It was truly unexpected.
I'd thought it would snatch up and swallow any interesting human on sight. Just like it did in my memory.
I couldn't begin to guess what on earth it had locked me up for.
To eat me later?
Don't tell me it liked the electric show so much it found me too good to eat?
Or maybe I looked like something it couldn't eat.
Something that'd give it a stomachache…
“Ha…”
Thinking that, at least a laugh came out.
“Haha.”
There was no changing what had already happened.
Calming myself, I tapped the wall lightly.
Tonk.
A dull sound rang out. Electricity didn't conduct well through glass. But if I delivered a strong shock all at once, I could break it.
So if I set my mind to it, I could get out anytime.
That meant the right move was to watch the situation first and decide my actions accordingly.
That's when.
I saw the monster, which had seemed to be moving away, dragging over a large bundle. Come to think of it, it had been carrying a sack like that when it came in earlier, too.
What's inside, I wonder.
Standing in front of the cutting board, the monster opened the bundle.
With its bony hand, it pulled out a large fish tail from inside.
The rainbow-colored scales that shifted hue depending on the angle were beautiful.
The monster threw that tail onto the board.
Splat.
A tail with blood streaming from its cross-section was laid out before my eyes.
The corpse, which had looked about the size of a chicken drumstick in the monster's hand, turned out to be quite large on a second look.
It was severed clean in the middle, so the original size was hard to gauge. But even just from the part that was there, it looked twice the size of a human. The scales were very large, too.
The monster took up a Chinese cleaver that had been hanging on the wall.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Each time the blade came down, the floor shook and the tail was chopped into pieces.
About the time it became unrecognizable from its original form, the monster pulled out a fresh tail from the sack and set it on the board.
Repeating the act several times turned the surroundings soggy with red liquid.
Watching the scene, I thought:
I just want one scale.
…
It was my first time seeing that monster cooking.
Come to think of it, the dungeon had looked just like a kitchen, with cooking utensils strewn all around. It wouldn't be surprising if the act of cooking took place in here.
If anything, it'd be stranger to just eat without any cooking process.
Then why did Yeom Hajae just get swallowed before the regression?
The question crossed my mind, but.
Finished with the prep, the monster put the tails into a pot. The minced meat filled the pot, piling up high.
Looking around as if searching for something, the monster soon bent down, having apparently found what it was after. What came up in the monster's hand was a ceramic shard.
Ah.
I knew the identity of that shard.
It was the ceramic jar Choi Haegang had broken. It had spilled a whole lot of water.
So it needs water.
What now. All of that got spilled.
The monster stared quietly at the fragment.
Then it picked up a wooden bucket and headed for the door, without even a hint of anger.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!…
The sound gradually grew distant. I rested a hand at my mouth and watched its retreating back.
How spirited.
That's when it happened.
Tap tap.
Someone knocked on the glass jar.
“…!”
When I turned, a short-haired man was standing there.
This person was definitely one of Atlas's… who was it again? Anyway, he was one of the guys who hung around with Choi Haegang.
I'd thought it seemed like one of them was missing, and it turned out he'd been here.
But his expression wasn't very good. Maybe he was uneasy being separated and alone—he was even breaking into a cold sweat.
I conveyed my question with my expression.
“?”
The man, who'd been moving his mouth trying to relay something, breathed onto the glass.
Then, on the fogged-up glass, he wrote letters with his finger, bit by bit.
It was written backwards, but I could somehow make it out.
[Use ability, escape]
Ability… is he telling me to escape with my ability?
I drew close to the glass wall. Then, like the man had done, I breathed onto it and wrote a question on the glass.
[Ability?]
The man pointed at himself with his finger.
It seemed to mean he'd use his own ability.
I had no idea what that man's ability was, but for now I signaled agreement.
[OK]
After a brief pause, the man closed his eyes. Then he drew a strange formation with hand gestures.
The glass before my eyes gradually disappeared. To be precise, like a cloth rolling upward, an empty space appeared from the bottom and steadily grew larger.
A short while later, a passage wide enough for one person to easily pass through had formed between the two of us.
“Aha.”
I see. To think he could make a hole in a wall.
I didn't know the exact range of use, but it was a fairly handy ability.
It seemed more useful for other clandestine activities than for dungeon raids, though. Infiltration, say.
The man spoke with his eyes still closed.
“Come out now. It only holds while my eyes are shut.”
“What happens if you open your eyes partway, Hunter? Does my body get sliced?”
“…I won't open them, so come out quickly.”
The man spoke with an anxious air. I obediently came out of the jar.
Then I grabbed the arm of the man, whose eyes were closed.
“Ready?”
“No. Don't open your eyes yet. Um…”
What do I say…
“That'll do.”
“What?”
I shouted with as much shock as I could muster.
“Gah! Monster!”
Before the startled man could open his eyes, I used my ability.
I zapped him just enough that there'd be no danger to his life—enough to make a grown man pass out, roughly.
At the current that flowed in through his arm, the man crumpled.
When he woke up, he probably wouldn't even properly remember why he'd lost consciousness.
Since I'd shouted monster right beforehand, wouldn't he assume the monster knocked him out?
I could only hope so.
I shoved the man into a corner as best I could.
The man's body was hidden behind an obstacle. It was a bin filled with some unidentified gray powder.
“Oof, heavy.”
I nudged his arm, which jutted out a little, with a few taps of my foot to tidy it up.
The reason I knocked him out was simple.
It'd be a problem if he died showing off in some bid to free me, or if he actually freed me for real.
This much is safe, right, Haegang?
It's all for your sake, and for mine.
Thinking that, I patted my stiff lower back.
Now that I looked, the hole made in the jar was slowly closing.
So it was the type that vanished on its own once the caster lost consciousness.
To go in or not.
I deliberated, but in the end I bent down and climbed back into the glass jar.
The moment I caught my breath.
[Karma has increased.]
A red window like a game screen appeared.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Sealing〉 now active. (00:15)]
A penalty?
At the word I could never forget, I reflexively froze. The agony of being burned alive came back to me.
The few seconds felt as long as several hours.
But even after dozens of seconds passed, the same pain as before didn't occur.
…
It was only after the window vanished on its own that I came back to my senses.
My heart began to pound fast.
What was that?
Just now it said "Karma has increased"…
I checked the status window.
[Quest: Settle your karma.
!If the quest is not completed within a set period of time, a penalty will be applied.]
[Penalty triggered: 〈Sealing〉 now active. (00:14)]
[Karma: 59779(+5)]
Karma had gone up. A penalty had triggered too.
But.
Why?
The sentence below the quest.
!If the quest is not completed within a set period of time, a penalty will be applied.
Before, the penalty had triggered when karma went three days without dropping.
So I'd naturally assumed the stated “set period of time” was roughly three days.
But it hadn't even been an hour since my karma dropped from getting grazed by Choi Haegang's blade.
Why had a penalty triggered this time?
In truth, there was only one cause I could think of.
The increase in karma.
It was gone now, but a window announcing a karma increase had definitely popped up.
Considering the nature of a metric called karma, the cause of the increase was probably knocking the man out.
Karma.
The word itself evoked sin.
Did my "karma" go up because I attacked someone? This seemed to be a metric tied to human suffering.
…It didn't pop up when I attacked Choi Haegang, though.
My head got complicated.
The penalty that had popped up before was “Flame of Purification.”
This time it was “Sealing.”
…
Sealing, of all things…
Ah.
I got a bad feeling.
In that moment.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The monster returned.
Holding a bucket full of water in one hand.
The monster supported the bucket with both hands and poured the water into the pot. After seeming to check the amount of water, it lit a fire in the hearth.
Smoke rose from the fireplace-like hearth. The pot, with the rainbow scales bobbing in it, was set over the fire.
Contrary to my wish that it'd leave now that it was done with its business, the monster came toward me, for some reason.
Go away. Go away. Go away…
The monster, having stubbornly come right up close, grabbed the lid and lifted the glass jar.
I felt my insides float up.
While I was enduring the queasy feeling, the jar swung this way and that.
“Ugh!”
I lost my balance and got knocked around, slamming into every side.
On some whim, the monster, which had been shaking the jar wildly, opened the lid and flipped it over. I had no choice but to fall onto the monster's palm.
The best I could do was take a break-fall so I wouldn't land wrong and bend something.
My head was spinning. Before I knew it, the monster's head was in front of my eyes.
What was visible between the golden cords was, instead of a mouth or eyes, a bizarre black hole.
As I lay frozen, a finger that had come right up to my face poked at my stomach.
As if telling me to do my little tricks again.
…Fuck.
I clenched my fist tight.
My ability wouldn't come out.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Sealing〉 now active. (00:12)]
