A Day Cursed With Bad Luck (3)

‘So this bastard was waiting for this exact moment!’

Charging toward the fallen gatherer at a furious pace, Hyeonseong ground her teeth.

No wonder she’d been so quiet even while watching—she’d been aiming again for the timing that would shove Hyeonseong into a failure crisis the instant the quest was accepted.

This time she’d even neatly stuffed in a “cost of failure,” too. She was desperate to suck her dry down to the last drop.

You could feel the malice—like she’d decided to extort her properly this time. If Hyeonseong showed this quest to anyone else, they’d think the same thing.

But no matter how bullshit it was, the quest had already popped. If she wanted to protect the Ghost Coins she’d scraped together, she had to roll with everything she had from here on.

She hurled herself toward the gatherer who was staring this way with a stunned face. Judging by the look, they thought the curse she’d spat at the Constellation was directed at them. There wasn’t time to explain, so she decided to ignore it for now.

Hyeonseong threw her body over the gatherer. The instant after, a streak of wind breath slammed into her back.

Right before the breath struck and dealt damage, the defensive necklace she’d put on earlier activated.

At the same time as the message, a barrier spread across her back. With a violent crash, the breath and barrier collided.

“Hey!”

The barrier and the Flightless Wyvern’s attack canceled out and vanished. Immediately after, Hyeonseong hauled the fallen gatherer to their feet.

The gatherer wobbled a bit, but thankfully managed to stand on their own. It seemed they hadn’t injured an ankle—just lost strength.

Catching the brief gap as the monster prepared its next attack, Hyeonseong grabbed the gatherer’s arm and ran.

“First, head that way!”

Hyeonseong sprinted straight toward the mountains. It was a bit far, but the only place that could offer even a sliver of safety right now was there.

Considering the recommended rank, there was a high chance the dungeon’s monsters were limited to the three juvenile Flightless Wyverns currently chasing them.

Even if there were other monsters, they’d be around E-rank at most. That would still fit a dungeon whose difficulty was rated A.

If the monsters ranged from F-rank at the lowest up to D-rank at the highest, Hyeonseong and the gatherers could handle them without major accidents as long as they were careful.

So for now, the correct move was to flee into the mountains no matter what.

When Hyeonseong and one gatherer ran toward the mountains, the other gatherers immediately followed.

Their response was faster than expected—it seemed most of them had already been considering “run to the mountains” as one of the options.

‘Good. Everyone’s coming this way.’

Hyeonseong glanced back and to the side. Still no deaths, no severe injuries.

Most of the gatherers looked exhausted, but they still had enough stamina to run. They were somehow dodging the attacks the juvenile Flightless Wyverns kept firing as they chased.

Behind the gatherers, the two C-rank hunters were visible. Whenever an attack looked hard to dodge, the two C-rank hunters blocked it or redirected it.

The Destroyer handled most of the high-power attacks. It looked like they’d heavily trained defensive and deflection skills.

The ice-element Mage scattered ice dust to briefly disrupt the wyverns’ vision, or created small patches of ice on the ground to make their footing slip—nuisance moves that helped nudge attack trajectories off-line.

‘They cover each other’s openings well.’

The Destroyer and the Mage were from the guild that held priority rights to this dungeon. They seemed like partners who’d fought together often within the guild.

That was even better. Once the gatherers were out of the way, they could leave the actual hunting to those two—just peel the monsters off one at a time.

As she ran while monitoring the situation, they reached the foot of the mountain before she knew it. Without hesitation, Hyeonseong stepped into the forest where trees grew thick.

‘For now…… they won’t be able to charge in easily, right?’

Letting go of the gatherer she’d been pulling along, Hyeonseong looked back out of the forest.

The three massive bodies of the Flightless Wyverns stood out. With that size, to force their way into this woodland they’d have to fire off breath attacks nonstop and bulldoze the forest down.

‘Even they can’t keep up attacks strong enough to flatten the forest right away. Before that…….’

Hyeonseong took a deep breath, opened her palm, and summoned Infinite Corridor while picturing a specific item. A small opening split the air above her palm, and a sheet of paper about the size of a notebook fell out.

It was a single-use item that drew a map of the surrounding area within a fixed radius centered on where the user was standing.

It could draw accurate maps even of unexplored areas, but the radius was small. And most importantly, it was disposable.

Despite that, it was an expensive magic tool per sheet. Feeling the sting, Hyeonseong activated its effect.

‘There it is!’

A detailed map of the nearby area appeared on the paper in an instant. A large cave was marked on it.

Given the item’s maximum mapping radius, it meant the cave was close.

‘And the location is perfect. Even if those bastards sweep the forest with breath, it’s not a direction they’ll immediately find.’

If she hadn’t found usable terrain, she would’ve had to go deeper into the mountains and burn another sheet.

Finding a cave without wasting anything put her in a better mood. Hyeonseong gathered the gatherers who’d followed her into the mountains.

“I think you’ve all noticed, but they can’t get in here easily right away.”

“So?”

When Hyeonseong gathered them and started speaking, someone tossed the question out bluntly.

“While we have time, we move toward this.”

Ignoring the unfriendly tone, Hyeonseong pointed at the cave marked on the map.

“Is that safe? If we go in wrong, it could get even more dangerous…….”

Someone else asked in a worried voice. A few gatherers nodded along.

No one seemed to doubt the map. The item Hyeonseong used was made by Garam Workshop, one of the famous producers of consumable magic tools.

They’d probably verified that through the system’s info lookup, so no one wasted time questioning its reliability.

“First we hide, and we make sure they can’t come to the side we’re hiding on. Ah—your name is Mr. Chae Wonyeong, right?”

Hyeonseong looked for the gatherer with the life-detection skill.

“‘Mr.’ is a bit much. Just call me Wonyeong.”

“Okay, then Wonyeong. On the way, please check if there are any monsters hiding. And once we reach the cave, check there too. Also—anyone who can detect toxins or resources?”

Hyeonseong asked the others. Two F-rank gatherers raised their hands, saying they could detect resources and terrain features respectively.

They agreed to confirm whether the cave was truly safe once they arrived.

“Then let’s go right now. Follow me.”

Guiding them was Hyeonseong’s job, since she had the map. At her words, the gatherers followed immediately.

“……But why is Hyeonseong acting like the leader?”

One of the gatherers trailing behind suddenly voiced the question.

“Because Hyeonseong knows the route, obviously.”

“And, well…… in the end, she’s also the highest-rank among us, right?”

A few people immediately took Hyeonseong’s side.

Someone muttered that she was “just a porter” anyway, but that was quickly shot down—

because porter or not, she’d saved someone who nearly died after falling, and no one else was staying as calm as she was in this situation.

Truthfully, Hyeonseong wasn’t all that calm. She’d already burned one use of the defensive necklace and one mapping sheet.

Once they reached the cave, depending on the environment, there was a high chance she’d have to use more consumables.

She’d basically locked in a loss already, and it stung. The only reason she was keeping a grip on her sanity was because the quest was active and she had to reduce the damage as much as possible.

Whatever she felt inside, on the outside, Hyeonseong probably looked the most composed. After a few exchanges, even the complainants shut up and followed.

Before long, Hyeonseong found the cave marked on the map.

The moment she spotted the entrance, she approached and examined it. From the shape, it looked like a cave someone had artificially dug out.

Hyeonseong stepped inside first to check whether it was some special zone. It was just an ordinary place.

When she came back out, she told the people who’d said they had detection skills to investigate the entire area.

The three gatherers who’d identified themselves as detection-type scanned the surroundings and the interior.

No monsters. No unstable ceiling or floor that looked ready to collapse. No poisonous plants or minerals. And the inside was spacious.

“Really? Good. I was worried it might be too narrow for everyone.”

After saying that, Hyeonseong told the gatherers to go in first. Maybe because she’d entered first, everyone went in without much fuss.

‘Then…….’

Hyeonseong recalled the items stored in Infinite Corridor again. Two bottles fell into her hands—one that erased human scent, and one that spread a smell draconic types hated.

Both were alchemically produced items, made by her older sister, Hyeonju.

Their grade was A. Items at that grade weren’t even displayed on shelves; they were high-end goods sold only to people who asked.

Naturally, the price per bottle was brutal—but Hyeonseong had squeezed a discount out of her with the “family card.”

Even with a fifty-percent discount, they didn’t feel cheap, because the base price was insane.

It was stingy as hell that she still charged her, saying “Family doesn’t mean free,” but in the end, Hyeonseong was the one who needed them.

For some reason, Hyeonseong couldn’t buy skills from the skill shop at all.

Whenever she tried to purchase any skill, a message would pop up saying she’d reached the maximum total amount of skills she could learn.

If even the most basic cheap skills were blocked, she had no choice but to invest in items. That was why she kept paying Hyeonju whenever she needed something and getting A-grade potions from her.

The ones she’d taken out now were things she’d been saving specifically for survival conditions against monsters with keen senses of smell, and against draconic types.

“Hyeonseong, aren’t you coming?”

One of the gatherers inside the cave asked.

“Go in. I’m going back to help over there.”

Answering the gatherer, Hyeonseong first uncorked the bottle that erased body scent. If she sprinkled it in front of the cave, it would cleanly wipe away any lingering human scent around the entrance.

“Help? You mean… fight?”

A bewildered voice came back.

It was a normal reaction. Hyeonseong was known as a hunter without combat skills.

It was only natural they’d think it was strange—she was basically saying a porter with no combat ability was going to fight A-rank draconic monsters.

“Numbers-wise, it’s two versus three. At least one more person has to join to make it balanced.”

Hyeonseong replied lightly.

“That ‘one more person’ still matters…….”

Another gatherer muttered under their breath. For something they’d tried to hush, the words carried clearly—meaning they said it so Hyeonseong would hear.

Hyeonseong fiddled with the now-empty bottle after sprinkling out the contents.

If it were up to her, she’d “accidentally” let her hand slip and jam the bottle straight into the mouth of the guy spouting that crap.

But she carved “patience” into her chest three times, then tossed the empty bottle back into Infinite Corridor.

Hyeonju had said she’d give a refund if she returned empty bottles. She didn’t want to waste precious small change punishing someone’s garbage mouth.

“If you don’t trust me, want to come help? Actually, I was thinking it might be a bit hard alone anyway. Nice—one more usable head in the count.”

“Help by doing what, exactly…….”

A third gatherer stuck their head out and asked.

“We’re going to split those lizards up one by one. Make it easier for the two over there to pick them off. But it’ll be tough for me alone to lure both of the extra two. You there—you seemed pretty unhappy with me earlier. Want to do it together? No, not ‘want to’… I should say ‘let’s do it.’ You know how it goes in this line of work, right? If you’ve got complaints—”

“N-No, it’s not that I have complaints…!”

At Hyeonseong’s smiling barrage, the first muttering gatherer startled and leaned back.

“Then at least stay quiet. Don’t ruin the mood with useless noise. Got it?”

The guy folded way too early. Bored now, Hyeonseong answered in a flat voice and opened the bottle containing the draconic-hating scent.

“I’m just going to spray this and go, so if possible, don’t come out until we clear it. And just in case—don’t start fighting each other in there. If monsters show up or the cave looks like it’ll collapse, use some common sense and get out.”

As she sprayed the chemical at the cave entrance, Hyeonseong rattled off nagging instructions.

The gatherers’ expressions soured as she piled on obvious advice like she was scolding children.

“We know all that, so if you’re going, stop talking and go already.”

“Even if I say it, people always ignore it, then I come back and it’s a mess because they fought anyway. Sigh. My crime is having nothing but trash skills like this—trash, I tell you.”

Hyeonseong replied pointedly and, just to show off, opened Infinite Corridor and tossed the empty bottle inside.

She sighed dramatically and laid the victim act on thick, and the gatherers who’d been about to argue all shut their mouths.

Once the cave went quiet, Hyeonseong said she’d be back and retraced the way they’d come, heading down the mountain.

‘Oh…… they already fired one?’

After backtracking a bit, she saw a path where trees had been blasted apart and the soil had been scraped away—as if someone had forcibly carved a route through.

Following the gouged track with her eyes, she saw it continued from the mountain slope.

The newly carved dirt path was a clean straight line and not very wide, meaning only one Flightless Wyvern had fired a breath attack.

Hyeonseong followed the path out of the forest. The two C-rank hunters were desperately holding out against all three Flightless Wyverns.

Judging by the situation, they’d provoked the dragons that were trying to carve a way into the mountains, and somehow kept them pinned on the plains.

She was still too far to see clearly, but the shouts stabbing into her ears and the hunters’ frantic movements made it obvious the situation was bad.

Hyeonseong pulled a megaphone-shaped item out of Infinite Corridor. It amplified the user’s voice and also layered an A-rank Taunt effect onto it.

For most Awakened, it was a useless item—but for Hyeonseong, who couldn’t learn even a single taunt skill, it was extremely useful.

Gripping the megaphone, she sprinted toward the fight. As she ran, she cleared her throat lightly to warm up. Once she closed the distance to the juvenile Flightless Wyverns, Hyeonseong brought the megaphone to her mouth.

“Hey, you damn lizard bastaaaaards!”

She drew a deep breath and screamed with everything she had. A system message appeared, and at the same time, the gazes of the two C-rank hunters and the three juvenile Flightless Wyverns snapped onto Hyeonseong all at once.

As the monsters’ attention landed on her, three lines of success messages appeared. She’d successfully taunted all three at once.

‘Oh…… yeah, calling them “lizards” really does work.’

Even among draconic types, the ones classified as true dragons tended to get especially fired up by words like “lizard,” “salamander,” or “eel.”

And the taunt skill embedded in the megaphone was A-rank—on par with the juvenile Flightless Wyverns—so it was only natural the effect was strong.

All three juvenile Flightless Wyverns started charging toward Hyeonseong. She bolted in the direction that took her farther away from the mountains.

“Pick them off one by one!”

Even while running for her life, Hyeonseong didn’t forget to shout to the C-rank hunters.

Hearing her, the C-rank ice Mage immediately fired a long, sharply tapered cone of ice at one wyvern. Given its size, it looked like the ice spear skill.

She wanted to check whether the spell hit properly, but she couldn’t afford to look. One of the remaining wyverns fired wind magic at her.

“Ghk!”

Several wind blades flew at her in a chaotic spray. She dodged desperately, but she couldn’t avoid having a few strands of hair and part of her outerwear sliced.

‘Damn it. Repair fees are going to hurt.’

The outerwear she was wearing wasn’t ordinary clothing. It had an effect that kept it from getting scratched or dirty even when rolling on the ground, and it also reduced damage from falls below a certain level, as well as damage from melee-type techniques.

In other words, it was the perfect “outerwear item” for someone like Hyeonseong who had to roll and tumble constantly.

But even if it was ideal for her day-to-day porter life, it wasn’t very effective in a situation like this—because it didn’t block magic attacks or cutting damage.

‘And I can’t exactly take it off, either…… How big is the deficit now?’

Dodging yet another burst of wind magic, Hyeonseong recalculated the items she’d burned today and the repair costs that would come later.

It was a stomach-churning number, but there was nothing she could do. If she held back on items because they were “wasted,” she’d just get killed by the monsters instead. What choice did she have?