The Trap Zone, Poison Field

Two in the afternoon.

I went to a café to meet someone.

"Jeonghwan!"

I don't know how long I'd been waiting, but the person I was waiting for finally showed. My old coworker, Choi Donghoon.

Donghoon had joined three months ahead of me. We were practically the same hire class, and the same age on top of it, which was probably why we'd ended up pretty close.

"You been waiting long? Sorry. I was coming from a job interview."

"......An interview?"

"Yeah. I quit the company too. Or—should I even say I quit? More like the company went under, and that was the end of it."

Hold on. The company went under? What was he talking about?

"The company went bankrupt?"

"Yeah, yeah. You've gotta be working somewhere by now, right? Then word about our place should've gotten around."

First I was hearing of it. I hadn't even taken a job. What in the world had happened?

"Ah, I've been doing something else. So what went down?"

"Something else? You asked me for the eleventh-floor scouting data, so I figured you were still doing the same work. Anyway. Before I get into what happened—you got your severance all right, yeah?"

"Yeah. I got mine ages ago."

"Whew, that's a relief. I mean, the company was late with paychecks now and then, remember? Turns out that was all because the money had already gone bad."

I'd suspected as much. They'd talked like everything was fine, but there was no way it actually was.

"But here's the real kicker. You know your department head. Dept Head Choi. She knew, and she hid it anyway."

"What? Her? That can't be right."

Whatever she was like underneath, she'd always loved looking flawless on the surface. Someone like that had covered this up?

"Yeah, for real. It blew up not long after you left, and once people found out, Dept Head Choi got treated like absolute garbage."

The way Donghoon told it, Dept Head Choi had been terrified she wouldn't collect her own severance, so she'd deliberately buried the company's finances—and worse, she'd forcibly held the other employees in place so they couldn't quit. That was where it exploded. The people she'd pinned down made up their minds to resign anyway, but by then it was already too late, and they never saw a won of severance.

"Well, the long-timers said the government support would cover them up to ten million won at most. But you know how it was. The ones who'd actually stuck around had ten years in, minimum. A subsidy like that didn't even come close."

In the end, just as Dept Head Choi had arranged it, people who walked away empty-handed piled up. From that day on, the entire staff ignored her and didn't spare the insults.

"Man, you should've seen her on the way out. She went from somebody everybody respected straight to the bottom of the barrel. Even the junior managers shut her down the second she opened her mouth, and one employee cursed her out right to her face. I mean, why grab people who were already trying to leave..."

"If all of that's true, getting cursed out was getting off easy. Lucky nobody hit her."

"Hahaha, you're not wrong. Aigoo. Anyway, everybody was jealous you got out with the timing you did. One wrong step and Dept Head Choi would've cost you your severance too."

A shock was still a shock. It wasn't the end of it, though. Donghoon went on, picking his words.

"......And I don't know if this part's true, but there's talk Dept Head Kim is under investigation. Embezzlement, supposedly? Word is he got tangled up while the funds were drying out. Some people say he was in on it with the executives."

Embezzlement. So the man had finally gone and done it. What a mess...

"Anyway, that's that. Here. The eleventh-floor materials you asked for."

Donghoon passed me a USB. This was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠why I'd come today—to get a real handle on the eleventh floor.

"You probably know the basics already, but I put it together carefully, since the section you used to cover was different."

Of course I knew the basics. The hunters I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been assigned, though, were the lower floors—the stretch everyone called the tutorial. Early after I joined I'd been given the eleventh floor and above as well, but nobody was covering the lower stretch, so I'd volunteered. That was how I'd ended up asking Donghoon for the files.

Going into the Tower myself, it really was a different world.

There was another reason I'd asked. What you catch over someone's shoulder and what's actually there aren't the same thing, and if I was going to look into it, I meant to do it properly—Hunternet, obviously, and the working files from the people who handled it on the ground.

"First off, you know this already, but from the eleventh floor the scale is nothing like before. It opens up so wide you can't even compare them. That's why the whole fight changes up there."

"Running into other hunters was pretty rare, yeah."

Donghoon nodded over his coffee.

"Right. You see monsters way more often than hunters. Wider floor, more monsters. And there's always at least one mid-size, and one large-size. Every time."

Below the tenth floor, hunters did most of the killing. Above the tenth, monsters did.

"So the hunters I managed mostly hid inside buildings and only stepped out once they'd read the situation. Reading the air matters that much up there. Wander around careless and bump into even one large-size, and you die while you're still running."

Large-size monsters. Things ten meters tall at the smallest—over thirty feet.

"Oh, and you know this too, right? From the eleventh floor on, the national system kicks in. That's why the U.S. once bunched up around the eleventh floor, all fired up to take down a large-size, and got their teeth kicked in."

"Obviously I know that."

They're as strong as they are huge. Down on the lower floors, not one has ever been brought down. All anyone does is run.

"Anyway, thanks. I'll read the details myself."

"But why do you even want this? You said it wasn't a company in this line of work."

"No real reason. Can't hurt to know things."

"Yeah, sure." Donghoon let it go like it was nothing.

"So what do you think JUNE's gonna be like?"

That was when he brought me up. Not that he had any idea he was talking to me.

"JUNE?"

"Yeah, JUNE. JUNE's heading to the eleventh floor this time too, right? Man, that guy is something else. Over nine thousand kills on the tenth floor? I never dreamed, not once in my life, I'd see a hunter like that."

"Haha. Y-yeah, I guess? If it's JUNE, he'll do fine. Probably."

"Hmm. I don't know. Even I can't say. From the eleventh floor on, that kind of power might not work."

Yeah. I thought the same thing. That was why I was studying.

"Anyway, thanks. See you next time."

"Yeah. Thanks for the coffee. I'll enjoy it."

And that was how I parted from Donghoon, the first time I'd seen him in a long while.

After JUNE cleared the tenth floor, the eyes of the whole world came pouring in.

First, America.

Then China.

Floors one through ten were the tutorial. The eleventh floor was where the real game began. Everyone was certain it would be different.

Then Japan.

That was Japan's obsession these days—whether they could get their hands on a Legendary-grade reward. The star of the show was Hanako, and her interview was blowing up too.

Heh. Hanako covered her mouth with one hand. When she lowered it, she was smiling, bright as anything.

Japan was ecstatic.

That evening I went home and read through the materials. What the atmosphere was like. What sat where. And which places would get you killed.

It says to avoid the center, no exceptions.

The place everyone on the eleventh floor stayed away from was the center—the main range of the large-size monsters, and the most heavily traveled ground on the floor.

Then that's where I'm going.

I wasn't like them. A place like that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was exactly what I wanted. All right, then. Time to go.

Fwip!

I was on the eleventh floor, and the scenery hit me at once. I stood in the middle of a barren waste—building wreckage and cars half-swallowed by sand, a ruined structure showing through here and there, split nearly in two. This was the Buried City zone.

And that over there is another zone.

Far off, I could just make out a forest. It wasn't like the floors before, locked to a single theme. If where I stood was open wasteland, the west had grown into a dense wood.

Vmmm.

And one thing had changed. My feet weren't touching the ground. I was hovering about a foot in the air—the effect of Sky Walk.

Oh, this is nice.

Moving barely cost me anything. Think about going forward, and I went forward. Think about going back, and I went back. And that wasn't all—I was fast. Between Sky Walk and the gift Ha Ojun had given me, my travel speed had jumped for certain.

"Let's go."

Whoosh—

My body moved light as anything, skimming through the air. All right. What first? The Pass Stone, obviously.

That part hadn't changed from the floors below. What you needed to reach the next floor was a Pass Stone. Until now I'd simply taken them out of bags I'd already claimed. From here on, it might not be that simple. My kill count might not hold up the way it used to, so the Pass Stone came first. They usually dropped off monsters, didn't they?

Not that I can see a single person.

The floor was enormous, and there were only about five thousand people on it. No wonder the place looked empty.

"Grrrrrr."

"Grrrk."

The monsters were another story. They were everywhere.

Scavengers.

Cleaners of the desert. Scavengers—quadrupeds with fangs jutting past their lips, things that dug up corpses and ate them. There were a lot of them. Some packed together, some scattered.

Might as well start with these.

KRRRUMMM—

I cast Fire Rain. The sky went dark at once, and out of it came a downpour of fire.

Shaaaaaa!

Fwoooosh!

The messages came down in a flood. One attack, and hundreds of them were gone.

Fwoooosh.

All that remained around me was fire clinging to the sand. The whole pack had been wiped out in a single pass.

Gulp. Gulp.

I drank a low-grade mana potion on the spot. No telling what might happen next.

So I walked, and kept walking, sipping mana potions as I went—until something strange came into view.

Hsssssss.

Hsssssss.

Dead in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠middle of the waste lay an uncanny poison field. One look and you knew stepping into it meant instant death. It was, unmistakably, the Trap Zone.

So that's it.

Something sat at the very center. Was that the Legendary I'd only ever heard about in rumors?

"Hup—!"

There was something else, too. A woman, standing inside the poisoned ground. Floating over her head was a Japanese name: Hanako. It looked like her real one.

One step. Then another. Painfully careful. The way she held every movement in check looked practiced. How was she even walking through that?

She's nearly there, though.

How long had she been grinding for this? Thrown out, going back in, over and over.

I looked down at what was under me. A body hanging in the air, and beneath it, ground sheeted in poison. If I was floating, I wasn't touching it. Was I?

Then I can just walk in, can't I?

Worth a try. Just in case, I eased up to the edge.

"......"

Nothing. I went in a little farther.

"......"

Here, too? Then over there? The same.

So I really can just go take it.

This was an absolute steal. Sky Walk was ridiculous.

"Y-you! What do you think you're doing!"

That was when the woman shouted at me.

"D-don't come any closer! That is mine!"

"......"

What was she talking about?

"I—I! Do you have any idea how much I've suffered? You absolutely cannot take it! Move one step farther and you die!"

"......"

She was staring at me with her eyes on fire. But this was the Tower—the height of stabbing someone in the back. And she was Japanese, besides.

"And why should I?"

"W-what?"

Vmmm—

I moved. Easy as anything. And before she could do a thing about it, I was there.

"D-don't touch it!"

You've got to be kidding me.

"N-nooooo! G-gaaaaah!"

The Japanese woman screamed. Her foot slipped.

And she died.