The Requirements Have Been Updated
Next to the now-headless Alpha, I caught my breath. In that brief moment, a very welcome message popped into existence. The required value section had updated. It was the one thing I needed most right now. I had only just managed to finish examining the students and end the waiting period on the required value. Yet the newly demanded figure showed a question mark instead of any number. No matter how many more examinations I performed after that, no matter how diligently I carried out my gatekeeper duties, the question mark never vanished to reveal an actual digit.
Has the question mark finally been erased?
It was still the same. No matter how I examined it, nothing had changed. The only difference was that the number had gone up by one… Wait. Did this mean yesterday’s ninety-six had updated to ninety-seven?
No. That can’t be right. Fuck, there’s no way it’s actually that.
It was a message that had never once appeared while I performed my gatekeeper duties. If it popped up for doing a good job on the rank examination, it should have shown at least once before now. There had to be something else. I was sure it wouldn’t end there. Yet the longer this went on, the stronger the feeling grew that this really was it.
“Sigh.”
I had forgotten another of life’s great truths again. Expect something, and you’ll be betrayed. Don’t expect anything, and there’s nothing to be betrayed by.
I sat back down and looked around. Since we had defeated the boss, the dungeon should have registered as cleared by now. The students’ battles ought to be over as well.
“Examiner!”
Just as I predicted, Kang Hana appeared in under two minutes. Behind her came the other students. They didn’t look great, but at least they were walking on their own feet.
“Over here.”
I raised my hand slightly and greeted Kang Hana as she ran toward me.
“Are you out of your mind?!”
Something came flying at me from behind her. It moved so fast that even the sprinting Kang Hana froze mid-stride with a startled “Eh?” For a second I thought it was a monster. I thought I was being ambushed. The person who dashed straight in front of me, looking ready to grab me by the collar, was—
“D-Dasom! What are you doing!”
“Are you insane?! No matter how skilled you are, disappearing without a single word like that! And charging off without even one person to support you—what were you thinking?! What if you had gotten hurt?!”
The usual Yu Dasom—always playful, always smiling—was now dead serious and furious.
“Student Dasom, I’m sorry. But this was unavoidable—”
“What if you had been seriously injured? Do you have any idea how miserable the healers feel every single time that happens?!”
In that instant I saw it: the desperate look in Yu Dasom’s eyes. It was the kind of gaze only someone who had already lost something could possess. She had healed and saved so many people, yet she was still clutching onto the memory of the one she couldn’t save.
“…Don’t ever do that again. Never.”
Only after saying that did Yu Dasom take several steps back. She gave my body a quick once-over and let out a sigh of relief. I pretended not to notice the faint tremble hidden inside that sigh.
“Ahem.”
Kang Hana, who had been watching Yu Dasom’s reaction, finally joined the conversation.
“Dasom is right. We were terrified when you vanished in the middle of battle. It got so bad we even scanned the ground thinking you might have collapsed somewhere.”
“You didn’t consider that I might have just run away?”
Kang Hana shook her head vigorously. “No way!”
I had only been joking, but her deadly serious response made things awkward.
“How are the students?”
“There were some injuries, but Dasom and the other support students healed everyone.”
“That’s a relief. The fighting did get a little dicey toward the end.”
A glance at the students confirmed they looked utterly exhausted. Fatigue clung to their faces like it had been glued there.
“Um, Examiner.”
Kang Hana, still reading the room, spoke carefully.
“This monster… it was a boss monster, right?”
“Yes. Alpha. The Lizard Man King, I believe. Something like that.”
“Then… was the boss also… like the Lizard Men we fought earlier…”
The unspoken question was clear: had it been far stronger than the known specimen? I wiped the smile from my face and adopted a grave expression.
“Yes. This one was completely different from anything in the records.”
“As I thought… It wasn’t just those individuals that were abnormal!”
Kang Hana clenched both fists, looking like she had expected this answer. To be precise, it was more accurate to call them changed rather than abnormal. And these changes would only grow more frequent and more extreme. For now the phenomenon had only appeared in the latter-half monsters and the boss, but given more time, every monster would transform like this—becoming stronger, faster, and far more vicious.
Only the ability users who could adapt would survive. Those who couldn’t would simply fall, just like during the first Gate incident.
“Then… if you hadn’t been here, our third squad might have been in real trouble.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. We were already deep in combat, and then a boss monster far stronger than normal attacked us from behind. If that had happened, we probably…” Kang Hana shuddered as though the mere thought horrified her.
The other students seemed to feel the same; they kept whispering, “She’s right.”
“Thank you, Examiner. Thanks to you we could focus on the battle without falling into danger.”
“No, this was simply my job. And since I acted on my own, I should actually be the one apologizing—”
“That was the best decision at the time. Dasom will understand. Won’t you?”
Kang Hana’s words left me feeling strangely embarrassed. I scratched my cheek. That alone was bad enough, but then the students’ sparkling eyes suddenly locked onto me. Not wanting any more strange attention, I quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway, the dungeon is cleared, so let’s exit quickly. We need to report what happened today, and I’m worried about what the first and second squads might have run into.”
“Ah! You’re right. There’s no guarantee it was only our area…”
A startled Yu Dasom immediately began urging everyone to leave. She wasn’t usually like this; it seemed she carried her own heavy story as well.
*
“What the hell, why did you guys come out so late?!”
“Whoa. Why do you all look like that?”
We had exited the dungeon in a hurry after worrying about every possible disaster that might have befallen the first and second squads. Instead we were greeted by perfectly fine-looking students from both groups. They stared at our completely wrecked third squad with baffled expressions. But the truly bewildered ones were probably us.
“Hey, were you guys okay?”
“What do you mean? The dungeon? The swamp was annoying, but otherwise we were fine.”
“No, no! The monsters! The Lizard Men!”
“What about them? There were quite a few archers and shamans, sure.”
“That’s not what I mean! Were there any monsters on your side stronger than the normal specimens?!”
The first and second squad students shook their heads at the third squad’s frantic questions. Even the boss monster Alpha had been exactly like the ones they usually faced.
“Why? Did something happen to you guys?”
After receiving our barrage of questions, the other two squads finally sensed something was off.
“Something happened?! On our side the Lizard Men suddenly got insanely strong!”
“I really thought I was going to die. When one of them swung down, I thought my arm was going to get ripped off.”
“Weren’t you just slacking on your training? That’s what it looks like to me.”
“I’m serious! This isn’t a joke. It was really bad.”
The Platinum-rank leaders of each squad were the first to grasp the gravity of the situation. After listening to the students, they turned their eyes toward me, silently asking whether this was real and not some prank.
“Everything the third squad students said is true. The monsters we encountered were different from the known specimens.”
“Huh… Really?”
“But ours were exactly the same as usual…”
That was because the full-scale monster Great Cataclysm had not yet begun. We were in a transitional period, and our third squad had simply been unlucky.
The problem is there’s no guarantee it was only this dungeon.
We needed to return to the Academy immediately. I hoped no similar incidents had occurred with the other teams.
“Are you finished?”
The ability user I had greeted earlier smiled and waved from ahead. Neither he nor any of the other ability users looked like they had struggled at all. It seemed they, like the first and second squads, had not experienced the cataclysm.
“Good work, Examiner. But… why does the third squad look like that?”
“Well…”
I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should tell the truth. Would revealing it only cause unnecessary panic? But I soon made my decision. They needed to know the current situation in order to prepare.
“Actually…”
And right then, my memory cut off completely.
*
“What exactly happened?”
Another Platinum-rank student approached Kang Hana. She took a deep breath and recounted everything that had occurred inside the dungeon. At first the monsters had been identical to the known specimens, but the Lizard Men they encountered in the latter half were completely different. They had even endured her magic without falling.
“…Does that even make sense?”
“It doesn’t. It really doesn’t, but that’s what happened. So the other students, me, and even the examiner…”
Kang Hana’s words never reached their end. A tremendous roar erupted, followed by an explosion that swallowed them.
Still, as Platinum ranks, both Kang Hana and her fellow student managed to cast defensive magic at the very last second. No one had predicted this sudden event. Yet their response was exceptionally fast.
“Prepare for battle!”
After completing the dungeon subjugation, only one group would create a situation like this. The villains, whose activity had surged dramatically in recent days, had appeared.