You Will Be Blessed If You Do Good Deeds¿

I was constantly rolling through the mud. Honestly, if someone saw me from a distance, they'd probably have no idea if I was human. They’d probably think it was just a clump of mud rolling around. But this was the only way to avoid the ants with poor vision.

‘I should’ve worked out earlier!’

For a high school senior who only studied for college exams, the intensity of this exercise was too much.

If it weren’t for the increase in my stamina and strength as a reward for defeating the queen ant earlier, I would’ve already been dead by now.

A severe thirst made the taste of blood rise in my mouth.

Still, I was lucky that the monsters I was facing had relatively low intelligence and that there was terrain nearby that could mask my scent. Even so, some degree of damage was unavoidable.

• Find the enemy! Find the enemy!

• Release the venom!

• Melt it! Melt it!

“Ugh!”

I let out a short scream.

Hiding in the mud to avoid the ants was just a temporary solution. Even though the ants were low-level monsters, they had some intelligence, so as soon as they realized I was hiding in the mud and masking my scent, they started to act.

They began spraying venom in all directions.

Drip, drip. The purple venom spread through the mud. The venom started seeping into the mud I was hiding in.

Sssssss!

The mud mixed with venom burned my skin like it was melting.

The pain of my skin melting with my eyes open was excruciating, but the real problem was where the venom had touched my flesh.

I kept my mouth shut to avoid screaming, but the scent of my burning skin attracted the ants to my location.

• Here! Here!

• Revenge for the queen!

Damn, those annoyingly diligent bastards!

Though I was worried about secondary infection, I had no other choice. I desperately lowered my posture, covering my wounds with fresh mud to hide the smell of the burning skin.

I probably looked like a mess.

‘How much time has passed…?’

I was hanging on by luck, but time was not on my side. My stamina was steadily depleting. Every time I rolled to avoid the ants, my wounds worsened, so my movements slowed down naturally.

• Kiiiii!

• It smells!

But the situation… there was no sign it was getting any better.

There was no sign of a rescue team arriving, nor did any system message appear to indicate that the error had been fixed.

‘Damn it.’

I tried to pump mana into my tired muscles to restore some strength, but with the mana circuit I had just used for the incantation magic, even casting a simple spell was impossible.

I had bravely declared I would hang on, but honestly, there was no hope left.

It was a miracle that I had lasted this long.

Thrown in with no weapons and surviving for this long?

‘But isn’t this enough?’

Even as I rolled in the mud, I wondered if the venom had touched my eyes, as my vision started to blur.

Maybe that’s why.

In a moment of bad judgment, my skin was exposed to the surface of the mud.

• Here!

Ssssss!

I barely managed to roll out of the way to avoid the teeth aimed at my neck. The ant's teeth lodged into the mud. But I couldn’t avoid it completely. The ant’s compound eyes caught my movement. The sight of it moving was disturbingly grotesque.

Click, click!

The teeth buried in the mud moved roughly.

But there was no energy left to avoid it.

Damn it.

I bit my lip.

I tried to get up, but my arms and legs wouldn’t cooperate.

Was it finally… too much?

Was this the end for Jung Da-on, the human?

‘Jung Da-jeong, I’m sorry…’

Just when I truly felt the end approaching, I squeezed my eyes shut.

Crash!

At that moment, I heard something different in my ear.

• Enemy! New enemy!

• It hurts! It hurts!

• Help!

A new voice of pain.

I urged my blurry mind to focus and raised my head.

And when I lifted it, I saw…

“...What?”

The swarm of ants, which had darkened the horizon, was literally being torn apart. Ant carcasses were flying apart like ashes burning in the fire.

And, most importantly.

The flow of mana in this world was shifting.

No, it wasn’t just mana. The very atmosphere in the sky felt unusual.

At first, I thought maybe a new monster had appeared, but it didn’t seem like it. In a low-level dungeon like this, no monster could exert such overwhelming force.

The true nature of this bizarre vortex was…!

• A new user has entered the dungeon.

For the first time, I felt pure joy from a system message.

Perhaps it was closer to euphoria.

So, the rescue team finally arrived!

‘That was quick, damn…’

They arrived just as I was on the brink of death. I was frustrated, but seeing how quickly they were sweeping through the monsters, it seemed like some very strong hunters had come.

Even though the ants were low-level monsters, the overwhelming display of strength suggested that at least an A-rank hunter was part of the rescue team, probably a group of a dozen or more.

With such a team, cleaning up this low-level dungeon would just be a matter of time.

‘Wow, I’m alive.’

Once I’m out of here, I’ll send a message to my family to get some samgyeopsal or something...

I wanted to cheer, but I just lay down in the mud. I really couldn’t do anything more.

And, honestly, I didn’t need to.

• Run! Run!

• Fight back! Fight back!

The ants, bent on avenging their queen, no longer cared about me. To be exact, they couldn’t. A much stronger enemy had appeared at the rear of their formation.

The sky, covered in ants, was suddenly tinted with a greenish hue.

It was pure chaos.

It looked like the end of the world.

• Dungeon cleared.

But for humans, it was also a victory.

“Rescue team here!”@@novelbin@@

And amidst the vanishing invaders, a voice echoed.

This time, it was the voice of a human, not a monster.

“If there are any survivors, please speak up!”

I desperately wanted to answer that voice, but I didn’t even have the strength to respond. I barely gathered enough energy to raise my head.

I needed to see the rescue team.

Finally, after a lot of effort, I saw the rescue team appear in the distance. I blinked my eyes.

The figure of the rescue team that had shown such overwhelming strength… was just one man.

It was unexpected. Hunters typically avoided solo expeditions for safety reasons.

But no matter how much I looked, there was only one man.

He was holding a sword in one hand, and oddly enough, his hair was white. It wasn’t dyed; it looked like it had genuinely turned white from age. But his face still looked young. Maybe in his early twenties.

‘Oh, it’s…’

Even with my blurred vision from the venom, and even though I didn’t care much for gossip because I was just a student, I couldn’t not recognize that face.

That man was… the most famous hunter in South Korea.

“Ah, found her.”

He was the man whose face you saw on billboards at department stores, on TV commercials.

I opened my eyes wide.

The one who cleared the dungeon by himself was… S-rank Hunter, Yoo Han-ul!

His name was well-known to anyone in South Korea. Even the reporters who had been in the dungeon with me earlier had mentioned his name when praising my own achievements. In fact, he represented all hunters in South Korea.

But why would someone like him come to a low-level dungeon like this to rescue?

Yoo Han-ul, ever sharp as an S-rank hunter, immediately recognized my presence. Without wasting time, he ran over and helped me, who was rolling in the mud.

“Are you okay?”

He then pulled up my ID photo on his Hunter-only PDA and looked back and forth between it and my face.

“Hm… Jung Da-on, right?”

It was understandable that Yoo Han-ul was suspicious. I must have looked like a complete mess.

After rolling around in the mud for hours, my skin, exposed under my torn clothes, was scratched and bruised.

“Oh, if it’s hard to speak, you don’t have to. You must have had a tough time, right?”

I stared at Yoo Han-ul, who spoke to me kindly.

Even in the TV commercials or on billboards, his features were meticulously sculpted, but seeing him in person, they were even more impressive.

His white hair didn’t even take away from his flawless beauty.

But… that wasn’t the problem.

I wasn’t stunned by his looks alone.

I had never seen Yoo Han-ul in person before, but…

As I still couldn’t speak, Yoo Han-ul, maybe thinking I was wary, smiled and squinted his eyes.

“I’m with the rescue team handling the dungeon break. I’m not an enemy. Have you ever heard of Yoo Han-ul?”

That was something anyone with normal eyesight and thinking in South Korea would know.

Even everyone in the country knew why his unusual white hair developed.

It was because Yoo Han-ul, while fighting an S-rank monster solo to stop a dungeon break, overused his mental energy, causing his hair to turn white. That story was covered in documentaries and broadcasted often.

“Has the shock been too much? Are you able to speak?”

When I still didn’t answer, Yoo Han-ul looked at me with a worried gaze.

Despite my appearance—covered in mud, ant body fluids, and probably looking unrecognizable—his gaze held no disgust or hesitation. Only pure concern.

He was truly a kind-hearted hunter worrying about a civilian who got stuck in a dungeon.

Just moments ago, he had wiped out the ants like they were nothing!

“Hmm, if you can’t speak, try blinking your eyes... You’re still conscious. That’s a relief. Now, I’m going to make contact with you, Jung Da-on... don’t be surprised. I’m just going to clean your wounds. If they get infected, it could be serious.”

The hand that had just unleashed deadly sword energy now pulled out a handkerchief and carefully wiped my face and injured areas.

“This is bad. Your arm’s injury is severe. It’s not a good idea to take a potion right now, but when we get out of here, we should head straight to the emergency room. Don’t worry too much. We can treat injuries worse than this in our country.”

With his overwhelming strength, one would expect him to be full of arrogance, but his tone was polite and his demeanor kind. It was almost as if he was trying to comfort a child. Truly, Yoo Han-ul was a respected hunter, even at such a young age.

As he wiped my face and hands with the handkerchief, he looked at me and froze in surprise when he saw my face, which was slightly cleaned up.

“Hmm.”

He tilted his head slightly.

I noticed the change in his gaze. For the first time, doubt appeared in his eyes.

“Have we met somewhere before?”

I strained to speak, my voice weak.

“No…”

I could have easily ignored the question, but there was something I couldn’t dismiss.

As a former Demon King, I possessed the ability to observe the souls of others.

So as soon as I saw Yoo Han-ul, I recognized him.

The color of his soul—one I could never forget.

Even if his body had changed, even if the world he lived in had shifted, the core of his soul remained the same.

But that brilliant, shining soul… was a light that was unwelcome to demons.

Yoo Han-ul, seeing my silent response, smiled brightly.

In a world where all traces of monsters had been wiped out, the sunset behind him glowed faintly.

To me, he looked almost angelic.

“Ah, I said it.”

And, turning away from his angelic smile, I looked up at the sky.

‘It’s over...’

The hero who had slain me in my past life as the Demon King.

Why had he been reincarnated here? I had no idea.