Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (1)
The blare of sirens mingled with the soft patter of rain. A light drizzle fell steadily around the gate, where the area bustled with hurried footsteps. The sky had already grown dark, and the lights set up throughout the vicinity cast a steady glow over the scene. Rescue workers moved briskly around the ambulances parked nearby, catching the endless stream of transport carts emerging from the gate. Most of the patients on those carts lay beneath white sheets stained crimson, leaving little doubt that there were no survivors.
The middle-aged man with sharp features surveyed the surroundings and came to that conclusion. Dispatched to investigate the incident, he observed everything from the tent erected to shield against the rain—the temporary investigation camp. He was the leader of the team assigned to this case. Yet his slouched posture, unkempt hair, and drowsy-looking eyes belonged more to a loafer haunting dark alleys than to someone in his position. Moreover, he simply sat idle inside the tent instead of working, so the sharp glares from the rescue workers laboring in the rain were, in a sense, inevitable. Though they couldn't voice their thoughts aloud because he looked like someone of high rank, every pair of eyes clearly asked, "What the hell is that guy doing over there?" He paid them no mind and continued his leisurely observation.
Even his relaxed demeanor didn't last long, however, perhaps worn down by the curses raining down from all sides.
"Team Leader!! I knew it... You dumped all the work on us and went right back to slacking off!"
The man, lost in thought while listening to the rain, turned toward the sharp female voice. Sure enough, his most beloved yet troublesome subordinate stood there. Exhaustion from the grueling work was etched across her face, and her eyes brimmed with discontent. Sensing the danger, he instinctively braced himself. That look was the unmistakable prelude to her hellish nagging. Above all else, he wanted to avoid that, so he forced a smile and spoke up quickly.
"Hae-jin... Isn't that a bit harsh? I simply entrusted the task to my 'competent' subordinates while staying here to prepare for any unforeseen developments. Calling it slacking off is quite the exaggeration."
"There you go again, trying to talk your way out of it... Ha, whatever. Complaining won't change anything, and that's not why I came here anyway."
The woman called Hae-jin narrowed her eyes and glared at him before letting out a deep sigh. Watching her reaction closely, he finally turned his gaze toward the gate. One by one, his subordinates were emerging from inside. It seemed they had completed the mission he had given them and returned safely.
"Everyone made it back in one piece! Excellent work. I knew this much would be well within your capabilities. Now then, let's hear the report."
Leaning back leisurely in his chair, the man stared at her. His shameless attitude pushed the woman past disbelief and straight toward madness. After everything they had endured inside, this was all their so-called team leader had to say. Under normal circumstances she would have unleashed a torrent of complaints, but duty came first. Grinding her teeth, she drew a deep breath and began her report.
"First, just as we suspected, there was indeed an error in the dungeon's rank. After entering and observing closely, we confirmed this isn't a D-rank dungeon—it's B-rank, two full tiers higher, and among the upper end of that bracket."
His eyes lit up at once. Their prediction had been spot on. From the beginning, his team's mission had been to investigate a rank discrepancy at a certain dungeon gate. Contacting the party leader who had purchased the clearing rights had yielded nothing, which was why they had come here in person and stumbled upon this horrific scene.
"As expected... So it was. What about the specific cause? Did you find anything inside?"
"No... But based on our overall analysis, we believe a power struggle between the monsters inside the dungeon was the trigger. The large quantity of magic stones discovered near the boss room supports that theory."
Hearing her blunt, emotionless report, the man slowly stroked his chin. A power struggle among monsters within the dungeon, followed by a natural reduction in their forces. It wasn't common, but precedents existed. It wasn't impossible.
The tragic annihilation of a low-level party due to a rank error. Taken in isolation, that conclusion seemed natural. Yet when viewed against the broader picture, the hypothesis raised more than a few troubling questions.
As if sensing his doubt, she continued.
"And... We searched every corner of the dungeon all day, but we couldn't find any monsters above D-rank. The seal on the boss room was still firmly intact."
Her report drove the final nail into his suspicion. He frowned and let out a troubled groan. That was the greatest mystery of the entire incident. During the initial investigation he had entered the dungeon himself and personally gauged the monsters' levels. Yet every creature they encountered had been severely weakened—nothing like true B-rank monsters. If not for the party members' corpses scattered along the paths and the fact that the boss room wasn't specially locked, he might have dismissed the whole thing as a mistake.
The cause was likely the overall weakening of the regular monsters due to the power struggle. On top of that, the boss room had been sealed by a special locking mechanism far beyond what such a weak party could ever hope to break. All the evidence pointed to a single conclusion: even if their level was low, a properly licensed party had entered a dungeon of appropriate difficulty, failed, and been completely wiped out. While possible in theory, the total annihilation of an entire party in a dungeon of this caliber felt far too unrealistic. Even for someone who had handled countless cases, the situation remained deeply unsettling and ambiguous.
"...The spot where the large cache of magic stones was buried. We found mining equipment there during the first investigation. Is it possible they were ambushed by monsters while digging?"
"We considered that possibility too, but there were no battle traces nearby to support it. Instead, the corpses were concentrated at the location we discovered during the first investigation, in the middle section. It's probably safe to assume a fierce battle took place there."
Recalling the scene he had witnessed hours earlier, the man pictured the massive cavity and the monsters and human corpses that had filled the surrounding area. When he first saw it, he had guessed the party suffered near-total annihilation right there. From what she said, there was no reason to disagree.
"Still, something doesn't add up. Even if we accept that the party was wiped out by monsters at that spot, then who placed the mining equipment at the magic stone cache? And why?"
"That's the strange part. As I mentioned, there were no battle traces around there at all. If someone had carried the equipment all the way to that location, there should have been some sign of their presence—alive or dead. Yet it was as if they had simply vanished. When we arrived, the only things we found were the backpack containing the mining equipment... and the child sitting over there."
At that moment, both their gazes turned inward in unison. At the end of their line of sight sat a young girl. Her shabby robe covered her head and face so thoroughly that she could easily be mistaken for a boy at a glance. Having already seen the face beneath, however, both adults knew she was a girl. She was the sole survivor discovered at the magic stone cache during the first investigation—the only living witness inside the dungeon and the key subject who might hold the answers to everything that had happened.
Sensing their stares, the girl flinched and pulled her robe down even further. Yet through the narrow gap, her eyes stared right back at them. At that oddly endearing reaction, the woman smiled brightly and waved her hand. The man, meanwhile, frowned almost imperceptibly. It might have been his imagination, but the child's bright, attentive gaze felt as though it was carefully studying them. Of course, a child that small couldn't possibly be doing such a thing, yet the strange feeling lingered. It was probably due to her unusual appearance. Strands of ashen hair peeked out from beneath the robe despite her attempts to hide them. Even when they first found her, he hadn't been able to conceal his surprise at that detail. The girl sitting there now possessed ashen hair—a trait no ordinary Korean would ever have.
There was only one way to explain such an appearance. Several years ago, the so-called "Great Catastrophe" had struck the world simultaneously, and afterward humans began awakening to mysterious superpowers. Those who used those abilities to hunt the monsters pouring from the gates were later called hunters, and he was one of them. Among those who awakened such powers, rare cases occurred where parts of their bodies changed or became different. The criteria were unclear, but multiple instances had been publicly reported. Perhaps this girl belonged to that category as well—he could only speculate for now.
As his thoughts reached that point, the moment he had first encountered the girl came back to him. She had been crouched against the cave wall, staring at them as they approached from afar. His subordinates might not have noticed, but he had flinched slightly at the time. Those hollow, deeply shadowed eyes... were not the kind a child of her age should possess, even now that he thought about it.