Ahn Yoonseung was the sort of creature who tended to respond favorably and would continue generating profit in the long run as long as he remained alive.
So taking on this degree of risk was, without question, an economically sound decision.
"Of course."
After muttering some flimsy justification to myself, I took the first step in my plan.
Like most disaster sites, from this point onward, it would be a race against time.
.
.
.
Wait.
Cancel that.
Forget the part where I said it would be a race against time.
"Dammit."
Right.
I had barged into a monster's nest.
There was no way the trouble waiting for me would amount to only a few minutes or hours.
~Grmmgg~
The moment I heard a beast growling somewhere nearby, I pressed myself into a corner of the dungeon and swallowed dryly.
"I'm going crazy."
To explain the situation, I had already made it roughly three-fifths of the way through this otherworldly space.
That meant only two traps remained before I reached the section where Ahn Yoonseung's team was believed to be stranded.
Unfortunately, as you can see, an unavoidable obstacle was now waiting directly in front of the doorway leading to the next passage.
"Greuk, geuk. Greuk."
The creature's forehead was covered in a hard armored shell reminiscent of an armadillo.
Its snout curled upward like that of a wild boar, exposing its teeth.
Six legs supported its body—a configuration that might have looked bizarre to people on Earth, but to me, it resembled a six-legged aquatic creature and wasn't especially unfamiliar.
"Ah, damn it. I'm sure I saw this thing in a book before, but I can't remember its scientific name."
It was a monster.
Judging by its strength, it seemed to be an amphibious creature somewhere around the middle of A-rank.
Since I wasn't carrying Earth's analyzer, I had no way to determine its exact classification.
But of one thing, at least, I was certain.
"If I fight it head-on, I think I'll lose..."
No.
I wasn't joking.
I really would...
There was an enormous difference between a match fought under fixed rules and an actual battle to the death.
Back then, there had been a three-minute time limit.
More importantly, the objective had merely been to destroy the pendant hanging from someone's neck—a target far less durable than a sorcerer's actual body.
That was why winning had been comparatively easy.
But now?
"With an F-rank body, I'm supposed to kill an A-rank monster? It looks ridiculously sturdy too, so I doubt poison will kill it quickly."
Kaaak, kaak.
In the distance, the strange six-legged creature shifted its feet one after another, scraping the ground.
It paced back and forth in a repetitive pattern, much like an animal trapped inside a zoo enclosure.
"Kyu."
And of all possible places, it had chosen to remain directly in front of the door I needed to pass through.
I tried using telekinesis to throw stones elsewhere and lure it away.
Strangely, however, whenever it moved beyond a certain radius, it immediately turned around and returned to its original position.
"Ugh! This is so frustrating."
I had already disabled seven traps to get this far.
At the same time, I had used stealth to evade the pursuit of a monster that seemed to be S-rank.
"I can't help it."
After thinking it over for a while, I finally reached a conclusion.
This time, there was no alternative.
I would have to force my way straight through.
Normally, I would have spent more time considering the problem and looking for another route.
But there were survivors trapped inside this dungeon, and I needed to rescue them.
"It looks like they're still managing to avoid the dungeon boss for now, but if those Earthlings who can't even identify traps get caught in some nasty spell..."
Tsk.
I glanced toward the direction where Ahn Yoonseung's team should be and slowly rolled up my sleeves.
Despite the dramatic gesture, however, I wasn't actually all that nervous.
I had already calculated the risks.
This wasn't recklessness.
It was a calculated move.
~Prrrr~
At least according to my calculations, I could beat it.
Once I finished organizing my thoughts, I drew in a deep breath and circulated my mana.
What followed was a fierce battle between an A-rank monster and a mere David.
.
.
.
9 minutes later.
~Thud!
A massive lump of flesh crashed onto the ground.
At the same time, ragged breathing echoed through the dungeon, like the panting of a castaway dying of thirst in the middle of a desert.
"H... heuk..."
The monster's corpse lay before me, its armored shell covered in countless shallow scratches.
After confirming that it had finally stopped moving, I shouted.
"This damn thing!"
Seriously.
Why was it so ridiculously persistent?!
"I did it!"
As I had said earlier, I, an archmage, had successfully defeated an A-rank monster while trapped in the body of an F-rank.
But there was hardly anything elegant about the victory.
Those nine minutes I had just glossed over contained a battle so miserable that it was almost painful to watch.
To be perfectly honest, it was probably the least impressive fight of my entire life.
With the pathetic amount of mana available to an F-rank body, breaking through an A-rank monster's natural resistance was practically impossible.
If I tried to cast a spell directly on a major organ such as the brain or heart, the magic power circulating through the creature's body automatically interfered with the spell.
So I relied on [Hydra]'s deadly venom instead.
I stabbed the monster inside the mouth, introducing the poison through its mucous membranes.
Once the venom weakened its resistance, I exploited the brief openings that appeared and cast spells without incarnations...
"Haa..."
In the end, I won by summoning a chunk of stone directly inside the creature's throat.
But even that method required me to target its airway with extreme precision—one of the few areas where the circulation of internal magic power was comparatively weak.
Trying to suffocate a crazed beast thrashing around like a rabid raccoon by blocking its windpipe...
That wasn't something even an archmage could pull off easily.
"Damn it. I missed so many spells that I've completely drained my mana..."
Whoo, whoo.
The monster had rammed me repeatedly with that massive armored forehead.
The protective effect of [Sacred Tree Seedling] had already been worn down almost completely.
At this point, its protective coating was on the verge of collapsing.
Another battle would be impossible.
"I've wasted too much time."
Being trapped in a dungeon alongside an S-rank monster was like standing beneath a roof that could collapse at any moment.
I hurriedly sharpened my senses and checked the surroundings.
Ahn Yoonseung's team was gradually being driven into a corner.
They had managed to avoid the monsters up until now, but before long, they would reach one of the dungeon's dead ends...
"Ugh."
I manipulated the muscles in my throat and forced my ragged breathing back under control.
Then, staggering slightly, I hurried toward the door in front of me and pushed it open.
But the instant my eyes caught sight of the next corridor beyond it, I heard a sharp whistling sound nearby...
~Taang!
A massive roar, almost like gunfire, exploded beside my ears.
It was a dungeon spell activated by opening the stone door.
Rectangular slabs lined with spikes shot inward from both sides like the jaws of an enormous rat trap, designed to crush anything caught between them.
To put it simply—
I had just triggered a trap.
"No!"
Crunch.
By the time I understood what had happened, the damage was already irreversible.
The remaining protection around my body had nearly disappeared before the trap activated.
As a result, my body was quite literally torn apart.
The slabs were lined with countless stone spikes resembling crocodile teeth, and they punched straight through the fat and flesh of my body.
My shoulder.
Shoulder blade.
Wrist.
Hip.
Ribs.
Thigh.
Bones cracked in several places.
And because the stone spikes had penetrated more than six centimeters into my body, there was no way my internal organs had escaped unharmed either.
"Damn it!"
Bam!
After completing its function, the trap mechanism retracted and returned to the floor.
Unfortunately, that only made things worse.
The moment the spikes embedded in my flesh were pulled free, there was nothing left to stop my bodily fluids from pouring through the newly opened wounds.
Just as expected, my white shirt rapidly turned red.
Blood began gushing out.
Tuk.
"Oh no."
If I hadn't already been suffering from mana exhaustion, I would've sensed the trap the instant I touched the door!
No.
Forget that.
If I had been in my prime, I could have read the entire magical structure of a crude trap like this from a hundred meters away.
But after exhausting both my stamina and mana fighting that A-rank monster, my judgment had deteriorated dramatically.
Because of that, I completely failed to notice the magic concealed inside the door.
"Huh..."
Damn it.
I had been in too much of a hurry.
That one sentence explained everything.
"Hoho."
Creeping.
When I looked at the state of my half-destroyed body, all I could manage was a hollow scoff followed by a bitter laugh.
I dropped onto all fours and crawled toward a safer section of the corridor.
Then I leaned my upper body against the wall and began thinking.
My expression might have looked calm.
Inside, however, I was anything but.
"After everything I've done in my life... I can't believe I'm making a mistake like this."
There were several things that even an archmage couldn't accomplish.
One of them was bringing the dead back to life.
"And if it's a dead body, sure, I can use it as a golem. But restoring 'someone else's living body' is an entirely different field—even a selfish Alpharius like me isn't confident about that!"
But what if Ahn Yoonseung suffered a fatal injury while I wasted time hesitating here?
As I circulated hemostatic magic throughout my body, I considered my condition.
Despite how badly damaged I was, my immediate survival wasn't actually in serious danger.
Fortunately, my lungs hadn't been completely destroyed.
"It's a good thing there was still some protection left."
Even so, the overall damage was severe.
Restoring this body completely would take roughly two days even if everything went smoothly.
"I bought a decent number of Earth-made mana recovery potions once I had some money to spare, just in case something like this happened... but I drank almost all of them while disabling traps on the way here."
And that final blow had completely destroyed the remaining protective effect.
Which meant I was now back to having a genuine F-rank body.
What should I do?
"Anyway, this is all Kim Gilyeo's fault. If that b*stard hadn't died, I wouldn't be stuck in this body."
Grumble.
I instinctively tried to shift the blame onto someone else.
But soon enough, I reached a conclusion.
"OK. Let's just abandon the main body for now."
Of course, I wasn't talking about replacing this body altogether.
The Golem Control technique had originally been developed around the principle of a wizard using mental signals to manipulate a designated substance rather than physically inhabiting it.
In simpler terms, it could be thought of as an extremely sophisticated form of remote control.
~Glance.
Still half-lying against the wall, I moved only my eyes.
The corpse of the six-legged amphibious monster entered my field of vision.
Immediately after reincarnating, I hadn't been capable of controlling monsters of any meaningful rank.
But now that my lungs had been restored...
If all I wanted was to make that body stand and move, without making full use of the creature's innate abilities...
~_~
I closed my eyes.
And when my darkened vision finally returned—
My eye level had changed drastically.
At the same time, the quiet sound of something breathing reached my ears.
"Huff. Huff."
***
[Web transmission]
[S-rank Hunter Seo Esther. Please confirm and reply immediately.]
Meanwhile, outside.
The Association had been thrown into chaos by the abnormal mutation of a certain Blue Gate.
Who could possibly have expected an S-rank Gate to appear in this manner?
~ Flap!
Immediately afterward, an enormous white creature descended from the sky.
The moment the Korean Hunter Association realized an S-rank Gate had appeared, it began urgently summoning the country's highest-ranking Hunters.
Jung Haeseong, who had been eating at home, was called in immediately.
And in order to bring back Korea's second S-rank Hunter, they had even gone so far as to turn around an airplane that was already in flight.
She had originally planned to visit her mother, who ran a large business in Vietnam, for the first time in quite a while.
But as of this moment, all of those plans had been ruined.
"Anyway, becoming S-rank comes with more inconveniences than I expected."
"Hunter Esther!"
"Yes. Hello— I'm Seo Esther, the daughter who couldn't attend her mother's once-a-year birthday celebration."
After jumping down from the transport magic tool, Esther looked around at the Hunters waiting nearby and spoke.
"So, which dungeon is responsible for turning me into an unfilial daughter? This one?"
"Ah, yes."
"As expected, Kang Changho didn't come."
But when Esther mentioned his name, an employee from the Hunter Association quickly stepped forward.
"K, Kang Hunter is currently inside a Gate."
"Uhm?"
"We checked the records, and the Association did authorize his entry... About thirty minutes ago, he entered the [Nameless Cave] that appeared in Songpa. So at present, it appears he's unable to respond to the summons."
Kang Changho was raiding a dungeon?
Even if he had received the summons properly, the chances of that Hunter obediently following the Association's instructions were low to begin with.
While Korea's second S-rank dismissed the staff member's explanation, Jung Haeseong quickly skimmed through the report prepared by the Association and quietly read its contents aloud.
"At approximately 1:19 PM, an abnormal mutation was confirmed. Neo Team 3, led by Hunter Park Seunghye, entered first. The first identified entity to emerge was an A-rank Red Tentacle..."
Then his eyes caught a conspicuous name written near the bottom of the page.
[Entry List: Park Seunghye, Baek Jakyung, Ahn Yunseung. --- (Additional) Kim Gilyeo]
"Excuse me for a moment. Sorry to interrupt, but Hunter Kim's name is already on the entry list. What does this mean?"
At Haeseong's question, the representative from the Neo Sisters Guild stepped forward to explain.
The bespectacled man had personally witnessed Kim Gilyeo enter the dungeon.
"You're saying he came here looking for him?"
"I heard he had some kind of dinner appointment with Team 3."
Since this was an emergency, Jung Haeseong probably had no interest in unnecessary details.
So the Neo representative quickly skipped over the trivial explanation and went straight to the point.
"Anyway, Hunter Kim Gilyeo entered the dungeon ahead of everyone else. He's currently disabling the traps inside. He said he would clear the path."
"Yes?"
"Huh? You're saying Gilyeo is inside that Gate right now?"
At those words, both Jung Haeseong and Esther, who had been checking their equipment, immediately froze.
A moment later, an almost scolding response came back.
"No, wait! Even so, how could you let him go in there alone? That's far too dangerous!"
But from the Hunter Association's perspective, it had been an entry they couldn't realistically prevent.
"Th, that... it couldn't be helped. This is an S-rank mutated Gate, after all."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just as Hunter Kim Gilyeo himself explained, it's safer to keep at least one S-rank inside. If he remains there alone, the dungeon is actually more stable than if we send additional personnel inside..."
The reference to changing monster numbers and "stabilizing" survival conditions immediately made sense to those present.
Every person standing there was an experienced Hunter who had survived countless dangerous raids.
It didn't take them long to understand the implication.
"...Let me make sure I understood you correctly. Are you saying Hunter Kim Gilyeo is currently staying inside that dungeon to prevent a possible break?"
"As long as survivors remain inside, an otherworldly structure won't collapse completely. Because of that property, during the early days of dungeon shocks, there were cases where a person was deliberately left inside as a living keystone to delay the worst possible disaster. In other words— it was effectively a modern human sacrifice."
"Yes. Because A-rank Team 3 could be wiped out at any moment."
"..."
"Hunter Gilyeo said there would be no point in simply sitting at the entrance. If an S-rank monster respawned there, he'd have to fight it anyway. So he decided he might as well explore the interior and clear some of the way while waiting for the two of you to arrive..."
"Ah, so that's why..."
A moment later, once he fully understood the situation, Jung Haeseong tightened his grip on the Sword of Sunset.
His pupils trembled like waves breaking against the shore.
Fortunately, however, the country's highest-ranked Hunter did not immediately charge into the S-rank Gate without any further preparation.
"Ah! Haeseong-ssi! Stop, stop. Wait a second! There's something I absolutely have to tell you before you go in!"
A woman with drooping eyes who had been standing nearby hurriedly grabbed hold of him, stopping the top-ranked Hunter in his tracks.