Chapter ss89: Side Story 89 - What If Story (4)

We got up early in the morning the next day to survey the field. We hopped into an SUV and made our way towards the field that we won in the auction, Yijieng.

Yoo Yeonha didn't say a word during the entire trip. No, it would've been a relief if she didn't say anything at all.

"Hmph!"

She would immediately scoff and turn her head away from me whenever our eyes met. I tried to tell her that I was simply joking last night, but she didn't budge an inch.

"Hmph!"

The local agent driving the SUV looked into the rearview mirror and asked, "... But are you really a mercenary?"

"Yes," I replied.

"You use that gun?"

"Yes."

"I see..." the agent muttered in half-disbelief and half-amazement.

The mainstream mindset was that modern guns didn't work on monsters. They weren't technically wrong since guns were basically ineffective against monsters ranked intermediate or above even with mana bullets.

"How do you plan to do the survey, team leader...?" I carefully asked Yoo Yeonha.

I was forced to mind my words because someone else was in the SUV with us.

Yoo Yeonha narrowed her eyes at me and shrugged, "What would a person like me know? I'll leave it all to you."

"..."

"Hmph!"

The SUV came to a halt while Yoo Yeonha did her best to sulk.

The driver turned to us and said, "This is the place."

Clack...!

Yoo Yeonha opened the door and got off. I followed suit.

A fresh breeze greeted us from all four directions. In front of us was a vast plain without any obstacles in sight. It was an extremely vast plain that stretched into the horizon.

"Hmm..." Yoo Yeonha inspected the field with a serious look.

I used my thousand-mile eyes to survey the area as well. I was able to see the entirety of the field and even the entrance from where we were standing.

"Then, I'll be going back now," the local agent said with a bow before he took out an electric kickboard from the SUV's trunk.

Well, it was a bit strange to call it a kickboard since it was extremely fast. Anyways...

I spoke casually to her again, "Are you going in?"

A field was similar, yet different to a dungeon. They were both created from mana, but the field that appeared in China was closer to a barrier.

First of all, an entrance existed in fields. In short, this meant that a field was nothing more than empty land from the outside, but the interior was entirely different from what could be seen. Also, there was no way to tell what the field would look like from the outside.

"I'll go in alone. I'm nobody after all," Yoo Yeonha grumbled with a hint of sadness in her voice.

"Sure. Do what you want," I replied with a shrug and turned around to walk back to the SUV.

However, I stopped in my tracks after feeling a powerful surge of killing intent from behind. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand.

"Ehem...! Ehem...!" I faked a cough and turned around again.

"..."

Yoo Yeonha's lips were trembling. Was she holding back tears by any chance or was she trying to push down her anger?

I smiled after getting my answer as she trembled in anger. I should stop playing with her now.

"I'm just joking. Let's go in together," I said.

Only then did Yoo Yeonha's expression finally relax.

"I think that's the entrance," I said while pointing at a tree near us.

The tree was around three meters tall. Its branches spread wide apart as if opening its arms. I could see a transparent entrance right underneath its branches.

"Yes, that should be it. Let's go," Yoo Yeonha replied.

We walked towards the entrance.

Yoo Yeonha extended her arm in front of the entrance and waved. Her milky white and smooth arm disappeared into the entrance.

"Shall we go in?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Alright, who goes in first?"

"Up to you."

"Fine."

She sounded quite confident with her response, but I could tell that she was obviously hesitating judging from the fact that she was squirming in place. In the end, I had no choice but to play my part as the bodyguard and enter first. Then I grabbed her hand sticking out in mid-air and yanked it towards me.

"Whoa! That scared me!"

"How is it?" I asked.

We immediately scanned our surroundings when we entered the field.

"Hmm... It looks like nothing special."

"Yeah, I agree."

The interior looked like an abandoned house from the slabs of concrete and steel rods littered here and there. Vines and moss were growing on top of the debris.

"There's a high possibility that it's a reenactment of the past," Yoo Yeonha said.

There were some cases where a field would recreate a past scenery, so we could find out what happened if we looked around.

"What should we do?" I asked.

"You know better than I do. We'll have to stay here for at least thirty minutes for a proper survey," Yoo Yeonha replied before taking out various pieces of equipment from her bag.

The first thing she took out was her whip followed by a mana density measurer, a compass, an automatic map drawer, and other items that were mandatory when surveying fields.

I drew my gun and infused aether into it just in case. I turned my Desert Eagle into a shotgun powerful enough to blow away an intermediate rank monster.

"Shall we go?" I asked.

"Yes... please lead the way," Yoo Yeonha replied while clinging to the hem of my shirt.

***

Two hours passed.

"I think we hit the jackpot..."

We did some light hunting while surveying the field. I nodded in agreement after inspecting the few remains of the monsters we defeated.

We defeated some cordyceps and a cyclops. The cordyceps was a fungi parasite monster that took control of other monsters while the cyclops was a distant cousin of ogres, except it only had one eye.

We hit the jackpot because their remains had immense value.

It was needless to explain why cordyceps were so valuable while the cyclops' eye was a medicine highly sought after by wealthy people.

"It's an excellent hunting spot," I said.

"Then..." Yoo Yeonha took out a dagger and personally disassembled the cordyceps and extracted the cyclops' eye. Her hands didn't get dirty since she conjured gloves with her mana before working on the monster remains.

"Let's head back," Yoo Yeonha said after storing the cleanly cut monster remains in an icebox.

"Sure," I replied.

We walked to the tree bathing underneath the moonlight with all of our equipment in tow. We marched into the entrance... but nothing happened.

"...?"

Both of us blinked. What was going on?

Yoo Yeonha spun on the spot and walked into the entrance again.

Whoosh... Whoosh...

She tried numerous times, but nothing happened.

"What's going on...?" she asked while looking at me.

I was confused and decided to inspect the entrance again. Then I found something bizarre.

"Huh?" I muttered.

"What's wrong?" Yoo Yeonha asked.

"... The entrance is gone?"

***

Six more hours passed. I took a few naps while Yoo Yeonha was busy arranging some documents on her smartwatch. We didn't have internet access, but it was still possible to use a smartwatch to work on some documents offline.

"This is taking quite a while..." I grumbled.

"It should be back sooner or later. Don't worry so much. It's not like it's never happened before, right?" Yoo Yeonha nonchalantly replied.

She was as calm as ever.

It was exactly as she said. Instances where the field's entrance suddenly changed to another place had happened during a survey. It was quite rare, but there were precedents of it documented.

"I guess... but are you alright?" I asked.

"Does it matter if I'm alright or not? It's not going to take that long for the entrance to return and I have a mountain of work to do anyways," Yoo Yeonha replied just as I expected she would.

Her response made me feel at ease.

I stretched my arms and lay on the grass. I looked up at the sky when suddenly...

Pat!

A water droplet fell on my face.

"... Huh?"

Pat... Pat... Patpat... Patpatpat... Tututututu!

A downpour occurred even before I could ask, 'Is it raining?'

Yoo Yeonha looked surprised as well.

"Does it rain inside fields as well?" I asked her.

"I heard it's possible, but a field is still a mana dimension so... it's quite dangerous..."

"Let's take shelter first."

There were a lot of abandoned buildings in the area that we could use for shelter from the rain.

However, Yoo Yeonha shook her head and said, "What if the entrance appears during that time? We don't know when it'll appear again, so we have to keep watch over it."

"Hmm..."

Her logic was quite convincing, but we couldn't afford to stay under mana rain known to be more potent than acid rain.

"Then you stay here for a bit. I'll go and look for things we can build a shelter with. Let me know if the entrance comes back," I said before standing up.

She suddenly grabbed my hand. I looked back and she was looking at me with wet eyes.

"... What?" I asked.

Yoo Yeonha didn't say anything, but I noticed her lips were squirming again. She exhaled as a rain droplet flowed down her long eyelashes.

"Let's go together... I don't want to be alone..." Yoo Yeonha said as she put her long fingers into my sleeve.

***

Patpatpatpatpatpat...!

The rain showed no signs of stopping, but we managed to build quite a cozy shelter. The old tree in front of the field's entrance underwent a renovation and had a roof now.

Of course, [Dexterity] didn't forget to add an artistic touch to it regardless of the situation we were in. Our shelter was more like a mini-mansion if I slightly exaggerated.

"I think I almost died..." I grumbled while checking the bruises on my body.

The entire shelter took four hours to build. This was exactly why every drop of mana rain was so dangerous.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say that it was more like hail, but with steel shots instead of water.

"How are you? Are you alright?" I asked Yoo Yeonha.

She blankly stared at the sky before looking down. She seemed to have lost it for some reason...

"I'm alright, but don't you think it's taking too long...? We can't afford to waste time trapped here like this..." she said.

She tried her best to sound nonchalant like usual, but I could tell she sounded different this time. In fact, she was sitting with her knees curled up to her chest. This posture was something our beloved supreme team leader would never do.

"We're losing too much time... If we fail to leave this place and they find out that something happened to me here..." she muttered repeatedly with her face buried in her knees.

I was slightly taken aback by the dramatic shift in her emotions. No, was she pretending to be alright this entire time?

"Yeah... Hmm..."

I guess I had no choice. I took out a thick book from my rucksack. I originally planned to give this to her at a critical time, but this was probably the most effective thing right now to stop her spiraling depression.

"Hey."

"..."

"Aren't you going to respond?"

"What?" Yoo Yeonha retorted and glared at me.

I felt mischievous all of a sudden and thought of teasing her. She had a big droplet at the edge of her eyes. I wasn't sure if she caught a cold from the air or not, but her nose was bright red as well. Her breathing was labored and she swept her hair back a bit too often.

It seemed like I didn't pay enough attention to her while I was engrossed in building our shelter.

"It's nothing much, but... Here, take this," I said as I gave her the gift.

"What is this...?"

"Just take a look."

Yoo Yeonha tilted her head in confusion as she received the book.

"An accounting book...?" she muttered.

"Yeah, I was busy tailing everyone from the vice guild master's faction," I proudly replied.

I not only tailed them, but also asked Kim Hosup to hack their smartwatches. Anyways, it was the result of my painstaking efforts. I found that accounting book after tailing individual after individual.

The accounting book was created by some hero who was scared of being abandoned. It contained a list of misdeeds the vice guild master asked from the hero.

"Come on... There's no way..." Yoo Yeonha muttered with a hint of skepticism.

She opened the book without much thought. The teardrop disappeared from the corners of her eyes and she straightened her posture.

She was entirely focused and kept muttering while reading every line in the book.

"I stole that, so it can't be used as evidence in court. You know that too, right?" I said.

I felt proud and embarrassed at the same time. After all, this was probably the best gift anyone could give her.

"Well, I'm sure you'll find a use for... Woah!"

Bam!

However, something smashed into me before I could even finish. Yoo Yeonha had flung herself towards me.

She remained in my embrace without saying anything. No, she did say something, but it was so faint and difficult to understand because of her sniffing.

"Is... Ish thish weel...?" she asked.

I replied that it certainly was, which made her cry.

She turned her head away and covered it with her sleeves. Maybe she didn't want me to see her crying, but she was doing a bad job at it as she kept shrugging while wiping her face with her sleeves.

It looked like she was dancing...

"Stop crying. You can win against the vice guild master once you get out of here," I said.

"Haha... Hahaha..." Yoo Yeonha brightly smiled in response.

Her smile seemed to say, 'When did I ever cry?'

I liked the way she smiled just now.

***

Four hours before the incident...

I looked at the night sky and looked back down at the table I made. Yoo Yeonha was writing something on her smartwatch. It seemed that our beloved supreme team leader was drafting a press conference speech.

"I'm done!" she gleefully exclaimed like an elementary student who just finished their summer vacation homework.

Yoo Yeonha proudly smiled and triumphantly walked towards me, "Let me show this to... Kyak!"

She tripped while walking over to me. This was all because she stubbornly wore high heels even to this place.

Thud!

She ended up in my embrace after I caught her from the fall.

"Ugh... my ankle..." she groaned in pain.

She looked quite cute. Her messy look without washing her hair or changing clothes for a day made her look like a street kitten.

"Are you alright?"

"...!"

Yoo Yeonha instantly shot up after realizing what was going on.

"Ah, I have to make some edits..." she muttered and ran to the chair.

Then she glanced at me after moving three meters away.

Our eyes met and her cheeks blushed.

I bitterly smiled and opened the door to our shelter.

"Huh? Where are you going?" she asked.

"It's time to sleep, so I'm going to craft some beds out of wood."

"We won't be staying for long, so why bother making a bed...?"

"Who knows, right?"

"Geez... Can you not say unlucky things like that?" Yoo Yeonha grumbled and narrowed her eyes before meekly muttering, "Also... I don't want to sleep alone. I'll come with you if you're going in..."