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Chapter 561: Elixir (3)

「Initiating bodily reconstruction.」

Along with that terrifying line, heat immediately began to circulate through Yeongwoo’s entire body.

“W–wait, hold on! Shouldn’t you at least ask which leg you’re going to replace?”

But the system didn’t answer.

Instead, the area near his left leg, the one where he’d taken off the prosthetic, began to swell.

Kududuk!

“Uagh!”

Then the patterns engraved on Yeongwoo’s head, which had looked exactly like those of an octopus, started sliding down the nape of his neck.

Srrrt.

Obviously they were moving toward the left leg.

Kwajak!

Next, from the cut surface of his left leg, long tentacles shot out, and while spewing violet veins in all directions, they began to mold new flesh.

Swoop!

That was also when Yeongwoo’s head, which had been closer to an oval, started changing to follow the human shape.

The texture of his skin, too, was restored at high speed, and the hair that had been ripped out earlier began to sprout in real time.

It was, quite literally, a rebirth.

But because some of his internal organs had also been replaced with Artari’s organs, Yeongwoo was feeling a monstrous wave of nausea.

And then, soon—

“Uwooooorgh!”

He actually dropped to the floor and vomited out a tremendous amount of bodily fluid.

There were even unidentifiable bits of entrails mixed into the vomit.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing to my body?”

The moment Yeongwoo lifted his head and said that, another irresistible surge of vomit came up from below his throat.

“Gwaaaaagh!”

This time, Yeongwoo’s vomit drew an arc and blasted out between the other participants, and everyone yelped and jumped back in every direction.

— P-please vomit facing the floor!!

Just as Madam Kanaph screamed, almost like a shriek, Yeongwoo’s left leg whipped through the air.

Hwaeeeek!

In that brief time, the neural connection had already finished, so it was able to move.

Of course, for now it still looked bizarre, like a thick tree root, so there was a pretty big sense of dissonance with the rest of Yeongwoo’s body.

Srrrp.

Right after that, Yeongwoo’s new leg began some kind of “synchronization.”

It was trying to adopt a shape as close as possible to the rest of his body.

The skin on the surface rippled several times, trying on this and that texture, and finally it found one similar to human skin.

— A… amazing.

Madam Kanaph, who had been staring with her mouth half-open at Yeongwoo’s leg wriggling, unconsciously let her lips part.

And it was the same for Alden Miras, the chef, and the two one-eyed ones, so for a while a hush fell over the chamber.

Gloop, gloorp.

Like that, Yeongwoo’s left leg repeatedly swelled and shrank on its own for a few minutes and, when at last its shape became very similar to that of a human leg—

Thump!

Yeongwoo’s left leg, now with exactly five toes, touched down on the floor.

“Is it finally over?”

Jeong Yeongwoo spoke to his own left leg.

But since it was now a body part subordinated to him, no answer came back.

“That damn purple… So you really couldn’t give that part up, huh?”

Yeongwoo wrinkled his nose when he saw that the leg he’d just grown was purple.

But aside from that, the sensation really was that of a leg he’d had from the beginning, and there was absolutely no problem moving it.

“A prosthetic and this, they feel completely different.”

Cheouk.

When Yeongwoo finally stood up, the wrecked scene around him came into view.

Vomit splattered everywhere, and grotesque violet limbs sprawled on the floor.

‘Funny, they match up as pairs.’

Back when he’d been fighting over strength with the elixir, he’d chopped off no fewer than two limbs.

Just those two monster limbs alone would be enough to activate one escape point.

Sssk.

When Yeongwoo lifted his head and looked to the ceiling, he saw that during that time the timer was about to enter the 3-hour mark.

[04:01:55]

“What, 1 minute 55 seconds? The escape time is almost here!”

When Yeongwoo widened his eyes at the timer, Madam Kanaph spoke up with a dumbfounded face.

— You’re checking the timer in the middle of all this…?

“That’s what we came here for, of course I am.”

Then he pointed at the limbs scattered on the floor like illegitimate children.

“Okay, pick those up.”

Alden, who met Yeongwoo’s gaze, tilted his head.

— You mean… you want me to pick them up?

“Who else? Is there anybody else here with spare arms?”

— ……

There were four severed arms and two severed legs on the floor.

And one of those arms was Alden’s own, at that.

— This is extremely discourteous.

“That’s what you’ve been saying from earlier. I’m going to be discourteous again, so grab those and follow me.”

Then Yeongwoo added,

“Oh, and be careful not to let my arm’s blood touch your skin. It’s poisonous.”

— Poisonous?

“If my blood touches you, it can eat through the flesh.”

It sounded like a joke, but it was the truth.

“Okay, you two, line up.”

When Yeongwoo gave an order to the two one-eyed ones, who were standing there with vacant expressions, they pointed at themselves.

— Us?

— Why me…?

“You want to get out of here, don’t you? In 1 minute the escape point will show up.”

At Yeongwoo’s words, the one-eyed ones all lifted their heads at once and looked at the timer.

Because they, too, wanted to get out of this horrible dungeon, or, more precisely, away from this horrible hybrid lifeform in front of them, as fast as possible.

— Ah, understood.

— Escape… Right. We have to escape.

Meanwhile, the timer on the ceiling had already started counting the final seconds.

[04:00:12]

And then finally—

BEEEEEEP!

With a sharp alert, the hour digit changed.

[03:59:59]

“Okay, everybody, let’s go home!”

At the same time as Yeongwoo said this, a long vertical line appeared in the air above the dungeon.

Piaaaat!

It was probably to mark the location of an escape point.

‘Huh, but… it’s not a triangle this time.’

As Yeongwoo blinked up at it, beams of light shot down from both ends of the vertical line.

‘Two?’

[Translator - Night]

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This time, there were only two escape points.

And the dungeon space was still very spacious.

Which meant, depending on where you were standing, you might not be able to reach an escape point in time.

“That one’s ours! Run!”

When Yeongwoo pointed toward the beam that had fallen the closest, the one-eyed ones, who had been hesitating in a weird pose, started bolting.

Ta-tat!

The chef took off after them, and then Alden, holding an armful of limbs just like Yeongwoo had ordered, started moving too.

— The fact that this entire madness is being recorded… I don’t want to believe it.

When Alden spoke in a voice filled with misery, Yeongwoo shrugged.

“Too bad your opponent happened to be me. The Great Typesetter will understand.”

Then he tossed Madam Kanaph, who was still hiding her body behind the Aratubank, her prosthetic leg “Little Bird.”

Hwaet.

“I’ll give it back. Put it on for now.”

— For now…?

“You never know when we’ll have to cut your leg off again.”

After that, he grabbed the back of Madam Kanaph’s neck as she was struggling to put her prosthetic on again.

“Let’s go. We’re almost done.”

* * *

Second escape point.

The lucky ones who were going to seize this chance to escape this time were the two one-eyed ones, the chef, and Alden, the third son of House Miras.

— So, four in total?

At Madam Kanaph’s question, Yeongwoo nodded.

“Right.”

— Then doesn’t that make this the last one?

Still slung over Yeongwoo’s back, Madam Kanaph folded her fingers one by one.

— First we sent out two… and now four. That makes six, right?

“Yep. And with us, that’s eight in total.”

— Oh, then we’re going out this time too?

Her eyes sparkled for the first time in a while.

But Yeongwoo’s answer was quite different from what she was hoping for.

“Nope. We’re not leaving this time.”

— What? Why not?

“The minimum number is eight, but we can’t know how many people actually came into this dungeon.”

In other words, since Yeongwoo was aiming for an over-clear, he needed to confirm that he was the very last person remaining in the dungeon.

[Circle’s Aesthetics]

| Dungeon Grade: Relic

| Difficulty: B

| Required Personnel: 8

| Recommended Personnel: 32

In theory, this dungeon could have 32 people, no, even more, inside it.

‘Judging from how things have gone so far, it’s probably at most around ten, though.’

If the very first entrants to this dungeon had been several dozen people, then the earlier escape points should have been activating too.

No matter how big the dungeon is, among several dozen people, at least one or two teams would have been near an escape point.

‘If we’re lucky, the ones we’ve met so far are all there are, but if not…’

Yeongwoo figured there were probably two, or maybe four, more somewhere in this dungeon.

Ta-tat!

When Yeongwoo picked up his speed, the participants who had run ahead of him started getting overtaken one by one.

“What are you doing, do you all want to stay with me for another hour? Run faster!”

When Yeongwoo looked back and shouted, not so much encouraging as threatening, the one-eyed ones clenched their teeth and pushed their speed higher.

By contrast—

— I… I can’t run that fast!

The chef from Lagtari was running far behind even the ones scheduled to escape.

Because he had never trained in martial arts, his movements couldn’t be all that quick.

“Come on, even if you were born with the body of a cosmic predator, you still can’t run?”

Yeongwoo had no choice but to rush over to the chef and grab him by the scruff of the neck.

Kwak!

Then, holding him up with one arm, he started running toward the escape point.

“You guys are all such high-maintenance types.”

When Yeongwoo looked at the escape point starting to come into view over there, the chef wriggled his tentacles and let out an excited sound.

— That’s it, right?

“Yeah. That’s the only exit that’ll send you back to the expulsion zone.”

The dungeon shutdown was progressing quickly now, but if the one-eyed ones just maintained their pace, they should all be able to make it in time.

Of course, that was assuming they didn’t die before they got there.

“What the.”

While Yeongwoo was watching the one-eyed ones sprinting ahead, he saw a silhouette further back and his eyes widened.

“There’s… something else?”

In a place like this, if something was moving, nine times out of ten it was a participant.

But that participant’s movements were rather rough.

“What the hell’s wrong with him?”

Instead of running straight toward the escape point, the guy was trying to jump the one-eyed ones who were running in front.

“That bastard!”

Startled, Yeongwoo kicked off and bolted forward, and at the same time Alden Miras threw away the limbs he was holding and charged the uninvited guest.

Kwoooaaat!

Even from this distance, the clash of their blades was so fierce you could hear the friction, and from the shock of it, the one-eyed ones tumbled to the floor.

Whoever it was, he was a fighter skilled enough to cross blades with the third son of House Miras.

“Hey! Third Son! What’s going on over there?”

The instant Yeongwoo used ultra-high-speed movement to rush toward the scene, something unbelievable happened.

Zzzeooock!

The air of the dungeon suddenly split open, and from inside that tear, blades started pouring down in a shower.

“What…?”

No matter how he looked at it, that was—

“No way, isn’t that the Sword Mountain?”

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