Chapter 18
Part 3. Bari-degi’s Domain (1)
[You might be better off taking the mental barrier potion yourself.]
“I see. That sounds good. And, well, what you heard is true.”
I shrugged slightly.
“I’m weak, so I need to work harder. So I don’t get in the way.”
Yoo Hui looked at me quietly for a moment.
Her eyes wavered just a little.
Only for an instant, though.
When I brought up my weakness first, her atmosphere sharpened strangely, then snapped off short.
“Hari.”
Hui spoke in a low voice.
“Do you really think that way?”
“Yeah.”
I answered honestly.
“Everyone knows I’m weak. So I thought that if I at least made useful potions, I could help somehow. And since you said they were good, I was really happy.”
The biggest reason was that I liked not being dragged into dungeons.
But no one at this academy would understand that. Entering dungeons was considered beneficial, even honorable.
There was no reason to say it out loud.
‘It’d just hurt my business.’
Hui studied my face for a long time.
As if she were trying to read something hidden behind my expression.
Like we’d known each other for a long time.
‘In reality, it’s only been a few days.’
That made it all the more striking how good the mood felt right now.
I even thought that if Yoo Hanseong saved the world safely later on and someone needed to sign a potion supply contract, it would be nice if it were Hui.
Pure fan sentiment.
“Hari.”
Hui suddenly reached out and lightly held my wrist.
There was barely any strength in her grip, but it felt careful and deliberate.
“…This won’t do.”
“Huh?”
“You shouldn’t be alone. Even when you’re practicing, you should take some kind of precautions.”
Out of nowhere?
Still, I answered gently.
“I’m fine on my own.”
“I don’t think you are.”
Hui cut me off quietly.
“Why not?”
“All I can see is a future where you get taken advantage of—”
“Hmm?”
She muttered too softly for me to catch clearly.
At that moment, I heard Erich sigh once, and his constant grumbling stopped.
Now it felt like I could hear things more clearly.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Just a feeling. I think it’d be better if you weren’t alone.”
A feeling?
More than that, we weren’t even that close, yet she was being strangely affectionate…
I tilted my head, thinking blankly, while she kept calmly persuading me long after finishing her drink.
She even suggested drawing a ward at the entrance of the workshop to keep troublemakers out.
For about thirty minutes, I listened in a daze, genuinely enjoying it.
After that, I just nodded mechanically.
‘I think I once read that Yoo Hui was a torture expert. Was this that kind of torture…?’
No. That wasn’t it.
Only after I nodded three times in a row did Hui finally stand up, looking oddly refreshed.
She walked me all the way to the old school building, where I said I was heading to the workshop, left me with a bright word of encouragement, and then left.
***
Surprisingly, when two weeks of frantic grinding had passed,
I asked Erich, who had gone quiet lately and only made the earring sparkle,
“Erich, do you think I wasn’t actually clumsy?”
[What nonsense are you talking about?]
“No, I mean… My success rate with D-rank potions has gone up a lot already.”
It was a speed that couldn’t be called normal for an F-rank. No—most healers of other ranks would be shocked by this pace.
Was it because Erich let me practice endlessly?
“It’s faster than expected. Then it’s about time to start doing this properly.”
After raising my potion success rate to a certain level, I needed to start preparing for the first dungeon.
To make not only the mental barrier potion, but also several special potions that would be needed—
“I need materials!”
[Special potions will cost money, and you won’t be able to sell them at a fair price.]
“Even so. If they don’t exist, you’ll regret it more in an emergency.”
[Hmph
Listening to Erich’s strange sigh, I clenched my fist.
Thinking that it was time to clear that dungeon.
***
There was a dungeon Yoo Hanseong never knew about in the original story.
Thinking about it always made me smile a little.
That dungeon became known when a single supporting character miraculously survived and discovered it.
The fact that only one person had returned alive said everything about that dungeon.
And the words that person left behind were—
“He didn’t leave behind what he saw in the dungeon, but what choices led to death, and what choices let you live.”
They said his death was peaceful, like falling asleep.
As if he’d postponed death just long enough to pass on that message.
Anyway, according to that almost sage-like survivor, the dungeon appeared irregularly at a specific location, only at dusk, when the moon was dim.
Not all night, and not when the sun had completely disappeared.
The entrance opened only during the time when light and darkness overlapped, neither able to push the other away.
And when day broke, it vanished as if nothing had happened, leaving behind three gold coins.
Always three. The number had never changed.
That was why people called it the Lucky Dungeon.
You could get gold coins without even entering.
But at the same time, rumors followed that anyone who entered would die.
Because aside from that one person, no one had ever come back out.
And that sole survivor spoke first not of what he saw inside but of what must never be done.
“There’s a path that leads straight to hell, a path that guides you to a higher-rank dungeon entrance, and a path where you fall asleep and die in the middle of a maze.”
He also warned never to turn around if you heard flute music, and never to entrust your body to the black, cozy fog.
He added that the dungeon felt less like a place trying to take something from you and more like a place willing to hold onto you.
Which made it even more dangerous.
The only person who returned alive summarized it like this:
“It’s a dungeon where you can only reach the reward room and escape if you stay fully alert, make a wish, and search for the exit.”
Those words were both a warning and a hint.
In the original story, Yoo Hanseong heard that tale only in passing.
At the time, it was far too distant to matter to him.
Yet strangely enough, the original story described the reward in considerable detail.
What kind of reward it was and why it seemed useless.
And among them was one reward that fit my current situation perfectly.
I had already prepared a mental resistance potion to avoid being entranced by the calming fog.
It was only E-rank.
But the original story clearly stated that once you knew the true nature of what was tempting you, its effect weakened exponentially.
And I already knew.
I knew what this dungeon used to lure people in and what loosened their minds.
So I judged that E-rank would be enough.
Still, just in case, I prepared one more safeguard.
Before heading near the place where the dungeon would appear, I spoke to the person who always sat next to me.
“Hi.”
“…?”
“My name’s Jin Hari. You’re Hyun Iseo, right? We sit next to each other, but we’re only saying hi now.”
After that came an occasional exchange of his irritated replies and my chatter.
Hyun Iseo was a textbook shut-in loner even in the original story, so this was expected.
Still, thankfully, even though he frowned several times while listening to me, he didn’t leave his seat.
Because I knew from the original story that he was neutral and tight-lipped, I’d made the effort.
And today, that effort paid off.
Hyun Iseo was here with me.
Pointing at the rope tied around my waist, I asked,
“If I go in and don’t come out by just before dawn, could you pull this rope from outside?”
He hesitated briefly, then nodded.
“You said it’s a dungeon where you could die.”
“I still want to try. There’s something I want from it.”
He took a deep breath and wrapped the end of the rope around his hand.
“If there’s no response before daybreak, I’ll pull immediately.”
“Okay. Thank you!”
As the moon dimmed, the air changed.
The presence of the dungeon—free of killing intent—slowly filled the space.
There was no crushing pressure, no monster roars.
Just the sensation of the boundary of reality thinning.
Black fog gathered and formed an entrance.
It looked cozy.
Warm.
Which made it all the more dangerous.
I immediately drank the mental resistance potion.
Then, checking the clarity of my mind, I repeated my wish to myself.
‘I want to become a great potion maker.’
The most direct goal is to enter this dungeon.
