Episode 73
“Cough, khak!”
A dizzying sensation swept over his body. It felt as though someone had seized his entrails and shaken them.
Like a fish forcibly flung up onto the surface of the water, Han Chasu spat out a gasping breath.
“Kh…”
His trembling hand gripped the floor. Beneath his pale eyelids, gray eyes moved sharply. ‘There are no enemies.’ He was startled, but he did not fall into confusion. He had experienced something similar before. ‘It’s like an Irregular Gate.’ The moment space had rearranged itself and his body had twisted. Recalling that sensation, Han Chasu turned his head.
Then, with a murky sigh, he swept his hair back.
“This is absurd…”
The scenery before his eyes was unfamiliar.
Blue sky showed through cracks in the shattered ceiling. Wind came and went through holes in the wall, and a red tapestry hanging there fluttered in tatters.
Clang.
The sound of an ownerless helmet rolling across the floor rang in his ears.
No matter where he looked, this was not Korea from the novel he had possessed. Nor was it any place he could have seen in the world he had lived in. ‘It’s like I’ve stepped into a fairy tale.’ Pressing his throbbing head, Han Chasu turned. Beneath a half-collapsed wall, Gi Taeyeon lay as if dead.
“Director.”
No matter how many times he called, the other man did not regain consciousness. Han Chasu checked Gi Taeyeon’s pulse. It was beating very strongly.
“Director. Hey. Open your eyes.”
“……”
“Is it because of the synchronization rate?”
It seemed to be the result of the pain synchronization rate being doubled, something the development lab had applied as if to make them suffer a little.
“Hmm.”
Han Chasu looked at the man’s deathly pale face, then took out a potion. ‘I don’t know what might happen, so I can’t touch him carelessly… I should at least feed him a potion.’ Han Chasu carefully parted Gi Taeyeon’s lips and poured in the blue liquid. He felt faint breaths leaking through the slightly opened lips.
Gulp.
Even while unconscious, Gi Taeyeon swallowed the potion well. His instinct to survive seemed to be extremely strong. ‘Now, first aid is done.’ Han Chasu held the remaining potion in his mouth and checked his wrist. When he pressed the button on the metallic band with a round screen, red light blinked.
Beep, beep, beep.
Beeeeeeep—
“……”
Silence embraced Han Chasu. After blankly staring at the screen, he strode over to Gi Taeyeon.
And the same warning tone stabbed at his ears.
Beep, beep, beep.
Beeeeeeep—
That made it certain.
The wristband, which served as a communicator with the control room, had lost its function.
“This is going to drive me insane… completely insane.”
Staring at the screen of the device that had gone entirely dead, Han Chasu dragged a hand down his face.
The wristband was not merely a means of communication. This small machine, which the development lab had repeatedly emphasized he must wear, also served as an escape stone.
Which meant he had to explore this bizarre place and find a way out.
“Whew…” ‘Right. I knew things had been going far too smoothly lately.’ Still, the situation was not as difficult as he had expected. It would have been a different story if he had fallen here empty-handed. The current Han Chasu was fully prepared.
It was all thanks to the habit he had developed after being caught in an Irregular Gate.
“Let’s see, I have plenty of potions.”
There were instant-effect potions made by Haetae craftsmen and various potions to remove abnormal statuses. On top of that, there were the equipment items he had squeezed out of the Cheonryeong Guild and the development lab.
Now the only thing left was to figure out where that killing intent he had felt before losing consciousness had come from…
Han Chasu was rubbing his stiff nape and taking another look around when—
“Ugh.”
“……”
“Mm… What the hell is this now?”
Perhaps the potion had worked. Gi Taeyeon had regained consciousness.
***
Han Chasu stayed by Gi Taeyeon’s side until he recovered himself. Explaining the situation was a bonus.
Gi Taeyeon had only one reaction after hearing the entire story.
“Those sons of bitches didn’t do their jobs properly. Once we get out, I’ll make every one of them write ten reports of explanation.”
“…
Is there a way out?”
“Ah. Hunter Han Chasu wouldn’t know. My, you must have been scared all by yourself. If I hadn’t been here, this could have been a very big problem.”
Gi Taeyeon smiled and patted Han Chasu’s head. At his attitude, as if soothing a frightened child, Han Chasu frowned.
Whether he did or not, Gi Taeyeon thoroughly ruffled Han Chasu’s hair and rose from his seat.
“Let’s see.”
His eyes, as he surveyed the surroundings, glowed a vivid blue. Han Chasu silently stood and watched him.
“Hmm…”
The place they were in was a spacious room about ten meters wide and ten meters long. The floor and pillars were marble. On the collapsed walls, incomprehensible patterns had been carved in relief, and here and there lay white bones and broken armor.
“Do you know where this is?”
At Han Chasu’s question, Gi Taeyeon tilted his head to the side. After thinking for a moment, he slowly opened his mouth.
“I think I saw it among the dungeon samples for testing… but I’m not certain.”
“A dungeon for testing? I thought it could only make monsters appear.”
“Since they went to the trouble of making virtual reality, isn’t it human nature to want to use it here and there? Well, even if it weren’t those development lab bastards, the higher-ups are the type to try to squeeze out anything they can by using whatever they already have to the fullest.”
Gi Taeyeon muttered in a tone of disgust. He was staring intently somewhere while loosening his wrist, looking as if he were about to get into a fight.
“Hmm, let’s see.”
The place Gi Taeyeon stopped was a wall that had collapsed down to waist height. Beyond the wall, a dense forest stretched out.
Han Chasu had no time to stop him. Gi Taeyeon drew his arm back and thrust his fist toward empty air.
Clang—!
A metallic noise struck their ears. Then a lattice-patterned wall suddenly appeared in midair.
The wall rippled like a net holding faint light, then soon vanished without a trace as though melting in the sunlight.
“It’s not an open-type dungeon. Whether that’s fortunate or unfortunate, there’s a high chance we’re still inside the system.”
Gi Taeyeon said, turning back to Han Chasu.
The virtual reality system still could not implement open-type dungeons.
That was because they had not yet perfectly controlled the heart of the Aderjan Mage, the core and center of the system. In other words, the Illusory Heart.
As its name suggested, the heart, with its powerful illusion ability, was a living trap. It was clearly nothing more than an item with no will of its own, and yet it had bewitched nearby people dozens of times.
“We can’t use this. What good is a rare item with a grade-one acquisition difficulty? We can’t use it!”
It was an item too dangerous to throw away, and too precious to shove into a corner. The one who discovered a use for the chicken-rib-like Illusory Heart was the head of the development lab at Fourth Headquarters.
“Isn’t it fine as long as we draw out only its power without going near it?” The development lab chief of Fourth Headquarters immediately began controlling the Illusory Heart together with the development lab chief of First Headquarters. Collecting all sorts of sealing devices was only the beginning; they even made a control device themselves from dungeon by-products.
The results exceeded expectations.
Even so, it was still beyond them to fully utilize the Illusory Heart’s power.
Whenever they tried to implement a complex dungeon like a dark maze or an underwater dungeon, space became tangled dozens of times.
“Hey, this isn’t going to work. The moment we try to raise the implementation level even a little, its power slips out of range like a ghost.”
In the end, the development lab had no choice but to be satisfied with quietly summoning a few monsters or creating very simple dungeons.
“Im Cheongmun threw a fit, but what could he do? Unless the Illusory Heart said, ‘Here, I shall grant what you desire,’ and trapped him in a fantasy, not everything in the world can go the way he wants.”
After they gave up their greed, system development proceeded smoothly. They had gone through multiple safety tests, and he had even confirmed it himself… ‘Why did a dungeon suddenly appear on its own?’ Gi Taeyeon was about to knock on the empty air once more.
“Ugh.”
Feeling pain, Gi Taeyeon clicked his tongue without realizing it. His wrist had swollen red. ‘Come to think of it, I matched my stats to Han Chasu’s.’ It was not particularly painful, but it was cumbersome. He had not brought any potions separately, either.
Gi Taeyeon was staring at his own wrist with indifferent eyes when a hand abruptly entered from beside him.
“Here, use this.”
“Mm?”
“It’s a potion. You can apply it, or drink it directly.”
Seeing the Haetae seal stamped on the potion’s cap, Gi Taeyeon laughed softly. ‘So he didn’t send all of them to the Cheonryeong Guild?’ Should he say it was fortunate that he at least knew how to look after himself? Gi Taeyeon found himself smirking at the frugal side of his retainer.
“Aren’t you going to take it?”
“My wrist hurts, so I can’t open the cap. Can’t you apply it for me instead?”
Han Chasu frowned briefly, but obediently opened the cap. A refreshing energy spread through the air with a whoosh.
As he carefully rubbed Gi Taeyeon’s wrist, he asked,
“I’ve heard the explanation now, so tell me how we get out.”
“It’s simple. When you get caught up in a dungeon, what should you do?”
“…
You’re saying we have to clear it.” ‘We can’t even fight together. This has become troublesome.’ A sigh escaped Han Chasu’s mouth.
If his body had been healthy, that would have been one thing. But with a body that threw penalties at him just for doing a little sparring, there was no way he could properly engage in combat.
On top of that, Gi Taeyeon currently had the same stats as him and a pain synchronization rate that was doubled. Clearing the dungeon might be more difficult than expected.
It was then that a strand of doubt rose in his mind.
“But do we necessarily have to succeed in clearing it?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s a test dungeon anyway, isn’t it? Surely we can get out even if we fail.”
And the fastest way to fail a dungeon clear was the death of a raid member.