#125
The tentacle clearly stretched towards me. However, as if hesitating, it paused around me before turning back and snatching Han Nari.
“Ms. Nari!”
I called out to Han Nari urgently. But she seemed too focused on using her healing skill to detoxify herself in the constantly flowing poison mist to respond. Her face kept alternating between pale and dark.
‘This is bad. An innocent person got involved because of me!’
I wished it had targeted me instead. It would have been easier for me to handle than Han Nari, who had no abilities other than healing.
‘Is it to make me feel guilty? Or to hinder my first dungeon conquest by limiting my movement?’
Either way, it was serious. But more than anything, the problem was that Han Nari could die if something went wrong. From the writer’s perspective, she was probably just an extra character.
The writer who was trying to kill even major characters wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate a mere extra.
I took out a ‘Sturdy Rope’ from my inventory. True to its name, it was an item so tough and durable that it would never break under normal circumstances.
After tying a round knot at the end, I threw it to Han Nari.
“Ms. Han Nari, catch this!”
“Kyaa… Urghh!”
Han Nari suddenly let out a strange cry as she tried to catch the rope. The tentacle that had been moving forward suddenly stopped and pressed against her chest.
Her face turned blue instantly as her breath was cut off. But she desperately reached out to grab the rope and shouted with a more hopeful voice.
“I… I got it!”
“Tie it around your body and wait a moment!”
At my words, she struggled to tie the rope around herself. After confirming she had tied it around her waist, I put on gloves that increased strength and speed and pulled the rope.
“Uwaaa!”
Han Nari screamed as she flew through the air. I quickly pulled the rope while maneuvering the palanquin, barely managing to prevent her from falling to the ground.
Han Nari, dangling and holding onto the palanquin’s railing, climbed up onto it while shedding tears profusely.
“I thought I was going to die!”
I too had been extremely worried, thinking Han Nari might die. But thankfully, I had managed to save her…
‘Managed?’
Did I really just barely save her?
With a doubtful feeling, I glared at the Poison Butterfly that had stopped at a distance. Something felt odd.
‘Strangely… the timing seemed too perfect.’
From the moment I threw the rope to Han Nari, it seemed like the monster’s escape speed had significantly decreased. Moreover, it wasn’t moving now.
Just in case, I used an attack item. It was an item that shot ice arrows through the air to hit the target.
The Poison Butterfly, which had been alive and fluttering until just now, shattered into pieces when hit by the ice. It disappeared very quietly, without even any organs left to make its monstrous screams.
‘Didn’t it die too easily…?’
It felt like a clumsy ending for something the writer had supposedly done.
I thought it might just be a simple dungeon anomaly, but the movement of the tentacle that had grabbed Han Nari earlier bothered me.
The way it had moved to grab me, then circled around to snatch Han Nari who was behind me.
‘That was also… strange.’
There was something awkward about it. If it was related to the writer, was there any reason for it to show such hesitant movement?
“Is it… not the writer?”
I muttered unconsciously, then glanced at Han Nari. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have heard me, busy trying to calm herself down.
I wasn’t sure what the right answer was, but for now, I was just glad Han Nari was safe.
“Are you okay?”
I asked, taking out water and chocolate from my inventory and handing them to her. Han Nari looked at me with tear-filled eyes and nodded.
“I really thought I was going to die. Oh my god, the feeling… it was so horrible! How can something like that exist? They call it a Poison Butterfly, but they should change it to Poison Tentacle Moth or something!”
After complaining to me for a while, Han Nari soon sighed deeply and muttered.
“I’m glad I survived, but I used too much energy constantly healing my poisoned body. What should I do? If Guide Lee Jaeha gets hurt from now on…”
“It’s okay. We just need to make sure I don’t get hurt.”
“I guess… you seem to attack from a distance, so you probably won’t get hurt, right?”
“That’s right.”
More than anything, I wanted to believe that no more anomalies would occur after this…
“I feel like I’m just a burden… Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
“How could you easily handle an anomaly on your first dungeon trip? Besides, you’re originally a healing Esper.”
“That’s true, but…”
“You know more about dungeons than I do. If it weren’t for the anomaly, you would have been a huge help.”
Han Nari seemed very dejected about only being able to scream and not do anything else.
But no matter how I thought about it, Han Nari wasn’t at fault at all. Even if she had come with a determined mindset, no one would predict being caught by the tentacles of a zombie-like Poison Butterfly due to a dungeon anomaly.
I tried hard to comfort her, but maybe due to my lack of eloquence, Han Nari’s expression remained gloomy.
I couldn’t keep comforting her forever, so after thinking for a moment, I suggested changing our mode of transportation.
“If this dungeon keeps producing monsters like that, we should probably abandon the palanquin and ride something else. If we ride something completely enclosed, we won’t be exposed to poison or attacks.”
“Wow, you have other options?”
“Of course. Let’s get down first. We can’t change in mid-air.”
I lowered the control stick to bring the palanquin close to the ground. Han Nari nodded and quickly jumped down from the palanquin.
“Aack!”
As I was about to follow her down, suddenly a scream came from below. Startled, I looked down to see Han Nari sinking into the ground.
“Ms. Nari!”
“Guide, save me please!”
What now, this time?
In a panic, I threw the rope again to grab Han Nari. This time too, she managed to grab the rope safely, but the force pulling her down was so strong that my body was sucked in along with her.
“Ugh, hic, you can just let go of me… Huaaang!”
As I was being pulled down with her, Han Nari cried out while sobbing. She was saying I could abandon her, but her voice was trembling with fear even as she said it.
Who would want to die like this? I gritted my teeth and frantically tried to use items that could help us out of this situation, but it was useless as everything sank into the ground.
‘Dowoon, Shin Haejun…!’
The moment I thought we might die so absurdly, those two came to mind. If I had known this would happen, I would have expressed my affection more.
‘I really… like both of them…’
Along with the thought of how I could like them both, I also thought that if I had known I would die like this, I should have told them I loved them.
‘How long are we going to fall?’
Han Nari and I, connected by the rope, fell endlessly towards the ground. Looking to the side, I saw she had already fainted from the fear of falling.
‘No, I have to survive and return. So I can tell them I like them… They’ll be sad.’
Biting my lip, I searched for an item that could eliminate the impact of the fall. Since the unconscious Han Nari couldn’t use a wing item, I took out the ‘Boing Boing Trampoline’ and threw it down. A fluffy-looking trampoline popped out with a ‘boing’ sound. It was an item that could prevent death by reducing fall damage to zero, even when falling from mid-air.
There must have been a ground, as I heard the trampoline hit the surface. Before we hit the ground, I pulled the rope to embrace Han Nari. It was to prevent us from bouncing apart.
“Ugh…!”
Although the fall damage was eliminated, we bounced up significantly when we hit the trampoline. I suddenly felt glad that I had held onto Han Nari. If I hadn’t, she would have been completely thrown off and died from hitting the ground.
‘Where is this?’
I had never heard of a dungeon that went underground like a tunnel.
When I raised my head to look at the sky, I could see a tiny hole pierced through. No wonder I thought we had been falling for a long time, it seemed we really had.
This time, I looked around to check our surroundings. In the extreme darkness, I could see things that were strangely glittering.
I took out a ‘Solar Lantern’ and threw it into the air, and the surroundings suddenly brightened as if an artificial sun had risen. Looking around in this state, I could see black shining crystals everywhere, as if we had entered a jewel mine.
‘Why does this feel familiar…?’
A dungeon in the form of a mine… I felt like I had seen this somewhere before.
As I was trying to recall my memory, suddenly I heard a sound as if something was crawling along the ground.
Looking towards the source of the sound, I saw something like a giant earthworm crawling between the crystals.
‘Ugh…!’
I felt a chill run down my spine. Seeing the giant insect made me feel nauseous. I even thought that maybe it was fortunate that Han Nari had fainted.
It seems that earthworm had eaten through the ground, causing Han Nari to sink in…
‘This feels really familiar… Huh?’
My eyes widened at a sudden realization. A giant earthworm-like monster that crawls along the surface, eating the ground, and an underground dungeon entered through those holes.
It was exactly the same type as the [Underground Babylon] dungeon in Limitless Nine. Now that I looked closely, even the design was similar.
‘Is this a coincidence?’
Couldn’t anyone come up with this kind of idea?
Why did it have to be a dungeon from Limitless Nine appearing here, making me feel uneasy?
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
