The Interview
"You already weeded out the ones flagged red for danger, right?"
Jeon Hye-ji had developed an ability to gauge just how dangerous a person was. She sorted them by color, and the deeper the red, the greater the threat. It wasn't a fine-grained classification—she couldn't zoom in on the details of how strong someone was. It simply marked, by her own standards, whether a person was dangerous or not.
"Yes."
"If I send in the high-risk ones from the left, how many are left? Twenty?"
"Yes."
"That should work."
"Wait—isn't it the left side, not the right?"
Hye-ji asked with wide, startled eyes. As she remembered it, the left column held the low-trust candidates and the right column the high-trust ones.
"Correct. The left."
"Not the left—the right."
"No. I want the left. You said the left was the low-trust crowd. Left is low trust, right is high trust. That's how it goes, isn't it?"
"Why……?"
"What do you think, why?"
"I don't know."
"You don't enter a dungeon with people you trust. You enter it with people who are willing to die in your place."
"……."
"And a total mess calls for total bastards."
Won-goo said it with a smile. Hye-ji felt she'd just learned another lesson.
"If that's the case, wouldn't the dangerous ones actually be preferable?"
"If they're too dangerous, we can't handle them. We need moderately dangerous ones so we can keep things under control."
"Then the Director planned to split them up from the start—"
Jo Mu-sa, who had been listening quietly, cut in with a startled expression.
"Jo Mu-sa. Have you ever once seen me break a contract? Splitting them according to the contract is correct. The dungeon is an opportunity. Whatever they grab in there, the contract lets them keep. In exchange, we clear it faster and take only the completion reward."
Won-goo's thinking was simple. Shove a crowd of survivors into the dungeon to illuminate the map, then clear it himself.
The orthodox method was to work through the dungeon step by step, claiming every reward along the way. But this case wasn't that. It was a raid on an already-discovered dungeon, with no way of knowing how many people had gone in before them or how far they'd progressed. Given that situation, snatching the completion reward and walking out was the most rational play available.
"So the rest are to be dealt with after it's over—that's the part, is it?"
"Old-timers sure have a habit of treating people like psychopaths."
"Hm? Isn't that exactly right?"
"Just listen. I told you before—contracts are kept. If they go in and survive, they keep everything. That's what I said."
"Ah, so 'if they survive' was the important part. Understood."
"Surviving is what matters in everything."
"So that's why you picked the left side. Because they—"
At Hye-ji's words, Won-goo nodded and chuckled.
"That's the hallmark of good liars. They can't bring themselves to trust anyone. And remember what I told you about C-ranks and D-ranks? No skills, but egos the size of a house. That's the reality of this world. People who'll do anything to latch onto someone else's hard work and steal a share. You want to know what defines people like that?"
"What?"
"They don't last long."
"So the Yang siblings finally made it."
"What on earth is all this about?"
The Yang sisters looked thoroughly worn out. Considering the forced march they'd just endured, it was only natural.
"I've been holding interviews."
"Selecting the people going into the dungeon, I see."
"That's right."
The Yang sisters and Won-goo had already reached an agreement on the matter, so neither raised any objection.
"Get some rest for now. It'll take a while for your people to arrive anyway."
"We rest when the job's done. An information broker's work isn't finished until the information has been delivered."
"See that? Already different from the rest."
Won-goo fussed over the arriving group with theatrical delight.
"The details will come in the report, so for now—"
"What about the pathfinder who went with me?"
"We split up before I reached the Shelter."
"Good enough."
"The dungeon has five underground floors. Four of them are open."
"So clearing floor four unlocks floor five."
"That's right. The main mobs are Kobolds."
"Kobolds. There'll be quite a lot of them."
"If our coordination holds, it won't be too hard."
"Fair point."
"And the thing you were most curious about, Director—the predecessors. They're clearly in there. But judging by how little progress they've made, they seem to be stuck in some particular area."
"A puzzle, is it? The structure doesn't look that complicated from the outside."
"There might be wounded among them. They could be spending their time treating injuries."
"Hmm, fair enough. In a Kobold dungeon, living inside long-term is entirely possible."
Kobolds were living creatures. If someone managed to capture them and secure supplies from their corpses, survival inside wasn't impossible.
"So in any case, they haven't cleared it yet."
"Correct."
"Then the odds of us running into them are high."
"I trust that's a problem the Director will solve for us."
"True enough. Ideal would be if our part-timers handled it on their own, but—"
Won-goo turned his gaze to the mess of paperwork spread out before him.
"They're probably quite a few floors down…… do you think we'll make it that far?"
"Who knows. They're Kobolds. Surely they don't lack basic sense to that degree?"
"The Field and a dungeon are completely different things. I've seen plenty of bastards turn into complete animals the moment they get inside."
"That's a worry for later. So—how was it?"
"How was what?"
Yang Jin-seon blinked.
"The pathfinder I recommended. How was he?"
"Ah…… well……"
Won-goo snorted with a grin.
"See? From now on, trust my eye a little more."
"Ugh. Fine. You're right."
With that, Yang Jin-seon rose from her seat.
"I'll go get some rest."
"Yeah. Rest up properly."
They split the candidates into teams of ten—Team A and Team B. The usual arrangement was five, but this time it was ten.
Jeon Hye-ji, unable to contain her curiosity, asked why.
"Hye-ji, back in school, didn't you ever know one of those guys?"
"……?"
"You know. The one you take one look at and your skin crawls. Some of them everyone sees the same way, sure—but I mean that kind. The one where you just feel like you don't click with him. The one that puts you off the instant you lay eyes on him."
"No, I never did."
"Surely there was one?"
"Maybe there was, now that I think about it."
"Right. Whenever people gather in numbers, you're guaranteed to snag one of those. So with ten, the odds are twice as good as with five."
There was no other reason. He'd set the teams at ten purely to sow division.
"This time, the Trailer stays behind. Leaving it out in the open is asking for something to happen. As you all know, everything we own is inside that thing."
Everyone nodded. The reason Won-goo hadn't actively run dungeons all this while was sitting right there. A dungeon was a space where Won-goo's ability was useless. Even if he went in, there was no telling what might happen to the Trailer parked outside. The safest play was to leave it at the Shelter and go without it.
"While I'm at the Coin Exchange, everyone repack your gear. A dungeon isn't the Field."
"How much do you intend to spend? That's the part I'd like to know."
Mu Beob-sa spoke up.
"We don't know what's inside, so I'll have to spend a fair amount."
Won-goo had earned a considerable pile of coins, yet he'd always passed them along to his crew. This time, however, he had no intention of doing so. This was an investment in himself. He'd also obtained the Transcendental Sigil, so spending coins could hardly be called a bad choice.
At the Coin Exchange, Won-goo put coins into stat-related abilities.
When he returned to the Trainer's office, a familiar face was waiting.
"What are you doing here? Didn't you get the money I sent?"
"It's not that, Director."
It was Il-chul, freshly out of full-body bandages and leaning on crutches. Even from a distance, that sharply pointed head made him unmistakable.
"What, was the amount too small for your taste? I sent enough that it shouldn't have been."
"It wasn't too small."
"Then what?"
"Why didn't you call me for the dungeon? That's what stings, Director! I may work freelance, but my skills are still—"
"Good grief…… take a look at yourself. You think you can go into a dungeon? What, should I have brought a nurse along too?"
"I can manage this much—"
"Your treatment isn't even finished, is it? Get well first. Come back when you're in proper condition if you want to work. Don't let greed send you to an early grave."
"I'm…… I'm fine, really—"
"The interviews are already done. In or out?"
The moment Won-goo pulled the Warhammer from his hip, Il-chul vanished. It was remarkably fast.
Jeon Hye-ji watched the whole exchange from behind.
"What are you staring at?"
"Director, that man……"
"I know. I know exactly what you're about to say. Just leave him be. Even without you telling me, it's already on record."
"Yes, sir."
"Let's go in. Everyone's ready, yes?"
"Of course."
"We didn't even come here to collect a debt. Why'd you call so many of us? And that's a lot—how many people is that, exactly?"
"The number of family I'm responsible for has grown a bit lately."
The teammates Yang Jin-seon had mentioned arrived. There were rather a lot of them.
Ten in total, all told.
"No cap on party size, so you brought every last one of them, huh."
"We need to get in there and finish quickly."
"You do understand? This is a per-head contract. We split the completion reward. Headcount means nothing."
"We understand."
"Then my day laborers and I will go get ourselves sorted."
"Shouldn't we do introductions first?"
"A nod between crew is introduction enough. Moving on."
"Understood."
Won-goo walked over to the survivors gathered on the other side. They stood clustered in two groups—Team A and Team B.
"Seeing them all together, I'd say I picked at least one person right. Every one of them looks reliable from the face alone."
The statement needed to be read in exactly the opposite sense. Team A and Team B alike were packed with faces that belonged on wanted posters. There were a few normal-looking survivors among them, but Won-goo knew what they really were. Every one of them had a suspicious incident or two in their past.
"You signed the contract, so you already know. The completion reward is ours, no exceptions. Everything else, you're free to grab as much of as you like—I won't say a word. One single rule: don't touch the completion reward. Understood? You all know these are unusually generous terms. We didn't even take an introduction fee for the dungeon."
When Won-goo spoke with grave eyes, they all listened intently.
"Anyone have questions?"
Nobody did. They simply gazed back at him with eyes sunk deep and dark.
"Then we move out."
◈ Kobold Dungeon Entrance ◈
"Director, aren't we heading in?"
"The ones who got played for fools always enter last. What about your team?"
"We're about to go in now."
"Everyone's got the skills for it?"
"My skills are the best, after all. Enough to back the others up."
"There are people who went in ahead of you. Don't overextend—if it goes bad, run. Got it? Inside a dungeon, anything can happen and nothing is strange. There are all kinds of freaks in there, so stay sharp."
"You stay safe too, Director."
"I always do."
Yang Jin-seon's team entered first. The entrance split into two paths, and since the dungeon laborers had already taken the left, the Yang sisters went right.
The moment Yang Jin-seon disappeared from view, Won-goo pulled out a cigarette and lit up at his leisure.
"By the way, why is that statue missing its head? That's the part I wonder about."
"Someone must've grabbed it and run. Maybe it was made of gold?"
"What a strange collection of people. And when is it that we go in?"
"Just wait a bit. We can take our time. You have to give the ones ahead the hours it takes to carve the road for us. They'll probably be fine and dandy for a good day or two—"
AAAGH!
"You crazy bastard! Get away from me!"
The laborers who'd gone in first were now spilling back out of the entrance.
"What—what's going on?"
Everyone stared, stunned, at the survivors bolting out.
One man in particular burst from the entrance. The one who'd submitted his paperwork under the alias Sde.
He was wearing a smile so wide it showed every last tooth. But the smile was wrong somewhere—it made him look like a man mid-rictus.
Sde, still grinning, hurled the saw he was carrying straight at one of the fleeing survivors.
Thud!
The survivor took the saw square in the back and went down. Sde closed the distance in an instant, pinned the man's leg, and began sawing through his neck.
Like cutting firewood.
And the entire time, he never once took his eyes off Won-goo's group.
Sde flung the severed head toward them. Won-goo drew the Warhammer and smashed the flying skull right out of the air.
Sde flashed a grin at the sight. He waggled his fingers in a lazy wave, then slipped quickly back into the dungeon's depths.
"What in the world is that bastard supposed to be? That's the part I'd like to know."
Hooo……
Won-goo dropped his cigarette to the ground and exhaled a long plume of smoke.
"Hye-ji. You were dead sure you did the danger check on him, weren't you?"
"That's…… he's changed. He's different from the interview."
"And now?"
"He's black."
"Good grief…… son of a bitch, right out of the gate."