Chapter 46: Daisytown Dungeon Briefing

The transformation spell consumed too much mana, so Ion decided to use it for the briefing and reverted to his original form.

He stood before the gate stone, ready to leave the dungeon…

Kyuu!

Ion paused as he was about to smash the gate stone.

Kyuu, kyup!

What was that sound?

Craining his neck toward the noise, he saw a fluffy baby bat curled up in a corner of the cave, trembling.

Ion picked up the bat, rolled into a ball and shivering.

“What are you…?”

Only monsters lived inside dungeons, so this bat must have slipped in with him.

How had he missed its presence?

Was he too focused on developing the spell?

Ion finished breaking the gate stone. An exit gate appeared, and he stepped back to Earth.

“Go find your home,” Ion said, releasing the bat.

But…

Kyuu…

Thud.

The bat fell limply to the ground, trembling, unable to flap its wings, making it look like Ion had tossed it.

“If Jin Seongha saw this, he’d try to kill me.”

Leaving it in the dungeon would’ve meant death by respawning monsters, but it seemed likely to die here too…

I’m not responsible beyond this.

The shivering bat was pitiful, but he’d brought it back to its world. It was its fault for sneaking into the dungeon.

Ion turned away without lingering.

…

…

Sigh…

A few steps later, Ion turned back and picked up the bat.

“I’ll keep you only until you recover.”

At his stern warning, the bat curled tighter, whimpering kyuu.

The next day, Ion arrived at the convention hall for the Daisytown briefing.

“Peter Argen, Hunter?” a staff member with a simultaneous interpreter asked.

“Yes.”

“This way.”

As Peter Argen, Ion was hired by Green Realist, one of the three guilds. He took a seat in the back corner of their section.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Four seats away, a tanned, burly Caucasian man waved. Ion returned the greeting, and the man, grinning, moved to sit beside him.

“…”

Ion regretted responding.

“I’m a mercenary. You?” the man asked.

“…Mercenary.”

“Nice! Thought you weren’t a guild member. Hoped so, too. It’d be sad if a guild guy sat alone like that. Between us, the U.S. is too guild-centric. Asia, like Korea or Japan, has a thriving mercenary system.”

“…”

“By the way, I’m Uiji. Uiji Krillin. Nice to meet you.”

“…Peter Argen.”

Uiji Krillin, a necromancer.

A skilled supporting character in the novel, he dies during a dungeon raid.

Uiji, not content with a greeting, offered a handshake. Ion, visibly annoyed, took his hand. A clattering sound followed.

“Whoops, quiet down,” Uiji said, tapping his bag.

Clack-clack-clack. A tiny humanoid skeleton poked its head out. Its empty eye sockets somehow sparkled. The size of a finger, it looked like a toy.

“Don’t worry. Skully doesn’t eat people like skeleton monsters. He’s a vegetarian.”

Clack. Clack-clack-clack.

Despite Uiji’s efforts to push it down, Skully kept popping up. Uiji finally zipped the bag shut.

“Actually, Skully’s why I came over. He loves eating and goes nuts if there’s a plant within a meter. He saw you pass by and freaked out. Weird, right?”

“…”

“What plant you got on you?”

Not if he had a plant, but what plant, as if certain. Ion considered pulling out a vine leaf.

Developed a transformation spell, and it’s got this flaw.

“You really got a plant?” Uiji pressed.

“…”

As Ion hesitated, the noisy hall fell silent, like cold water had been dumped over it. Then, an even louder murmur erupted.

Ion and Uiji turned toward the crowd’s gaze.

Ion’s eyes widened.

Someone he hadn’t expected to see.

Dam Il-on was entering the hall.

The briefing began.

A-rank and above dungeons required briefings, usually repetitive: prepare extra return stones, cooperate, and raid safely.

This one was different.

Onil took the stage, using a hologram device to outline precautions:

1. Daisytown dungeon yields rare, valuable byproducts.
2. Byproducts come from monsters, not terrain, so avoid damaging corpses.
3. Teams prioritize those with skills that kill without ruining corpses, regardless of guild or mercenary status.

Uiji whistled beside Ion. “Perfect for my skills. Nice.”

Ion had requested Ryu to hire him as someone who could kill without damaging corpses. Peter Argen’s skill was sonic-based—external skin needed to be intact, but internal organs didn’t matter.

“The S-rank monster we’ll face is this,” Onil said.

The hologram showed Daisytown’s S-rank monster, unseen until now but familiar to humans: a mermaid.

Gasps—Oh, Wow, My gosh—rippled through the crowd.

Onil detailed the mermaid’s weaknesses and byproduct handling.

“Her rep’s wild, but she’s diligent in person, huh?” Uiji said.

“…”

“No reaction, huh? Haha.”

Ion had no time to humor Uiji.

I should’ve predicted she’d come.

It made sense. Il-on and Sa-on wouldn’t pass up Solminium, a cheat code against Giants. Since Sa-on’s petrification skill couldn’t harvest Solminium, Il-on’s presence was logical.

What’s her skill?

Il-on’s second skill was a closely guarded secret. This was her first raid outside D-NATE. It would finally be revealed.

News must be breaking in Korea by now.

D-NATE’s guildmaster Il-on, who rarely joined national S-rank raids, was collaborating with the U.S. Hunter Agency for Daisytown. It’d draw massive attention.

“Additional details will be shared through the guilds. Train based on these methods until the raid,” Onil said, stepping down after covering byproduct precautions.

“Tch, it was getting good, now it’s boring again,” Uiji grumbled.

A Green Realist deputy guildmaster, originally scheduled to brief, took the stage. The usual tedious briefing followed.

The excitement from the new S-rank monster and byproducts fizzled out. Uiji’s posture slumped, nearly sliding off his chair.

“Ugh, boring. Same old talk, and the guy doesn’t even know it himself.”

The briefing dragged toward two hours. Ion agreed with Uiji’s yawn.

The Green Realist deputy was incompetent, misreading scripts, botching A-rank monster names, mispronouncing skills and items, and mismatching slides.

Green Realist’s status as a top U.S. guild was solely due to its five S-rank Hunters.

“Man, I wanna go home. Gotta feed Skully leaves,” Uiji muttered.

Ion wanted to return to his lodging too, to water Sansevieria. He’d left it behind due to bag checks, worried it’d be lonely. Maybe he should’ve brought others, but Sanse wouldn’t want that. It wasn’t the type to think others should suffer as it did.

“We’re in the back, so we can slack off, but front-row folks must be miserable. A or B-rank is best—no need for decorum, yawning in the back unnoticed. Right, Peter Ar… Whoa.”

Uiji’s sudden exclamation wasn’t alone.

“Oh, God.”

“Goodness.”

“Wow.”

Exclamations echoed.

What was it?

Ion, lost in thought, followed Uiji’s wide-eyed gaze.

“…”

Dam Il-on was picking her ear as she left the hall, an aide scrambling after her.

The Green Realist deputy shouted, flustered, “Hey, Onil! Are you crazy? What’s that about?”

Il-on stopped, glared, and said two words: “Too long!”

She strode out.

“Sorry, sorry!” Two D-NATE guild members bowed at 90 degrees to the crowd and hurried after her.

“Pfft, so cool. Heard she’s notorious in Korea—totally true. My type,” Uiji said, joined by amused laughter from others.

The irked deputy left the stage, and Hegis’s raid leader, Elliet Middlener, took over. The respected S-rank Hunter’s briefing was crisp and professional.

After the briefing, busy people left, while others stayed for the afterparty, attended even by non-Hunter celebrities. Party-loving Americans, as expected.

Among S-ranks, only Cheicob Piller, known for loving parties, stayed.

Leaving the hall, Ion scanned for Il-on. She was gone.

Quiet and blunt, she wasn’t one to skip parties, so she must’ve had urgent business.

Does Dam Il-on remember the novel’s longest overflow timeline?

The D-rank dungeon’s nine-year overflow ETA nagged at Ion. The novel clearly stated dungeons overflowed within three years if uncleared…

“Ahem, hey, Peter Argen.”

“…”

“Hey!”

Ion wanted to ignore him but was grabbed by the arm.

He shook Uiji off forcefully. Uiji stared at his palm, puzzled.

Of course.

It wasn’t solid.

Peter Argen looked muscular, but the arm felt like clutching fabric.

Weird.

Ion played it off. “What?”

“Oh, uh, Skully—”

Clack-clack-clack.

Uiji fumbled, pulling the skeleton summon from his bag. It reached for Ion, its empty eyes sparkling—not to hug, but to eat something.