Chapter 140 – Survival (2)
Her face, as white as her white hair, was exposed in the round sunlight. The bleeding wounds were roughly torn as if they had been bitten by an animal. I tried my best not to look at the wound, averting my eyes and crushing the grass into the wound.
“Aww… !ぅ… !”
Hunter Sung Ha-yeon opened her eyes and complained of pain. I saw her hand grabbing the wall and crushing it. I too was dizzy at the wound that seemed like it would tear even more if I gave it the wrong amount of strength.
“Shut up, are you done?”
Seong Ha-yeon Hunter looked at me in a cold sweat. I nodded and shook my green-and-red-stained hands in the air. The medicine filled in the wound will permeate her body and help the wound heal. Seong Ha-yeon Hunter said as she waved her hand in the air to make her ice.
“Wash your hands with it. It’s embarrassing. And, I’m sorry. I was acting like an idiot and gave you a chance.”
Was Seong Ha-yeon Hunter someone who knew how to make a simple apology like this? She took a deep breath and told me so. But what’s the use of an apology now? Jumping into her gate to save her was something I chose because I wanted to. Even if it wasn’t me who was here, but senior Yoo Jeong, even if it were Ichie, he would have jumped into the gate to save Hunter Seong Ha-yeon.
I said so laughing.
“The rescue team will come soon. Don’t worry too much. You lived like this.”
Seong Ha-yeon, Hunter, tilted her head at her reassuring words, and she asked me back.
“Is the rescue team coming? How are you?”
Has Hunter Seong Ha-yeon been out of her academy for so long that she’s forgotten about it? The instructor once said that when the gate becomes unstable or the gate closes due to an accident, the rescue team comes to rescue her. I remembered that information and explained it to Hunter Seong Ha-yeon again. The look on her face as she listened to the story was not the look of remembering something she had forgotten, nor the look of her admiration on me for being well-informed. She kept her mouth shut with a slightly pitiful look.
I excitedly stopped explaining. Seong Ha-yeon Hunter said.
“…The rescue team is not coming.”
“But, obviously, the instructor at that time…”
“You don’t know the coordinates here. It’s a place that was roughly opened with a simple gate, so there’s no way they saved the coordinates. We just have to live here.”
“Still…”
There was no meaning in saying that there would be a way, so I kept my mouth shut. Seong Ha-yeon Hunter said. She seemed to have become a bit negative as a person because of the pain in her side.
“No matter how lucky you get through the gate, decades may have passed over there. The time flow is different here. It’s arbitrary. There were cases where a week had passed after being rescued from a locked gate in an hour, and there were cases where we opened the gate again after a week due to an accident and rescued them in less than three minutes.”
I didn’t want to hear more negative stories. So, first of all, I decided to do what I have to do now. The first thing to do was to get all the jungle cat corpses out of the cave. The cave has the right humidity and warm temperature, so it was a very good environment for corpses to rot.
“First, let’s clean up. You have to stay here.”
“…Yes.”
Seong Ha-yeon Hunter nodded her head and then moved to her side with only the strength of her legs. She held the corpse scattered on the floor with her hand and exerted light force, causing the sticky body to become a block of ice and tumble off the floor. She looked at the pieces of her corpse and looked at me again.
“Hey, would you like to gather some of the corpses here? If I just carry these and go outside, monsters will flock to me because of the smell of blood, right? Just collect the corpses and put them together in one place.”
“All right.”
As she said, I threw the stretched corpse into one place. Every time a corpse fell to the floor, the smell of blood spread along with an unpleasant sound. It’s a terrible smell even if you smell it inside the cave, but how bad would it be if you take it outside? When the bodies piled up enough to push them out of the cave, she told me.
“Wait for a sec.”
Then she put her hands on her body, took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully.
“Ah… !”
Her face contorted, and her hands trembled. The corpses slowly turned white, frozen like fresh fish from a frozen food warehouse. The skin, intestines, and blood drops that had been soggy until just before had all become hard enough to be used as bricks.
Seong Ha-yeon Hunter said while wiping her hands.
“Just throw this away. It’s better to throw it out dozens of meters than to bury it nearby.”
“All right.”
I nodded, picked up the ice block, and stepped outside. The weather was rather humid and warm, and I could already feel water dripping down the corpse block. While I was out, she was pulling the remaining pieces of her body together by hand, preparing to freeze them again.
Outside the cave, there were traces of the monster that had just passed by. Traces of giant snails or giant bugs from old movies seeming to have been crushed. Everywhere in the traces of destruction, young monsters who had failed to avoid the monsters had become flattened copies. I threw the block as hard as I could, praying that the monster wouldn’t suddenly take an interest in our cave.
Turning my head, I saw a block similar to the one before rolling out from inside the cave like an automated factory. I smiled once at Hunter Seong Ha-yeon, who couldn’t see her, then threw her remaining corpse block over the bush. As he became D-class, his physical abilities increased dramatically, so a block he threw once flew tens of meters while reflecting sunlight.
When I came back in, Seong Ha-yeon Hunter was washing her hands. After funneling her ice, she propped her hand under it, and the water dripped and turned into a usable sink of its own. I sat down next to her and held out her hand in the same way.
Sung Ha-yeon Hunter looked at me and raised the corners of her mouth, she said.
“Great job. Really. And thank you.”
“Because I will definitely be rescued. Let’s do our best.”
“Okay.”
Seong Ha-yeon Hunter didn’t say that we couldn’t do it anymore. As I said this, I called upon the Almighty in my heart.
[Almighty Emperor. Is it possible to cross dimensions?]
[If that was possible, would I have been trapped at the bottom of the gate?]
It was true, and since the Almighty would get angry if he secretly asked for something he couldn’t do, he couldn’t ask too much. Washing my hands with cold water, I asked the Almighty again.
[Almighty Emperor. What to do next? They said there was no way to go back.]
[Don’t try to cling to the impossible. How will you find a way out? Can we do some research here?]
[No. However, there are people waiting outside, and there are many complicated cases right now.]
[Be faithful to the present. I can’t find the answer either, but I have no choice but to.]
[Yes.]
In the end, the Almighty only said the same thing. I sat down next to her and stared at her ceiling. There were tiny cracks here and there in the cave, so drafts came in, and sunlight was shining on the floor like a spotlight.
Seong Ha-yeon Being next to Hunter felt a chill. She said she was fine, but she felt the damp air of the cave sit down as she continued to use her powers, giving her the feeling that she was sitting by the Han River on a winter night. I secretly distanced myself from her, saw her hostile rubbing her body again, and reluctantly raised her body to get out of her.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m trying to find something to cover. You can’t stay on the floor all the time.”
If I stayed like this, I would really freeze to death. I tried to smile as if I was okay, and Seong Ha-yeon Hunter said this with a very sorry expression.
“That’s right. I have to go and help. I’m sorry you’re in this condition.”
“No. Are you okay.”
Seong Ha-yeon Hunter seemed really sorry for me to go out on his behalf. Just looking at her usual appearance, she was a person who liked to step out more than others, so she must be very frustrated with the current situation. I gave her a smile and then lifted her already cold spear and shield.
I needed leather. Thick, warm leather. It was good to eat meat as well.
*******
Strong Boar was walking through the fields, snorting her snort. Today, Strong Boar walked with his legs twitching in search of a tree with a pretty shade. Even monsters that are reckless and extremely violent can be peaceful on days when the sun is warm and no one is disturbing them.
Strong Boar found a tree she liked, leaned against her trunk, and she began to doze off. However, Strong Boar did not let her guard down. She curled her legs up a bit so she could get up at any moment, and one of her eyes squinted to look around.
Her sharp tusks were sharpened to tear at any moment, and her hard forehead protruded with bone thick enough to crush rocks. A formidable size and menacing breath. Strong Boar made sure that there were no large predators nearby like Lava, then slowly closed her eyes.
“Caught.”
And Jeong Su-hyeon came out from the bushes.
Before Strong Boar even rose from her seat, her knee nerves had already been pierced by her spear.
“Cut!”
Strong Boar, unable to get up, began to howl pitifully. She banged her head against the tree trunk and complained of her pain. Pulling the spear from his knee, Jeong Su-hyeon swung his weapon at the Strong Boar’s temple. As soon as it pierced his head, the movement stopped.
“Turn it off…”
The struggles that complained of pain subsided and the screams subsided. Jeong Su-hyeon did not have time to mourn the innocent death of Strong Boar. Scavengers targeting corpses were everywhere.
Jeong Su-hyeon pulled out the blade of his spear and began peeling off his skin.
