Chapter 09

Sung Jin-Ah blinked, trying to process what her eyes were seeing.

The situation made no sense. And the place was completely unfamiliar.

Where her usual, predictable classroom used to be, now stood a vast space crowned by marble pillars holding up ceilings so high they vanished into a whitish haze. Through the massive windows, an endless expanse of white stretched beyond.

And floating outside, pastel-colored spheres drifted in silence. Despite their numbers, none of them ever collided.

'What? What is this place…?'

Was this the inside of a dungeon? Were there monsters here?

At that thought, she remembered her situation and scanned the surroundings with a tense expression.

A girl with blood-red hair and a crimson dress that looked like it was made of silk was glancing around with absolute disinterest. Her eyes, the same deep red as her hair, briefly swept over Jin-Ah.

"!!!"

In that fleeting moment, Jin-Ah felt as though she might die.

Her legs trembled violently. Cold sweat ran down her back. It felt like an enormous beast had looked at her, judged her, and then dismissed her.

When the red-haired girl's gaze moved on, Jin-Ah finally exhaled the breath she'd been holding.

'Hm? Is she…?'

Beside her, a golden-haired girl lay on the floor. Completely naked, her body looked fragile and malnourished. Her expression was blank, her eyes hollow.

Jin-Ah looked at the golden-haired girl with a complicated gaze. She couldn't have been older than fifteen, and the state she was in reminded her of patients in the hospital where her mother stayed.

"Hi…" she greeted awkwardly.

The golden girl barely nodded.

With a stiff smile, Jin-Ah took off her school jacket and gently draped it over the girl's shoulders.

Of course, she didn't know her. But she couldn't just leave someone that vulnerable. If she could, she'd offer food and a hot shower too. But this wasn't the time, nor the place.

The crimson eyes of the golden girl met hers for the first time. Eyes that had seen far too much for someone so young.

"Th-thank you…" she whispered, struggling with the words as if speech was unfamiliar.

"Haha~ don't mention it," Jin-Ah said with a bright smile.

The two girls Jin-Ah had seen so far in this strange place struck her as odd. Especially those red eyes they both had.

'Are they Hunters…?'

She'd heard that sometimes, awakened Hunters developed unusual traits. She even knew of a powerful S-Rank Hunter whose transformation state gave him animal-like features.

At that moment, the girl in red moved. She walked arrogantly down the long hallway, the red carpet soft beneath her feet. She didn't spare Jin-Ah or the other girl even a glance.

"Huh? Wait…!"

With that otherworldly appearance, her presence was so heavy it was hard to even look directly at her.

And when Jin-Ah called out, she was met with a cold, piercing stare. It was as if she'd be killed in the very next second.

Jin-Ah swallowed her words.

'She must be a high-rank Hunter.'

Assessing the situation, she realized—if this was a dungeon, that meant there were monsters. A malnourished girl and a high school student with no combat experience didn't stand a chance.

Jin-Ah let her gaze wander a bit.

"Uh… hey, can you stand?"

The golden-haired girl gave a weak shake of her head.

Then, Jin-Ah slowly reached out her hand.

"Let's follow her."

The only one who seemed strong in this strange place. Even if the other girl found them annoying, they had no choice. Because this was the only way Jin-Ah might survive.

×××

In the silence, where only their footsteps echoed, Jin-Ah could hear her own heartbeat.

She supported the golden-haired girl with one arm as they walked side by side down that long, endless corridor, shrouded in a mist that made it feel like a dream—like none of this was real.

Jin-Ah swallowed hard.

It felt like, at any moment, a terrifying beast would leap out from behind one of the pillars lost in the fog.

The red-haired girl kept walking ahead, her long wavy hair swaying with every step. Back straight, gaze indifferent.

A few minutes passed.

They stopped where a wide staircase led up to an imposing throne. A throne carved from a hard, unyielding stone, covered in symbols Jin-Ah had never seen before—and if she stared at them for more than a few seconds, a sharp headache would hit her like a hammer to the skull.

Suddenly, the red-haired girl, who had up until now looked down on them and had clearly been debating whether to drive them out, stiffened. Her eyes lit up and locked onto a single point.

Feeling the pressure radiate from her, Jin-Ah went pale and instinctively took a step back.

It was because...

"Huh…?"

There, sitting on the throne, a young man with white hair opened his eyes.

Golden eyes that didn't just look—they pierced straight through the existence. A golden that looked like molten gold.

Jin-Ah felt as though her entire life—from the moment she was born, to the appearance of the portal that brought her here, her school years, her mother's illness in the hospital, and her brother's injuries in every raid—was being read line by line in some notebook held by an incomprehensible being.

―Thud!

The man stood up.

The red-haired girl, in all her arrogance, demanded:

"Introduce yourself right now to this princess!"

Soft laughter rippled through the hall.

"I am Aegis, and Aegis is me."

He was…

A power beyond human understanding.

That's how Jin-Ah saw him.

×××

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