They were seated inside a hastily set-up situation room in front of the Ungin Life building in Mapo-gu.
It was Korea’s second RP dungeon. Since the first RP had appeared around the time of the Cataclysm, it had been nearly eight years.
For now, every S-rank and the first raid teams of the major guilds had gathered to assess the situation.
The leading figures of each guild assembled and put on a grave air, but the situation ended more simply than expected.
The Association President had looked at On Jurim, coughed awkwardly for some reason, then merely designated the guild to be drafted for this RP and vanished as if fleeing with his tail between his legs.
The support guild had been decided, but they remained in their seats for a while.
The moment they scattered, the reporters camped outside would surely bombard them with every kind of question.
‘Is Hyeonak not deploying? Guild Leader On Jurim, are you so slow to move even when an RP dungeon appears?’
They would ignore the Association President’s orders entirely and ask nonsense like that without any context.
In the end, it was to show that Hyeonak was not simply sitting idle either, and that they would not stand by and watch a threat to Korea, or something to that effect.
“No~~~ matter how I think about it, it’s strange~~”
“Hmm? What is?”
At team leader Kim Jongwon’s words, Gidan, who had been opening a game on his phone, raised his head and asked.
“I’m talking about Association President An Seonyeong…… Sending only her daughter-in-law’s guild feels really strange and fishy.”
“Why? Isn’t it because it’s an RP?”
In truth, RP dungeons differed from other dungeons starting from the very method of attack.
RP dungeons.
Officially called Replay Dungeons, and sometimes referred to by some as Role-Playing Dungeons, these great dungeons randomly replayed memories of a world remaining within the System.
According to researchers who had studied the System thus far, the prevailing hypothesis was that the System had not originated on Earth, but had been artificially created in another world, and had crossed over to Earth with the end of its original world.
RP dungeons were places that reproduced that world.
Scholars compared them to something like cache files left inside the System.
Therefore, while other dungeons had a specific monster as their master, RPs were unique in that the System itself became the master of the dungeon.
Because of that, the method of clearing them also changed.
The System, the master of an RP dungeon, reproduced a world and then generated a specific scenario quest suited to the dungeon.
And the condition for clearing it was for the hunters sent into the dungeon to progress through that scenario safely.
Once they entered an RP, hunters became members of a world other than Earth. As though they had become actors on a stage and taken on roles.
After that, they all received a common main quest, as well as personal quests assigned according to their roles.
Among them, only by completing the main quest could an RP dungeon be cleared.
For that reason, the established theory was that the chance of clearing it was higher if guilds that were already in sync entered together, rather than sending in a huge crowd that would all get in one another’s way in a chaotic mess.
That was why one large guild, Brom, had been made the core, with allied guilds connected to it sent in as a single unit.
Judging from past cases, as long as each person acted according to their role, the difficulty of clearing the main quest was not high.
The problem, however, was the dungeon break.
For dungeon breaks below S-rank, it meant the monsters inside the dungeon came pouring out.
But an RP dungeon break was different. When an RP opened, world collided with world.
Literally, it brought an impact on the level of cities collapsing and nations declining.
Because of that, despite the fact that the difficulty of clearing an RP was not high, it was classified as a great dungeon, and all S-ranks had gathered in one place.
Gidan sank deep into his chair and continued.
“The clear difficulty is low, it’s an RP, and since it appeared right in the middle of Seoul, it’ll get a lot of attention. I feel like she just thought it’d be useful in a lot of ways.”
“You little high schooler, adults have something called experience, you know. There are things that just hit you right in the forehead. Isn’t that right, Guild Leader?”
He looked at Jurim.
Jurim gave no answer and only kept smoking. Then, after fiddling with his phone, the one thing he finally spat out was this.
“Aren’t food names these days pointlessly long?”
Separate from the fact that they very much agreed with him, Jurim’s mind had been off in a strange place lately. With some exaggeration, it was suspicious that a man who slept half the day had only been sleeping a third of it for the past few days.
Nayeon chimed in, saying she couldn’t memorize the names, while Kim Jongwon crossed his arms with a displeased expression.
Meanwhile, Gidan tapped on his keyboard. He seemed to be looking for someone in the game, but perhaps the person was nowhere to be found, as the chat window was filled only with question marks.
Just then, Nayeon, who had been pondering the team leader’s question, clapped her hands.
“I got it. Isn’t it so they can give Guild Leader Cheon an artifact?”
Artifacts.
Equipment possessed by bosses of S-rank or higher, such as Biat’s Void, were called artifacts, meaning “items made with technology from another world.”
If RPs were truly reproductions of the original world, in other words, they were places where artifacts that existed only among the remnants of another world could be farmed.
“Hm, is that it? Is it because of artifacts? To give them to her daughter-in-law’s side? This is why blood ties, regional ties, school ties, all that stuff is no good.”
Gidan cut into his muttering.
“That’s on the level of ‘theoretically, time travel through a black hole is possible,’ you know. If that really worked, the whole world would already be in an uproar.”
Not only artifacts of S-rank or higher, but elixirs, legendary potions said to cure all diseases, and Lost Technology Archiving Books, which preserved technologies that had existed in the past but were now lost.
If it was possible to bring items like that back?
When RP research was first announced, it caused a sensation, and every hunter scrambled to enter an RP, but……
‘Artifacts? I’ve never seen one. Do they really even exist?’
‘A candid statement from an American S-rank hunter: it would be faster to kill one more S-rank monster than to look for artifacts in an RP.’
Since there were countless interviews from hunters who had only wandered around rural villages or outskirts in RPs before returning, RPs had now fallen into the category of places that were merely troublesome and bothersome.
Just then, Jurim, who had been silent all along, turned his cigarette butt into dust and rose.
“What are you going to do?”
“I feel like I’m getting dumber the longer I stay here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ow, that’s internal damage worth four weeks of treatment.”
The team leader grimaced, and Gidan clutched his ribs.
“Guild Leader, don’t worry. They say stupidity isn’t contagious.”
Nayeon said brightly, all by herself.
Whether they did or not, Jurim pulled back the cloth of the tent.
“Uh, Guild Leader. Where are you going? There are probably still reporters outside.”
“An errand.”
At the indifferent reply, everyone wore blank expressions. Even Nayeon was shocked.
Who on earth was he running an errand for? He wasn’t that kind of person, was he?
*
“Our guild, NAG, never takes the safety of the people lightly. I’m not saying Brom will fail, but unlike other dungeons with established strategies, the situation inside an RP dungeon cannot be predicted, so in preparation for any possible accident, all guild members are on standby to respond in real time……”
Outside the tent, Gu Sinhu, who had been rambling into a microphone for quite some time, trailed off.
Because the reporters’ gazes had all shifted to one place at once.
It was where Jurim, who had come out of Hyeonak’s tent, stood.
“Thank you for your answer, Guild Leader Gu Sinhu.”
The reporter who had been holding a microphone up to him quickly wrapped things up and began moving toward Jurim. The same went for all the reporters who had been camped in front of Gu Sinhu.
“Guild Leader On Jurim, what do you think about this RP dungeon?”
“Guild Leader On Jurim! What response is Hyeonak planning?”
They thrust microphones and cameras at him and chased after him from behind and beside him, but the center of attention himself maintained complete silence and merely sauntered along.
‘Fuck, with a face like that, he should’ve become a celebrity. Why the hell did he become a hunter?’
Gu Sinhu glared at Jurim in irritation.
On Jurim, Gidan, Nayeon, and even On Jurim’s adopted daughter.
Was it because their looks were on a higher level compared to other guilds? No matter how hateful their behavior was, people were more curious about Hyeonak’s moves than NAG’s.
With that crowd trailing after him, Jurim entered a convenience store some distance away, then came back out holding a bag of strawberry-flavored candy.
‘What kind of fresh lunacy is that supposed to be?’
In the middle of this disaster, the person receiving the most attention had not opened his mouth once, and what he did was buy candy at a convenience store.
Listening to the constant burst of shutters, Gu Sinhu imagined the titles of the photo articles that would soon be uploaded.
‘[Photo S] On Jurim’s Great-Dungeon-Class Sweet Tooth.’
‘[Photo] Thank You, On Jurim! Hanyang Confectionery All Smiles.’
Filthy lookism. Gu Sinhu, growing pointlessly angry, was just about to enter NAG’s tent.
The moment he turned his head, his eyes met Jurim’s.