The Artist Who Paints Dungeon

After finishing a fantastic meal, Gio threw sausages to the waterfowl and returned to the cabin to rest. Perhaps because he had eaten so much, he didn't feel hungry even when dinner came.

“Scorched rice….”

“Coorr?”

“I can’t eat right now, but let’s cook scorched rice tomorrow. It’ll be delicious.”

“Cooooorororrr.”

Lying on the bed, Seo Gio poked Honey who was lying next to him.

“Coong.”

“So soft.”

“Coong!!!”

Honey protested vehemently, but it only made him even cuter.

“This harmless little guy.”

He thought that if it grew just a little bigger, he might even use it as a pillow.

'Would it be possible to create something that feels similar?'

Feeling bad about using a living waterfowl as a pillow, he considered making a soft pillow that wasn’t alive.

Lost in such thoughts, Gio blinked.

He couldn't sleep at all.

“Phew….”

There were times like this occasionally.

“Is this the fate of an artist?”

“…Coong?”

Honey reacted as if to say, 'Stop talking nonsense and just sleep,' but it wasn't that simple.

Rubbing his face a few times against the softness of the blanket stuffed full of feathers, Gio soon got up from his spot.

“Honey, Dad's leaving.”

“Coor.”

“You heartless guy.”

Leaving the tired Honey behind, he headed to his studio full of all kinds of materials.

His severe insomnia was triggered by a sudden interest in something.

“…I'm curious about the view outside the company.”

By pinpointing a location and imagining it as precisely as possible, Gio could visualize the scenery of that place.

At first, he thought it was just his imagination. After all, even if he imagined what the third floor of the ‘Collection’ company might look like, it shouldn't match the actual view. �

However, as he continued to imagine it and gradually completed the painting, he realized something.

'The landscape of the location I imagined is relatively accurate.'

He suspected it might be one of the benefits he gained after becoming a portrait.

“The outside….”

Gio murmured.

“It's probably a dark dawn.”

It wasn't a place he had never seen before, and painting a place he had already seen once wasn't difficult. Gio began to move his brush as he recalled the view he had seen while standing against a wall in an alley.

Soon, a picture frame appeared in a certain alleyway in Seoul.

***

“Haaah….”

In the early morning streets, a woman ruffled her hair.

“Where else should I cling to next?”

The woman with short black hair, Cha Ara, couldn’t hold back her sigh.

'As expected, there is no place that welcomes F-ranks.'

Even as an Awakener, F-ranks were treated as nothing more than porters.

Cha Ara's rank was F. Her main skill was 'Body Reinforcement.' She couldn't afford to learn any other skills, and it was no surprise that she didn't have a profession. She had the typical porter’s status.

Today, after being dismissed from her original team, she sat aimlessly on a bench.

“…Well, who would hire a porter with an injured leg?”

It was due to a leg injury she sustained in the dungeon she visited that afternoon.

With plenty of other F-ranks who wanted to be porters, there was no reason to hire someone who limped.

'I liked that the team was relatively composed of decent people.'

Though they weren't particularly kind, it was a team consisting of people who didn't meddle in each other's business. Even though they treated Cha Ara as invisible due to her being an F-rank porter, the team members themselves were generally indifferent to one another.

Such indifference was hard to find and was one of the virtues of modern people.

“Though that's also why I got fired so easily.”

Having no more usefully, Cha Ara was told they could no longer hire her and was kicked out.

It was a relief that at least they settled her payment before kicking her out. Cha Ara stared at the balance on her account displayed on her phone for a long time.

Altogether, it amounted to about 500,000 won.

It wasn't enough to pay the rent and buy a priest's robe for her youngest sibling.

“The rent went up this time….”

Groan.

Cha Ara let out a distressed sound.

“…Now, what should I do.”

Looking up at the sky where snow began to fall gently, Cha Ara clicked her tongue.

“This is awful.”

As if the cold wasn't bad enough, why did it have to snow too?

'…The terminal must have been cut off long ago. Anyway, with oppa at home, the youngest should be fine. As long as he’s not somewhere giving away his things like a pushover again, it's fine.’

Inwardly feeling a sense of loneliness, Cha Ara sniffled and got up from the bench.

“Better find a place where I won't get snowed on.”

Tightening the scarf her youngest sibling had made for her, Cha Ara started moving her feet.

She had originally intended to just sleep on the bench, but with snow falling, she might not wake up the next morning.

'If only I could sleep near a station or corporate building.'

Public facilities or areas near relatively well-off companies, where there was a lot of foot traffic, had warmth spells cast on them

If she could sleep near there, she wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to sleep out in the open, but if caught, she could be demoted to a 4th-class citizen at worst.

‘I’ve secured a city stay permit for a few days with my hunter’s license, but that doesn't mean I can sleep out in the open anywhere. If I get caught by security, it'll be in trouble ….'

At times like this, she envied her older brother, Cha Eun-hyuk.

“That guy can at least sleep in his fish-shaped bun cart.”

Her older brother, who sells fish-shaped buns, made a living by always moving his cart from the countryside to the city since left unattended in the city, someone might steal or destroy it.

“Ugh….”

So naturally, Cha Ara didn't expect that she could sleep on his cart.

After wandering aimlessly for a while, Cha Ara's steps led her into a dark alley.

…What's that.

'…A portrait?'

On one side of the alley wall, hung a portrait of a man.

“…What the hell, it's creepy….”

The man in the portrait was handsome, as if he were a sculpture or doll, but rather than his striking looks, it was the stillness in his quietly closed eyes that seeped into her skin.

It felt like staring at a painted corpse, so ominous that Cha Ara backed away and left the area.

'Some lunatic hung a painting here.'

It must have been the work of some crazy guy or a hunter with bizarre skills, so Cha Ara decided not to pay it much attention. She had no intention of sleeping in this place where snow fell directly, anyway.

After walking a bit further, Cha Ara came across a woman.

She had been hit by the cold snow for so long that a thick layer of white snow had already piled up on her.

Judging by the appearance of the woman curled up like a ball, she seemed to be a fourth-class citizen illegally residing in the city.

Her thin body was faintly moving, not dead yet as she seemingly still breathing.

'She's pretty far out.'

Usually, the poor stayed in deeper alleys.

Cha Ara initially intended to ignore the vagrant and walk past, but stopped after taking a few steps with an extremely uncomfortable expression before returning to stand before her.

Whether they had fallen asleep or passed out from the cold, the vagrant was breathing but hadn't regained consciousness. She didn't even seem to notice Cha Ara right in front of them.

“…Damn it.”

Cha Ara took off her scarf, lightly wrapped it around the vagrant's neck, and quickly walked away. Hearing faint sounds of the vagrant moving, her pace quickened even more.

'Damn it, this is embarrassing. Damn it, damn it….'

Feeling the chill on her now-bare neck, Cha Ara grew somewhat resentful.

“Why is she sleeping so pitifully like that…!”

Her chest tightened inexplicably.

The vagrant's age seemed to be similar to or younger than her own. At most, she couldn't have been over twenty years old.

She couldn't just walk past when someone she could have called a friend looked like they were on the verge of death while sleeping.

“Ah, darn it. The youngest knitted that for me… Youngest, ah…”

It was a scarf painstakingly woven from the fur of livestock and monsters caught in the village. The youngest had decent skills, so it was quite a good scarf, and she had been using it well all winter. But now, she had lost it in such a stupid way.

'Damn it… I shouldn't have said anything to oppa or Cha Yi-sol…'

As Cha Ara trudged along the road, something strange soon caught her eye.

A portrait of a man.

“…Huh.”

She had seen it earlier.

'…W, what is this? I didn’t see this here before. Did I see it wrong? Or were there multiple picture frames?’

The frame was half-hidden in the shadows, making the face hard to see, but she immediately recognized it as the same portrait she had just seen.

For some reason, a chill ran down her spine, like seeing a horror movie.

“Uh, uh uh….”

Even if she was F-rank, an awakener was still an awakener. She could instinctively feel danger.

“Am I screwed?”

At that crude remark,

the portrait, buried in the shadows, opened its eyes.

The mouth of the portrait, no longer obscured by the darkness, moved smoothly.

“My apologies.”

It spoke in an aristocratic tone.

When Cha Ara blinked at the overwhelming sense of unease.

The picture frame was nowhere to be seen.

What, woah, what.

'What was that?'

It was only then that Cha Ara realized she had collapsed to the ground.

“…D-d

Someone save me.

Her hand, resting on the snow-covered ground, trembled. Cha Ara knew—and the world knew—that it wasn't simply because of the cold.

Though it was nonsense, deep down, she felt like I wouldn’t be able to keep her composure if she didn't at least ramble such nonsense.

“Crazy….”

Cha Ara realized something without even intending to.

'I almost died.'

Though the situation hadn't been truly that dangerous, Cha Ara knew that the bizarre portrait she had just encountered was an extremely dangerous existence.

Had it been even slightly less polite, enough not to feel the need to say, ‘My apologies’, who might say for sure if Cha Ara couldn't have ended up as a corpse?

“…What, what was that. Seriously, what was that. What did I just see.”

Cha Ara, who was gathering her strength to escape this place, felt something cold and hard brush her hand while fumbling around.

At the small and hard texture, Cha Ara, whose skin crawled all the way to the top of her head, couldn't even scream—her mouth gaped and closed wordlessly.

As she groped around with her hand again, uncontrollably shaking, a cold small object soon entered her hand.

With her heart sinking, she inspected it …..

“…A g, gem?”

It was a black and transparent-coloured gem.

“…What is this…”

She also instinctively knew one thing.

Cha Ara knew that this was a gift from the portrait she had just encountered.

Before they died, her parents had always told her that good deeds would be rewarded.

This entire situation felt like a chilling fairy tale.

***

Meanwhile, another person was just as unsettled.

“Stalking is a bad thing.”

Gio couldn't regain his composure at his own rudeness.

Painting the alley at dawn had been fine. However, after finishing the painting, he saw a woman moving inside the frame and briefly worried whether she might be in danger at such a late hour.

As a result, Gio’s gaze kept following her even without himself realizing ….

“And ended up stalking her.”

He had observed the other person without her consent.

“She must have been surprised.”

He would simply quietly observe the buildings inside Collection or move between frames normally, so he didn't realize. However, through this opportunity, Gio came to know for certain.

'If I fix my gaze on something that moves, the frame in the real world moves along with them.'

That was how the moving portrait incident that followed Cha Ara came about.

“I hope my apology was conveyed well…”

Because he had just been absentmindedly watching the bob-haired woman, he saw her giving her scarf to a poor person and the sight of her being terrified at seeing his frame. Only when the woman turned pale and froze, collapsing with a thud did Gio finally come to his senses.

He felt admiration toward the woman who still seemed to be about a high school student’s age, worried about whether she was okay being alone at this late hour, and guilty for having startled her with his rudeness.

This deep emotion was recognized as an item of trade, and Gio gave a gem to Cha Ara as a gift.

No, wait a moment.

“Did I scare her even more?”

Overwhelmed by his own rudeness and being out of it, he couldn't think straight.

But if he suddenly gave a gift to a high schooler already terrified by a living, moving portrait without saying a word, who would pick it up saying, 'Wow, it's a gem?'

“Ah….”

He should have just given her something like cookies.

'Of all times,  I didn't have any baked cookies on hand, so I ended up drawing her a gem instead without realizing it.’

If he had given her some trivial snack, it might have been less frightening. Gio faintly saw the back of the bob-haired student running away in panic through the frame.

“My apologies…”

At that moment, Gio realized something.

Does my personality change sometimes?

It was the moment he became truly aware of himself as the ‘Black Cloak’.