The Academy Geniuses I Raised and Dressed

How did we end up all the way to the seventh floor of the dungeon?

A few minutes earlier, I had finished collecting all the required materials on the first floor of the Spirit Forest and had moved on to the second floor.

Before long, I found one of the two materials needed from this floor. That left only the Ghost Flower. To find it, I aimed for the springs scattered throughout the forest.

When I arrived at one such spring, I saw the Ghost Flower—along with Meiling, standing on the opposite side.

She must have arrived almost exactly when I did, because she was glancing between the flower and me.

The moment our eyes met—

Without anyone needing to say it first, we both lunged for the pale-white Ghost Flower.

Unfortunately, with my Stamina Aptitude of F, there was no way I could match Meiling’s agility, boosted by her C in Stamina. She snatched the flower easily.

While she was standing there, smugly holding it, the ground beneath us suddenly lit up, and in the next instant, we were both transported to the seventh floor.

It only took a glance to realize where we were—the trees and plants all around us were wilted and withered.

On the final floor of the Spirit Forest, the scenery changes drastically like this.

"I’m not dying here," Meiling said, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

"We just have to find a return portal and get out of the dungeon. Oh, I see—you couldn’t get the Ghost Flower, so you’re lying to make me hit the emergency request button?"

"Do you even know what floor we’re on?"

At my words, she closed her mouth.

"…Are you saying you know?"

"Seventh floor."

This time she froze with her mouth open.

"Look at the trees and plants around us—it’s obvious. This is the seventh floor of the Spirit Forest. The monsters here are about level sixty-one to seventy."

I lowered my voice.

"If we fight them, we’re as good as dead."

No need to say it aloud, but neither her rare magic staff nor her skills could so much as scratch a seventh-floor monster.

"Wh-why would we suddenly get sent here?" she asked, now whispering like me as reality sank in.

"Who knows. A trap, some kind of teleport device… can’t say for sure."

I shifted my gaze to the drone in my hands.

Then, I pressed the red button labeled HELP.

"You…!" Meiling’s eyes widened at me.

"It’s an emergency," I said calmly.

"But the teacher said using it means zero points!"

"Our lives are more important than the score."

"…"

She pressed her lips together at that.

Still… just what the hell is going on?

I licked my lips nervously.

When I told her I didn’t know why we’d been sent here, that was a lie. In truth, I knew the cause very well.

The problem was that this related event wasn’t supposed to happen until much later—near the end of the second semester.

So it was already starting at this point? And I even got dragged into it myself…

Whatever the reason, getting out alive came first.

"Meiling, are you wearing that unique necklace you got before?"

"I am."

"Let me borrow it. I need monster detection."

"…Fine."

She reached into her collar and pulled out the necklace, handing it to me.

I removed the one I was wearing and equipped the Eyes of the Ashen Butcher.

My senses sharpened immediately, and information I hadn’t been aware of before flowed into my mind.

No monsters nearby. Good.

If there had been monsters where we landed, we’d have died on the spot.

Still, just sitting here waiting for rescue was suicide.

In open-world dungeons, monsters can spawn anywhere at random—meaning they could appear here without warning.

"Stay behind me, Meiling."

"Where are we going?"

"Like you said—out of the dungeon. We’ll find a return portal. We can’t just sit around waiting for a rescue that might never come. The longer we stay, the higher the chance we die."

If we were really lucky, we might run into hunters already active on this floor and get help.

But that was a long shot.

To handle monsters here, hunters needed to be in the sixty-one to seventy range, and according to Latesai’s lore, the higher the level, the fewer the hunters.

And in this open-floor dungeon, I couldn’t hear a single sound—if there were a battle going on, even faint noises would carry.

"But what about the boss?" she asked, understandably worried.

In any floor except the first, the return portal—and the portal to the next area—only appeared in the boss’s domain.

On the first floor, a return portal was always at the starting point. But on the seventh floor, we’d have to locate the boss’s area to find one.

In the Spirit Forest’s open terrain, it was more accurate to say you were finding the boss rather than entering a boss room.

"You don’t have to kill the boss to use the portal. Trust me. And if something goes wrong…" I met her eyes.

"I’ll make sure you get out of here alive."

"W-what…?"

"Let’s move."

"W-wait—"

I didn’t wait. I started walking, and before long, I heard her footsteps following me.

Spirit Forest – First Floor

At the starting point where the first-years from Gwangcheon Academy had entered, Allen stood in front of the return portal.

A red alert suddenly appeared on the tablet in his hand.

It was a rescue signal.

"Hmm."

Allen was troubled.

The name on the request was Nam Yein.

I’m sure I heard this student was one of the top ones…

Chen Meiling from Class A, Nam Yaein from Class B, and Lumina Cueva—these three had been described by the principal as possessing potential far beyond the rest of the first-years.

In fact, Lumina Cueva had already gathered all her materials and was resting at the first-floor starting point.

At the one-hour mark, she was the only one who had finished.

When asked why she hadn’t left, she shyly said she was waiting for her friend.

Most of the others had either given up on the second-floor materials or were still struggling on the first.

"What’s wrong?" asked a faculty member beside him.

"We’ve got a rescue request," Allen replied.

Hearing this, Lumina—who had been sitting a short distance away—instinctively leaned to try and see.

Then the tablet showed the live feed from Yein’s drone.

"No!!"

"This is—!"

Both adults spoke at once in shock.

The footage clearly showed the seventh floor of the Spirit Forest.

The blurry, choppy image was proof of the massive floor difference between here and there.

And in the video were not just Yein, but Meiling as well.

"Why are they on the seventh floor?" the staff member asked.

Huh? Seventh floor?? Lumina tilted her head.

"We’ll only know for sure after checking the drone itself… but there’s no time for that now," Allen said, lowering the tablet and pulling gear from his inventory.

If they lost the academy’s top prospects less than a month after arriving in Gwangcheon, it wouldn’t just be a slap on the wrist.

The principal’s razor-sharp gaze flashed in his mind.

"You go outside and request reinforcements from the school. Once you’re back, handle the students returning here. I’ll try to locate the nearest portal so I can move in as soon as help arrives to rescue Nam Yein and Chen Meiling."

Yein and Meiling!?

Lumina’s face went pale.

"What about the time difference between inside and outside?" the staff member asked.

"No need to worry—it’s not like ten seconds outside will turn into years inside. When you exit through a portal, time snaps back to the exact moment you entered. Just take this when you come back with the rescue team, and you’ll arrive at my current time frame."

Allen cut a lock of his hair and handed it over.

"Then I’ll leave it to you."

Allen finished equipping himself in an instant and dashed away from the starting point, his speed like that of a wolf weaving through the forest.

"Still… how in the world did those kids end up on the seventh floor? If this goes wrong, the both of them could—huh?"

The staff member looked around the starting area and noticed something odd.

"Wasn’t someone just over there a moment ago?"

He thought it over for a few seconds before dismissing it as his imagination and looking away.

Crawling along the ground, I raised a fist.

The rustling sounds from behind me stopped.

I focused all my senses forward.

There.

It was the third monster group I’d detected since we arrived on the seventh floor.

After checking my surroundings, I adjusted our route toward the direction with no monster presence.

Moving slowly without making a sound, just to avoid detection, was exhausting.

Our forward progress was painfully slow, and the tension made every muscle in my body scream.

If we weren’t hunters, we would have collapsed long ago.

It had been about thirty minutes since I’d sent the rescue request, but no help had arrived.

Given that rescuing us would require a level 65–70 hunter, Allen alone couldn’t possibly pull it off.

From what I remembered, the Gwangcheon Academy instructors were only around level 50.

Even if they brought in outside help, it would take time.

As I crawled, I lifted my upper body slightly to study the shapes of the trees and undergrowth.

In the Spirit Forest, you could locate the boss’s area by studying the vegetation.

But despite searching, I hadn’t found a single clue. The boss zone seemed far from our teleport point.

Unlucky.

Then again, being sent to the seventh floor at all had already been bad luck.

"Hoo…"

A strained breath came from behind me.

I turned to see Meiling with her head hanging low toward the ground.

No way—

I quickly turned fully and grabbed her chin, lifting her face.

"W-what are you doing??"

"Shh."

I covered her mouth with my palm and examined her closely.

Already…

Her skin had taken on a faint greenish tint.

An obvious sign of poisoning.

There are poison traps on the seventh floor, sure… but we’ve been crawling along the exact same path, so why only her…?

As I looked more closely, I spotted a red, swollen patch along her neck.

Ah, a venom bug.

Thankfully, it wasn’t from a monster attack.

Venom bugs were a gimmick on this floor—they inflicted a random poison effect at random times.

I quickly pulled an antidote potion from my inventory and handed it to her.

"Drink."

With a pained expression, Meiling drank it and immediately clamped both hands over her mouth.

"Uurp…"

A gagging sound slipped through her fingers. I’d never drunk one myself, but it must have tasted even worse than an HP potion.

At least it worked—her complexion began to return to normal.

"Y-you came prepared…" she whispered, handing me the empty vial.

"You never know what’ll happen in a dungeon. If you feel anything wrong with your body again, tell me immediately—don’t try to hide it."

Most likely, her pride had kept her from asking for help until now.

"As I said before, the only thing that matters right now is your life. Everything else can wait."

"…Got it."

She actually agreed quietly, instead of snapping back with a Don’t order me around.

I stowed the empty vial in my inventory and was about to move again when—

Through the enhanced vision from the Eyes of the Ashen Butcher, I caught sight of something.

A black, writhing shadow—or perhaps a mist.

It was moving slowly, but unmistakably toward us.

"…Meiling." I reached toward my inventory.

"What?"

"When I give the signal, get up and run."

"What? What’s going on?"

"A monster’s spotted us."

"!!"

I heard her swallow hard.

It was one of the seventh floor’s monsters—Night Wraith Fog.

An Dark-attribute creature that could drain your HP to zero in an instant if it caught you, unless you had immunity or resistance.

We hadn’t noticed it before, so it must have just respawned nearby.

Our bad luck was really holding steady.

I pulled out an item from my inventory, hurled it toward the Night Wraith Fog, and shouted—

"Now! Run!"

We sprang to our feet and sprinted.

A muffled pop sounded behind us, followed by a cloud of black smoke enveloping the monster.

It was a smoke bomb—the same kind I’d used against Jin Cheongwang’s gang.

Against monsters, it could buy a few precious seconds.

The problem now was that we could no longer move slowly and safely like before.

Sure enough, I could already sense other monsters picking up our movement and drawing closer.

"Save your movement skill until the very end! That’s your last lifeline!"

"Got it!!" she yelled back, her tone sharp with stress.

"By the way, why are you so slow?!"

"Not my fault! My Stamina Aptitude is F!"

"What!? It’s that low?!"

Sorry about that! Dammit!

It’s not like I wanted to end up possessing some disposable background character!

I wanted to yell it out, but any extra breath I had needed to go to my legs.

Even as we ran flat-out, I kept scanning the area.

We had to avoid monsters, but I also had to keep looking for clues.

"There!!"

That’s when I saw it—blades of grass tinged a yellow-green.

A sign of the boss’s territory.

"Follow me! This way!"

Meiling and I bolted toward the trail of yellow-green grass.

(End of Chapter)