NOVEL NEXT 11.
11.
“Sehun, what are you looking at?”
Jian, who had quickly sorted the garbage into boxes and plastic bags, approached Sehun, who was still gazing out the window.
As Sehun blinked, his faintly blood-tinged irises returned to a deep black color.
“That,” he said.
His tiny index finger pointed at the moon floating in the sky. The moon, shining even brighter than before, must have looked quite pretty to the child’s eyes.
Finding Sehun both cute and pitiful, Jian added one more task to do while Sehun slept: ordering books and toys for the child via Hunter delivery service.
“Now it’s time to wash up and go to bed. It’s gotten quite late.”
Jian grabbed Sehun’s shoulders and turned him towards the bathroom. Though obediently following Jian, Sehun occasionally looked back towards the window.
When Jian’s gaze was elsewhere, a cold sneer briefly crossed the child’s small lips.
* * *
“I’ll be back.”
Jian stroked the deeply sleeping child’s head as he bid farewell and tiptoed out of the house.
Checking the time, he saw only 20 minutes remained until dungeon entry time. It took about 10 minutes to walk there, so if he hurried, he could arrive on time.
Past midnight, the streets were quiet, being far from the entertainment district. Jian, walking while following the arrow direction on his map app, gently touched his face.
‘Is this too strange…?’
Without a mask, he had hurriedly wrapped a black scarf to cover up to below his eyes and wore sunglasses.
A scarf and sunglasses at midnight in March – what a combination. It was eye-catching, but many Hunters dressed in outlandish ways, so it wasn’t particularly unusual.
Still feeling uneasy, he kept scanning his surroundings as he walked.
Disliking encounters with people, he deliberately chose a dungeon that allowed unmanned entry.
For B-rank dungeons and above, staff dispatched from the Hunter Management Bureau must personally check Hunter IDs, but the dungeon Jian was heading to today was F-rank, so it was fine.
The monster emerging from this dungeon was the Clam. Shaped like a clam with two legs, it had low aggression and, despite its hard-looking shell, low defense, thus classified as an F-rank monster.
After winding through alleys following the app’s directions, he arrived at a place where a bluish barrier rippled.
It was a protective shield preventing non-awakened ordinary people from approaching. As he neared the entrance, a warning sound played along with a guiding voice.
—Please scan your entry ticket.
Inside the barrier, a gate large enough for one person to pass through was prominently placed.
It was an almond-shaped gate, black like a black hole inside. Usually, a dungeon’s rank was proportional to the gate’s size. Judging by its size, this was undoubtedly an F-rank dungeon.
Jian approached the machine that could scan QR codes. If one ignored the warning sound and just passed through the entrance, the system would immediately dispatch Hunter police from the Hunter Management Bureau.
After scanning the QR code that appeared on his phone screen, a cheerful notification sound played, and the barrier disappeared only in front of the gate.
—The entrance will close soon. Please hurry into the dungeon.
He felt scared about entering the dungeon alone. Even though he had possessed the body of an S-rank Hunter, Jian was just an ordinary person who had never experienced combat before dying.
While he hesitated, the disappeared barrier began to restore itself. Remembering the entry fee, Jian clenched both fists and leaped into the gate.
“Heurgh…!”
Jian stretched his arms forward, making a choking sound. As soon as his body passed through the gate, he felt dizzy and nauseous. It was similar to car sickness but much worse.
He steadied himself on his wobbling legs. He could feel the air had changed dramatically from moments ago.
Jian took off his sunglasses and scarf. While it had been cool enough outside to wear a thick padded jacket, inside it was humid and hot enough for sweat to run down his back.
“So this is a dungeon…”
It was amazing how the world could change so much in just a few steps. Jian leaned on a nearby stone pillar to catch his breath.
It was a safety stone installed in front of the gate leading out of the dungeon, creating a 5-meter radius safe zone where dungeon monsters couldn’t approach.
Swish— Swish—
While he was distracted by the strange sight, an alien sound caught his attention. As Jian turned his head towards the sound, his face turned pale.
The scene he encountered before his motion sickness had fully subsided was shocking. The Clams’ colors ranged from dark gray to black.
Moreover, their shape was closer to slightly oval than the common clam. Seeing thousands of Clams moving while tightly packed together made his skin crawl.
Jian staggered, clutching his dizzy head. He had an ominous feeling that adapting to a Hunter’s life might be more difficult than he thought.
Clams were considered cute among monsters. That’s why he had chosen this dungeon. If he had entered a dungeon with insect-type or reptile-type monsters from the start, he might have fainted.
Suppressing the urge to run away immediately, Jian gathered his resolve. He was no longer alone; he had Sehun to take care of now.
He might even have to deal with Hunters, but emotionally, it was much less burdensome to eliminate creepy-looking monsters than to attack fellow humans.
He needed to quickly improve his combat sense while facing monsters. Even with a Hunter’s abilities, he was no different from an ordinary person, having lived in a world without Hunters and monsters.
“Phew… You can do this, Lee Jian.”
Jian slapped both his cheeks hard with his palms to focus. His fair skin turned red, but he was too tense to feel the pain.
“Skill window.”
A translucent window that only Jian could see appeared before his eyes. He quickly read through all the skills visible at a glance.
A complex expression crossed Jian’s face. The shock he felt when he first saw the skills came back to him anew.
What good was being S-rank? All the skills were strange.
‘Cooking porridge for others’ benefit. No one can find me. Try to penetrate if you can. Is this even an attack skill?’
Whoever named them had the worst sense of naming. Above all, the strangest thing was the Life Force stat.
‘Why am I the only one with Life Force deduction… This is ominous.’
He had never seen a Hunter in novels who used skills by deducting Life Force. Except for Jian, all Hunters used Mana, not Life Force, when using skills.
Moreover, as far as Jian knew, no one had Life Force displayed on their status window; only the total amount and remaining percentage of HP and MP were shown.
Life Force. Doesn’t it sound much more directly related to life than HP?
Peculiarly, on Jian’s status window, only the “Life Force” stat was displayed instead of HP and MP.
‘It’s fortunate that it’s ten million, but…’
Haa, Jian sighed deeply as he ran his hand through his hair. It was known that A-rank Hunters usually had HP and MP stats of over 1 million. S-rank Hunters had over 5 million.
Compared to other S-rank Hunters, Jian’s Life Force of ten million was similar to their combined HP and MP, so his ability might not be inferior.
The problem was that there were no Life Force recovery potions in this world, and he had no way of knowing what would happen if Life Force reached zero, or how long it would take for used Life Force to recover. Except by experiencing it firsthand.
If only all the original owner’s memories had surfaced when he possessed the body. But with only the temporary memories from the first day, he had no choice but to act like this.
‘I really want to live a long, healthy life…’
Having died from overwork in his previous life, Jian wanted to live a long life this time, until his black hair turned completely white.
That’s why he had tried to live apart from the Hunter lifestyle. Instead of enjoying wealth and fame in the spotlight, Hunters had a mortality rate embarrassingly higher than ordinary people.
But now that the situation had changed, he needed to muster his courage.
Wiping his palms, sweaty from tension, on his pants, Jian looked ahead.
Countless Clams, too many to count without fear, were moving on the mudflat-like ground, making a sound like cloth dragging on the floor.
Even though it was an F-rank dungeon, it was so vast that the end wasn’t visible. It suddenly felt real that he had entered a different world just by passing through one gate.
To attack, he had to leave the safe zone. Jian clenched his fists tightly and passed through the blue barrier.
Shak, shak, shak, shak—
The Clams all reacted at once, sensing Jian’s presence. The tightly closed gaps between their shells opened, revealing two gleaming red eyes.
The dungeon was rather dark, with only a red-tinged full moon in the sky. With the eerily glowing red eyes appearing in numbers equal to the Clams, Jian’s legs trembled like a newborn fawn’s.