Beyond The Control

Chapter 22

There was another difference between the second raid and the first. The dungeon appeared in a village at the edge of the East Sea, requiring over 4 hours of travel by car. Even with emergency lights on the car roof, the basic distance made it difficult to expect a dramatic reduction of one or two hours.

And above the seats, on the metal shelves, were black backpacks neatly arranged.

From C-rank dungeons, it’s essential to pack backpacks for camping. Generally, the higher the dungeon level, the wider the internal area and the more monsters there are.

To finish quickly, you only need to defeat the boss mob holding the key to dungeon dissolution, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. True to its name, it stubbornly holds out in the most dangerous and deepest part. In the end, to catch the boss mob, you had to keep eliminating the small fry positioned in front of it.

It’s no exaggeration to say that this is where the power of high-level awakened ones shines. With one skill, the surroundings are completely devastated. That’s why they’re not just idolized as heroes and enjoy immense popularity for nothing.

‘Song Ji-hyeok will be at the center of that from now on.’

I found myself glancing to the side without realizing it. Not right next to me, but sitting symmetrically across the aisle. Espers are generally quite large, so if two sat side by side like buddies, they’d end up with one whole side of their bodies pressed together.

“What is it?”

Somehow he knew I was looking. I smiled at Song Ji-hyeok, who turned his head to face me, and said, “Just, I’m counting on you.” It wasn’t just empty words; Song Ji-hyeok’s performance was expected to stand out more in this battle.

The place we finally arrived at was a residential area commonly seen in city centers. The essential police line was loosely set up, and two Association employees in suits were guarding the area.

The locals must have all been evacuated, as there wasn’t a single person or car to be seen in any alley. Seeing only roads and residential buildings remaining empty in all directions, it naturally evoked the image of the final day of an apocalypse.

I turned my gaze to look at the dungeon entrance. The dark green aura surging around it confirmed it was definitely B-rank, and among them, it seemed to be quite high in difficulty.

There are mainly two ways to estimate the dungeon level. Either measure the wavelength around the dungeon entrance with a specialized measuring device, or determine it by the color of the aura flickering around the gate. The latter can be immediately recognized by anyone who isn’t color blind.

Although we had run several B-rank dungeons as a team, seeing the aura close to deep green made me a bit nervous. I hoped there would be many monsters I could handle.

Eventually, under Gitae’s lead, we entered the dungeon. After passing through the pitch-black darkness dominating the space, as always, a completely different landscape unfolded. An enormous expanse of green land visible at a glance, trees towering as if to pierce the sky, trees, and more trees. It was a typical forest-type dungeon.

Han Song-i, standing next to me, muttered coolly as if she had read my mind.

“A day trip is out of the question.”

Dungeons have characteristics by type. Cave types are mostly pitch black without a spot of light, while maze types or relic types have traps lurking everywhere. One wrong step and you could fall vertically to the bottom of an abyss.

And forest types…

“It’s incredibly vast,” Lee Seong-min said.

As he said, being vast is the characteristic. Even now, a massive forest stretched out before our eyes, so vast that it was impossible to tell where it ended just by looking.

Here too, my mental database shone. After examining the surrounding trees and checking the moss covering the ground, I said to Gitae,

“It’s a typical forest type, but there will be quite a lot of monsters. The mobs will be mixed, and we need to be careful not to step on Fortes roots while moving. The boss mob is probably a Zhu-wolf.”

No sooner had I finished speaking than Han Song-i gave me two thumbs up.

“That’s amazing, oppa.”

“It’s nothing special.”

I casually brushed under my nose while saying it was no big deal. This much is really nothing.

Suddenly feeling a gaze, I looked up to find Song Ji-hyeok staring at me intently. Just by his expression, I could almost hear what he was saying.

‘Come on, you could enjoy the praise a little.’

Gitae, who had been surveying the front, soon turned back to the team members and spoke.

“Let’s split into two teams again this time. Me, Kim Sang-jun, and Lee Hye-young Esper will be Team A, the rest will be Team B led by Han Song-i. Can you handle it?”

“Is there any doubt?”

Gitae nodded with trust at Han Song-i’s confident attitude. So we split into two teams. We agreed to advance east and west separately and then regroup at a northern point.

Gitae’s group left first, and the remaining Team B reinforced our strategy a bit more. Of course, the role of strategist fell to me here as well. We decided that the newcomers would lead the battles, with the experienced members helping in sudden or crisis situations. We also didn’t forget to be cautious about the Fortes.

“If you see trees with red trunks, be careful not to touch the roots or anything. They wrap around people like tentacles, and they’re not only ferocious but also have a sticky toxic substance on their petals.”

Kang Ha-na, who had a frightening experience with centipede venom, shuddered.

“And the monsters will look like carnivorous animals that are 2% lacking. You need to take out their necks to completely cut off their breathing.”

Even among the same carnivorous types, the attack methods differ slightly. For example, a Rexy Tiger loses energy and dies if you just take out its tail, but it was right for each person to learn or acquire such details on their own.

But then…

No sooner had we heard a rustling sound nearby than a bright yellow flash shot out like a comb from Han Song-i’s hand. It was a reflexive movement as an Esper.

What had been a Red Wolf was torn to shreds without even a shape left, and simultaneously, dozens of Red Wolves leaped out of the forest with eerie glowing eyes. It was the start of a full-scale battle.

“On the right!”

As soon as Han Song-i shouted, Lee Seong-min activated his skill. A chilling force, stretched out like drawn steel, advanced powerfully, freezing a dozen Red Wolves at once.

The result was the same as what I had seen before. The frozen forms shattered into pieces with a crackling sound like broken glass windows.

On the opposite side, Kang Ha-na was struggling hard. Although she screamed as if about to reach enlightenment every time she fired a skill, she calmly sliced the monsters’ necks one by one in blade form.

As for the other newcomer, Song Ji-hyeok…

A smile spread across my face as I turned around. The guy was like a fish in water. Skills overlapped in succession so fast that even my eyes could hardly confirm their trajectories, as if a huge waterfall had unfolded in mid-air.

Slashing with enough force to sweep away the forest, he didn’t miss even the baby monsters far away, piercing their necks. Watching him do everything single-handedly made my earlier worry about this being a B-rank dungeon seem not just groundless but even embarrassing.

“Keep an eye on Ha-na too.”

“Yes, oppa.”

After asking Han Song-i, I retraced our steps. Passing through trees felled by the Espers’ merciless attacks, I quickly scanned the monster corpses strewn about. Among the all-red corpses, I found two Black Wolf bodies standing out like lone black dots. There had been more, but the rest were torn to shreds like paper, with only these two remaining relatively intact.

I took out my dagger and unhesitatingly cut open the body’s belly, then reached in. I had positioned myself well, as I immediately found what I wanted without having to rummage around. It was a pearl-like core.

There are a few monsters that have cores in their bodies even though they’re not boss mobs, and the Black Wolf in front of me was one of the easiest to encounter. Being C-rank, it wouldn’t fetch a high price, but it was certainly better than nothing.

After securely pocketing the core from the other one as well, I returned to the battlefield. The air all around was in chaos, with dozens, hundreds of skill trajectories leaving messy afterimages. Just as Team Leader Joo had foreseen, the newcomers were freely demonstrating their capabilities in their own ways.

About 20 minutes passed like that.

“Huff, huff…”

Kang Ha-na, who had struggled to cut the necks of the charging wolves, breathed heavily. These were the last remaining monsters in this area. Song Ji-hyeok had already finished clearing his assigned sector early on, and Lee Seong-min was also wrapping up at a similar timing.

“Good work, everyone. Is anyone hurt?”

Han Song-i, young in age but a veteran in experience, didn’t forget to check on the team members’ well-being. After finishing the area cleanup, we advanced once again.

The deeper we went, the denser the forest became. The leaves of the towering trees were so lush they covered the sky, and all sorts of weeds on the ground had grown up to waist height.

Patches of fog were also hazily spread about. Although not enough to obscure our vision, everyone was advancing with heightened senses when…

“Aaaaagh!”

Lee Seong-min’s body, walking in front of me, was suddenly lifted into the air. It seemed he had accidentally stepped on a Fortes root.

Han Song-i, quickly grasping the situation, immediately launched a skill. But the branch-like tentacle wrapped around Lee Seong-min’s ankle changed its trajectory as if taunting us and hid its body in the fog. The successive attacks she made by intuition also seemed to miss the target.

At that moment, Song Ji-hyeok made a motion to step forward. Seeing this, I hurried to stop him.

“Wait!”

The guy, who had been condensing energy as if about to launch it any second, looked at me with eyes that seemed to ask why.