The flames crackled in front of me as if hell had just opened its doors and greeted me.
"First Salamander in sight! Formation!" Nayun shouted, already on the move.
Sven was hot on her heels, of course. How could he not be?
The rest of the team spread out in formation.
We had discussed a few things about the plans Nayun and I had suggested—and when I say "we," I mean her and the other members. In the end, she had adapted them to her liking—not too far from what I had initially proposed.
I focused on covering the blind spots.
Wherever the others weren't looking—I was there.
The Salamander advanced like a possessed lizard, breathing fire from its snout.
But Nayun shot an arrow faster than a gun, and Sven followed right after, plunging his sword between the creature's scales.
CLANG!
One, two, three sword strokes.
The creature screeched, but didn't fall.
Others appeared.
Five more. And from the background noise, others were walking toward us too.
Emerging from the sides of the stone corridor as if they'd rehearsed it.
They didn't come in disarray.
They moved in pairs, spreading out to flank us.
"Are they organizing?" Nayun asked.
Dongyul blocked a sideways attack with his shield, nearly sending the creature flying backward with the impact.
Seori dove to the side and split open a Salamander as if it were made of wet paper.
Behind me, a small explosion of ice.
Juhan cast a simple area-of-effect spell.
Perfect.
But it was not enough; the girl seemed to be conserving her mana.
Nayun noticed this too.
Her gaze swept the field for half a second before she gave a quick order:
"Junghwan, fall back and cover the right! Goeun, backup light! Lucas Han, with me!"
I responded to the command without much thought.
I moved beside her, cutting off a Salamander that was sneaking up behind Juhan.
My spear found hot flesh.
It fell, but two more took its place.
The ground clicked.
Shit.
"TRAP!" I screamed.
But everyone was already jumping.
Arrows shot from the corners of the walls.
Sven's shoulder made a soft crack as one of the arrows grazed by.
Most of the others passed straight through, predictable.
Except two.
They were clearly different.
It had the same violet glow, but brighter than the others, at the tips.
Poison.
The tip of my spear slammed into the nearest Salamander's neck, and it collapsed without drama.
"Clear the left!" Nayun shouted.
There were several more Salamanders in addition to the five that had appeared.
The magic circle beside him exploded in a blast of freezing wind.
Three Salamanders were thrown against the wall.
Seori shot forward like an arrow and finished the job with precise cuts, never missing a beat.
"Sven, back!" Goeun warned.
Sven spun in midair, delivering a sideways slash that split the creature in half.
He landed with a smug smile.
"Too slow."
Junghwan caught the last Salamander that tried to flee from the flank, smashing it to the ground with his shield before it could even scream.
The smell of sulfur and meat filled the air.
We did all that in less than three minutes.
That was the strength of our team. Well, more likely their strength.
I rolled my shoulders, leaving the system open in the corner of my vision.
The poison arrows still bothered me.
Even those with greater perceptiveness, like Nayun herself, hadn't noticed this fact.
I let it slide. Making a fuss would be pointless.
Besides, this was part of the manhwa's story. I remembered Kim Hajin noticing something similar too.
"Okay," Nayun said, with that hint of weariness at the edge of her words. "No distractions from now on. If he'd stepped two meters back, we'd be scooping up pieces with a spoon.''
Her gaze fixed on Sven, who was still massaging his shoulder.
"But overall... you guys did well."
A few small smiles appeared.
"You too, Sven. Your rotations were decent."
The boy lifted his chin, pulling a look of pride.
"I always do my best, leader. You know how it is."
"Don't call me leader in that tone," she snapped, "It's like we're on a forced march at military school."
And then she blurted out the unexpected:
"Oh, and... Lucas did well too."
"Liam," I corrected reflexively.
"Huh?"
"My name. It's Liam. Liam Han. Not Lucas."
She clicked her tongue impatiently.
"Whatever. The formation you suggested worked better than I expected. Congrats, man."
Sven froze for a second.
A crease appeared at the corner of his eye.
The smile he'd been wearing faded for a single instant—the corner of his mouth twitching, his jaw clenching—before returning to normal.
As if nothing had happened.
No one commented. Perharps, didn't even notice it.
We continued down the corridor.
The walls, made of artificially carved stone, now had orange hues, imbued with mana, flickering in pulses.
[Strange,] a message from Luxion appeared before me. [The lighting should have been like this since the entrance.]
"Well, it wasn't," I said. ''Who knows... what if they didn't pay the electricity bill?"
The robot ignored the joke and continued with his explanation:
[The sequence of events seems to have changed.]
[Besides, the first monster encounter should have happened much earlier.]
"What about the traps?"
[They should have started long before that crossroads, too. If it was in line with what happened to Kim Hajin originally.]
We passed two more Salamanders on the way.
They saw us and attacked.
But… they didn't last a minute.
Dongyul crushed the first one with his shield. Sven crossed the second as if testing the blade's sharpness.
Everything was quick and simple. A bit bland, almost boring.
The group chatted as we advanced.
Comments on the monsters, and about the time we still had until we reached the end.
Nayun and Sven continued to chatter among themselves.
He brought up one topic after another.
She seemed both annoyed and amused—perhaps out of boredom.
"You dodged late on that last Salamander," Nayun said.
"That's not the case," he replied, shrugging. "I was just giving Dongyul a chance to shine."
He laughed at his own ''joke'', and Nayun just stared at him.
In that awkward moment, Sven started to say something else to her, but his voice cut off mid-sentence.
CLICK.
"Oh, damn..." he hissed, too late.
The sound of the gears behind the trap's operation was the only thing we could hear before the trigger went off.
The arrow shot out of a slit in his side like a spring-loaded viper.
He tried to dodge in vain. His reaction time was too slow.
THUNK.
The arrow slammed into his right abdomen.
At first, he didn't scream.
His eyes widened, and he stood there, still. Blinking.
Eyelids fluttered open and closed as the others swallowed.
But the calm before the storm didn't last long.
The poison soon began to take effect.
"Ghh... AAAARGH!"
His cheekbones contorted and his eyes rolled back as the pain hit like a sledgehammer.
He fell to his knees, trembling, veins bulging at his temples.
Blood trickled slowly... but it was too dark.
Almost black, purple.
"This doesn't look like incapacitating poison!"
"Shouldn't this shit be weaker?!"
The others sounded desperate. They swarmed around Sven.
Luckily, I didn't seem to see any other traps nearby.
I approached slowly and studied the arrowhead.
"Luxxion, identification?"
[Unknown compound. Unable to determine without direct contact.]
[The fatality rate, however, is presumably high if not treated properly.]
"Shit... Goeun, heal! We need to get the poison out." Nayun uttered.
"I'm trying!" Goeun said, hurriedly conjuring. "But this stuff is beyond my expertise!"
His lips quickly turned purple.
Goeun performed what could be considered first aid and removed what she could from the arrow, leaving enough to stop the bleeding from worsening.
"It's... getting hard... to breathe..."
Dongyul quickly decided what he was going to do.
He bent down, pulled Sven's arm over his shoulder, and lifted him like dead weight.
"I'll carry him."
"We need to get out of here. Now," Nayun growled, her expression hard. "If this poison is what it seems, and not what we expected, things are going to get ugly."
As the group became even more alert, they readjusted.
We continued forward.
The corridor began to change as we advanced.
The walls, once slightly cold and uniform, now had pulsating veins of magma running between the rocks, like incandescent arteries.
The artificial lighting was replaced by a natural, orange, flickering glow.
The heat hit us head-on.
It was like walking into a furnace in sportswear.
A few more meters, and then we saw it.
A wide, oval opening carved into the molten rock.
Inside, the light was even more intense.
We could see heat waves distorting the air, as some of us stopped at the edge.
It was a drop of about three or four meters. Not fatal, but far from comfortable.
On the other side… a wide, round, cavernous hall.
A sort of an underground coliseum.
Circular walls with platforms and entrances connecting several different corridors.
Some of them already had sounds—footsteps, scraping metal, distant voices. Other teams were arriving.
In the center of the arena was a fiery fissure.
A pit of lava partially covered by slabs of cracked stone. Beside her…
"There he is," Nayun murmured.
The final boss.
Crouched, one knee on the ground, his head bowed as if in silent prayer.
A Magma Golem.
Enormous. Probably around five meters tall if it stood upright.
Its body resembled a grotesque mixture of molten rock and living magma. Parts of its torso breathed, swelling and contracting. From within the cracks, lava oozed like feverish sweat.
Its eyes were two deep craters, but I knew—they were open.
Dongyul dropped Sven beside me, and Goeun knelt to continue healing.
"An intermediate level 5…" Nayun said, her eyes fixed on the monster. "With Sven out of action, fighting him will be tricky."
Seori crossed her arms. "What if we wait for the other teams to arrive?"
"That's the plan," Nayun replied. "We join forces, finish this thing quickly, and get Sven to a real doctor."
"And until then?" Junghwan asked.
"We stay hidden. Discreet. Don't draw attention to yourself."
[Despite the initial inconsistencies, it seems we're back in the original sequence.]
Luxxion appeared in the corner of my vision, floating with a faint hum.
[From Sven's fall into the trap to this encounter with the Boss.]
I looked at the boy again.
''Could I've stopped that from happening?''
[Probably.]
Sven was sweating, his face paler than before.
But there was something new.
His hand moved slowly.
He gripped the fabric of his uniform, across his chest. Then, squeezed tightly.
''This feels weird…'' Goeun murmured beside me. 'The poison should have subsided by now. Why is he clutching his chest like that?''
Before I could respond, the scream came.
''AAARGH!!''
Sven arched his back, thrashing as if he'd been electrocuted.
His eyes were bloodshot.
Nayun immediately turned around, running back.
''What's wrong with him now?'' she screamed, crouching down beside him. ''Is he freaking out or turning into a damn zombie?''
She, then, turned to me. We were the closest to Sven.
''Lucas, hold him before he rips out his own tongue.''
"Liam," I grumbled, never taking my eyes off Sven. ''It's Liam.''
I was going to grab him. I really was.
But there wasn't time.
RUMMMMBLE.
Stones creaked. The ground shook. Shadows stretched out like giant hands behind Nayun.
I looked up.
Just as I remembered from the original storyline, the Magma Golem was standing.
It had seen us, without a shadow of a doubt.
The thing opened its mouth as to prove that fact. Or what must have been one.
A fiery abyss flowed there like a river.
And, then, it spat at our direction.