"That's everything but the boss room," announces Yun Minseo. "Five in there with it, all along the far wall. The boss is likely to have breath weapons or something, on account of being a dragon, so be careful to keep the carnage contained."

Park Yoo-min and Choi Seungjoo meet up with them in the module (currently) in front of the boss room.

"Are you ready to kick some undead dragon ass? Because I am so ready to kick some undead dragon ass. Bet it's got loot."

Snort.

"Ready. Are you hoping for a full dragon hoard? Because normal gold and jewels will actually be worth less than weird dungeon stuff, you know."

"Oh no I'm hoping there's, like, magical items. Equipment or—"

"We should go in and rescue the people trapped inside."

"—right."

"Hyung is nervous," Choi Seungjoo explains.

He scratches his cheek. "It'll be my first time facing a big dungeon boss like this with such a small group. It's not that I don't trust you guys, but..."

He pats Yoo-min's shoulder.

"Okay, useful thoughts, useful thoughts. Pre-game strategy is useful, right.

"The dragon may be undead but its hide is probably still going to be as resilient as boss monsters tend to be, so it won't be a matter of just burning through it. ...probably. I mean, do try, if that works that'll be a lot easier for all of us, but we should plan for the case where it doesn't. Suggestions?" Not that he doesn't have a plan already forming in his head as he speaks—he's the leader for this mission for a reason, he's got more experience under his belt than Tae-gun does even—but he shouldn't assume his plans are the best, especially in a situation he's not as comfortable with.

Aw. Hye-jin can tell he cares about the captured people they're out to rescue, and the babbling is just a coping mechanism. She gives Yoo-min an understanding smile, but carries on in the practicalities.

"Generally, I think I'll be better off keeping it away from places we don't want it to be over directly making it die. So - away from the back wall that has people trapped. And when I can, I'll focus fire on joints and wings such to weaken for everyone else - that's usually what we do already, when it comes to bosses."

"Sensible and agreeable!"

"Choi Seungjoo-sunbae's powers would probably be good for keeping the boss away from the civilians while Park Yoo-min-sunbae and Kim Hye-jin distract it and I rescue them. I believe I should aim to do that as soon as possible to avoid chance of collateral damage from the fight itself; with bigger monsters there's a lot more that can go very wrong the longer we wait."

"Also sensible! And you'll never guess what I have, because I won't give you time to before I show it to you." He pulls up the 3D holomap of the room, which he can use to point at where the civilians are trapped and his best guess at how they should navigate the early fight to give Tae-gun as much space as possible.

This all sounds reasonable to her, and she's absolutely down to continue being scary and full of fire! And yes, sooner rather than later is better, they should be prioritizing speed of rescuing the civilians. Hye-jin will do her best to make sure that this final stage of the rescue mission goes well, and that everyone gets out safely. Tae-gun will have such excellent opportunities to be heroic and reassuring and whatnot.

"Alright! Twelve seconds for more questions before the dungeon shifts again! No? We good? Good, let's win this."

Planning wins battles, and this one is no different. Kim Hye-jin and Park Yoo-min harass the dragon while Lee Tae-gun rescues the civilians and Choi Seungjoo makes the dragon have a lot of trouble turning around and going after him. Once the civilians are safe, they can go all-out.

The problem: it doesn't really work. The dragon isn't just tough, it's nigh-invulnerable. It takes some damage, slowly, but if this is a war of attrition it'll be a very drawn out one.

The solution: the dragon's hoard. It does have one, it turns out, but it's mostly useless things, scrap and broken machines and rusted metal. It defends said hoard fiercely, however, and the reason why becomes obvious when they catch a shiny glint in the middle of the trash: the dungeon core. It's linked to the dragon itself, and damaging it hurts the dragon a lot more than anything they'd done previously. 

From there it's straightforward, and once the core is destroyed and the dragon is dissolving into ash as the dungeon slowly crumbles they are teleported back to the entrance.

Woo-young is slumped over on a stretcher, being aggressively snuggled by Tae-hwan, and that's probably the only reason he can speak. "Please standby while the medical team ensures you are all fit to leave and won't carry any monster parasites out," he drawls, in stark contrast with the actual med team's professional rush to make sure everything is alright before the dungeon collapse rate starts getting properly dangerous.

Wince. Poor Woo-young. Losing movement is awful.

Anyway, yes. Making sure she doesn't have any little parasites tagging along with her, though she's probably fine. On account of mostly being on fire in this dungeon.

The nice thing about rescues is that there's less media pressure on the espers involved. Everyone's all distracted by the actual victims, with press conferences and interviews with scared loved ones and lots of speculation. The victims of course are much worse off, with vultures shaped like news reporters trying to get them for interviews about what was it like, but, well. At least they usually get something concrete out of the experience. Usually insurance and interviews pay them quite a pretty penny for their trauma and time spent under the media magnifying glass, and there will always be another rescue to eventually take the heat off of them, so it's not forever. Sometimes there are even dungeon chasers, trying to get themselves snatched up by dungeons a second time for the thrill, attention, and payout. Information about dungeons is often more of a cutthroat business than the dungeon clears themselves, between guilds, independent espers, entrepreneurs, dungeon chasers, and various flavors of government entity, well. It gets complicated fast.

But none of that's her problem. Her problem is just heading back to her (still temporary!) silo with her complicated and somewhat self destructive partner, and making sure that he properly locks himself in the bathroom so they can handle their mutual backlash with minimal awkwardness and regrets.

Some people are a lot happier in front of cameras, swooning their partner's arms in the throes of backlash and looking soulfully and longingly into said partner's eyes, in a performance worthy of a K-pop band's kayfabe.

Said partner sighs longsufferingly but... also does in a rather camera-worthy way.

Tae-gun prefers his image to be more professional, thanks. Back to the silo—

—where he can finally stop holding together and, yes, handle his backlash.

The K-pop performance is amusing, and she lets it show on her face. Cute. Glad they're having fun. Not for her either, though, she's with Tae-gun. Professionalism means that nobody wants to play dollies with your life. Well, no it doesn't, but she can pretend it does.

She gets her traditional hot cup of A Beverage (this time it's coffee) and her space heaters and blankets and sits with her back against the bathroom door to see about handling one of the many things involved with reconstructing her life in Korea instead of Japan. This time it's looking at houses again. It's rather nice to look at houses, actually, though she'll probably stop once she actually has one.

The flavour of today's backlash is: horny! It was only one dungeon and he did it with other people so he can manage well enough with the meds and jerking off a couple of times very quietly so that Kim Hye-jin won't hear him.

He still hates it though.