The Dungeon That Cleared Itself
Jisu cocked his head, listening to the bizarre noise.
"...A monster?"
A strange sound whose source they couldn't pin down. Jisu was on his first dungeon run, so that was one thing — but even Gaeul, who had dungeon experience, had never encountered anything like this.
Frightened, she edged closer to him.
Squish.
The soft press of her chest against his arm wasn't exactly unwelcome. Jisu cleared his throat.
"The monsters might be preparing something."
"Preparing? Do you have any idea what?"
Jisu shook his head.
"Not really. It's just... well, something like this is happening."
"Is that so? Honestly, I've never heard weird noises like this either."
"So this kind of roaring isn't normal, then?"
Gaeul nodded at his question.
"Right. Normally the monsters just show up one or two at a time, and you take them out. They're not as strong as the ones that appear in the raids you see on the news."
"Hmm."
Jisu fell silent, thinking. There was no way to figure out what was going on right now, but it wasn't as if they had any option besides pressing forward. According to Gaeul, these monsters were weaker than raid-class ones. Even if this turned out to be some kind of trap, charging in headfirst didn't seem like the worst idea.
Well. We'll just have to keep going and see.
Overthinking wouldn't do them any good. Jisu took Gaeul's slightly trembling hand.
"If you're scared, hold my hand."
"Ah? Oh — okay."
Gaeul gripped his hand tightly, and they started walking again.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud— they kept moving forward, and the meaningless roar only grew louder. A rumbling thunder of feet. A piercing screech. A frantic scrambling.
"..."
The farther they went, the more the strange sounds greeted them, as if they'd wandered into a jump-scare attraction. The difference being that this one wasn't even fun.
Gaeul had been spooked by the roaring at first, but when nothing actually happened, she felt her tension start to ease. She thought back to her previous dungeon runs. You walked in, monsters appeared, you killed them, talked about how to split the loot, and when you started hitting your limit — because you couldn't fight forever — you pulled out. That kind of thing. And in all those experiences, she had never once heard nothing but weird noises like this.
"Hmm..."
Jisu was just as bewildered, but unlike Gaeul, this was his first dungeon. For all he knew, this was how it was supposed to go. So he just kept walking.
"Could there be people up ahead?"
"People?"
Gaeul tilted her head at his question.
"Yeah. Like... maybe that's the sound of a crowd rushing somewhere?"
"...Hmm."
He didn't really answer, but he didn't stop walking either. Step by step, the whole way forward, they could hear footsteps — like something fleeing at full speed.
How long did they walk like that? Gaeul, who'd been lost in thought the entire time she followed him — something had felt off — suddenly spoke as if she'd just remembered something.
"Wait. Could there even be people ahead of us?"
Jisu turned at the sound of her voice behind him.
"Huh?"
"No, I mean — I was so flustered earlier I mixed things up for a second. Dungeons have scheduled usage times. You draw a number and enter in order, so you'd never actually run into anyone ahead of you. Didn't you register for the dungeon expedition before coming, Jisu?"
"Oh, is that how it works? I have an operator — they just told me to go, so I came."
Gaeul nodded. That made sense. Well, if he'd registered himself, there's no way he wouldn't know that.
"Then this sound... it probably isn't people..."
Even Gaeul herself didn't sound certain, her voice trailing off. If it wasn't people, then it was monsters? Why? For what reason? Because of what?
Jisu, who'd been listening, answered with a calm that didn't match the situation.
"Well, we'll find out if we keep going. Let's go deeper."
And so they continued walking into the depths of the dungeon.
How much farther did they go? A familiar sensation began to wrap itself around Gaeul's entire body.
"This place...!"
She could sense something ominous. Back then — the first time she'd joined a dungeon party. A bigger operation than this, with a well-known expedition team. They'd been short on people because so many teams came through, and she'd lucked into a spot. That was when she'd felt this exact sensation. The moment a mid-management-class monster of the dungeon had appeared.
Mid-management-class monsters — commonly called mid-bosses — possessed a baseline of intelligence and could communicate with hunters. Of course, that only applied if the hunter's mental fortitude was up to the task. If your Mental Strength stat was too low, you wouldn't be communicating with anything. You'd just be trembling in front of it. Gaeul's stats weren't great, so all she'd done was huddle among the others and watch the expedition leader handle it.
Don't tell me the mid-boss is already showing up?
They hadn't encountered a single monster on the way here, so she had no sense of how far they'd actually progressed. We're already this deep?
Gaeul recalled the mid-boss she'd encountered before. A monster with a roughly humanoid shape, grotesquely formed. She herself hadn't been able to make out what it was saying, but she remembered the expedition captain desperately trying to talk to it. And since they'd pulled out right after that, she'd never even gotten a look at its combat capabilities.
"Um, Jisu? You might want to be careful. I think a mid-boss is about to appear."
"A mid-boss?"
Jisu, still walking in front, didn't even turn around as he spoke, but she didn't particularly mind.
"Yes. Oh — you said this is your first dungeon, right? When you keep exploring a dungeon, creatures that give off a completely different aura from regular monsters start showing up. They're supposedly a lot stronger than the usual ones. I don't know the details, but unless your Mental Strength stat can support you, they're hard to deal with..."
"...I see."
Jisu didn't think any monster appearing here would be stronger than him, but this was still uncharted territory, and a natural tension crept in.
"Shall we keep going, then?"
A nod from behind. Confirming Gaeul's agreement, Jisu carefully opened the stone door. It was a sliding door, the kind he'd only seen back in his school days. With a rumbling scrape, the scene beyond came into view.
Hard stone walls. Tools of unknown purpose lay scattered across the floor, as if something had been here. But the mid-boss she'd mentioned was nowhere to be seen.
"...There's nothing here?"
"Yeah, you're right."
Gaeul was just as bewildered. She'd definitely felt something off, and given how similar it was to that previous sensation, a mid-boss had almost certainly been here. And yet there was nothing?
Do dungeons like this even exist?
With her low rank and limited expedition experience, that was about as far as Gaeul's thinking could go. Human imagination, after all, was mostly confined to what a person had experienced and could recall.
At any rate, nothing happened in the mid-boss room. Even the thud-thud-thud of running footsteps had gone silent. He'd started to wonder if this was just how dungeons were, but now that they'd come this far, something felt off. Were they even going the right way? Was this even a dungeon...?
Of course, a message window had appeared when they entered, so this was definitely a dungeon. Which left only one option. Like it or not, they had to clear it.
"Clearing" it sounded grand, but in the end it just meant walking. No different from a stroll. He could've been holding a dog's leash and it wouldn't have felt out of place. Cave notwithstanding.
Jisu, who'd been leading the way, glanced carefully behind him. Gaeul trailing along in the back the whole time seemed to be bothering him. He'd only been walking ahead so he could take point if a monster showed up. There was no reason to keep the distance now.
Better to say something.
Jisu carefully matched his stride to hers. Walking side by side, he gave her enough room to keep a natural personal space. Being considerate of other people wasn't a hard thing for him.
Alright. Time to find a decent topic.
"Gaeul, how many times have you been in a dungeon?"
The moment it left his mouth he thought it was a pretty lame question, but Gaeul answered without minding.
"This is my fourth."
"Not that often, then."
"Yeah. I don't seem to be particularly useful on expeditions. For hunters like me — the in-between ones — just getting to participate in a dungeon is a big deal."
"I see."
Gaeul answered as if it were nothing, but Jisu could tell she'd had her share of struggles. The news and media always highlighted the glamorous side of being a hunter. And in truth, the moment Jisu became one, he'd been able to stop worrying about putting food on the table. Of course, he was an S-rank or higher — a high-rank hunter in every sense.
"It's like being a spare part, I guess. Not that I'm bitter about anything. Being bitter wouldn't fix anything, and as long as the work comes in, I can at least keep myself fed."
Really no different from a temp agency.
He was a successful hunter now, but just a few months ago Jisu had been bouncing between offices just to scrape together meals. He understood exactly how she felt.
"Sorry. That was a pretty gloomy, pointless thing to say."
She glanced at his face as she said it, and Jisu smiled.
"No, it's fine. Thank you for telling me. It was about you, so I don't think it's pointless at all."
"Really?"
Gaeul ducked her head, her face coloring slightly. We're practically strangers, and he just grabs my hand like it's nothing, says things like that so easily...
Objectively speaking, he was good-looking, with a solid build. An S-rank or higher hunter would definitely be popular with women. That was probably why he could say things like that so casually. They probably wouldn't even see each other again after today.
How much farther did they walk? At last, a door came into view. A swinging door with bizarre decorations — an interior that was practically screaming this is the boss room with everything it had.
"This must be the boss room, then?"
"Looks like it. This is my first time actually seeing one."
Gaeul's words came out clipped. It was hard to tell what was going on, but one way or another, they needed to put an end to this situation.
"Let's go."
"Ah — yes!"
And so Jisu took the lead and opened the door. A creak rang out, and at the same moment, what entered their field of vision was—
"AAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!!!"
Whoosh—
"????"
A humanoid monster in the shape of a man, stepping into some kind of strange portal. It happened so fast they couldn't even process what they'd just seen. They were still standing there, staring blankly ahead, when—
"What?"
The dungeon had been cleared.