#92
Kieeeek!
The boss mob, sensing something unusual, made a strange sound.
The tentacles began stretching toward Seo Yi-young as their target. Dozens of tentacles wrapped around Seo Yi-young’s body.
His entire body hurt as if being pierced. No, he couldn’t breathe from the heat that seemed to burn his body. But this level of pain was what he’d felt even when caught by just one tentacle. There’s a limit to the pain humans can feel. There’s a limit to the pain the brain can perceive, and beyond that, it’s all the same anyway.
“…Ah, ugh, uaah!”
He could feel the force dragging his body. The thud, thud vibration of the ground as well.
He could feel the tentacles wrapped around Seo Yi-young’s body absorbing his strength. But something like this, he just needed to increase his heal output. Was it because of his do-or-die mindset? Seo Yi-young boldly amplified his healing amount, a thought he wouldn’t normally have.
The burning sensation that rose as if flames were igniting inside his body caused Seo Yi-young’s bitten lip to burst and bleed. The sensation of bugs crawling through every corner of his blood vessels was disappearing. As if being consumed by heat that started inside his body. It was hard to even keep his eyes open.
Pop!
Unable to withstand what they were absorbing from Seo Yi-young, the tentacles burst. As the restraining tentacles disappeared, the pain that had dominated his body also vanished.
The boss mob was 2-3 meters ahead. Hundreds and thousands of eyeballs that had sprouted from between its split body were looking at Seo Yi-young. The eyes gradually merged into one, finally becoming six giant eyeballs.
Watching this sight, Seo Yi-young released all his power as if vomiting out the heat boiling inside his body.
Kieek, kieeeek!
With the boss mob’s scream-like sound as the finale, Seo Yi-young slowly collapsed to the floor where he stood.
He couldn’t think of anything. He couldn’t hear any sound. No, maybe his ears had broken. But one thing was certain—with the heal he’d just released, all the hunters would be completely recovered. Support hunters aside, if they were combat hunters, they should be able to use their skills at least once each.
The corner of his mouth lifted.
Go ahead and try to take that, you damn moth bastard.
Had he collapsed on the floor? With his eyes unable to see and ears unable to hear, his other senses seemed to have disappeared as well. He couldn’t feel anything.
Then something flowed into Seo Yi-young’s lips.
Startled, Seo Yi-young reflexively turned his head and spat out the liquid that had entered his mouth. It was dangerous to consume food when you didn’t know who was giving it.
“Cough…! Cough!”
He had swallowed a little of the liquid that went down his throat, but it wasn’t much.
The liquid he couldn’t drink properly due to choking flowed down his chin. He heard a tsk sound. He felt a touch rubbing and patting his back.
“Unnecessarily cautious. It’s a potion. Drink it.”
His vision, which had been nothing but white, gradually returned. Seeing the face entering his hazy vision, Seo Yi-young’s eyes widened.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
It was Choi Do-jun.
Since there had been no news, he’d assumed he’d definitely been taken down by the boss mob.
“…Do-jun…?”
…Could it be that he came back to life with my heal just now?
It seemed Choi Do-jun was the one who had poured the potion into his mouth earlier. He’d been in a state where he couldn’t even breathe properly from using all his strength, but after consuming what he’d given him, he at least had the strength to move his body.
“Damn bastard… If you were alive, you should have given some sign.”
While speaking in a resentful voice, he swallowed the hot lumps that kept rising. But perhaps because his tear ducts had loosened, tears streamed down the corners of his eyes without him being able to do anything about it. Seo Yi-young obediently received and drank the potion Choi Do-jun poured into his mouth again.
The potion’s effect definitely appeared. His physical condition returned to normal.
“You’re being foolishly stubborn as usual.”
Choi Do-jun, who had been examining Seo Yi-young’s condition, spoke.
The voice he thought he wouldn’t be able to hear, that he thought he couldn’t hear, flowed into his eardrums. He wanted to say something, but his voice wouldn’t come out properly. He opened and closed his mouth several times, but as if his vocal cords were crushed, he couldn’t say anything.
“I never thought you’d do something so reckless.”
“Reckless my ass… Why are you still in this condition?”
One arm was exposed to the point where bone was visible, with blood dripping. The same-side leg was the same. Even though he’d definitely done an enormous amount of healing, seeing him in this state meant he’d been too far away for Seo Yi-young’s skill to reach. Seo Yi-young frowned and immediately healed him.
“But that seems to have been the right answer.”
“Huh?”
Choi Do-jun clenched and unclenched his fist as he stood up. Because of that, Seo Yi-young also awkwardly straightened his body, then stopped for a moment.
“…Huh?”
Seo Yi-young stopped in place, unable to believe the scene before his eyes. The boss mob had returned to its appearance before it transformed.
“…What the hell is this?”
All Seo Yi-young had done was heal. But what on earth had happened now?
The boss mob had returned to its appearance before it changed. Naturally, the tentacles that had been binding the surrounding hunters also disappeared. The hunters who had collapsed on the floor began to regain consciousness one by one, letting out small groans.
He didn’t know what had happened, but if they were going to face it, this state before the transformation was much better. At least they wouldn’t feel that terrible fear.
The boss mob, which had been still for a while, also resumed movement. It seemed to move its antennae, then stared intently at Seo Yi-young and Choi Do-jun. Then, like before, crackling sounds began as something seemed to be tearing. When that sound started, it would soon change form and drag out tentacles. They had to resolve this before then.
“Perfect timing. We don’t have to deal with those troublesome tentacles.”
“Huh? Hey, wait… Choi Do-jun!”
Seo Yi-young shouted as he watched Choi Do-jun leap up.
“Are you crazy? You should coordinate with the other hunters…!”
—There’s no time for that.
At Choi Do-jun’s words, Seo Yi-young couldn’t retort and paused for a moment.
Right. This was Choi Do-jun. He never gambled on things with no chance of winning. But clearly, at first, he couldn’t hunt the boss mob alone. That’s why he’d gotten Jung Jae-geun’s help, wasn’t it?
Maybe now, Choi Do-jun was about to make the first gamble of his hunter life. If so, he had to stop him. There would be no chance of winning like this.
“Wait, Choi Do-jun…!”
When Seo Yi-young called out to him, flash, a massive light fell from the sky and struck directly.
“Waah!”
He reflexively covered his eyes and fell on his butt. But it was a little different from before. He could barely feel the heat radiating around them. At this level, he should have been suffocated by the hot heat, but there was none of that at all.
The boss mob that received Choi Do-jun’s attack flapped its wings and struggled with its massive body to escape, but like an insect pinned to a board, it couldn’t move from that spot.
Is this… possible?
Even if it were an S-class dungeon boss mob, he wouldn’t have believed it, let alone a catastrophe-level dungeon. At this level, he could have just entered alone and succeeded in conquering it after defeating it. How was something like this possible?
No, possible or not, it had already happened. It was possible because it worked.
There was probably more he was hiding.
Seo Yi-young closed his gaping mouth again.
“You, you should have… used something like this from the beginning, damn bastard.”
—How unfortunate. I thought you’d trust me.
“Stop dawdling and finish it quickly. It smells like burning.”
When Seo Yi-young scolded him in a tone like telling him to clean up piled garbage, Choi Do-jun laughed quietly.
—As you command.
As soon as Choi Do-jun finished speaking, light several times more powerful than what he’d been emitting seemed to condense and shot at the boss mob. Like stepping on a rotten pumpkin and bursting it, the boss mob exploded.
“…Ugh.”
The boss mob’s green bodily fluids poured out like a fountain, making Seo Yi-young frown. He barely managed to block it with his hand so it didn’t get in his eyes, but the sticky fluid that got on him was unbearably disgusting.
When he said he’d do it, he really did eliminate the boss mob.
Maybe this wasn’t actually a boss mob.
Otherwise, how could Choi Do-jun have taken that thing down by himself? Seo Yi-young looked down at the boss mob’s remains on the floor with a disgruntled expression.
“Why are you looking at me with that face? Are you disappointed now that it’s defeated?”
“What nonsense are you talking about after defeating the mob so well?”
Choi Do-jun landed in front of the scolding Seo Yi-young.
“If you were going to do this, you should have used your full power from the beginning to conquer it. Making us suffer needlessly. Are you joking?”
“That’s what I should be saying, Seo Yi-young.”
“What now?”
“What exactly is your ability?”
At Choi Do-jun’s quiet voice asking while looking directly at him, Seo Yi-young was about to answer immediately as if it were obvious, then stopped.
Seo Yi-young’s ability.
Recovery.
The original Seo Yi-young’s skill name from this dimension that he’d seen in his dream came to mind. [Return Everything to Original]. It was different from the skill name written in his current status window. Seo Yi-young checked his skill name once more.
[Turn Back Time]
“…”
Turn Back Time.
…Turn Back Time.
Seo Yi-young muttered his skill name in his mouth.
With his heal, he had returned the transformed boss mob back.
It didn’t make sense. Heal was for treating injuries. The boss mob wasn’t even injured; it had simply transformed. With his skill’s ability, he shouldn’t be able to make it return to its original state. Heal wasn’t like that.
But what if his skill wasn’t ‘recovery’ as he’d known it until now?
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
