Chapter 28
Part 5. The Moon Halo Dungeon (1)
Since this wasn’t something happening here directly, everyone was just watching with curiosity.
Still, who could have expected an S-rank dungeon to open inside academy grounds, and an irregular one at that?
‘No one would know—except a regressor.’
Right now, Yoo Hanseong was probably feeling the weight of the victims this incident would cause as well.
Because he wouldn’t be able to save everyone.
‘I just hope my potions can help, even a little.’
I was fiddling with coins in front of the vending machine when I heard a familiar voice from the hallway.
“…Ugh.”
When I turned around, it was Lee Haesol.
He was pressing his fingers to his forehead as he walked into the lounge.
Friends around him asked worriedly,
“Haesol, are you okay?”
“You said you’ve been feeling nauseous.”
“I’m fine.”
Haesol replied briefly.
“I’m just a little tired.”
Under the lounge lights, his face looked paler than usual.
I took a slow breath in front of the vending machine.
Now.
I picked up the box and walked further into the lounge.
Lowering my voice slightly on purpose, I called him.
“Haesol.”
He lifted his head.
His gaze slowly turned toward me.
“Yeah.”
“Just a moment.”
I opened the box and took out a small bottle.
There was no label on it.
I had done that on purpose.
If it had a name, people might get more suspicious.
“…You said your head hurts.”
“Well—”
“Take it. You weren’t at your seat, so I was carrying it to give it to you directly.”
I spoke casually, like always.
Then I took out a potion from my pocket and placed it in his hand.
“This one helps when you can’t sleep well. It kind of… stabilizes your mind, I guess. That’s how it feels.”
The tendons near his wrist tightened slightly.
“You didn’t make this just for me, did you?”
“No. I gave it to your whole party. After you left yesterday, I got the idea.”
“Ah, seriously…”
“I heard the broadcast today and got anxious, so I decided to give it to you.”
As I spoke, I gently pressed the bottle into his hand.
Letting him receive it himself.
Not forcing it.
“Everything inside it—I’ve tried it myself too. So don’t worry about mental-type effects. I removed anything with side effects. Take it if you need it. It won’t make everything perfect, but it should make things feel a little less scary and less complicated.”
In reality, the effect would be much stronger.
We both knew that without saying it.
“Mental-type stuff is sensitive, so if it doesn’t suit you, you don’t have to take it. Okay?”
Haesol looked down at the bottle for a moment.
The liquid inside wavered faintly under the lounge lights.
He exhaled once, then looked at me.
“Hari.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
It was only one line, but many emotions were mixed into it.
Guilt. Burden. And something like a very small amount of trust.
I pretended not to notice any of that and just waved my hand lightly.
“I’m making these because I’m anxious too. Since I can’t go into dungeons myself, I want to at least do this for the people who do.”
I smiled like it was a joke.
“I’m weak, after all.”
He frowned slightly, muttering something like “again.”
He clearly didn’t like that expression.
“I don’t like it when you call yourself weak.”
“If I don’t face reality regularly, I’ll make mistakes.”
I replied deliberately casually.
“It’s fine. Even if I’m weak, I can still live doing what I can.”
He let out a small laugh, almost like a sigh.
Still, he didn’t let go of the bottle.
His fingers were gripping the neck tightly.
“I’ll… take it later.”
“Yeah. If it doesn’t suit you, throw it away right away. Promise.”
I said lightly.
“Don’t force yourself to drink it.”
After that, I hugged the box again and headed back to my room, muttering silently to myself.
This should look like a coincidence, right?
Just an anxious F-rank healer handing out practice potions to friends on a nervous day.
I just hoped at least one person wouldn’t completely break.
And that was everything I could do.
It looked like the dungeon would open at night.
I also distributed all the extra potions I had left to the other students in Class 8.
The Moon Halo Dungeon was one that could fluctuate in rank and had appeared suddenly, but usually it ended up around C-rank.
So no one seemed to realize how serious it was yet.
‘That’s why only Class 8, whose turn it was to practice, is being sent in for screen evaluation.’
If an S-rank dungeon were used as a test dungeon, the teachers would be horrified.
But once the first team went in, the entrance would be sealed, so no one else could enter.
‘All I can do is watch.’
They were going into a place where people would die.
My chest churned painfully, more than I expected.
Because I hoped no one would die, I had spent the past few days making as many extra potions as I could.
At least my classmates now accepted my potions without argument.
That was something to be grateful for.
“Th-this many?”
“I had something on my mind, so I stayed up all night. Since I made a lot anyway, take everything!”
The looks they gave me were stranger than usual.
Shaking their heads, they still accepted the potions.
Time passed, and streetlights spread their glow outside the dormitory windows.
The sky looked unusually hazy.
There wasn’t any fog, but it felt like dust was floating in the air, blurring everything.
The light from the TV in the dorm’s common lounge and the murmuring voices of students spilled into the hallway.
I closed my door and took a deep breath.
Tonight definitely wasn’t going to be quiet.
The day the Moon Halo opened was always strange.
A low vibration continued somewhere, and it felt like electricity brushing against my skin from far away.
I checked the small box on my desk again.
A few emergency recovery potions I’d made just in case, and two simple stabilization potions.
I wanted to believe I wouldn’t need them, but in the original story, tonight was the night of the first casualty.
But maybe this time would be different.
Lee Haesol had taken my potion.
I sincerely hoped it would suit him.
Suddenly, a low “whump”-like vibration passed outside the window.
Startled, I grabbed the window frame.
For a brief moment, the sky above the mountain behind the dormitory flickered, as if a thin membrane had torn.
The Moon Halo activation signal.
Someone shouted from the dorm hallway.
“It opened! It just appeared!”
The area outside my door grew noisy.
When I stepped out, students were crowded in the hallway.
Most of them were holding their phones.
It seemed real-time alerts had gone out all at once.
From the moment Class 8, the raid team, entered, abnormalities began to appear.
“What is that? It says fragmentary rifts and a mid-level dungeon are being detected at the same time. That means the rank’s high, right?”
“Are you kidding me—what class went in? Class 8? First-years? Damn it, what are they supposed to do? Teacher!”
Normally, it was a party that received almost no protection, but this time…
This time, maybe it would be a little better.
When I went down to the first floor, the common lounge TV already showed a live broadcast.
You couldn’t see the interior clearly, but it displayed the dungeon’s external state, team composition, and part of the internal fluctuation graph.
The atmosphere in the lounge was so tense it felt hard to breathe.
I stood quietly in a corner and watched the screen.
School news captions scrolled across the bottom.
“Dungeon activation near Narin Academy. Moon Halo region, first infiltration begins.”
Ignoring the confusion of the people watching, the mechanical broadcast began in an even, emotionless tone.
When the camera showed the outside, a chill could be felt through the screen, even though it wasn’t winter.
The Moon Halo Dungeon didn’t only appear here.
“Moon Halo” was a collective name for dungeons with similar characteristics.
A distinct bluish light stained the sky like a spill.
And beneath it stood the student raid team from Class 8.
Yoo Hanseong stood at the very front.
Like a leader, he calmly counted his teammates and checked their equipment until the last moment.
Behind him, Lee Haesol was repeatedly taking deep breaths.
The camera zoomed in briefly, filling the screen with Haesol’s face.
‘Did he drink the potion?’
If he’d already taken it, he would definitely need more later.
As expected, slipping two extra S-rank Mental Barrier Potions into his pocket earlier had been the right choice.
Later, I’d say I added them by mistake.
Even if it seemed suspicious, it was something I could explain away.
Haesol looked pale, but his expression hadn’t completely collapsed.
This should be enough for him to endure.
A phone notification sounded.
It was a group alert.
“Class 1-8 designated for first deployment. Deployment time: 21:40.”
I stared at the screen and whispered quietly,
“Please…”
What if something went wrong?
Still, things were a little different today.
Haesol had potions.
The words “Entry Complete” appeared on the screen, and the Class 8 students were shown spreading out near the Moon Halo entrance, finding comfortable positions.
The entrance was open like a black裂.
The air around it looked slightly twisted, and mist continued to pour out.
The automatic broadcast camera slowly followed them inside.
One of the team members raised a hand and said,
“Are we… really going to be okay?”
Beside him, Yoo Hanseong replied in a firm voice,
“We can do this.”
It was a short sentence, but strangely reassuring.
Even through the screen, I could tell.
That one line alone seemed to steady the team’s expressions.
At the bottom of the TV screen, the internal fluctuation graph appeared.
