Chapter 108: Standing on the Sky

Seong Ji-woo stared blankly ahead, his mind empty, when Lee Won-jae asked in a half-dead voice,

“W-What I’m seeing… is this real?”

No one could answer him. After all, how many people could imagine a world where you ended up hanging upside down?

Even with it happening right before their eyes, the three of them couldn’t easily believe it. Space and time felt twisted, and their sense of reality slipped away.

They froze in place, unable to take even a single step. One wrong move felt like it would send them plunging straight down—
or rather, from their perspective, shooting straight up into the sky.

After scanning their surroundings, Son Ji-hwan let out a sigh and asked,

“What are the odds that we’re trapped in yet another hallucination space?”

“I’d honestly prefer that.”

After answering, Seong Ji-woo stared overhead for a long while, then raised a finger and pointed.

The other two followed his gaze.

There, swarming densely together, were the mountain madmen.

Tiny figures, no bigger than fingernails, crawled and shifted about. That alone made it clear—the place they were standing on was the sky of the dungeon.

Lee Won-jae instinctively raised his arms and shielded his head. It felt as though everything above him might come crashing down at any moment.

Fweeeee—!

Just then, a whistling cry echoed from far away. It resembled the mountain madmen’s laughter, yet the texture was different—almost like the sound of wind.

The cry circled around them, echoing from all directions. The three of them stiffened.

“That’s… not a monster cry, right?”

Lee Won-jae asked, his face drained of color. He was hoping it wasn’t—but in truth, all three of them already knew.

That sound belonged to the true master of this dungeon.

Fweeeek!

Whether it was threatening them or simply observing, the cry kept circling at a fixed distance, never drawing closer.

“…Aah!”

Lee Won-jae scrunched up his face and ducked his head, then suddenly yelped and stomped his feet in panic.

Because beneath his feet lay a dizzying expanse of sky.

He clearly felt like he was standing on something solid, yet below him stretched an endless blue void. It felt as if the ground had suddenly dropped away into the heavens, sending his heart plummeting.

And yet, Lee Won-jae remained firmly standing on the sky.

After flailing for a moment, he finally stopped and collapsed into a sitting position.

Thud.

Landing hard on his backside, he reached out and felt around. There was nothing—yet his hands touched something solid, as though a transparent pane of glass were there.

Only then did he let out a deep, relieved sigh.

“Are you okay?”

At Seong Ji-woo’s question, Lee Won-jae nodded weakly.

Fwee—fweeee!

The shortened, sharper cries sounded far more menacing. Son Ji-hwan felt around for something he could use as a weapon. His long-range throwing knives were already gone—there were none left.

At this point, close combat was the only option.

The problem was what that sound belonged to.

“I think it’s a bird of prey.”

“A bird?”

“More specifically… an eagle.”

The moment he said it, a pitch-black silhouette appeared, as if on cue.

“It really suits the dungeon.”

Son Ji-hwan muttered that he finally understood why this dungeon was unnecessarily huge.

“Splitting up earlier definitely wasn’t the best choice.”

If that eagle had appeared any sooner, the four of them would have been captured without resistance.

“Does it help if we stay together?”

At Seong Ji-woo’s question, Son Ji-hwan shook his head.

“No. Still, it’s better than being scattered and killed without anyone noticing. It’d be nice if we had a ranged ability user…”

At those words, Seong Ji-woo turned to look at Lee Won-jae.

So did Son Ji-hwan.

Caught in both their gazes, Lee Won-jae blinked in confusion.

“M-Me…?”

“Among us, you’re the closest thing we have to a ranged dealer.”

“W-What? Me? I—I’m not really…”

Lee Won-jae hurriedly denied it, pointing at himself with wide eyes. His fingertips were trembling badly.

“Can you use your ability?”

“…I—I can, technically. But I’ve never used it to attack before. And, well, my rank’s low, so…”

He rambled on, listing all the reasons he couldn’t do it.

“Lee Won-jae.”

Seong Ji-woo called his name seriously.

“Yes?”

“You said you wanted to be a hunter.”

“….”

“That’s why you applied to our guild.”

Lee Won-jae’s expression shifted at those words—somewhere between fear and regret. Seong Ji-woo’s gaze stayed fixed on him.

He remembered the interview, when Lee Won-jae had spoken grandly about his reasons for applying. What Ji-woo had felt back then wasn’t empty bravado meant to pass—it was sincerity.

Branded as a B-rank in a world where ability users constantly had to prove themselves, Lee Won-jae had hit his limits and driven himself out of the hunter world without ever truly testing them.

That deeply ingrained resignation had robbed him of even a shred of confidence.

“Isn’t it better to try before dying?”

At Seong Ji-woo’s words, Lee Won-jae’s eyes shook violently. He seemed to be wrestling with countless conflicts inside.

“A-Are we… going to die?”

He desperately hoped Ji-woo would say, I didn’t mean it like that.

But Seong Ji-woo said nothing more.

Lee Won-jae’s face stiffened. Something surged up from deep inside his chest.

“You might not be able to do it,” Seong Ji-woo added calmly, “but you can try.”

At those words, Lee Won-jae staggered as he forced himself to stand.

You can try.

He had never heard that—not from others, not from himself.

Seong Ji-woo was a type of person Lee Won-jae had never encountered before. Completely different in every way.

A supporter with no attack skills, yet calmly saying he’d take on the role of a dealer—Lee Won-jae couldn’t understand that mindset.

“…I can try…”

He muttered it to himself. It wasn’t some great revelation—half disbelief, half stubborn defiance.

“S-So… what do I do?”

He asked, resolved to at least try once, just as Ji-woo had said.

Seong Ji-woo tilted his head up and searched for something, then pointed.

There was a lake.

“I saw it earlier. It’s hard to judge the scale from here, but it’s not small.”

Even roughly speaking, it looked about the size of a small mountain peak. Lee Won-jae licked his dry lips.

“That should be enough.”

He would probably collapse from exhaustion before even using all that water.

Back in high school, while interning at a guild, he’d once moved a ten-ton water tank. All he’d done was store it in his subspace and transfer it elsewhere—yet he’d been bedridden for days afterward.

Another water ability user in that guild, an A-rank, had moved ten times that amount without so much as an ache.

He’d even gone into a gate the very next day.

That had been the day Lee Won-jae realized he wasn’t cut out to be a hunter.

Up until then, he’d only vaguely suspected it. That day, it felt like his ankle had been shackled.

He thought he could roam freely and move forward—but in reality, he could only go as far as the length of the chain around his ankle.

Accepting it had been easy. What had been hard was refusing to accept it. Once he let go of the rope he’d been clinging to alone, everything else became simple.

He was good at studying. Talented enough to quickly make up for the time he’d abandoned trying to live as an ability user.

But that was all.
A decent university.
A decent résumé.
A decent job.

He thought that wasn’t bad—he even thought he was lucky to have found his path early.

Then Yoo Hee-ro entered the picture. The X-Gate disappeared. The hunter boom began.

Swept up in it, he foolishly thought a washed-up ability user like himself might still become something, and applied to a guild.

Getting a hunter license he never thought he’d receive made him feel like he was somebody—an embarrassing delusion.

After that, every choice felt heavy with responsibility.

Even though he hadn’t done much activity, going into a gate once or twice a month felt harder than the years he’d spent sitting at a desk for ten hours a day.

Sometimes, he missed the safe, repetitive life.

Here, he was useless. At least at the bank, he’d been a cog in a massive machine.

In the guild, it felt like everything about him was being laid bare.

Honestly, it was humiliating.

Lee Won-jae extended his hand toward the lake. He felt the water being drawn into his subspace.

When it filled up to his throat, producing a sloshing, unpleasant sensation, he stopped. The injuries he’d been ignoring screamed in protest, pain tearing through him.

Even this alone felt like his limit.

Fweeeek!

Right on cue, the eagle appeared again.

This time, it raised its head stiffly and charged straight at them, clearly intent on a real clash.

Lee Won-jae froze. In the empty sky, depth was hard to perceive—the monster didn’t feel like it was getting closer, only endlessly larger.

“It won’t be hard. Just hold that thing in place,” Seong Ji-woo said. “We’ll handle the rest.”

He didn’t know how he even heard those words. Lee Won-jae nodded frantically.

Seeing there was no point in saying more to someone on the verge of panic, Seong Ji-woo gave him one simple, instinctive instruction.

“Cut off its breathing.”

At those words, it felt as if his own throat had been seized.

Lee Won-jae clenched his teeth. Without time to calculate or think, he fired the water straight at the eagle.

Beside him, Seong Ji-woo and Son Ji-hwan shot forward like arrows.