Chapter 140 – What, That. I Don’t Know. Scared (1)
In order to investigate the recently appeared ‘Sir’, a stranger of unknown origin, Guild Master Jeong Si-woo issues an urgent confidential quest. After consideration, the reconnaissance group, which was entrusted with the quest, consisted of five members, including Kurin, a veteran adventurer of Gold rank, Shumi, an adventurer who had become somewhat accustomed to Silver rank, and his party members. The five people who boarded the airship headed for Landfill returned to the adventurer’s guild after about a week of investigation, but unfortunately the results were less than expected.
Adventurer Kurin and Shumi’s party vividly conveyed what ‘Sensei’ had done in Landfill during the week, but it was a detailed and direct explanation of the target ‘Sensei”s origin and abilities, his plans, and the size of the forces that followed him. Little information was gleaned. It’s not a failure, but it’s an ambiguous achievement that’s hard to count as a success. Still, the guild master paid them compensation in the sense that they worked hard to get to that rough place, but ‘adventurer grade increase’ was excluded from the reward details.
The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment in return.
Kurin’s age has slowly reached twenty-seven. Among adventurers, he was still young, but Kurin was very nervous, as if he was being chased by something. This time, she was determined to enter the platinum rank without fail, and in order to build up her performance, one of the qualifications for her rank test, she applied for a somewhat risky expedition quest that she would normally be reluctant to do. And…
Haha… Cool!”
The result is this.
The goal of this expedition quest is to explore an unknown dungeon revealed through a newly opened dimension. The goods obtained from the dungeon can be acquired by the person who found them, and the risk of pioneering quests like this is high, so the guild gave them considerable performance. It was urgent for Kurin to fulfill her performance, so she forced herself to explore the dungeon. And, of course, this dungeon they started exploring… ‘Giant’ was the worst place for adventurers, including Kurin.
Giing, knocking. Giing, knocking.
Scattered with the members of her expedition, and due to an injury to one of her shoulders, Kurin, who wields her long long spear with both hands and throws it, can no longer fight properly. A heavy, unpleasant sound of metal was approaching her from afar, in her so-so isolation.
This ‘giant castle’ looked like a castle from the Middle Ages, but in fact, it was just a camouflage for insectivorous plants to attract insects. What appeared in front of them, who had thought that a golem made of bricks would come out at best, was a high-tech weapon that did not match the surrounding scenery at all. Soldiers made of metal, drones with firearms attached, and all sorts of mechanical devices resembling various creatures came pouring out from all sides and raided the expedition members.
Due to the sudden attack and the emergence of stronger enemies than expected, the expeditionary force was scattered in an instant, and Kurin also fled from the mechanical soldiers, but one of the drones fired a bullet into her shoulder.
“Damn… I was too greedy. I should have just accepted a quest near Desperado as usual, and I was needlessly greedy and went out on an expedition…”
If you regret it now, it’s already too late.
But… I couldn’t help it. Because there was no hope if it was too late.
Kurin, no, Hyeyoon was from Busan, South Korea. She grew up in a rural village overlooking the sea and was a good-natured daughter who loved to go boating with her father, who worked as a fisherman. She was not very good at fishing, but she was amazing at the quality of a harpoon. Every time she caught unexpected results, she said, “My father is also my daughter.” She laughed and praised her. Was
Until one day, while out on a boat, a typhoon suddenly hits, and the hand holding the pillar of the boat loses its strength, so the wind blows it away and it falls into the sea.
As she was from a seaside village, Hyeyoon also knew how to swim. But there was a big difference between her stepping into the water with sufficient preparation and being thrown into the water unexpectedly. Seawater enters her mouth and nose, which she opens to breathe, and Hyeyoon panics. It sank and was abandoned.
She thought her life was ending so absurdly that when she came to her senses, a man of hers was looking down at her. The man who introduced herself as the messenger of the sea god said that she had drowned and that she would bring her back to life because she was to some extent at fault in that. However, in a world other than this world.
So, Hye-yoon was reborn in the world of Atipia with a new name of Kurin… But she missed her hometown.
She wanted to feel the salty sea breeze again, to hear the lapping and crashing waves again, and to see her father, who was grieving the loss of his one and only daughter, at least once more.
Then, a news came to her ears. An adventurer’s guild mainly composed of strangers. In that guild, different benefits are given depending on the level of adventurers. Among them, the top 1%, Platinum level adventurers… Opportunity to be introduced to the Transcendentalists under the supervision of Guild Master Jeong Si-woo is given.
Gods, angels, demons, demons, transcendental beings, etc… Divine beings who are called by all kinds of names, can destroy and create worlds, and can send at least one person to another world by opening a dimension.
And on the day Kurin heard that among those who were favored by the gods, there were also those who could return to the hometown she was born in, Kurin headed to the adventurer’s guild without hesitation.
Her proficiency in spearmanship, coupled with her flair for magic with a small blessing from the messenger of the sea god, made her an instant gold-class adventurer, but that was all. That alone wouldn’t have gotten her to platinum status. In a situation where she couldn’t even meet the messenger of the sea god she met before, Kurin had to somehow accept the choice of the gods. She was so fond of the transcendent being that she wanted to return to her own home even once.
However, was it too greedy?
Her arms are soaked in the red blood that flowed from her punctured shoulder, and the siege of hideous machine soldiers gradually draws closer. The expedition has failed, and there will be very few survivors. And he’s not among them. Burying her head between her knees, Kurin couldn’t help but burst into tears.
What the hell did I do wrong to have to go through this.
Was the wish to return to her hometown such a great desire?
After going out to sea as usual, he got caught up in a typhoon and drowned, belonged to an adventurer’s guild or something, took on various hard work, and even sold himself to beg for his life from a strange man a while ago… The life she looked back on from the threshold was so pitiful and pitiful that a deep sense of regret and despair swallowed her. At that time, I was seriously contemplating whether it would be more comfortable to kill myself than to be brutally killed by those terrible lumps of metal.
-Is that really enough?
Her one voice shook her.
That voice… A voice I heard a while ago when I went to the underground city of Landfill for a quest from the guild master. It was the voice of a man who was plotting something in Landfill, an unknown man called ‘Sir’ by others.
“Somehow, I thought I let go, but what kind of bullshit is this again…”
– I will ask you again. Is that really enough? Do you have any regrets? What do you want?
“Huh… It’s all wrong. In a situation like this, what the hell are you supposed to do…”
There is no hope. All I see is a dark future. In such a situation, his bruising words, asking why he didn’t wake up again and just sit there, shook Kurin’s… No, Hye-yoon’s heart.
“It’s over now. It’s over…”
-What I asked you is not how to overcome this situation. Finally, he asked if there was anything he wanted.
“What do you want…?”
Isolated in the middle of enemy territory where slaughter machines eager to kill him at any moment, Kurin, who was gripped by the fear of dying, heard his voice in his ears, a whisper that was more dangerous and sweet than that of a devil.
-Desire, desire, wish, wish, hope, etc… It doesn’t matter what you call it. Last minute at the end, remember what you really want. What you want even if you throw away everything you have. You just close your eyes and think of what you most desire. Then I will grant your wish. Now, let me ask you again. What are you wishing for now?
Following his voice, Kurin slowly closed his eyes. In the pitch-black darkness, a picture slowly emerged in her mind.
Shoot aaaaa sound of the cool waves.
The cries of seagulls hovering in the sky.
A cool sea breeze blows from the other side and tickles your cheeks.
Kurin and Hyeyoon… Were already at sea.
The hometown she longed for and wanted to return to. A quiet rural town with clear views of the soothing blue sea, where you won’t have to fight terrifying monsters and risk your life for adventure to survive. Kurin finally faced what her own wish was. She… Still wanted to go back. To her home, to the sea, to her family.
-Three, two, one. Now… Now open your eyes.
“…Uh?”
Following his words, Hyeyoon opened her eyes and was taken aback. It was a truly unexpected scenery.
Beasts of metal that chew people with their bones, mechanical soldiers that cut through thick rocks like tofu, and drones that fly around and shoot guns with ear-piercing sounds.
Everyone was swept away by a huge wave that appeared out of nowhere.
The old castle, which was blocked on all sides by high walls, filled with water and became a small sea close to a lake, and she herself stood in the center. And the water that instantly submerged her castle was starting from the floor where she put her spear.
– Look, it went well because I did what I said, right?
“Eh, what is this…? What the hell happened? Could this be… Did you do all of this?”
To her bewilderment, her man answered in a voice that contained her laughter.
-I just helped you a little to bring out the power of your mind into reality. This is all you did
“What did I… Do?”
Submerging this huge castle, equivalent to a small town, in such a short amount of time is not an easy task even for a moderate archmage who majored in the water element. Besides, even after such an enormous task, she felt no other fatigue.
How on earth is this even possible? Even the wizards, who dismissed her secondary magic as a trivial skill, and the holders of powers and blessings who boasted that they were chosen by God, did something that could not be easily accomplished by herself, who did not have much.
– So, how are you feeling?
“…”
Kurin lowered her head. She didn’t know where or how this man was looking at herself, but she didn’t want him to see the expression she was making right now, at least right now.
-If you sharpen that power further, you might be able to achieve your dream someday. If you have any thoughts, stop by Landfill once again someday. I will always be waiting there
With that, the man’s voice ended.
After a long time passed and all the water in the castle was drained, Kurin passed between the mechanical monsters that had been discharged and fell and joined the surviving members of the expedition who had already gathered outside the castle.
On this day, in Desperado, the land of adventure and freedom, the story of the existence of ‘Sensei’ and the power he possesses was known in earnest through the mouth of the person involved, Kurin.
*
“…This has been done right. I never thought they would use our personnel like this.”
The man sitting in his office, the representative of Desperado and the guild master Siu Jeong, looked down at the adventurers of the guild who were having a heated discussion about a certain story through the window and clicked his tongue.
“I confirmed that the man’s strength was not normal by bumping into his subordinates a few times. However, at that time, I just felt that it was a bit of a headache…”
Soon after, Siu picked up the paper on the desk with the status history recently updated by Kurin, a veteran gold-level adventurer. His eyes went to the place written at the end of the paper.
Skill? : [Nostalgic Sea]
– Changes the surrounding environment to ‘sea’ centered on the user and activates the following abilities.
[Constant steam breathing]
[Increase swimming speed]
…
There was a lot of information on the paper, but it didn’t really matter. The various contents listed below are all just to assist with the abilities listed in the first part.
“Temporarily change the surrounding environment to the sea…”
It is very important to use the environment around you in battle. However, her newly acquired power this time is the power to change the surrounding environment to her advantage. Besides, the bigger problem is…
Since that power is not magic, it does not consume mana, and it is not a protection or authority, so it cannot be blocked even by blocking the divine power. Just by consuming a little more mental stamina, the ability to instantly turn an enemy camp into one’s home ground was a very rare class even within Atipia, where many magics, powers, and blessings prevailed.
And… It’s probably the power that the man called ‘Teacher’ gave me. It is not known what kind of transaction took place between the two. On that day, the adventurer Kurin hid the transaction itself with the teacher. Of course, I have no intention of pressuring her with that.
I’m not even in a good position in the guild because of my sluggish performance, but when I ask why he hid the deal with the teacher shortly after returning from an expedition where he risked his life, he said that the guild puts their own interests ahead of the adventurers’ human rights, and the guild Because you might leave.
Because of the principle of guaranteeing freedom, the adventurer’s guild is not well controlled compared to other cities, so it is not a good choice to reduce the power that is lacking even if it is not. Especially if you are a person with an unconventional ability to change the surrounding environment to your advantage.
Also, there was no choice but to revise the evaluation of teacher Jeong Si-woo again. As a result of the confirmation, the dungeon where the expedition was hit hard this time was considerably higher than expected, and it was a level of magic where several platinum level adventurers should have ventured out. Such a dangerous place was annihilated by only one gold-level adventurer. Even gold-level talents are at this level when they awaken their power, but what if platinum-level adventurers obtain that power?
Most of Desperado’s oppressive power against other countries so far came from guild master Jeong Si-woo. In other words, with the exception of Siwoo Jung himself, Desperado is on the side of miserably low power. But what if all the guild members got those strong abilities? The balance of power will collapse at once.
And the collapse of the balance will lead to chaos. Indeed, the foreign press in charge of chaos is a special treasured apostle.
In general, when it comes to causing chaos, most of them cause chaos through acts of destruction such as terrorism, but this apostle is different. He intends to influence this Atipia to such an extent that if he ceases to exist, he will be in trouble. If left alone, they will have too much power, and if you kill them, that’s a problem in their own right.
“The goddess of justice didn’t make a prophecy for nothing.”
Then, as one of the representatives of the seven cities and the guild master of the adventurer’s guild, the conclusion Siwoo Jung will draw is fixed. To increase the strength of the guild through a deal with the teacher, and at the same time to keep him in check so that he cannot increase his power beyond a certain level. That is the only answer
Help someone and hinder them at the same time. That sounds contradictory. Not really different. However, Jung Si-woo had no fear in doing this.
“I’ll have to write to Mr. Landfill. I want to establish friendly relations as soon as possible.”
Because, Lady Luck was on his side.
