The Espers Who Regretted Losing Me Chapter 71

What is this…?

It was the same even when Cha Eunhwi and Lee Shinra turned on their flashlights. Whether there was light or not, it made almost no difference.

I needed to check again.

“Turn off the flashlights for a moment.”

At my words, the two of them switched them off.

Darkness fell over the area again—but I could still see everything clearly. Far too clearly.

“…This place is supposed to be pitch-black, right?”

“Yeah. It’s our first time inside too, but the records say, ‘darkness where you can’t see even an inch ahead.’ Is it just too dark for you? If you’re uneasy, you can stay somewhere safe with Shinra—”

“No. I can see really well.”

“Huh?”

“I mean it. I can clearly see your faces, and even those rocks and tunnels way over there.”

This was far beyond just having good eyesight.

Yeon Dogyeong, who had been looking where I was looking, held up two fingers and asked,

“Then can you see this too?”

“Yeah. Two fingers.”

“…Wait. I’ll move farther back.”

Dogyeong stepped back about five more steps.

Then he held up four fingers.

“What about now?”

“Four.”

He moved even farther away—far enough that Cha Eunhwi muttered, “I can’t see anymore.”

But—

“I can still see you from here, so stop making a heart with your hands. It’s uncomfortable.”

I could see everything perfectly.

I’d compared it to night-vision goggles earlier, but I needed to correct that.

Even though I could tell it was dark, everything around me stood out sharply and clearly.

After confirming that I could see from that distance, Dogyeong came back, still looking shocked.

“Wow, what the hell. Yoon Hyeya, why did your eyesight get so good?”

“Was it like this inside the gate too?”

“I don’t know why my eyes changed, but the gate I was in wasn’t this dark. It had daytime and nighttime, and at night the moon was bright enough to light things up. But when I got eaten by the dragon, I couldn’t see anything.”

It should’ve been just as dark there as it was here, which made this even stranger.

But the moment I mentioned being eaten, the atmosphere stiffened.

When I glanced to the side, Lee Shinra’s face had gone pale. Dogyeong, who’d been grinning, and Cha Eunhwi too, both looked tense.

I’m the one who got eaten, and even I don’t have trauma. You guys are weak.

I didn’t really want to comfort them, but this wasn’t a great way to start a gate run.

So I spoke casually.

“It wasn’t that scary in there, and I don’t even remember what happened clearly. So don’t react like that every time. It just makes me more uncomfortable. Anyway, yesterday’s tests didn’t show anything special, so this is weird.”

Dragging it out would only kill the mood, so I changed the topic.

Cha Eunhwi was the first to lift his head. He swallowed once and spoke calmly.

“There’s no clear answer right now, so let’s finish the raid first and think about it later. And if you’re okay with it, Hyeya, let’s keep things as they are. The monsters in this cave detect heat.”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

Espers already had good eyesight and strong vision.

The flashlights had been prepared purely for me, and if monsters reacted to heat, it was safer not to use them.

Cha Eunhwi and Lee Shinra put their flashlights away.

Then Cha Eunhwi calmly pointed at the many branching paths and explained.

“You all remember that the shortest clear time for this gate was just over three hours, right? The cave is wide and shaped like a maze, but finding the right path is easy. When you reach a fork, just stand still and wait. You’ll hear singing from the correct path.”

So that’s why the gate name included melody.

Following Cha Eunhwi’s explanation, we walked toward the fork.

Yeon Dogyeong and Cha Eunhwi kept some distance from me while watching the surroundings. Lee Shinra stayed close, maintaining a barrier around me.

Drip. Drop. Drip-drop.
The sound of water falling echoed from somewhere, and it felt strangely mysterious.

Then—

I suddenly sensed something odd. Really odd. Like something crawling—almost like insects.

My skin crawled. Without thinking, I pulled out my baton and swung it through the air.

“KIEEEEK!”

“AAAH!”

A piercing scream rang out right in front of me, and I screamed too in surprise.

What fell to the ground, struck by my baton, was a bat with sharp, protruding teeth.

I stood there blankly, still holding the baton, when more bats began dropping from the ceiling.

“W-What is that…?!”

“Wait.”

Cha Eunhwi turned on his flashlight and, the moment it lit up, threw it far away.

The bats immediately swarmed toward the light.

Yeon Dogyeong then hurled a mass of fire at them.

Shrill cries filled the cave as dozens of bats were burned to ashes in an instant.

The gray smoke was trapped inside Lee Shinra’s barrier and soon disappeared.

After the bats were completely dealt with, Cha Eunhwi, Yeon Dogyeong, and Lee Shinra all looked at me with strange expressions.

“Yoon Hyeya… how did you know there was a monster there?”

“I just felt something weird. It was too unsettling not to hit it. You guys didn’t notice?”

“Not at all.”

“Those bats can camouflage themselves with their surroundings and hide their presence. Even if you pass right next to them, it’s hard to notice. We really didn’t sense them.”

At Cha Eunhwi’s words, Dogyeong and I frowned at the same time.

My eyesight becoming better than even A-rank espers was strange enough—but noticing monsters that they couldn’t was even stranger.

And I was just a guide.

“I seriously don’t understand anything anymore…”

I couldn’t tell whether this was a problem with the gate, or with my body.

As the confusion-filled silence continued, Lee Shinra, who had been standing quietly beside me, hesitated before speaking.

“Um… I think there’s… one more important issue.”

“Important issue? You need to use the bathroom?”

“…No. Hyung, that’s not funny. Especially right now.”

Lee Shinra, who had been extremely tense, let out a sigh at Yeon Dogyeong’s pointless joke.

He visibly relaxed a little. I glanced at Dogyeong, who shrugged.

After taking a deep breath, Lee Shinra carefully looked at my hand and spoke.

“Hyeya noona… when you swung that just now, it was extremely faint, but… really, really faint—something like the energy you give off when you guide spread out.”

“Did Yoon Hyeya just use radial guiding?”

“I didn’t guide.”

“Yes. If noona had guided, it would’ve felt much stronger. But it really was… incredibly faint.”

“Are you sure, Shinra?”

“That doesn’t make sense… I couldn’t feel Yoon Hyeya’s guiding at all.”

“Hyung and Eunhwi-hyung were a bit farther away, but I was right next to noona. And it was really brief…”

I had no idea what this meant either.

The moment I looked down at my hand in confusion, Cha Eunhwi asked me again.

“Hyeya. You’re sure you didn’t guide, right?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even think about guiding. I just swung the baton without realizing it.”

Even now, I was stunned—especially by how fast my reflexes were.

Seriously, it was like peeling an onion. The more layers we peeled, the more weird things came out.

I went over my actions just in case, but the conclusion was the same: I hadn’t guided.

And the proof was clear.

“If I had guided like Shinra said, wouldn’t the bats have rushed at me first? But they ignored me and only chased the flashlight.”

Because the moment a guide uses guiding, all monsters inside a gate are supposed to target that guide above everything else.