NOVPUB
Chapter 235
“Even when a wound heals, it leaves a scar. A dimensional rift already formed here, so I created a path following the marks left behind,” Harmakan said.
The instance dungeons he had created thus far had not required keys, but this one was an exception. The ones before were spaces centered around Harmakan, but this time, he had used a spell to reopen a scar that had previously formed along the dimensional wall.
Suho took the golden key he had been given and held it toward the station exit.
At that moment, the air around the key rippled. A powerful surge of mana swirled, and the dimensional wall was forcibly split apart.
“A g-gate?”
Jiwoo’s eyes shot wide open in shock.
My god! It really is a gate! What in the world? How is that even possible?
There had been so many surprises today she was beginning to think her heart couldn’t handle it. It was pounding so hard it hurt.
This gate had spawned out of nowhere. Even after witnessing it with her own eyes, Jiwoo struggled to believe it. She stood there, jaw hanging open and hands covering her mouth, her gaze darting between Suho and Harmakan.
“S-Suho... I don’t—”
“Shall we go inside?” he suggested casually.
Jiwoo hiccuped. She couldn’t wrap her head around how calm he was after doing something so absurd. She decided to stop trying to understand anything at this point.
Suho was the first to step inside the gate.
He had already disappeared halfway into it when Jiwoo suddenly snapped back to her senses and shouted, “W-wait! I didn’t know this would happen. I don’t even have my weapon—”
“Just go in. You won’t have to fight, anyway,” said Harmakan.
He gave her a light push on the back. She stumbled forward, and without meaning to, followed Suho right into the gate.
There was a rush of light.
Jiwoo had only taken one step—and yet a completely different world unfolded before her.
[You have entered an instance dungeon.]
The message appeared in front of Suho, though Jiwoo was unaware of it. All she could see were the twisted surroundings of Hapjeong Station, which now resembled a grotesque jungle.
Vines hung down from the ceiling like snakes, curling around the walls. The air was thick with the nauseating stench of rotting corpses. A low, ghostly moaning echoed through the space.
Jiwoo spun around.
“Is this... a wall?” she asked, banging on the invisible barrier behind her. Beyond it was the sunny, peaceful real world.
The situation terrified her. It seemed they had entered a completely different space. No matter how hard she pushed, the barrier wouldn’t budge.
In a dry, mechanical tone, Harmakan said, “Stop trying. In order to leave, you will have to kill the boss monster or use a teleportation stone.”
He raised a thumb, pointing at himself with a sinister grin.
“I’m the boss, by the way.”
Jiwoo was sure of one thing amid all the confusion. She should have guessed it from the way this summon looked, but she was now convinced—he had the worst personality.
Actually, correction...
“Kieeek! You slow human! Are you going to make the Young Monarch wait?!”
The ant summon might have looked cute, but he was just as foul-tempered.
Beru screeched at Jiwoo again, even louder this time. “Get moving!”
“Fine, fine! I heard you the first time,” she grumbled. She had no choice but to carefully walk after Suho, who was already heading down the exit stairs. 𝓷ℴ𝓿𝓅𝓊𝒷.𝓬𝓸𝓂
But even as an S-rank hunter, Jiwoo had a fear of the unknown. As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she instinctively gulped as she began to take in Hapjeong Station in earnest.
The bathroom came into view first, then the rows of underground shops. Everything was in ruins, with shattered windows and crumbling walls. Faint florescent lights shone on the deserted shops and the empty corridor. The sight spooked her.
The lights overhead buzzed and flickered as though they were about to go out. Jiwoo stepped carefully over weeds that had grown through cracks in the tile, studying her surroundings with an uncertain frown.
I’ve never seen a dungeon like this before.
It seemed that this wasn’t like a usual dungeon that led to an entirely new dimension. It was as though the station itself had turned into a dungeon.
I didn’t know this was possible...
Jiwoo had encountered many S-rank hunters thus far, but never anyone like Suho. The more she watched him, the more she realized she didn’t know a thing about him.
She walked up beside him and asked nervously, “Suho... May I ask what you plan to do here?” Despite being his elder, her voice had grown more polite without her even realizing it.
Suho was scanning his surroundings calmly. “We created the dungeon, so now we’ll look for the double dungeon inside it. You said you didn’t clear it back then. There’s a chance it might still be around.”
“I see...”
“Creating” a dungeon by themselves in order to look for the double dungeon... That was easy enough to say, but it would have been impossible for anyone else to do.
There was something else, however, that Jiwoo couldn’t understand.
“But this dungeon is completely different from the one I cleared with my partners. Do you think the double dungeon could still be here?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Suho responded.
Harmakan added confidently, “There is a definite possibility. This place might look different, but it was made along the scar in the dimension wall. If there are any traces of a breach in here, that would be the double dungeon.”
There was another reason that Harmakan was so sure of himself. He had created this place, and yet even he could sense an unfamiliar presence here.
A shiver ran down Jiwoo’s spine. In the silence of the dungeon, she felt something watching them.
Her earlier confusion and hesitation vanished, and her S-rank instincts kicked in. She spun around, her eyes flashing sharply.
“There!”
Her gaze locked onto movement.
Jiwoo’s body moved in a blur, stretching forward like a rubber band snapping. She didn’t need a weapon—the body of an S-class hunter was a weapon of war itself.
Her fist tore through the wall with a resounding crash, shattering it into rubble.
Her hand shot into the broken section and she snatched something by its neck, taking care not to kill it right away. The creature squirmed and thrashed, releasing high-pitched whines as it tried to free itself from her grasp.
“Wh-what in the world is this?”
The thing Jiwoo was holding wasn’t normal. Her eyes widened as she looked over the magic beast.
Suddenly, the window of an old clothing store behind Suho suddenly shattered.
A group of creatures swarmed in, screeching and grunting as they attacked with incredible speed. Their spines glistened with a green poison.
[The Monarch of Plagues smacks her lips.]
Querehsha had awakened. This did not mean the creatures were insects, however—she was only responding to the poison.
“What are they?” Suho asked. Instead of countering the attack, he lightly raised his hand and closed his fist.
Ruler’s Authority.
The creatures froze mid-leap, confused. They were suspended in the air as though caught in an invisible web.
Suho observed them, then called out to Harmakan with an intrigued look.
“Any idea what these are?”
“Interesting. I did not create them,” the demonic spirit replied, his eyes gleaming.
Beru took a bite from one of the creatures and spat it out. “They taste horrible. I don’t think they are proper magic beasts at all.”
“It doesn’t seem that way,” Suho agreed. The creatures looked extremely odd.
He frowned. What would you call these...?
“Are they plants?” he mumbled.
The creatures resembled malformed dolls wrapped in purple, tentacle-like vines. Some had multiple legs like an octopus, while others had tentacles dangling from them like grass roots. They were complete messes, to say the least.
The only common feature among them was that they wore helms where their heads should have been—helms that resembled human skulls.
[??]
Even the system, which usually displayed the names of all beasts, was unable to identify these creatures. Above their heads, only question marks hovered in place.
“I guess they’re plants that mimic skeletons. Or maybe they sprouted from the skulls,” Suho said.
I have no idea what to call them. Looks like I’ll have to turn to Antares for help.
[“Antares” has entered the body of the shaman.]
The tiny lizard came into view above Suho’s shoulder, then crossed his arms solemnly.
“Ask away,” Antares said.
“Antares, are these the nightmare bulbs?”
“No. These are simply nameless weeds. Not all the weeds have names.”
“So they’re from the Sea of the Afterlife?”
“Likely. But none of the beings from other dimensions look as half-assed as this.”
By “beings,” he was referring to the ordinary magic beasts that had appeared on Earth thus far, those from the dimensions ruled by the Monarchs. But even Antares, who had ruled for so long, had never seen anything like these monsters before.
“Beings like these have no special name, and their appearance is random. We simply call them ‘Residents of the Rift.’”
“Residents of the Rift?”
Suho cocked his head. He had never heard such a term.
Antares shrugged. “I’m not sure if they could even be called ‘residents.’ They are dimensional junk, floating in the dimensional rift.”
“Dimensional junk?”
“Actually, I think it would be more accurate to call them dregs. They are not creations of the Absolute Being, but the dregs of those creations. They were never completed.”
The weed Suho was holding shuddered violently, its shrill screeches echoing through the air. It was almost as if it understood Antares’ words.
“You seem to have offended it,” Suho remarked.
“Offense? What an interesting thing to say. Those creatures are unable to feel anything at all,” Antares said with a scoff.
With a cold gaze, he looked down at the trembling weed, his eyes filled with disdain.
“They are not sentient, and they have no souls. Because they were never finished, all they have is a hollow craving for life. They are starving scraps of creation left to aimlessly wander the rift.”
The soulless weed shrieked again. Its voice was the only sound echoing in the instance dungeon.
Antares glanced around, his lips curling into a sly grin. “In any case, there’s an opening where these weeds slipped through. I believe you humans call that a double dungeon.”
The opening likely wouldn’t be easy to locate. If these weeds had souls, Suho could extract them as shadow soldiers and have them guide him, but as soulless dregs, they were not valid targets.
As always, however, there was another way.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jiwoo said, feeling a chill.
Suho, Antares, Harmakan, and Beru had all turned to stare at her. Even the weeds had the hollow black eye sockets of their skull helms locked on Jiwoo.
She instinctively realized what her role must be.
“Don’t tell me... I’m the bait?”
Antares nodded gravely as she looked at him. His face was dead serious.
“The nightmare bulbs are the greediest of all the weeds. The Residents of the Rift will be eager to get a taste of you since you previously escaped from the bulbs.”
Harmakan, standing motionlessly behind Antares, was smiling viciously at her as well. “I told you from the start that you wouldn’t have to fight.”
“Goddamn it, you...” Jiwoo hissed.
Suddenly, squealing filled the dungeon. From every direction, countless weed monsters emerged, all headed straight for Jiwoo.
At the same time, hot flames enveloped Suho’s fist. The dark flames, born from the Heart of the King of Dragons, surged out like a living whip and incinerated every weed in sight.
Suho’s eyes gleamed fiercely in the flickering light.
“Everyone, protect Jiwoo!” he shouted. “Beru, track where these things are coming from. Find the source!”
“As you command!” Beru said with a screech, his grin widening with feral delight. He sprang after Suho, who had already dashed ahead.
“Eeek!”
Jiwoo let out a startled cry as Harmakan grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder.
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “I will keep you safe.”
“Darn you! I told you I needed a weapon—”
“Haha. Why bother?”
Harmakan, the Supreme Chief of the demonic spirits and the creator of instance dungeons, spoke as firmly as the boss of a dungeon might.
“No variables are permitted. Consider yourself kidnapped if that makes you feel better.”
He was nothing if not a perfectionist.
