Chapter 26

Chapter 26

“Was I unconscious for a long time?”

“About three hours.”

“Three hours…”

It was an awkward amount of time, neither long nor short. Considering it was three hours spent inside a dungeon, it felt endlessly long, but at the same time, setting aside the dungeon situation, it wasn’t particularly long at all.

“Have you been like this the whole time?”

“Originally… I was in a black space where nothing was visible. When Master was dragged there, I grabbed that hand and went in together.”

“Ah.”

I had a vague memory of Yoon Juyeong grabbing my hand right before I was dragged off by the wolf, and it seemed that was true. I opened and closed the hand he had grabbed, then looked up at him again.

“Wipe your tears. Anyone would think your parents had died.”

“If something had happened to Master, it would have been a bigger problem than that.”

“……”

It probably wouldn’t have been. For a moment, I forced down the words that tried to slip out of my mouth without my knowing.

To be honest, my guess was that the moment I died, my skill would have been released too, so the thing Juyeong was worried about wouldn’t have happened.

But if I said that now, Juyeong, who still couldn’t stop crying, would only get sadder, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut.

“Then when did we come back here?”

“The moment I felt that Master… had awakened, the darkness around us began to lift. And…”

Yoon Juyeong’s gaze, still stained with tears, slowly turned toward my feet. Only then did I notice a strangely familiar, soft sensation around my ankle.

“Ah, no way.”

I immediately looked down at my feet, and as expected, Blackie was rubbing his face against my ankle.

I hurriedly bent down and scooped Blackie into my arms. He whined pitifully, as if asking why I hadn’t recognized him sooner, and snuggled into my embrace.

“…This thing appeared, Master. I’m asking just in case… Is this the bastard that dragged you away?”

“Uh… yes, but… well. For now, as you can see, he’s not hostile, so please relax your expression.”

Yoon Juyeong’s expression as he looked at Blackie looked like it wouldn’t be strange even if a demon possessed him right then and there.

Actually, he wasn’t frowning heavily on the surface, but his slightly narrowed brows and his chillingly cold green eyes made it especially clear.

Fortunately, Juyeong listened to me. He still looked dissatisfied as he glanced at Blackie in my arms, but eventually he withdrew that near-freezing gaze and looked at me with eyes that held their usual warmth.

Luckily, it seemed he had calmed down while looking at Blackie, and the tears that had been streaming from his eyes had stopped.

“What about the other party members? What happened to them?”

“I don’t know the details either. From the moment I grabbed Master’s hand and entered that area, I was cut off from the outside situation.”

“Hmm…”

Wasn’t that a bit too problematic? Yoon Juyeong himself was an S-Rank hunter, so even an A-Rank Dungeon wouldn’t be much danger for him, but it was a different story for the A-Rank and B-Rank hunters.

‘I was trapped in there for three whole hours…’

Assuming Hunter Kim Seongmyeong and Hunter Jeong Soyeon were still alive, they would have had to endure this dangerous place alone for a full three hours.

I finally let out a sigh I couldn’t hold back and hugged Blackie tightly in my arms, with a hint of resentment.

“Let’s find Hunter Kim Seongmyeong and Hunter Jeong Soyeon quickly. I’m worried they might have been seriously hurt while we were in there.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but in the worst case, their lives might have been in danger. As soon as Yoon Juyeong heard my words, he nodded once and immediately reached both arms out toward me.

“…Huh?”

For a moment, I didn’t understand his gesture and just stared at him blankly. Yoon Juyeong looked at me with his eyes still bearing the traces of tears and gave me a very gentle smile.

“To find them, we need to move as fast as possible. It would be faster for me to carry Master than for you to walk on your own.”

“Ah… right. That is… true.”

No matter how hard a C-Rank hunter tried, it would be difficult to keep up with the speed of an S-Rank hunter running while carrying one person’s weight.

I eventually admitted that Yoon Juyeong’s words were reasonable. Honestly, even setting aside the fact that Yoon Juyeong treated me as his master, it was a reasonable and obvious conclusion.

In the end, I naturally wrapped one arm around Yoon Juyeong’s neck as he lifted me, and held Blackie a little more securely in my other arm.

Yoon Juyeong adjusted his hold on me a few times, as if checking the position, then immediately bowed his head toward me with a smile.

“Then I’ll start moving now, Master.”

“Ah, wha— *gack*!”

The next moment, I got to experience firsthand what it felt like to be a race car driving at top speed without a roof.

Wow. I never thought I’d feel something like this while being carried by someone in my lifetime.

Feeling both the sharp speed that made my hair whip around so hard it felt like it might get pulled out, and the overly cozy warmth of Yoon Juyeong’s arms at the same time, I ended up half-losing my mind.

Honestly, even for an Awakened like me, who was supposed to be much tougher than an ordinary person, this speed was absolutely unbearable.

* * *

“Oh my goodness, I’m so glad you’re safe, Hunter Seohee!”

About thirty minutes after wandering around looking for Hunter Kim Seongmyeong and Hunter Jeong Soyeon while carried in Yoon Juyeong’s arms. He and I managed to find Hunter Kim Seongmyeong and Hunter Jeong Soyeon, who had been hiding among a particularly dense cluster of trees.

As soon as I spotted them, I immediately got down from Yoon Juyeong and approached where the two were.

Up close, Kim Seongmyeong and Jeong Soyeon were thankfully fine, aside from their clothes being a bit dirty and having a few minor scratches on their faces. Relieved that they were safe, I walked straight up to Jeong Soyeon.

“I’m fine — Hunter Yoon Juyeong helped me, so there were no problems at all. More than that, I’m really glad you’re safe, Jeong Soyeon. And I’m glad you’re safe too, Kim Seongmyeong.”

Of course, I was just as relieved that Kim Seongmyeong was safe as I was about Jeong Soyeon, but the reason I specifically approached Jeong Soyeon to say this was because Kim Seongmyeong had already gone over to Yoon Juyeong and was chattering away about all sorts of things.

Hunter Jeong Soyeon looked at Hunter Kim Seongmyeong with a prim, sharp-eyed expression as he went on and on to Yoon Juyeong — saying things like, since he was an S-Rank hunter, he hadn’t thought there’d be any problems, but he was still glad he was safe, and that it was amazing how an S-Rank hunter could protect even a C-Rank hunter without a scratch.

“Honestly, it’s like watching Chunhyang cheering for her returning Lee Mongryong or something. Is he that blind to anyone who isn’t an S-Rank hunter?”

“Ahaha… Well, since he’s an A-Rank hunter, he’s probably met S-Rank hunters more often than we have, so maybe that makes them feel even more special to him.”

For a C-Rank hunter like me and a B-Rank hunter like her, S-Rank was a being beyond the clouds, but for A-Rank hunters, the feeling would naturally be different.

Unlike us, they’d probably formed parties to clear dungeons together or cooperate on quests quite often.

“Ugh. He looks like a bear and acts like one too. …Still, he’s not incompetent. When Hunter Yoon Juyeong went to rescue Seohee, he immediately and skillfully sent a distress signal to the outside, and then even accounted for the possibility of monsters swarming in and picked the best spot to hole up.”

“Ah… so a veteran really is different. By the way, if he sent a distress signal to the outside, there’s a chance other hunters might come in.”

“That would be nice, but… considering the gate restrictions, they won’t be able to enter for at least another thirty minutes. And given that S-Rank hunter’s skills over there, I think he’ll have already taken down the final boss by then. Besides, if it’s Yoon Juyeong, he could kill the boss monster long before any support hunters even reach where we are.”

At Hunter Jeong Soyeon’s words, I nodded as well. It was just my personal guess, but I also thought things would likely turn out the way she said.

‘Ah, wait.’

Come to think of it, I’d forgotten something important. I immediately stopped nodding and met Jeong Soyeon’s eyes. She seemed puzzled by my sudden change in behavior and called my name, “Seohee?”

I bowed my head to her without preamble.

“Actually, I should have apologized first, but I shamelessly forgot for a moment. Because of me, you were put in sudden danger—”

“Ah, no, no, there’s no need to apologize. That wasn’t your fault, Seohee.”

Jeong Soyeon immediately grabbed my shoulders and more or less forced me to straighten up. Awkwardly following her lead, I straightened my back while looking at Hunter Jeong Soyeon with eyes that couldn’t quite hide my fluster.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Seohee. It’s not like you made a mistake and got caught by that wolf. From the start, we were supposed to protect you, a C-Rank hunter, and we failed to do that.”

“Well, but it wasn’t just anything—it was an unexpected situation inside the dungeon, and if I’d reacted just a little faster—”

“Blaming yourself with hypotheticals is a bad habit.”

This time, it was Hunter Kim Seongmyeong who suddenly cut into our conversation—I had no idea when he’d even arrived where we were.

As if to say he’d had a rough time while Hunter Yoon Juyeong was out, he adjusted his sunglasses, which were cracked and caked with dust in several places, and carefully patted my shoulder.

“It’s impossible for a C-Rank hunter to stand against a monster in an A-Rank Dungeon. There was nothing Hunter Yoon Seohee could have done in that situation. To put it bluntly, don’t overestimate yourself.”

“Ah……”

It was the plain truth, without a single flaw. As Hunter Kim Seongmyeong said, there was nothing a mere C-Rank hunter like me could do in an A-Rank Dungeon, and it was only natural that there wasn’t.

Just as he said, for me to talk about ‘what I could have done’ in that situation was nothing more than insisting on the impossible.