Chapter 36
Chapter 36
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 36
Chapter Title: Rescue Team (3)
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A room blocked off on the bottom and left. There were only two doors: one at the back where the rescue team had just come from, and one on the right.
There was no reason to backtrack. They naturally headed for the door on the right and kept going straight from there.
How many more rooms had they passed? Nam Soyul sliced a monster in half and pressed on without hesitation. But murmurs of discontent began to leak out from the rescue team following behind her.
"Is this... really the right way?"
"......She must have some plan."
The four vanguards taking on the tanking role. In a situation where they were already short on time to reach their comrades, they were frustrated by getting lost like this.
They weren't the only ones adding to the confusion.
"These monsters are barely B-rank gate level at best... You saying they got taken out by trash like this?"
Even after arriving at the gate, they still couldn't figure out what had caused the accident. Was it simply that the maze was too complex for them to escape? Or was there some other threat in the labyrinth they didn't know about?
They had no idea. Nothing gave them a satisfying answer, so their impatience only grew.
As the complaints built up, one of the vanguards irritably glanced back. There was someone who'd been bugging him for a while now. At the very rear of the formation, a guy who wasn't even participating in combat and was just endlessly scribbling something down.
"What's with that asshole? He here to investigate or what?"
It was Han Yujin. He didn't even lift his head, nose buried in his notepad. The silence around them made the sound of his pen scratching the paper stand out, grating on their taut nerves.
"He's lagging a step behind every time 'cause he's checking his notepad. Shouldn't somebody say something?"
"Cut it out. We asked him to come support us. Don't pick a fight."
His comrade next to him tried to intervene, but the man's expression didn't soften. With nothing resolved, the group trudged on in silence. Even casual chatter died out, leaving only the heavy sound of footsteps echoing through the passage.
They soon arrived at the fourteenth room.
"...Hah."
The path was blocked again. Right and bottom were walls, leaving only the top. With no other choice like before, Nam Soyul started toward the upper door with a heavy expression.
"Captain."
One of the vanguards finally couldn't hold back and spoke up. Nam Soyul, not a member of Arang Guild, could lead the rescue team because she was an S-rank hunter—but also because she was the disciple of the Arang Guild Master.
Normally, they would have followed without question, but they couldn't maintain that attitude now.
"Is going straight like this really right? There's not a single trace anywhere. If we're completely off track..."
Nam Soyul's brow furrowed. She didn't have any brilliant ideas either. It was just pushing forward on probability. The mood was turning sour.
"There's a high chance traces remain above."
A calm voice cut through the silence like cold water. All eyes snapped to the back. It was the man from the rear who'd been silent until now: Han Yujin.
The vanguard who'd been grilling Nam Soyul scowled. A D-rank punk who'd just been fiddling with his notepad this whole time dared to butt in. He strode toward Han Yujin.
"You better have a reason for saying that so confidently."
Pent-up anger exploded out. He nearly spat that if he didn't know shit, he should shut his mouth. But even as the threatening bulk loomed right in his face, Han Yujin didn't flinch. Instead, he matter-of-factly flipped open his notepad.
"I've been mapping the gate's structure as we pass through the rooms."
"What?"
On the notepad was a record of how many rooms they'd gone in which directions.
Three times to the left.
Three times down after a dead end.
And eight times to the right.
Han Yujin's finger pointed to the last part.
"The key point is that we've progressed from the left end to the right end. There are nine rooms horizontally. We've only passed four vertically, so I can't be certain, but there are probably a similar number vertically too. Therefore..."
Han Yujin turned the page, revealing a clear diagram based on his explanation.
"Considering the room shapes, our position is one of the four corners."
The other team members had gathered around Han Yujin before they knew it. Even Nam Soyul peered at the map he'd drawn with evident interest.
So he hadn't just been doodling aimlessly—he'd been mapping their path.
Surprise flickered in the man's eyes. But that was it; Han Yujin's guess didn't solve the core issue.
"We still don't know the exact direction, so what's the point? How do you expect to find the raid team's traces with just that?"
It was a sharp point. Han Yujin's map showed relative paths, not absolute coordinates like north, south, east, or west. They had no way of knowing if they were at the northeast corner or southwest corner.
But Han Yujin replied in an unperturbed tone.
"We don't need to know the direction to find the raid team's traces."
"What?"
The man looked stunned. Han Yujin looked past him to Nam Soyul.
"Just one question for Hunter Nam Soyul. Was there a reason you went through the rooms in this direction?"
Nam Soyul blinked in confusion.
"Straight is more logical than changing directions without any basis."
Han Yujin nodded. Anyone facing an unfamiliar maze—especially experienced hunters—would think the same. He turned back to the man who'd challenged him.
"Wouldn't the raid team have judged the same?"
"...!"
Gasps rippled around them. Han Yujin drew a thick line over the diagram in his notepad with his pen and continued.
"Assuming our guess is right, we can express our path in roughly four ways. Let me draw just one."
"If they judged the same as us, they'd inevitably stick to the outer rooms. But we've covered nearly half the left side and the entire bottom, and found no traces."
He reached the conclusion. Han Yujin looked up at the man.
"If traces exist, the probability is highest on the far right or top that we haven't checked."
Pinpointing their exact current position didn't matter. The remaining options boiled down to the same essence: walk the unchecked outer edges.
The man was speechless at the concise, clear logic.
'He came up with this just from walking the path?'
Not only estimating the maze's structure from what had seemed hopeless, but reverse-engineering the missing raid team's thinking to point the way forward.
What kind of thought process allowed such insight? They'd all seen and experienced the same things, yet only Han Yujin had realized it.
Of course, his words were just a possibility, not necessarily fact. But that didn't matter.
It wasn't blindly walking like before—it was a proposal backed by logic. The key was whether that logic convinced the group.
And their expressions made it clear. They all stared at him in admiration. A faint smile tugged at Nam Soyul's lips.
"We go up."
*
As the group passed through the upper door into the passage, I let out a quiet sigh of relief inside.
Since it was a gate I knew, sharing the info wasn't an issue. The important part was how I did it. Spouting facts outright? They wouldn't believe me and would question the source.
I'd puzzled it out and scraped together some logic. It had plenty of holes, so I planned to brush off any pushback, but luckily the impact of the content got them to buy it.
We crossed into the next room above, and a herd of centaurs appeared. Nam Soyul drew her sword, and that was enough.
I glanced briefly at the headless corpses.
Monsters too weak for an A-rank gate. Everything so far was B-rank gate level at best.
But that was because we were on basement level 1. 'Karak's Underground Labyrinth' was a three-basement-level maze. The deeper you went, the tougher the enemies. The point where I'd need to help was from basement level 2.
Still, it didn't exceed a normal A-rank gate's difficulty.
Arang Guild's raid team consisted of ten A-rank hunters—an absolutely elite force. With proper prep and some luck, they could clear an S-rank gate.
It was Arang Guild's stable, conservative lineup. Even in the game, they rarely failed clears.
Even the vicious gimmick-filled 'Shining Crystal Cave' could cause deaths but never outright prevent a clear.
So I couldn't understand it. What in this gate could trap them?
Pathfinding issues? Basement 1 might take time, but wandering reveals the structure naturally. And since all floors share the layout, it stops being a problem once figured out.
The only wildcard—mental attacks? Jin Seohyun could block those with thick force fields.
'Karak's Underground Labyrinth' clearly wasn't a gate that could threaten them. Yet no one escaped. It wasn't one or two casualties—the entire raid had gone wrong.
What the hell had to happen for an accident like this?
My chest pounded with unresolved questions as Nam Soyul opened the next door.
A room with no monsters. But there was something new we'd never seen before.
"A door! The door is open!"
It was a trace of the raid team.