Chapter 53
I hid my true feelings and outwardly spoke as if I was worried.
“…I think that would be good too. We haven’t found a single mart on our way.”
Besides, large marts are rare in rural areas, and most places have been ransacked by now. Fresh food was obviously nonexistent.
“It would be nice if the camper van’s refrigerator was a bit bigger.”
Baek Yi-heon, who was in charge of cooking for the team, muttered regretfully while looking at the mini-fridge.
It seemed he was disappointed that they couldn’t store meat for long even after hunting.
“I’ve been trying to make things like those items the monsters drop, but I keep failing. It doesn’t work even with my ability.”
Of course not.
You need refined magic stones to make items.
Once he knows that, he’d probably be able to make anything.
The camper van could only go up to the paved road at the entrance of the hiking trail.
As we stopped the car at the deserted foot of the mountain, Baek Yi-heon said,
“We’ll be back. Noah and Sehun, please stay in the car.”
“Me too! I’ll also stay in the car…”
“No. I’ll go with you.”
I quickly cut off Choi Kkang-kang’s words and exclaimed.
Then, I hastily added to the puzzled Baek Yi-heon.
“Well, Intrachankuntha is saying so? He says something doesn’t feel right.”
Baek Yi-heon’s face immediately turned serious.
“Something similar happened at Mangsang Beach too. There was actually a dungeon there.”
“I see. So you’re also an awakened of those sides?”
Choi Kkang-kang asked curiously.
“Do siblings end up contracting with similar gods? That’s really interes… ting!”
He hastily covered his mouth as if he had made a mistake.
“……”
“……”
An awkward silence fell over the camper van for a moment.
It seemed Baek Yi-heon also knew roughly what had happened in Dowonhyang.
He probably asked Yu what happened while he was away.
However, no one had asked me who this Cain person was, or if we were siblings.
A serial killer father, and a half-brother whose existence I didn’t even know about.
Well, Baek Yi-heon probably felt awkward about directly asking about this messy story he had never witnessed.
Understanding the situation, I pretended not to notice and spoke casually.
“That’s right. To be precise, it’s not prophecy but information-type, so I can’t know very detailed futures.”
“I-I see… That must be useful! Hahaha…”
“If another hidden dungeon has appeared, we can’t just ignore it.”
Baek Yi-heon spoke softly, breaking the awkward atmosphere.
“It would be better to go check it out now, even for future reference.”
Yes, yes.
Having a consistent person as a teammate was really convenient at times like this.
I nodded as I turned off the car engine.
“Alright. There’s no one around, and this area seems safe, so let’s leave the car here and go up.”
💎
After packing the remaining food in our backpacks as emergency rations, we left the car and headed towards the mountain.
I was the one determining our group’s direction.
“Hmm… My guardian deity is telling us to go this way?”
[(Messenger) Indra says that even small lies pile up to become habits, and that soon becomes one’s own karma…]
Ignoring the constant nagging in my head, I continued to move forward.
Before climbing the mountain, we looked at a map at the entrance of the hiking trail.
There were signs along the hiking trail at regular intervals, so finding the way wasn’t as difficult as expected.
Of course, the others thought I was moving based on information from my guardian deity.
‘We should be arriving soon.’
As I was walking, checking the fading signs.
“…Huh? Sudden fog?”
Just as I thought fog was setting in on a bright sunny day, it quickly thickened until we could barely see ahead.
I had an immediate intuition.
‘This is definitely not natural fog.’
As I stopped in my tracks, the group following me naturally stopped as well.
“Noah. This fog…”
“Yes. It seems to be the work of monsters.”
Before I could finish speaking, Baek Yi-heon immediately drew out his dragon’s fang.
Sehun expanded a dome-shaped barrier with a yellowish glow.
The non-combat personnel—Sehun, me, and Choi Kkang-kang—stepped inside it.
That’s when it happened.
“What on earth is that…”
Through the hazy fog, when a huge black shadow appeared.
Yu, who was beside me, muttered as if groaning.
“What, that impossible size is…”
And for good reason, the shadow was almost as huge as a small mountain.
You’d have to tilt your head far back just to see the head of this monstrous shadow.
‘What the hell. What is this insane size?’
I stared intently at the shadow, trying to calm my pounding heart.
A head with something like a bird’s beak.
Below it, a giant-like body with arms bizarrely bent.
‘What is this? I’ve never seen a monster like this, even in the original work!’
I desperately racked my brain for information I’d read in the original story.
Deep mountains. Fog. Huge body.
And a gigantic, grotesque form that looked like different monsters pieced together…
Wait a minute.
‘Different monsters…?’
Suddenly, something crossed my mind.
I quickly turned to look at Yu, but her face was still calm and the third eye on her forehead hadn’t opened.
That meant the monster wasn’t near us.
“No! Don’t be fooled!”
I shouted towards Baek Yi-heon, who looked ready to swing his dragon’s fang at the shadow.
“Noah? What do you mean…”
“That’s just a ‘shadow’!”
In fact, this is a very common hunting method in the animal world.
Like a male lion’s mane, or a pufferfish inflating its body to intimidate opponents in advance.
‘First, we need to get rid of this fog.’
I quickly sifted through the information in my head.
Fog… it’s the state of tiny water particles suspended in the air.
I immediately took out a red magic stone from my hip sack and gripped it in my hand.
Then.
“Everyone, get behind me!”
As I shouted while jumping forward, Yu and Baek Yi-heon quickly moved behind me.
Whoosh!
Fires ignited in mid-air, here and there between the trees.
At least dozens, no, hundreds of fireballs.
In the hazy fog.
The sight of multiple fires burning alone in mid-air without any fuel looked bizarre, as if will-o’-the-wisps had appeared.
“Wow… What are you?”
The sound of Choi Kkang-kang muttering blankly from behind.
However, ignoring that and continuing to focus on maintaining the fires, the hazy fog gradually began to clear.
The fog was disappearing as the intense heat removed the moisture.
And simultaneously, what appeared in the distance was.
“…What is that?”
A bird-like monster with a long beak like a pelican.
And below it, supporting the bird monster, was a plant-type monster that looked like a cactus.
Choi Kkang-kang exclaimed in disbelief.
“There were two of them?!”
That wasn’t all.
Both were so small they barely reached knee-height.
And with the fog gone, they looked at us with wide eyes as if shocked…
“Um… I’m not sure if I should say this, but…”
Sehun, who had been examining the monsters, said cautiously.
“They seem… kind of cute.”
Indeed, the two were too adorable to be threatening.
Especially the plant-type monster with three round holes in its cactus-like body.
“They sprayed fog and then used shadows to deceive us.”
Even Yu, who usually goes berserk at the sight of monsters until they’re annihilated, was calm.
That’s how unthreatening these creatures were.
“Squeak squeak!”
“Waaaaaah!”
With the fog cleared, their panicked, clumsy attempts to escape only added to their insignificance.
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Thank you for reading! ♡
