I Awakened as a Dark History - Chapter 43

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 43
Seventh day of the Dungeon conquest.
We stood on the threshold of the final sector.
“I need to swap out some gear.”
“Anyone have spare Antidote Items?”
“We have a healer—why bother carrying Antidote Items?”
“I’m a vanguard tank, so I need them. Want to take the poison hit instead of me?”
“……Here.”
“Where did all the Flame Skill users go? Get them up front.”
In the midst of the chatter, I found myself with nothing to do again. This time, An Je-hwan was also occupied with preparations.
“I’m uncertain how effective this newly synthesized poison will be.”
“Even if it just weakens them, that’s enough.”
Mysterious spheres rolled across the ground.
Baek Mun-il and the vanguard hunters gathered them and stowed them in a Subspace.
“Be careful they don’t rupture by accident. The poison is lethal to people as well.”
An Je-hwan cautioned them one final time.
The hunters nodded and rushed toward the entrance.
Perhaps because it was the final sector, everyone radiated both excitement and tension.
The most treacherous final sector—once they cleared this, vacation awaited them.
‘I’ll grab some chicken and rest once I’m out of the Dungeon.’
After a week of subsisting on bland emergency rations, my mouth felt parched.
One by one, images of rich, delicious food drifted into my mind.
‘Chicken, braised pork feet, and a cold beer!’
That anticipation lifted my spirits as well.
Baek Mun-il seemed to sense the mood and turned to face his conquest team.
“This is the final sector now. Everyone gets vacation once we finish, right?”
“Wooooo!”
A few of the spirited ones cheered immediately.
The more seasoned ones simply nodded with composure.
And Baek Mun-il tempered their enthusiasm with gravity.
“Anyone who makes a careless mistake because they’re excited about vacation loses their vacation.”
Nervous breaths caught in throats throughout the group, and resolve hardened in their eyes.
“The final sector is the most dangerous and time-consuming. Mistakes won’t be tolerated, and mistakes mean casualties.”
At their leader’s warning, the team members tightened their grip on their weapons.
“Stay sharp. Keep your guard up and your mind alert. Hold on to your lives with both hands.”
“Yes, sir!”
The conquest team responded in unison, their voices firm and unwavering.
Only then did Baek Mun-il turn with a satisfied expression.
“Let’s move out!”
As we climbed the second staircase, a lush forest came into view.
Unlike the swamp that had been unbearably damp, this place was fresh and fragrant.
I found myself captivated by the flowers blooming brilliantly overhead.
The blossoms spread in profusion on all sides, as though reaching out their hands to greet us.
It resembled a spring botanical garden.
“Throw!”
And then a word utterly at odds with the garden rang out from ahead.
Poison Pearls flew in all directions.
Bang—!
Hiss.
The Poison Pearls struck the surrounding trees and seeped into the ground.
The fresh earth blotched with purple, and the trees withered in an instant.
In the aftermath, the flowers scattered to the ground like rain.
I was so startled I grabbed the person beside me and shook them frantically. “No, wait! What is this? The trees are all dead!”
“The trees?”
“And the flowers—they’re all falling!”
“Ah…….”
An Je-hwan, who had become my unwilling target, let out a vacant exclamation.
“They aren’t trees or flowers.”
“Then what are they…….”

As if to make me understand what I refused to grasp, a scream pierced the air from somewhere distant.
Shrieeeeeek—!
The withering trees trembled violently, their mouths gaping open.
“Gasp!”
From the screaming mouth, a face slowly came into focus.
At the grotesque sight, I instinctively shrank back.
Mercifully, the scream didn’t linger—it cut off abruptly.
The tree was dead.
Only then did I realize these weren’t ordinary trees at all.
“What—what is that—what even is that?!”
“They’re Dryads. Queen’s Forest means the forest of the Dryad Queen.”
Dryad was a term that meant tree sprite.
But what I’d just witnessed bore no resemblance to anything cute and whimsical that word suggested.
“You can kill Dryads in that form if you want…….”
Something more like tree demons or tree fiends would be fitting.
“But if you destroy their core body—the tree—you can disable them easily enough.”
The realization that every gorgeous flower and lush tree was a Demon Beast made my skin crawl.
An Je-hwan paid no attention to my reaction and began evaluating the poison he’d crafted.
“I made a toxin with herbicide as its base specifically for use here, and it seems to be quite effective.”
An Je-hwan pulled out a pen and notebook from his Subspace again.
It looked like he meant to record the poison’s effects as we advanced.
“Poison deployed. Forward!”
Following Baek Mun-il’s command from the front, everyone moved forward cautiously, one step at a time.
They were trying to stay safe within the toxin’s effective range.
And true to that purpose, the poison’s coverage area was remarkably broad.
Scratch-scratch.
I ignored the pen scratching beside me and lifted my gaze upward.
My Synchronization Rate was currently 39%.
The rate that had dropped after defeating the second Boss had climbed again in the meantime.
Probably because I’d been startled watching the tree die.
‘How stupid—getting embarrassed that my Synchronization Rate goes up just from being dumb.’
I inwardly despaired and walked diligently onward.
Still, the higher my Synchronization Rate, the better I could use my abilities, so I decided to just write it off as net zero emotional impact.
That made me feel a little better.
An Je-hwan’s poison continued to prove its worth after that.
Every time we came to a chokepoint, he’d toss poison, and the Dryads didn’t dare show themselves.
I spotted a wary Dryad keeping its distance and turned my head away.
Some of the hunters noticed it too, but deliberately left it alone.
This wasn’t a Dungeon we were planning to close anyway.
There was no need to go out of our way to exterminate every last Dryad.
Watching them, I muttered softly to myself.
“I thought they’d just charge recklessly to protect their core, but this is unexpected.”
The expert beside me heard my voice and answered immediately.
“Dryads can’t stray far from their core bodies. They’re just keeping watch because if they provoked us needlessly and I started throwing Poison Pearls, they’d be in real trouble.”
“Ah, they’re surprisingly smart.”
“Most Demon Beasts classified as humanoid have high intelligence. Some can even converse.”
I thought of the succubus who had spoken to us and immediately understood.
You could talk to them, but you couldn’t negotiate with them.
“Can Dryads converse too?”
“No. Dryads can’t converse at all.”
Perhaps because they were animal and plant respectively, their languages were too different.
The Dryad watching us from a distance moved cautiously as we drew away.
The other Dryads kept their eyes on us, frozen in place like players in a children’s game.
At their thoroughly terrified state, somehow my mind eased.
“At this rate, we’re going to clear this sector the easiest of all.”
An Je-hwan nodded in agreement.
[Current Synchronization Rate]
39%
.
.
.
45%
……Could we really not find an easier way through?
* * *
My worries proved justified—or perhaps exactly as I’d anticipated.
Either way, we’d wandered the forest for far too long.
Flying solo above a certain altitude was dangerous, which meant we had no idea which path we’d already traveled.
Just when I began to wonder where we were actually headed, the withered tree reappeared before us.
I blinked and turned to the hunter beside me.
“Are we back where we started?”
“Looks like it.”
The hunter answered my question with a tone that suggested he was teasing.
As my face fell, he seemed to find it amusing.
“You didn’t get us lost, did you?”
“Not at all.”
It was a resolute answer, but somehow I didn’t quite believe him.
When I gave him a skeptical look, he finally relented.
“Dryads can communicate with one another through their roots. When we kill the Queen in the Boss chamber, if they summon allies through those roots, we’ll be trapped between forces.”
“Ah……!”
So that’s why they’d spread poison in a circular perimeter around the Boss chamber.
To sever the Dryads’ means of communication.
Once I understood the strategy, my expression brightened.
“Then all we have to do is kill the Queen?”
“No, there are still Dryads inside this circle. We have to clear them out as we move toward the Boss chamber.”
“We’ll keep using the poison?”
The hunter smiled wryly. I could see his Synchronization Rate tick up another notch.
“The poison’s about to run dry.”
As he spoke, he gripped his weapon tightly.
“From here on out, it’s hand-to-hand combat.”
This was the beginning of the real grind.
He clenched his fists and showed them to me.
“Trust us, Healer! Dryads don’t just have physical strength—they have a Charm Ability too. Our lives are in your hands.”
I almost snapped at him right then and there.
I fixed An Je-hwan with a look of pure anguish.
The predictions of two non-experienced people had fallen completely flat.
“So the easy part’s already over.”
“Mm.”
An Je-hwan, equally unaware that the strategy would unfold this way, let out a belated groan.
But the blundering of the inexperienced and the disciplined movements of the raid team were two different things.
“We advance inward from here and eliminate all Dryads within the perimeter! Combat stations!”
The hunter who’d explained everything to me smiled meaningfully.
I turned to An Je-hwan and delivered a comment that was only half-joking.
“The easy part’s supposedly over now.”
“I see.”
We stepped beyond the poisoned ground, stained purple by toxin, for the first time.
The rustling of grass underfoot was fresh and eerie all at once.
The Dryads, already aware that we were the ones spreading poison, didn’t approach easily.
But the moment we began hacking through trees with our weapons and pressing forward, everything changed.
Shhhhhh.
Shiiiiiiii—
The sound of leaves trembling in the wind rose from every direction at once.
Yet there was no wind. The hunters raised their weapons.
“Guild Master, the Dryads’ calls are coming from multiple locations!”
“Circle formation! Protect the Non-Combat Roles!”
The tanks that had occupied the front lines formed a ring around us, shields raised.
Crack.
Along with the sound of splintering leaves, thick wooden branches rained down upon us.
Crash!! Bang!
Wooden logs and steel shields collided from all sides, filling the air with deafening noise.

The moment the shield knocked away the wooden tendril, Baek Mun-il’s command rang out.
“Counter with Flame Skill!”
From all directions came the sound of hunters chanting their activation spells.
Soon, countless flames raced up the wooden stalks.
Screeeech!
Several Dryads struck by the fireballs shrieked and crumbled to ash.
The Dryads, intelligent Demon Beasts that they were, changed tactics on the instant.
“We reveal ourselves fully!”
“All damage dealers, forward!”
They stopped trying to shoot flames and began charging straight at the raid group.
They looked like mannequins woven from wooden branches, rushing forward en masse.
Among them were creatures with one arm transformed into a blade-like limb, and others that had braided both hands into a long spear.
Every single one of them was grotesque.
“They don’t exactly look like fairies.”
“They’re Demon Beasts, after all.”
Their weapons appeared wooden in form, yet they did not shatter or splinter when they struck steel.
It was a Demon Beast’s innate power.
And as the weapons clashed, blood began spattering across the ground.
Thud!
“Gah, no!”
One of the Dryads finally drove its spear-like limb into an ally’s abdomen.
The Dryad raised its spear-formed arm to finish the hunter.
Crack! Slash!
But an Ice Shuriken flew faster still, severing the Dryad’s head and neck clean away.
And then it was my turn to cast a skill.
“Honey Dew.”
Golden droplets rippled outward, enveloping all my allies.
In the instant their wounds began to heal, every single Dryad’s eyes turned toward me.
“What…?”
Something felt terribly wrong.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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