Chapter 206: Bangi-dong Dungeon (1)
TL: SHW
Entrance to Dungeon Seoul-Songpa-20210406-0103.
Initially reported as D-rank.
In a way, I could say this dungeon was the reason my life had ended up like this.
The real causes were Ark and Noah Michel, of course. But in my memory, everything had started with this dungeon. The Bangi-dong Dungeon. The very dungeon Yoo Ji-eun had stubbornly insisted she had to raid.
Even now, thinking about Yoo Ji-eun only made me feel wronged. If she'd given me any logical reason besides that damned Hunter's Instinct of hers, I would've looked the other way and let her do it. Yoo Ji-eun's name carried enough weight to arrange that much. It wasn't as though she wanted to put off raiding a dungeon that needed to be closed. She wanted to close it. If she'd just given me some halfway plausible excuse, I could've brushed it off as an internal dungeon evaluation or something.
Yoo Ji-eun knew all that, and yet she'd done nothing but stubbornly insist. That meant even she hadn't been sure. Which irritated me even more. She'd been trying to dump the responsibility on me.
Damn that infuriating woman.
“December 9, 2021.”
Hong Seok-young spoke slowly into the recorder.
“Dungeon Seoul-Songpa-20210406-0103. Total entrants: two. Hong Seok-young and Woo Hwijae of Guild Mimi.”
The dungeon's rank had remained unchanged for twenty years. D-rank. The small monsters resembling centipedes were not aggressive. Their bodily fluids were mildly toxic, but nowhere near enough to affect an Awakened.
A tiny, cute dungeon that wasn't even useful for training. According to Hope, it was more like an empty snack box that had attracted a bunch of bugs... a Cradle.
Back when guilds managed dungeons, raiding even places like this had been considered a waste of manpower, so they were left alone. Now that the government managed them, easy-to-clear dungeons of D-rank and below would gradually be closed one by one. That had been one of the first projects undertaken after the Ability Management Agency was established.
But this dungeon had never been closed. Mana Herbs grew naturally inside it. It was a stable dungeon whose size and danger level never changed. There were practically no monsters, while Mana Herbs flourished.
Despite knowing all that perfectly well, Yoo Ji-eun had stubbornly insisted on closing it. Instead of saying she had a bad feeling, she could've simply destroyed the core and claimed she'd closed the dungeon because the monsters inside had attacked the Hunters. There would've been no problem. Even if someone had suspected something, nobody would've had the nerve to challenge Yoo Ji-eun. Her influence had been considerable even without her status as Hong Seok-young's prized apprentice.
It was all in the past now.
“Current time... What time is it?”
“Ten in the morning. Ten fourteen... fifteen.”
“Current time, 10:15 a.m. Entering the dungeon.”
***
Once we passed through the Gate, the smell of grass filled the air. A broad meadow stretched out ahead. As the grass brushed against my ankles, I lifted my head and saw a sky packed with stars. Even in the most remote wilderness, far removed from human civilization, it would have been difficult to see that many.
‘Well, that's because this isn't our world! Cradles were designed to recreate as much of our world's environment as possible... You could call this proof of that, I guess?’
Countless stars illuminated the dungeon. Maybe their light was why it was as bright as midday inside, or maybe the Escape Pod had separate lighting of its own.
‘That sky's basically decoration anyway! It's not real. Oh, that's actually pretty poetic. The sky over a homeland we'll never see again? Sandra, didn't you like this kind of thing?’
‘Please don't drag me into this....’
‘You don't? Like a spring day in a ruined homeland we'll never return to.’
‘What does spring have to do with anything....’
‘That novel you were reading the other day.’
‘No, I do like it, but I told you not to drag me into this!’
“You've been in here before?”
Hong Seok-young asked as he looked around.
Hong Seok-young himself had entered this dungeon only a few months ago, not long after it first appeared. The clue Woo I-rok had thoughtfully left behind at the research institute had been what allowed us to turn our attention to the Bangi-dong Dungeon.
Of course, the dungeon was now managed by the government rather than Daseon. I just hoped nobody had wondered why Hong Seok-young had entered an insignificant D-rank dungeon.
I shrugged.
“Well.... Maybe once?”
“Once?”
I looked around.
A forest stood at the far end of the meadow surrounding the Gate. Aside from a few dungeons with unusual environments, most followed this sort of layout. The lower the rank, in particular, the more alike their structures tended to be.
In other words... they were food warehouses. Apparently monsters were no different when it came to not putting much effort into a storeroom.
“Mana Herbs grow here. I came in once for a work inspection.”
We crossed the meadow at an easy pace and entered the forest. The moment we stepped beneath the trees, the climate changed so abruptly it was like walking straight into a jungle. I couldn't help frowning.
“Hmm.... And when was that?”
“About fifteen years from now.”
“That's a long way off. Anything different?”
“Different....”
“A lot can change in ten years. Dungeons can change too.”
Fundamentally, every dungeon maintained an ecosystem of its own. It should have been utterly impossible by Earth's common sense, yet somehow the monsters inside continued to survive.
After hearing Hope's explanation, it all made sense. If the environment had been artificially created, then sure, that was possible. It would be a serious problem if a food warehouse spoiled before it was needed.
“It wasn't very different.”
“So something was different?”
I looked between the trees. A centipede wriggled along, looking like a miniature version of the enormous centipede corpse I'd seen in the burned ruins of Seoul.
Normally, somewhere this overgrown would have been full of noise. Insects, birds, something. By Earth's common sense, there should have been something to hear.
But in this dungeon, there was nothing except the rustling of leaves as the centipedes crawled through them.
“I told you Mana Herbs grow here. When I came in, the place was covered in them from here... all the way back to the Gate.”
“That many?”
“This was one of the places in Korea where Mana Herbs grew most abundantly.”
“It'd be a shame to close a place like that.”
“You're planning to close it?”
Startled, I turned to Hong Seok-young. He looked back as though my surprise was the strange part.
“What else? Keep it open?”
“No....”
“You said the thing that crawled out of here burned Seoul down.”
“...The one that actually burned it was something else, though.”
“Either way.”
“......”
Hong Seok-young clicked his tongue.
“I have no intention of leaving something this suspicious sitting in the middle of Seoul. Hope was even kind enough to tell us to keep an eye on this place.”
As he spoke, Hong Seok-young kicked aside a centipede crawling past his feet.
“Let's close it before the Mana Herbs start growing. Why, is there a problem?”
“......No.”
I hesitated for a moment.
I'd forgotten this old man was like this. Still, he wasn't wrong. If we already knew the place was going to cause trouble, why leave it alone?
Of course....
There was a good chance the item that had sent me into the past was here.
“Anything besides the Mana Herbs?”
“When I came here, there were hardly any monsters.”
“Monsters? These centipedes?”
“Yes.”
Hong Seok-young frowned at the centipedes clustered densely beneath a tree.
“Maybe they cleared them out to grow the Mana Herbs?”
“That's possible. This place had already been used as a Mana Herb Cultivation Site for quite a while. I don't really know how they managed it before I came here.”
Something felt off as I said it.
That's strange.
Sure, the dungeon had already been in use before I joined the Ability Management Agency, but this was a Mana Herb Cultivation Site, of all things. There was no way there wouldn't be management records. Yet I couldn't remember ever seeing any while I worked at the Agency, and there'd been nothing on the Mana Watch either.
Was I worrying over nothing? Had the records simply been omitted?
The uneasy feeling remained. In that case, Hong Seok-young's way of dealing with things was the right one. Let's just close it.
“I see.... If closing it bothers you that much, should we leave it alone?”
“No. Let's close it.”
Hong Seok-young stared at me for a moment before grinning.
“That puts your mind at ease, doesn't it?”
“......”
“Oh, don't look so offended.”
Hong Seok-young pointed at the crease between my brows.
“We're not competing with each other, so why do you look like you've lost?”
“Somehow....”
“Somehow?”
“My pride's hurt.”
“...Why?”
“Having to take advice from someone like you....”
Hong Seok-young stared at me in disbelief.
“Hwijae-gun. I'm your dad.”
“That's exactly why it hurts my pride even more.”
“...Ahem. I suppose it might.”
Hong Seok-young agreed in a strangely deflated voice. I'd expected him to snap back at me, but he backed down surprisingly quickly. That wasn't like him.
I stared at the centipedes bunched together like a cluster of baby spiders, then glanced at Hong Seok-young when an uneasy feeling crept over me. Sure enough, he was wearing that irritating grin again. My father had been a handful too, but this Hong Seok-young was every bit as impossible to figure out.
When our eyes met, Hong Seok-young hurriedly cleared his throat and looked away.
“Anyway, we're destroying the core before we leave. Since we're already here, we'll search the place for clues first.... So if there's anything about this dungeon you haven't told me, tell me now.”
The words were phrased like a gentle suggestion, but his tone was firm. As if he already knew I still had something hidden.
Should I... tell him?
What a stupid question. Of course I should.
Hong Seok-young already knew I'd come from the future. According to him, there was even a monster that had come back to the past.
Then was that item reusable rather than single-use?
If the giant centipede that had emerged from this place really had possessed that item, then maybe it too had crossed from the future into the past.
Taking all of that into account, what if it wasn't only monsters? What if humans could travel from the future to the past just as easily?
Wouldn't our chances be much better if we sent Hong Seok-young into the past instead of me? Even if I failed here, and Ark, Noah Michel, once again caused every dungeon to erupt and destroyed the world?
Wouldn't that give us another chance to start over from scratch?
“It's a bit late to bring this up, but you've always been awfully fixated on this dungeon.”
“...The same goes for you.”
“Well, did you write about it in a diary like I-rok did? That this dungeon....”
Hong Seok-young stopped mid-sentence.
Just as I knew Woo I-rok well, Hong Seok-young probably knew the father I spoke of better than anyone else.
Woo Hwijae, whom Hong Seok-young had adopted, wouldn't have hidden that kind of information from him. Even if he hadn't heard it from me directly, if anyone from the research institute had mentioned the dungeon even once, he would've destroyed its core immediately. He himself had said as much just moments ago. He had no intention of leaving a suspicious dungeon sitting in the middle of Seoul.
And yet my father had left this one alone. Which meant he hadn't known about this dungeon.
Hong Seok-young frowned, his mouth hanging slightly open.
“There's another reason you've been so concerned about this place, isn't there?”
“......”
“You didn't just call it the Songpa District dungeon. You kept singling it out as the Bangi-dong Dungeon. Frankly, because you did, Hunter Lee and I both dug into this place more thoroughly.”
“......”
“And we actually found signs that someone had been up to something suspicious here. But I know something.”
“...What?”
“That expression you're making right now is exactly the one I-rok used whenever he dropped my phone and pretended he didn't know anything about it.”
What's with that incredibly specific example?
“Hwijae-gun.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Tell me now and I won't scold you.”
It wasn't as if I'd actually planned to hide it.
This old man had a peculiar talent for making me not want to tell him even the things I'd already been planning to say.
***
For more chapters, you can check out my Patreon here --> https://patreon.com/SHWTL
If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊
To receive the latest update notifications or report mistakes, join our Discord server linked below.