The Grass-Goblin Maze
“Goddammit, the kid got dragged along with me!”
Kim Pyo-sang snatched his hand away with a jolt, the soft squish of a child's cheek still on his palm.
He'd flung open the door in a blind scramble to dodge the incoming security team, only to find himself staring down a pitch-black corridor. Still, there was no better place to hide, so he'd slipped in feeling rather pleased with himself — and then, at the end of that corridor, he'd found this.
A gate.
The moment he laid eyes on something familiar, a brilliant idea struck him.
I just have to hold out inside a dungeon, like before…!
He'd lasted over a month stowing away toward China. Surely he could survive a few days here. And glancing around, he had a pretty good idea where he was — a wall-mounted electronic pad held the gate's information, after all.
[SAFE-GRADE DUNGEON C1116 — E-RANK]
One of BOND's safe-grade underground dungeons — the ones he'd only ever heard rumors about.
They say they buy up nothing but those so-called "capitalist paradise dungeons" where safety is guaranteed, right?
Grinning at his stroke of luck, he approached the gate.
“Hmm…?”
But then, in the distance, he spotted something approaching with tiny footsteps. Kim Pyo-sang immediately flattened himself against the wall with surprising agility.
Don't tell me — the security team?
-Pitter-patter-patter.
What the hell?
-Pitter-patter-patter-patter.
Only footsteps echoed down the corridor; no human figure appeared anywhere. He kept his eyes locked on the corridor ahead, but all he could sense was movement. Tension crept over him, and he felt his muscles slowly draw tight.
“What is that?”
-Whip.
Kim Pyo-sang's head snapped toward the gate, where the sound had come from.
“……!”
He watched, hypnotized, as the tiny thing toddled around the gate, peering at it from every angle, and then he shrieked under his breath in alarm.
“Hey! What are you? How'd you get in here?!”
But the little thing thoroughly ignored him.
“It looks so strange. It's kind of like the potion colors Noah showed me~”
“Hey, kid! I asked how you got in here??”
“…….”
When the questions kept coming, the brat finally turned and looked up at him, head tilted crooked.
“The door was open.”
You little—
The boy — the kind of kid whose future prospects were written all over his face, and not favorably — trudged up to Kim Pyo-sang. His eyes were narrowed with some unspoken grievance, and Kim Pyo-sang, forgetting his own situation entirely, found himself wanting to give the kid a piece of his mind.
Wait a second. Isn't this brat one of the ones who was going on about my poop in the bathroom earlier?
“……Taejae!! Where are you?!”
“……!”
But of all moments, a voice came from behind, calling for this brat.
“Huh? Teacher? Teach—!”
Before the boy could answer the voice calling him, panic seized Kim Pyo-sang and he clamped a hand over the kid's mouth.
“……Mmph.”
His heart thundered in shock, cold sweat trickling down his back.
If they catch me here, it's over.
As the footsteps drew closer, Kim Pyo-sang scooped the kid up like a man fleeing the scene and leapt into the gate.
And thus, at present:
The little punk was glaring at him with the fury of a thousand suns.
“What are you looking at?”
“You, sir.”
“Stop looking at me. Lower your eyes.”
“How does one lower one's eyes? Isn't it spread that you spread, not lower? I know one spreads a blanket — is it the same thing?”
“…….”
The kid's masterclass of a retort left him speechless. His mouth flapped open and shut a few times in sheer indignation before he finally wrenched his head away.
Compose yourself, compose yourself. What use would I have for beating the stuffing out of a rice-grain-sized runt…!
Grumbling, he surveyed the dungeon. He'd felt it the moment he entered, but this place was markedly different from every dungeon he'd been in before.
Never seen anything like this.
Sheer rock walls rose at the edges of the vast expanse, while at its center a halfheartedly maintained fence of grass stretched on without end.
It was clearly dark, yet not truly dark at all. And the reason it could be so was surely this — Kim Pyo-sang looked down at the stone embedded in the ground at his feet.
A mineral that gave off light. These stones were set into the ground at intervals along the fence path.
Staring into the softly glowing blue mineral for too long made him feel as though it might suck him off somewhere.
What is this thing, and why's it giving me the creeps?
…Well, it did mean he could walk around comfortably enough.
“Mister, what's your name?”
He was doing his best to shake off the uneasy feeling as he walked when the brat, who'd been trailing behind him like a duckling, piped up.
Kim Pyo-sang glanced at him, then let out a short, deflating snort.
“What would you do with it if you knew?”
They'd walk together until the kid wore out, then dump him and be on his way. His conscience had long since been ground down to powder — feeling guilt over abandoning one small child was simply beyond it.
Why bother with names for someone he'd be leaving behind any minute?
“Hey! Brat! Because I don't want to hear that kind of talk.”
“Then you really ought to tell me your name, shouldn't you.”
“I was taught it's polite to ask first, you know. Didn't anyone ever teach you manners, mister? What did you even do with your life?”
“…….”
So the good-for-nothing brat decides to have manners, of all places?
Kim Pyo-sang cleared his throat a few times and mumbled out his name.
“Kim Pyo-sang.”
The awkward syllables hung at the edge of his lips. It was his own name, yet it felt strangely unfamiliar — he could hardly remember the last time he'd said it aloud.
Well, naturally. No one had asked since he'd quit his job.
“I'm Nam Taejae.”
What am I supposed to do with that? Looking down at the child who had somehow fallen into step beside him, Kim Pyo-sang's face hardened.
“Hey, Nam… Taejae. Let's split up and go our separate ways now.”
He wanted this boulder of a child off his hands as soon as possible. He was busy enough trying to save his own neck — he had zero intention of lugging around a kid who might burst into tears at the slightest poke.
“But I'm going the way I'm going.”
“Ah, is that right? Then you go that way, and I'll go this way.”
Gritting his teeth, Kim Pyo-sang even went so far as to helpfully point with his finger, dredging up his very last reserves of patience.
“Okay. Goodbye, sir.”
He'd thrown the words out just to test the waters, but the brat turned on his heel without a shred of hesitation and trudged off toward the corner of the grass fence.
Pitter-patter. Kim Pyo-sang watched the little yellow backpack shrink into the distance, then turned back the other way.
…What the hell, that was anticlimactic.
He'd expected the kid to latch onto him, or to grab at him crying like a child would, at least. An uncomfortable weight settled on his chest, as if he'd swallowed a stone — but at least his frayed nerves had eased considerably.
Yeah. This is better.
Only now that the round little head had vanished from view did his brain seem to start working again.
Now then. Where should I hide?
Dungeons managed by major hunter corporations like BOND were usually low in danger. Some ran high, of course, but those existed for other purposes entirely. For the most part, they deliberately left dungeons uncleared, harvesting the byproducts of the monsters within or resources that could only be obtained inside. It was why dungeons had come to be called the new-age "mine."
But for a non-combat Awakener like Kim Pyo-sang, even a safe-grade dungeon demanded caution. If he ever ran into a monster, running was his only option — nothing else to it.
Constantly fleeing sounded exhausting; better to hole up somewhere and rest in peace and quiet.
“Mister.”
“Wh-what now?!”
He was humming a tune as he scouted out a suitable spot when that ominous little voice came from beside him — again!
“Y-you! Why did you come back?!”
“The path over there was blocked by a wall. And strange kids kept chasing me, so…”
“If the path's blocked, go somewhere else on your own! Why follow me?”
“That path was the only one I could see…. Is this perhaps your house, mister? If it is, I'm sorry.”
The brat clasped his hands neatly together, apologized, and gave a solemn little bow, and Kim Pyo-sang was left utterly dumbfounded.
Is this kid mooching off me on purpose or what?
No, more than that.
Hold on…. Didn't this brat say something earlier?
“…What did you just say?”
“I don't remember.”
“No, no! You just said the path was blocked and then what did you call them?!”
“…I don't know. The path was blocked, and strange kids were chasing me, so I came here…”
“Strange kids?”
“Yes, sir. Small and cute-looking…. Ah, there they come. I guess we met again. Hello~”
The brat waved cheerfully over his shoulder, and Kim Pyo-sang stopped dead in his tracks to look as well.
Far off… along the direction the brat had disappeared earlier, he could see grass advancing toward them.
“What is that?”
Since when could grass move?
And why — why did the ground itself seem to be moving?
As the figures drew closer, the earth trembled faintly beneath them. They sharpened into view.
Where faces should have been, they wore masks of animal skulls, moss draped over their bodies — squat little things, each gripping a tiny axe or shovel in one hand!
One look was enough to know they weren't human. Which meant the things that belonged here were…
“……!”
“Hello! What are your names?”
Mon-monsters.
That single thought flashed through his mind, and he hauled up Nam Taejae by the waist and bolted. Throwing away a kid out of sheer ignorance and throwing him away knowing death was staring you in the face were — were they really so different? Probably not!
And not to brag, but given his colorful criminal history, running was the one thing he was actually decent at.
Kim Pyo-sang ran on nothing but stamina and sheer leg power, blood roaring in his throat.
Seriously, goddammit!
“They suddenly tried to give me an axe, so I just didn't take it and came back. They're strange, but I don't think they're bad friends.”
No, no?
They weren't giving you an axe — they were going to cleave your skull in with it!
“Mister, you're running so fast I feel like I'm going to throw up.”
“D-don't throw up!”
“But I just ate!”
“Swallow it! Swallow it back down!”
“Hurrrp—uueeegh.”
“NOOOOOO!!”
With his right arm getting thoroughly soaked, Kim Pyo-sang felt his soul leaving his body. A dwarf monster waving a blade chased him from behind while a second dwarf vomited down his right arm.
I seized the soul-drained Kwon Haeseong by the collar and hurled us both through the gate.
The moment we entered the dungeon, I felt the change in the air against my skin. But before I could even register it, my eyes were already sweeping the area.
Where are they, damn it.
“……I lost them.”
Kwon Haeseong murmured it in a voice on the verge of tears, stunned and hollow.
“…….”
Even with eyes washed clean, I couldn't see it — that yellow backpack, or the yellow field-trip uniform that had been visible from ten meters away.
Instead, I saw something else.
A landscape I could never have laid eyes on in my daily life, hemmed in on all sides by nothing but concrete buildings. This space, steeped in a darkness like early evening, carried an odd, eerie beauty — great moss-covered boulders here and there, sheer rock walls rising behind them.
But my reaction to the scenery was closer to horror than awe.
“It's a maze…”
Did I see that right?
A genuine, honest-to-god maze.
Unless my brain had failed to process reality and was hallucinating, what spread out before us was a massive labyrinth built from halfheartedly assembled grass fences.
One with no visible end.
“Nam Taejae!! Don't you die!”
Just then, Noah's desperate cry echoed out, ringing beyond the maze walls.
I didn't even bother with a sigh, simply gesturing at Kwon Haeseong.
“First, we find the kids.”
Walking the maze taught me that glowing stones were set into the ground along these paths. Thank goodness something served as lighting at all — without even that, simply walking would have been a chore.
And it let us find this, too.
Footprints.
Thanks to that, the three children weren't hard to find. Kwon Haeseong, somehow spotting palm-sized footprints like a bloodhound on the hunt, finally tracked them down at a dead end.
“Teacher.”
“……You little rascals.”
Hollow laughter had barely left my lips before Kwon Haeseong and I silently clenched our fists.
Wow, just… what even is that.
Behind the waving children stood a monster the size of a refrigerator…
Shambling forward with a low uuuoooh— groan, it was quite threatening.
Don't tell me that's the monster everyone talks about…
“It's loud.”
“Did it eat Nam Taejae, by any chance?”
And of course, with a monster right in front of their noses, the children — utterly failing to grasp the situation — were just chatting away.
“Hmm, Noah. Taejae wasn't eaten by that ugly thing. If you look closely, its teeth are rounded like a herbivore's — those kinds usually don't eat meat.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah. Animals that eat meat have sharp teeth. And my brother said chewing only counts as chewing if there's a good chew to it — people with dirty faces always chew very thoroughly. But this one's ugly yet kind-faced, see?”
“What's a dirty face mean? If it's dirty, does it chew well?”
“You don't know? I think it's just… like, going grrr— like that.”
At that, Kwon Haeseong murmured lowly, a look of pure shock on his face.
“It's not that…”
I picked up the pace without a word.
In this lunatic situation, the only ones losing their minds were the adults.
“That one looks like 'Booster' from 'Hello Teabot.'”
“Does it? My brother said he'd buy me a Teabot for my birthday this time.”
“……Nam Taejae really likes Teabot too.”
And the moment we closed within arm's reach of them—
The monster's massive arms plummeted toward the children's heads.
-THUD!!
I slid across the ground, arm outstretched, wrapped it around all three children's waists, and rolled. In sync with me, Kwon Haeseong drove his fist into the monster.
A burning sensation flared across my back, and I was up on my feet in an instant, sprinting madly away with the kids.
“Are you okay?”
Startled, the children could only nod.
I set them down a safe distance away and turned to look back at Kwon Haeseong, locked in a fierce struggle with the monster. The thing he fought wore a water-buffalo skull mask, big as a rice cooker, over its head, and every time it swung that head I could hear the wind split apart.
Brutal.
The surprising thing, though, was that Kwon Haeseong was holding his own against it better than I'd expected.
…Not that he was dominating it, mind you. In a way, that was obvious. The man wasn't on a BOND field team anymore — how was he supposed to trade blows with a monster and win?
If we dragged this out, we'd all be in danger.
Seeing Kwon Haeseong stealing glances our way, I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Stop looking over here and focus!”
When did you have the spare attention to worry about us?
Then I immediately rummaged through my bag, packed to bursting with the defective prototypes Manager Lee Wonwoo had given me. There had to be a way. A way to turn this situation around.
Charging in bare-fisted alongside him? I did have a brain, thank you.
I'd just get flattened.
One idle shake of that monster's head and I'd be slammed into some rock like an autumn leaf. So the plan was to fish something out of the bag, grip it, and throw myself in.
…This is it!
The moment a cold touch brushed the back of my hand, I grabbed it on reflex. Looking down at it in silence, I nodded without meaning to.
I remembered.
A genuinely plausible way to turn this situation around.