* * *
As Do Hajun was about to rush forward, water droplets formed around Lee Cheongmyeong’s body.
In an instant, the deer-shaped monster was sliced apart by water.
As the monster fell with a thud, Lee Cheongmyeong clapped and laughed.
“I beat it!”
Do Hajun hastily picked up the laughing Lee Cheongmyeong.
Even as he quickly checked for injuries, Lee Cheongmyeong proudly pointed at the monster he had defeated.
“I beat it, Jun!”
“Yes, you did. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No! Heehee.”
Unlike the laughing Lee Cheongmyeong, Do Hajun’s heart was pounding, and his mind was racing.
He couldn’t decide whether to praise Lee Cheongmyeong for defeating the monster or scold him for doing something so dangerous.
“Team leader!!”
At Ahn Eunseon’s scream, Do Hajun’s body moved instinctively.
As he dodged from his standing position, a huge beast’s fist crashed down where he had been.
“It’s the Giant Rabbit!”
With the appearance of the boss monster the Delta Team had been searching for, Do Hajun quickly grabbed Lee Cheongmyeong.
“Jeon Seohyun!”
As he swiftly avoided the large hand, vines sprouted from the ground and wrapped around the Giant Rabbit’s arm.
While the vines and the large rabbit’s hand struggled, Do Hajun spoke to Ahn Eunseon.
“Ahn Eunseon, I’m sending Lee Cheongmyeong to you. Hold him tight.”
“Yes!!”
Meanwhile, the Giant Rabbit broke free from the vines and charged at Do Hajun.
Timing his retreat perfectly, Do Hajun put Lee Cheongmyeong down.
“Go to Ahn Eunseon.”
“No!”
As Lee Cheongmyeong resisted, Do Hajun drew his sword and said sternly.
“Quickly!”
While talking to Lee Cheongmyeong, the Giant Rabbit’s foot aimed at Do Hajun.
Blocking the foot with his sword, Do Hajun shouted.
“Lee Cheongmyeong! Go to Ahn Eunseon!”
With Lee Cheongmyeong at risk, Jeon Seohyun and Yoo Mia hesitated, unable to use their skills, and instead, charged the rabbit with their weapons.
However, the boss Giant Rabbit, with high physical defense, was not harmed by swords or guns. Instead, it swung its sharp claws.
As they distanced themselves to avoid the claws, the Giant Rabbit inhaled deeply.
“Yoo Mia! Open a door!”
Grabbing Lee Cheongmyeong, Do Hajun leaped into the door Yoo Mia opened.
Yoo Mia’s teleportation skill could only open doors to short distances within the dungeon, and this time, it opened behind the Giant Rabbit.
“Beep-!”
A high-pitched sound, loud enough to hurt their ears, accompanied by a fierce wind, swept across the ground.
“Ahn Eunseon!”
As Ahn Eunseon ran over, Do Hajun handed Lee Cheongmyeong to her and charged back at the Giant Rabbit.
“Jeon Seohyun!”
Jeon Seohyun’s vines wrapped around the Giant Rabbit’s body again.
Do Hajun jumped onto the vines and swung his sword at the Giant Rabbit’s weak spot, its ear.
“Beep-!”
With a spray of red blood, one ear was cut off.
As the Giant Rabbit thrashed, Do Hajun landed on the ground next to Jeon Seohyun and Yoo Mia, who had rushed over.
“Team leader.”
Without looking at them, Do Hajun glared at the rabbit.
The Giant Rabbit’s ear hadn’t fallen to the ground. If not for the blood, it looked as if it had never been cut.
“Damn it.”
It was the only weakness they had found.
“I don’t want to! I want to go to Jun!”
“Lee Cheongmyeong, stay there!”
Though the ear had reattached, the vines still tightly bound the Giant Rabbit.
“We shouldn’t have come alone.”
Yoo Mia and Jeon Seohyun were both attackers, but Yoo Mia, like Do Hajun, fought physically, and Jeon Seohyun’s skills were ineffective against the Giant Rabbit.
It would have been better to bring someone who could use fire.
As he regretted their situation, the Giant Rabbit stopped struggling.
“Grrk”
The Giant Rabbit’s body twitched, and its fluffy white belly began to bulge.
“Damn it. Jeon Seohyun, cover the rabbit’s mouth!”
“Huh? Yes!”
The vines that wrapped around the body quickly grew to cover the mouth, but the Giant Rabbit’s mouth opened first.
“Ugh”
With the sound of something being retched out, eggs spilled from the mouth of the Giant Rabbit.
The vines tried to cover its mouth, but they were torn to shreds, unable to stop the eggs from pouring out.
The eggs shattered upon hitting the ground, and small monsters emerged, quickly growing into regular-sized monsters.
“Damn it. This is crap.”
Yoo Mia cursed as she fired a barrage of bullets.
As monsters fell one by one from her shots, arrows with leaves attached rained down among them.
“Wow. This is really something.”
Do Hajun dodged the bullets and arrows, swinging his sword.
With each strike, monster blood splattered onto his suit.
“Team leader, on your right!”
At Ahn Eunseon’s shout, he turned left, just as a whip wrapped around the neck of a gaping monster.
“Thanks.”
Do Hajun decapitated the monster in one swift move and charged towards the giant rabbit.
The giant rabbit, having stopped vomiting monsters, was now thrashing to break free of the vines.
Do Hajun’s sword struck the rabbit’s neck.
However, with a dull clang, the blade merely wobbled.
“Damn it. How high is its physical defense?”
He backed off, realizing the giant rabbit was impervious to his sword.
“Cheongmyeong!”
At Ahn Eunseon’s scream, Do Hajun turned to see Lee Cheongmyeong running towards him.
“Lee Cheongmyeong! Don’t come!”
“Behind you, team leader!”
He spun around at Eunseon’s shout and the chilling sensation, just as a massive rabbit foot, freed from the torn vines, came at him.
His sleeve tore, and a burning pain spread across his forearm.
“Ugh.”
“J-Jun!”
Without time to check his wound, Do Hajun rolled to avoid the rabbit foot again.
In his tumble, he saw Lee Cheongmyeong running towards him.
“Lee Cheongmyeong, stay back!”
“Don’t hurt Jun! You hurt Jun!”
With a reddened face and clenched fists, water droplets began forming around Lee Cheongmyeong.
The droplets quickly transformed into multiple streams of water, one of which shot towards the giant rabbit.
“Die!”
The water stream wrapped around the giant rabbit’s neck.
As the rabbit’s feet pounded the ground, the water lifted its body into the air.
Other streams of water attacked the surrounding monsters as if they had a life of their own.
Sharp streams pierced through the monsters.
In an instant, the monsters became corpses without a chance to scream.
The streams merged into a large spear after slaughtering all the monsters.
“Take this!”
At Lee Cheongmyeong’s command, the spear flew towards the giant rabbit.
The sharp end pierced the rabbit’s belly, causing a glowing stone to drop to the ground.
“Eeeek!”
With a piercing scream, the giant rabbit’s body disintegrated into dust.
“Jun!”
As the giant rabbit disappeared, Lee Cheongmyeong ran to Do Hajun, who was on the ground, and buried his tear-streaked face in Do Hajun’s chest.
“Don’t die, Jun! Waaah!”
* * *
“…I didn’t expect an SS-rank hunter to be this strong. Killing a B-rank in one shot. And a kid, no less.”
“Isn’t the dungeon boss actually Cheongmyeong?”
“It’s over now!”
As Ahn Eunseon finished healing, the cut wounds vanished completely.
“Does it still hurt?”
Lee Cheongmyeong, with eyes full of tears, asked as he looked at Do Hajun’s wound.
“It doesn’t hurt. It’s all healed.”
“Right? This noona healed it all, didn’t she?”
Ahn Eunseon comforted the panicked Lee Cheongmyeong, assuring him that she would heal everything.
Distracted by the golden healing glow, Lee Cheongmyeong stopped sobbing, while Do Hajun stood up and patted his back.
“Really not hurting?”
“Yes, it doesn’t hurt. It’s all healed.”
“Sniff.”
Holding the nearly crying Lee Cheongmyeong, Do Hajun pointed his chin towards a purple stone on the ground.
“Pick it up. Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Unlike regular monsters, boss monsters had magic stones inside them.
A boss monster wouldn’t die until the magic stone was extracted and taken out of the dungeon, preventing a quick respawn.
“Is it just a coincidence?”
“What?”
As Yoo Mia gathered the magic stone, Jeon Seohyun asked.
“Extracting the magic stone.”
Sometimes, during a battle, the magic stone inside a boss monster would break.
If the magic stone broke, the boss monster would go berserk, causing the dungeon to explode.
Thus, hunters would approach and identify the location of the magic stone with a Dungeon Gadget before attacking the boss monster.
This time, they had started the battle too abruptly to locate the magic stone first.
“Is it really a coincidence?”
Ahn Eunseon replied, looking at Lee Cheongmyeong, who was nuzzling against Do Hajun’s shoulder.
“You might not have seen it, but it was too perfect to be a coincidence. The water seemed to protect the magic stone, wrapping around it.”
“Hmm.”
The water spear that pierced the giant rabbit could have shattered the fragile magic stone instantly.
Was it really a coincidence that the water wrapped around it protectively?
“Does Cheongmyeong know about magic stones?”
At Ahn Eunseon’s words, Lee Cheongmyeong lifted his head from Do Hajun’s shoulder.
“Magic stone?”
“This. Did you avoid breaking it on purpose?”
“Umm.”
Lee Cheongmyeong looked confused.
“If not on purpose, maybe his body just remembers.”
This time, Yoo Mia proposed a plausible theory.
“Maybe. That’s possible.”
Ahn Eunseon nodded in agreement.
Whether it was intentional or just muscle memory, the important thing was that they had cleared the dungeon.
Do Hajun, uncomfortable with his blood-soaked suit and holding Lee Cheongmyeong, hurried his steps.
In front of the gate, a diamond-shaped gemstone floated in the air.
“It’s the barrier stone!”
The barrier stone that appears after defeating all the monsters in the dungeon makes a one-time dungeon disappear, while it activates the exit gate in a fixed dungeon.
Do Hajun held the multi-colored barrier stone in his hand.
“This is my favorite moment.”
“Mine too!”
As he squeezed the stone, it crumbled, and the exit gate was activated.
“Let’s go. Cheongmyeong, cover your eyes again.”
After making sure Cheongmyeong had covered his eyes with his small hands, everyone stepped onto the gate.
As the light from the gate faded, the temporary office they had first entered appeared.
The dark office, dimly lit by the street lamps outside, indicated that quite some time had passed.
“Good job, everyone.”
“Well done.”
“Good work!”
“Great job.”
As usual, they exchanged greetings after completing the dungeon.
“Team leader, are you leaving right away?”
“I should.”
Although he wanted to go straight home, he couldn’t ignore Kang Wontae’s words.
“Shall I open the door for you?”
“Sure.”
After setting the lock, Do Hajun nodded as he left the temporary office.
“I’ll set it to the office.”
“Okay.”
“Team leader Do Hajun.”
A deep, resonant voice with clear diction approached Do Hajun, accompanied by a rich fragrance.
Do Hajun frowned and turned his head.
There were long legs, like those of a model, in fine black handmade shoes.
The dark gray vest over a white silk shirt looked perfectly tailored.
However, despite the formal three-piece suit, a sky-blue hanbok overcoat was draped over his shoulders, and his blue silk tie and collar were slightly loosened.
‘Why is he wearing that hanbok overcoat he never even uses?’
Despite his inner grumbling, Do Hajun greeted him politely.
“…Hello, Guild Master Chae Yiwon. What brings you here?”
* * *
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