The Underground Passage Connects Everything
“Director Gong. Your estimate was wrong.”
“And yet it's rare for my estimates to be off, wouldn't you say?”
Any normal person would have been in a foul mood after a misjudged estimate, but Won-goo was actually smiling.
It had been an estimate he could afford to get wrong. No — you could even say that getting it wrong had been the better outcome.
The Six-Party Gang had crumbled far faster than expected, and Wabulgwi had proven even more powerful than anticipated.
“So is it that Wabulgwi is strong? Or that they're weak?”
“Neither, friend. Either way, let's go wrap things up.”
“By the way, Director Gong. Wasn't this Queen lowballing the story she gave us? The safe zone incident is clearly a bigger job than the contract said. This thing could balloon on us if we're not careful.”
“Let it balloon. But that would be on our side of the ledger too — we didn't scrutinize the incident closely enough, did we?”
“So we're only taking the service fee the contract specifies?”
“That's right. Anything extra on top of that is Queen's choice to make.”
“Shame, that.”
“A contract's a contract, however much you grumble. Besides, our own pathfinder who guided us here would have reported it anyway. We do have mouths, you know.”
“So you're saying you'd pay up just to keep everyone's mouth shut?”
“Would you give up on that thing over there?”
Won-goo pointed at the mart, then continued.
“Look at it — still standing even without Queen around. That tells you it's a Gift with one hell of a long cooldown.”
“How long, exactly?”
“No way to know. Either way, nobody could give that up. And Queen knows it too. If she can't reclaim that thing, she has no future. That's why she called us.”
“So the plan was to win it back first and haggle later. Still, Director Gong — aren't we being a little naive here?”
“……?”
“……?”
“……?”
At the word naive, the crew's footsteps stopped dead.
They had been strolling toward the mart without a care in the world.
“Naive? How so?”
“Well…… couldn't Queen still stab us in the back? No? Did I overstep?”
“Want me to put you back to sleep?”
“Ah, come on.”
“If Queen double-crossed us now, everything would spiral out of control. You really think she'd risk that? And if she had the firepower to backstab us, she'd have just cleared this place out herself.”
“Clearing it out herself would mean heavy casualties. That could be exactly why she hired us.”
“Now you're reaching. At that scale, she'd have hired a few nearby Named and bulldozed the place directly. The fact that she didn't — that she called us — tells you that wasn't an option. She couldn't even put together a proper estimate in the first place. What are you going on about?”
“Hmm…… fair enough.”
“Stop overthinking it. Just go back to sleep.”
Taking the rebuke, Pacific grumbled under his breath and shuffled ahead.
In the meantime, the darkness was receding, and the surroundings were growing brighter.
The screams of survivors spilling out of the mart were gradually dying down as well.
But while the explosive shrieking had subsided, groans and moans of the wounded still seeped through the air.
The aftermath of Wabulgwi.
As if conducting an experiment to see just how much destruction a single powerful monster could inflict, Wabulgwi had torn through everything in its path.
Many survivors had died. Many more had been wounded.
And yet the injured weren't receiving proper treatment.
Why?
Because the battle wasn't over yet.
In the parking lot, Wabulgwi and the leadership of the Six-Party Gang were still locked in combat.
Wabulgwi was far from whole, either.
Its golden Buddha armor had been stripped away, revealing the grotesque horror underneath, and everything below its left elbow was gone. A blade jutted from the base of its tail bone, and blood streamed down its head.
Even so, Wabulgwi kept fighting.
Surrounding it were seven executives in all.
The crew stopped at the mart's entrance and watched the battle.
Tap.
Won-goo pulled out a cigarette, and Hyun-sung lit it for him.
“Cheol-su. When I give the signal, you close the capsule. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
They weren't studying the fight with particular intensity. They were simply watching how far things would play out.
Wabulgwi and the gang's leadership were pouring everything into the battle, so none of them had noticed the new arrivals standing in front of the mart.
That was how vicious their fight had become.
Won-goo puffed on his cigarette and quietly issued orders to the crew. With everyone standing close, he could be as detailed as he liked.
“Hye-ji. See that big-nosed bastard over there? That Khorosho is their main damage dealer. The moment the fight starts, you put a round straight into that son of a bitch's head first. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pacific.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you take him alive?”
“Can do.”
“Then don't kill him. I've got questions. Hyun-sung.”
“Yes, boss.”
“You handle the rest. Keep them alive if you can; if they die, so be it. The only thing that matters is that none of us gets hurt.”
“Understood, boss.”
Thwack! Bang! Boom!
The battle churned out a symphony of noise.
Won-goo's crew held position and watched in silence.
They weren't reassessing anyone while they watched, either.
Won-goo moving in this close already meant the estimates on their targets were finished.
And telling Hyun-sung that life or death didn't matter carried its own meaning: nothing among them had a Gift worth keeping.
Skilled, yes — but with ordinary Gifts.
To Won-goo, that meant nothing.
There was, however, one exception he was watching closely.
The man Won-goo had called Khorosho.
The one who had contributed most to stripping Wabulgwi's golden Buddha armor.
In truth, the rest of them might as well have been support units whose only job was enabling Khorosho to use his ability properly.
Thwack! Crack!
“Gyaaaaagh!”
The Chinese man who had blocked Wabulgwi's front kick had blood pouring from his mouth.
His sternum was clearly broken. Even so, he clamped onto Wabulgwi's leg, and the moment he did, the rest of the gang swarmed in, raining down merciless blows.
“Уйди с дороги! (Out of the way!)”
Khorosho roared, and the executives clinging to Wabulgwi scrambled clear.
Then, hoisting his blood-caked bat, Khorosho leapt at Wabulgwi.
That's what I want to know. Is it a weapon enhancement? Or an ability of the weapon itself? The cooldown looks like about ten minutes……
Won-goo had fought Wabulgwi face to face, so he knew exactly how hard that golden armor was.
After all, he'd brought the thing down by bludgeoning it with a shotgun countless times.
The Wabulgwi inside the capsule and the Wabulgwi that had appeared as a field boss were clearly different in combat power — the capsule version couldn't use the wide-area attack that the real one unleashed inside the temple hall.
If it could have, the battle would have ended long ago.
In any case, Khorosho had stripped away that legendary hardness with a single swing of that red-hot bat.
Khorosho had then spent ten minutes on the run while the others bought time by grinding Wabulgwi down.
The funny thing was, even after the armor came off, the rest of them still couldn't finish it.
That was how much of a monster Wabulgwi truly was.
Whiiiine! KWAAANG!
A blow landed hard enough to make the earth shudder, and a column of dust bloomed skyward.
The gang members, sensing the battle was over, let out sighs of relief.
But inside that cloud of dust, Khorosho's face looked like a man who had just chewed dog shit.
Won-goo had given the order to close the capsule at the precise moment.
Khorosho had just unleashed his ultimate technique on empty air.
Scanning his surroundings, trying to make sense of a Wabulgwi that had simply vanished, Khorosho at last spotted Won-goo at the mart entrance — smoking a cigarette and grinning.
“You ought to keep better situational awareness. They never teach you that in the army?”
The smile was dripping with mockery.
“Ты…… (You……)”
Madness flared in Khorosho's eyes. He hadn't pieced together the full picture. But one thing was certain: all of this was because of the bastard grinning in front of him. And that he had been played, completely.
“Убей это! (Kill it!)”
Khorosho bellowed at the top of his lungs — and Won-goo's hand rose.
Crack!
The shot from Jeon Hye-ji's rifle bored straight through Khorosho's eye.
“GYYYYAAAAGH!”
Killing a coin-enhanced survivor with a single shot was no easy feat. Even a clean headshot often failed to punch through a hardened skull.
The same held true for Hye-ji's rifle in sniping mode.
But joints, eyes — weak points like those were the exception.
Against them, she could deal devastating damage any time she pleased.
“Jeon Hye-ji. Nice shot.”
Pacific closed in fast on Khorosho, who was thrashing and clawing at his ruined eye, and pinned him down.
Rising from his wheelchair, he swarmed the man and had him wrapped head to toe in Tail Dog's Rope in seconds.
He then flung his chakrams at two of the other executives.
After that, the rest of the crew piled on.
Cleanup took less than a minute.
Their targets were already spent, and the gap in overall strength was substantial.
It would have been absurd for Won-goo's Services — every member of whom could pass for a high-tier Named — to lose to some hastily thrown-together gang.
The only thing that could have pushed them back was the wildcard of some extraordinary Gift, and with none of that in play, it was simple.
Hyun-sung's team subdued them all without killing a single one.
“Let's sort them out. The dead go on the right. The ones still breathing, on the left. The leadership, right here in front of me. Hyun-sung — can you manage it in twenty minutes?”
“Yes, boss. Twenty minutes is plenty.”
“D-Director. Th-this thing is, it's, it's wrong somehow.”
Suwon was lugging Khorosho's wooden bat over while groaning under its weight.
Suwon's strength was nothing to sneeze at — it was actually formidable.
If a man like him was struggling to carry it, the thing had to be monstrously heavy.
“It's that heavy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hm. Is there an option attached to the bat or something?”
It looked like an ordinary baseball bat, yet the weight was staggering. This was beyond merely having a steel core stuffed inside.
“Rafael! Come here and try lifting this.”
Rafael hurried over and hefted the bat.
It was easier for her than for Suwon, but even she found it far from light.
“Heavy.”
“Could you use it as a weapon?”
“Swinging it will be difficult.”
A weapon so heavy that even Rafael struggled to swing it.
“It's not weight-locked, then. It's just a weapon that gets its power from sheer mass? Rafael. Stow this in the Trailer carefully. I want it appraised. This is no ordinary item.”
Having given his orders, Won-goo moved his feet toward where hands were scarce.
* * *
Once the interrogation began, information came pouring freely from the mouths of Khorosho and the other executives.
No special treatment had been required.
They had simply made a promise.
Answer the questions properly, and you live.
And Won-goo intended to keep that promise.
“Hyun-sung!”
“Yes! Boss.”
“Give this Khorosho bastard a cigarette and a pack of ramyeon. He's answering the cleanest out of all of them.”
“On it!”
“What did we get?”
Pacific wheeled himself over.
“Mostly what we expected. They drifted here searching for paradise — true. That's why they attacked — true. The mart inside is a Safe Zone — true too. Seems immune to natural disasters. But one thing caught me off guard.”
“What part was unexpected?”
“The route they took to get here. I figured there was some dungeon or tower connected nearby. Turns out that wasn't it.”
“Then what was it?”
“The Underground Passage.”
“The Underground Passage?”
“Yeah. The Underground Passage. Where the subways run.”
“Isn't going in there basically suicide?”
“You're not wrong. That place is crawling with monsters, isn't it.”
“So did they find some rat hole in there or what…… Anyway, that's how they came through.”
“Is that serious?”
“Deadly serious. Because unlike dungeons or towers, the Underground Passage is all connected.”
“What do you mean, all connected?”
“Everything. The whole world.”
“……?”
“What's that supposed to mean? Explain it so a person can understand.”
“I think he means that using the Underground Passage, you could travel anywhere on Earth.”
Jeon Hye-ji, who had been listening quietly, chimed in.
“Exactly. That's it. The Underground Passage connects everything.”