Chapter 93

Chapter 93

I Became the Academy Mafia Chapter 93“──Found you.”

I rushed toward the bastard who was still focused on the screen and drove a straight punch at him.

“Hm? You crazy bastard!”

As if he'd sensed the killing intent, he quickly grabbed his pickaxe and blocked my fist.

“How the hell did you...!”

“How else? We took the elevator.”

I sneered at the flustered bastard and detonated the aura gathered in my fist, sending his body flying backward from the recoil.

“How can there be an elevator in a dungeon...!”

It seemed the first surprise attack had worked at least somewhat, because he shouted with a twisted expression.

Jin-woo burst into laughter at the sight.

“In this day and age, a dungeon could have an elevator. What? Got a problem with it? Hehe.”

“You damn brat...!”

It wasn't like I couldn't understand why the Miner was so furious.

Even I hadn't expected things to go this smoothly.

“Don't feel too wronged. We were just a little luckier.”

What we discovered on the first floor of the dungeon was the freight elevator we used in the club room.

I had thought that since the dungeon we were in had overlapped with the dungeon beneath the club room, its characteristics and terrain would be similar, but I never dreamed that even the elevator connected to the club room would be recreated.‘Wow, this is here too, Boss. Can we ride this?’When Jin-woo said that after discovering the elevator, even I wasn't sure.

Nothing like this had ever happened in the game either.‘By the way, does this thing actually work?’The problem was how to go down even after finding the elevator.

Because the dungeon elevator was designed so that only floors that had been cleared would light up separately.

However.[D1]...[D10]‘Hm? Isn't the 10th floor lit up? Oh, it pressed.’Maybe because the villains had already occupied the lowest floor.The moment we pressed the 10th floor, the elevator we were riding began to move with a smooth mechanical sound.[Ding-dong.][──Basement 10th floor.]

And so we arrived at the 10th floor.

The sight of the Miner standing before us with an aggrieved expression was quite entertaining.

“You think luck alone could cause something like this?!”

Apparently our appearance from the elevator had been that shocking, because he pointed his pickaxe at us and shouted.

Well, it wasn't like I couldn't understand how he felt.

Normally, a person would have had to clear the upper floors and arrive on the 10th floor completely exhausted.

They must have planned around that too.

But what can you do?

This dungeon is basically mine.

“You were the ones who tried to trespass first, yet here you are shouting at the owner... how amusing.”

“What?”

“To begin with, you're the bastard who got caught because you had rotten luck, aren't you? It's nothing new. And...”

I glanced at the screen he'd been watching until just now.

So he'd been monitoring the entire dungeon like this.

Looking at the other screens, it seemed most of the kids were safely making their way through the dungeon under the protection of the instructors.

“Trespassing and voyeurism too. I wonder when the Villain Alliance became the Pervert Alliance.”

“...

Watch your mouth, brat.”

“Looks like you're the one who needs to be careful.”

Clang! With that sound, the dagger Jin-woo threw struck the Miner's safety helmet.

“No, what kind of safety helmet is that hard? I threw that with full strength.”

Taking advantage of the gap while the Miner and I were talking, Jin-woo had tried a surprise attack. He spoke in a disappointed tone while rolling his wrist.

“Pathetic tricks... you think an attack like that would work on me?”

“It's not like he's bragging about having a stone head, so what's with the pride? What should we do, Boss? I think if the two of us gang up on him, we'll finish quickly.”

Jin-woo spoke confidently like that, but I had something else for him to do.

“Jin-woo.”

“Yeah. I'm ready.”

“Rather than that... see the hole above the Miner?”

“A hole?...

I can see it.”

I quietly gave Jin-woo instructions in a low voice.

“When I give the signal, jump up there and help the 9th floor.”

“Hm? Don't fight the Miner and help the kids on the 9th floor?”

Jin-woo froze and asked again after hearing me.

But there was a reason we had to do it this way.

“In the end, we have to defeat the 10th-floor boss to escape this dungeon, so it'd be better to conserve our strength. Help the 9th floor first, then join up here with the others.”

“...

You're going to handle that guy alone, Boss?”

“I'll be more than enough by myself.”

“If Boss says so... then what's the signal?”

It would be better to show him through action than answer.

“Now.”

I concentrated aura into my lower body and dashed toward the bastard in one burst.

“You damn brat! Did you think I'd fall for that again!”

The Miner raised his pickaxe and slammed it into the ground to stop my charge.

The ground shook and dust rose, making it difficult to properly determine his position, but this alone meant the first stage of the plan had already succeeded.

“Boss! You better win!”

Because Jin-woo had successfully entered the hole the Miner had used to infiltrate the 10th floor.

If we hadn't been here, he would've gone up to the 9th floor as well and joined ‘Snow Girl Pa’ to attack the kids... but now I remained on the 10th floor.

There was no way he'd abandon the 10th floor and go up in this situation.

More than anything, the Miner running away because he got scared of a single freshman?

“There's no way.”

He was absolutely not that kind of character.

The dust slowly began settling, gradually revealing the surroundings.

The bastard was nowhere to be seen.

But I'd already experienced something similar before and knew how to deal with it.

“Was it like this?”

I released aura through the soles of my feet and searched the surrounding ground.

It was the Miner's unique detection method I'd seen while clearing the kobold dungeon with old man Kwak Chun-sik.

Maybe I couldn't have done it back when I knew nothing, but after practicing aura control through the bracelet the old man gave me, I could now vaguely detect the shape of the bastard hiding underground.

“You were hiding there.”

An unnatural shape could be felt underground.

Judging by it, he seemed ready to break through the ground and ambush me at any moment.

“I don't really like whack-a-mole.”

At the same time, I leapt toward that spot and drove my fist into the ground.

Booooom!

Because I struck with my fist packed full of aura, the ground exploded and formed a crater around me.

“Crazy! How the hell...?!”

Inside it was the Miner, holding up his pickaxe and blocking my fist with trembling arms.

“Curious? There was someone besides me who's good at finding you. I learned it from him.”

As I said that and concentrated aura into my fist, the bastard's expression twisted violently.

“An aura user with detection ability...? Don't tell me. You're Kwak Chun-sik's disciple!”

Perhaps because the name of the man who had put him in Niflheim was mentioned, anger began blazing in his eyes.

“So what if I am? For the record, even if you kneel and beg, I don't plan on accepting an apology.”

I said that to provoke him, and he ground his teeth with a crunch.

“You cocky brat...!”

At the same time, a flash erupted from the headlamp and stole my vision in an instant.

“I'll turn you into minced meat!”

Did he think taking away my sight would create an opening?

Maybe it would've been threatening enough to me not long ago.

But.[Activating 「Skill: Aura Sonar」.]

Aura released from my body spread through the dungeon and illuminated the surroundings.

The Miner was right in front of me, raising his pickaxe to swing it down.

I stretched out an arm, grabbed his pickaxe, then headbutted the place I assumed was his head.

Crunch!

I felt something soft.

“Kyaagh!”

Was that his nose?

Then another headbutt──“──Fuck off!”

Along with his shout, tremendous pain struck my solar plexus and knocked the breath out of me. My body was sent flying backward.

“Hup!”

I reduced the impact with a breakfall, then looked toward him with my gradually recovering vision.

“Haa...! Haa...!”

I saw him stretching a foot toward me while blood poured from his nose.

“...

Black Iron Shoes.”

Because digging through the earth was his main job, [Black Iron Shoes] were known as an item he had made himself.

They were his unique equipment, forged by melting ‘Black Iron,’ a material occasionally found in dungeons and said to be unimaginably difficult to process.

So that was what it was.

It was a good thing I'd wrapped my abdomen in aura right before being hit. Otherwise, I could've been seriously injured.

“...

I kicked you intending to burst your body, but you're pretty sturdy.”

The bastard snorted out a clot of blood from his nose and glared at me as he muttered.

“That was supposed to be a kick? I thought a mosquito bit me.”

“What? Khahahaha!”

When I spoke while pretending to scratch the place he'd hit, the bastard burst out laughing in disbelief.

“For someone saying that, your expression doesn't look too good... wouldn't it be better to just stick your head out cleanly? It'll hurt less that way.”

At his offer to give me a painless death if I surrendered, I stuck out my middle finger instead of my head.

“Why don't you straighten that crushed nose before talking, you worm bastard.”

“...

What?”

His expression instantly froze at my words.

“Did you just... call me, the great Miner, a worm?”

“Right, that nickname was given to you by him too, wasn't it? What, did your PTSD flare up?”

It probably wasn't a very pleasant memory for him.

Because there had only ever been one person in this world who called him a worm.

“Old man Kwak Chun-sik told me this. That bastard Miner should've changed his villain name to Worm. If a bastard who only knows how to dig through dirt and shit isn't a worm, then what is he?”

Well, even this was heavily sanitized.

True to an old fossil, the exact version had included all kinds of profanity, insults about his family background, the health of the Miner's parents, and his personality... but wasn't that too low-class for me to repeat?

So I had no choice but to just use the nickname.

“It suits you, Worm. Don't you think your parents would prefer their son being called the villain Worm?”

But even my moderately sanitized provocation seemed humiliating enough, because the bastard lowered his head and his body began trembling.

“Yeah... Worm... heh. Hehehehehe. But you know something?”

He held his pickaxe like a golf club and took a swinging stance.

“Kwak Chun-sik. That damn bastard couldn't withstand this either!”

Bang! With that sound, fragments of rock shattered by the pickaxe began rushing toward me at tremendous speed.

As if that weren't enough, the rocks seemed to have been coated in mana during the process, glowing ominously as they flew toward me.

No, even so, this is a bit──