94.
“Ah, this isn’t enough. Let’s collect the items and move to the safe zone.”
Feeling his limits, Siyun clutched the soiled handkerchief in his hand.
After collecting the items dropped by the Kraken and using flight skills to return to the island, the battle was still raging. The sounds of skills being used and monsters’ howls filled the air from all directions.
Although everyone showed relieved expressions at seeing the party return safely, they couldn’t easily approach.
While Siyun took out a cleaning artifact to tidy himself, Jian also wet a handkerchief with drinking water and wiped Sehun’s face and hands.
“I’ll go check on Jihwan.”
“Yes, hyung.”
After Jungsu disappeared to where Jihwan was in the distance, Jian and Sehun also continued to deal with the remaining monsters.
Soon after, other groups also arrived at the 31st floor with slight time differences.
“Jian hyung! Han Sehun!”
Hyunsu, who belonged to Group 3, appeared through the portal with Hyunwoo. He greeted them loudly with excitement but quickly closed his mouth after assessing the atmosphere around.
“Is everyone uninjured?”
“Yes. But a Kraken already appeared.”
“Is that true?”
Jian nodded instead of answering. Hyunwoo’s expression became serious. To think that the Kraken, ranked among the highest of A-rank monsters, would appear when this wasn’t even the final floor.
Wasn’t it a monster that could mean destruction for a country without S-rank Hunters?
“I’ll check if anyone is injured.”
As the two were talking, Hyunsu, who had been looking around, left with a solemn expression, and Hyunwoo followed him.
* * *
Screech…!
The last monster sank below the water’s surface. Sehun moved his fingertips to retrieve the magic stones and items that were about to sink to the bottom of the sea.
“We’ll move to the next floor after an hour of rest. Group 1 will go first again.”
Yeon Siyun announced, looking around at the members of the 4th expedition team.
After Yeon Siyun finished speaking, Jian headed to a secluded corner. In a place away from others’ gazes, he took out a life force recovery potion. He drank it secretly because it was a different color from regular recovery potions.
There was nothing to gain by letting others know he used life force.
“Hyung, do you want to lie down and rest a bit? Are you tired?”
“No, I can still manage. Aren’t you drinking a recovery potion? You used your ability a lot.”
Jian spoke to Sehun, who had immediately followed him, patting the spot beside him. While everyone else was busy drinking recovery potions, only Sehun stood there blankly.
He seemed to have been like this before too. With a strange sense of déjà vu, Jian tilted his head as Sehun took out a recovery potion and drank it.
Watching his Adam’s apple move smoothly, Jian also took out some simple snacks.
“Hyunsu adapted quickly.”
Jian took a bite of a bread filled with chocolate cream and followed Hyunsu with his eyes as he ran around like a puppy. His face was bright as he used healing skills to treat the injured.
“He’s always liked helping others.”
Sehun also sat beside Jian and munched on the bread. Hyunsu had been like that since childhood.
Even while walking down the street, if he saw an elderly woman crouched selling something, he would spend all his money buying things he didn’t even need.
In that respect, Hyunsu and Jian’s personalities were similar. Jian couldn’t just pass by people who looked pitiful either.
He had a tendency to become especially soft-hearted toward young children. Even now, Jian was donating part of his earnings to several orphanages.
Whenever Sehun saw these two people, full of compassion that he himself lacked, he thought this was why the world still functioned decently.
If the world were full of people like himself, the weak would have long died out, and only selfish individuals would remain, desperate to kill each other.
“I wonder what will appear on the 32nd floor.”
Jian muttered, folding the empty bread wrapper into a paper shape. He had only been worried about the Cerberus on the 45th floor, but it seemed the path to get there wouldn’t be smooth either.
“Who knows. The 31st floor was the sea, so it might be a mountain.”
Sehun also folded a paper shape following Jian. Though he said this, he didn’t care what appeared.
The most important person to him was Jian, and no monster had yet appeared that was difficult to handle with his abilities.
However, when his gaze fell on the empty recovery potion bottle, an uncomfortable breath escaped him.
Although his mana usage wasn’t high since he was only using telekinesis, the problem was that his physical strength and mana weren’t recovering even after drinking the recovery potion.
At first, he thought it was his imagination. Since he had never used his abilities excessively enough to need mana or physical strength recovery potions, he was late in discovering this abnormal condition.
Normally, he used his abilities only to the extent that they would fully replenish after a short time, so the number of times he had drunk recovery potions could be counted on one hand.
But when facing the Kraken, he had used quite a lot of mana. That’s when he knew for sure: recovery potions had no effect on his body.
Was he also a half-baked result? Awakening as an S-rank Hunter but with recovery potions being useless was truly a serious problem.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell Jian. If he did, Jian would certainly try to remove him from the Tower immediately.
Jian used life force instead of mana, and he himself couldn’t benefit from recovery potions.
He was a bit curious about what side effects Shin Yoonjae was experiencing, but he needed to quickly think of a way to overcome this situation.
And the opportunity came sooner than expected.
* * *
“Ugh…”
Kim Seonghyun of the Blue Dragon Guild staggered, clutching his stomach where blood was flowing profusely. He looked at Sehun with trembling eyes.
“Is there any contact with the other team members?”
“…No.”
The smell of blood should be nauseating, but Sehun couldn’t take his eyes off the droplets of blood falling to the floor.
“Do you have any wound recovery potions left? Of all times, I’ve run out of extras…”
Seonghyun smiled awkwardly and subtly asked Sehun for just one wound recovery potion.
The two were currently separated from the others, trapped in a maze surrounded by walls on all sides.
The Tower tended to have a sharp increase in dungeon difficulty every five floors. But after the Kraken appeared on the 31st floor, a maze dungeon appeared on the 41st floor.
What’s worse, the maze moved before they could properly install safety stones, tearing the party apart.
After being dropped somewhere unknown with Seonghyun, Sehun immediately tried to move to find Jian.
But suddenly, dozens of small gray dwarves appeared, shooting poisoned needles and arrows.
While blocking these attacks coming from all directions, thornvines suddenly sprang from the walls and floor.
Sehun avoided them without much difficulty, but Seonghyun suffered a critical injury. An enormous amount of blood gushed from his severely punctured thigh.
Only after pouring and drinking wound recovery potions did his leg become normal again. The problem was that they continued to be attacked afterward.
The monsters in the maze dungeon were clever. Thinking Seonghyun was easier to deal with than Sehun, they concentrated their attacks on him.
Since Sehun didn’t particularly try to protect Seonghyun, he was injured several more times afterward. Eventually, he ran out of all his recovery potions.
This time, he was wounded in the stomach, causing considerable pain. With a pale face, Seonghyun tried to contact Siyun, but it was in vain.
They say misfortunes never come alone. To make matters worse, the communication artifact had also stopped working.
With no other choice, Seonghyun had to rely on Sehun, who was much younger than him.
“Hunter Han Sehun?”
But Sehun’s expression had been strange for a while. Whenever his dazed eyes swept over Seonghyun’s wound and the pool of blood on the floor, goosebumps rose on Seonghyun’s arms.
“Here it is.”
Was it his imagination? Seonghyun bowed his head to Sehun, who handed him a recovery potion with a faint smile. Despite his young age, Sehun was an S-rank Hunter.
He was someone who could grow as much as Siyun with just a little time. As Seonghyun poured the wound recovery potion he received from Sehun onto his wound, his internal organs began to find their places again, and the torn skin started to heal.
“We need to regroup with the others quickly… You have a flight artifact, right? Should we try going up?”
Sehun nodded at Seonghyun’s suggestion. The strong smell of blood kept trying to break down his sanity. He bit the inside of his cheek hard to regain his composure.
This wasn’t the time for this. He needed to find Jian quickly.
But the two had to experience an even bigger mishap after using the artifact.
“The walls keep getting higher…”
As they went up, the maze walls surrounding them also rose. Floating in the air, Seonghyun struggled to withstand the successive attacks from dwarves and thornvines emerging from various places.
Seonghyun gritted his teeth at an attack that grazed his forearm. It felt like one wrong move could lead to irreversible injury.
As they were about to descend back to the ground, Sehun, who had been silently dealing with monsters, approached.
