#039
“What, what?”
Yoon Pa-ran asked again with a bewildered face. Instead of repeating what he had said, Dan Joo-hyuk stood up. As he slowly approached, Yoon Pa-ran, with his guard fully raised, stepped back.
Knowing this full well, Dan Joo-hyuk deliberately closed the distance further. Just because he didn’t like this sense of distance.
Yoon Pa-ran’s face became seriously rigid, like a young animal cornered. Feeling threatened, he even started kicking, but it was easy to avoid.
Only after finally approaching right up to his face did Dan Joo-hyuk feel his slightly twisted mood recover.
“Damn it, what are you trying to—!”
Just as Yoon Pa-ran was about to shout loudly in confusion,
Dan Joo-hyuk spoke languidly as if nothing had happened.
“Let’s go now. We need to face the boss.”
“Hah…”
With a deep sigh, Yoon Pa-ran repeatedly rubbed his face with his hands.
Perhaps because the sky’s color was different from outside, his face suddenly seemed a bit gaunt.
“You, stop messing around.”
Soon, instead of running away, he looked straight at Dan Joo-hyuk.
It was a gaze that always pierced through Dan Joo-hyuk without avoiding him. No one else dared to give him such a look without fear. The bright blue glare suited Yoon Pa-ran very well.
That’s why, strangely, he kept feeling mischievous.
“But.”
“Ugh.”
He grabbed Yoon Pa-ran’s retreating wrist and pulled him sharply. Following his resisting feet, long furrows were carved into the green grass.
Only after bringing Yoon Pa-ran’s white face right up to his own did he feel satisfied.
“The contract was for physical contact, you know.”
Even though he had no such intention, he kept teasing Yoon Pa-ran gently.
Although he knew this would only deepen Yoon Pa-ran’s wariness, it was strangely addictive and he couldn’t help it.
“Let go!”
Yoon Pa-ran, his wrist caught, exerted force to violently pull himself free. Dan could have broken his arm right there, but for now, he quietly let go.
Yoon Pa-ran’s struggling strength was stronger than expected. Dan’s hand felt strangely empty after suddenly losing that body heat.
Dan Joo-hyuk had been feeling unfamiliar with his own erratic emotions for a while now. Why was he acting like this towards Yoon Pa-ran?
Right. It seemed he had some pent-up desires. It had been quite a while since he had been intimate with anyone else.
Having made this judgment, Dan Joo-hyuk deliberately took a step back this time and smiled.
“Alright.”
“Damn it…”
Yoon Pa-ran, who had been on high alert fearing Dan might approach again, soon spat out in an irritated voice. Despite continuously provoking him until now, Dan answered quite refreshingly.
That attitude made him lose his energy.
Now that he looked at it, it was clear it had all been teasing. In fact, there was no reason for Dan Joo-hyuk to engage in more skinship with him.
Realizing he had overreacted, Yoon Pa-ran rubbed his brow again.
“Hah…”
“Let’s go. It’s time.”
Dan Joo-hyuk, picking up his sword, walked forward without looking back.
Wanting to shake off the unpleasant sensation that remained, Yoon Pa-ran hurriedly drew his sword and followed him. He also intended to stab Dan if he tried any more pranks.
Perhaps sensing the anger Yoon Pa-ran was emitting, Dan Joo-hyuk remained silent.
“…”
As they headed towards where the boss would be, Yoon Pa-ran repeatedly swallowed sighs inwardly. He was extremely tired, but he had to get the job done.
For some time now, they had been tackling boss monsters together like this.
Due to Dan’s level being too high, the items dropped by boss monsters weren’t coming out properly. Even for lower-rank gates, boss monster items were quite valuable, so it was hard to give up easily.
Moreover, there was something they discovered after defeating boss monsters a few times.
When facing a boss while heavily imbued with Sacred Energy, the curses on items were weakened.
*A curse is bestowed.
―The wielder of this sword shall meet death.
Usually, strong curses tended to threaten the user’s life or body.
Yoon Pa-ran’s sword was under one of the strongest curses, extremely difficult to remove. And items dropped by boss monsters generally contained such strong curses.
But after defeating the first boss monster with Dan Joo-hyuk, Yoon Pa-ran noticed something strange about the item.
*A curse is bestowed.
―The wearer of these shoes will get athlete’s foot.
‘…?’
It was supposedly a C-rank gate boss, but the curse was very ambiguous. This was despite the item’s performance itself being worthy of a boss monster drop.
This strange suspicion was confirmed as they faced successive boss monsters. All the curses were underwhelming.
When he discovered curses like [30% chance of catching a mild cold on Thursdays], Yoon Pa-ran was certain.
And when he told Dan Joo-hyuk about this fact, Dan calmly replied:
‘You noticed?’
He had clearly known about it all along and kept quiet. It was truly infuriating behavior.
Perhaps the curse-removing effect was even better when Dan Joo-hyuk used [Sacred Energy]. Although it was energy absorbed from Yoon Pa-ran, strangely, its power seemed to increase when Dan Joo-hyuk wielded it.
Wait, come to think of it, Dan had faced bosses alone several times too. For lower-rank bosses, he might even produce items without curses.
“…Ah.”
Now that he thought about it, it was suspicious that Dan had been taking all the items that had come out so far. Although he had agreed to give all the spoils to Yoon Pa-ran and unfailingly provided money equivalent to their value.
It was indeed strange that he took the actual items, saying he had something to research. They were low-rank items, useless to Dan Joo-hyuk.
“What’s wrong?”
It was then that Yoon Pa-ran was strongly glaring at Dan Joo-hyuk’s back due to his continued suspicions.
As if he had eyes on the back of his head, Dan turned around with a puzzled look.
“Nothing.”
Yoon Pa-ran changed the subject, pretending to scout the area ahead.
Somehow, he had been giving good prices for the items. It must have been because no curse removal costs were involved.
Although it was irritating, Yoon Pa-ran couldn’t take issue with Dan Joo-hyuk’s attitude. They weren’t on terms to kindly share information with each other anyway.
In any case, while Yoon Pa-ran had somewhat thought that Dan Joo-hyuk’s research with this power wasn’t futile, the results were amazingly impressive.
[Broken Blessing Fragment], needed for curse removal, was an expensive and hard-to-obtain material item. Just saving on that cost could leave a huge profit margin when selling items.
Moreover, being able to freely display [Sacred Energy] was quite advantageous. It allowed Yoon Pa-ran to properly train in using this power as well.
He didn’t know when he might run gates with Dan Joo-hyuk again. He should make the most of this opportunity.
“…”
That doesn’t mean I’ll put up with all that pervert’s teasing though.
Once again glaring at the back of Dan’s round head, Yoon Pa-ran resolved. As soon as they got out of the gate, he would firmly tell him to stop such nonsense.
And he resolved again. He planned to experiment whether the [Sacred Energy] skill could purify already obtained items, but whatever the result, he would absolutely not tell Dan Joo-hyuk.
If he could purify items, it would be a truly groundbreaking discovery.
“We’re here.”
Dan Joo-hyuk’s low voice awakened Yoon Pa-ran from his thoughts. Snapping back to attention and looking ahead, he indeed saw the boss in the distance.
Dan Joo-hyuk even put away his sword and folded his arms, as if telling Yoon Pa-ran to handle it himself for now.
As it was a familiar routine, Yoon Pa-ran stepped forward.
“Huff…”
The boss monster hadn’t noticed the two people’s appearance and had its back turned. Well, it was understandable that its reactions were dull, given its low rank compared to the two of them.
The monster had an abnormally long upper body and walked on two legs. While frowning at its eerie appearance that seemed to belong in a ghost story, something strange caught his eye.
“What’s that thing eating?”
“Looks like a regular monster wandered in.”
The boss was moving its hands that dragged on the ground, munching on something. Dan Joo-hyuk answered calmly, as if he had already noticed this fact too.
As he said, occasionally monsters that unluckily stepped into the boss area would get eaten by the boss. It was a well-known mystery why already dead monsters engaged in eating-like behavior at all.
The boss’s huge body obscured what exactly it was stuffing into its mouth. However, Yoon Pa-ran had a strangely bad feeling about it and focused his attention there, frowning.
Then something odd caught his eye.
“…?”
At the monster’s feet lay a strangely shaped stone fragment. It was hard to see clearly from a distance, but it looked oddly like a Go stone cut in half.
In fact, Yoon Pa-ran was puzzled why this had caught his eye at all. Befitting the grassland terrain, such pebbles were strewn all over the place.
What is that?
Why do I feel… so uneasy?
Grook, grook.
As he was wondering about this incomprehensible sensation, the boss monster planted its front foot on the stone fragment Yoon Pa-ran had been eyeing.
The pieces of flesh strewn messily on the ground along with the stone were lifted by the clawed front foot.
Among those flesh pieces, Yoon Pa-ran discovered it.
A finger that appeared to be human.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
