The Armory
Mu Beob-sa gathered the crew separately.
Ordinarily, he was not a man who involved himself much in the affairs of his crewmates. Yet here he was, calling every one of them together. Everyone except Rafael.
“That part is for Hye-ji to explain to Rafael later.”
“Yes. But......”
“I already know what you want to say. That part, too. So listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You've all noticed by now — Midnight is one of the ones guarding this place. But she's a little unwell.”
“Unwell isn't exactly...... well, the thing is......”
Jo Mu-sa and the others had all seen it. The current crackling in the air around Midnight. Her loosened, unfocused eyes. The smoke seeping out of her.
None of it was the reaction of a person. It was the kind of response you'd see from a machine.
“Midnight is in a great deal of pain. But she is alive. That's all you need to hold onto — that part.”
“But is it really......”
“If Director Gong says so, how could it be otherwise? That part. Wouldn't you agree, Lee Hyun-sung?”
“Yes, Master Mage.”
“If Director Gong says it is so, then what part of it could be false?”
“If Hyeong-nim says it's so, then it's so.”
“Good. Then treat her exactly as you always have. That part. As for Midnight herself — don't ask about her if you can help it. Don't try to find out. Is that a difficult request?”
One by one, the crew shook their heads.
These were people who had crossed the line between life and death together. A little cooperation like this was nothing to them.
“Where'd everyone go?”
It was roughly two hours later that Won-goo emerged.
“I explained it to them properly and sent them off.”
“Good work.”
“All fixed, then?”
“Fix it? There was nothing to fix. It repairs itself. The Shelter gained a new facility, and that's what put the strain on her.”
“Is that how it is.”
“None of them said anything?”
“I told them she was simply unwell. They all seemed to accept it.”
“Accept it, my ass. They probably think I'm out of my mind.”
Won-goo snorted a laugh.
Mu Beob-sa did not laugh along.
“Come with me. I said I'd show you the library, didn't I?”
“That part could wait for another day.”
“Another day, hell. We're going now.”
“So it truly is empty. That part.”
The library was lined with an immense number of bookshelves, yet not a single volume occupied any of them.
“Still, the facility itself doesn't seem bad. I'd say it was worth the coins, if nothing else.”
“That much, I'll grant.”
Both men found themselves thinking it might have been better to bring the rest of the crew along to see it. That was how lavish the library — the newest addition to the Shelter — truly was.
A vast circular hall sat at its center, and around it the shelves curved outward in sweeping arcs. Soft light poured down from the ceiling, its brightness shifting in real time as they moved.
“Curious. Is the light coming out differently for each of us? That part.”
“Probably. You and I are different heights, different eyesight. That would explain it.”
“This is certainly not Earth's technology. That part is certain.”
With that, Won-goo walked to the central hall and tossed down the book he'd been carrying — the one Mu Beob-sa had happened to scavenge at some point.
The instant the book left his hand, light spilled out from the heart of the hall, and lines of text materialized in the empty air.
Initiating analysis of book.
1%......
10%......
100%......
Analysis complete.
The artificial intelligence needed only a few seconds to break the book down.
How may I assist you?
“Take the contents of that book and expand on them using the Jonggwanwi database as a foundation.”
Access to the Jonggwanwi database must be approached with caution.
“Is that a no?”
It is possible. However, to avoid unnecessary tracking, considerable time will be required. The central library system will be unavailable for the duration of the process. Do you wish to proceed?
“Go ahead. Do it. How long will it take?”
The exact duration cannot be determined, as the volume of data stored in the Jonggwanwi database is unknown. Given that the process may take a long time, shall the task be divided into multiple stages?
“Yes. Do it that way.”
Commencing operation.
“Isn't that thing something like the AI we had back on Earth?”
“Something like it. Only a superior model. What do you think — not bad, eh?”
“It's impressive, that part, but...... Director Gong, is even this sort of thing possible for you?”
“I told you — my Gift is expensive, but it's a strange one. It can handle all kinds of work. If I'd ever put a Milestone Trait into upgrading that thing, I could probably have used it out in the Field itself.”
“Then......”
“We wouldn't need information brokers anymore. It's faster and more accurate, after all.”
“Then why didn't you do it?”
“If that solved everything, obviously I would have. But there are things it doesn't solve. That's why.”
“Doesn't that much already solve everything, though? It can hack into the Jonggwanwi itself......”
“With the Jonggwanwi, sure — it's just data, so I can pull it out. But the Field isn't just data sitting around waiting to be read. Psychokinesis, sorcery, magic. All of that applies out there too. How is that thing supposed to crack any of it?”
“Because of things like that......”
“It might feel good in the moment, but one day I'd be kicking myself, biting the dirt in regret. That's why I don't.”
“I understand now.”
“Master Mage. Do you know which facility I'm aiming for next?”
“......?”
“The armory.”
“The armory?”
“That's right. That was my plan from the start.”
Won-goo's claim that he had no intention of swelling the ranks of his crew had been sincere. His plan was to take in crewmates of high potential and develop them intensively, then fill the remaining gaps with his own ability.
Getting the armory up and running would demand far more coins, but that didn't concern him. Everything so far had unfolded exactly according to his plan. If anything, things were going even faster than he'd anticipated.
The night passed quickly. As the darkness lifted, the crew filed back into the Trailer.
Then, once they had emerged from the Trailer again, it reverted once more into the briefcase. The crew held their positions and kept watch on the surroundings until the transformation completed.
Everyone had rested deeply, and their faces were flushed with color and life.
“All right. Back to your senses — we move.”
“Yes, sir!”
“DULLAAAAA!”
Dulla was going wild. The creaking, jerky quality of his movements kept improving until he was now fighting more smoothly than he had when he'd crossed blades with Lee Hyun-sung on the Number Bridge.
By now, Dulla had become a considerable fighting force in his own right.
Best of all, he could take orders by voice alone, which meant Geum Chul-soo no longer needed to control him manually.
“I used to think raising his intelligence wasn't worth it, you know? But it turns out I was wrong.”
“See? I kept telling you he might just keep getting better. He understands words a lot better these days, doesn't he?”
“He even picks up on specifics now. He's smarter than I ever expected.”
“Good to hear.”
“Someday we might even be able to send him on errands, Director.”
At that, Won-goo let out a snort of laughter. He'd just pictured Dulla roaming around the Shelter.
A three-meter knight strolling through the halls, severed head carried in one hand. Just imagining it was entertaining.
“Errands might be pushing it. Either way, if that head of his keeps getting sharper, that's a good thing. I should find him a weapon of his own someday.”
“Would that be all right?”
“He fights well enough. And besides — the single greatest advantage of a capsule monster isn't anything else.”
“Which is?”
“The fact that even if it dies, it comes back to life. As long as you don't die, it revives again after a set period, doesn't it?”
“Ah...... right, that's true.”
“And in certain situations, that's an awfully valuable thing to have.”
Clearing the Tower of Agony was, frankly, easy.
Won-goo already knew everything there was to know about its strategy, so nothing could hold them up.
The Tower of Agony had, after all, been designed for the phrase 'If you don't know, you suffer.' better than anywhere else in the world.
Which was to say, the opposite applied just as neatly: if you know, it's trivially easy.
The crew, having spent the night in the Temporary Shelter, climbed to the topmost floor at a blistering pace. Priests of unusual rank appeared here and there, but just as Won-goo had foreseen, they posed no real difficulty.
If anything, most of the crew agreed that dealing with survivors out in the open had been the harder fight.
“The Siamese frog was a tough monster, wasn't it, Director?” Jo Mu-sa remarked.
“You asking the obvious? A Siamese frog could've been the boss of a ten-story tower and nobody would've blinked. Might've sat even higher than that.”
Jo Mu-sa said this because the boss that had appeared on the fifth floor had been dispatched with almost anticlimactic ease.
The boss was the Crystal Executor — a being that wielded magic through translucent gemstones like shards of crystal itself.
The Executor's magic was full of genuinely nasty tricks. It conjured hallucinations. It spawned doubles to sow chaos. And it could even link directly into a person's mind and seize control — a single moment of carelessness, and an entire party being wiped out would have been no joke at all.
But Won-goo knew the Executor's weaknesses too.
It was a creature that could be beaten simply by finishing the fight before its magic could properly unfold.
To shore up that weakness, the Crystal Executor appeared flanked by well over a hundred priests sworn to its protection, its defensive magic already cast and shimmering.
Yet the horde of priests couldn't survive even a few minutes under the hail of bullets from Won-goo and Hye-ji. And the Executor's protective spell, the Crystal Shield, cracked under a single blow from Rafael's hammer — and shattered outright on the second.
What followed was her final, all-or-nothing strike.
Three swings. That was all Rafael needed to finish off the boss.
And yet her expression never changed in the slightest.
Won-goo, watching her, was wearing a broad, contented grin.
Because he felt a gap in his crew had finally been filled.
The weak point had been raw attack power.
Damage.
In a typical party, the main damage dealer was the mage-type position — the role that fell to Mu Beob-sa among his crew. But for reasons of his own, Mu Beob-sa could not cast magic, the same kind of unspoken arrangement that had once kept Lee Hyun-sung from drawing a blade. No one pressed him hard about it, since it was a matter of mutual understanding.
That didn't mean Mu Beob-sa was shirking his share, of course. Even now, shield raised, he was doing everything his role demanded of him.
But until he awakened, the absence of real offensive firepower was inevitable — and then Rafael had appeared and solved the problem in one stroke.
“Good work, Rafael.”
“......”
Rafael stared at him in silence.
“Something to say?”
“Ramen.”
“......?”
“Ramen.”
Everyone's faces froze in shock. Her enunciation was thick and halting, but it was ramen, in perfect Korean.
“You want to eat ramen? You can have it whenever you like. Take your reward first and I'll make it right after.”
“Want to eat now.”
She added it in the tongue of the Dwarf Elves.
“I said I'll make it once you take your reward.”
“Now.”
“Fine. Hyun-sung.”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim!”
“Get the ramen going. Make it a big batch.”
“Hyeong-nim.”
“What?”
“The, uh...... the pot is in the Trailer.”
“You didn't set one aside in your pack?”
“That's...... the packs are all in the Trailer too.”
Won-goo's brow furrowed.
“You idiots...... why the hell would you stick all the packs in there? Whatever's been assigned to you, you carry it on you at all times! Do you know when or where something might happen? Has everyone's brain checked out?!”
“My apologies, Hyeong-nim! Your humble brother's thinking was too short!”
Lee Hyun-sung bellowed the apology and bent his head a full ninety degrees.
“Hah...... From now on, the pack goes everywhere with you. And I'm not saying this for nothing. You saw that bat-swinging bastard Yang Jun-sik, didn't you? He went into a dungeon and got bounced out alone, all by himself. There's no law saying that can't happen to you too. And if that situation comes, what's your lifeline? The pack on your back! The pack!”
“Our apologies.”
While he chewed the crew out, Won-goo converted the briefcase back into the Trailer. Practiced hands cleared an open patch of ground so the vehicle could materialize.
“Boil it back there. I'm going to collect the rewards.”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim! We'll be waiting!”
“Waiting for what? Eat first. Ramen is a matter of minutes, not hours.”
“Yes, Hyeong-nim!”
He moved off to claim the rewards.
And moments later, Won-goo was swallowed by the light.