"But honestly, this is unfair. Given my level of talent, I think I was actually rather humble..."
Hmm. Anyway, it's difficult for a capable person not to become arrogant.
I briefly reminisced about my past life before returning to the conversation at hand.
"Anyway, because of that, I'm somewhat lacking in common sense. So if I occasionally say something strange, please be generous and overlook it."
"Ah, I-I will."
On the other hand, I hoped this talented sorcerer wouldn't end up suffering the same way someone else had.
***
What was it like to live a life in which no one understood you?
At the very least, the woman inside the cave could answer that question with certainty.
It felt like being a human dropped onto Jupiter.
She imagined herself drifting through an ocean of liquid hydrogen, with nowhere to set foot.
Then why had no one understood her?
The first time she sensed that something was wrong was in the third grade.
It was the beginning of a new semester. Everyone had changed seats, and the drowsy-eyed girl happened to be paired with a boy who had attended the same English kindergarten as her.
Seo Esther had been a pretty child from an early age, with long, thick eyelashes. As it happened, the boy beside her also had fair skin and well-defined features.
Whenever their classmates saw Esther and her seatmate together, they would tease them by asking whether the two were dating.
"Hey! Esther! You're not a little kid anymore, so why do you still put glitter in your hair? That's so childish. And your name is really weird too."
Embarrassed by the teasing, the boy deliberately began acting cruelly toward his seatmate.
"Kyaah!"
"Aaah!"
"Teacheerr!"
The fresh new semester of Class 3-2 soon culminated in a shocking incident.
One Wednesday, during lunch, the droopy-eyed girl stabbed her seatmate's hand with a metal chopstick.
"Why did you do that?"
The young Esther wanted to ask the same thing herself.
Teacher, why did her classmate act that way?
Even after she told him to stop, he kept bothering her and making fun of her name.
And on top of that, he had apparently forgotten that back in kindergarten, he'd once torn up someone else's sketchbook.
Even so, she had endured it all and given him three separate chances.
"I couldn't take it anymore."
It was around that time that Esther realized her threshold for anger was far lower than that of most people.
She learned that, unlike her, ordinary people did not remain vividly furious over things that had happened years ago.
Nor did they stab classmates out of spite when they lost their temper.
But what changed simply because she understood that?
It wasn't as though her unnaturally sharp memory would suddenly become dull.
In truth, everything Esther had experienced was merely foreshadowing her eventual awakening to curse-type magic.
As a certain alien had once pointed out, curse sorcerers were inherently sensitive by nature.
And they tended to hold grudges for a very long time.
"Our princess—I left your dinner outside your room. Make sure you eat today, okay?"
Ordinary people often told Esther that she was making too much of a fuss and advised her to simply forget things that had happened so long ago.
But her emotions did not dissolve with time.
Their texture was cold and solid, impervious to the passing years.
So how could she speak of forgiveness as lightly as everyone else?
She knew perfectly well, deep down, that she loved her family.
And yet there were times when old memories made her resent them all over again.
If living was going to be this exhausting, wouldn't it have been better if she had never been born with the talent to awaken at all?
"_"
Of course, Esther had never been in a position to choose her own genetic makeup.
So the only choice left to her was to withdraw from society before she ended up stabbing another classmate with chopsticks.
Online game [SOM].
Fortunately, the new world she settled into was somewhat more livable.
After all, in that place, it was perfectly acceptable to kill people she disliked over and over again.
"Whenever I come somewhere dark and dreary like this cave, it always reminds me of those days."
Seo Esther briefly reflected on her school years before pushing the memories from her mind.
Come to think of it, Dungeon Shock had been a fortunate phenomenon for certain people.
Before the incident, she had been nothing more than a short-tempered anomaly.
After gaining power, however, she could at least channel her anger in a somewhat constructive direction.
Despite other people's concerns, Esther was already an exceptionally arrogant sorcerer.
She harbored an ambitious dream—to keep expanding her influence until, one day, she became a figure capable of representing superhumans as a whole.
Once she had acquired such a grand goal, petty incidents like the bullying she'd suffered from an old classmate no longer infuriated her.
Naturally, vitality gradually returned to her life as well.
Broadcast appearances intended to improve the public image of Awakened people.
Managing the Magic Tower.
Dealing with death row inmates.
Dungeon raids.
And countless other pursuits.
"_"
She had chosen all of it of her own free will.
There was no room for regret.
"Cough."
A coughing sound echoed from somewhere nearby.
Esther squeezed her eyes shut and stopped walking.
They were currently making their way through an endless cave.
It had been roughly thirty minutes since she and her companion had risen from their break and resumed their expedition.
Before her was the impossible sight of a man who normally seemed so cold-blooded that he wouldn't shed a single drop of blood even if stabbed with a dagger—yet now he was coughing it up in torrents.
"To think this is the aftermath of working... As expected, it must've been something that happened at the S-rank gate in Japan..."
Normally, seeing a powerful opponent in such a state would have made her secretly pleased to discover a weakness.
Yet for some reason, her mood had only been sinking ever since earlier.
Why didn't she feel that way now?
"~ Anyway, I'm worried. From what I've seen, Hunter Esther, you seem to overwork yourself."
Was it because Kim Giryeo had said that?
"My childhood? There's not much to talk about if you dig into that time. Since I was an orphan, I didn't have many experiences."
Or perhaps she pitied him because of those words?
It was probably one of the two.
In fact, when she had spoken about her school years earlier, it had been the look in his eyes that changed her attitude.
Whenever people heard that the guild master of the Magic Tower had once been a reclusive shut-in, they usually responded with a mixture of flattery and awkwardness.
"That makes sense."
"But you're doing well now, aren't you?"
"I like games too."
Kim Giryeo had been different.
He had looked at her with such dry indifference that even Esther's own family would have struggled to match it.
It was only a hunch, but for some reason, he had seemed to genuinely understand what it meant to have failed at school in a way countless others never had.
"Cough, cough."
So had Esther been moved because Giryeo understood her?
Unfortunately, no.
Although Esther often questioned her own difficult personality, she had never particularly wanted anyone's understanding.
What she had felt during their earlier conversation was discomfort.
Every time she stood before Kim Giryeo, she had the strange sensation that her weaknesses were being laid bare.
It made her hesitant.
It made her cautious.
Perhaps that was the reason.
His monstrous insight made it impossible to think of him as the weaker one.
Even after seeing him cough up blood, Esther still couldn't bring herself to regard him as someone who possessed any real weakness.
"Ah, I'm sorry. I'm fine now, so we can keep moving..."
Esther resumed the dungeon raid with complicated feelings.
One hour passed.
Then two.
Even after five hours of walking, the exit remained nowhere in sight.
Gradually, another concern began to creep in.
"I came in lightly equipped because I didn't think much of this place, but if we're trapped here for too long, this is going to become a problem."
Growl.
As expected, hunger had already begun to set in.
Dungeons had been growing longer lately, and carrying emergency food had become something of a trend among hunters.
But because this was only an F-rank gate, Esther had let her guard down.
What if she ended up starving to death without ever seeing the boss?
"Hunter Esther, are you hungry?"
"T-that's..."
That was when it happened.
The man who had been quietly following behind her quickened his pace and pulled something from his pocket.
It was a packaged chocolate snack.
"I don't remember when I bought it, but I found it while rummaging through my pocket. I think I probably bought a bunch on sale at a convenience store and stuffed them in here because I didn't want to waste a shopping bag."
"Oh my! What a relief. But... can I really have some too?"
"Of course. I have quite a lot. But just in case, please save it for later."
"Thank you."
Growl.
Esther slowly ate the snack he had shared with her, trying to quiet her protesting stomach.
The sugar helped.
She began to feel a little better.
***
...But one day later.
"AHH! I'M SO ANNOYED!"
Boom!
A tremendous crash rang through the dark cave.
"Esther-ssi, I understand how you feel, but if you keep moving around so recklessly, you'll only exhaust yourself even more..."
After more than twenty hours of walking, the raiders trapped inside the cave finally realized just how absurdly long the dungeon truly was.
And that fact now posed an immediate threat to the life of an S-rank Hunter.
After all, humanity's high-level Awakened consumed significantly more energy than ordinary people.
In other words, they had terrible fuel efficiency.
"I'm starving! My stomach feels like it's on fire! Just how far does this cave go? How far!"
Esther vented her frustration on the bone monster blocking the path and continued forward.
Giryeo was in poor physical condition and had to avoid strenuous activity.
As a result, they eventually adopted a strategy in which Esther carried him and ran at full speed.
An S-rank Hunter didn't lose much stamina from running alone.
So Esther ran for two straight hours after surviving on nothing but a drink.
"Ugh..."
As expected, they still failed to find the exit that day.
With no clue where the cave ended, a vague sense of fear began to settle in.
Even so, the situation was still manageable.
Fountains had been placed at regular intervals throughout the cave, meaning they had no reason to worry about dehydration.
At the very least, they weren't going to die of thirst.
Gulp!
Esther decided to use the potions she habitually carried with her to replenish her energy instead.
Surely they would provide more nutrition than plain water.
She started with a relatively inexpensive antidote potion.
Next came a mana potion.
...And the moment she finally opened her precious high-grade healing potion came approximately two days and seventeen hours after entering the dungeon.
"Huh..."
By then, Esther was moving her legs almost mechanically.
Through blurry eyes, she thought only one thing.
She wanted to kill them.
She had no idea who "them" referred to.
But if someone had deliberately created this dungeon, she would tear that person apart with her own hands.
"Ah, the water in this fountain is good too. You can drink it without worrying."
Now even filling up on water was becoming difficult!
"My blood sugar is dropping. It feels like my brain is being squeezed."
As the lack of nutrients took its toll, her body began consuming itself simply to stay alive.
And the pain produced by that process was beyond imagination.
At this rate, could she actually become the first S-rank Hunter ever to die inside an F-rank gate?
Esther endured the dizziness for a while before finally speaking in a trembling voice.
"Excuse me, Giryeo... I'm really sorry, but could I have just one more of those cookies? I know I've already eaten my share for now, but... maybe I could take the next portion early...?"
Her fellow party member had been handing out chocolate cookies once every twelve hours.
But no matter how she thought about it, she couldn't possibly keep going on such a tiny amount.
"They're almost gone now."
"Yes?!"
"Calm down. There's still enough for you to last through the day."
It couldn't be helped.
The man muttered briefly, then emptied his pockets and handed the remaining cookies over to her.
"Here. These are the last ones—enough for tonight and tomorrow morning."
So these really were the last.
Well, considering that he'd happened to have biscuits in his coat at all, they had already been unbelievably lucky...
"Yeah."
Then Esther suddenly came back to her senses and looked at her companion.
"Wait a minute. If you give both of those to me, what are you going to do? You don't have anything left for yourself. You should keep one."
The calm voice of Korea's fourth S-rank slowly filled the cave.
"It's fine. That was a lie."
"Yes?"
"I was only counting your portions from the beginning anyway. I never included myself, so just eat them."
"...?"
"If we argued about it every time we ate, we'd just waste more energy, so I told you I was splitting them with you... Wait, hold on. Why are you wasting your salt for no reason...?"