Chapter 75

The golden motes suspended in the air plummeted toward the floor, pooling into a luminous stream that forged a winding path through the dark.

Watching the radiant line pierce deep into the gloom, Eui-rim held his breath.

The screams begging for death echoed without pause. Having long lost the strength to plead for rescue, the voice begged solely for oblivion—harrowing, broken, and agonizingly raw.

It sounded identical to his own voice in the previous timeline, trapped in recursive agony while crossing the boundary, begging to simply be allowed to die.

“Is that someone from the Association rescue team?” Chaeyoon asked, scanning the gloom.

Hae-gun narrowed his blue-gray eyes. “Most likely,” he said in a low voice.

“How many entered on the rescue team? Seven?” Chaeyoon answered her own question, reciting the roster from memory. “One A-rank, four B-ranks, two C-ranks.” Her face tightened into granite. Exhaling a thin breath, she muttered, “Unless we hit a phantom earlier, one of those C-ranks was the corpse that vanished.”

“Shouldn’t we sprint instead of talking? We have to pull them out!” Moonhyuk urged, dragging the tethered Si-hoon.

Despite the urgency, Hae-gun did not move. Sensing his hesitation, Eui-rim looked at the Guild Master’s rigid profile. “What is it?”

“I sense two presences,” Hae-gun murmured. “But only one is screaming.”

An S-rank’s sensory acuity is terrifying. Pinpointing life signs across that distance.

Eui-rim glanced at Chaeyoon and Moonhyuk, but neither showed any awareness of distant presences. While they looked on in confusion, Hae-gun gathered both axes into one hand and turned to Chaeyoon. “Give me the pack. Take whatever weapons you need right now.”

“You’re carrying it?” Chaeyoon asked, surprised.

“We might need the supplies,” Hae-gun replied.

“I’ll be right beside you anyway,” Chaeyoon countered.

“You and Moonhyuk follow at a distance,” Hae-gun commanded.

“Pardon?” both hunters chorused in disbelief.

Their jaws dropped at the sudden order. Glancing briefly toward Eui-rim, Hae-gun added in a measured tone, “We don’t know what lies ahead, so advance cautiously. I’ll leave signs at every intersection.”

Only then did Eui-rim understand the strategy. If he triggered 〈Rewinding Hand〉 again, Chaeyoon and Moonhyuk would freeze, leaving them completely defenseless in an unmapped zone. Hae-gun was keeping them outside the lethal radius.

“Even so—” Chaeyoon began.

The instant Chaeyoon opened her mouth to argue, Eui-rim activated the skill without hesitation. Seo Hae-gun had decided the parameters, and there was no time for committee debates. Every second lost meant another life snuffed out.

Pushing the skill’s radius to its absolute perimeter had taxed the duration. Previously, he could maintain the temporal freeze for three full minutes. Expanding the boundary had cut the countdown by a third.

…Did I manage to encompass the distant room?

“The screaming stopped,” Hae-gun noted instantly. Exchanging a tight nod with him, Eui-rim broke into a run.

“Did your skill reach that far, Eui-rim-ssi?” Hae-gun asked as they sprinted.

“Most likely,” Eui-rim called back. “I stretched the boundary as wide as I could force it. It shaved a minute off our window, though.”

Hae-gun’s eyebrows arched in genuine admiration. “Didn’t you say modulating the boundary was the hardest aspect of the skill?”

“It is, but desperate circumstances demand desperate adjustments,” Eui-rim replied.

Hae-gun let out a low, breathless chuckle. “You truly are full of surprises.”

They sprinted through the dead corridor, following the radiant golden trail. With time frozen, their boots made not a single sound against the cracked hospital tiles.

The air grew colder and heavier with every step. The stench of rot mingled sickeningly with the metallic tang of dried blood.

“We’re getting close,” Hae-gun murmured, shifting his grip on his twin axes.

A sharp turn brought them before a darkened alcove where the guiding trail pooled like glowing water.

Sticky black sludge blanketed the floor ahead, thick and viscous like semi-coagulated tar.

“Watch your step,” Eui-rim warned softly.

A three-way junction appeared ahead. While exchanging quiet remarks, they advanced until the corridor splintered in three distinct directions.

The characteristics of the three passages diverged sharply. The right fork appeared to connect to the standard raid route, while from the central path drifted a refreshing breeze, creating the uncanny illusion of leading outdoors. An inexperienced hunter might easily have mistaken the center tunnel for an exit.

Of course, as predictable as dungeon hazards tended to be, the radiant trail pointed straight into the left path—the filthiest and most foul-smelling of the three. Gesturing toward the repulsive corridor, Eui-rim said, “It’s this way.”

Without hesitation, Hae-gun stepped into the left path. Examining the floor slick with putrid muck, he extended his arm to halt Eui-rim. “Monster fluids and human blood, churned together. Step carefully.”

“Fluids?” Eui-rim asked.

“It seems we’re dealing with something other than ordinary zombies.”

Standard humanoid undead simply burst with coagulated blood upon death; they do not secrete active bodily fluids. Creatures that ooze foul secretions like sewage are typically beast-types or grotesque chimera variants.

Yet humanoid undead were supposed to be the sole inhabitants of the Isolation Ward.

Even with the rank escalation, Eui-rim hadn’t anticipated the monster types mutating as well. Though they had taken a detour, the dungeon’s fundamental layout hadn’t drastically shifted.

A wet, crunching thwack! pulled Eui-rim’s attention to the wall, where Hae-gun had cleanly embedded a spare hand-axe into the stone.

Is that the trail marker he promised Son Chaeyoon? It will certainly be hard to miss.

As they proceeded deeper into the left corridor, the guiding beacon shone brighter than ever. Shimmering with brilliant amber intensity, the light heralded that their immediate objective lay just ahead.

The passage ended in a solid dead end.

Confirming that the luminous trail terminated here, Eui-rim tapped his knuckles against the wall. The stone was webbed with jagged fractures like thick tree branches, through which a pale light leaked thinly.

There was no need to explain that their objective lay beyond the barrier. Ever since linking through resonance, Eui-rim shared an instinctive understanding with Hae-gun. Like two minds tethered by a single taut thread, their tactical execution aligned flawlessly.

Closing his eyes, Eui-rim saw two floating windows in his dark vision: the countdown timer marking the final moments of his skill, and the status window glowing with steadfast luminescence.

The moment Eui-rim opened his eyes and dismissed 〈Rewinding Hand〉, Hae-gun’s pressurized water blades surged into the stone. Anticipating the precise split-second the time freeze lifted, Hae-gun detonated the fissures, pulverizing the wall to dust.

Ruuuumble…!

Leaping back to clear the collapsing masonry, a stark blue glow illuminated the chamber ahead. A wave of choking dust and the coppery stench of fresh blood washed over them. Scanning the blood-drenched room, Eui-rim’s eyes widened as he spotted a familiar face.

“Hunter Yoo Tae-geun?”

Yoo Tae-geun, his face paper-white and rigid, was pinning a writhing body to the floor with his full weight. Ordinarily, an A-rank vanguard would have reacted instantly to the shattering wall. Yet whether from shock or mental trauma, he remained frozen.

“Guh, gah, aaaaagh! Aaaaargh! Kill me! Kill me, please, just kill meeeee!”

The hunter pinned beneath Yoo Tae-geun shrieked in agony. Sprawled atop a colossal floor mural of a weeping one-eyed—identical to the corpse in the first chamber—his limbs were strangled in pitch-black, writhing shadows.

Stepping past Hae-gun, Eui-rim unzipped his medical kit. The moment he witnessed those contorting limbs, muscle memory dictated his immediate actions.

“Seo Hae-gun-ssi! Take over pinning him down for Hunter Yoo Tae-geun. And force this gag into his mouth immediately!”

Tossing the gag, Eui-rim pulled out trauma shears and high-grade recovery potions. Hae-gun grasped the gravity instantly: dropping his spare gear, he seized the thrashing hunter and dragged him beyond the perimeter of the occult eye.

“…Cheongho… Guild… Master?”

The moment he was hauled free of the mural, clarity flickered back into Yoo Tae-geun’s hollow eyes. Hearing his voice, Eui-rim picked up an axe from the floor and stepped forward.

“Hunter Yoo Tae-geun. Are you lucid?”

“Healer Kang—no, Hunter Kang Eui-rim? How are you here…?”

“If you have the presence of mind to correct my title, your head is clear enough. That’s a relief. I need an immediate favor—can you swing an axe for me?”

“…Pardon?”

“I lack the physical stats to sever bone cleanly. We must amputate every limb infected by the shadows right now. Otherwise, he’s lost.”

In his previous life, before the Shadow’s Seed had metastasized across the surface, Eui-rim had treated dozens of victims on the verge of turning into hosts. He knew this nightmare intimately.

The screaming hunter was actively transforming into a parasitic vessel. If the darkness crept over his neck and consumed his face, the agony would cease—but his consciousness would be erased forever.

“Mmmph! G-Guh, huff, hmph!”

Hearing muffled groans, Eui-rim saw Hae-gun forcibly clamp the leather gag between the man’s teeth. Once Hae-gun had him immobilized, Eui-rim shouted to Yoo Tae-geun, “Now! Hurry, or he dies!”

Shocked into action by the shout, Yoo Tae-geun drew a ragged breath. The grim finality of the command hardened his resolve, thick veins bulging across his forearms as he gripped the haft.

“…Haa. Please, Guild Master Seo. Hold him down so he doesn’t thrash.”

“Understood. Just do it,” Hae-gun replied coldly.

The instant Hae-gun’s hands locked around the hunter’s thighs, Yoo Tae-geun brought the heavy blade down with terrifying force. Like a seasoned lumberjack splitting timber, the blow fell without a microsecond of hesitation.

“Mmmmmph!”

In a single brutal strike, both legs below the knees were severed, dark blood erupting in a violent arc. Eui-rim’s hands moved on pure instinct, following a drill etched into his bones. Dousing the stumps in concentrated recovery potion, he immediately flushed the infected flesh with sterile saline.

Deprived of the flesh it sought to consume, the black sludge began to writhe and recoil, slithering backward like a crushed centipede retreating into soil.

The moment the shadow detached, Eui-rim poured half a potion across the severed tissue to halt the hemorrhage. Glancing up as Yoo Tae-geun sheared through the infected arms, Eui-rim repeated the exact same procedure on the upper stumps.

Following a shuddering convulsion, the hunter fell limp. With the dark entity expelled, the hallucinatory agony ceased, leaving his features comparatively peaceful despite the traumatic mutilation.