On the next floor, Seo MinHyun stopped, sat down, and refused to move. “I’m done.”

  Mu Yichen, Park Taegun, and Kang Juwon exchanged glances before… doing the same thing.

  One by one, they sat down in the dungeon chamber, backs to the cold walls, like they were nobles lounging in a throne room rather than exhausted adventurers in a pit of monsters.

  Park Taegun sighed like an old man who’d just seen his retirement fund disappear. Kang Juwon leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling as though wondering if it was structurally sound enough to just collapse and put them out of their misery.

  Mu Yichen, being SSS-rank, was the least affected physically, but even he gave a small shrug and joined them. His endurance was fine, his mental patience was not.

  Lee Aseok stood a few meters away, chewing the last bite of his energy bar, watching this slow-motion mutiny unfold.

  He didn’t say anything immediately. He scanned the chamber instead, as though he were calculating something in that quiet, detached way of his.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, he walked over and sat down with them.

  The group stared at him in disbelief.

  “Oh,” Seo MinHyun said with a smirk. “Finally tired too, huh? Guess even the great hero can’t keep going forever.”

  Park Taegun snorted. “About time. I was starting to think you were part machine.”

  Kang Juwon gave a short, bitter laugh. “Next thing you know, he’ll be admitting he’s been eating our food supplies while we worked.”

  Lee Aseok didn’t respond to any of it. He simply leaned back against the wall, resting one arm on his knee, eyes half-lidded in that infuriatingly calm way.

  The others thought he was exhausted, too. That maybe, finally, he was sharing in their pain.

  They were wrong.

  The truth was, this was the last dungeon before the final boss. And Lee Aseok knew it.

  The moment they cleared this floor, the endgame would begin.

  He wasn’t resting because he was tired.

  He was resting because he saw no reason to rush into the final fight when he could enjoy a rare moment of stillness.

  Three weeks.

  That was how long they had been inside the Hell Gate without proper rest. No beds, no baths, no sunlight, just endless darkness, danger, and the constant, morale-crushing sound of Seo MinHyun’s complaining.

  Their clothes were torn, their weapons dulled, their eyes permanently set to “haunted.”

  Even Mu Yichen’s normally perfect posture had slumped into something resembling human fatigue.

  The chamber was quiet now, save for the occasional distant growl of a monster that seemed just as uninterested in fighting as they were.

  Lee Aseok leaned his head back against the cold stone wall, closing his eyes.

  He didn’t sleep, he never did in places like this, but he allowed himself to drift in that in-between state, where thoughts faded and the endless dungeon noise became nothing more than background hum.

  Seo MinHyun muttered something about never joining another dungeon expedition in his life.

  Kang Juwon mumbled that if they survived, he was charging Lee Aseok triple for his guild’s trouble.

  Park Taegun didn’t say anything at all, he was too busy staring into the middle distance like a man whose soul had just moved out.

  The dungeon was silent.

  Too silent.

  Lee Aseok leaned back against the cold stone wall, his iron rod resting beside him, and closed his eyes.

  The others had collapsed into various corners of the wide hall, their weapons discarded in a pile as though they’d all collectively decided they were done pretending to be professionals.

  Three weeks in the Hell Gate without a single proper rest had stripped them of pride, dignity, and, in Seo MinHyun’s case, the ability to stop talking. He was now mumbling in his sleep about mana potions and digging rights.

  The chamber looked like a throne room, tall columns, high ceilings, ornate patterns carved into the walls, but there was no throne. No monsters. No traps. Just an endless, heavy stillness that pressed on the skin.

  Most people would have called it a blessing.

  Lee Aseok knew better as a cold familiarity settled into his bones.

  Something in the air tightened around his chest.

  Not danger—memory.

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  In his past life, this same stillness had fooled them all.

  The moment they had entered this same castle-like dungeon, there had been no enemies either.

  Everyone had been wary at first, but when nothing appeared after hours of waiting, the exhaustion caught up with them.

  Weapons were lowered. Helmets came off. Someone even suggested setting up camp in the middle of the grand hall.

  It had seemed harmless.

  It wasn’t.

  The danger here wasn’t claws or fangs, it was the mind.

  The air was thick with a subtle, poisonous magic, an illusion so deep it sank directly into the soul.

  One moment you’d be resting against the wall, and the next you’d be unconscious, lost in a dream so vivid you’d never realize it wasn’t real.

  In that life, Lee Aseok had been immune, not because of some special mental strength, but because of the holy sword.

  The weapon’s divine bond shielded him from the magic, keeping his mind clear.

  But clear mind or not, his body had been at its breaking point.

  He’d been an F-rank physically, after all. The only reason he’d survived so far was equipment and stubbornness, the kind that kept you fighting even when your muscles screamed for mercy.

  So while everyone else collapsed under the illusion, Lee Aseok simply… collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

  No monsters needed to knock him down. He’d done it himself.

  And the worst part?

  The nightmare didn’t end when he woke up.

  Before his rebirth, Before they had entered the Hell Gate in that past life, a different disaster had struck.

  Mu Yichen’s mother had discovered their relationship, if you could call it that.

  She had swept into their lives like a typhoon, all polite smiles and absolute authority, and taken her son back to the Mu residence.

  Lee Aseok had tried not to think about it.

  Mu Yichen wasn’t the type to obey anyone blindly, not even his own family. Aseok had figured it was just a temporary separation. Annoying, but harmless.

  He had even convinced himself that worrying was pointless.

  Until, a few days later, he’d seen the news.

  Lee Aseok had thought he’d reached his breaking point when he saw the headline.

  [SSS-Rank Hunter Mu Yichen Announces Engagement to S-Rank Healer Yoo Areum]

  There had been a smiling photo beneath it, Mu Yichen in a suit, Yoo Areum in a pearl-colored dress, both of them looking like they’d been born to appear on luxury brand billboards.

  Lee Aseok wasn’t sure what emotion hit him first. Anger? Betrayal? Confusion? Or maybe it was the strange, heavy emptiness that came when you were too tired to process anything.

  He only knew one thing, whatever it was, it felt dangerously close to snapping something inside him.

  But Mu Yichen had come.

  Not with excuses, but with quiet certainty.

  When Aseok had asked about the engagement, Mu Yichen hadn’t hesitated.

  He’d simply pulled him into an embrace, holding him close enough that his voice was almost against Aseok’s ear.

  “It’s just for show,” he’d murmured. “I’ll explain everything soon.”

  There had been no chance to argue. No chance to demand that explanation.

  Because only a day later, the Hell Gate opened, and their world turned into an unending descent through monsters, traps, and exhaustion.

  The castle-like floor had been a rare reprieve. No monsters. No screams. Just silent halls and the echo of their own footsteps.

  Which made it all the more embarrassing when Lee Aseok, the so-called hero, passed out.

  Not because of any illusion this time, just plain, unglamorous exhaustion. His body had reached its limit, and he’d crumpled against the wall like a discarded broom.

  When he’d woken up, the others were groggily stirring as well. No one said it out loud, but the collective mood was: Let’s never speak of this.

  At the time, only Mu Yichen stayed close to him.

  Seo MinHyun kept his distance, openly annoyed at Aseok’s existence.

  Park Taegun treated him like a ghost, acknowledging only when necessary.

  And Yoo Areum? She disliked him instantly, for the crime of being too close to Mu Yichen.

  The air in the chamber was cold, heavy with something unseen.

  That was when the floor trembled.

  Without warning, an enormous barrier surged into existence ahead of them, a vertical wall of golden light that shimmered with thin, crackling veins of red. It stretched from floor to ceiling, sealing off the far end of the hall.

  The sound that followed was not a roar. It was something worse—a low, almost human laugh that rolled across the room like a shiver.

  Then he appeared.

  The final boss of the Hell Gate was nothing like the mindless monsters they had fought so far.

  He was tall, easily two and a half meters, with a physique that was lean but unmistakably strong, like a statue carved from steel.

  His hair spilled down his back in a cascade of molten gold, almost too bright to look at directly.

  His eyes… were wrong. They were a deep, shimmering amber, slit like a serpent’s, and every time they blinked it felt like the air in the room thickened.

  But it was his wings that drew every gaze, twelve in total, arched from his back in symmetrical layers.

  Each wing was sharp at the edges, as if made from overlapping blades of light, their feathers gleaming with a metallic sheen that caught every flicker of the torchlight.

  He wasn’t armored, but he didn’t need to be. His very presence was a weapon.

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop with every step he took, yet his voice, when it came, was smooth, rich and intelligent, carrying the weight of someone who already knew he was superior.

  Seo MinHyun, to his credit, reacted first. He strode up to the barrier and raised his staff, chanting an incantation. A violent blast of magic struck the golden wall… and fizzled into nothingness.

  The barrier didn’t even ripple.

  Seo MinHyun’s magic hit the barrier with a crack that echoed across the hall. Light flared against the golden surface, then fizzled out like a wet firework.

  Nothing.

  He frowned, adjusted his grip, and blasted it again. Still nothing.

  “This barrier’s broken,” Seo muttered under his breath, stepping back as if the wall had personally offended him.

  Lee Aseok didn’t comment. From where he stood, leaning casually on his holy sword, it was obvious the barrier wasn’t broken, it was perfect. Solid. Untouchable.

  And the one standing on the other side wasn’t going to let it fall easily.

  The final boss of the Hell Gate was studying them with unnerving calm.

  His amber, serpent-like eyes swept over the party, lingering just long enough on each person to make the air feel heavier.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was as smooth as a polished blade.

  “Only the chosen hero is worthy of fighting me.”

  The words hung in the silence like a judge’s verdict.

  Lee Aseok didn’t think much of it.

  Rules like this were common in dungeons, absurd, arbitrary, and made to be broken.

  They’d ignore it, like they always did, and kill the boss together. That was how it worked.

  They weren’t friends, not really.

  But they had fought side by side for too long to leave anyone behind.

  Or so he thought.

  “That means you,” Mu Yichen said.

  For a moment, Lee Aseok didn’t understand the words. He blinked at Mu Yichen, waiting for him to clarify, maybe laugh, maybe follow up with ‘just kidding.’

  But there was no trace of humor in the SSS-rank hunter’s expression. It was calm. Unyielding.

  “You’re the hero. You should fight him first.”

  The sound that left Lee Aseok’s throat was almost a laugh, but it died halfway.

  He felt it before he could name it, the sensation of being struck, hard, in the back of the head. Not physically. Something worse.

  Mu Yichen.

  Of all people.

  The others looked at Mu Yichen in surprise, but none of them spoke.

  Seo MinHyun crossed his arms, Park Taegun’s gaze drifted away, and Yoo Areum was studying her nails like she was above the entire conversation.

  Author Note:

  Every “OH MY GOD ASEOK STOP” gives me the strength to write the next disaster.

  Mon ? Wed ? Fri

  (Yes, I too question my life choices.)

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