Chapter 1192 – 1192. Test
I stopped walking and looked around.
Solid ground, thickly rising trees, and a sky full of pure white clouds. There was nothing special to see.
There was nothing special. I wondered why Ha Seung-hee had chosen this place. I quietly watched her.
Ha Seung-hee lowered the bag she had been carrying on her back to the ground. I heard it was an expensive artifact. The bag’s capacity was much larger than it looked, and it also reduced the weight of its contents. I vaguely heard that it cost over 100 billion won.
I wasn’t at all envious of Ha Seung-hee’s bag. I had an inventory that was more convenient than Ha Seung-hee’s bag.
She rummaged through the bag and took out a glass bottle filled with green liquid. HB-1. A replica of Hebil’s accelerant. It looked no different from the original.
“You’re testing here? There’s nothing here? Are you thinking of using it on the trees?”
“You don’t know anything. There’s Bellapuric over there.”
“Bella… what?”
She rummaged through the bushes. She found a weed and grinned. She carefully scraped the ground and began to dig up the weed.
“Bellapuric. It’s one of the common herbs found in dungeons. It has excellent antipyretic effects. The roots, in particular, are one of the ingredients for potions.”
“…If it’s an ingredient for potions, it must be quite expensive.”
“Yes. It usually trades for 120,000 won.”
After collecting the Bellapuric, she tore the roots to shreds and scattered them everywhere. Then, she poured a bottle of HB-1 onto the ground.
The shredded root pieces wriggled and regenerated. The roots went down into the ground, and the upper part began to grow into a stem. Ha Seung-hee and I stepped back and watched the situation. It didn’t even take a minute for the herb called Bellapuric to grow.
It didn’t end there. The Bellapuric’s fruit fell to the ground, and the fruit that fell to the ground grew and multiplied.
After three minutes, the surrounding area was full of Bellapuric.
“This is about 300 plants. I’m satisfied.”
“If 120,000 won is 300…”
“That’s 36 million won.”
“How much are you planning to sell HB-1 for?”
“I’m thinking of selling it for 50 million won per bottle.”
“That expensive?”
“It’s cheap. Think about it. If you can get the seeds of herbs that cost more than 500,000 won each, you can make several times more profit. Well, the price of herbs will go down, though.”
“What if you monopolize HB-1 and grow and sell the herbs? Then you can make more money.”
“Monopolies cause problems. The biggest problem is that you end up making unnecessary enemies. I’d rather make more allies than enemies if possible.”
Ssssh.
A chilling sound was heard.
Ha Seung-hee and I looked around and widened our eyes. The plants other than Bellapuric, the trees and bushes, began to wither and dry up.
“The side effects are strong. Was it like this on Earth too?”
“…No. It wasn’t this bad. The Bellapuric… is unharmed. I need to find out if this only happens in dungeons, or if the herb called Bellapuric is special.”
She took out a wooden box and stored the Bellapuric. I could feel mana from the box. It seemed to be a box with special effects.
“Are you taking it? It’s too good to throw away.”
“I need to research this too. It looks fine on the outside, but… I don’t know what kind of problems there might be inside.”
We moved again. We found another herb. Just like before, we used HB-1 to quickly cultivate the herb. The result was the same as with Bellapuric. The surrounding plants withered and dried up instantly.
“…I need to test it in other dungeons too. You’ll help me, right?”
“Yeah. It’s not a difficult task.”
I looked straight ahead.
There was a calm lake. It looked like the lake was at least 1km in diameter. Pink lotus flowers floated on the surface of the water.
It was a mysterious and peaceful sight. But Ha Seung-hee and I didn’t go near the lake. That’s because a D-rank monster called a Fog Snake was hiding beneath the surface of this beautiful lake.
The Fog Snake was a snake with a frog’s head and legs. They attack with their long tongues. The tips of their tongues are sharp like awls, and they are poisonous.
“Senior. Do you know what happens if you pour HB-1 into the water?”
“I’ve never poured it into water, so I don’t know.”
“If it’s diluted in water, the effect decreases. If there’s too much water, the effect disappears.”
“Then pouring HB-1 here won’t have any effect.”
“We don’t know that yet. This is a dungeon, after all.”
Ha Seung-hee took out three bottles of HB-1 from her bag. She poured all three bottles of HB-1 into the lake at once. The green liquid seemed to be diluting, but then it was absorbed by the lotus flowers nearby. A change began. The lotus petals fell off, and the lotus base spat out lotus seeds. The lotus seeds sank straight to the bottom of the lake and grew rapidly.
“The reaction is the same as with the other herbs.”
A problem occurred. The other lotus flowers around it withered and died. Not only that, but the water became polluted and murky. Only the lotus flowers affected by HB-1 showed off their noble beauty.
Ha Seung-hee reached out to collect a lotus flower. I grabbed her by the back of her neck and pulled her back. A Fog Snake jumped out of the water and stretched its tongue out into the air where Ha Seung-hee’s head had been. The tongue was over 1m long.
“A Fog Snake?! Why all of a sudden when we didn’t even go into the lake?!”
“It must be pissed off because the water got polluted.”
I stepped forward and drew the Hwaryeon Dagger from my waist and swung it. I cut off the Fog Snake’s tongue and hit its head. I killed it easily. Fog Snakes are not difficult to deal with if you avoid their surprise attacks.
‘The problem is that those surprise attacks are hard to avoid.’
I didn’t put the Hwaryeon Dagger back into its sheath and remained on guard. There was no guarantee that only one would attack.
“Senior Yoo-jin. Please collect some lotus flowers.”
“Okay. Is one enough?”
“Five. I need them for research. Please pull them out with the roots.”
I approached the lake and reached out with my left hand. I pulled on a lotus flower. I failed to pull it out with the roots. The stem broke.
“Be satisfied with this.”
“…What about the roots?”
I would have had to go directly into the lake to pull out the roots, and I didn’t want to do that.
“You do it yourself then.”
“……If you’re going to help, help properly, please?”
“I don’t want to go into the water.”
“Is that so? The hotel I booked for today is famous for its excellent bathtubs… I guess you won’t be getting into the bathtub, Senior.”
“……A bathtub play, huh. Not bad.”
I put my foot into the lake. A few Fog Snakes swam over and attacked. I swung my sword in the water. The corpses of the Fog Snakes soared up with the water.
‘Annoying.’
Crack.
Lightning flashed in my fist.
“Don’t use lightning. It could affect the lotus flowers.”
That was a valid point.
“Okay.”
I carefully dug out the lotus flowers from the roots.
‘This kind of menial work is something that slaves should be doing…’
It was annoying, but I couldn’t help it. Ha Seung-hee would give me service tonight for all my hard work.
‘Since she’s using me like this… I’ll have to see Ha Seung-hee’s horny dance tonight to make it worth it.’
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
A grating sound rang in my ears as I was collecting the fourth lotus flower.
It sounded like a flute. A flute sound that was just being blown strongly without any melody.
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!
I checked the source of the sound. It was in the forest about 300m away from here.
‘There’s no monster in this dungeon that makes that kind of sound. Was the preliminary investigation wrong? Or maybe…’
It was the work of someone who had secretly entered the dungeon.
The moment that thought reached me, I threw away the lotus flower I was holding and went out of the lake to stand next to Ha Seung-hee.
“Senior?”
“…They’re coming.”
I pushed Ha Seung-hee behind me and stretched out my hand towards the front. Dozens of Fog Snakes jumped out from the front and charged at us.
Crackling, crackling, crackling.
I discharged the lightning that had gathered in my palm. Dozens of lightning bolts swept through the Fog Snakes. The electrocuted Fog Snakes fell weakly to the ground.
Peeeeeeep, peeeeeeeeeeeep!
The flute sound rang out again.
Dozens of Fog Snakes jumped out of the lake. The creatures with the bodies of snakes and the legs of frogs could move on land. What was even more terrifying was that they didn’t crawl like snakes, but jumped like frogs.
“…Fog Snakes are appearing every time the flute sound rings out. Are they being controlled by the flute sound?”
Hunters’ abilities are diverse. It wouldn’t be strange to have an ability to control monsters with a flute sound. And there was another way to think about it. A flute that controls monsters, or something like that.
“It seems like someone secretly entered the dungeon.”
“…The dungeon entrance was being guarded by association staff.”
“They must have taken advantage of a gap and entered. The association staff guarding the entrance are all the same, anyway.”
Crackling, crackling, crackling.
I countered the dozens of Fog Snakes charging at me by releasing lightning. Fortunately, they were D-rank monsters with no electrical resistance. I could kill dozens of them just by releasing lightning.
‘Until my mana runs out, that is.’
Peeeeep! Peeeeeeeeeeep!
Splash, splash, splash.
Fog Snakes jumped out of the lake. They were aiming directly at Ha Seung-hee and me. I ran with Ha Seung-hee towards the place where the flute sound was coming from.
“…Senior. We have to kill the guy playing the flute here.”
Ha Seung-hee said with a cold expression. She swung her hand at the Fog Snakes chasing us from behind. Her ability, invisible claws, cut the Fog Snakes into five pieces.
“Is it Ha Jun-soo’s doing?”
“No. It probably isn’t. Big Brother has already missed his chance. He can’t physically harm me. If he did, he would lose his position as successor forever.”
“He could do it without the chairman finding out.”
“There’s no way Grandpa wouldn’t have put surveillance on Big Brother. Anyway, we have to kill him here. HB-1 can’t be revealed to the world yet!”
“Do you have any idea who he might be?”
“…There are too many to count. The most suspicious are the competing companies… There are more than five companies that could do something like this. If you include guilds and overseas companies… it’s a headache. It would be easier to just catch him and interrogate him.”
“You’re right, we can just catch him and interrogate him. What’s so difficult about that?”
“Senior!!”
Ha Seung-hee shouted. We had no choice but to stop. We were already surrounded by hundreds of Fog Snakes.
“It’s impossible for them to surround us like this. The intelligence of Fog Snakes is… at the level of ordinary beasts.”
“The guy playing the flute must have controlled them.”
I answered nonchalantly and held the Hwaryeon Dagger in both hands. Crackling. Red lightning flowed along the blade of the Hwaryeon Dagger.
Ssssh!
The Fog Snakes made a sharp sound and opened their mouths all at once, stretching out their tongues. It looked as if hundreds of tentacles were aiming at us.
Thwack!
I slammed the Hwaryeon Dagger into the ground.
Red lightning seeped into the ground and then shot up into the sky, spreading in all directions. Hundreds of Fog Snakes were electrocuted, and the trees and bushes caught fire.
“Let’s go.”
“Aren’t you going to collect the magic stones? Even if they’re the lowest-grade D-rank magic stones… this amount is like hitting the jackpot.”
“I’m not interested in small change.”
I found him.
He was sitting on a rock, wearing a cloak. His black hair, which reached his shoulders, was curly, and his eyes were sunken. He looked at us and lowered the wooden flute he had been holding to his mouth.
