What a bolt from the blue.’
Come to think of it, Red Gates and Blue Gates might look similar at first glance, but the way they appeared was quite different.
Red passages, which intermittently spewed monsters into the world, showed such obvious signs before forming that their emergence could even be predicted to some extent.
Blue Gates, on the other hand, were so quiet during the formation process that I only realized this one was about to open moments before it actually did.
In other words, it appeared completely out of nowhere.
My guess was that the difference came from the fact that Blue Gates were far more stable than Red Gates.
“O, oh my goodness! Wait, is the probability of something like this even... possible? I’ve lived my whole life, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Gate appear right next to me!”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Esther, clearly shaken by the sudden appearance of the subspace, stammered as she clutched her chest.
Still, she was the head of a guild for a reason. She recovered quickly.
A few minutes later, she picked up the internal phone on her desk and called the analysts downstairs.
“What is all this?”
“Heuk.”
“Wow, how did it end up appearing right in the middle of the CEO’s office...?”
The Magic Tower employees who arrived soon afterward busied themselves investigating the mysterious Gate.
However, during the process, a somewhat anticlimactic piece of information came to light.
Piik.
One of the Magic Tower employees, holding an analyzer, cautiously reached their right arm into the Gate.
‘Oh, so that’s how you do it.’
By the time they pulled their arm back out, the tension in the room already seemed almost pointless.
The device displayed a result that immediately put everyone at ease.
[Unidentified Gate]
[Grade: F]
“It’s F-rank, though?”
“F?”
Even an ordinary person without magic could handle that level with nothing more than a club.
It was the lowest-risk hunting ground possible.
“Ah, what is this?”
The Gate that had appeared before us was none other than an F-rank dungeon.
Well, the fact that a Gate had suddenly manifested in a room where people had been casually drinking coffee was already absurd enough.
There was no way another incredibly rare coincidence, like it being A-rank, would be piled on top of that.
If that happened, we might as well go buy a lottery ticket.
“I was worried for nothing!”
Esther let out a sigh of relief, her voice much calmer than before.
And once the shock subsided, curiosity slowly began to take its place.
Come to think of it, the Gate was only F-rank—a safe zone, essentially—and yet the dungeon name was listed as [Unidentified Gate].
In other words, the Gate contained an environment that had never been discovered anywhere in the world before.
Alternatively, someone might already have found the dungeon but simply failed to report the information to Pixie.
“Hmm.”
Either way, as the discoverers, we naturally held the informational advantage.
“It’s a completely new dungeon.”
The curly-haired woman standing to one side of the office narrowed her drooping eyes in thought.
After a short pause, a new proposal slipped from her lips.
“You know, Giryeo-ssi.”
“Yes.”
“This Gate just had to appear right in the middle of the room, so we should clear it quickly, even if only to get it out of the way, right?”
“Yes.”
“But do we really need to involve the Association in this? I’ve dealt with something similar before, so I know how they operate. Even when they investigated something as minor as a D-rank Gate, they kept all the internal information to themselves under the excuse of ‘hunter protection’ and whatnot. And on top of that, I was the one who reported it. How irritating.”
The corners of Seo Esther’s lips curled upward slightly.
“So this time, the Tower should handle it independently. And if it’s not too much trouble, could you help us explore the Gate a little?”
“Me?”
“Our Giryeo has a much keener eye than most people.”
Sharing information privately among the discoverers while cutting the Association out of the loop, huh.
Since I had no ties to any national institution anyway, it wasn’t a proposal I had any particular reason to reject.
‘The problem is that it just had to be a Sunday.’
As I mentioned earlier, today was the weekend.
And I had planned to stay home not merely to rest, but for another reason as well.
‘11 AM.’
I took out my phone and checked the time.
At that moment, Esther spoke in a calm voice.
“If we happen to discover something interesting again, like those reinforcement materials, then as long as we keep the boss alive, a round trip should take thirty minutes at most.”
Thirty minutes wasn’t merely enough.
It was excessive.
For an S-rank hunter, an F-rank dungeon wasn’t something that took thirty minutes to clear.
They could finish one in under five minutes just by running straight through it.
“Giryeo-ssi, please. Just give me an hour and thirty minutes.”
“An hour and thirty minutes?”
“Thirty minutes to explore the dungeon, and then we can have lunch together at a restaurant. I think that would be perfect. Would that be okay?”
“....”
“Of course, I’ll make sure you’re compensated properly for your time. The guild just acquired some really good magic stones!”
Paying for labor with magic stones, huh.
For reference, this was a country where the minimum wage hovered around ten thousand won.
And someone wealthy enough to casually offer magic stones as an hourly wage probably wasn’t the kind of person who would split the bill over something as trivial as lunch.
Judging by the flow of the conversation, my companion was almost certainly planning to pay for the meal too.
“...What kind of menu did you have in mind?”
“Yes?”
When I abruptly asked about lunch, Esther stammered for a moment before answering.
“Uh, well... I’m not sure? Ah, maybe something simple, like steak or a Korean set meal?”
Then a bright response immediately followed.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
There’s a saying in this world that you should be wary of people who treat you to beef.
But honestly, if it was free steak, wouldn’t it be fine to knowingly let myself be fooled just this once?
***
“It’s quite dark, as expected.”
“And damp too.”
“That’s how caves are.”
“Oh my, watch your step.”
“Why are there so many rocks in the way?”
A short while later, we finished our simple preparations and entered the dungeon.
We brought Esther’s primary equipment along with some analog writing tools.
Thanks to the monster lurking near the entrance, we were able to confirm once again that the dungeon truly was F-rank.
With such a light load, there was nothing to worry about.
“There’s a monster ten meters ahead.”
Bam!
As I stood still and quietly examined the walls, a dull thud soon reached my ears.
It was the sound of Esther dealing with the obstacle ahead.
They were creatures writhing up from the dry ground like plants sprouting from soil.
“By the way, I was expecting something exciting since this is a new dungeon, but these monsters look awfully familiar.”
The inhabitants of this place were none other than [Old Bones].
To be precise, they were monsters so common in F-rank dungeons that photographs of them were even included as examples in the beginner’s guide distributed by the Hunter Association.
“Even aside from the monsters, the dungeon’s structure is pretty ordinary too.”
Unlike the wind, this Gate led to a separate world shaped like a cave, the sort commonly found in various hunting grounds.
I’d rather not remember it, but...
That incident when those criminals called the Frogs nearly robbed me because of those twin guardian angels.
Yeah.
If I had to compare them, this dungeon was practically an exact replica of the F-rank Gate I entered back then.
Red. Dark.
With a winding ceiling that resembled the esophagus of some enormous beast.
“Hmm.”
The only difference was that the path ahead stretched in a straight line.
“What is this? There’s nothing to see here.”
We decided to explore a little farther just in case, but in the end, aside from finding this structure, we discovered nothing particularly noteworthy.
“It’s a fountain.”
“It’s a bit small.”
“Why is it here?”
“How would I know?”
A carved fountain, like the one I had seen in the White Maze, stood abruptly in the middle of the passage.
No, what was this?
A jumble of leftover elements thrown together?
What kind of bizarre assorted lunchbox was this?
“....”
“....”
Esther and I exchanged a brief glance.
No matter how we looked at it, this dungeon seemed to be nothing more than a variant of the common F-rank cave type.
Rather than wasting our energy, it seemed better to move on.
“We haven’t been here that long anyway. Let’s just head back.”
“Right, Giryeo-ssi. At this point, my secretary could clear this while eating instant noodles.”
Our opinions aligned immediately.
And so we unanimously decided to abandon the exploration and head back.
It had taken us around ten minutes to reach the fountain.
But considering that we had stopped several times along the way to analyze things, the return trip should probably take...
Less than five minutes.
...Or at least, that was what I thought until a moment ago.
‘Huh.’
A few minutes passed.
As Esther and I casually chatted while making our way back toward the entrance, I instinctively sensed that something about the atmosphere was wrong.
More precisely, the brightness was wrong.
By now, we should have been seeing the blue light cast by the Gate.
Yet the far end of the passage was still swallowed in darkness.
‘What on earth is this?’
Cold sweat ran down my spine.
It wasn’t merely because of a vague sense of unease.
A possibility suddenly crossed my mind, and I immediately focused my senses to verify it.
The result led me to one conclusion.
“No way...”
“Giryeo-ssi?”
Tak, tak, tak.
I pushed off hard against the ground and ran forward.
But no matter how far I went, I still couldn’t see the entrance we had come through.
No, damn it.
Wait.
Looking carefully, it wasn’t merely that the light was gone.
“The passage!”
“Heuk!”
The woman who followed me gasped.
Shockingly, the entrance we had used was now completely sealed off by a wall of red stone.
The Gate itself had vanished from that spot.
Tuk.
I stood frozen in front of the blocked end of the cave, utterly dumbfounded.
Damn it.
How long had it even been since I destroyed that cursed Rakhsasa Temple?
Why was something this absurd happening again, with the entrance simply disappearing out of nowhere?
‘Could this be a characteristic of the dungeon itself?’
But I never expected anything like this.
When Esther had gone ahead earlier to confirm whether the grade-analysis result was correct, the Gate had clearly been functioning normally while we hunted the monsters near the entrance.
“Goodness, what happened here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could someone outside have used an item...? No, that can’t be. This is clearly the top floor of our guild!”
“Calm down. The entrance disappearing is certainly shocking, but we still have another way to deal with this.”
“Looks like we don’t have a choice. At this point, we’ll have to defeat the boss and find another way out.”
Gate clear.
Thankfully, these otherworlds had one absolute rule.
Defeating the boss opened an exit.
“That’s right. Don’t panic. Let’s calmly continue with the raid.”
But three full hours later.
“Oh my...”
We finally discovered the last strange secret this dungeon had been hiding.
‘The path...’
The unidentified Gate that had appeared inside the Magic Tower representative’s office.
Its true nature was none other than...
‘The path doesn’t end!’
A new type of dungeon with an abnormally, absurdly long interior!
I had once heard from Ahn Yoonseung that the scale of dungeons inside Gates had been steadily increasing lately.
A representative example was [The Deepest Place], a dungeon divided into three floors.
However, that phenomenon had only been observed in higher-grade dungeons, around A or B rank.
No such changes had been noticeable in low-level hunting grounds.
It was practically common knowledge in the industry that F-rank Gates were small enough to complete a round trip through them within an hour.
“Goodness, no matter how far we walk, we still can’t find the boss.”
Esther gave a small laugh in an attempt to lighten the mood.
But I wasn’t in any state to play along.
After persistently checking again and again, I had just made a chilling discovery.
The boss of this dungeon was outside even the archmage’s detection range.
Damn it.
How could something like this happen...
“I really picked the wrong day.”
Once I realized the seriousness of the situation, I began repeating the same sentence over and over.
Of all days, why did an incident have to happen today?
The thought left me increasingly anxious.
“Why? Did you have something else you needed to do?”
The S-rank Hunter responded awkwardly.
She was walking ahead of me, so I couldn’t see her expression, but judging from the tone of her voice, she was probably looking rather dejected.
“I’m sorry. I made an unnecessary suggestion and ended up wasting your time, Giryeo-ssi.”
“....”
“Uhm, how about this? From now on, why don’t we both run at full speed? We could make it a race. Since we’re both S-rank, if we really pick up the pace, then surely we can—”
But at that moment, the peaceful conversation abruptly stopped.
At the same time, the steady rhythm of footsteps ceased as well.
An unnatural silence filled the cave.
“Giryeo-ssi?”
Whoosh.
When Esther tilted her head and looked back after no longer hearing my footsteps, our eyes met for the first time in several minutes.
But even then, I couldn’t bring myself to answer her.
“Hunter Giryeo?!”
Blood kept surging up my throat, making speech almost impossible.
I hurriedly covered my mouth.
But when the blood pooling inside struck the back of my throat, I could no longer suppress the cough.
“Keugh, cough.”
The wet sound of blood and phlegm being coughed up echoed through the cave.
Blood spilled down my chin and soaked my clothes a deep crimson.
Sticky traces seeped between my fingers.
Within seconds, even the whites of my eyes were webbed with burst blood vessels.
“Cough.”
That’s right.
This was the true nature of the ‘slightly inconvenient drawback’ of the [Sacred Tree Seedling].
“...It’s oka...”
More precisely, I was about to say something.
But the moment I opened my mouth to tell her that I was fine, I began vomiting blood again...