Storm Warrior - Chapter 340



Only Noblemtl

#340, Heterogeneous Energy

Han Seong-yoon has been able to predict the appearance of most monsters in advance.

Same goes for Ivy.

Both of them were able to naturally sense danger without worrying about each other and respond on their own.

Because of that, Han Seong-yoon couldn’t help but be very nervous.

“… … .”

Because it meant that there was a being around her that she couldn’t sense and that was only affected by Ivy’s sense of smell.

But even after quite some time had passed, the son-in-law was filled with silence.

Finally, Han Seong-yoon, who had been watching his surroundings without even breathing, let out the breath he had been holding.

“Phuhu─! Damn it. Why aren’t you showing up?”

“… … .”

“Does it still stink?”

“… Sister?”

When Han Seong-yoon called again because there was no answer, Ivy, who had been furrowing her brows, corrected what she had said earlier.

“… It’s not a different smell. It’s not like it has Maru-san’s scent on it.”

“Oh, what’s wrong? I was nervous. If I made a mistake, you should tell me quickly.”

“That’s not it… I think the smell has disappeared. I can’t smell anything.”

“What? Then you missed the smell of the floor too-”

Only then did Han Seong-yoon open his eyes wide and stop talking.

‘…Huh? Wait a minute.’

Because I really couldn’t smell anything.

This wasn’t about animal-level smells or the tiny scents you could detect.

The peculiar musty smell of caves created by otherworldly bacteria.

And the smell of blood seeping into the surface of the volcanic rock was something she had smelled a moment ago.

Sniff sniff!

Han Seong-yoon put his hand to his nose to smell something, then flapped his front bangs and shouted.

“I really can’t smell anything! What is this? Is my nose numb?”

‘… No. There’s nothing wrong with my olfactory nerve.’

The reason Ivy initially thought she smelled something different was because she had momentarily sensed the flow of ‘it’.

“…is a phenomenon.”

I can’t really explain it, but… I definitely felt something entering the space, as if invisible smoke was filling the room.

“Phenomenon? What is this phenomenon of not being able to smell?”

“Maybe all we can sense is smell.”

“Hmm… I’m getting scared.”

Han Seong-yoon is fearless enough to look like something is wrong with his hair.

To her, being scared meant that it was difficult to understand the current situation, or that it was a pain in the neck.

But Ivy nodded to Han Seong-yoon’s words.

“Yeah… something feels off. It’s ominous.”

“Is that all? It’s nice not having to smell blood, sweat, or the rotting corpses of monsters. Well, listening to what my sister said, I think I have a slightly unpleasant feeling…”

Although he thought it was just his mood, Han Seong-yoon was actually more sensitive to subtle changes.

The sixth sense itself, which is at the level of a superhuman, is because she is superior.

Anyway, it was when Han Seong-yoon was wiping away the goosebumps that were coming up late.

Gurrrrrr!

“It’s a surprise….”

Suddenly, there was a loud noise and the space where the two people were standing slowly rotated as if it were a stage set.

Although it clearly appears to be a natural cave with no traces of any stone structures, the volcanic rock walls have split and moved as if they were a viscous fluid, forming a new structure.

The road I just walked along has disappeared,

A sabotage gimmick in an underwater dungeon that reveals a new path in a previously blocked direction.

It was a scene I had witnessed many times before, but it was the first time I had stood directly in that changing space.

The ground I was standing on also shook violently.

“Sister! Catch me!”

Han Seong-yoon and Ivy held onto each other’s lapels for support and maintained their balance.

Could it be because I held my hand too tightly?

The dragon tooth pendant, which had been stuck out of its leather case as if it had been squeezed, slipped out of Han Seong-yoon’s hand.

Chorus!

Whoosh!

Han Seong-yoon quickly reached out to grab the chain, but it was all in vain.

This was because the shaking of the ground had not yet stopped.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The pendant, which was floating in the air like a balloon that was blown away,

“Another piece of shit… What!”

As the ground movement ended and a new path that had been blocked was revealed, I flew towards it.

I was a bit relaxed because it flew past a range that I could catch faster than I thought, but then it suddenly disappeared, and I suddenly came to my senses.

“Oh no!”

Han Seong-yoon immediately chased after the pendant and kicked the spot.

Pot!

Even though it couldn’t be of immediate help, it was something very precious to her.

Ivy followed right behind.

Wow─!

A large number of monsters were gathered in the dark cave path, as if they were waiting for the wall blocking them to disappear.

Kwajik!

Han Seong-yoon dealt with them well while running without slowing down.

The power and rapidity of the magical waves emitted by the matured Qigong master were incredible.

Boom!

Along with the Yeomdongye, she was a high-level qigong master who had reached S-class, and had learned all kinds of ancient techniques(?) through Maru.

Because he was so focused on striking forward, he occasionally missed the monsters, but they were quickly pierced by Ivy’s epee that followed.

Push!

“Ugh!”

How long did you run like that?

Han Seong-yoon, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped.

Ivy also slowed down, shedding her sword.

“why….”

As she was about to ask why he had stopped, she soon noticed the darkness that had fallen ahead.

Han Seong-yoon spoke with his gaze straight ahead.

“I think I went over there… but something seems different?”

At first glance it looked like the shadow of the cave itself, but it was clearly dark and it was clearly a door leading somewhere.

It wasn’t hard to recognize it, as it looked similar to the checkpoints I had passed several times on my way here.

But something feels different.

To be precise, it felt like every nerve in my body was sending me a warning that something was wrong.

“Yeah… If I’m thinking correctly, I think this is the last door.”

“Huh! Let’s see what kind of honey they put in this dungeon to make us listen to the mad dragon.”

“… … .”

Han Seong-yoon thought that the term ‘Dragon of the Underwater Dungeon’ naturally referred to Maru.

When Ivy first encountered the information in the player community, most of the time Kwangryong was referred to by the name “Katrinan”, but she simply understood it as a nickname they had given to him after a fictional character.

It had to be that way because both of them believed that Maru was the only dragon that existed on this land.

One day, Maru told Han Seong-yoon a little story about Road.

But from Han Seong-yoon’s perspective, it was only natural that her absent husband would come to mind first, and not her mother-in-law(?), who she had heard had gone missing a long time ago.

Meanwhile, Ivy was suddenly struck by a strange thought.

“let’s go.”

Although the questions were not yet completely resolved, Han Seong-yoon was about to roll up her sleeves and enter the darkness, so I grabbed her.

“Seongyoon… Wait a minute.”

“why?”

“Mr. Maru… why are you so angry?”

“fury?”

At the words ‘like that’, Han Seong-yoon looked back at the darkness.

Endless hatred,

Burning anger,

Yet, it is a cold and chilling indifference.

The danger signal that the Dark Door was sending was, in the end, a genuine murderous intent.

“Huh… Why, even though you hurt people… and you still haven’t solved it?”

“You mean all the guys who were hurt by Maru all this time were those guys called Players? You and your friends were cleaning them up. Isn’t that why you asked Maru for help? Heh heh~ How dare you say that without my permission.”

Han Seong-yoon’s thinking is an error that occurred because he first defined the player as the ‘evil of the world’ in the process of understanding the information.

According to Ivy’s separate investigation, it wasn’t only players who had tried Suden’s Gwangryong raid and died.

I didn’t bother to correct it.

Before she thought that Han Seong-yoon would be shocked, she herself couldn’t understand it at all.

If we had known dragons as monsters from the beginning, what would have been awkward?

However, Maru was a guardian who stood on the side of humans during the great disaster, the husband of a human woman, and Han Seong-jun’s family.

However, Maru’s position in this dungeon was that of a human slayer.

Before coming here, I thought there must be a good reason, whether it was self-defense or proper retribution.

But after experiencing the darkness directly in front of me, my thoughts changed a little.

‘If you really want to help Sungjun… that kind of method and anger makes no sense.’

“You’re all here, so why don’t you just meet up and ask? Who did it? Who made our groom angry! Like this. But before that, I need to let go of my anger first.”

“… … .”

So now, the fundamental question is whether the being over there is really her sister’s husband, but Ivy took another step forward as if she had no choice but to do so when Seongyoon stubbornly took another step forward.

“Stick behind me.”

To Ivy, Han Seong-yoon was someone she absolutely had to protect.

The problem was that the other person thought the opposite.

“Sister, you have to stick behind me.”

Pot!

Ivy jumped straight into the darkness, as if there was no room for compromise.

***

Suden 6th floor.

We reached the final floor, where the door to the boss room existed, less than an hour after we set out.

“I think we’re almost there… I think it was all just luck finding the boss room from here.”

Overcome almost all traps and puzzle-like obstacles head-on,

The time when I ran without stopping, even passing through semi-boss level monsters.

In fact, I didn’t even touch the ground because I was using Velocity Flight to shoot.

In order to avoid encountering other hunters, he was even casting invisibility (transparency magic) at the same time.

Naturally, Gayoung, who followed behind, also had to use magic at the same level as me in order not to fall behind.

“Whew… It’s luck anyway, so let’s walk for a bit.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Gayoung took a deep breath.

Although the soul is said to be that of a dragon,

Now he was a guy with the typical body of a nerd with a lot of magic power.

When even your magical power is severely depleted, you become a man worse than average.

“Haa… I think I’m going crazy. Is it possible to find the path you’re looking for so quickly?”

“Is that something a developer should say in front of users? Isn’t something like path-finding something you’ve already implemented in your game?”

In the original game, you had to remember all the small changes in difficulty, such as the types of dropped items that changed slightly in order to determine if you were heading to the right upper level, or even counting how many hits it took for a monster of the same type to die.

“I had to make it so you could find it, so there are some parts that I implemented by enlarging them. In reality, they are much more subtle clues, but you would never be able to figure them out if you were coming at the same speed as before. By the way, we didn’t even kill any mobs, right? How did you do that?”

As the guy said, it might have been a clue that was much harder to find in reality.

Because I found my way in a completely different way.

“… Just look at it carefully. Look carefully.”

“What the… What is it? Are you really not going to tell me?”

“You see the force acting on the dungeon itself.”

“Can you see that?”

If there is a mystery that humans can never imagine, not even the dragons can control magic, it is the power of the gods.

What I saw exactly were the letters of the gods that were hidden in various places.

Of course, there is no way to explain it or make him understand right away.

“Not all of them… By the way, don’t you have a bad feeling?”

“How does it feel? Does this have anything to do with finding your way?”

does not exist.

A different, alien energy from the force that formed the letters… .

‘I think I felt something similar a long time ago….’

“… I feel like I can feel something, huh? Sniff sniff! Is my nose blocked?”

“Shh. Just a moment.”

“… … .”

… I remembered.

I didn’t feel anything at the time,

Could it be that the current sensation brings back similar feelings from old memories?

When I tried to recall an unpleasant experience, it didn’t match up right away.

“It’s a spirit.”

“I’m listening.”

“No, it’s a spirit. I felt the same way when I encountered Lucas’ spirit before.”

“… … !”