"... Ho… How… this be… …gonna die here?" As I regained consciousness, I could hear a panicked voice not too far from me.
"Ugh, my head…" I tried to sit myself up while holding my aching head.
My eyes kept blinking to adapt to the surroundings. When my eyes finished adapting, I noticed that I was in an eerie forested dungeon.
Ahh… ahh… we are gonna die here
Eomma… I'm sorry eomma, I cannot live like you want me to.
Fear quickly got a hold of me. Nothing came to mind about how we could survive from here. I could hear Manager Wang's now depressed voice going on and on with the same thoughts I just had.
As my fear still took control of my body and mind, I could hear another voice not far from me. I shifted my head to find the source of the sound. Turns out it was Mirae, who was still knocked unconscious.
Her voice brought me to reality, moping here about the situation will not help the situation at all. Thankfully, I didn't have any injuries besides the aching head that I had since I fell here. So, I steadied myself to get up and tried to reach her. Her position is not too far from me but it's still quite a distance from me and Manager Wang's, especially since she was closer to the edge of the field of where we are now.
While moving closer to her with my shaky legs, I suddenly heard another rustling sound from the bushes and trees not far from Mirae's place. I paused for a moment, as I looked at the source of the sound I could see that the bushes were visibly shaking.
From the bushes came out a beast that looked similar to a rat but bigger, Its eyes glowed with a sickly yellow light, and its sharp, gnashing teeth protruded from its snarling mouth. That beast looked at where Mirae's unconscious body was.
"Hh-" A gasp sound tried to come out of my mouth uncontrollably because of the sight of the beast, but I tried my best to cover my mouth so no sound could escape and attract the beast more.
Unfortunately, I forgot there was another person here with me besides Mirae who is still unconscious.
"Arghhh..." he screamed loudly. "No, don't come near me. You… you can have these 2 stupid girls instead." Manager Wang frantically utters amid his fear.
So, the beast got attracted to his scream and the sight of us, especially Mirae. As it lurched towards her, its eyes fixed on her unconscious body.
No, no, no. Don't come close. The thought quickly rose to my mind.
What should I do? What should I do? Afraid of what the beast could do to Mirae and us. My mind raced as I tried to come up with a plan.
I quickly assessed the situation and made a split-second decision to divert the beast's attention away from Mirae. With all my willpower, I managed to stay calm because I needed it to be able to help her.
Ah, I know. Some beasts are attracted to the smell of blood, and I think that was also what attracted this beast to us in the first place.
I ripped the sleeve off one of my arms, and bit onto my finger to try letting out some blood to smear it on the cutout cloth. The adrenaline rushed through me as I did it. Fortunately, it eased up the pain i felt.
When the cloth was soaked enough with my blood on it, I tied it up with some rocks underneath me to give weight to it. While preparing it my eyes were still observing the beast that was an inch away from where Mirae was.
I knew for this to work I needed to throw it past the beast so the smell of blood could attract it more. So I tried my best to throw it as hard as I could over the beast's head to the opposite side of us.
'Whoosh'
Thankfully the ball of cloth could fly past it and drop around 10m distance away from us. As the cloth passed by the beast, its nose quickly reacted to the scent of blood, so it moved its head in the direction of it and hurriedly chased it.
Seeing how the beast was distracted, I hurriedly came over to where Mirae was. I didn't know what kind of luck we had, but thankfully Mirae seemed to start waking up.
I quickly grabbed her hand and started to drag her barely conscious self in the opposite direction of where the beast was clawing at the cloth, and I knew that we didn't have much time to run away from here quickly.
As I kept running and dragging her, Mirae quickly caught on to where we were, the situation, and started to pick up her pace. While running I could hear another set of hurried footsteps following us. I didn't know when Manager Wang started to run along with us. I'm just thankful that at least he knows how to shut his loud mouth now.
I didn't know how long we had to run until I came across a gap between some big stones and against the short rocky cliff hole in our direction. I knew that Mirae and I would not last longer running like this and could hurriedly catch up to the beast if we just kept running, or in the worst case, we might even come across a more dangerous beast as we ran.
So I pulled her hand that was beside me and signaled her to that gap. We ran there hoping there was nothing in there and it could hide us from other beasts too.
When we entered the crack we found a small cave behind it. Hopefully, it was enough big enough to hide us for a while. Not long after Mirae and I entered the crack, Manager Wang also followed us into it.
Thankfully, there was nothing but rocks and a few grass in it. As the cave is only as big as a 2 by 2 room I can see the whole room, and I observed no other living beings in it. I guess it was safe enough for us to stay here until help from the Awakener Association.
My legs just went weak as my mind started to relax. I slumped to the ground and my whole body was still trembling as adrenaline rushed through my veins. I didn't know how long it took for us to calm ourselves down, but it felt like an eternity. The silence was deafening in the cave. I could only hear many different breaths in the room.
"Ae… Aerin-ah are we in a dungeon?" Mirae's small voice broke the deafening silence.
"I… think so," I answered in a little unsure tone. "I don't know enough about dungeons, but from many descriptions from news and articles I've read before, I think this is the inside of a so-called dungeon."
"Thank you Aerin, I know without you I'm just going to be food for those beasts." Mirae huddled closer to me and started to hug me.
"Of course Mirae, I'm not going to leave you alone." I hugged her back as I knew we both needed the reassurance of other human beings' touch.
"Hey enough of this sappy talk, I don't want to hear any more of that. Move away, I need space to lie down." Manager Wang let his presence be known to the two of them. He also shoved me as he moved past us and plopped his big body down to the floor not far behind us.
"You guys better thank me later as my son-in-law will help save you guys too," he said arrogantly.
"Yeah, yeah let's hope your son-in-law can save us faster than us dying in here because of the beast." I turned my back on him and sat a bit closer to the opening.
"Yeah, I am gonna survive." I heard him mumbling behind me.