Chapter 53
“…Pardon?”
I was rendered speechless by Sonya’s question as she stared up at me.
Why hadn’t I sprayed on the perfume I’d received as a gift?
Naturally, I had a reason.
“Ah, it’s just……”
“Was the scent not to your liking?”
Her amber eyes trembled faintly.
Seeing her grow dejected like a large dog that had been scolded by its owner, I hurriedly waved my hands.
“No! The scent was really nice. Truly. But it was so…… How should I put it? Strong?”
“Strong?”
“Yes. I didn’t realize it at first, but when I wore that perfume to work, the beastkin customers who came into the store were terrified.”
“They were terrified?”
Her eyes trembled slightly.
“Those with sensitive noses practically ran away as soon as they opened the door. Some of them even trembled in fear. The little beastkin customers in particular looked like they were about to cry, so I had no choice but to stop wearing it while working. I was afraid I’d drive away the customers.”
The scent was good.
It was clearly a scent she had chosen after giving it serious thought.
It suited my taste, and even felt luxurious.
But my current job was in customer service.
Since I had to deal with people, a perfume that made them run away just from smelling it was too much to wear every day.
What the cat beastkin customer had said back then had been decisive.
-Eek, eeeek! Y-you smell like a s-scary wolf lady, b-big brother!
-Waaah! You smell scary! S-save me!
Could there be some code among beastkin hidden in this scent that I didn’t know about?
Female beastkin in particular had been unusually frightened.
Anyway, that was why I hadn’t worn it.
When I answered honestly, Sonya’s body stiffened in shock.
“Ah……”
A dazed little exclamation slipped from her lips.
At the same time, her cheeks flushed bright red.
Her neck turned bright red as well.
Her pupils were shaking as though an earthquake had struck.
“Ms. Sonya? Your face suddenly got incredibly red……”
“N-no, it’s nothing! Nothing at all! I-I wasn’t thinking things through. I’m sorry. I was only thinking about myself, wasn’t I? Hahaha.”
Sonya hurriedly took a step back from me.
She covered her flushed cheeks with both hands and looked everywhere but at me.
What was she apologizing so profusely for? I was the one who had said I couldn’t use the perfume because the scent didn’t suit me.
***
‘This is insane…….’
After hearing Kim Mincheol’s answer, Sonya let out a soundless scream.
Other beastkin had run away because of it?
‘How much of my scent did I put into the perfume……?’
There had been only one reason she had left her trace—her mana signature—in the perfume.
To show everyone around him that she was protecting this man.
The favor he had done her was too great to repay with spirit stones alone.
It had been a way of repaying that debt by protecting him while he worked at a convenience store where troublesome customers kept gathering.
It was part of the territorial marking that beastkin, especially carnivorous beastkin, performed instinctively.
A scent that said, This person is mine to protect.
A faint scent indicated a moderate degree of familiarity.
The stronger the scent became, the deeper that familiarity was.
To express her gratitude, she had made the concentration strong and sprayed it on him.
But Sonya had overlooked one very important fact.
Kim Mincheol was a man—in other words, a ‘male.’
Since she had never left her scent on a male before, she had no idea how strong the concentration should be.
She had simply let instinct guide her and mixed her trace into the perfume.
But the scent of a beastkin who stood among the Seven Heroes—especially a wolfkin—would have been overwhelmingly strong to other beastkin.
And if that scent was radiating from the body of an ordinary human male, how would it have felt to the other beastkin?
The answer was obvious.
‘This male is mine, so don’t covet him, you insolent bitches.’
That was why the female beastkin customers had no choice but to panic and flee as soon as they opened the store door.
Her question about why he hadn’t used the perfume.
To her, it had merely been a casual little complaint about why he wasn’t using the gift she had given him.
But when she remembered what she had done to the perfume, Sonya’s face turned bright red.
‘What on earth have I done to Mr. Mincheol……!’
She had marked her territory all over a male, then complained about why he wasn’t wearing it.
Interpreted according to the standards of other races, it came down to this.
‘You got matching couple rings with me, so why aren’t you wearing yours?’
It was an incredibly rude thing to say.
They weren’t even lovers.
They were nothing more than a convenience store customer and a part-timer.
She had crossed the line simply because she had given him a single gift.
She had arranged matching rings on her own and assigned them meaning herself.
She wanted to hide in a mouse hole from shame.
Heat rushed over her face.
She lowered her head and regretted what she had done.
I must be crazy.
This was all a side effect of the 74th floor.
Because her desires were running wild, she had blurted out something she never should have said.
He didn’t think she was some strange woman, did he?
She didn’t want to show her benefactor that side of herself.
“Huh?”
As she floundered in embarrassment, she suddenly realized that her physical condition had completely changed.
‘……I can’t hear them.’
The hallucinations that had been tormenting her just moments ago.
The voices telling her to smash everything around her and kill.
The voices that had kept urging her on were gone.
The excessive desire she had acquired in the 74th-floor dungeon had subsided.
She was still in a more heightened state than usual, of course, but it was a different kind of stimulation from what she had felt on the 74th floor.
Until now, all she had wanted was to smash and destroy everything around her.
But now, a subtle possessiveness had taken its place.
A secret craving to bury her nose once more in the nape of the human standing before her—Kim Mincheol—and layer his body in her scent.
‘Get a grip.’
She had calmed down enough that a few sharp slaps to her cheeks were all it took to regain her composure.
It was surely because of the refreshing scent coming from Kim Mincheol.
That fragrant smell gave her a sense of control that reined in her rampaging instincts.
There was a strange relief in it.
She kept finding herself wanting to have it.
‘Mr. Mincheol’s scent is suppressing my urge to fight.’
At that moment, Yusera’s words struck Sonya’s mind.
-Don’t enter the 74th floor alone.
-If possible, bring someone who can restrain you.
-Don’t bring a hunter who’s too strong.
Those cryptic hints Yusera had left her.
Sonya cautiously looked up at Kim Mincheol with trembling eyes.
The person who satisfied every condition was standing right in front of her.
He was an ordinary person.
Since he wasn’t a hunter, he wouldn’t trigger the dungeon’s gimmick that increased its difficulty.
On top of that, there was this fragrant scent.
The refreshing smell calmed her rampaging instincts.
If that was the case, then……
‘If Mr. Mincheol is by my side, I can keep myself from going berserk no matter what.’
Even if she were consumed by the desire stimulated by the dungeon, it wouldn’t be directed toward destruction.
Possessiveness.
As long as Kim Mincheol was beside her, the desire that stirred within her would surely be drawn in that direction.
If that happened, she might even be able to bring out more powerful strength than usual to protect him.
It was the only key capable of countering the 74th floor’s desire-enhancement debuff.
When Sonya’s thoughts reached that point, she clapped her hands without realizing it.
Clap!
Vitality returned to Sonya’s eyes.
“M-Ms. Sonya? Are you feeling a little better now?”
Even at a time like this, Mincheol was looking at her with concern.
He really was a kind person.
He had burst open a triangle kimbap and broken the refrigerator door.
Even though she had caused a scene and damaged the store, Kim Mincheol was still worried about her.
I can trust this person.
I could trust him to watch my back inside the dungeon.
As long as her desires stayed calm, she had enough power to protect him.
“M-Mr. Mincheol! How much do you get paid per hour here?”
“Pardon? I do get paid fairly well, but……”
“I’ll give you a hundred times that. No, a thousand times.”
“……Pardon?”
She suddenly grabbed Kim Mincheol by the wrist.
“Please, step, back.”
The golem standing behind them took a step closer.
But she paid it no heed.
Even that golem would know she wasn’t acting out of hostility.
“Come somewhere with me. No, please come with me.”
“Where?”
“The Tower. I need you, Mr. Mincheol.”
Kim Mincheol blinked.
Secretly, Sonya hoped he would delay his answer just a little longer.
She wanted to feel the warmth of his skin against hers for even a little longer as she held his sturdy wrist.
Was this also because of the possessiveness the dungeon had stimulated?
She didn’t know.
***
“You want me to go to the Tower with you?”
“Don’t worry! I swear I won’t let a hair on your head be harmed! I-I’ll protect you somehow, Mr. Mincheol!”
I was briefly at a loss for words at her earnest plea as she clung to my sleeve.
She had just destroyed the refrigerator handle with nothing but her grip, hadn’t she?
But now she was carefully clutching only the very end of my sleeve.
A dungeon, huh.
I had occasionally seen posts about them on the convenience store gallery.
I meant the gallery users who had changed careers from convenience-store workers to hunters or porters and sometimes came by to share their impressions.
-Being a porter seems doable for a convenience-store worker.
-The raid members do all the fighting anyway, and there’s no penalty for ordinary people entering below the 50th floor.
-The hourly pay is more than twenty times what most convenience-store workers make.
-It might not have been doable in the old days, but these days hardly anyone dies in the Tower, so it’s worth trying.
I had heard that the income from a single trip was quite lucrative.
Of course, unless you had a fixed party, you apparently wouldn’t get scheduled very often, so the work schedule was irregular.
Maybe it would be worth trying once.
“What floor is it?”
“……It’s a little high.”
“How high?”
No matter how high it was, surely it wouldn’t be above the 50th floor?
Just as I thought that.
“…The 4th.”
“Pardon?”
“The 74th floor……”
The 74th floor?
Quite a bit of time had passed since I settled in Taepyeong City.
Since I watched the news and browsed the gallery at the convenience store every day, I had a rough idea of the local big shots and major issues.
A hunter currently challenging the Tower’s 74th floor.
A wolf beastkin with black wolf ears, no less.
Her name was Sonya.
No way.
I had assumed she was simply someone with the same name.
Who could have imagined that one of Taepyeong City’s top Seven Heroes would be choosing triangle kimbap at the convenience store in my neighborhood?
“Could you possibly be Sonya, one of the Seven Heroes?”
“…Y-yes.”
She lowered her head like a guilty criminal, and her wolf ears drooped dejectedly.
“I-I’m sorry for hiding it. I wasn’t deliberately trying to deceive you. It’s just…… I felt comfortable because you treated me like an ordinary person instead of like one of the Seven Heroes, Mr. Mincheol, so I didn’t think it was necessary to say anything……”
Watching my reaction, she mumbled in a voice steeped in apology.
Honestly, acceptance came before any sense of betrayal.
No wonder the other customers always seemed so wary whenever she came in.
Now I understood why the beastkin had been so shocked by the perfume she gave me.
I immediately understood the comment about it smelling like a delinquent older sister.
So that was why. She was one of the Seven Heroes.
‘But even so, can an ordinary person like me go to the 74th floor?’
Just as I was about to wonder whether it would be dangerous, a number flashed through my mind.
-I’ll give you a hundred times that. No, a thousand times.
A thousand times my hourly wage.
Thirty million won.
And the party member who would escort me was none other than one of the Seven Heroes, said to be the strongest person alive.
There was no reason for me not to go.
It was free money.
“All right. I’ll go.”
“R-really?!”
Sonya’s head shot up.
Her amber eyes widened.
“Yes. You said you’d protect me, after all. If one of the Seven Heroes is guarding me, how could I possibly get hurt?”
“O-of course! I won’t let you suffer even a single scratch, Mr. Mincheol!”
“But when is it? I’ll have to tell the manager so I can arrange my schedule.”
“Oh, that’s fine! We’ll work around your schedule, Mr. Mincheol! I can postpone all the guild’s plans myself, so don’t worry about it!”
She nodded with a radiant smile, as though she had gained the whole world.
Was it really okay to tailor the Tower-conquest schedule to me?
I was just a part-timer.
Well, if she was willing to accommodate me, there was no reason to refuse.
“Then I’ll see you this weekend, and as for the details……”
“Ah, wait! Mr. Mincheol, may I ask you one favor?”
I was about to say goodbye and wrap things up when Sonya hesitantly tugged at my sleeve.
“What is it?”
“When you come to our guild this weekend, could you wear that perfume?”
“…Would that be all right? The beastkin seemed extremely frightened by it.”
“Th-there aren’t many beastkin at our guild, so it’ll be fine!”
Sonya hurriedly began adding excuses.
“M-my guild members might underestimate you just because you’re human! O-of course, there’s absolutely no one mean enough to do that in our guild, but you never know, right? It’s perfect for establishing dominance! A-and!”
“And?”
“My scent is incredibly effective at driving away most monsters! You can think of it like an insect screen! You’ll be much safer if you wear it here!”
An insect screen for establishing dominance and repelling monsters, huh.
If it was a perfume infused with the mana of one of the Seven Heroes, monsters would certainly be likely to flee from it.
If I didn’t want to become dead weight, taking that kind of precaution was the right call.
“Ah, if that’s the case, then I should wear it. All right.”
“……! Y-yes! You have to use plenty! Make sure you spray on lots of it!”
When I readily nodded, Sonya smiled happily.
The wolf tail sticking out behind her wagged furiously.
Was she really that happy?
“Fo, x. It’s a fox.”
The golem standing behind her muttered in its emotionless voice.
“Re, port to the mas, ter.”