Actually, he was on the verge of dying, but he looked like he was going to die anyway. A team member who entered the dungeon with a sword approached Danwoo, and it didn’t seem like they had any good intentions.
To survive, Danwoo would have to fight against them, but his limbs were twisted and his intestines damaged. When he barely managed to turn his head, he coughed out a clot of blood that was stuck somewhere in his throat, blocking his airways. Blood seemed to flow from his eyes and nostrils as well, and his body couldn’t stand the accumulated damage.
‘Where did the healer go…?’
Danwoo couldn’t see anything, even when he tried to blink away his blurry vision. He only saw black and red, his ears were ringing, and his head was aching. His body was struggling between various senses of cold and warmth. His hands and feet were cold because of poor blood flow, and a strangely quiet groan escaped his lips.
Lee Danwoo had imagined his own death.
‘I wonder if at some point I will fall and die.’
That kind of death wouldn’t hurt.
It was amazing that he was still alive in the first place. The amount of drugs he had ingested far exceeded the safe limit, and there was no way he had any durability left in that state.
Imagining it was easy, but the reality was painful.
Due to the abuse of magic supplements, his senses were at their peak.
Thanks to that, he felt pain, as if his stomach was turning inside out and his bones and muscles were dislodged. He felt all of it several times worse than usual.
He looked as if he would die of shock if he was left alone for even a minute.
‘This is the worst.’
Or not? He had avoided the worst since he cleared the dungeon.
He didn’t even know what happened to the other team members. Only one stopped in front of Danwoo, and the sword he was holding was visible even in the dark.
Even if you were to cut down hundreds of monsters with it, there were no visible scratches and no blood would stick to the blade. The sacred sword was in the hands of his team member, shining as beautifully as ever.
The owner of the sacred sword was Danwoo.
“If you have come to return the sword, put it down.”
Danwoo spat out blood once again after speaking to the team member standing in front of him.
Of course, he didn’t even pretend to listen.
“Leader. Did Leader kill my brother?”
The sharp tip of the sword touched Danwoo’s neck, making it difficult for him to breathe.
‘Let me spit some blood…’
He wanted to, but as expected, the team member didn’t seem to care.
Danwoo swallowed the blood and looked up at his team member.
‘The brother must be Cha Woowon.’
Only in this raid, Danwoo took on the title of team leader, but he was originally only a member of Cha Woowon’s attack team.
The owner of the sacred sword, which Danwoo brought in, was originally Cha Woowon.
Cha Woowon, ‘The Master of the Sacred Sword’.
The hero that the people wanted…
Cha Woowon’s handsome face and this team member’s face looked similar.
Anyone could tell that they were brothers, so when he had asked Danwoo to take him into the team, Danwoo refused.
It wasn’t Danwoo’s wish to be killed in a dungeon.
However, they were living in a world where finding a good team member was like picking a star in the sky. Cha Woowon’s younger brother was more talented, so he had refused because there was a risk of being stabbed in the back.
Would they have been able to find a better team member? Danwoo didn’t think so.
In the end, Danwoo had accepted him, and this is how it turned out.
‘Are you relieved that we cleared the dungeon?
If he had been killed before clearing the dungeon, it wouldn’t have been so unfair. Lee Danwoo didn’t want to clear the dungeon in the first place.
If they couldn’t clear <The Last Dungeon>, it would’ve been the end. Everyone would’ve died.
But what did that have to do with Lee Danwoo?
He had no desire to live any longer.
The reason Danwoo had recruited a new team member and entered <The Last Dungeon> was because Cha Woowon was dead.
He had saved Danwoo and died in <The Last Dungeon>, so he had no choice but to return to this place.
Because Cha Woowon’s body was here.
‘Damn it, Cha Woowon.’
During the first raid of <The Last Dungeon>, Cha Woowon’s team was annihilated.
Everybody had died except Lee Danwoo.
Danwoo, the only survivor, had escaped and received all of the criticism.
Cha Woowon, ‘The Master of the Sacred Sword’ and an S-Class hunter, had died. How did that justify Lee Danwoo’s survival, considering he was the weakest in their attack team? Danwoo would’ve thought the same thing, had he not been in the party. So people talked endlessly.
– What happened?
– Why did Lee Danwoo come out with the sacred sword?
– Hunter Cha Woowon can’t be dead…
Everyone was questioning it.
– Did Lee Danwoo betray him?
Cha Woowon’s younger brother pointed the sword at his neck and asked.
“Did you kill my brother? Did you betray my brother and steal the sacred sword?! Answer me!”
Lee Danwoo denied it. In front of those people, when he returned to the guild, everywhere he went, the answer was always ‘no’. But after realising that no one was listening, he kept quiet.
However, the person that was asking right now was Cha Woowon’s younger brother.
Like his older brother, he also seemed to have a weak personality.
And the cleared dungeon was collapsing.
Lee Danwoo didn’t know that <The Last Dungeon> would collapse after being cleared.
Wouldn’t Cha Woowon’s younger brother waste time if he ran towards the exit while carrying Danwoo?
Even now, time was limited.
‘This idiot can’t even see the ceiling collapsing because he’s watching his enemy die…’
It was such a stupid thing to do.
If he were to leave, Lee Danwoo would die.
Did he have to live with this guy’s help?
No matter how much he thought about it…
He didn’t want to.
Lee Danwoo wanted to die. He decided to die today. Even if it wasn’t exactly today, the moment he cleared <The Last Dungeon>, he knew he was going to die. He had thought about it even before entering the dungeon.
Because he couldn’t leave Cha Woowon’s body here.
“Oh, I killed him.”
Danwoo said without hesitation.
He laughed a little. It actually seemed like he wanted to tell that to someone.
“Of course I did it. Otherwise, how did Cha Woowon die? How could Cha Woowon not be able to clear a dungeon even I could clear? Like you, he was narrow-minded and trusted people easily.”
“You’re lying.”
Cha Woowon’s brother was rather foolish. A pile of stones fell beside him, making Danwoo impatient.
He could barely see with one of his eyes, and he couldn’t breathe properly. It was fortunate that his tongue still moved.
“… I wanted the sacred sword, I wanted to be a hero, and I wanted to monopolise the glory. So I killed him. I was jealous of Cha Woowon. There’s no way you didn’t know. There were a bunch of people like that around him. I used to be one of them.”
“You’re lying.”
The tip of the sword, which was shaking against his neck, was lifted.
With barely any vision left, Danwoo saw it.
A face that resembled Cha Woowon, stained with tears, stabbing Danwoo with his sword.
“You’re lying…!”
Ding!
[You have cleared The Last Dungeon.]
[Choose a reward.]
.
.
.
[The reward has been received.]
Danwoo thought he heard something.
***
Lee Danwoo died.
Nobody could survive being stabbed by a sword in the neck and having the ceiling collapse on top of them.
Lee Danwoo vaguely thought of words such as peace, rest, and that it was all over. First of all, he was in a peaceful space where he was laying on something soft and the mana in the air was thin…
Then there was a strange noise.
Bang! Bang!
“Lee Danwoo! Lee Danwoo!”
Bang! Bang!
“Hey, Lee Danwoo! Wake up!”
It was a banging noise loud enough to wake up a dying person.
“Let Danwoo sleep. Why are you waking him up so early in the morning?”
“He has an exam. I’m helping him wake up. Hey! Why aren’t you waking up?”
Danwoo opened his eyes.
‘Fuck, what?’
There was the smell of oil. Someone was cooking.
The cramping pain and the nauseating headache were gone. Danwoo was lying on a bed with a soft mattress, not in a collapsed dungeon.
Did Cha Woowon’s younger brother change his mind at the end and rescue Danwoo? He was soft enough to do it, but…
This place was strange.
‘It’s not a hospital.’
The knocking on the door was familiar. Before he could even think, he heard the door being unlocked and swung open.
He laid his eyes on a face he hadn’t seen in years. It was the face of his cousin. A tall, mountain-bandit-looking guy who didn’t resemble Lee Danwoo at all was staring at him, surprised.
“Oh! Why are you awake?”
‘…?’
Lee Danwoo thought it was a dream and that he just remembered a familiar face.
“If you wanted me to keep sleeping, you shouldn’t have barked like a rooster.”
“Roosters don’t bark. Did you get up early because of the exam? Wow, you’re nervous too. Do you really think you can pass?”
‘Exam?’
His cousin, Kim Jigyu, was his aunt’s son. Danwoo remembered how long it had been since he had seen this face.
Danwoo became independent not long after graduating from high school. He expressed his intention to become independent to his aunt, and Danwoo took the money he had saved up and left to buy himself a place.
He had lived without seeing his cousin’s face for a long time afterwards. It had been six or seven years since then…