Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Episode 7. The Man Who Should Have Died

Park Jisoo thought he was going to die.

His left arm had been blown away along with his shield, and his right thigh trembled every time he tried to stand. A metallic taste rose in his throat, and every breath made it feel as though the space between his ribs was being torn apart.

Even so, he did not retreat.

If he did, the teammates behind him would die.

“Fall back!”

Park Jisoo shouted.

Beyond the collapsed cavern, his teammates staggered to their feet. One of the damage dealers was clutching his shoulder, the healer sat collapsed on the ground with blood running from his nose, and the mage was barely holding himself up with his staff.

This was not how the raid was supposed to go.

The target of this dungeon was an A-Rank named monster, the Crimson Flame-Horn Basilisk. They had prepared fire-resistance equipment and accounted for its poison patterns. The raid difficulty was high, but still within what they could handle.

If only the situation had unfolded according to the report.

The problem was that what had awakened in the inner cavern was not a basilisk.

Red scales.

Torn wings.

Horns scraping the ceiling of the cavern.

It was a dragon.

It was still too small to be called a fully grown adult. But that distinction meant nothing now. It was not something an A-Rank party could handle.

A red dragon hatchling, or perhaps one that had only recently reached adulthood.

The moment Park Jisoo realized the situation, he made his decision.

The raid was impossible.

‘If I want at least the others to survive...’

“Jisoo!”

The healer shouted from behind him.

Jisoo did not answer. He had no room to.

The dragon raised its head.

Red light boiled up inside its throat. The air heated first. The smell of burning skin filled the cavern. Park Jisoo summoned his shield and gripped it with both hands.

“Get out!”

“You can’t stop it alone!”

“I said get out!”

He drove the shield into the ground.

The next moment, breath poured out.

FWOOOOOSH—!

The world was erased in red.

Heat traveled through the metal and surged into his arms. His left arm was blown away instantly, while the skin along the inside of his right side felt as though it were cooking. Park Jisoo gritted his teeth. He swallowed his scream.

He had to endure.

He could hear his teammates moving behind him. Someone was dragging someone else, and someone seemed to have fallen. Curses and screams mixed together, but they were getting farther away.

Good. As long as they were getting farther away, that was enough.

Park Jisoo’s knees hit the ground.

The breath stopped.

He raised his head.

The dragon was still in front of him. Its red eyes looked down at Park Jisoo. It seemed unable to understand the tiny obstruction still standing before it.

Park Jisoo exhaled a breath mixed with blood.

“Come on.”

He did not even know whether the words came out properly.

The dragon moved. Its foreleg swung.

With no shield left, Park Jisoo took the impact with his entire body. The force tore through his shoulder and slammed into his back. His body was shoved backward. The soles of his feet scraped across the ground, and his knees buckled again.

‘So this is the end...’

It was a common ending for a tank. His comrades escaped safely because of his sacrifice, while he himself remained only as a record.

‘It’s an honor to end like this.’

Jisoo closed his eyes.

The red dragon flapped its wings. At the same time, his vision went black.

____________

But he did not die.

“His stamina is down to 6!!! Are there any more healers??? Hurry!!!!”

When the rescue team reached the cavern, everyone had been prepared to recover a corpse.

None of the teammates who had left Park Jisoo behind said anything. Their faces answered for them instead. That was how horrific the situation had been.

“Any signs of life?”

“None. No, wait.”

Detection-type hunter Kim Jihoo frowned. He slowly closed his eyes, then opened them again. The signal was extremely faint, but it was there.

“I think... he’s alive?”

“What? Don’t tell me he beat the red dragon?”

“You saw it fly away earlier too!”

“Th-then is it residual monster activity?”

“Oh, come on!!! I’m telling you, I think he’s alive???”

Jihoo’s shout was followed by a brief silence, then the team members ran toward the scene without anyone needing to go first. The rescue team followed behind them.

And this was what they found.

Park Jisoo lay collapsed among fallen rocks and unidentifiable melted fragments. Half his armor had burned away, his left arm was missing, and one side of his face was covered in blood and soot.

And yet his chest was still moving. For the moment, he was alive. Even though he had only 6 stamina left.

“How the hell did he survive this?”

“Just heal him!!! He’s about to die!!!!”

“Uh..., right...”

After several high-level healers of B-Rank or above completed emergency treatment, Park Jisoo was safely admitted to the hospital.

But during that process, several people discovered that his data had changed in a subtle way.

______________

The ceiling was white.

Jisoo knew this place. It was the VIP room of the hospital affiliated with the White Tiger Guild.

The smell of disinfectant filled the air. Bandages were wrapped around his right side, and when he breathed deeply, a sharp tingling ran through the inside of his ribs. An IV was even inserted into his regenerated left arm.

‘What...? Why am I alive?’

Was this a dream?

Park Jisoo tried to move. His body did not budge.

“Don’t move. The fact that you’re alive at all is strange.”

Park Jisoo only moved his eyes. A man in a black suit, Nam Taejun, stood beside the bed.

“Guild Master...”

“Looks like you’re conscious again.”

“Did everyone... survive?”

That was the first thing Park Jisoo asked. Nam Taejun looked at him for a moment before answering.

“Thanks to the time you bought them.”

Park Jisoo closed his eyes. That answer was enough.

“I don’t think this is the kind of question you ask someone lying in a hospital bed, but there’s something urgent I need to ask.”

“...Yes?”

“What did you do?”

Park Jisoo’s confused expression at the question, thrown at him without context, quickly turned irritated.

“How many times have I told you to please include a subject and object when you talk!!!”

“Shut up, you bastard! Keep your voice down! I just barely got everyone to keep their mouths shut, so do you want to make a scene?!”

“...Keep their mouths shut?”

Jisoo stared at Taejun, demanding an explanation. But Taejun was the one who needed one.

“Where did you get 10 stamina?”

“...Huh?”

Jisoo made a stupid face. The kind of face that clearly said, What the hell are you talking about?

“Your stamina stat was 10 higher than before. That’s why you survived.”

“...What?? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Maybe the machine malfunctioned? Since when do hunters grow?”

“The malfunction is in your memory!! If you don’t believe me, open your status window! Answer me, damn it!! What the hell did you do?!?!”

This time, Taejun shouted at the top of his lungs. It was not behavior befitting the master of a massive guild, but his excitement came first.

No matter how many times they retested him, the results were the same. A hunter had grown. He had never heard of or seen anything like it. If such a thing was possible, then as a guild master, Taejun had a duty to uncover the information.

“...You really don’t know?”

“Uh...”

“Remember, you bastard! The entire hunter industry could depend on this!”

“Uh... Stamina +10... It really did go up?”

Park Jisoo rolled his eyes around after checking his status window.

“Uh, uh... It definitely wasn’t like this the night before the raid?”

“I’m seriously going insane. What the hell did you stuff yourself with to end up like this and not even remember?”

“...Stuff myself with?”

‘Oops.’

Taejun hurriedly shut his mouth. This was someone who had thrown away his life to save his guildmates and was now lying in a hospital bed. That was not an appropriate expression to use.

So Taejun tried to quickly wrap up the conversation.

“Sorry. That came out wrong. I’m going to leave now, so for the time being, rest here and...”

But he did not get to finish.

“Oh, right. I ate something. Yukhoe.”

“...Yukhoe?”

“I drank alone the night before the raid.”

You drank the night before a raid...?

Taejun’s expression went cold. But wisely, he held back and patiently listened instead of interrupting Jisoo.

“I think I bought something called Minolac Yukhoe or whatever from the Exchange as a snack while I was drinking. It said it increased stamina by +10.”

“...Minolac Yukhoe? You’re saying that kind of thing raises stats?”

“That’s right. Minolac Yukhoe. The purchase is still in my Exchange history.”

Jisoo weakly answered after checking the Exchange. Taejun could not hide his disbelief.

Monster meat was basically poisonous. There had been eccentrics who tried to find ways to eat it, but he had never heard of it having an effect that increased stats.

But Jisoo was not the kind of person who would tell a lie like this. Nor was this the kind of situation where he would.

Then only one truth remained.

“So food that increases stats has appeared in this world.”

“If that’s true, are you going to look for it?”

Jisoo asked. Taejun’s answer was already decided.

“We have to. Preferably the producer.”

______________

Meanwhile, Jinho was struggling alone, completely unaware of any of this.

The one million won had disappeared faster than expected. When the number first appeared in his bank account, he had thought he could finally breathe.

The relief of knowing he would not immediately starve to death, and the relief of knowing that if he traded through the Exchange, his identity would not be exposed.

Those two feelings intersected and gave him temporary peace.

But the problem came afterward.

[Egg Fried Rice (Grade D)]

- A basic dish made by stir-frying egg and rice at high heat.

- The grains of rice have separated evenly, and the oil coating is stable.

- The touch of a Dungeon Chef has partially improved the dish’s overall quality.

[Stir-Fried Pork and Scallions (Grade D)]

- A dish made by stir-frying ordinary pork and scallions at high heat.

- Heat control is stable, but the quality of the ingredients is low.

- The touch of a Dungeon Chef has partially improved the dish’s overall quality.

“Damn it, what exactly is the condition?”

If he could keep listing things on the Exchange, that was how he wanted to sell them.

So Jinho poured all of his breaks and after-work time into experiments.

Eggs, onions, scallions, cheap pork, kimchi from the corner of the refrigerator, and various other things.

He tried stir-frying them, making soup, changing the direction he cut them and the order in which he added seasonings.

The cooking itself turned out well.

His proficiency rose noticeably, and even stir-fries he would once have handled carelessly now came out balanced. His sense for heat control and ingredient timing had clearly changed as well.

The problem was the finished products and the Exchange.

Not only was he unable to make food with stat bonuses, none of it could be listed on the Exchange.

Standing in front of each completed dish, he checked his status window and inventory over and over. But no listing notice appeared, no indication that it could be sold, no system notification of any kind.

Was the cooking too poor? That could not be it.

“It’s not like my ability disappeared either...”

Over several days, Jinho wrote down every dish he had made on a sheet of paper. Dozens of dishes filled the page.

Of all of them, only one had ever been listed on the Exchange.

[Minolac Yukhoe].

“What was different about it... Wait.”

Jinho thought back to the ingredient used in the Minolac Yukhoe.

A monster called a ‘Minolac.’

There was only one difference between that and all the dishes he had made since.

‘The ingredient.’

Whether it came from a dungeon or not.

‘The problem is how I’m supposed to get that.’

The Minolac had been an accident. He had gotten caught up in a dungeon break, nearly died, awakened, and then butchered it in a daze.

Waiting for something like that to happen again would be insane.

Still lying down, Jinho glanced toward one corner. He did not have many options.

Either give up on the Exchange and wait for his future salary,

or enter a gate himself.

After thinking for a moment, Jinho sat up and picked up his phone.

In the direction he had been looking, the system floated before him.

[Today’s Menu has arrived.]

[Today’s Menu: Iron-Hoof Boar Mala Stir-Fry]

[Time Remaining: 23:47:58]