The People Of Baengnyeong Forest (24)

The instant the green light grew even brighter, a message appeared before Hyeonseong.

‘It is over.’

Right after she checked the message that the lich had died, the green glare that had been stabbing at her eyes also receded.

When her vision returned to normal, Hyeonseong could see a heap of bones that had been shattered to pieces. In the middle of the pile, a fist-sized green crystal orb had fallen.

Hyeonseong walked up to the pile of bones. Grudge wraiths still remained all around, but she did not pay them any mind. She could no longer feel any hostility from the grudge wraiths.

‘If there was any hostility still left, then it meant there was one more step in the process of clearing that side separately.’

She picked up the green crystal orb sitting atop the bones. She checked the item info.

It was exactly the same information as the green crystal she had used earlier.

‘So I’d be sending the remaining undead back with this, too.’

Hyeonseong briefly looked around. All the grudge wraiths were silently staring at the green crystal.

‘They were asking me to purify them now, right?’

After confirming the grudge wraiths’ intent, Hyeonseong took the holy relic out of her pouch again. The relic was still emitting a gentle glow.

‘If the two were connected, then….’

She did not know the exact moment the relic had activated. But she was certain that it had happened after she had shoved the green crystal into the blood jade.

‘That thing earlier only started talking properly after I put the green crystal in, and it kept going on about a god. It must’ve sensed the holy power from this world, so it said that.’

Hyeonseong brought the green crystal up to the relic. The relic’s radiance brightened even further.

Aaah….

As the relic’s glow intensified, a few of the grudge wraiths let out quiet exclamations.

‘But what did I do next? Before, it worked when I shoved it into the blood jade…. Ah, was it this?’

After a brief moment of deliberation, Hyeonseong slammed the relic and the green crystal together. The green crystal squashed like jelly and wrapped around the relic. The green crystal that had enveloped the relic soon turned into a green aura and was absorbed into it.

Brrrr….

The relic, having absorbed the crystal’s aura, vibrated. When Hyeonseong let go, it slowly floated upward. Every grudge wraith’s gaze followed the relic as it rose.

The relic floated up close to the ceiling. Then it began to emit a pale green light. Soon, a pale green radiance burst forth and blanketed the entire room.

A system message printed just before she shut her eyes against the blinding radiance. Hyeonseong half-opened her eyes and checked the information on one grudge wraith.

‘This side is over now, too.’

The grudge wraiths purified by the relic’s light were no longer monsters.

‘The dungeon clear condition was eliminating every monster. But that ghost was no longer a target to be eliminated. The other undead monsters were probably the same. If so….’

The pale green radiance grew even stronger. When Hyeonseong reflexively closed her eyes, the world flashed once beyond her eyelids, then went dark. Realizing the light had receded, she opened her eyes again.

The clear messages printed the moment she opened her eyes. It seemed that when the light exploded, every remaining undead had been purified.

‘The ghosts are still here, but….’

The purified ghosts were still lingering nearby. But when she looked closer, there were noticeably fewer than before.

She quickly found out why. Right in front of her, a few ghosts were turning faint.

The faint ghosts soon scattered and vanished, as if shattering into fragments.

‘They’d all leave on their own, too.’

Thank you.

A small voice brushed Hyeonseong’s ear. Right after that, another ghost disappeared.

“Then I guess we could go back now…. Ah, right.”

She had almost forgotten something important. Hyeonseong took out the contract she had written together with Ivan.

“Hey, Ivan. You had to keep your promise, right?”

In case he had forgotten, she kindly pointed to the clause with her fingertip. An emphasis mark demanding fulfillment was floating over the clause as well.

“Ghk…!”

Ivan looked flustered as he checked the contract. It seemed he had completely forgotten about signing it in the meantime.

“From what I could tell, it didn’t look like I messed up item management either. Right?”

Hyeonseong asked the other Baengnyeong Forest people.

“Everything we checked earlier was all there.”

“We put everything in as-is from the start, so there was no way we missed anything.”

“There wasn’t anything misclassified or slipped away.”

The answers came back immediately. A few of them even smiled faintly as they answered. It seemed they had their own petty complaints about Ivan in everyday life.

“Come on, hurry. There’s no time.”

The dungeon was about to close automatically. Hyeonseong shook the contract and pressed Ivan.

“…Damn it, fine. I’ll do it.”

Ivan squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head.

“…I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t feel quite polite enough.”

Hyeonseong muttered while glancing at the contract. If all contract terms were satisfied, the contract would automatically vanish. The fact that it was still in her hand meant the apology was not polite enough.

“Damn it!”

“Come on, apologize properly and finish it. It’s time to leave.”

Milena set a hand on Ivan’s shoulder as he flared up. Veins stood out on the back of her hand.

“Kghhh!”

Under the subtle pressure Milena applied, Ivan finally dropped to his knees. It was the instant his knees touched the floor.

“…!”

It sounded like Ivan said something, but she could not hear it clearly. At that exact moment, the dungeon closed and forced them to exit.

‘Well, I saw his knees hit the ground for real, so it was fine.’

As the contract disappeared, Hyeonseong lightly shook out her now-empty hand.

‘It was a shame the record-type items all got snatched away again…. More importantly, it felt like there were a lot of onlookers today.’

The moment she exited the dungeon, Hyeonseong looked around. The dungeon entrance area itself was cordoned off so civilians could not approach. Still, there were quite a few civilians peeking in from beyond the line.

‘Well, it was right next to the subway station. People passing by would be curious enough to stop and peek.’

“Uh, wait. That person, maybe….”

“Isn’t that Ye Hyeonseong?”

She had been about to leave right away, but she heard people loudly talking nearby. Hearing her own name made her stop without thinking.

“Who is the guy next to her? I felt like I’d seen him somewhere….”

“Wait, I heard that the dungeon had a 20-person limit, didn’t it? Then why did only two people come out? Don’t tell me….”

“Ah, it wasn’t a wipe. I guess it was already full from the moment it opened. The people who were here when the entrance opened said that when those two went in, the dungeon filled up….”

“Oh, so that was that dungeon? The one connected to other countries or even other worlds at the same time….”

‘…I need to bolt, fast.’

The longer the conversation went on, the more their curiosity about the two of them grew. Hyeonseong searched for a route she could use to leave quickly.

“Let’s go that way.”

Kwon Seojin said in a low voice.

“Where?”

When Hyeonseong asked, Kwon Seojin moved immediately. Seeing the direction he headed, Hyeonseong understood where he was aiming.

‘That way is the bus stop.’

“Uh…!”

“Wait a second, Ms. Ye Hyeonseong! I’m a reporter from XX Ilbo…!”

As the two slipped through the crowd, a few people hurried after them. She could not tell whether shouting that they were reporters right to her face was “ethical” or not.

‘Ah, I’m not buying, you bastards.’

Memorizing the newspaper names the reporters blurted out as they rushed in, Hyeonseong ran for the stop. A bus happened to be pulling in.

“We could take that, right?”

“Yes.”

Hyeonseong boarded the just-arrived bus with Kwon Seojin. While the reporters hesitated for a moment, the bus shut its doors and departed.

‘Guess only small-fry reporters came today, at least.’

The truly persistent ones even followed her onto the bus. Those types tried to squeeze out even a single word by sticking to her to the very end, no matter how she ignored them.

‘If one of those had been here, I was going to go straight to Hyeonju’s Jinri Workshop.’

Even those leech-like types usually peeled off once she dragged them to Hyeonju’s Jinri Workshop or to Hyeonyeong’s Ten Thousand Swords Guild HQ.

The reporters might underestimate her, but they did not underestimate the workshop and guild legal teams.

“By the way, where was this bus headed?”

Hyeonseong asked as she sat in a seat with a decent amount of space.

“Hmm, it looked like it was going past Yongsan and heading to Yeouido. There’s a dungeon item exchange market on the way, too.”

“Then since we’re already on it, let’s stop by that market. We still haven’t divided ours up.”

Since it was not the opposite direction from home, she decided they would handle the items they’d picked up in the dungeon and then go back.

‘Still, I’m tired.’

Feeling exhaustion wash over her, Hyeonseong yawned wide.

It was not just her imagination. They had entered the dungeon a little after lunchtime, but the current time was just before lunch.

They had used up most of the nearly full-day time limit and come out, which meant they had effectively pulled an all-nighter. It would have been strange if she was not tired.

‘Looks like there’s a lot to sort out again this time, too….’

There were a few questions that had piled up while clearing the dungeon again. But she could not organize them right now. She needed to close her eyes, even briefly, to clear her head.

“Tell me when we reach the market….”

Hyeonseong mumbled a rough request to Kwon Seojin and closed her eyes. Right before she did, she saw a message print, but she decided she would check that later too.