Chapter 32
Damp, fishy air filled his lungs.
Everything around them was stained a deep red, as if blood had been hardened and smeared across the walls.
Chaeho lightly brushed his fingers over the red ore embedded in the wall as he walked. The rough, unstable texture scraped against his fingertips.
Seo Taekyung led the way with his large shield raised, while Chaeho followed close behind, keeping his eyes fixed ahead.
The mine tunnel was so narrow that even two people walking side by side would have struggled to fit. Yoon Jia and Kim Dohyun, who followed behind them, had to stay almost pressed against the backs of the people in front.
“It’s much narrower than I expected. It feels hard to breathe in here.”
Kim Dohyun spoke while nervously glancing around.
“That’s exactly what makes this place difficult. If a monster suddenly jumps out, we won’t even have enough room to form a proper formation.”
Seo Taekyung answered in a low voice.
Chaeho silently moved his gaze around.
His attention wasn’t focused on the monsters.
It was on the terrain itself.
Uneven pillars of ore protruded from the walls.
Narrow passages twisted unpredictably ahead.
The entire structure looked so unstable that even slamming a shield too hard against the wrong place might shake the ceiling.
This dungeon itself is more dangerous than the monsters.
That was when it happened.
A faint scraping sound came from somewhere in the darkness.
Chaeho’s eyes instantly moved upward.
Fine stone dust was falling from the ceiling.
Even the invisible flow of mana felt unstable, like a string that had been stretched until it was about to snap.
Without hesitation, Chaeho raised his hand.
“Stop.”
His voice was short and firm.
Seo Taekyung immediately stopped and readjusted his shield.
The two following behind them also held their breath.
There was no sound.
Only the strange red glow flickered around them.
“Hunter Lee, what is—”
Seo Taekyung carefully began to speak.
At that exact moment—
Kiiiiik!
A sharp metallic screech rang out from the darkness ahead.
A small armored monster came rushing toward them, frantically kicking its legs.
It looked panicked, almost as if something were chasing it.
When it noticed the party, it hurriedly tried to change direction.
But there was nowhere for it to escape inside the narrow mine tunnel.
Crack!
The monster’s heavily armored head slammed straight into an old ore support pillar.
A dull breaking sound echoed through the tunnel as a huge crack split across the support.
At the same time, the entire mine began to violently shake.
Crack... crack...
The heavy sound of rocks shifting came from above their heads.
The support holding up the ceiling shattered.
Dozens of tons of rock began crashing down all at once.
“Danger!”
Seo Taekyung instinctively raised his shield over his head.
But one shield was nowhere near large enough to protect all four people.
Chaeho immediately activated his ability.
[Time Slow].
The flow of the world became thick and sluggish.
The falling rocks slowed until they almost seemed frozen in the air.
Even the thunderous noise that had been pounding against his ears became a low, buzzing vibration.
Chaeho’s eyes moved rapidly.
The sizes of the falling fragments.
The paths of the massive boulders.
The angles at which smaller debris would scatter after impact.
A three-dimensional map of the collapse formed inside his mind in an instant.
The skill that normally allowed him to search for openings during battle was now functioning as a perfect tool for analyzing the environment.
Below the right wall.
And the gap at seven o’clock.
Chaeho precisely identified the safe blind spots that would form inside the narrow tunnel.
Only 0.1 seconds had passed.
The moment he released his skill, the world rushed back to full speed.
BOOOOM!
Just before the rocks smashed into the ground, Chaeho shot forward.
“Seo Taekyung, get right up against the right wall!”
Chaeho shouted as he forcefully shoved Seo Taekyung by the shoulder.
At the same time, he turned and grabbed Yoon Jia and Kim Dohyun, who had frozen in place.
“You two, seven o’clock! Get down!”
Driven by his merciless strength, the two of them tumbled to the ground.
At that very instant, a massive boulder came crashing down toward Chaeho’s head.
He slid one foot across the ground with the smallest possible movement and twisted his upper body.
The enormous rock, nearly the size of a house, swept past right in front of his face with barely a sheet of paper’s distance between them.
Only the edge of Chaeho’s clothes fluttered in the cold wind created by its passage.
BOOM! BANG! BOOOOM!
The tunnel was filled with dust as tremendous impacts shook the mine.
Rock fragments flew in every direction, shattering the red ore into razor-sharp pieces.
The deafening noise continued for a long moment before slowly fading away.
Thick dust filled the air.
Chaeho covered his mouth with his sleeve and quietly stood up.
A massive boulder was buried in the ground directly where he had been standing moments ago.
“Cough, cough.”
Seo Taekyung, who had been pressed tightly against the right wall, lowered his shield while coughing.
“Is everyone all right?”
“Yes. Cough... I’m okay.”
“We survived.”
Yoon Jia and Kim Dohyun, who had crouched in the corner at the seven o’clock position, staggered to their feet while covered from head to toe in dust.
Broken chunks of rock were scattered everywhere.
Yet the three positions Chaeho had pointed out were miraculously untouched.
Not a single person had even suffered a minor scratch.
Yoon Jia blankly brushed the dust from her clothes before turning toward Chaeho.
Unconcealed shock filled her eyes.
“Hunter Lee Chaeho... What exactly did you just do?”
“Hm?”
“It looked like you already knew exactly where the rocks would fall before the collapse even happened. If you had been even slightly late, or if your directions had been wrong, all of us could have been crushed to death.”
Her voice trembled faintly.
The collapse had been completely sudden.
And yet, in that single instant, Chaeho had divided three party members between two safe zones and avoided the falling rocks himself.
Simply calling it experience wasn’t enough to explain such precise control over the situation.
Kim Dohyun was also staring at Chaeho in disbelief.
Chaeho casually dusted off his clothes, wearing his usual calm expression.
“I’ve been through countless old, narrow dungeons while working as a porter, so I’m familiar with this kind of thing.”
“What?”
“If you look at the cracks in the ceiling or the way the stone dust falls, you can roughly tell which direction it’s going to collapse. I just avoided it instinctively.”
Chaeho shrugged, naturally brushing the matter aside.
Yoon Jia still looked doubtful, but she couldn’t bring herself to question him any further.
After all, it wasn’t exactly appropriate to interrogate the man who had just saved her life.
“Even so, that was incredible. Thanks to your judgment in that split second, we avoided being wiped out.”
Seo Taekyung let out a deep sigh of relief while rubbing his chest.
His eyes now contained more than simple goodwill toward Chaeho.
There was strong trust in them.
“Thank you so much, Hunter Lee Chaeho. If you hadn’t been here, our raid might have ended before it even properly started.”
Kim Dohyun also bowed his head deeply.
“It was nothing. If no one’s hurt, we should keep moving. That noise might attract other monsters.”
Chaeho answered briefly before examining the gaps in the blocked passage.
There was barely enough space between the pile of rocks for one person to pass through.
“Looks like we can get through here. I’ll go first.”
Chaeho lightly leaped over the obstacle.
The other party members followed him without a single complaint.
After what had just happened, the party’s trust in Chaeho had risen dramatically without anyone needing to say it aloud.
Throughout their journey through the dark mine tunnel, Chaeho’s five senses remained sharply alert.
Even during periods when there was no fighting, he repeatedly activated his ability in short bursts.
0.1 seconds.
He slowed the world almost to a halt and examined tiny cracks in the floor or signs of hidden traps concealed within the darkness.
“Seo Taekyung, watch your step. The ground is slightly sunken there.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Seo Taekyung shortened his stride at Chaeho’s warning and avoided the pit.
“Yoon Jia, the mana reaction from the ore on that wall is pretty unstable. Don’t get too close.”
“Y-Yes! Understood.”
The instructions that came from Chaeho were short and precise.
One by one, the terrain traps hidden in the darkness were exposed before his eyes.
Occasionally, Red Iron Beetles appeared and blocked their path, but even those were hardly a threat.
“Two approaching from the front!”
Seo Taekyung slammed his heavy shield down and blocked the passage.
The Red Iron Beetles, covered in hard shells, charged into the shield with metallic screeches.
Bang!
The impact caused the monsters to freeze for the briefest instant.
In that moment—
Chaeho’s body slipped forward like a ghost.
To his eyes, the joints between the shells of the Red Iron Beetles were revealed as if he were watching everything in slow motion.
His sword traced a clean, unnecessary-movement-free path through the air.
Slash.
Rather than forcing his way through their thick armor, he precisely sliced through the thin section of the neck where two pieces of shell connected.
Before the green fluid could even spray out, Chaeho had already moved to the side of the next target and thrust the tip of his sword inside.
Kirik!
The two monsters collapsed to the ground almost simultaneously.
It was already over before Seo Taekyung could even lower his shield.
Yoon Jia, who had been preparing a mana projectile from behind, lowered her staff with a slightly empty expression.
“...I don’t even get a chance to cast magic.”
“That just means you can conserve your mana. Save it for when something big shows up later.”
Chaeho lightly flicked the blood from his blade and returned the sword to its sheath.
He looked completely calm.
Even his breathing remained steady.
Kim Dohyun had not found a single opportunity to use healing magic either, so all he could do was fiddle with his staff.
“I’m starting to wonder if this is really a C-rank dungeon raid. I’ve never walked through a dungeon this comfortably before.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The Red Iron Mine was infamous for its difficult terrain and vicious surprise attacks.
But thanks to Chaeho’s thorough control of their surroundings and his advance warnings, the party allowed no unexpected variables to interfere with them.
They avoided collapsing terrain.
They bypassed traps.
When monsters attempted surprise attacks, the party turned those attacks against them instead.
Their movement through the dungeon was perfectly synchronized, like the gears inside a machine.
After walking for quite some time, Seo Taekyung checked the map on his tablet and stopped.
“We’re here.”
At his words, everyone looked ahead.
The narrow mine tunnel gradually widened, revealing the entrance to an enormous cavern.
At the same time, they could clearly feel dense mana pressing against their skin like needles.
This was the boundary at the end of the second area, leading into the deepest section of the dungeon.
“We made it all the way here without a single injury. Everyone did a great job. And honestly, it’s all thanks to Hunter Lee Chaeho.”
Seo Taekyung turned toward Chaeho with a smile.
Yoon Jia and Kim Dohyun nodded in agreement.
They had maintained such a stable pace that they had barely even used up any stamina.
“We were just lucky. The mana concentration from here onward is no joke.”
Chaeho replied calmly while staring into the increasingly thick darkness ahead.
“Should we check our equipment one more time before going in?”
“Sounds good. Let’s rest for a bit before continuing.”
Chaeho lightly leaned against the wall while idly touching the handle of his sword.
The cold air of the deep mine brushed past the back of his neck.
