Housekeeper in the dungeon

Episode 21

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He felt like he was floating in thin air. But it was only for a moment. Gravity pulled him down to the ground.

“Ow!”

Hee-Na flailed her limbs, eventually choosing to cover her face with her arms, bracing herself for the impact on her ass.

“……?

But after a few seconds, she didn’t feel any impact. Instead, there was a loud thud and she was in someone’s firm arms.

Hee-Na instinctively sniffed against the chest. She could smell the faint odor of soap, freshly washed.

‘You smell good…….’

It wasn’t until she heard a calm voice from above her head that she came to her senses.

“Are you okay?”

Kang jin-hyeon asked as he slowly lowered Hee-na from his arms.

“Uh…….”

Hee-Na’s face turned bright red.

She was snuggled against the chest of the man who had taken her in safely, sniffing him……. No matter how cavalier he was, this was too unscrupulous of an act!

“Go, thank you. Mr. Hunter, Kang jin-hyeon. Is Hunter okay?”

Hee-na hurriedly pulled herself out of Kang jin-hyeon’s arms and looked at him, who looked as calm as ever.

This calmed her racing heart a bit.

“I’m fine. By the way, where’s that piece of iron you were cleaning earlier? I think that’s what caused this.”

“The piece of iron? Oh, you mean this?”

Hee-Na opened her fisted hand. A shard of silver glittered and glowed in her palm. She looked at it, and the item information popped up.

The description of the piece of □□ has changed. However, the description of what it is is still woefully inadequate.

Furthermore…….

“It’s an attributed item.”

Kang Jinhyun muttered. Hee-Na scratched her head at the unfamiliar term.

“What do you mean, an appropriated item?”

“Are you sure your name is Hee-Na Lee?”

Hee-na pressed her lips together at the sudden mention of her name.

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you see that the item description is followed by Ms. Lee’s name? This is a characteristic of attributed items, meaning that they are owned by a specific person. They cannot be transferred to anyone else.”

Hee-na was surprised by Kang’s explanation.

“What if the item I got during my dungeon run becomes my own?”

“Since it’s already happened, you can’t do anything but report it. Just put it in your inventory for now.”

“Okay…….”

Hee-na obediently did as she was told and put the ‘□□’s fragment’ into her inventory.

She was nervous to think that she had something she didn’t recognize, but she couldn’t help but wonder what it was now.

“What is this?

Hee-Na sighed and looked around. It was a strange place. The sun was setting over the ashen wilderness.

“What is this place, anyway?”

“It looks like a dungeon. I don’t know how, but I think I was transported here by the rust on the iron sculpture earlier. And if this is a dungeon, we need to find the gate to get out.”

Kang jin-hyeon summarized the situation, step by step. His calmness was remarkable.

He would normally have freaked out at this point.

“So where do we go to get out?”

I asked, but instead of Kang, the system window responded.

“What is this?

Hee-na stared at the system window with wide eyes.

An unfamiliar skill fired out of nowhere, and a square map appeared in the air. It looked like a crude treasure map drawn by a child.

“What’s going on? Is there something wrong with the system?”

Kang jin-hyeon quickly realized something was wrong with Hee-na. In response to his probing, Hee-na explained what she saw.

“Well, when I cast an unfamiliar skill, a map appeared in front of my eyes.”

“You mean a map……, what did it look like specifically?”

“It looks like a roughly drawn medicine……. Wait, let me check the skill description.”

Hee-Na shifted her gaze to the skill description.

So it sounds like “Where’s Home” is some sort of navigation skill. It was a map to help me find Hee-Na’s house, which was hidden somewhere in the dungeon.

“Ms. Lee, what kind of skill is this?”

Kang jin-hyeon interrupted Hee-na, who was lost in thought. Unable to withstand his piercing glare, Hee-na embellished her answer.

“It’s a map skill,” she said, “and it shows the location of boss mobs and gates.”

She left out the part about her home.

Even though Hee-na was clueless Awakened, she knew that she had to keep the ‘Home Sweet Home’ skill a secret due to Woo Min-ah’s repeated advice.

But even without the ‘Home Sweet Home’ story, it was an incredible skill. Suddenly, Kang Jinhyun’s eyes lit up.

“…… Such a skill exists. It’s amazing.”

He seemed genuinely impressed.

He was right because knowing the location of the dungeon’s boss mobs and gates would cut the dungeon clearance speed in half or less.

That’s why the first dungeon takes so long.

Hunters didn’t know where the bosses were or where the gates were, and they had to wander around the dungeon vaguely to find them.

In that context, Hee-na’s skill was incredible, to say the least.

“Ms. Lee, it would be a waste to let someone with your skills rot in the environment beautification team. I’d like to scout you for the dungeon raiding team.”

Kang jin-hyeon, who was the king of the heavens, forgot about the whole situation and offered her a job as a scout.

“Hmph. No way, I don’t have any combat skills, and my physical strength is less than 30. I’m a normal person, a normal person!”

Hee-Na threw up her hands in disgust. She didn’t care how much more money they paid her, she didn’t want to join a dungeon raiding team.

As she swept and scrubbed the Blue Dragon Guild building, filling her stamina with kimbap in between, she was perfectly content with her current state.

It was regular and safe.

“But……!”

“No way! Dungeons are too dangerous! My dream is to live a normal, happy life with my family in a cozy house.”

It was already unusual enough to have a home in a dungeon, and I didn’t want to add to that unusualness.

Kang Jin Hyun raised an eyebrow at Hee Na’s vehement denial.

“Then let’s save that conversation for later. Right now, we need to get out of this dungeon.”

“……Yes, getting out of here is the priority.”

Hee-Na tried to calm her fluttering heart. She traced the map on the floor with a stone.

“The map isn’t very detailed, it’s almost like a map, but it looks like this.”

Based on the square map, Hee Na and Kang Jin Hyun were in the bottom left corner.

The area labeled “Gate” was in the upper left, above the large mountain.

For reference, Hee-Na’s house was on the bottom right, opposite the gate.

Hee-na drew the map in a crooked way, leaving out the location of her house.

Kang jin-hyeon looked at the crude map in Hee-na’s hand with a serious demeanor.

“I’m done.”

Hee-na pulled her hand away, and Kang jin-hyeon asked another question.

“Didn’t you show the boss’s location?”

“I didn’t see anything like that.”

“Is that so? Then it’s a stabilized dungeon with the boss removed…….”

Hee-Na asked impatiently.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yes. For now, the monsters are mostly gone.”

Hee-Na patted her chest. Even though it was only a one-time experience, she hated monsters to the point of shivering.

Kang jin-hyeon jerked his finger into the distance as Hee-na breathed a sigh of relief.

“And fortunately, it doesn’t look like we need to check the directions. It says the gate is on a mountain, but…… I can see the mountain in the distance.”

Hee-Na looked at Kang’s fingertips. Even to her, it looked very far away.

“It looks far away, doesn’t it?”

Kang nodded.

“We’ll have to travel for a day or so, but it’ll be dark soon, so we might as well set up camp here.”

And with that, he pretended to pull something out of his inventory.

In a flash, he had a campfire going, and he pulled out sleeping bags and spread them out. He sprinkled something in a circle around the fire.

“It’s illusion stone powder. It makes it harder for monsters to recognize this place.”

He even took the time to explain what he was doing.

Kang jin-hyeon was common sense and polite, but he seemed to be a blunt person by default, so this kindness was unexpected.

“Ms. Lee, surprisingly, dungeon raiding isn’t that dangerous, because you can do it with a group of people, and there are tools like this.”

Hexina was Hee-na. This was an overly friendly gesture to lure her into the dungeon raiding team.