Toward the End (7)
The Espers tilted their heads in confusion at Gu Jin-young’s concerning demeanor and pressed him for answers.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s happening? Why suddenly…”
The expressions of the Espers who were speaking froze instantly. As if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, they stared blankly in the direction where Gu Jin-young had indicated team members were returning, then let out nervous laughs and muttered:
“…That’s impossible.”
Soon after, the ground shook with a series of booms. The Espers, furrowing their brows, immediately gritted their teeth and shouted:
“Everyone, battle positions! Calmly move to your designated spots!”
“Protecting the Guides is the highest priority! Deploy the shields!”
We Guides, unable to properly assess the situation, scrambled into the shield deployed by the defense-type Espers. Meanwhile, the Espers moved in unison, preparing for whatever was coming.
What on earth was going on? Were monsters approaching instead of our team members returning? Reflecting my thoughts, Oh Se-rang, who was watching the situation in bewilderment, asked:
“What’s happening? Are monsters attacking us?”
“…Yes. It seems so.”
Monsters attacking a base camp was quite rare. This was partly because base camps were established far from monster habitats, but mostly due to the artifacts that concealed human scent and presence. Therefore, unless there was a problem with the artifacts or we had misjudged the monsters’ habitats, seeing monsters at a base camp was uncommon.
Guides rarely encountered monsters, except when they had to keep moving with Espers in dungeons where establishing a base camp was difficult. Because of this, there were even Guides who had never seen a monster before.
“Wait a minute… can we handle this with just the people here…?”
A junior Guide asked nervously. With limited experience, this sudden situation would naturally feel unfamiliar. The pupils of the rookie Guide, who had just completed his first year, trembled uncontrollably. Evidently quite anxious, he paced restlessly within the shield, repeatedly asking for reassurance.
“Are we really safe inside this shield…? Can I trust it? Wouldn’t it be better to run away now while we still can?”
Of course, while training schools did provide education on emergency situations like this, the gap between theory and practice was vast, making initial panic and worry natural. Moreover, with the imminent emergence of an S-grade dungeon, everyone was bound to be more sensitive than usual.
“You should be safe inside the shield. But as for whether we alone are sufficient to handle the monster, since we haven’t properly identified it yet, that’s…”
As the Esper’s voice trailed off, the rookie Guide’s face turned pale. Then Gu Jin-young, who had been silently listening to their conversation, spoke up.
“…It’s the boss.”
“What?”
“What did you say?”
“I said that the monster heading toward our base camp is this dungeon’s boss.”
The previously chaotic base camp fell silent at Gu Jin-young’s rigid declaration. Not just an ordinary monster, but the dungeon boss itself was coming our way. It was an unbelievable situation that left everyone stunned. Facing something completely unprecedented, we all froze in place. While we stood dumbfounded within the shield, the Espers skillfully formed a battle formation.
The ground-shaking sounds gradually drew closer. Well aware that it would be nearly impossible for just the personnel remaining at the base camp to defeat a dungeon boss, the Guides could only tremble with a profound sense of helplessness and fear. Their minds were undoubtedly filled with thoughts of the absurd death they might face here. I was no different from them.
A Guide must both save Espers and be protected by them. Yet, in moments like these, that obvious fact became bitingly unfair. And even as I numbly awaited approaching death, I found myself longing to see Sa Hae-geon.
While the ground continued to shake, the massive head of the boss finally became visible in the distance. The Espers clenched their fists, their faces etched with tension as they observed the creature resembling a giant lizard. The dungeon boss looked similar to a Komodo dragon, except it carried a large volcano on its back like a snail and spewed sulfuric gas as if it might erupt at any moment.
How small must we appear in the eyes of the dungeon boss? It probably viewed us similarly to how we might see squirrels or rabbits. The vertically elongated pupils of the dungeon boss turned toward us. I felt paralyzed in this volatile situation, where it seemed a fireball might fly at us any second.
I seemed to have imagined thousands of possibilities in my mind: Espers returning to the base camp just in time to save us and defeat the dungeon boss; Sa Hae-geon embracing me and desperately asking if I was okay; and, by some stroke of luck, the boss’s attack missing us. With these thoughts, I stared at the boss, unable even to close my eyes.
But making our tension seem foolish, the dungeon boss merely glanced at the base camp and us without showing any signs of attacking or trampling over us. It simply turned its head as if it hadn’t seen us and slowly walked away. As if it never intended to attack the base camp in the first place.
As the situation unfolded differently than expected, Gu Jin-young hurriedly checked the tablet screen again. The tablet screen, which we all huddled together to see, showed that the dungeon boss’s path had changed. We stared blankly at the dungeon boss as it slightly skirted the base camp, then breathed sighs of relief.
Another unbelievable event had occurred. A dungeon boss that saw humans invading its territory yet passed by without attacking. Normally, it would consider its territory violated and attack indiscriminately—was it even possible for it to just walk by after making eye contact with us?
The rookie Guide, his legs apparently giving out, collapsed to the ground and sobbed.
“Ugh, hic… I really thought I was going to die… hic… What kind of hellish experience is this… If I’d known it would be like this, I would have quit being a Guide long ago…”
Others, their tension released, chimed in one after another.
“Exactly! I almost embarrassingly wet myself, ugh.”
“Wow, that was terrifying. Felt like a scene from a horror movie.”
“It’s fortunate, but why did it just pass us by?”
“…Yeah. Or are other team members nearby? Maybe it spotted them and changed direction?”
Oh Se-rang said this while roughly rubbing her forearm. The rice ball she was holding fell and rolled on the floor inside the shield. The suggestion that it had changed direction after spotting other team members was quite plausible. We listened to the fading footsteps of the dungeon boss and began to reorganize the disheveled base camp.
* * *
Meanwhile, someone else was facing an equally bizarre situation. Lee Cheol-min couldn’t believe what he was seeing and tightly closed his eyes, then opened them again. But no matter how much he blinked or rubbed his eyes, the scene before him remained unchanged.
“What on earth is happening…?”
With the ground-shaking sounds, a massive monster had appeared and, without giving them time to be startled, prostrated itself before them. It certainly looked like a dungeon boss, yet such a creature not only appeared voluntarily before Espers, who were essentially intruders, but even adopted a submissive posture.
This was such an absurd situation that if he were to talk about it outside, people would whisper that he was insane. In his thirty-nine years of life, he had never experienced anything like it. It was a scene that would be criticized for lacking plausibility even in a movie or drama.
Woo Jae-dam, in the leadership position, was equally perplexed. He looked at the dungeon monster that, instead of attacking the Espers, lay prostrate in their path and blinked its eyes, then let out a bewildered laugh.
“What is that?”
“Isn’t it the dungeon boss?”
“That’s not what I’m asking… Why is the dungeon boss acting like this?”
“How should I know? But doesn’t it look kind of like a dog? Even though it resembles a lizard, it almost seems cute when it acts like this…”
The Espers, initially cautious, were now observing the dungeon boss with curiosity. Sa Hae-geon looked with disbelief at the Espers and the monster alternately, then asked Lee Cheol-min in a low voice:
“Is this common?”
“What? Of course not. This is an absurd situation. What kind of monster would perform for humans who have invaded its home? Unless it has some ulterior motive…”
Lee Cheol-min responded dismissively but couldn’t hide his suspicions. And Sa Hae-geon felt the same way, especially since the monster’s gaze seemed to be directed at Yoon Seon-hoo.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
