S-Rank Gate

"..."

Lee Seon-woo was a mess of feelings he had never felt before, and the confusion left him reeling.

Not once in his life had he ever imagined being outmatched in swordsmanship. The experiments of his childhood had left him with eyes that sat outside the bounds of ordinary human capacity, and through them he could read the trajectory of an opponent's blade before it ever fell.

It was like taking a test with the answer key already open in front of him. All he had to do was move his body along the key, and even the most dazzling sword arts would fall apart in his hands.

So, honestly, he had once thought he might even be able to go a round with the Sword Saint herself.

"I'll yield the first move."

"You won't regret it?"

That was before he met the girl with the handle SwordMaster.

Her blade's path would not open to him.

He could not see what she was about to do.

To Lee Seon-woo, who had always assumed the future would simply present itself to him, it was a shock.

Standing for the first time before a test paper with no answer key, he panicked. That was why his fist had shot out on pure instinct.

It was the sort of thing that deserved to be called foul play.

Driving a bare fist down at a girl a full head shorter than him was nothing like a fair match.

"Hand-to-hand? Fine by me!"

But instead of calling him on it, the girl met him with her body.

Only when he crashed into a wind of crushing force that had no business belonging to that bright little smile did he understand.

This girl was no ordinary kid.

She walked the same road of the sword that he did.

From that moment on, he swung with everything he had. He heaved his greatsword and shattered the earth itself just to hold back the wind thick with murderous intent.

For the first time in his life, he felt as though swordsmanship itself was overwhelming him.

There was no way to stop the lattice of cuts that carved themselves into the air as if they had never heard of physics or cause and effect. Even then, the only answer he could scrape together was the blunt one: take every ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hit and counter.

It was the first unsolvable problem ever thrown into Lee Seon-woo's life.

Maybe that was why.

Maybe that was why interest stirred in him toward the girl who had handed him a problem he could not solve.

It was not a rational feeling.

It was the interest of someone who walked the same path of the sword.

"If exchanging contacts is awkward, would you at least play one game with me?"

"Gladly."

That was why Lee Seon-woo accepted the girl's proposal.

"...Ah?"

It did not take Lee Seon-woo long to regret his decision.

Plenty of people want to become Awakened and clear dungeons as heroes.

But Awakened make up less than one percent of the population. In a world where not everyone can be a hero, people's eyes turned naturally toward virtual reality.

A place where anyone could do anything they imagined.

Inside it, building virtual dungeons, assigning abilities, and recreating something close to a real dungeon was not all that difficult.

Those virtual-reality dungeons only grew more refined with time.

The player base swelled, and the war stories and advice of real dungeon-clear teams poured in. Before long, the dungeons of the virtual world had become so precise that you could barely tell them apart from the real thing.

That went for S-rank dungeons too.

S-Rank Dungeon Clear (Despair Mode) was polished enough that even real Awakened came to train in it.

...Complete with a manual like that.

But that much was no real problem for us.

This was a two-person party made of the next Sword Saint and the sitting Sword Saint. I figured the two of us could clear it without much trouble.

And even if we couldn't, I'd at least get a read on Lee Seon-woo's skill. However little I liked the title of Sword Saint... I had no desire to hand it off to someone who hadn't earned it.

"It'll be fun, won't it, big brother?"

"Hahahaha..."

Lee Seon-woo managed a weak, empty laugh while the chat went up in flames behind him. Leaving them to it, I turned toward the gate that had appeared in the center of the arena.

"So what kind of gate is it?"

"It says Tomb of the Knight King. I'll send you the full write-up as a note."

I opened thumb and forefinger at a right angle, and the dungeon data rose into the air.

Both the boss, the Soul of the Knight King, and the Undead Knights were mobs I'd never seen before. Even I, who'd run into every kind of monster imaginable in Siberia, had never laid eyes on them—so I'd grabbed the dungeon out of curiosity.

"Hmm... so it's not completely impossible."

"Of course not. I do have a conscience, you know."

I ignored the look from Lee Seon-woo that clearly said You? and drew a sword from empty air—the same blade I'd used in the spar.

The moment my body upgraded to S-rank Awakened physical specs, every step felt lighter.

So I pushed into the gate without hesitation.

With no idea what was waiting on the other side.

Inside the Tomb of the Knight King, it was dark.

A dank, close stone-walled dungeon, thick with damp and a sour smell, stitched together from eerie corridors that practically advertised hidden traps in every corner.

So I decided to check.

One tile in particular put out a nasty little ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠aura. I stepped on it like it was nothing, and from somewhere behind me came the clank of machinery waking up.

"Ah?"

"Look out!"

Lee Seon-woo swung his greatsword in a rush, and sparks leapt in the air a few times. Broken arrow shafts punched into the floor.

"Oh, so the traps actually work?"

"Haah... is there such a thing as a trap that only pretends to work?"

"Ahaha..."

I smoothed over Lee Seon-woo's sharp look with a thin smile and turned my eyes away. Chat was taking this better than I'd expected.

"Sorry. First time here, so I got curious."

"First... time?"

"Yeah. I picked it because they said nobody's cleared the map yet."

"I've never run this map either."

"Ah?"

"I was saving it for later content, actually."

For an Awakened, Lee Seon-woo streamed a fair amount. I'd assumed he'd have dropped by at least once—apparently not.

"Hmm..."

Whether you had prior intel on a dungeon or not was a massive factor in whether you cleared it. Even an S-rank Awakened couldn't just charge blind into an S-class gate with zero information.

I hadn't cracked open the Siberia Gate for fun. Taking a high-rank gate with a skeleton crew was suicide.

Unfortunately, once you were already inside, there was no way out.

"We're screwed, huh?"

"I hate to agree, but... it seems so."

In other words: we were screwed.

Because from far down the corridor, heavy footsteps had already started rolling toward us.

"You hear that, right?"

"Yes. Unfortunately, it seems we don't have time to complain."

"Heh. Good. I hate lectures."

I smiled thinly and reset my grip on the longsword.

An unknown dungeon didn't matter. Fighting under the worst possible conditions was my specialty. For someone who had always been forced to stand on the front line, intel was almost never part of the package.

"All right then—shall we take them o...n?"

I got that far and froze mid-sentence.

Because the Undead Knights stepping out of the dark looked somehow, unnervingly familiar.

Thanks to a memory cursed with being too sharp, I knew in an instant where I had seen them.

Seven years ago. The day the old Northern Supernatural Research Institute in Russia collapsed.

The things that had poured out of the gate that opened underground, and butchered without mercy the young friends who had endured the same horrific experiments beside me—

"...Ah, shit."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

My breath started to seize in my throat.