Ch.180180 – Another Love Story 1

# 180 – Another Love Story # 1

“If you don’t enter the tiger’s den, you cannot catch the tiger cub.”

That’s exactly what we just accomplished.

To get the key inside the giant snake’s body, we went directly inside. Perhaps because we brought in a lot of toxic substances, the snake couldn’t bear it and spat us all out.

[Uuuweeeeck!]

The continuous vomiting seemed incredibly painful.

In human terms, it would be like drinking a whole bottle of harmful pesticide.

Honestly, I thought the Snake Shaman would die from the poison, but there was no sign of that. She was just vomiting. But that was enough.

“Let’s run! Run! We’ve got the key! Hurry!”

Jeongseok jingled the key in his hand. That clear, melodious sound snapped me back to my senses. To be honest, with our current power, it would be difficult to defeat the Gandara Shaman.

Only after challenging her multiple times and investing points would we see the answer. But if we obtained the key she was hiding? It was as good as defeating the shaman.

“Everyone run! This battle is our victory! Everyone needs to escape alive! Hurry! Everyone, snap out of it!”

I encouraged my friends.

My desperate cry seemed to work as everyone started running hard. Of course, the Snake Shaman quickly regained her senses.

Gandara Shaman Misuzu was so angry that we had tricked her, her scales trembled with rage, and her screams and angry cries were so loud they felt like an earthquake.

Gooooooooo-.

No, the school building itself was actually shaking.

A monster that causes earthquakes with its anger.

She truly could be considered a god.

How we managed to return alive from inside such a being was truly a miracle.

“Don’t come! Don’t come!”

I knocked over a nearby gasoline container.

It was to spread the gasoline smell that snakes hate.

Kwagwang-.

Of course, the Snake Shaman pursued us as if she no longer cared about the smell, but in the process, her writhing body caused torches placed in the shrine to fall over.

As a result, fire caught on the gasoline that had been spilled everywhere.

Whrrrrk-! Whrrk-!

The problem was that fire also caught on Bong Jiyeon’s body, which had been doused with gasoline earlier. Bong Jiyeon writhed in agony as she burned.

“Aeuauk!”

Seeing a friend burning alive was extremely shocking, so while everyone was panicking, Jeongseok rushed toward Bong Jiyeon.

And to put out the fire on Bong Jiyeon’s body, he flapped his clothes, poured water from his water bottle, and even embraced her.

[Aaaaaaah!]

Then we heard the Gandara Shaman screaming behind us. It sounded like demons’ screams coming from a cave connected to hell.

[Aaaaaaaaak!]

When I turned my head, the Snake Shaman was suffering. She seemed to be in more pain than when I had fed her poison earlier. Seeing this, Kim Miryeong’s eyes flickered with madness as she laughed.

“Yes! When the girl who received the divine possession burns, she suffers too! Their compatibility must be that good! If we kill this girl now, we might be able to kill the Snake Shaman!”

Kill Bong Jiyeon, who had become the shaman’s medium, to defeat the Gandara Shaman? It was impressive that we could eliminate such a divine-like being.

But to sacrifice Bong Jiyeon?

Jeongseok would never allow it, and I couldn’t do it either. I considered Bong Jiyeon a fairly close friend.

“You fools! You think you can obtain truth with just that? You don’t have the determination to sell and sacrifice everything to get what you want! You have no determination!”

Kim Miryeong criticized us.

It was indeed a fitting rebuke from a woman who pursued honor and wealth even to the point of turning her own sister into a vengeful ghost to control.

But Kim Miryeong was wrong.

“I do have determination. The determination that no one dies! Even if we get the key and defeat the monster, if even one person dies, we’ve failed!”

[Aaaak!]

When the Snake Shaman screamed again, a chilling wind blew from somewhere and extinguished all the flames in the shrine.

Everything suddenly became very dark. I couldn’t see ahead, but the fire on Bong Jiyeon’s body was also extinguished. It seemed the Snake Shaman had put out Bong Jiyeon’s fire to protect herself.

“Let’s go! Jeongseok! Let’s go! Everyone! Help!”

I was desperate to escape this shrine, carrying Jeongseok on my shoulder, who had suffered serious injuries while trying to extinguish the fire on Bong Jiyeon.

In Bong Jiyeon’s case, Teacher Hong Miri carried her, and though she was blackened with burns, she seemed to have survived somehow.

As long as she was alive, that was enough.

As long as she was alive, we could manage somehow!

# # #

When we came outside, the world was dark.

11 PM.

Just at the end of the hai hour.

Only two hours had passed through that hellish process?

Along with the relief of having survived, I felt a surge of worry.

“We need to go to the hospital! Both Jiyeon and Seok are in bad shape!”

Dahui urgently shouted, looking at the blackened Bong Jiyeon. Jeongseok had also suffered quite severe burns, though not as bad as Bong Jiyeon.

We needed to get to the emergency room quickly in Teacher Hong Miri’s car. However, Bong Jiyeon’s condition was so serious that she might not survive the trip to the hospital.

Should I turn back time?

If Bong Jiyeon died, the mission would be a failure even if we got the key.

Shk-. At that moment, Bong Jiyeon’s eyes turned toward me.

“……”

It seemed like she was trying to say something, but either her tongue had burned or her mouth had dried up from the heat, as her lips only moved slightly. Seeing this, Yang Juhui spoke.

“Hey, we should use that.”

“Ah.”

I understood exactly what Yang Juhui meant and headed to Teacher Hong Miri’s van.

Then I took out a box from my bag there.

「First Aid Kit: A container of emergency medicine that treats injuries. Can perfectly heal any wound or disease as long as the person is alive. Disappears after one use.」

It was a treatment kit said to be able to perfectly heal any wound or disease.

It looked like a common first aid box you might find somewhere in a home, containing bandages, band-aids, and disinfectant.

In a way, it could be seen as a very shabby item, so it was true that some feelings of disbelief arose. Could this really treat full-body burns?

But having no other options, we took out the medicine and applied plenty of ointment and disinfectant to Bong Jiyeon’s body. We also applied it to Jeongseok’s body.

“Drink this.”

Yang Juhui even put red medicine into Bong Jiyeon’s mouth.

Seeing this, Kwon Sua trembled.

“Could it be that the reason HP potions are red in games is because of red medicine…!?”

That’s what comes to mind in this situation?

But like an actual HP potion, vitality returned to Bong Jiyeon’s body after drinking the red disinfectant. Bong Jiyeon, who couldn’t say anything with her parched lips before, breathed roughly and even cursed.

“Yang Juhui, you bitch…”

With that, Bong Jiyeon lost consciousness.

We wrapped bandages tightly around Bong Jiyeon’s body. Teacher Hong Miri, Yu Dahui, and Yang Juhui did the bandaging.

Even though she was burned and blackened, I couldn’t look at a naked girl.

Meanwhile, I treated Jeongseok.

In Jeongseok’s case, he had severe burns on his palms.

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“I thought so.”

“But it’s healing quickly. It’s really itchy.”

Jeongseok was observing his burns healing in real-time.

It seemed Jeongseok wasn’t in his right mind. Still, it was quite impressive how he had jumped in to save the burning Bong Jiyeon earlier.

Wasn’t he afraid of the pain of burning?

We went to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, Bong Jiyeon unwrapped the bandages wrapped around her body, saying, “Ah, this is suffocating.” The way she tore through the bandages looked like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon or a snake shedding its skin. Even more surprising was Bong Jiyeon’s condition.

“Gasp.”

“What? What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Not only had her wounds healed completely in just a few minutes, but Bong Jiyeon’s skin had improved several times over. It was so radiant it seemed to shine as if she’d had a glass skin treatment.

Bong Jiyeon had always been pretty, but her skin couldn’t exactly be described as great. Maybe because she smoked, or because she lived irregularly, anyway.

And now this Bong Jiyeon was showing baby-like skin as if she had been reborn, which was truly amazing.

“Is this what they call a complete transformation?”

When I marveled, Jeongseok added.

“It’s metamorphosis.”

“Focus on the essence of what I’m trying to say. Letters and appearances are just shadows.”

Of course, Jeongseok, who had made a minor correction to me, was also greatly surprised looking at Bong Jiyeon. Had he fallen for her again now that the Bong Jiyeon he liked had become a beauty with honey skin?

The car stopped in front of the hospital.

After getting out of the car, Bong Jiyeon jumped lightly. And she was greatly surprised.

“My ankle… it’s healed?”

Bong Jiyeon had been a promising short-distance track athlete but had given up her dream due to an ankle injury.

Because of that, she had become twisted, hanging out with bad friends and rebelling. But now she seemed amazed that the pain in her ankle had disappeared without any aftereffects.

“Bong Jiyeon student seems to have no problems?”

The emergency room doctor looked at us with a puzzled expression. We had brought in a friend with burns, but there were no injuries at all, so he seemed confused.

However, in Jeongseok’s case, there was still a burn mark on his left palm because there hadn’t been enough medicine. It might last a lifetime, but if we acquire another “First Aid Kit” in the corridor, even scars like that would heal easily.

“Everyone survived.”

We all survived.

And we obtained the 4th floor key.

“I really thought I was going to die.”

Fatigue hit me hard, like I was finally exhaling the breath I’d been holding.

Everyone was tired and exhausted.

“Hey! Let me go now!”

Only Virgin Bodhisattva Kim Miryeong was still making a fuss.

We went to Dahui’s mansion and put Kim Miryeong in a room with Gong Yerin and Lim Huiyeon.

It’s not like insect collecting, but gathering women in rooms. My reality was still astral.

“Everyone, you worked really hard today. Sleep well.”

We all slept at Dahui’s mansion. We had originally planned to explore the Nightmare Corridor as soon as time returned, but we lacked the mental strength to do so.

I’ll sleep in.

And so time passed to the next morning.

Some woman screamed, “Kyaak-!”

“Hey! Bong Jiyeon! What are you doing!”

“……”

9 AM.

Yang Juhui, who had come out to drink water, was horrified to see Bong Jiyeon rummaging through the mansion’s refrigerator.

It was because Bong Jiyeon was putting raw meat into her mouth and eating it.

Bong Jiyeon’s eyes were slit vertically like a snake’s, and her tongue inside her mouth was also split like a snake’s.

Clearly not a normal state. It felt like Bong Jiyeon’s body had been taken over by the Snake Shaman.

Teacher Hong Miri, who had woken up, held her forehead.

“This is a side effect of the divine possession. You could say they’ve been switched.”