“What's a special dungeon?”
“……”
Ha..
At Bi-soo's question, I rubbed my dry face with both hands.
“How in the world did you pass the written test? The types of dungeons are the most basic of basics.”
“Ugh! I barely passed by guessing! What about it!”
It seemed like talking to her would just drag things out. I turned my head and sent a look full of expectation.
“Jeong-hyeon.”
“Ye-yes?”
“You know, right, Jeong-hyeon? Your written test score was nearly perfect.”
“Ah……. I know a little.”
Kang Jeong-hyeon glanced left and right before cautiously continuing.
“A special dungeon is, just as the name implies… a general term for a special type of dungeon that doesn't follow the commonly known forms……. The most representative example is the Poison Dungeon. In terms of proportion, they make up about 5% of all dungeons.”
Listening to his fluent answer, I suppressed a laugh. To say he knew 'a little' when he had clearly memorized the textbook. He could afford to be a little less modest.
“That's right. Special dungeons are like mutations, you could say. Anything that doesn't follow the usual patterns.”
They're all just roughly lumped together and called special dungeons, but the types are immensely varied.
“I heard this from someone in the past, but there was a case where Monsters burst out of a Gate before the deadline.”
“Whaat?!”
The one most surprised by those words wasn't Bi-soo or Kang Jeong-hyeon, but Maria. Even for her, who was in the great Glory Guild and had experienced numerous battlefields, it must have been the first time she'd heard such a story. That's because this was top-secret information told to me by Hunter Association Supervisor Pyo Hyeok-gyu.
A ‘Code Yellow’ that had been activated in North America. Although the difficulty of subduing the Monsters wasn't particularly high, the fact that the ‘deadline’ for the dungeon's opening didn't apply held a serious meaning.
“That's a scary story……. Even now, Guilds are adjusting their dungeon schedules according to the deadlines…… If Monsters were to pour out all at once from unresolved dungeons…….”
Seeing Maria's worried face, I shrugged my shoulders.
“On that day, the Republic of Korea would become a scene of utter chaos.”
Then, Yuk Cheol-wan asked me.
“Is there no possibility of an error? Like setting the deadline incorrectly……”
“The local Association conducted an audit, and they said there was about a week left until the dungeon was supposed to open. The machine that measures dungeon energy was also confirmed to be working normally.”
“Unbelievable. That would be something that overturns all the established formulas of the world……”
“That's not all. There are cases of dungeons disappearing suddenly without being cleared, or dungeons not vanishing even after the boss Monster was defeated." "Recently, these kinds of strange anomalies have been pouring out like a flood all over the world.”
“So that's why we need information. Is that it?”
“Yes. If we're not careful, the whole world could end up like Israel.”
“……!!”
Even before the appearance of Monsters, Israel was quite a powerful nation. Military facilities armed with state-of-the-art equipment and human resources holding key positions in various countries around the world. Even after the dawn of the Hunter era, their strength had been consistently maintained, but unbelievably, Israel walked the path of ruin.
So futilely.
In just three days. Unmanageable monsters poured out across the entire country, and the elites from various nations, dispatched urgently by the World Hunter Organization, joined forces and were barely able to subjugate the Monsters. Unfortunately, in the process, less than one-tenth of the Israeli population survived.
A nation that had stood shoulder to shoulder with the world's great powers had suffered a devastating blow in an instant. The ‘Code Red’ that had sounded only once since the establishment of the World Hunter Organization. It was the only case of a global alarm being raised, transcending national boundaries.
The biggest problem with this tragedy was that the exact cause of the catastrophe had yet to be identified.
“The day I became an Awakened was also the day a Double Gate opened. Two Gates opened at the same time, and coincidentally, both were Poison Dungeons. Many casualties occurred in the process.”
“……”
Maria's face fell heavily once again. As a former member of the Glory Guild, she seemed to be feeling a sense of responsibility.
“The reason we couldn't predict these variables is that we've only been gathering information from ordinary dungeons." "We need to gather information to counter the coming Great Cataclysm in the process of clearing special dungeons.”
Bi-soo pouted her lips and asked.
“This Great Cataclysm……. Is it really coming?”
“It might have already arrived.”
“Whew. That's grim.”
Bi-soo whistled, and Kang Jeong-hyeon swallowed hard.
“We will basically expand our investigation area based on Poison Dungeons. Maria-nim?”
“Yes……?”
“Do you know about the minerals in Poison Dungeons?”
“No……. I don't know at all.”
I lifted my head and looked toward Yuk Cheol-wan. Yuk Cheol-wan, the Clan Leader of ‘Cleanup Clan’, began to explain in a confident voice for a change.
“Minerals gathered from Poison Dungeons are worth more than three times as much as regular minerals. Moreover, if you happen to collect rare herbs, you can earn a profit of hundreds of millions of won from a single dungeon clear.”
“Wow……. That's a scale large enough for an elite Guild team to mobilize.”
“Haha. So you don't need to worry about income. Ms. Bi-soo and Mr. Jeong-hyeon here will receive more, not less, than they would at a major guild.”
“Woah.”
Bi-soo's eyes sparkled brightly. It was a radiance she had never once shown while preparing for the Hunter Qualification Test. Thinking about it again, her passing the written test was nothing short of a miracle.
“Of course, we will also do what the world expects of us. When an accident suddenly occurs, we will move to where help is needed and clean up the scene.”
Bi-soo quickly asks.
“Then, what about the things we get there? Can we take them?”
“What are you talking about right now?”
“No. I mean, we should at least get paid for our labor……”
I answered more resolutely than ever before.
“Of course we take what we defeated, and we must also get a service fee from the relevant guild.”
“A se-service fee?”
“Yes. We're cleaning up the scene on behalf of a Guild that lacks the ability, so isn't it only right that we wring out a payment?”
Everyone's expression turned strange.
Why. What.
[Somehow, he seems more of a merchant than any Guild representative?]
[Th-that's true.]
I can hear you, you punks.
“It wasn't for nothing that I spoke to the Association's Vice Chairman about the Irregulars. A just cause is a just cause, but we should naturally receive fair compensation for the work we do. I didn't expect to be operating on such a large scale from the start, but……. we won't be starving.”
“Alright!”
“We will operate based on information I receive separately, not on pre-registered Poison Dungeons. The plan is to handle them before the Association discovers them.”
“Let's do it!”
But somehow.
I started to feel a sense of dissonance.
These people.
Aren't they taking this too literally?
“……Aren't you curious?”
“Huh?”
“Where I'm getting information the Association doesn't know about, how the money will be settled. Things like that. Aren't you curious?”
“Eh. You'll take care of it all. I hate dealing with that kind of headache.”
Bi-soo waved her hand dismissively, and Kang Jeong-hyeon nodded with a faithful expression. As for Maria, whether it was because she had already earned enough or because she was never interested in money to begin with, she showed no enthusiasm from start to finish. What ridiculously naive people? ……Hmm.
Maybe I should just take it all for myself.
“……If there are no more questions, how about a light company dinner?”
“Okay!!”
Only then did the people start to show some motivation.
“……”
A large man sat in a small space. Perhaps because the lighting was dim, the air felt heavy, and the man's expression was even more somber than that. On the plain, unadorned desk, a single thin sheet of paper lay there alone.
The man had been staring at it blankly for a very long time.
‘Written Explanation’.
It's a report one typically submits to their superiors when they have done something wrong. Gu Geon-yi, the head and Representative of Glory. He was now in a position where he had to submit a written explanation to the Hunter Association.
“……Keukkeukkeuk.”
His eyes were still downcast, but a pained laugh escaped his lips. A truly bizarre sight. But Gu Geon-yi simply couldn't hold back the laughter that was leaking out.
‘A bunch of vermin not even worth a single punch.’
The power of the Glory Guild was immense. To the point where it was questionable if even the combined forces of all the other guilds, excluding Glory, could be a match. If they decided to wipe out the Hunter Association, the world would change in a single day.
However, they couldn't do so simply because they lacked a ‘just cause’. The Association officials, who had fawned over him in all sorts of ways when Vice Chairman Yoo In-won was still alive, had recently started acting subtly different. No one had ever dared.
No one had ever pointed out the Glory Guild's mistakes at a gathering of Hunter officials. And now they were calling him, the Representative, to write a letter of apology in a shabby place like this? Flames sparked once again in Gu Geon-yi's eyes.
He put down the pen he was holding and slowly lifted the paper.
Crunch.
And then, mouthful by mouthful, he began to meticulously chew and eat the written explanation form.
‘I'll make you pay the price for looking down on the Glory Guild.’
The thought of having to save people had already flown to Andromeda in his mind. He had to get back Maria, who was stolen by Cheon Hae-seon. He had to reverse the Association's policy of reducing their jurisdiction next year.
He had to drag Baek Jeong-dae, who had publicly humiliated him, down from the Vice Chairman's seat. No, that's not enough. He had to kill Baek Jeong-dae.
‘The problem is…….’
Power.
He lacked power. Gu Geon-yi was a genius, and he had been a strong being from the very beginning. But even someone like Gu Geon-yi had times when he felt his own power was lacking.
Like when he was utterly crushed by Kang Hyeon in the Hunter Ranking Match. Of course, the matchup was terrible. A Tanker facing an Esper is like a mouse before a cat.
But after suffering that humiliating defeat, the Glory Guild struggled for a while to expand its influence. That's just how the position of the strongest in a guild is. There are thousands of talented people within the Glory Guild, but when the person considered the strongest is trampled by someone else, the guild's reputation plummets along with them.
Now, people would use his clash with Cheon Hae-seon as gossip. His own humiliation was one thing, since it had already happened, but if it damaged the Glory Guild's image, it would impact the guild's business as a whole. He absolutely had to prevent that from happening.
“Son of a bitch……”
There's a limit to how much someone can improve. How could a guy who hadn't even been a Hunter for a year have grown so much? The more he thought about it, the more absurd it was.
He remembered the day he met Cheon Hae-seon at the Hunter Association headquarters. A fucking nobody who flinched just from having Ether infused into a voice had now become an equal opponent. The thought that he might have already surpassed him surged up, but the pride firmly rooted in his heart blocked the train of thought heading in that direction.
Gu Geon-yi shot up from his seat. On the plain door, he could see the face of Cheon Hae-seon taking Maria away. Maria was more than just a business partner or a colleague.
Coming from the same orphanage, they had spent over ten years together; she was like his own arms and legs. The sense of loss from losing such a person was indescribable in words. Gu Geon-yi finally couldn't hold it in and swung his fist.
Kwang.
He had only come in to cooperate; he could break down a door like this and leave whenever he wanted. Of course, the Association would throw a fit. But Gu Geon-yi's intuition, honed from leading the guild for many years, was telling him so.
That all of this was because he lacked power. Maria leaving him. The people of the world praising Cheon Hae-seon.
The Association being uncooperative with the Glory Guild. All of it. It was all because his own power was insufficient.
‘If I gain overwhelming power, everything will come back.’
After leaving the Hunter Association, Gu Geon-yi immediately went to the Glory Guild's Gangnam research lab. Recently, the Glory Guild had been analyzing a special ‘something’. Something incredibly dangerous, yet absurdly powerful.
A black ‘something’ that seemed to suck in everything around it, even light.
Dark matter.
It was something discovered at the scene of Yoo Ji-won's death.