A Day Cursed With Bad Luck (6)

‘What do I do?’

Hyeonseong hesitated after being pressed for an explanation.

On the Interstellar Network System, an S-rank Awakened couldn’t hide their list of owned skills. As long as someone could access the Interstellar Network, anyone could check it.

That said, what others could see through the system was only the skill name and grade. There was no way to know the fine details.

So it wasn’t that rare for people to keep hidden any properties you couldn’t infer from the skill name alone.

‘Should I keep one trump card and hide it?’

It was a trait that could even swallow an A-rank Breath skill. If she wanted to keep it as a trump card, hiding it would be more beneficial.

But there was a problem.

The moment Hyeonseong started weighing her answer, a Constellation message flew in.

‘That bastard is the problem.’

There was no way that one would move in a way that benefited Hyeonseong. If she tried to half-hide it, there was a high chance the whole situation from a moment ago would get exposed in detail instead.

‘She’s absolutely the type to do that.’

Having been burned a few times, Hyeonseong couldn’t help being on guard.

‘…Then it’s better if I say it first.’

She organized her thoughts and reached a conclusion. Better to “pay taxes” voluntarily now.

Once she decided, Hyeonseong gave the two of them a simple explanation of what had just happened—how Infinite Corridor had swallowed the Breath, and how she’d used that swallowed Breath to push one juvenile Flightless Wyvern into a near-death state.

Another Constellation message arrived the instant she explained. Yeah—good call saying it first.

Hyeonseong turned her eyes back to the two women. They were staring at her like they couldn’t believe it.

“If you could do something like that, then why—?”

“Because I only found out today that it worked, that’s why.”

Hyeonseong answered the Mage lightly.

To begin with, she’d only strengthened Infinite Corridor recently.

The ability to divide the inside into partitions for management was something she gained when she enhanced the skill.

Before enhancement, she’d never even thought to try taking magic into Infinite Corridor. Even if she had thought of it, she wouldn’t have dared.

‘If I take a skill wrong and everything inside gets wrecked, I’m screwed.’

In fact, the Breath she’d taken earlier gained an added warning after it became an item: it could destroy other items stored in the same space.

And Breath aside, most combat magic you faced mid-fight existed to kill enemies or break something.

Regardless of power, it was magic focused on destruction—so even if she’d come up with this idea earlier, she couldn’t have used it before enhancing the skill.

‘Because it was obvious it would destroy the items inside.’

Before enhancement, she couldn’t separate the interior into partitions. Everything was piled into one space.

If she swallowed an attack skill into that state, it would’ve smashed every item she’d stored.

‘That would’ve meant I had to shut down my business, basically.’

As for why she hadn’t tried it after enhancing the skill—simple. She just hadn’t realized it might be possible.

She also hadn’t run into many situations dangerous enough to need attack absorption, and Hyeonseong’s escape and evasion were better than you’d think.

In short, she’d survived without blocking attack skills with Infinite Corridor, so the thought hadn’t reached that far.

“If I’d known it worked, I’d have abused it ages ago.”

Hyeonseong felt bitterly regretful. If she’d known sooner, life would’ve been way easier.

“Well, there are plenty of skills where we still haven’t fully researched their uses and practical range.”

The Mage understood quickly. As she said, simple low-grade skills had been analyzed long ago, but high-grade skills with few holders were still under research.

Even more so here—Hyeonseong’s Infinite Corridor was held by exactly one person in the world: Hyeonseong herself. It was practically her personal skill.

Unless Hyeonseong tested it herself, nobody could know its true range.

“Anyway, I get it. Being able to cage even Breath is impressive.”

The Destroyer seemed to believe her.

She’d already seen Hyeonseong capture wind attacks with Infinite Corridor, even if those were lower-grade.

And it was common knowledge that Hyeonseong’s Infinite Corridor had the “infinite” attribute.

So if an infinite inventory could swallow attack magic, it made sense it could probably swallow Breath similarly.

For Hyeonseong, it was convenient—no need for pointless arguments or persuasion.

‘…And that girl’s staying quiet, too.’

She checked the system messages that had piled up. A few Constellations showed minor reactions to her explanation.

‘A Hand Faster Than the Eye’ showed no reaction. There was no sign of her spreading rumors through the Interstellar Network either.

Looks like Hyeonseong cooperating killed her fun.

With the nuisance quiet, Hyeonseong decided to focus on the remaining monster.

The three of them soon found the last juvenile Flightless Wyvern.

‘It’s still collapsed over there.’

It was still in a near-death state. But looking at the system-provided info, some of the status effects would be lifted soon.

They didn’t waste time—straight to decapitation.

The Mage went first, coating the wyvern’s neck with frost like before.

As white frost spread along its neck, the Destroyer tightened her grip on the axe handle and charged.

Her axe came down on the frosted scales. A loud metallic clang rang out again, and the frozen scales cracked apart.

Grrrr…

The moment the scales shattered away, a low growl leaked from the wyvern.

Hyeonseong hurriedly checked its info.

‘Damn.’

The stun debuff—about thirty seconds remaining—had disappeared. So had confusion and magic seal.

At least paralysis, mana recovery slowdown, and other movement-dulling debuffs were still active. They still had a window.

“HYAAH!”

The Destroyer shouted and swung again. The axe blade fell toward the exposed neck where scales had peeled away.

The strike was fast. Hyeonseong was sure the dungeon clear was seconds away.

CHENG-KANG—!

But then Hyeonseong heard an odd sound. Not the sound of a neck coming off, not the axe biting into the ground—something like glass shattering.

“…Oh.”

Between the axe and the wyvern, glittering transparent shards spilled down.

It was clearly a defensive spell breaking.

No need to overthink it—the wyvern had used a skill right before the axe could bite into its neck.

It shattered in one blow, so the skill grade seemed low.

But even young and half-dead, a dragon was still a dragon. That barrier was sturdy enough to nullify one powerful axe strike.

‘Then of course you can’t just take its head in one—’

The heavy, fast-falling axe got pushed back slightly, then dropped again onto the wyvern’s neck.

It struck—but the neck stayed attached. The barrier had reduced the axe’s power.

‘Seriously. Nothing goes smoothly today.’

Hyeonseong let out a low, incredulous murmur, then fixed her gaze on the juvenile Flightless Wyvern.

No matter how ridiculous it was, she had to watch its next move.

It had just used magic. That meant even with dulled movement, it could still attack and defend.

Sure, with slowed mana recovery it couldn’t recklessly use high-output spells, but it could absolutely spam fast, low-consumption attacks.

“Shit!”

The Destroyer and the Mage also realized something had gone wrong and immediately widened their distance.

Right after, the juvenile Flightless Wyvern—still sprawled on the ground—began firing off low-grade attack skills like wind arrows in a wild barrage.

Exactly as Hyeonseong had predicted.

“Hyeonseong! That thing from earlier!”

The Mage called for her. From the way she spoke, she meant swallowing magic attacks with Infinite Corridor.

Hyeonseong did as asked—she opened wide the Infinite Corridor partition where she’d stored wind arrows and wind blades, directly into the oncoming barrage.

The opened Infinite Corridor swallowed all the small wind spells.

Hyeonseong checked the stored item info.

The remaining uses of wind arrows and wind blades climbed in real time.

New skills were stored as well: wind spears and wind claws. Both were C-rank, too.

‘More tools to use.’

With every attack being swallowed, the sound of rushing wind quickly died down. The juvenile Flightless Wyvern stopped attacking.

It had no choice. What was the point of firing spells if some unknown space just ate them?

Hyeonseong checked the stored uses:

‘Disgusting. It really spammed that many.’

Even for fast-cast, fast-fire skills, that was a ridiculous volume in barely a minute.

“Either way, it stopped.”

The instant the barrage ended, Hyeonseong pulled out the Wind Blade skill stored in Infinite Corridor.

Breath had auto-fired the moment she opened the partition, but she still hadn’t confirmed how “manual” skills behaved.

She was about to find out.

‘Let’s see.’

When she drew out Wind Blade, a card-shaped item dropped into her hand—a card with a wind blade icon.

Skill items stored as items generally looked like this. Both items you could obtain as owned skills and disposable one-time-use skills came in this form.

So skills swallowed into Infinite Corridor became the same kind of skill item.

‘Then I know exactly how to use it.’

She’d used countless disposable skill cards.

She held the card and thought about activating the skill. Immediately, one use was consumed and a large crescent-shaped wind blade formed.

Then she spent two more uses, generating two blades at once.

Even if the magazine count was 1, having multiple uses let you treat it like an item with multiple shots.

She threw the rapidly formed wind blades at the juvenile Flightless Wyvern.

Whoosh—

The wyvern immediately deployed a barrier. The same transparent barrier as before.

Three wind blades hammered the surface and vanished. The barrier didn’t get so much as a scratch.

‘It was just a test throw anyway.’

She’d confirmed exactly how swallowed skills functioned.

And she’d learned something else: the wyvern had decided to turtle behind defense.

Now that she’d confirmed what she needed, all that remained was beating it down.

“Let’s break that, then take its neck immediately. Do you have something that can crack that in one hit?”

Hyeonseong asked the Destroyer and the Mage.

“Can’t we use the earlier method—swallow it?”

The Mage asked. Hyeonseong hadn’t considered that.

“…Should we try?”

Hyeonseong looked at the wyvern’s condition.

It was still lying there, not moving. According to its info, the debuffs slowing its movement and recovery hadn’t lifted yet.

It seemed like it planned to endure with magic until those wore off.

The Mage told her to try. Hyeonseong shut her eyes for a split second and decided.

‘I’ve still got defense uses left on the necklace.’

If things went wrong, she could rely on the ‘Ironwall Guardian Necklace’ or just run for her life.

She approached the juvenile Flightless Wyvern.

Even dulled, it hadn’t lost all awareness. As Hyeonseong came closer, it shifted its head slightly.

Then the barrier surrounding it flashed white for an instant before turning transparent again.

Was it a warning? Or reinforcing the barrier? Hard to tell.

‘Either way, it doesn’t look like it’s getting up.’

Only the barrier reacted—the wyvern itself didn’t move. She could be bolder.

She stepped right up to the spot where it had flashed, close enough to breathe on it.

She pressed her palm to the barrier. Nothing happened.

Looks like the barrier had no reflection effect or other offensive function.

In that state, Hyeonseong opened Infinite Corridor.

Centered on the palm pressed to the barrier, Infinite Corridor opened wide.

‘Oh… it works?’

Infinite Corridor recognized the barrier as a swallowable object and began pulling it in.

As the barrier was dragged, the ground and the juvenile Flightless Wyvern inside it were tugged as well.

It was probably because the barrier was spherical and enclosed down to the ground beneath.

Grrrk?

The juvenile Flightless Wyvern, lying inside, jerked and lifted its head in alarm.

The transparent barrier turned a translucent white, then began crumbling like powder.

It must have tried to cancel the magic.

But it was too late. Infinite Corridor swallowed the barrier before the spell could fully disperse.

‘Huh.’

Inside Infinite Corridor, the barrier and part of the ground came in.

The barrier was stored as a disposable A-rank skill card, and the ground was stored as dirt.

The juvenile Flightless Wyvern was pushed out of the barrier and slammed face-first into the ground.

Infinite Corridor could swallow objects only. Living creatures couldn’t enter from the start.

“This actually works?”

Hyeonseong said to the Mage.

The Mage’s eyes were wide enough to pop out. The Destroyer’s expression beside her wasn’t much different.