When I returned to the edge of the forest carrying Joo Youngha, who was coughing up blood, the team members were in a complete uproar.
They had all been waiting to see Joo Youngha get taken down a notch, but seeing it actually happen seemed to panic them.
Fortunately, Joo Youngha regained consciousness immediately after returning to the castle.
It seemed the worst-case scenario had been avoided.
“Can’t we stop this now? It feels unpleasant…”
Joo Youngha spoke with a pale face. He clearly didn’t like being forced to lie in bed.
‘Good to see he’s recovered enough energy to be annoying again…’
Seo Jaewon suppressed his irritation and spoke as kindly as possible.
“Don’t say things like that right to someone’s face. Besides, Yoomin probably doesn’t want to hold your hand either.”
Min Yoomin, who had been holding Joo Youngha’s hand, caught their look and pulled his hand away.
“Holding” was a generous term; his hand had barely been resting on the back of Joo Youngha’s.
Only then did Seo Jaewon release his firm grip on Joo Youngha’s forearm, which he’d been holding to prevent him from fleeing.
Joo Youngha rubbed the spot where Min Yoomin had touched against the blanket before surreptitiously grabbing Seo Jaewon’s hand. Seo Jaewon gave his arm a sharp smack.
Min Yoomin spoke with an expression like someone suffering from severe motion sickness.
“🀆🀆🀆 🀆🀆 🀆🀆🀆🀆 🀆🀆 death 🀆🀆 🀆🀆.”
But since it was still a foreign language, it was impossible to understand.
“Guide Min Yoomin says it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for him either… and he doesn’t know exactly what went wrong.”
When Jaewon looked at Hwi Saul, the man translated calmly.
He had a face identical to Hwi Sara’s, but strangely, he looked much more intelligent.
“He says the energy load is piled up immensely. But since he hasn’t received proper guiding for a long time, that’s to be expected and isn’t necessarily ‘wrong.’ If he had to find a connection, perhaps staying in that state for so long has started to take a physical toll…”
Seo Jaewon agreed with that.
Though the energy levels had improved slightly since Jaewon took over as his exclusive Guide, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the years of accumulated load.
Still, the lack of a clear answer was frustrating.
“🀆🀆 🀆🀆 🀆🀆🀆🀆 🀆🀆…”
“For now, it seems the best course of action is to refrain from guiding and focus on stabilization.”
“I see…”
Seo Jaewon had forced the energy exam because he thought Min Yoomin, with his longer career, might know something, but it seemed he had only succeeded in making both Min Yoomin and Joo Youngha feel miserable.
“By the way, Saul-hyung, can you actually understand what Guide Min Yoomin is saying?”
It had been incredibly difficult having to communicate with Min Yoomin through gestures every time.
In this dungeon where everything else was haphazard, did they really need to be this faithful to the “foreign guest” setting?
This communication barrier applied to Min Yoomin as well; he was currently staring at Seo Jaewon with a bewildered face.
He clearly hadn’t understood the conversation between Seo Jaewon and Hwi Saul.
He frustratedly tugged at his own hair.
“……. ……🀆🀆 🀆 Fck* 🀆🀆.”
…As expected, do people always learn swear words first in a foreign language?
That one word was heard loud and clear.
Hwi Saul smiled vaguely and answered Seo Jaewon’s question.
“Because of our roles, we spend a lot of time together.”
He supposed that if Saul could communicate with plants and Hwi Sara, a foreigner shouldn’t be impossible.
At least the will to communicate was mutual.
Just then, a dazed voice pierced Seo Jaewon’s ear.
“Can’t everyone leave so only Jaewon stays?”
Joo Youngha whined from the bed.
He looked genuinely displeased, his pale face clearly showing how much he hated that brief contact.
“Joo Youngha, don’t you speak without permission.”
“……”
At Seo Jaewon’s scolding, Joo Youngha obediently raised one hand.
“Even if you raise your hand, the answer is no!”
“But…”
Thinking about how frantic he had been because of this guy, Jaewon wanted to smack that pretty face, but the kid looked so wilted that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was infuriating.
“It’s stifling. I’m getting up.”
Joo Youngha eventually tried to push the blanket aside and sit up.
For someone who had vomited a bucket of blood and fainted, he was remarkably arrogant.
Seo Jaewon rubbed away the dried blood of Joo Youngha that was still on the back of his hand and forced a smile.
“What did I say I’d do if you got up without permission?”
“You said you’d tie me to the bedpost…”
Joo Youngha answered reluctantly with a face full of discontent.
‘Good, you remember.’
Seo Jaewon pushed him back down onto the bed.
When he ruffled the guy’s hair as a “reward” for being good, he finally quieted down.
“No, but seriously, what happened? I set the stage for you, so why did you get hurt in some random place?”
Hwi Sara, who had been looking at the two of them with disgust, asked the question.
That was exactly what Seo Jaewon had been brooding over.
“I don’t know. We didn’t do anything that should have triggered a dungeon gimmick.”
Since he couldn’t tell the team about the system error, Seo Jaewon had to explain the events vaguely.
The system window was now quiet, as if it had never shown an error message.
It still occasionally popped up the matching rate in the corner of his eye in response to his thoughts, though.
‘What the hell was that error?’
Even when he tried to prompt it internally,
!TIP!
Please take good care of Joo Youngha for his stability and growth 🙂 !
—No other answer came back.
“Whatever that space was, it’s definitely dangerous enough to kill an A-rank Esper. We need to investigate if there are other survivors. But with Joo Youngha in this state…”
The fact that Joo Youngha’s condition was so poor weighed on him.
‘Will he even get better?’
He said he was fine, but that couldn’t be a real indicator of wellness.
You can’t trust the standards of a guy who kills his teammates or lets himself get stabbed on a whim.
While he was staring intensely at Joo Youngha’s face while lost in serious thought, the guy gave a silly “Heh” laugh.
‘I told you not to laugh like you’ve lost all strength!’
The way the corners of his eyes drooped made him look so fleeting and pitiful that it was annoying.
“Jaewon, I’m cold.”
“What? Should I ask them to light the fireplace?”
“No, next to me…”
Joo Youngha’s pale hand tugged at Seo Jaewon’s sleeve.
“I’m dirty right now, man.”
What was this, coming from a guy who was usually obsessed with being clean?
Right now, Seo Jaewon was a mess of Joo Youngha’s blood, dust, and sweat.
He’d been running around so frantically he hadn’t had time to wash.
Joo Youngha let out a small laugh, seemingly finding something about that statement funny.
“Being dirty because of me is actually…”
BANG!
Before Joo Youngha could finish, the door slammed open.
It was a familiar face.
…Ji Myunghoon.
“What’s this? Why are you making so much noise?”
Hwi Sara chided him openly.
Jaewon had figured it was about time for him to show up.
But the atmosphere was strange.
“Esper Ji Myunghoon?”
“Pant, huff…”
His wide-open eyes were glazed and bloodshot, and his breathing was visibly labored.
The way he stumbled and leaned against the doorway was ominous.
Most of all, the energy leaking out of him was foul and chaotic.
He could feel the stinging presence even from a distance.
‘That’s…!’
If you were a Guide—no, even an Esper—you knew these symptoms well.
It was the precursor to a Rampage.
“🀆🀆 🀆🀆 🀆🀆!”
Min Yoomin’s expression turned serious instantly.
He fumbled at his waist, and his face quickly turned to one of despair.
Seo Jaewon realized the problem immediately.
‘There’s no Rampage Suppressant!’
A Rampage Suppressant is a drug that can stop an Esper who has begun to enter a rampage state; it’s an injectable that momentarily overloads the target’s entire nervous system.
Espers in a rampage state have extremely heightened senses; the drug works by exploding those neural reactions even further, causing shock and neutralizing them.
Because it attacks the entire nervous system, the side effects are severe—it can occasionally cause death or brain damage—but so far, it was the only thing that could prevent the massacre that occurs when an Esper loses control.
‘Damn it, of all times…!’
It’s protocol for a field Guide to always carry one, but because they had entered a dungeon that changed their clothes, both Min Yoomin and Seo Jaewon had lost their raid equipment.
Seo Jaewon watched Ji Myunghoon and calmly organized his thoughts.
‘If you can’t do what you want, you do what you can.’
Ji Myunghoon hadn’t fully entered the rampage yet.
He had to do something now before it was too late.
“Esper Ji Myunghoon, can you hear me? You appear to be on the verge of a rampage. You need to receive guiding immediately.”
“Huff, puff…”
Ji Myunghoon only wheezed and didn’t answer.
Joo Youngha narrowed his eyes, shifting his gaze from Ji Myunghoon to Seo Jaewon.
Seo Jaewon raised a hand to signal Joo Youngha to stay quiet.
‘I absolutely cannot let Joo Youngha step in.’
If Joo Youngha moved now, someone would actually die.
He needed to approach this cautiously.
He glanced at Hwi Sara, and she quietly stood up from her seat.
Once again, Seo Jaewon spoke clearly and loudly.
“Esper Ji Myunghoon, can you hear my voice?”
Was he listening?
Ji Myunghoon stood tall, glaring at Seo Jaewon with bloodshot eyes.
He looked as if he had lost his reason, but he hadn’t completely lost consciousness yet.
It was still reversible.
The fact that he had returned to the meeting place in that state proved it.
Seo Jaewon decided to bet on that hope.
He spoke slowly and deliberately, raising his voice so it would reach Ji Myunghoon’s ears clearly.
“If you can hear me, answer my question. A baby dog is a puppy; so, what do we call a baby cow?”
