Chapter 72

At the decisive answer, Hae-gun’s eyes narrowed. Glancing at the scattered mist of his dissipated water needles, he spoke in a low voice. “Normally, I’d ask how you could possibly know that.”

“…”

“Yet strangely enough,” Hae-gun continued, “I feel you’re dead on. Honestly, I was just thinking it might be better to refrain from using skills inside this domain.”

“Pardon?” Eui-rim blinked.

At the word domain, Eui-rim flinched. After a fleeting pause, Hae-gun casually adjusted his grip on his twin handaxes.

“It might sound strange, but I feel as though I’ve experienced something like this before,” Hae-gun said.

“Experienced something like this…?” Eui-rim echoed.

“Yeah,” Hae-gun said. “It’s hard to put into words, but this ugly sensation keeps crawling up my neck. Like… a déjà vu that makes me sick the more I think about it.”

Eui-rim was momentarily struck dumb. Domain. A sickening déjà vu. From those fragmentary words alone, he realized that Hae-gun was picking up faint, suppressed echoes from his past life.

Did stepping into the Fragment’s domain resonate with his suppressed memories?

“Eui-rim-ssi, how many more times can you cast your skill?” Hae-gun asked, breaking the silence.

Forcing a facade of calm, Eui-rim checked the dwindling timer. “…I’m not entirely sure. I haven’t tested my absolute limit.”

“True. We rushed in here on short notice,” Hae-gun acknowledged.

Accepting the answer without fuss, Hae-gun moved behind the frozen Son Chaeyoon. After rummaging through her tactical pack for a few moments, his brow furrowed.

“It seems the contents of the pack froze under your skill as well. I can’t retrieve the item,” Hae-gun said.

“What are you looking for?” Eui-rim asked.

“Protective gear for you,” Hae-gun answered.

At that response, Eui-rim glanced at the Watch of Seclusion strapped to his wrist. He had assumed this was the only defense he carried. There was more?

“Once I pull out the bracelet, fall back to the rear,” Hae-gun instructed. “Don’t trigger the Watch of Seclusion yet. Even if it’s an S-rank artifact, it has a cooldown period.”

“But to keep maintaining 〈Rewinding Hand〉, I need to stay close to you,” Eui-rim protested.

“If skills are useless, fighting with multiple vanguards is more efficient,” Hae-gun countered. “The kids and I will handle it, so you stay as far back as possible.”

Handle it with just the guild members? Slaughtering that massive horde of undead with only three people, without a single offensive skill?

“I can’t do that. I’ll help too,” Eui-rim insisted.

The sheer number of ghouls was staggering; the end of the procession wasn’t even visible down the corridor. No matter how monstrous the trio’s physical stats were, they would inevitably tire.

“No. Stay back,” Hae-gun ordered firmly.

“Seo Hae-gun-ssi.”

“You said there are four more Sigils remaining,” Hae-gun said. “Conserve your strength. Between that corpse vanishing and everything else, there are too many variables in play.”

Eui-rim could hardly argue that his stamina or mana was boundless. This was an escalated A-rank dungeon. Knowing he might need to deploy his skills frantically at any moment, following Hae-gun’s lead was the wiser choice.

Exchanging a final nod with Hae-gun, Eui-rim touched his arm the instant the timer hit zero.

“Huh? What the—Guild Master, why are you suddenly behind me…?” Son Chaeyoon’s startled voice rang out as time resumed.

“No skills work in this area except physical strikes,” Hae-gun barked. “Focus purely on crushing their heads.”

Though the command was concise, it did little to dispel their shock. Chaeyoon stared as Hae-gun swiftly retrieved the Black Sapphire bracelet from her unzipped pack.

“Skills don’t work? Why?” Chaeyoon blurted out.

“Explanations later,” Hae-gun cut her off.

Hae-gun went to toss the artifact to Eui-rim, then checked himself with a sigh. He seemed to remember belatedly that while the chain was weightless to him, to Eui-rim it was a chunk of dense metal heavier than an iron dumbbell.

Stepping close, Hae-gun snapped the clasp around Eui-rim’s opposite wrist, then handed over a spare hunting knife. “Keep this, just in case.”

The dagger Eui-rim had driven into the sigil had long vanished beneath the churning crowd of ghouls. Accepting the hunting knife, Eui-rim retreated toward the rear wall.

Crunch!

Ahn Moonhyuk took the vanguard, manifesting his heavy halberd. Thrusting the massive polearm like a whaling harpoon, he impaled three ghouls through their craniums, using the sheer momentum to sweep adjacent monsters aside. He was practically mopping the floor using skewered corpses as a broom.

“Gwoooaaargh!”

“There’s so damn many of them!” Moonhyuk bellowed, veins bulging in his neck.

Son Chaeyoon darted into the fray. Stringing wire ropes across the breached threshold, she battered the advancing ghouls with an iron club, using the tension lines to entangle them before caving in their skulls.

Naturally, even with their swift, coordinated strikes, the undead did not go down easily. No matter how humanoid their frames, they were dungeon monsters through and through.

A mutated ghoul’s skull was far thicker and denser than that of any human. Even wielding signature high-grade weapons, mowing through an endless tide with only three fighters was an uphill slog without skill reinforcement.

The saving grace was Hae-gun, who tore through the ranks with the force of an entire battalion. Eui-rim had wondered how the archer intended to fight with twin hatchets, but the twin blades detonated against rotten bone with concussive violence heavier than shotgun blasts.

Boom!

It drove home the terrifying reality that an S-rank hunter’s baseline physical strength was leagues beyond ordinary human comprehension.

“Ugh, fuck. I almost got sent straight to the afterlife,” a gravelly voice wheezed.

Turning his head, Eui-rim found Kim Si-hoon standing beside him, though how the man had crossed the room was anyone’s guess. Hadn’t he been cowering in the corner screaming only moments ago?

Yet there wasn’t a scratch on him. With his wrists bound and his collar tethered to the phantom steed, movement should have been agonizing, but an A-rank was an A-rank after all.

As Si-hoon edged closer, Eui-rim pulled his cuff down over the Black Sapphire bracelet. While Si-hoon already knew about the Watch of Seclusion from when Seonha handed it over at the entrance, he knew nothing of the heavy chain.

Back in their clinic days, Si-hoon had thrown a bitter tantrum over a mere B-rank watch, sneering: I didn’t take you for someone who loved luxury items. Eui-rim had no desire to give the man fresh fuel. Uncomfortable with the shrinking distance, he spoke up.

“Aren’t you going to deploy a barrier?” Eui-rim asked.

“Why bother? They’re handling it fine over there,” Si-hoon replied nonchalantly, brushing damp soil from his jacket.

“Still, you never know what might slip past,” Eui-rim countered.

“Healer Kang is standing here unprotected; a hunter can’t destroy his pride by hiding,” Si-hoon said with a sneer. “If you’re scared, stay close to me. I’ll protect you.”

“No, I’m fine. If push comes to shove, I intend to use this,” Eui-rim said, gesturing with the hunting knife.

Si-hoon let out a boisterous snort of contempt, mocking the idea of anyone accomplishing anything with a kitchen blade.

Good grief. Look at him looking down on me. Despite appearances, Eui-rim had often been told his close-quarters knife work was remarkably sharp for a healer.

Eui-rim clicked his tongue quietly, staring at the steel. The hunting knife was balanced remarkably like the dagger he had carried through the previous timeline, stirring wry, bitter nostalgia whenever memories flickered across his mind.

A time before the colossal, one-eyed horror floating in the heavens had opened its lid. Back when dungeon breaks erupted like weeds after rain, and every living soul took up arms without exception.

In those desperate days, everyone swung whatever they could hold. Not merely combatants, but healers and civilians grabbed rusted iron and poured into the streets to bleed.

Well, once the Shadow opened its eye, all those struggles became meaningless anyway.

Even so, there had been a time when he fought tooth and nail simply to live another hour. A period when burying corpses consumed more hours than treating the wounded, and when he had to hold a blade to shield those who could not stand.

“Anyway, fuck, I have no idea what’s happening. The whole dungeon went totally insane,” Si-hoon grumbled.

“…”

“I should have just killed that lunatic healer when I had the chance,” Si-hoon muttered.

Startled by the admission, Eui-rim turned his gaze. Si-hoon, biting his lip, silently mouthed, What? in blatant provocation.

“Why would you have killed the healer?” Eui-rim asked.

“Because the dungeon went haywire the second that bastard touched something,” Si-hoon spat.

“Went haywire? What did he touch?” Eui-rim asked.

“Who knows? Beats me,” Si-hoon retorted. “All I remember is him babbling about how this hospital was the most suitable vessel, how the apocalypse was finally starting, hammering on the concrete wall like a madman.”

What on earth is he talking about?

“You never mentioned anything like that back at the hospital,” Eui-rim pressed.

“Didn’t say it because you didn’t ask,” Si-hoon snapped.

“Something like that shouldn’t require asking—” Swallowing a surge of disgust with an effort, Eui-rim shifted tack. “There was no mention of any of that in the Association’s incident report either.”

“Huh? No way. I submitted that exact testimony to the Association,” Si-hoon insisted. “I told them the crazy bastard threw a fit and tampered with something on the wall. Didn’t you read the report properly? It was the very first thing I logged; there’s no way they left it out.”

Hearing that vehement claim, Eui-rim found himself momentarily speechless.

He reported it directly to the Association, yet it was scrubbed from the briefing? Why?

“Anyway, that’s why the bastard was moved to a secure isolation ward in the first place. He was the first to take the debuff and lose his mind,” Si-hoon whined. “Ah, fuck. Seriously, why did your healing skill have to vanish right before our raid? If you had just come along as planned, would I have ever gotten tangled up with a psychopath like that?”

The revelation struck with such force that Si-hoon’s voice seemed to recede into a dull drone. Remembering the eye tattoo branded onto that healer’s thumb, Eui-rim pressed urgently for answers.

“How exactly did he knock on the wall?” Eui-rim demanded.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Si-hoon grunted.