Chapter 106

Executive Director Bae Hyeon-jo asked, as if puzzled.

“Without even hearing what it’s about?”

“Surely you wouldn’t push me into a death trap.”

“I just might.”

“Even if you did, there’s nothing I could do about it.”

He stared at me.

I met his gaze. Soon, Executive Director Bae Hyeon-jo let out a smirk.

“You don’t mean that.”

Damn, he saw through me.

“Still, it’s nice to hear. Your skill in captivating people has improved, hasn’t it?”

“There are plenty of people who would lie to win the heart of Ilseong’s President.”

“It’s a position you could have if you set your mind to it.”

I didn’t bother to deny it. It would be true in reality. But if a bloodbath ensued, the world would become even more precarious. That couldn’t happen.

Instead, winning this man’s favor is the better path in the long run.

Suddenly, I remembered Seong Yo-han, who had mocked me as he died.

In the end, you’ll make the same choice as me, was that what he said?

I shook my head and spoke.

“Please, tell me. What is it you wish to request?”

He hesitated before speaking.

“There’s a Dungeon I want to show you.”

A Dungeon?

Why a Dungeon all of a sudden?

“Follow me.”

Executive Director Bae Hyeon-jo stood up as if steeling himself.

We went down to the Ilseong lobby.

It was then.

A large man made eye contact with me.

A face I’d seen sometime before.

Who was it again? Was his name Park Cheol-hyeong?

He was the right-hand man of Ilseong’s Head of department, the one who was now locked up in the Association’s underground prison.

Seeing him up close, I was certain.

It really is Park Cheol-hyeong.

“……!”

In any case, Park Cheol-hyeong flinched upon seeing me. His complexion was terrible, too.

What’s with him?

“If you keep staring, that guy might just drop to his knees.”

“Why?”

“He must know he did something wrong.”

A memory from the past surfaced.

The memory of him grabbing me by the collar and telling me to get lost, or trying to throw a punch, or cursing at me, and other trivial things like that.

But I’m not a petty person.

There’s no way I’d hold a grudge over something so small.

I just stared at him intently.

I wasn’t doing anything, but he was trembling all on his own.

“I see why Yeo Ju-kyung worries about you.”

“The Association President?”

“She’s restless, worried you’ll choose the wrong path. That’s what I heard, anyway.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I don’t understand why she’s backing you so much if that’s the case.”

Bae Hyeon-jo doesn’t know what the future holds.

Well, I suppose there will be a chance to tell him someday.

“In my opinion, I don’t think there’s any need to worry.”

“Is that so?”

“That guy, Park Cheol-hyeong. If it were me, I would have killed him a hundred times over. But you’re just standing there watching.”

“I might kill him someday.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Seems like a bet that’s too much in my favor.”

Still, I didn’t say I’d take it.

At that, Bae Hyeon-jo patted my shoulder a couple of times.

“That’s enough, though. If you stare any longer, the guy’s going to pass out. He’s essential to Ilseong, too.”

“Of course.”

This seemed like enough revenge. I tore my gaze away, and we moved to a different location.

On the way, every Ilseong employee we passed acknowledged me.

Most were thanking me, saying they were putting the Buff Stones to good use, while some grumbled about how Civilians were running rampant these days.

Among them, there wasn’t a single person who was hostile toward me.

Strangely, the smile on Executive Director Bae Hyeon-jo’s face deepened even more.

Before long, we were in the basement of Ilseong.

“Was there always a place this spacious?”

It was a wide, open area.

And inside, like a cave… a Dungeon?

The entrance to a purple Dungeon was shimmering.

Just looking at it, I could feel a chilling energy.

It was on a different level from the S-Rank Hunting Ground on Jeju Island.

If I had to assign it a rank, it seemed closer to SS-Rank than S-Rank.

“Why is there a Dungeon here?”

“Was it three years ago? It suddenly appeared.”

“Are you asking me to raid this Dungeon?”

“No.”

He shook his head.

“Just… let me enter it.”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant.

As I got closer to the Dungeon, I understood.

This Dungeon, it has an entry restriction.

-Entry Limit: 1/1

The strange part was this.

The entry limit was one person, and that one spot was filled.

Meaning, there was someone inside.

I set that aside for a moment and checked something else important.

“It hasn’t undergone Gate Conversion.”

“A true blessing, isn’t it?”

I agreed.

If a Dungeon this immense turned into a Gate, it would be a truly horrific disaster.

Noticing the look in my eyes, he spoke bitterly.

“My friend is trapped in there.”

“Your friend.”

He nodded.

From the look in his eyes, it didn’t seem like he was lying.

But trapped? The nuance is strange.

“How long has it been?”

“Was it three years ago?”

Then that means he’s dead.

“He’s alive.”

“?”

“If he were dead, his Mana would have seeped out.”

When a Hunter dies in a Dungeon, the Mana they had in life flows out of the Dungeon.

The Association’s forensics team uses that to deduce what happened inside the Dungeon.

Whether they were killed by a person or a Monster.

But he was saying that Mana hadn’t flowed out.

But does that even make sense?

A person has been wandering inside a Dungeon for over three years? Even I can’t be sure about that.

But the proof was right in front of me.

The fact that the entry limit remains the same means,

whatever he is, he’s no ordinary person.

“Who is it?”

“Son In-hyeok.”

“Ah.”

I’d heard of him.

He was one of the S-Rank Awakeners who went missing a few years ago.

He vanished without a trace, causing a stir for a while, but as is the way of the world, it was quietly buried.

Come to think of it, he was also an S-Rank belonging to Ilseong.

“He insisted that he had to raid it. Of course, I tried to stop him, but it was no use.”

Bae Hyeon-jo recalled the past with a bitter expression.

“And this is the result. If he had just died, I could have forgotten about it and moved on.”

“He must be someone precious to you.”

He nodded without hesitation.

“Back in the day, he saved my life a few times.”

He approached the Dungeon entrance.

Then, he spoke in a desperate voice.

“Can you get me inside?”

“What are you going to do once you’re in there?”

“I have to see the guy’s face.”

“You’ll die for sure.”

“It’s fine. He’s worth it.”

Desperation was laced in his voice.

He looked completely different from when he would joke around with his usual relaxed face.

I didn’t know the detailed circumstances, but I could tell that Son In-hyeok was an incredibly important person to Bae Hyeon-jo.

And Bae Hyeon-jo is incredibly important to me.

So I shook my head.

“No. You can’t.”

“I thought you might be able to do it, but is it too difficult after all?”

“Lifting the restriction isn’t difficult.”

The structure isn’t that complicated.

I’m not destroying the Dungeon itself, so just lifting the entry restriction is something I can easily do with my current knowledge of magic.

After a moment of thought, I spoke.

“I might consider it if we form a Party and enter the Dungeon. But going in alone is out of the question. Let’s go in together.”

“…Together?”

I cut off Executive Director Bae Hyeon-jo before he could continue.

“I’ll have to call someone.”

“Someone? Who?”

“The strongest person in our country.”

Although after we raid this Dungeon, that person will probably change.

Republic of Korea Awakener Association, Association President’s Office.

Yeo Ju-kyung looked down at the building below.

There were many people passing by.

The atmosphere had changed completely from just a few days ago.

Instead of being dark and gloomy, people’s faces were blooming with smiles.

“I heard they’re even opening academies these days.”

“Academies?”

“Academies that help you find out if you have a talent for swordsmanship or a talent for magic.”

“……”

Yeo Ju-kyung let out a deep breath.

“Was there a scene like this in the future you saw?”

“There wasn’t.”

“Exactly.”

This was what Yeo Ju-kyung was unhappy about.

It was a future she had been planning for a full 20 years.

All to avoid the end of the world.

But in the last year, it had gone very, very off track.

All because of Choi Gi-woong.

Is this really the right thing?

With toddling steps, she carried a teacup to the table where Han Seung-hoon was sitting.

“This has completely deviated from the future we designed.”

“So what? It’s gotten better.”

“How can you be so sure it’s gotten better?”

“People are smiling, aren’t they?”

“That’s because the future has changed.”

Originally, the situation at this point in time wasn’t like this.

If it were simply a situation where Civilians had become Awakeners, Yeo Ju-kyung wouldn’t be wearing such a serious expression.

But the side effects were becoming just as severe.

“It’s too fast. It’s so fast it’s driving me crazy. In the original picture, there weren’t this many Gates opening at this point in time.”

“That’s true.”

“Fewer people were dying than this, too. The world was supposed to start breaking down much later than this.”

At the very least, Choi Gi-woong was supposed to become active three years from now.

The point when Choi Gi-woong reached the level of a 1st-class agent.

And what had drastically pulled that forward was Han Seung-hoon’s unilateral decision.

“It was an injection we had to take eventually anyway.”

“I raised you wrong. I raised you wrong. The snot-nosed kid you were 20 years ago wasn’t like this.”

Pouring water into the teacup, Yeo Ju-kyung clicked her tongue.

“I can’t get used to you these days.”

“Well, it’s not like I can get used to a grandmother’s way of speaking coming from a child’s body, either.”

Han Seung-hoon chuckled and downed the tea in one gulp.

“You know the current situation is serious, right? In many ways.”

“I know.”

“Any countermeasures?”

Han Seung-hoon shrugged.

“None, I guess. We have no choice but to trust that guy.”

Yeo Ju-kyung let out another deep sigh.

“What if Choi Gi-woong suddenly gives up on everything? We trusted him and backed him completely, but what if he gets scared and runs away?”

“There was no such future.”

“Right. Your future sight is so uncanny. You must have predicted that all of this would be pulled forward, right?”

“Then there’s nothing we can do. Wasn’t Choi Gi-woong the only answer anyway?”

“The timing is the problem. You should have told him at least a year later than you did. When he was more mature.”

“You don’t trust Choi Gi-woong.”

“People are bound to change.”

“Does that apply to you too, Association President?”

“I can’t say there’s no temptation.”

Yeo Ju-kyung said.

“If I didn’t know the world was ending, I probably would have lived a more spectacular life than I do now.”

Han Seung-hoon smirked.

“I’m willing to bet on it. You’re not that kind of person, Association President. And neither is that guy, Choi Gi-woong.”

“Fine. Let’s make a bet.”

“A bet? What kind of bet?”

As if she had been waiting, Yeo Ju-kyung opened her mouth.

“About Choi Gi-woong’s growth rate.”

“What about his growth rate? It’s incredibly fast.”

“It needs to be even faster, as much as the apocalypse has been pulled forward. Don’t you agree?”

“Is that how the story goes?”

“To what extent?”

“He needs to become stronger than me within at least half a year.”

“Half a year is too tight.”

In the original future, the point when Choi Gi-woong reached SS-Rank was two years from now.

She was telling him to pull that forward by a year and a half.

“Given the speed at which the world is collapsing right now, there’s no other answer.”

“So what are the terms of the bet?”

“I’ll have to take back the control I handed over to Choi Gi-woong.”

“And if I win?”

“I won’t raise any objections from now on.”

“That’s too unfair…”

It was then.

The phone rang. It was Choi Gi-woong.

A strange tension filled the air.

Yeo Ju-kyung flinched. She was already worried about what kind of trouble this kid was going to cause now.

In a different sense, Han Seung-hoon flinched. He didn’t know how to relay Yeo Ju-kyung’s words.

“Answer it.”

“Me? But it’s for you, Association President.”

“Hurry.”

Han Seung-hoon had no choice but to take the call.

A moment later, after hanging up, Han Seung-hoon spoke.

“He’s asking us to raid a Dungeon with him. Our Gi-woong.”