Ghost (1)
“Should I give you the gold axe, or the silver axe?”
“I’ll take the axe made of amorphous alloy, please!”
“Here you go~.”
It wasn’t exactly a folktale.
Du-ho and Isto were clowning around in front of three axes.
Up close, it was actually a pretty heartwarming sight.
But from a distance, they looked like lunatics dancing over a pile of corpses, arguing over axes.
With a look of absolute satisfaction, Du-ho said, “Isto. Put all of these in the Garage.”
- Yes~.
Isto carried the axes into the Garage.
Du-ho followed after him and asked, “Isto, let’s apply these to your body later.”
Oh! Oh!
- Does that mean I’m getting upgraded?
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I use something this good?”
- I love it!
At Isto’s reaction, the corners of Du-ho’s mouth rose on their own.
Even if amorphous metal was notoriously difficult to work with.
I’ve got metal manipulation.
He had just tried a little metal manipulation on the axe head a moment ago, and it had separated from the handle exactly the way he’d wanted.
In other words, Du-ho and amorphous metal were a great match.
And on top of that, if he kept practicing, his skill would only grow.
One by one, plans for Isto’s tuning began taking shape in his mind.
“For starters, how about replacing the joints?”
- Oh~. That sounds like a good idea, hamda!
The material was not only hard, but also springy.
“And the mana conductivity is excellent, so it’s perfect!”
- You already figured all that out, imkka!
“Who do you think I am?”
- The one and only Mechromancer, Im Du-ho nim, imda!
Ha-ha-ha, ehehehe!
After laughing their fill, the two of them left the Garage.
Then a message window popped up.
Reward: Legacy of the Forgotten Technician
A small box engraved with a cogwheel pattern appeared in front of Du-ho.
So this is the “Legacy of the Forgotten Technician”?
He was curious, but he packed the box away in the Garage.
I need to focus and get back to work.
So he left the Abyss to deliver the repaired android to the administration office.
* * *
Thirty minutes after Im Du-ho left the Abyss.
[WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT]
With the extermination of Queen’s Ratkin, the first floor of the Korean Abyss will disappear.
“What?”
The sudden announcement sent Yeouido into an uproar.
At first, most people asked again, unable to believe what they’d heard.
“The Abyss first floor is disappearing?”
“How does that even make sense?”
Questions born of sheer unfamiliarity piled one atop another.
“Queen’s Ratkin? Not King’s Ratkin?”
“Isn’t that a typo?”
“Was there even such a creature?”
And soon, even bigger questions followed.
“Why would the first floor disappear just because the Queen thing died?”
“Exactly.”
“I seriously don’t get it.”
In the end, only one question remained.
“Then… what happens to the other floors?”
At that moment, curiosity returned to reality with a vengeance.
Woooooooom….
A foul, low vibration pressed down on the air and bored straight into their bones.
“W-What is that?”
A roar rolled outward from the Abyss’s center, as if heralding the end of the world.
“The meter! Check the meter!”
When the hunter at the observation post glanced down at the measuring device, numbers he had never seen before began to writhe wildly across it.
A terrified voice slipped out.
“What the hell….”
In that instant.
Fwooooosh!
The space of the first floor caved inward, and a colossal void opened up.
Kwaaaaang!!!
The shockwave that followed tore through the atmosphere.
“A-A earthquake!”
“Everybody down!”
Amid the chaos of screams and alarms, another system message struck their ears.
And then an even greater change began.
Rumble… KOOOONG—!!
From deep beneath the earth came a thunderous blast, like some ancient giant had just awakened.
It was the sound of the Abyss’s floors—each with its own sky and ground—being forcibly pulled upward, one level at a time.
A cataclysm in which heaven collapsed and the earth surged upward was unfolding inside the Abyss right now.
Kooong! Kooong! Kooong!
Every time a floor locked into place, Yeouido shook as if it had been struck by a colossal hammer.
Due to floor reorganization, the clear period has been reset.
Du-kooong!!!
And with the final impact, silence settled over the Abyss.
As the hunters who had been sprawled on the ground began to lift themselves up one by one, the last announcement rang out.
The clear period for Floor 81 has been extended from 3 months to 5 months.
A system message none of them had ever heard before.
Everyone wondered if their ears had gone bad.
“An extension? ...That’s a good thing, right?”
“Of course it is! It’s been extended by two whole months!”
“And the Cheoncheon Clan failed the clear today!”
“Woooooo!”
All the hunters and Awakened in Yeouido let out cries of relief.
The most astonishing fact of all was that every building in Yeouido was still standing, untouched.
So there was no better outcome they could have hoped for.
Once things had calmed down, people gathered in small groups and started talking about the unbelievable event they’d just lived through.
“Does anybody know anything about Queen’s Ratkin?”
“What guild on earth took one of those down?”
“No way… did the Cheoncheon Clan decide to wipe out the entire first floor on purpose?”
Seriously?
“Those are the kind of bastards who only care about inflating their own price tags!”
“Wait, wait. So just charging blindly into the lower floors of the Abyss isn’t the answer after all!”
All kinds of speculation and conspiracy theories poured out.
Meanwhile, hunters who saw hope in the chaos began dreaming of a new shift in the world.
Seventy years had passed since the Abyss first revealed itself to the world.
This was the first time an upper floor had disappeared.
And on that day, the last hunter to set foot on the vanished first floor of the Abyss was one man.
Im Du-ho.
* * *
As Du-ho entered the Hunter Administration Bureau, he wore a dazed expression.
“Isto? What does that mean?”
- Hmm?
“They say the first floor disappeared?”
- Ah, ah….
“What? You know something about th—”
When people around him started sneaking glances, Du-ho swallowed the rest of his words. He quickly headed to a corner and slipped into the Garage.
“Tell me. What do you know?”
- Hm… if Queen’s Ratkin was exterminated, then the ecosystem must have collapsed, hamda.
“The announcement said it was because of extermination too, but what exactly does that mean?”
At that, Isto’s body trembled violently.
Question marks sprang up one after another in his LED eyes, just like last time.
“Isto?”
- Huh! When did you come in, imkka?
This brat.
...There he goes again.
- Hmm?
“You definitely knew something just now.”
- H-Huh?!
Wow.
“I can’t even record this if I wanted to.”
- ???
Just as Du-ho thumped his chest in frustration, a new window appeared.
[FIRST-FLOOR CLEAR REWARD]
Reward: Dimensional Passage has been granted.
Damn it!
“Jesus, that scared me!”
Unexpectedly, a reward window had popped up.
He narrowed his eyes and read it.
“Dimensional Passage?”
- Hmm… giving that as a reward feels a bit much, hamda.
“You’re going to pretend you don’t know when I ask again, aren’t you?”
- Me, imkka?
“Yeah.”
Isto’s LED eyes shook furiously as if he had been wronged. Then he started explaining.
- Dimensional Passage isn’t a skill. It’s something that should normally be granted to every hunter who enters the Abyss in the first place, imda.
“Go on.”
- I said it before, back outside the Abyss, didn’t I? The first time you enter the Abyss, you have to go there directly, but after that you can enter from anywhere.
“Ah! Ah! That?”
- Yep, that’s right, hamda.
So this was a reward for contributing to the first floor’s disappearance.
Maybe, just maybe.
“Could it be that I’m the only one who can do this?”
- That seems highly likely, hamda.
Oh! Oh!
- Come to think of it, Du-ho nim is so incredible that even the Abyss must have recognized it. I mean, look at the special treatment it’s giving you.
“Hey now, what special treatment? If it weren’t for you, I might’ve died an hour later.”
- Not at all. Dying in a Floor 1 quest is an absurd assumption, imda.
Absurd assumption, my ass.
He had wiped out 1,000 Ratkins on his own, along with seven King’s Ratkins, and on top of that, even Queen’s Ratkin.
No matter how little Du-ho knew about hunters, this was beyond what most guilds could manage.
“Not just any guild could pull that off.”
- Ehehehe~ really, imkka?
“Better late than never, but thanks for today.”
- Mm, mm… I was just doing what needed to be done, imda.
For some reason, Isto seemed unable to handle being thanked.
Is he secretly shy?
Anyway.
With most of his questions answered, Du-ho left the Garage and headed at a quick pace for the Machine Upcycling department on Basement 2.
* * *
Assistant Manager Park Gyu-tae was sitting in front of a hologram with bloodshot eyes, replaying CCTV footage over and over again.
He was losing his mind.
“He definitely came in….”
He had already checked the footage from the time he’d left work yesterday all the way through this morning for the fifth time.
My eyes are killing me!
“Just you wait, you bastard. The second I catch you….”
He was pinning all his hopes on the scene where Im Du-ho would appear here.
But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find him anywhere.
“Is the camera broken?”
Impossible.
The scene of Park himself arriving late in the morning had been captured perfectly.
...Did he really not come?
By all appearances, the android was gone, and Im Du-ho had taken a half-day.
Besides, hadn’t the two of them fought yesterday?
Well, technically, Du-ho had been the only one to get beaten up.
He checked the time. It was 2 p.m.
Maybe….
Could I just say something urgent came up and run?
A tempting thought flashed through Park’s head.
If he slipped away before his superior arrived, then the blame for what came next would fall on Im Du-ho.
Run!
Just as he made up his mind….
The hologram on the desk blinked.
The moment he saw the caller, his face went white.
Assistant Manager Ham Bong-sik
I’m screwed.
“Y-Yes, this is Park Tae— no, Park Gyu-tae.”
- Assistant Manager Park, you’re ready, right?
“Th-That’s….”
- Hey, I know it’s all set, so why are you acting like this? I’m coming down in five minutes.
Cold sweat poured off him like rain.
“Assistant Manager, just a second! Right now… this is….”
Click.
The call ended, and Assistant Manager Park sank into despair.
“Five minutes? He said five minutes?”
Now he couldn’t run.
Am I losing my mind... or did it really disappear...?
Setting that aside, the fact that the expensive android had vanished made him even more anxious.
Could the android have gone out on its own?
“Yeah, that’s it!”
Just as he finally found a convenient excuse and clenched his cheap-implant fist, clank—
The door opened, and Im Du-ho walked in.
“Good afternoon.”
At that calm greeting, Assistant Manager Park exploded.
“Hey!”
Whirr, clank, whirr. Clank.
Park’s implant legs whirred as he charged at Du-ho and blurted out his accusation without hesitation.
“How did you get in?!”
“Pardon?”
Du-ho wore a blank expression.
“I came in through the door.”
“No! I’m asking how you got in yesterday!”
“I was at home. We even talked on the phone yesterday, remember?”
“Forget that! Where did you hide the android?”
Park’s voice was close to a scream.
“The android?”
“I don’t know how you managed to take something that heavy, but you definitely took it!”
Du-ho looked genuinely confused.
“Assistant Manager Park, why would I take that? And, no offense, but is it even light enough to carry? That’s not a weight someone like me, a natural-born civilian, could handle.”
“Please… please, just stop and bring it back! The Assistant Manager is coming in five minutes!”
At Du-ho’s airtight alibi, Park’s face twisted into a miserable grimace.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“No, seriously, you went this whole time without even reporting it? You made this even worse.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Park’s heart dropped through the floor.
“I’m fucked….”
He clutched his head and bent over his desk.
Take Isto out.
- Yep~.
Isto slipped out of the Garage, stood the android up, and quietly ducked back inside.
Just then, the door opened and Assistant Manager Ham Bong-sik walked in.
“Assistant Manager Park, did you have lu— what’s with this atmosphere?”
Park raised his head and blurted out everything in one breath.
“Assistant Manager! Im Du-ho, that maniac, stole the android!”
“...What?”
“Yes! It doesn’t show up on CCTV, but he hid it to screw me over! Honestly, yesterday I just played a little prank on that bastard to knock some sense into him….”
Park poured out the entire story of the past six months with Du-ho, practically confessing to everything along the way.
Maybe because he was worried he’d have to compensate for an expensive android, he’d decided workplace harassment was the safer route.
And then.
Park launched into self-justification.
“I’ll admit I went too far. Yes, I admit it. But listen! Even if I was furious, how can we just sit back and do nothing after Im Du-ho secretly stole company property?”
Then he looked at Assistant Manager Ham….
“Assistant Manager Park, you should go to the hospital.”
“...Excuse me?”
“And hurry up and move the android.”
“Didn’t you hear me? Im Du-ho that bastard—”
Park Gyu-tae!!!!
Ham Bong-sik roared.
“Why are you talking about a coworker like that?”
“—!”
“And what, the android’s right there! Are you on drugs or something?!”
Park Gyu-tae slowly turned his head toward the direction of Ham’s pointing finger.
The android was standing in the corner.
“Th-th-this… that can’t be….”
Still wearing a dazed expression, Park met the android’s gaze.
Its eyes were wide open and glaring straight at him.
Eeeeeeek!!
Crash, bang, thud….
Terrified, Park Gyu-tae went sprawling to the floor in a noisy heap, chair and all.