The Female Lead Saves the World - Chapter 319

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

Yeo Joo Saves the World
Part 2, Episode 140

Why won’t it fall?
I thought blankly.
I didn’t even feel the sense of crisis that screamed ‘I need to escape.’
My entire body seemed to have frozen solid.
The simulation device, rapidly closing in, felt like it was draining all my vitality in one swift pull.
Is this how I die?
There’s still so much left to do.
If I die, will this world fall into ruin again?
Will I fail just like this?
Is this truly the end?
Then, belatedly, a thought struck me.
‘I need to escape.’
But it was already too late.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Please, let it not hurt.
It was a rather pathetic final wish for the end of my life, but it was the most desperate prayer I could muster.
Boom—!
A deafening roar erupted, loud enough to make my ears ring.
My body was thrust backward, and my hair whipped violently in the force.
I thought the massive sound was the noise of my body being crushed.
Yet I felt no pain, and my consciousness continued unbroken.
Had I regressed at the moment of death, on top of having possessed someone once before?
Even as such questions flickered through my mind, I remained curled up, unable to relax my tensed body.
“You should have called me.”
A soft voice reached me, and warmth bloomed against my back.
The solid, heavy weight of a firm body enveloping mine was unmistakably present.
As I slowly opened my eyes, Kang Han’s face came into view, watching me from mere inches away.
“Ah.”
I was alive.
Relief flooded through me all at once, and my legs nearly gave way.
Kang Han then pulled me closer into his embrace, letting me lean against him.
His body, which I’d always thought didn’t need to feel quite so reassuring, was the most dependable thing in the world in that moment.
“Th-thank you.”
I exhaled a sigh, still unsettled by what had just occurred, and surveyed my surroundings.
Not far away, embedded in the wall above where I’d been standing, was the simulation device that had fallen.
What had driven it into the wall was a bolt of lightning far thicker and more massive than Muk Chang’s—a jagged, brilliant arc of electricity.
Crackle.
Around the still-raging electrical discharge, bright yellow sparks scattered wildly.
“Yeo Joo!”
“Are you alright?!”
The materialized Cave Dungeon rippled like gentle waves before returning to its plain, ordinary appearance, and in that same moment, the Justice Guild members came rushing over.
“That was way too close!”
“Why did that thing suddenly fall?”
While everyone else clicked their tongues at the simulation device Kang Han had embedded in the wall, Kang Young Won approached me with concern etched across her face.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I’m fine. There’s no pain or—”
I was in the middle of checking my body when I noticed something.
One of my arms felt damp, and when I looked down, it was soaked with blood.
But my body was completely unharmed.
“Wait… Kang Han?”
The blood wasn’t mine—it was his.
Startled, I released his arm that had been holding me and turned around, only to see a long, jagged wound stretching from his shoulder down to the middle of his back.
“If you’re injured, you have to say something! At least show some sign of pain!”
I burst out, and Kang Han responded with a faint smile.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
That couldn’t possibly be true.
Even a paper cut stings and sends shivers down my spine!
“I need to get a trauma healing potion right away—!”
Oh, Chung Soo isn’t here.
But fortunately, I’m a healer.
I turned Kang Han around so his back was fully visible and placed my hand against the wound.

[ Activating skill ‘Body Restoration’. ]
[ Consuming mana to treat the target’s external injuries. ]

Unlike reality, using mana didn’t feel bad at all.
Every time I cast a skill, my stamina drained away, but there was no dizzying side effect—just a faint sensation of something slipping from my body.
Without that wretched level system, my stats as an A-rank healer were fully unleashed.
The wound that had been bleeding so profusely it was painful to watch sealed itself in moments.
“Phew.”
After healing the injury, my racing heart seemed to settle down a bit.
Though startled by the sudden accident, I was familiar enough with training injuries that I could hear the other hunters chatting around me.
“But how did Han know to block it? It happened so fast.”
“Isn’t it obvious? He was just watching Yeo Joo the whole time.”
Yang Hwa Yeon’s reproach made me a little embarrassed.
And I was acutely aware of Kang Han still standing nearby.
“Ahem. Thank you for saving me, Sub-guild Master.”
I bowed again and tried to step back.
But before I could even move my feet, Kang Han’s hand came up and gently tilted my chin upward.
“You’re hurt.”
“Am I? Oh, I must have gotten scraped a bit.”
I’d nearly died—a few scratches were nothing.
But Kang Han didn’t seem to see it that way.
In his green eyes, his pupils narrowed sharply as they traced over the wound, then shot a glare at someone rushing over from behind, gasping for breath.
It was a middle-aged man sweating so profusely he needed a handkerchief.
“I-I heard there was an accident! Is anyone injured…?”
“Are you the facility manager?”
Kang Han asked sharply and strode toward the manager.
Through the torn shirt, his erector spinae and thick latissimus dorsi muscles rippled visibly—shamelessly on display.
Even now, I couldn’t help but be distracted by that.
I forced my gaze away and turned it toward the simulation device.
Thanks to that, all thoughts of Kang Han’s muscles vanished.
The shock of nearly dying had made me forget something important, and it came rushing back.
‘This accident wasn’t a coincidence.’
The reason was clear.
‘They’re trying to eliminate me now that I’ve woken up from the dream.’
Because I’m a threat to this perfect world.

+++

The accident nearly derailed everything, but my repeated insistence that we continue allowed us to complete the simulation training without incident.
Since I’d have to watch Kang Han’s mood regarding the Dungeon, he wouldn’t kill me twice in the same location, and now that I’d become target number one for expulsion, I needed to thoroughly understand the skills and abilities of the Hunters who would enter the Dungeon with me—even a slight increase in survival odds mattered.
The Gate would open at 5 AM.
After work, I returned home, slept for a bit, and woke to find it was already time to depart.
In the dim room lit only by the night light, I quietly changed clothes and picked up my packed bag.
I had planned to leave without telling anyone.
But the moment I opened the door and stepped into the Living Room, I froze.
“Yeo Joo, where are you going?”
My mother sat in front of the TV, which wasn’t even showing a regular broadcast, remote in hand, staring at the screen.
“…Mom.”
It was the face I’d kept a photograph of at my bedside, one I looked at every day so I wouldn’t forget.
Now I realized my mother’s face hadn’t changed at all from the photo we’d taken together when I was sixteen.
It was because I didn’t know what my mother’s face looked like after eight more years had passed.
“Yeo Joo, surely you’re not…”
My mother studied my face carefully before asking.
“You’re not going into that Gate opening in Cheonho-dong today, are you?”
“…No.”
I lied.
“Well, I am going near there, but I’m just waiting outside. If any of the Hunters are injured when they come out after clearing it, I need to treat them.”
“Even so, it’s dangerous near the Gate…”
“Mom, your daughter is a Hunter too. I have to accept that level of risk.”
“I suppose there’s no helping it, but…”
My mother couldn’t hide her anxiety, yet she forced herself to smile at me.
“Yes, our daughter is so brave.”
Our daughter.
Inevitably, my grip tightened on the bag’s strap.
“…I’ll be back.”
I managed to squeeze out just those words.
My throat burned as if it were on fire, but I deliberately pressed harder on my toes and walked toward the entrance.
Just as I was slipping my right foot into my shoe.
My mother, who had followed me out to see me off, spoke.
“Come straight home when you’re done. I’ll have your favorite miso soup waiting for you.”
Damn it.
My eyes shut tight on their own.
A surge.
Everything I’d been forcing down came rushing up all at once.
“Be careful, our Yeo Joo. Don’t get hurt, okay?”
She loves that dream Dungeon where you can achieve everything you want.
This place, where I construct happiness I can never truly have, is nothing but a nightmare.
I was angry.
I trembled with rage at this cursed Dungeon, mocking me by conjuring my mother and father before my eyes.
Yet at the same time, I wanted nothing more than to turn around and pull my mother into a tight embrace.
I wanted to bury my face in her warmth, to feel the tenderness of her touch.
I wanted to pretend I knew nothing of reality, to simply live here with my parents like this.
But.
“Yes, I understand.”
I answered with a voice that trembled pathetically, then finished putting on my shoes.
I picked up the luggage I’d set down moments before and placed my hand on the doorknob of the entrance.
“Mom.”
There was something I’d desperately wanted to say in that moment when the accident occurred.
Words I couldn’t speak because we parted so suddenly after being transferred to the Hospital, without even a chance to say goodbye.
“You don’t need to worry about me anymore. I’ll live well.”
I didn’t look back.
Fearing I might hear my mother’s response, I pushed the door open with all my strength and leaped into the biting dawn wind that rushed toward me.

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