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“Mr. Shin Jeongha! Move, now!”
Hyeonseong shouted in an urgent voice. She couldn’t let the Bulgasari recognize the craftsmen stoking the furnace fire.
But right after Hyeonseong shouted, the Bulgasari’s chest swelled. It looked like it was taking a huge breath in—an unmistakable sign of a breath-type skill.
‘Damn it!’
The Bulgasari turned toward Shin Jeongha and used its breath skill. Shin Jeongha himself was already out of the breath’s path, but the firing direction had been fixed the moment it started.
And of course, in that fixed direction were the craftsmen stoking the furnace.
‘In this situation…… this is the only way.’
Clashing a powerful attack skill into it like before was risky. There was no way to predict where the breath would ricochet. But it wasn’t like she had a usable defensive skill either.
‘What I took from that dragon last time—there’s no guarantee it blocks that 100%.’
Then there was only one option left.
The space in front of the panicked craftsmen split open into a long, gaping fissure. At the same time, the molten-metal breath fired.
“Hiiik……!”
The craftsmen let out frightened sounds at the sight of the breath.
‘The direction’s right. The range, too…….’
Hyeonseong widened the gap in space even more. She expanded it to match the spread of the molten metal.
Then the molten stream touched the Infinite Corridor’s entrance.
And it was sucked into the bottomless space without leaving a trace.
The entrance, having swallowed every last drop, closed.
A new notice appeared as she closed the Infinite Corridor. Hyeonseong immediately checked the Bulgasari.
After the molten metal had been siphoned out, its body had visibly shrunk.
‘It didn’t seem to shrink when it breathed earlier…… maybe because I drew it out longer this time?’
Hyeonseong checked the monster’s info again.
She could see it had dropped one tier, from mid-large down to medium.
‘No wonder it was obsessed with eating. The problem wasn’t just getting bigger.’
While moving to stand in front of the craftsmen, Hyeonseong gripped an S-rank Mana Pierce card—one of the skill cards Hyeonyeong had made for her.
‘Now it’ll do one of two things. Either target the craftsmen again… or…… target the pipes.’
It had shrunk enough to drop its system “weight class.” That meant the amount of metal inside its body had decreased that much.
Its frame—and the “weapons” it could use—had clearly diminished. It might ignore humans for the moment and try to restock.
‘……Either way, what I need to do stays the same.’
The Bulgasari tried to turn its head toward the wall. Hyeonseong dashed out while pulling a “Gaze-Focus Megaphone” from the Infinite Corridor.
“Hey! Hey! Don’t you look away!”
She activated the megaphone’s taunt function and shouted at full volume. It didn’t matter whether the taunt “stuck.” What she needed was the opening created during the special-effect activation window.
‘Got it!’
Reacting to the sound and the skill, the Bulgasari turned back toward Hyeonseong. She didn’t waste the chance—she aimed the skill card straight at its left eye.
The instant she lined up the direction, she deducted 1 use. The skill fired immediately, and a sharp aura strike landed squarely in the Bulgasari’s left eye.
Kraaak!
“Yes, ‘The Prankster of the Beginning’! Thank you for the sponsorship!”
Hyeonseong responded to the message while tossing the megaphone into the Infinite Corridor.
With the item used to trigger the skill gone, the activation naturally canceled as well.
‘Doesn’t matter anyway.’
The Bulgasari was already staring Hyeonseong down again. She didn’t need a skill effect to keep its attention.
“Mr. Shin Jeongha! Turn it!”
Hyeonseong shouted as she ran, dodging the Bulgasari chasing her. Shin Jeongha, already nocked, repositioned and aimed at the Bulgasari.
‘Good. He understood.’
Shin Jeongha took a position that would lure the Bulgasari into turning its back on the furnace.
“Fire—how much longer?”
“Uh…… two minutes!”
While guiding the monster’s direction so Shin Jeongha could aim better, Hyeonseong asked the craftsmen. The answer came right away.
‘After all that, it’s still two minutes?’
A flash of disbelief crossed Hyeonseong’s face.
‘……We endure. What else?’
Getting annoyed would only drain her energy. Those two minutes weren’t going to vanish.
‘Still, if it keeps repeating the same patterns, holding out should be manageable.’
So far, the Bulgasari’s attack patterns were simple and few. Everything was physical damage, plus a roar that could apply debuffs.
All the physical attacks were directional. If she watched its movements carefully, she could predict which attack would fire in which direction.
‘The roar is the problem, though…….’
Dodging a tail strike after a charge, Hyeonseong recalled what the roar’s tell had looked like.
‘It was similar to the breath. It takes a huge inhale before it screams, too.’
The problem was having skills with similar tells. While avoiding a wide swing of its arm, Hyeonseong formed a response.
‘If it inhales when it’s not time for a breath, assume it’s the roar.’
She retreated after dodging the arm swing, and the Bulgasari lifted its foot—another earth-splitting attack. After checking the toe direction, she threw herself to the right.
Then, after she dodged again, the Bulgasari inhaled. It was earlier than the estimated cooldown on its molten-metal breath.
Hyeonseong immediately pulled an item from the Infinite Corridor: the A-rank “Earplugs of Silent Blessing.”
‘The roar’s effect was on the weaker side, so this should block it.’
They were just earplugs, yet they had an unnecessarily grand rank and name—but they were effective. When worn, they could block or reduce debuffs triggered through sound.
……!
The moment she plugged her ears, the Bulgasari opened its mouth wide. As expected, no molten breath poured out.
She couldn’t hear it, but she could tell. The strange vibration in the air made it obvious—it had screamed.
The expensive item did its job again. From the activation messages, the Bulgasari’s roar could inflict two different status ailments.
‘Either one triggers at random, or it depends on stats—which one applies.’
As soon as the Bulgasari closed its mouth, Hyeonseong pulled the earplugs out. Unless she needed to block sound effects, she had to keep her ears open during a fight.
She put the earplugs back into the Infinite Corridor. The Bulgasari charged straight at her. Hyeonseong slipped outside its path.
‘What about the craftsmen?’
The instant she dodged, her gaze snapped back to them. The first roar hadn’t seemed to cause major trouble, but this time could be different.
“Ugh, my head…….”
“Hey—careful!”
This time, chaos broke out among the craftsmen. A few unlucky ones had been hit by the debuff.
‘Damn it—this will slow down stoking the fire.’
Several afflicted craftsmen couldn’t operate the furnace properly, or nearly toppled into it. That forced other unaffected craftsmen to stop stoking to prevent accidents.
They couldn’t just let coworkers get injured.
‘I still have more debuff-clearing potions…….’
She jumped and dodged another tail strike.
‘The problem is, I can’t go hand-deliver them.’
The Bulgasari twisted its body toward Hyeonseong, looking desperate to avenge its dead left eye.
‘And I can’t exactly send Shin Jeongha either.’
Shin Jeongha wasn’t idle—every time an opening appeared, he shot at the Bulgasari’s left eye or between its scales, slowing its reactions.
‘No new contact…… huh.’
Hyeonseong ran toward the side opposite the furnace and pulled out her hunter terminal.
Only Hyeonyeong had sent a message: asking for monster info, and saying she’d dispatch combat- and recovery-type Awakened to the workshop area in case of emergency.
‘If you’re in the same dungeon, you can throw a message by locking onto a position even without exchanging numbers…… so if there’s nothing, it probably means there’s no crisis yet.’
The ground split again with heavy footsteps. Hyeonseong flung herself left to avoid the crack.
Still playing tag with the Bulgasari, she activated the terminal’s location-tracking. She was trying to find the two Awakened she’d sent out with the ordinary employees.
‘If I call the one who said they’re non-combat…… huh?’
The tracking completed instantly. After dodging a charge, she checked the signals: two were inside the workshop, and two were right outside, nearby.
‘I thought they’d go toward the shopfront and office area. Did they bring all the staff from there?’
She could ask later.
‘More importantly, if they’re that close…….’
Dodging the tail swing, Hyeonseong turned toward the workshop entrance. She planned to send a message and call out by voice.
The moment she turned, she sprinted for the doorway. With one hand, she hit any button and started typing a message.
Even then, the Bulgasari chased relentlessly, seemingly unconcerned with Shin Jeongha’s steady barrage of arrows.
‘Good. If I can just get outside like this…….’
Right when she was close enough to reach the entrance, a Constellation message arrived.
‘Again? What now…….’
“What?”
A stunned sound escaped Hyeonseong. Immediately after, the view beyond the doorway dimmed sharply, as if someone had overlaid black cellophane.
[‘Hands Faster Than Eyes’ cackles.]
Hyeonseong reached the doorway and slammed her fist toward the open frame. A sense of mass—something that shouldn’t exist—met her knuckles. Ripples spread from where her fist struck the space within the frame.
“Damn it!”
Hyeonseong spun back into the workshop. Through the now even-dimmer doorway, she caught a fleeting glimpse of people outside.
……!
When she looked back again, she saw the particularly whiny Awakened pounding on the invisible wall.
He seemed to be shouting something, but no sound came through. Even the audio was blocked.
‘Damn it. If it got unusually quiet, I should’ve suspected something!’
Grinding her teeth, Hyeonseong turned her eyes back to the workshop.
If a Constellation—especially one like that—wasn’t picking fights or issuing quests, it meant only one thing:
It was preparing a trick like this to obstruct the clear.
A flood of messages poured in at once. The Constellations were excited by an item that could forcibly twist a dungeon environment.
Clenching her teeth at the messages that stuck in her vision, Hyeonseong felt her blood boil. A dungeon being twisted by Constellation interference was exactly the kind of situation she hated most.
‘Someday, I really will kill that bastard!’
Grinding her teeth, Hyeonseong ran toward Shin Jeongha and opened the Infinite Corridor beside him.
“Mr. Shin Jeongha! Left!”
Hyeonseong shouted to Shin Jeongha, who had just fired an arrow at the Bulgasari’s head. The moment Shin Jeongha turned his eyes left, Hyeonseong pulled out potions that cleared the dizziness status.
“Five of those! Take them over there!”
“Y-Yes!”
Hearing Shin Jeongha’s reply, Hyeonseong turned back to face the Bulgasari. The monster was still charging.
Hyeonseong moved left. At the same time, Shin Jeongha scooped up all the potions that had dropped from the Infinite Corridor and ran right—toward where the craftsmen were gathered.
The Bulgasari’s gaze flicked right for an instant. Hyeonseong closed the corridor she’d opened, then reopened it beside herself. The Infinite Corridor dropped the “Gaze-Focus Megaphone.”
“Hey! You long-nosed bear of a bastard!”
The instant the megaphone hit her hand, she triggered the taunt again. Shouting whatever came to mind, she drew the Bulgasari’s attention back to herself.
“Oh wow—so you do know ‘bear’ is an insult?”
She kept yelling loudly with the megaphone effect active, while opening the Infinite Corridor and retrieving the S-rank Mana Pierce card again.
“You know why I’m calling you a bear? First, I can’t tell if you look like a bear or an elephant, and second—”
“—because all you do is dumb attacks. A charge, a tail swing, and a stomp—that’s S-rank? You’re just—”
Even with the taunt success message, Hyeonseong kept babbling into the megaphone. She needed to create the timing to use the card.
“—a big, messy bear! Isn’t that right?!”
Kyaaah—!
As if reacting to Hyeonseong’s nonsense, the Bulgasari let out a furious scream. Hyeonseong’s eyes sharpened.
She tightened her grip on the skill card. After the scream, the Bulgasari’s chest began to swell again—this time, clearly preparing to fire molten-metal breath.
‘Yeah. Just a little more.’
Hyeonseong stared at the Bulgasari’s snout. The attack was coming any moment now.
Pu-hwaak—
The instant molten metal burst from its mouth, the Infinite Corridor opened again straight in front of it. The torrent of molten metal was sucked directly into the corridor.
While the Infinite Corridor “blocked” the molten breath, Hyeonseong retreated three or four steps. Once she’d created enough distance, she sprinted forward and stomped hard, launching herself into the air.
At the peak of her jump, the molten breath began to thin. The breath attack was ending.
Perfect timing.
Hyeonseong immediately aimed the skill card in her hand at the Bulgasari’s mouth.
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