And that wasn't the only problem.
About three minutes after the game of tag began—
"U, ugh..."
The C-rank Hunter finally seemed to realize that catching the fairy was impossible.
He stopped moving.
Cold sweat poured down his face as fear rooted him to the spot, and before long, he began looking for somewhere else to dump that fear.
Tuk!
He grabbed another member of the raiding party.
"Heuk, heuk..."
But why did it have to be me?
"I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."
After doing something like this, he still had the nerve to apologize?
Flash.
I stared blankly at the glowing ring that had transferred onto my shoulder.
And here, the weakness I had never managed to compensate for became painfully obvious.
The [Sacred Tree Seedling] had improved my defenses, but my physical abilities were still scraping the bottom.
'I couldn't dodge that.'
Hmm.
Still, that Hunter probably had no idea how terrible my reflexes actually were.
"Why an S-rank, of all people?"
I glanced at my right arm as I asked.
Logically speaking, passing the role of 'it' to an S-rank made no sense.
If I really possessed the abilities they thought I did, I could simply catch up to him and pass the mark straight back.
So I genuinely wanted to know what had gone through his head.
"Th, that's... I'm sorry. I just couldn't stand being 'it' anymore. I, I seriously feel like I'm going insane right now..."
"..."
"B, but Hunter Kim Giryeo, you're S-rank, right? You should be able to... catch a fairy like that, shouldn't you?"
"No. With teleportation involved, it would honestly be difficult."
"Really? I mean, that's true, but..."
The C-rank Hunter stared at me with panic-stricken eyes.
"But you're still S-rank."
As a mid-tier Hunter, he should have known perfectly well that ordinary rankings didn't mean much inside a special gate like this.
And yet—
"If you're S-rank, it's different, right? I mean, even if you end up taking the penalty, you're tough, so... you won't die, right? Please, could you just keep being 'it'? P, please. Please don't give it back to me..."
"Chief Lee!"
Unable to endure any more, Seonwoo Yeon shouted at her colleague.
I stopped her before she could intervene.
"...It's fine."
There was no point arguing over who had the mark right now.
The moment I became 'it,' I forced myself to calm down.
I couldn't recklessly try to pass the mark back.
The other man was a seasoned C-rank Hunter.
I, meanwhile, was nothing more than a fraud hiding behind a forged rank.
'I'm at a disadvantage in a contest of speed.'
So I made a decision.
First, I needed to redirect everyone's attention.
If I could soften the group's tension, then eventually that damned employee who had dumped the role on me would lower his guard.
'More importantly, I can't let everyone get too far away from me!'
Tremble.
I hid my shaking hands inside my pockets and spoke with all the composure I could muster.
"The employee is right. It's probably better if I keep the role of 'it.'"
"Yes?"
"It's not good for everyone to panic from the very beginning inside a dungeon. For now, so everyone can calm down..."
I won't pass it on.
When I spoke as though I were calmly reassuring them, the people around me reacted exactly as expected.
They stopped fleeing.
The tension gradually began to loosen.
"Y, you're really going to keep it? Really?"
"This should prove I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry. Come closer. There's no reason to wander off and get separated."
"Hmm."
"I'll deal with the fairy somehow. It may be difficult to catch it, but if the punishment involves physically attacking someone, it should have to come close eventually."
I poured out every reassuring line I could think of while trying to close the distance between myself and the potential targets for the mark.
At the same time, I continuously analyzed the glowing ring on my body.
Unfortunately, it wasn't something I could erase with F-rank magic.
In other words—
If I wanted to survive, I would eventually have to pass it to someone else.
'That damned bastard...!'
The problem was that the C-rank Hunter I wanted to target was still too far away.
Even after hearing me declare that I wouldn't pass the mark, that employee stubbornly refused to approach.
No matter how cleverly I tried to lure him closer, he stayed where he was.
And as the ten-minute deadline drew nearer, even the others—who had briefly seemed reassured—began subtly putting distance between themselves and me again.
"Ugh."
Anxiety tightened in my chest.
If they kept this much distance, then the moment I finally tried to pass the role to someone, my F-rank physical abilities would be exposed for everyone to see.
'If I'd known things would turn out like this, I should've done something about this sluggish body first. No, but with such limited resources, what was I supposed to do?!'
My thoughts tangled into a mess.
Then, from somewhere above, the fairy's clear voice rang out.
"Only one minute left~"
I had done everything I could to keep everyone from focusing too much on the game.
But with a single sentence from that creature, all the tension came rushing back.
The other Hunters immediately retreated several more steps, their bodies going rigid again.
At that moment, I genuinely wanted to crush the fairy's innocent little head between my hands.
"Haah."
At this point, I had no idea what to do.
I stood still for a moment and thought.
The person closest to me was Seonwoo Yeon.
But she was B-rank.
Even now, her face was stiff as ice as she kept glancing toward the glowing mark on me.
If I made even the slightest suspicious movement, she'd probably bolt away at full speed.
"Hunter-nim, maybe you should try catching the fairy now..."
"Like I said earlier, that's impossible. It's clearly using a teleportation skill."
"That's true, but..."
"Not just me. Even Jung Haseong or Esther would have trouble catching it. That's one thing I'm certain about, so don't waste your strength trying."
Fifty seconds remained.
It was time to decide.
Should I take revenge on the bastard who had passed the ring to me?
Or should I play it safe and target the slower artist?
The answer was obvious.
If I wanted certainty, I had to choose the weaker one.
The association's C-rank Hunter could defend himself if I tried to pass the ring to him at the last second.
"Yeah."
In the end, it came down to the same judgment I had always made.
'I can't exactly die in someone else's place just because I feel sorry for them.'
I decided to sacrifice an innocent weakling to preserve my own life.
It was hardly a noble thought.
Then again, that was only natural for someone like me, an Alphauri.
I might appreciate altruism, but I had never once claimed to be virtuous.
However—
Only a few seconds later, someone stopped me before I could act on that decision.
"...I..."
A sudden surge of mana.
Then a hand touched my back.
Caught completely off guard, I twisted around.
The first thing I saw was the long black hair of an Awakened person.
"What...!?"
Tuk!
Flash!
Seonwoo Yeon had touched my back and taken the mark from me.
She immediately staggered backward, looking almost as shocked as I was.
"Three seconds left!"
At that exact moment, the fairy announced the end of the game.
"2"
"1"
"That's..."
Just as the fairy was about to announce the result, the Earthling in the suit spoke in a trembling voice.
"...Giryeo-ssi, you're an S-rank Hunter, right?"
Strangely enough, her reasoning began with exactly the same words the association employee had used earlier.
"Because you're an S-rank Hunter..."
She had taken the mark from me.
Perhaps imagining what would happen next, she drew a deep breath, her face drained with fear.
"That's it! Now the person who's 'it' receives the penalty!"
At the same time, the ten minutes came to an end.
A green afterimage gathered at the fairy's fingertips.
Then it condensed into a brilliant streak of light and shot forward with terrifying speed.
The next sound was a dull thud.
"Seonwoo Yeon!"
The Association's B-rank Hunter collapsed without making so much as a sound.
Something had punched straight through her abdomen.
Akkk.
The wingless fairy let out a light, delighted laugh despite the bloody scene it had just created.
As much as I wanted to skin that creature alive on the spot, there was no time for that.
Seonwoo Yeon was lying on the ground, blood pouring from the hole in her side.
"Why?"
She had already explained her reason.
And yet—
I still couldn't understand what the Earthling had done.
Questions flooded my mind.
"Why on earth...?"
What difference did it make that the other person was an S-rank Hunter?
I hurriedly examined Seonwoo Yeon's condition.
A wound roughly four centimeters across had pierced through her side.
Warm blood continued to seep from the opening as her body tried to maintain homeostasis.
And as I looked at it—
"Huh?"
Wait.
This wasn't fatal.
Right.
It wasn't fatal at all.
The wound had missed every vital area, and once my anger subsided enough for me to assess it properly, I realized the blood loss wasn't particularly severe either.
"Wait a minute. Looking at it properly, this is almost a minor injury?"
Come to think of it...
Everyone had unconsciously assumed that the penalty meant death because of what the fairies at the festival had done.
But looking back, this wingless creature had never actually said that losing the game would result in death.
The moment I realized Seonwoo Yeon's condition was treatable, my thoughts cleared instantly.
"Potion!"
I shouted toward the others.
"Did anyone bring healing potions? Give them to me right now! Quickly!"
Another association employee immediately pulled out emergency medicine.
It appeared to be a mid-to-high-grade healing potion.
I poured it over the wound.
Fortunately, the magical projectile had missed both the bones and the vital organs, so the regeneration proceeded relatively quickly.
Considering everything that had happened, Seonwoo Yeon had probably fainted not because of the severity of the wound itself, but because of her terror of dying and the enormous stress she had been under.
"Ah..."
Just as I expected, it wasn't difficult to bring her back around after shaking her shoulder.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she sucked in a sharp breath like someone who had just surfaced from deep water.
"Huh? My head... I'm not dead? I'm alive?"
She still seemed dazed.
I sat beside her and explained.
"The punishment was different."
"What?"
"The fairies in the plaza killed people, so we assumed this one would do the same. But this time, all it did was put a hole through your body."
Seonwoo Yeon's lips parted slightly.
Apparently, surviving had come as quite a shock to her.
But whatever surprise she felt couldn't compare to my own.
I had never imagined that this B-rank Hunter would do something as reckless as willingly throw her own life away.
"No, more importantly, why did you take the mark in the first place?"
I asked because I was genuinely curious about what was going on inside this alien's head.
Seonwoo Yeon answered quietly.
"Because it really looked like you weren't going to pass it to anyone, Giryeo-ssi..."
"Yes?"
"We might have ended up losing an S-rank Hunter in a place like this, and I just... didn't want that to happen."
She had made such a courageous sacrifice, yet her body was still trembling with fear.
The experience of believing she was about to die—even if only for a few moments—seemed to have left its mark.
"Actually, saying it was 'because you're S-rank' was just an excuse."
"..."
"I just couldn't stand it."
"..."
"Ever since my parents passed away, I haven't been able to bear watching someone get hurt right in front of me."
"..."
"So I did it for myself. Because that would've been easier for me to live with..."
She continued explaining.
Apparently, this was simply the kind of person she was.
She said she would have taken the mark regardless of who had been wearing it, so I shouldn't feel guilty.
Of course, even without that explanation, someone with an Alphauri soul like mine wasn't particularly burdened by guilt in the first place...
Still—
I fell silent for a long moment after hearing her words.
"Hunter-nim?"
And then, just as I remained lost in thought, a voice suddenly rang out from above.
"~ Thank you all for granting my wish!"
A shrill, tearing laugh.
The unmistakable voice of a fairy.
"Playing with you was fun. It was so much fun! I'm going to write about today in my diary. I'm really glad you all came to the kingdom."
Chatter chatter.
The others could no longer hide their anger.
Their faces twisted as they glared at the fairy.
But no matter how infuriating the creature's words were, it was still nothing more than a puppet behaving according to the design imposed upon it.
"Take my arm and stand up."
"Ah, thank you..."
Pouring emotions into an object was foolish.
So I ignored the fairy and focused instead on helping Seonwoo Yeon.
Even after using a healing potion, she would still need support for a while.