The Otherworldly Magic Swordsman Who Disciplines the Hunter World Chapter 47

His eyes snapped open. Gong Siyoung scrambled to his feet, his gaze flitting wildly around the surroundings.

His bewildered eyes were filled with confusion. It was difficult to distinguish exactly where reality ended and the hallucination began.

A cold, damp wind brushed past his cheek. Reflexively rubbing his face, he flinched and looked down at his hands.

Vines were clinging to his cheeks and the nape of his neck. No, they weren’t vines; they were living stalks. He grabbed the stalks coiled around his body, ripped them off, and threw them away.

“What on earth happened…?”

He had been with Julian until just a moment ago, and then Julian attacked him… and then?

He reflexively rubbed his stomach. He felt his flat abdominal muscles through his clothes. He was perfectly fine, without a single pierced or painful spot. His thoughts stuttered as if his brain were filled with grains of sand.

Where was this place? The exploration zone? Or perhaps somewhere deeper?

Since they had fallen into the hallucination immediately after the reset, they might have dropped into the core area from the very start. At this point, it was hard to be certain of anything.

In contrast to his chaotic mind, his body instinctively began to search for a path. Mystery vines filled the area, and every single one of them was connected to something.

As if venting his frustration, he stomped hard on a vine on the ground. The frozen vine shattered into pieces with a clink.

“So, that really was inside a hallucination, and the way to escape was…”

The sensation of the blade sinking into his stomach was still vivid. He could still picture Julian’s trembling breath and eyes, and even the expression he had been wearing.

The emotion Gong Siyoung felt at that moment was, clearly, a sense of betrayal.

He hadn’t doubted for a single second that Julian would attack him. Even at the very moment he thrust the sword forward.

It was absurd. He never imagined he would be taken down so helplessly.

He irritably trampled the brush catching at his feet. Ice fragments scattered with a crunch.

Then, at some point, the direction of the wind changed. A shadow loomed over Gong Siyoung.

Julian had mentioned Minos, describing it as a Gatekeeper. A Gatekeeper guarding the canyon. He said they were all trapped in Minos’s dream and had to escape.

Only after waking from the dream could Gong Siyoung understand the meaning of those words. The physical form of the sleeping Gatekeeper, Minos.

The things he had thought were vines until now weren’t actually vines. Faceless snakes wriggled, revealing their presence.

They possessed an appearance where one couldn’t distinguish front from back. They were unpleasant and bizarre, and every single one of them was alive. Beside the aimlessly moving snakes, he saw his sleeping comrades.

Myeong Haejin, Gu Jayoung, Woo Yujin… and even Julian. They were all there. The sight of them with their eyes closed and peaceful faces sent a chilling shiver down his spine.

Minos stood before a massive door that looked to be at least 10m tall. The owner of the dream, sleeping with his eyes closed and wrapped in faceless snakes, was the master of this dungeon.

Gong Siyoung drew an ice spear and drove it straight into Minos’s solar plexus. In place of their sleeping master, the snakes simultaneously convulsed and shrieked.

Blood sprayed from Minos’s chest like a mist. The sliding monster collapsed powerlessly onto the ground.

Gong Siyoung stabbed the monster’s head once more with the ice spear. Only after finishing the confirmation kill did he look back at the group. Since the boss monster was dead, wouldn’t that hallucination vanish as well?

Just then, Myeong Haejin let out a “Gah!” and snapped his eyes open, gasping for breath.

He hurriedly cleared away the snakes wrapped around his face and flailed his hands. Gong Siyoung immediately reached out.

“What… what is happening right now…?”

Myeong Haejin’s pupils shook violently. As if failing to recognize Gong Siyoung, he frantically felt his own body.

At the sight of him even pulling off his clothes to check his chest area, Gong Siyoung clicked his tongue.

“Get a hold of yourself.”

The babbling Myeong Haejin swept back his hair. Then, discovering a snake still attached to his forehead, he hurriedly brushed it off. He stood up completely and shook his body out.

At the sight of his fussing, Gong Siyoung’s gaze turned cold.

After shaking himself like a madman for quite a while, Myeong Haejin finally recognized Gong Siyoung. Whether out of relief or surprise, his voice cracked as he called Gong Siyoung’s name.

“Si, Siyoung Hunter! What is going on right now?! Huh? I just… no, Mr. Julian, Hunter Yuri, Yuri hyung suddenly just! He just attacked me?!”

Though he stuttered and rambled, that alone was enough to roughly grasp the situation.

It was easy to guess what Julian was doing. Gong Siyoung narrowed his eyes.

“Wait, so that means the hallucination remains even if you kill Minos?”

Since the main body is dead, shouldn’t the dream or hallucination naturally vanish? Something didn’t add up.

Holding onto the still-dazed Myeong Haejin, he approached the place where the other party members were bound.

Gu Jayoung and Woo Yujin were collapsed nearby. While laying the two of them flat on the ground, the wriggling snakes began to crumble into dust. It seemed they were affected by the death of the boss monster.

The form of Minos had also almost entirely disappeared. As the monster blocking the way vanished, the massive door behind it became more visible.

Like deja vu, familiar markings appeared above the door. There was noise in the display, but it wasn’t unreadable.

[ Limited Use: The Second Circle (A) guarded by ‘Minos of Hallucination’: ‘Lu-li-osi’ is unlocked. ]

[ Limited Use: 144:00:00 until Ga-te O-en ]

Gu Jayoung snapped her eyes open. She, who had been feeling her own head, discovered the two men and covered her mouth.

“My god… my god, my god! Really, for real?!”

After rambling for a while, Gu Jayoung spotted the door and stiffened. As if asking if what she saw was correct, she pointed at the status window, and Myeong Haejin nodded.

“Yeah, I see it too… But wait, what? What do you mean ‘for real’? Was Hunter Jayoung also attacked by Yuri hyung? You were, weren’t you? You were?”

“I… No, I, well no, I mean… Wait a second, just, just let me think for a moment…”

Gu Jayoung clutched her head. After thinking for exactly one second, she opened her mouth. Her finger, pointing back and forth between Gong Siyoung and Myeong Haejin, trembled.

“Hunter Yuri did it! While swinging his sword! He said once I opened my eyes again, it would be as if nothing had happened, and that I shouldn’t be scared because he already sent the two of you ahead! Then a sword really got stuck in my head! It hurt! It hurt so much!”

Thinking back on it now, it was all true, but at the time she heard it, it had just been the sophistry of a psychopathic murderer.

Thinking he was a real madman who had completely lost his mind, Gu Jayoung had fled desperately based on that judgment. But then, her head was ultimately pierced after being caught by Julian…

Gu Jayoung protectively cradled her head. She truly thought she was going to die right then. She felt like her life had flashed before her eyes for a moment. It was chilling to think about even now.

“Wait, then that means Hunter Yuri knew it was a hallucination and even knew how to escape from it.”

At Myeong Haejin’s point, Gu Jayoung chimed in, “Now that you mention it, that’s true.”

While the two exchanged various stories, Gong Siyoung was lost in entirely different thoughts.

While Julian was kicking the group out of the dream, he had eliminated Minos. The boss monster died, and then the Gate opened.

Myeong Haejin and Gu Jayoung were still too distracted to say anything despite seeing the Gate, but this was a problem that couldn’t be easily ignored.

It meant that Gates within Gates, and dungeons within dungeons, were continuing to connect.

If clearing just the first dungeon resulted in this mess, then what about the next? They didn’t even know how many layers were stacked. If it never ended no matter how far they went, how were they supposed to solve it then?

“Siyoung Hunter, haven’t you heard anything? Is it okay to leave those two like this? Will they wake up if we just wait like this?”

Woo Yujin and Julian had not yet woken up. Gong Siyoung grabbed the sleeping Julian’s arm to inspect it. He only let go of the hand after confirming the smooth skin was free of burns.

“He said he had faced this kind of monster in the past. I think that’s why he noticed. The boss monster appeared when the dungeon reset, and I think everyone was hit then. Before we could even realize it, we were sucked into either a hallucination or a dream.”

“Ah… So that’s how Hunter Yuri knew.”

“But, wait a second. Just a second.”

Gu Jayoung muttered while still clutching her head. After saying “just a second” for a long time, she suddenly snapped her head up.

“To wake up from the dream, you have to die. Then doesn’t that mean one of the two has to stay behind?”

“Hey, that can’t be it. If you set your mind to it, it’s possible to die on your own. Seeing Hunter Yuri when he killed me, he was bloodless and tearless, you know?”

“With that momentum, wouldn’t he be perfectly fine on his own?” At Myeong Haejin’s answer, Gu Jayoung agreed, “I suppose so?”

Myeong Haejin, who sat down right next to Woo Yujin, gestured to the two of them.

“Let’s just wait for now. Let’s wait until the two of them wake up and then leave here. We’ll need preparation before we go in there.”

The numbers on the Gate were counting down. 144 hours—the generous number felt like a blessing. Gong Siyoung also sat next to Julian and crossed his arms.

‘Just you wait until you wake up.’

He had a lot to say. Was it really that hard to explain before taking action?

His mood was strangely sour because of Julian’s method, which completely disregarded the position of the person on the receiving end. If he had just spoken properly, he wouldn’t have been this flustered or confused.

In contrast to his anxious heart, time flowed peacefully. While they were exchanging various stories about the current situation, Woo Yujin woke up with a scream. He flopped around like a live fish and shrieked.

“Save me! Help me! Save meeeeeeee! Ah! Ah…?!”