Inside a packed city bus hurtling along. Rokhui, gripping a strap tightly as she stood, sighed and tucked her phone into her padded jacket pocket.
She had sighed so hard that her bangs, bleached platinum blonde, fluttered high into the air.
“Hah… I knew it, dropping out is the answer….”
Yeah, right. She had already pressed the return-to-school application button and was on her way back from an academic advisor consultation.
Just as the text message warned, if she took a leave of absence this time, it would really mean expulsion. How hard had she worked to get into that school, and now expulsion? Gim Jeonghye, who had always just fumed without really doing anything, might actually faint this time.
They say humans are creatures of forgetting, and watching Rokhui live the past two years having forgotten this hell, it certainly seemed true.
“I was too complacent….”
She had put it off and put it off until she had completely missed the window to find a studio.
Lost in the sweetness of her leave, Rokhui had forgotten the dizzying chain of transfers—village bus, city bus, subway, and even a school shuttle. A commute taking a whopping four hours round trip.
Surely no one could endure this commuting hell.
The voice of Gim Jeonghye telling her to look for a studio while she still had the chance echoed in her ears.
“…What am I going to tell Mom.”
In a daze, Rokhui pressed her head against a bus pole.
Her head swirled chaotically just thinking of excuses.
“Wow, Hanul must’ve shot another ad. Is it cosmetics this time?”
Rokhui raised her head at the conversation floating from the back seats.
Looking out the window, a flashy commercial was playing on an electronic billboard.
A man standing alone against a black background.
Soon, the camera’s focus seemed to get sucked toward him, closing up on his face.
The screen filled with wet hair, glistening pupils, and a smoldering, reddish gaze.
Red-painted lips were smeared and crushed beneath his thumb.
Hanul. A rookie who had appeared like a comet in the Hunter world recently.
Twenty-five years old.
Roughly a year ago, immediately upon Awakening, he had seized the public’s attention with both an exalted SS-rank and outstanding looks.
Though a former model, he wasn’t even a celebrity, yet every ad he shot was a so-called jackpot.
Sold-Out Man, Sold-Out Fairy, Icon of the Century, and so on.
These flashy titles showed his impact; there was a reason the entire advertising world wanted him.
\- The sexiest color, Red.
The ad copy spread and vanished along with Hanul’s lips.
‘So now he’s conquering sexiness too. Is that it?’
It was a new direction for Hanul, who had dominated the “male friend” and “big dog” concepts with the boyish beauty emanating from his large, clear eyes.
‘He must make a ton of money. Damn. I’m jealous.’
Hunters usually got flak if they weren’t devoted to their main job, but Hanul appeared at Gates often enough, and his “entertainment activities” were just ads and interviews that other Hunters did too. Because of that, Hanul’s portal search bar was a clean zone devoid of controversy.
“Whoever thought of putting red lipstick on Hanul, I want to lock them in a prison of praise.”
“Seeing how Hanul’s been rising lately, isn’t he comfortably in the male Hunter top three alongside Cha Yuno and Jeong Haejun? I heard she got totally cursed out talking to a hardcore akgae—a malicious solo fan—of Cha Yuno yesterday?”
“What? What’s wrong with our Hanul oppa?? Who do they think they are??”
“Right? My sister is just, only Cha Yuno.”
“Ah… your sister…? Haha, she certainly has an eye. Did you ask your sister what an akgae is?”
‘Girls, no matter how well Hanul is doing, Cha Yuno is Cha Yuno.’
Rokhui wanted to butt into the high school girls’ conversation but held herself back.
Second son of the Taeil Corporation, Guild Master Cha Yuno of «Eclipse», the undisputed number one guild in Korea.
It was Rokhui’s personal opinion that his aristocratic looks were something Hanul couldn’t even dare to compare to.
But taste was just taste.
“Cha Yuno definitely has that maddening charm. If I fell into a dungeon, I’d love Hanul too, but I suppose I’d want to be saved by someone stable like a Ben X, Cha Yuno.”
“Ah, falling into a dungeon is overboard. And you’re on Hanul’s side.”
“Does that matter? Beauty saves the world. Beauty is beauty, no matter what.”
“True, Jeong Haejun may be uncle-aged, but his face is pure oppa. Did you see the paparazzi shot that came out recently? His decadent sexiness was insane.”
“There’s no business before beauty. What does age matter? He’s this handsome!”
Deeply impressed by the girl’s words, Rokhui almost turned around to ask for a high five.
\- The next stop is Sinseon City Hall.
The moment Rokhui got off the bus, she grimaced at Hanul’s face on the bus stop billboard.
“A Hunter making money off ads.”
Rokhui was jealous of him.
“He is ridiculously good-looking, though.”
Hanul and Rokhui were the same age.
Rokhui found it distasteful that Hanul, despite being the same age, was thriving with a pure, unblemished visual that seemed almost naive to the ways of the world, unlike herself, who was stained by the mundane.
“While someone here is stuck with a four-hour commute.”
The jeonse deposit for the studio near her school, which she had looked up before getting off, wouldn’t leave her head.
It was an unimaginable sum for flat-broke Rokhui, but for Hanul, it would be pocket change.
If she had secured a studio in advance, her mother would have helped, but instead, Rokhui found herself resentfully envying the blameless Hanul for a missed opportunity.
【The contracted Constellation ‘Wings that Command Authority’ consoles you, saying that when you debut as a Hunter, young one, you will easily surpass that guy’s fame, wealth, and popularity.】
“That’s your idea of consolation? I’m not buying a Dungeon Parrot.”
Oddly enough, Hanul was a freelancer who didn’t join a Guild but received requests through the Association.
Guild membership was an important factor for Awakened to guarantee stable income, benefits, and safety, but even though a year had passed since his Hunter debut, he remained unaffiliated.
There were many rumors about why Hanul refused scouting offers from top-tier guilds at home and abroad and insisted on freelancing.
Publicly, the reason was that he liked his main job as a model and wanted to keep it up while working as a Hunter.
As if there were only one or two guilds willing to meet his conditions.
Among the many rumors, the most credible was that his exclusive agency from before his Awakening was holding him back.
Now that his contract with the agency was predicted to end soon, the question of “which guild would take Hanul” was a hot potato.
The guild that took him would undoubtedly prosper.
It was unimaginable how much more successful Hanul—who was already thriving without a guild—would become if he joined one.
“Just you wait. Once I update the system, I’ll buy that measly studio outright.”
‘Just you wait. Once I update the system~’
Whatever that update was, it had become Rokhui’s catchphrase these days.
There were still ten minutes before the village bus to her house would arrive.
Rokhui slumped onto the cold wooden bench at the bus stop.
【!Warning! Mid-sized Gate occurrence detected within 1km!】
“Gate?”
Rokhui furrowed her brows and stared at the transparent window that had appeared in her vision.
A mid-sized Gate was large enough for three full-sized buses to enter even if lined up in a row.
This area was the city center with a commercial district built around City Hall.
Of all times, it happened to be when students were leaving school, and many figures in uniforms could be seen.
A mid-sized Gate in a place with such high foot traffic was a near-catastrophe, no matter how low its rank.
“System, how much time is left until the Gate opens?”
Met with silence from the system, Rokhui anxiously looked around her surroundings.
At the system’s warning, people were already scurrying about in panic.
The young were fleeing quickly, but among the pedestrians, there were many elderly who found swift evacuation difficult.
“Damn it.”
Finally, a system window popped up.
【!Warning! Evacuate outside 400m or you are in danger!】
“Are you kidding? Give me the remaining time.”
【Follow the arrows!
\>\>\> Calculating remaining time until Gate generation…】
The system told you the direction to evacuate if you were near a Gate when it occurred.
Whoever made it, it was a truly kind feature.
“Hurry up and tell me!”
If only it weren’t so damn slow on a whim.
Rokhui stomped her feet anxiously.
Rokhui had many complaints about the system’s speed.
Because despite being decent features, they were always useless when it counted.
【Remaining time until Gate opening: 00:00:30】
“Son of a—….”
Four hundred meters in thirty seconds was impossible even for a healthy adult sprinting at full speed.
A Gate sucked everything at its point of occurrence into the dungeon.
No matter what awaited inside, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that for ordinary people, the odds were one in two that one of any two people would die.
After the Second World opened, hundreds of Gates had opened and closed all over Earth.
Many had been sacrificed in the process, and people had gradually grown numb to the danger.
“This is insane.”
Just as cars had come into being and traffic accidents occurred, Gates and dungeons had also come to be seen as a type of accident.
Today’s Gate would likely be dismissed as one of countless accidents, but people dying and getting hurt was always a cruel thing.
Casualties had to be minimized.
How hard Rokhui had worked to that end, no one but herself knew, but they had been truly tearful days.
“Damn system! If only the speed were improved, how many more people could survive….”
She had resolved to take drastic measures precisely because things had come to this, but she still needed time.
“Why does a dungeon have to burst right in front of me now?”
She wished she could just see the system warning and look the other way.
But this was happening to her right now too.
Rokhui ran. Mixed in among people screaming and fleeing, she ran hard, drawing on strength she didn’t have.
Even sprinting with all her might, it was questionable whether she could evacuate to the safe zone.
“Please, F-rank!!!”
If she was going to fall in anyway, she hoped the dungeon rank inside the Gate would be low.
For so many people to survive as long as possible, they needed to encounter a dungeon they could endure until a Hunter arrived.
【MASTER MODE: Scan for potential ability holders failed.】
‘There isn’t even anyone here who could Awaken right now.’
Rokhui hadn’t run far before her breathing grew ragged.
Then, in Rokhui’s vision, an old woman running with a young child tripped.
“Grandma!”
A child who looked elementary-school-aged stomped his feet in place before his grandmother, who had collapsed into a sit.
“Child, you go first. Grandma’s legs hurt, so I’ll rest and go. Don’t worry and run away quickly!”
Though Rokhui could barely keep her own body steady, she couldn’t bear to pretend she hadn’t seen them.
Rokhui changed direction and ran.
People running with eyes forward shoved her shoulders and bumped into her, but she stubbornly rushed toward the grandmother and child.
“Elder, lean on me. Let’s go together.”
Rokhui exhaled a ragged breath and held out her hand.
“Miss, I’m fine. A young miss like you has to live!”
Even though the grandmother brushed away Rokhui’s hand, Rokhui somehow grabbed and pulled her up.
“You have to get up!”
“I’m asking you to take care of our child. Old folks like us have already lived long enough, so it’s fine. Go quickly!”
“What are you saying!”
The grandmother pushed against Rokhui’s back.
The child finally burst into tears.
“Grandma, get up. Waaah.”
The crying ringing in her ears clouded Rokhui’s mind.
It wasn’t just this grandmother.
Around her, many elderly stood with resignation.
If they fell into the dungeon, would even one of them survive?
In a dungeon without a Hunter?
“Please, even just one Hunter…!”
But Sinseon was neither Seoul nor a major city.
As if there would be an Awakened passing by by chance,
【MASTER MODE: 3 Awakened detected.】
There were?
Before Rokhui’s eyes, the crying grandmother and grandchild flickered like glitching video and disappeared.
It was unmistakably a Hunter’s ability.
“It’s a movement-ability Awakened!”
Someone shouted in relief.
The sight of people around her disappearing one by one was almost moving.
The luck was unbelievable.
Expectation spread across Rokhui’s face.
If it was a movement-ability Awakened, the odds were high they were from the domestic first-tier guild, «Eclipse».
Stopped by relief, Rokhui caught her ragged breath and sank down on her trembling legs.
And she clasped her hands together, waiting for her turn.
What would teleportation feel like?
According to rumor, teleportation felt like your body split into molecules and then stuck back together like magnets…
That was when.
【The contracted Constellation ‘Wings that Command Authority’ says that if you take it so easy, you’ll end up d— %^&&zzzt^-】
Before the words “go to your grave” could even finish, Rokhui’s body lost its destination and floundered in the air.
A feeling as if floating in empty space.
‘This can’t be teleportation.’
In the distance, she could see people who had evacuated to the safety zone.
And beneath her was a pitch-black hole, a giant blue membrane rippling like a crocodile opening its jaws wide for prey.
“I’m screwed….”
Her body tipped backward, and the blue sky gradually grew distant.
Gravity wrapped around her entire body like a rapidly dropping amusement ride.
She was falling.
At the feeling of piercing a thin membrane, Rokhui squeezed her eyes shut.
Thud— With that sound, a powerful shock transmitted to her hips traveled up her spine with a sharp jolt.
【You have entered the Dungeon.】