Was Happy Being a Despised F-Rank Healer, You Know? - Chapter 157

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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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17. Shadow Stepping (19)

“……Hali!”
“Ugh!”
“Damn it.”
Yu Hee had no mind to examine the Skill Window flickering before her eyes since earlier.
She’d caught a glimpse of it being A-rank, and the thought had only crossed her mind that if Eerie Shadow tried to interfere, this would be blocked too.
‘Hali almost died.’
It was deliberate—her friends could see that much. They sensed there was intent behind it, so they hadn’t thought she’d actually die.
But put another way, it just meant she wasn’t thinking of dying.
She knew Hali had a tendency to treat her own circumstances carelessly.
She’d thought it had gotten better lately, so she’d entrusted everything to her.
She shouldn’t have done that.
‘People can’t change that easily.’
If you looked at it, sure, even in a world where dungeons ran rampant, there were cases where someone prioritized others over themselves like Hali did—though they weren’t common.
But in most such cases, people endured physical deprivation to fill an emotional void.
Hali wasn’t like that.
That girl showed no signs of emotional deficit at all.
Or more precisely, even if there was an emotional deficit, she wasn’t the type to fill it through others.
“At first I thought it was strange, but now I think Hali’s right. ……If it’s about living.”
That’s what Lee Hae-sol had said once—that just being near her felt like salvation.
A gentle smile, kind words. Consideration that seemed easily offered but was never given cheaply.
These things themselves were rare, but the longer you spent with Hali, the more you glimpsed those stern qualities.
Of course, whether it was due to being pushed too hard by a traumatic past, her instinct to care for her own body seemed to have been forcibly erased, which was dangerous in its own right…….
‘I thought she was getting better. It couldn’t change that easily!’
This was the first time she’d met someone so solid that you could love her with all your might and trust her completely.
And that was probably why.
Seeing those strong traits again and again, she’d made a mistake like today.
‘If you die because of me…….’
The thought couldn’t even finish forming before chills ran through her.
While Yu Hee was frozen, the other students who had been squeezing their eyes shut or gritting their teeth began to come to their senses one by one.
And they began to panic.
“What, what are you doing?”
Lee Si-hyeon, who had been clenching her fists as though about to rush forward and drive them home, asked Gong Seo-yun in bewilderment.
“Ah, haha! It looks like no one here has killed a person before.”
“……Huh?”
As though he’d killed before, Gong Seo-yun spun with cold eyes and began to manifest flaming arrows one by one.
Deep crimson arrows whirled through the air, rotating three hundred sixty degrees.
With an eerie expression even more sinister than the assassins in the mirror, Gong Seo-yun conjured arrows without ceasing.
“Think twelve will do it?”
……Twelve seemed sufficient for simple killing, but if that wasn’t what Gong Seo-yun wanted—if he wanted something more deliberate.
“If I throw them at the mirror, would the arrows maybe reach over there?”
Yu Hee, still hiding her trembling hands, answered that he shouldn’t talk nonsense.
“That so?”
Too bad. So what now?
Watching Gong Seo-yun mutter this quietly, Lee Si-hyeon and Baek Ha-yeon standing nearby took a few steps away from him.
Yuhan Seong had already summoned Magpie.
-This is bad!
“It looks like you’ve been left out too. Is the entrance blocked—is that why you couldn’t come in?”
-Sound waves were blocked too. They said it was dangerous for me…….
“They said it would be dangerous for you?”
Though he appeared composed on the surface, Yuhan Seong’s eyes glinted with an ominous light unlike usual.
Even if Hali hadn’t helped prevent the apocalypse, Yuhan Seong would not have stood by watching her fall into danger.
The miscalculation was that Jin Hali was the type of person who worried even about her summon.
Because of that, her attempt to join the fight even through Magpie had come to nothing.
The assassin who had woven that web barrier would be better served using their own talents rather than fighting directly. Even through an indirect method via summon, the intensity was enough to put Yuhan Seong in difficulty.
‘And you’re trapped in there.’
Seemingly trapped by her own choice, no less.
Yuhan Seong felt heat rise to the back of his neck for the first time in a long while.
No matter how dangerous the situation, he never felt anger.
But when it came to Hali, his rational thinking definitely grew dull.
He stared at the mirror showing Hali’s side without taking his eyes off it, his hand pressed to the dungeon exit, wrestling fiercely with whether to detonate it.
“Go back for now and call the teachers.”
-Teachers? Which ones?
“Start with the homeroom teacher.”
That would be faster and more efficient.
Exposing the Magpie summon to more people could be considered a loss from his perspective alone, but he didn’t see it that way at all.
After sending Magpie away, he began rapidly analyzing the mana of the exit down to the smallest thread.
‘There’s almost no gap.’
If this was the level of control the entity possessed, one could say it was fortunate that the Lion was at Hali’s side right now.
But this Lion can’t do anything if Hali doesn’t want it to.
About ten seconds.
Having found a gap where explosion was possible, Yuhan Seong spoke.
“If I detonate this, what kind of damage would the Dungeon Master—Jin Hali—sustain?”
It was almost like thinking aloud, but Lee Hae-sol answered with a pale face.
“……Aren’t there no cases of a dungeon with an owner being broken from inside?”
Lee Hae-sol seemed to have had the same thought and asked quietly.
Yuhan Seong nodded wordlessly once.
Seeing him like that, Lee Hae-sol opened his mouth to speak of something he’d just thought of.
“There’s a method I can think of.”
“A method?”
Han Seong turned his head slightly and looked back, asking in return.
“Using Hali’s mana to open it.”
“The Lion is with Hali right now.”
He could understand why Yuhan Seong had sent Magpie back and chosen Eerie Shadow instead.
Magpie was probably relatively vulnerable to things like poison fangs and the assassins’ attacks.
But because of that, there was now no target for Yuhan Seong to threaten right in front of him.
“What about the other bosses?”
“……That’s not it. What if we use Hali’s potions?”
“Ah.”
The mana of the students, which had been wavering uneasily or anxiously, froze all at once.
“Hali did give us attack potions, after all.”
“If we destroy Hali’s dungeon with Hali’s mana, are you sure it won’t hurt her? Isn’t this just a hypothesis?”
A few students, including Hyun I-seo and Goi-deun, showed somewhat skeptical reactions, but Lee Hae-sol was certain.
“There’s a record. A person who became a dungeon owner destroyed their own dungeon from inside, and it was restored within days. Interestingly, when someone else destroyed it, it stayed destroyed.”
“Do you have evidence it’s a mana issue and not a person issue?”
Gong Seo-yun, who had been listening to the conversation between Lee Hae-sol and the others from across the way, asked in a cold voice.
Yu Hee answered that.
“We might get the idea if we think back to how the Lion trains us.”
They all recalled Eerie Shadow—or rather, Eerie Shadow—as they trained them.
No matter what training they did, there was one thing the summon had repeatedly told them.
“Within a dungeon enlivened by meeting an owner as we have, there is no way for a living creature to avoid an attack. A dungeon recognizes and remembers mana three-dimensionally.”
“Oh, it did say that.”
“You all carry quite interesting scents……though not quite like Protagonist’s.”
It had consistently shown patterns of recognition centered on mana.
While that couldn’t quite be called evidence, it was enough weight to support the hypothesis that Hali’s mana wouldn’t harm Hali.
Then Yu Hee staggered.
“Yu Hee!”
“……It’s because I’m using a new skill for the first time.”
After quickly checking, this A-rank skill was a glutton for mana, consuming it at an alarming rate.
“I should sit this one out.”
“Drink a Mana Potion.”
“……That would be better.”
Without even being told about the terrible mana efficiency, Hyun I-seo noticed and handed her a Mana Potion that Hali had given them.
Without a word, they all gathered the Mana Potions from their own supplies and stacked them in front of Yu Hee.
“…….”
Looking at the potions piled like a mountain, she wasn’t sure whether to feel reassured.
‘Hali, just you wait.’
Yu Hee thought this while glancing at Hali, whose wounds had multiplied—not quite as devastating as the first, but every one of them looked threatening.
Soon after, every student in Class 8 hurled their attack potions in unison.
Though not as varied as what Hali herself carried, they’d chosen the most reliable ones, so no one worried about getting hurt throwing them.
Whoosh—Boom!
“Put Intent into it, not just mana! That’s more effective!”
“What is that, how do you even do it!”
“Just do it!”
And so, more boldly, they shattered the Lion’s domain.
Watching the palace crumble along with a third of the exit, someone muttered.
“That part didn’t need to be destroyed……?”
And time passed.
Jin Hali’s forearm was nearly severed by the Short Sword.

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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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