoided her gaze.

‘We discovered the hidden dungeon after four o’clock, didn’t we?’

If they had all spent about an hour inside, it meant only fifteen minutes had passed since she was trapped in the dungeon. Cho-i could only reach one conclusion.

‘Did I really travel back in time?’

Her thinking, honed by various fantasy novels, found the answer quite simply.

‘To say that time didn’t pass in there, time did pass when we all went in together, didn’t it?’