Labyrinth Exploration 101 - L.E Chapter 7 (Part 1): I Hate Pain (2)

‘…Hey. What are you staring at so hard?’*

Some time in the past. Somewhere in the sky. Inside a plane heading into a mission.

I asked a comrade who was staring at a photo.

‘Family. Why?’

The comrade smiled faintly as he answered. I didn’t feel much about it. But as an orphan, I was a little envious.

‘Don’t stare at it too long. That’s a death flag.’

‘…You’re such a buzzkill.’

The comrade’s name was Seo Ji-hyuk.

He chuckled and put the photo away. I casually asked, ‘You have a younger sister, right?’

‘Yeah. But she’s a bit of a handful. Kinda like you.’

‘…What’s that supposed to mean?’

He and I were peers. We trained together for two years and had already been through several missions together. To exaggerate a little, we were comrades who had faced life and death together.

‘Get ready. Things are about to get real.’

But this was our first deployment. It was practically going to war.

‘Guess I’d better.’

He replied like that, but he was too good a person.

Far too good a person.

Probably someone who wasn’t ready to kill.

A friend who shouldn’t have been in the desolate, chaotic battlefield at the end of the world.

—

Terrorists—those called ‘villains’—often did things that ordinary people could never imagine.

—

‘Seo Ji-hyuk! Don’t go!’

A cityscape with buildings in ruins. Seo Ji-hyuk running through the center of it appeared in my scope.

‘You damn bastard, I said don’t go!’

I shouted. Seo Ji-hyuk kept moving as if he didn’t hear me, and at the end of his path was a child.

About four or five years old.

‘That damn bastard, hey!’

Seo Ji-hyuk eventually picked up the child. A bloodied child. A child who seemed already dead, limp in his arms. As he lifted the child, the blanket wrapped around the child slipped off. The child’s thin waist was lined with explosives.

‘Oh, fu—’

**BOOM!**

An explosion shook the earth. The shockwave swept through the area. Seo Ji-hyuk was thrown back, covered in the child’s entrails and flesh.

I ran to him, drenched in blood.

‘Snap out of it! Hey! Hey! You damn bastard!’

His eyes were unfocused, and his body trembled like a leaf.

I slapped him to bring him back to his senses, but another child was spotted not far away. The child had a bazooka as big as their body strapped to their shoulder. The child struggled to aim it at us.

I didn’t hesitate.

I shot the child square between the eyes.

‘Damn… damn it.’

I brushed off that day’s killing with curses, but Seo Ji-hyuk couldn’t. He was plagued by vicious trauma.

The guy who missed his family, who loved children, couldn’t even sleep properly at night, having seizures and sobbing several times a day….

Again, he and I were friends.

But when things turned out like that, I realized I couldn’t be friends with him anymore.

‘If I stick with this guy, I might die or get seriously hurt.’

That’s what I thought.

And that’s exactly what happened.

That’s what soldiers are. That’s what the battlefield is.

The good ones die first.

The good ones drag their comrades down.

Meanwhile, a guy like me—someone who killed people with ease—survived even on ‘that day,’ when it felt like the world was dead-set on killing me, right up to the very end.

The one who killed most effortlessly lived the longest.

—

“…Ahem.”

I looked away from Seo Ji-woo. Her profile resembled Seo Ji-hyuk’s so much that it brought back unnecessary memories.

“Well, I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do.”

“Let’s just start by searching the area.”

The mages murmured and began to move. I glanced around.

For now, there’s no exit in sight, but we’re supposed to get out somehow. Over on the grassy field, Kim Se-jin was sitting, reading a book.

I quietly approached Kim Se-jin.

“…What are you reading?”

I asked cautiously.

Maybe the book he was reading held a clue.

“Ah. A novel.”

“Can I take a look?”

“Haha. Sure.”

Kim Se-jin handed me the book. I flipped through it—*flip-flip*—but there wasn’t anything special. I just gave it back.

“Thank you.”

“No problem~”

I climbed up to the bleachers. I went as high as I could to get a bird’s-eye view of the grassy field.

No clue.

“…I need to eat.”

No helping it. Looks like a Magic stat of 11.5 isn’t enough.

I pulled a Lemona from my pocket. *Slurp*—I sucked it down.

[Blue Lemona: Increases Magic stat by 1 for 1 hour.]

A warm surge of mana coursed up my spine.

My senses sharpened, and a heat bloomed at the back of my neck. Leaning against the railing in that state, I stared down at the ground below…

“…Huh?”

The scenery was strange.

From a distance, it all looked like identical grass, but faint mana flickered at the edges of the field, tinting it with subtle differences.

A peculiar ‘whole.’

When I focused mana into my eyes to observe it, I could see.

I could definitely see.

The entire grassy field was one giant spell formation.

“Found it.”

I smiled. I was about to activate the spell formula but stopped.

A sudden thought struck me.

Kim Se-jin.

Why was that mage sitting there specifically?

Not dead center of the field, but slightly off to the right—what’s the reason?

“You noticed, huh?”

A voice came from beside me. I flinched and turned.

It was Seo Ji-woo.

Dangun

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