The Floor Gives Way
Team Seven, with Min Ji-won as its leader, had continued hunting without incident ever since their first engagement.
Ji-won had been startled by how calmly her teammates moved all of a sudden — but the truth was, they weren't handling themselves this well simply because they were combat-oriented types.
Their thinking had just gotten simpler.
Min Ji-won is with us. We'll be fine.
She hadn't noticed, but the sight of Min Ji-won pouring everything she had into her spar with Park Yeon-chan had left a deep impression on the first-years. The buzz around it showed no sign of cooling off; if anything, she had become the center of the conversation.
In Park Yeon-chan's case, word had already spread that he'd been overwhelming from the entrance exam onward, so people simply nodded and said he was incredible, as expected. Min Ji-won, on the other hand, had been regarded as one of the stronger students in the year — nothing more, nothing less. That was probably why it hit so hard.
The exceptional ability she had shown that day, and the way she refused to give up and fought with everything she had even against an overwhelming gap in skill, had been more than enough to set a fire under the Academy's new students.
And to the members of Team Seven, that image of her struck even harder. They had clashed with the ever-strict Min Ji-won more than once, but they had always acknowledged her skill. After witnessing her iron will in the spar with Park Yeon-chan as well, a solid sense of security settled into their hearts.
Someone that strong is on our team.
With someone that incredible here, our team will be fine.
It might have been a complacent way of thinking — but that conviction, burned into their minds, had produced calm and composure. It carried straight through from practice into real combat, and it was shaping every movement they made now.
On top of that, they had a reliable instructor ready to step in the moment things turned dangerous. Already standing behind a sturdy safety wall, they now had an even larger breakwater in front of it. There was nothing left to fear.
And as much as it kills me to admit it…
She's easy to move with.
They hadn't realized it until they hit actual combat, but Min Ji-won's methods — the ones they'd dismissed as a little rigid — turned out to be exactly what a real fight demanded, without a single unnecessary piece. Every member of the team felt the same.
The long-range attacks they'd once fired timidly for fear of hitting an ally. The spear work that had been clumsy for lack of flexibility. The defense that had known nothing but shoving with raw power. The half-hearted checks and attacks that had mostly just dithered around.
All of it was showing the shine of hard training as they cut down the monsters in front of them.
"Break! This is a checkpoint!"
In no time at all, they had reached a zone where monsters didn't appear — a rest area.
We got here faster than I expected.
Min Ji-won ran her fingers over the rest-area marks painted along the walls. They were one of the many signs left by explorers who had spent long years mapping the Tower, analyzing its ecosystem and monster patterns.
Monsters appeared throughout the Tower, but for reasons no one fully understood, there were certain stretches — including the entrance — that monsters simply never entered. Those were the rest areas. The official name was Safety Area, but most people just called them rest stops for short.
I didn't think we needed to rush… but at this rate, we might finish sooner than I thought.
Ji-won was cross-checking the map she had drawn while scouting the Tower herself against the rough sketch they'd been handed before the exercise began.
"How long do you think it'll take?"
The girl holding a staff — Oh So-hee — asked from where she sat on the floor, glancing up at Ji-won.
"Hmm… at our current pace, we should hit the turnaround point in about an hour and a half."
She hadn't expected Oh So-hee to strike up a conversation, so Ji-won was a little flustered, but she answered as casually as she could manage. The other girl didn't seem to have meant much by it either; she just nodded as if it were nothing.
After a reasonable rest, the team pulled themselves together and resumed the search.
They ran into a few more fights along the way, but cleared them without any real trouble. Pushing steadily forward, they finally arrived at a split.
"A fork."
"They said there were four routes, and there were three at the entrance, right? Isn't this one of them?"
Hwang Min-su, the spearman, was about to step into the passage straight ahead when —
"Wait!"
Min Ji-won's voice cracked out sharp and clear, stopping him cold.
"That way is a dungeon. There's a skull mark painted next to it."
"O-oh. You're right. That was close."
Among the marks left by explorers, a skull meant danger. Drawn beside a passage, it indicated a dungeon; drawn on open ground with nothing around it, it meant a trap.
At Ji-won's warning, Hwang Min-su jerked back in alarm and pulled his foot out of the passage — and that was when a cold voice drove into her back from behind the group, where she had been mapping.
"No. You should keep going straight."
"Teacher?"
The words were far too loaded. Ji-won glanced back — and what met her eyes was Instructor Yu I-jin, smiling a grotesque little smile.
"Get away from the entra—!"
"Too late."
The moment she saw his face, instinct screamed danger. Ji-won shouted toward her teammates, but the floor beneath their feet flipped faster than her warning could reach them.
Rrrrumble—!
"Whoa! What the—!"
"Kyaaaaaa!"
And the overturned floor shook them out like crumbs from a bag of snacks, dumping every member of Team Seven into the depths of the dungeon below.
"All right — break~!"
Having wrapped up another fight without any issues, we found a rest-area mark and decided to take a short breather.
"Haaah! I almost died."
Kang Min-hyeon, the one I'd been putting through the wringer in combat, collapsed straight onto the floor with a groan. One by one, the rest of the team dropped down after him.
Yeon Min-ju's naturally calm, so she always handles things without a hitch.
I'd been rotating them one at a time through monster kills because I wanted to see what each of them could do on their own, and every one of them had shown off their strengths. The level of performance was higher than I'd expected — things were going pretty well, all things considered.
Bzzzt—
The radio artifact in my pocket started vibrating.
"Teacher, mind if I go take a dump real quick?"
"…What?"
"I'll just handle it back there and come right back! I brought gear for waste disposal, so I'll clean up after myself too!"
Technically, the rule in the Tower was that you took care of business at a rest area. The unspoken etiquette was that everyone faced forward while you dealt with it using the portable toilet kit you'd packed in advance — but.
It's not like I'm actually going to the bathroom. And even if I were, I'm not about to get wrecked by a D-Rank.
The instructor's face twisted for a second, but he seemed to reach the same conclusion and waved me off without further comment.
The second I had permission, I bolted around a corner and yanked out the radio.
"—Boss. You in the Tower right now?"
"Obviously, you idiot."
Park Jae-hyun's voice came through the moment I hit the receive button. The question was so obvious that my answer came out snippier than I meant it to.
"More importantly, aren't you supposed to be in the exercise too?"
"—I bailed. Said my stomach hurt?"
"…What?"
This guy, saying that like it was nothing.
"Hey, even if you've got social anxiety, you still have to actually go to scho—"
"—Boss. That's not what matters right now."
The sudden weight in Park Jae-hyun's voice snapped every nerve in my body tight.
"Why? What happened?"
"—I skipped the exercise and had nothing to do, so I started digging into Alpha."
"Get to the point."
If he was this urgent about telling me something while knowing I was in the middle of a field exercise, it wasn't going to be small talk. I cut past the preamble and pushed him for the meat of it. He made an aah~! sound and launched into the explanation.
"—You remember how I checked every staff member inside the Academy and nothing special turned up?"
"Yeah."
He was starting from the preamble after all — but it sounded like he hadn't fully sorted it in his own head either, so I decided to just listen instead of arguing.
"—Based on what you told me, one of them definitely had to be involved, so I started wondering how they were even operating. I monitored each staff member's daily routine one by one. And weirdly enough, I found someone mouthing words in places where there was nobody around."
"—At first I figured it was just complaining to themselves, or muttering about being tired. But the content I could read off their lips was way too specific to be talking to yourself."
"What were they saying?"
"—Basically reports to Freedom. I'll fill you in on the rest later — for now I'll just hit the most recent stuff."
From the way he was talking, this person had been embedded in the Academy as a spy for a long time. So what made this so urgent?
"—This is only a partial decode."
[There has been no agreement whatsoever with upper command.]
[—In a situation where preparations are insufficient——will you be all right?]
[—Won't the sacrifice be insufficie——]
[I'll handle the groundwork——]
[Whether to follow upper command's orders——or——executing the plan——there's no——preparing half-heartedly——]
"Hey. When is this from?"
Because it was a lip-read decode, there was a lot of noise. Plenty of stretches where you couldn't be sure what was actually being said. But even the scraps I could make out were enough to send ice flooding through my veins.
"—Yesterday."
Yesterday. Sacrifice. Insufficient? Of what? Freedom's plan. No consultation with upper command.
Alpha. Alpha's communications had gone dark.
But the truth was, reports had been going out constantly. For reasons I didn't know, someone inside the Academy had been hiding their presence and acting as a liaison.
So why had Alpha's contact gone silent?
Or had it even gone silent at all?
They cut it on purpose.
But why…?
No. That wasn't the priority right now.
"—Bo… Boss!"
"…Yeah."
"Is there a teacher whose middle character is I and whose name starts with a J sound?"
"I-J? Why?"
"—The last thing Alpha said. The camera angle was bad so a lot of it got cut, but they definitely said 'Teacher.'"
There were way too many people with an I and a J in their name.
Hell, even among the instructors who came in with us today—
Wait.
"They met yesterday. Why yesterday? They said the groundwork was already done. They're not waiting on orders from above. Executing the plan on their own… Sacrifice. Low chance of success…"
"—Boss?"
The Freedom operative who'd been on the call with Lee Ju-won had said something loaded to him. Something about how the other spies nearby were doing…
Like they were checking whether he'd noticed something that was already there.
Noticed what?
Whether he'd figured out there was a traitor inside the organization.
"These bastards…"
"—Boss?"
If I was wrong, fine. But if I was right—
"Min Ji-won is in danger."
"—What? What do you mean…?"
No time to explain it piece by piece. They'd said the groundwork was already laid — every second might count.
"Park Jae-hyun, get ready. We've got work to do."