Boss Room

A Gate Break is what happens when a gate left alone past a certain point collapses and vomits every monster inside it into the world.

It was the single greatest reason the Siberia War turned into hell.

There was no way to find every gate scattered across Siberia's vast permafrost. Our job was to cut down whatever came at us, then hunt the source and wipe it out.

Thanks to that, I knew Gate Breaks better than most.

The time from a gate's birth to its Break tracked closely with its rank. The higher the rank, the later the Break tended to hit.

By that measure, the Northern Research Institute Gate in Siberia—designated the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fifth S-rank gate—was an outlier of the worst kind.

A Gate Break had detonated two hours after the gate appeared. Most of the researchers and test subjects were dead before anyone could even respond.

The memory was still sharp.

Undead knights in pitch-black full plate, astride black horses that looked as if they'd crawled up from hell, slaughtering us where we stood. They looked exactly like the ones in front of me now. I would never forget them.

"…Hah."

My breath started to come short.

I saw the children again—the ones who had gritted their teeth through the same agonizing experiments and talked of escaping together someday, of living happy lives. Boys and girls with the same silver hair and blue eyes as mine. Family, for all intents and purposes. They had been cut down without the slightest chance to fight back.

That was the first death I ever saw in this world.

So, without quite meaning to, I let a little of my reason slip.

I swung straight into the undead knights closing in.

They had been advancing with their greatswords tipped up, putting on a show—and not one of them lasted a full second. All of them became scraps of armor.

"And what of it."

I knew I shouldn't. I still couldn't hold down what was boiling up inside me.

If I hadn't been streaming. If there hadn't been someone here who'd lived through the same thing. If I hadn't already been through this once before—

I might have run for the dungeon's depths right then.

What caught my ankle was Lee Seon-woo's voice beside me.

"Hup…"

He drew a deep breath. His face didn't look any better than mine. He didn't say much, but I could tell on instinct that something similar had hit him too.

If we had both been test subjects of the Northern Supernatural Research Institute… we would have gone through the same thing.

I glanced at his expression, then swept the chat. Fortunately, none of the viewers seemed to have caught the look on his face yet.

"Lee Seon-woo. Pull yourself together."

I forced the rising heat down and whispered it. I still couldn't let anything about those experiments leak outside.

The Northern Supernatural Research Institute incident was classified. So was the fact that any survivors existed. A dungeon that spawned undead knights like these had no business existing in a virtual world at all.

It had been barely a day since I'd asked Maria to look into the Northern Supernatural Research Institute. A related party was not supposed to show up this fast.

"Mm… maybe it's already too late…"

So I snapped my fingers and ran the code.

A blue light flashed, and every authority over this space began pouring into me—broadcast admin rights, control over Lee Seon-woo's avatar, all of it.

First, I threw a transmission error onto ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the stream.

The moment I confirmed no one could see inside the dungeon anymore, I turned my eyes on Lee Seon-woo.

Dilated pupils. Hands shaking. Body locked. Synchronization Rate already up to thirty percent. Having been through the same symptoms a few times myself, it wasn't hard to tell a trauma trigger had been pulled.

Fortunately, it wasn't that bad yet.

From personal experience, a solid external shock was usually enough to snap someone out of a state like this.

"It's fine. An S-rank Awakened won't break from this much."

I knew what I was doing was rough.

But I couldn't make the same mistake twice. It was a kind of compulsion.

Failing once is a real mistake. From the second time on, it's on you—and the ones who pay for my mistakes aren't me. They're my subordinates, with their lives.

"So I don't get to fail twice."

I put my hands on Lee Seon-woo's avatar, then stepped a few paces back and leaned against the wall to steady the churn in my chest.

Whatever happiness I'd been feeling a moment ago had been gone for a while. In its place sat the memory of that day.

Being protected by kids younger than me had felt truly wretched.

And on top of that, I hadn't even wanted to die—so while my mouth said no, I'd let myself be pulled along by my sister's hand. I hated that version of myself so much.

"So the least I could have done was keep the promise…"

What was I even doing now?

Forgetting the promise of the kids who'd died for me. Rotting in a room, gaming and scrolling galleries on loop—was a worthless life ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like that allowed?

Did I even have the right to live like this?

"Ugh…!"

What cut the ugly thoughts short was a pain that stabbed through my skull. The leftover effect of the drug I'd held back during the spar with Lee Seon-woo was kicking in.

The sword the undead knight had swung faded. The children's blood on my cheek washed out of memory. Even the promises we'd shared to the end began to blur.

I didn't fight it.

I was already close enough to breaking. If I kept pulling those memories up, I didn't think I could hold on.

I still had reasons I couldn't fall apart yet.

So forget it.

There was nothing I could do with it even if I remembered.

As the drug worked through my head, the good feeling started to come back. I knew better than to get addicted to this kind of thing—and still, it was the kind you couldn't refuse.

I didn't have the willpower left to fight it anymore.

Thanks to that, by the time Lee Seon-woo came back to himself, I was mostly myself again too.

"Ah. Looks like you're with us again?"

"Just now, that was…"

"Undead knights. Fairly strong ones, as it happens."

"The stream—what happened to the stream?!"

First thing he checked once he had his bearings was the broadcast. Well, I would have done the same, so I couldn't exactly fault him.

"They're saying it's a transmission error. Kids did this last time too—guess they still haven't fixed it."

"Hoo…"

I watched him let out a breath of relief and asked,

"But you're really okay? You're only going to keep running into things like that from here on."

"…I'm fine. I'm just a bit of a coward, so I startled, that's all."

"My, you're more of a scaredy-cat than you look?"

I laughed lightly and released the backdoor program. Only then did the stream feed come back to normal.

Fortunately, Lee Seon-woo didn't seem to have noticed anything. In a state like that, even I couldn't see what was going on around me—so I didn't figure he'd seen much either.

So I asked as if nothing had happened at all.

"For now—shall we keep going?"

"Let's. We should see it through to the end."

We moved toward the dungeon's depths.

I wanted to know what waited at the end of a dungeon that should have been locked away as classified.

"…Yeah. Still weird."

I muttered it under my breath as I watched the undead knights charge us. For an S-rank dungeon, the difficulty was far too low.

Undead knights with specs supposedly close to a B-rank dungeon boss were dropping to the most basic attacks. The difficulty was absurdly low.

"You're right. At this rate it isn't S-rank—it's A-rank, maybe even B-rank."

"I'm not the only one who's uneasy about this, right?"

It wasn't a situation to smile about. Unlike dungeons in reality, virtual-world dungeons had resource limits.

The virtual world might be infinite, but the physical space that stored its data was finite. Even an S-rank dungeon couldn't escape that ceiling.

The smarter a mob's AI and the more varied its attack patterns, the more resources it burned. Which meant the trash mobs we'd been cutting down so far hadn't been eating much at all.

There was only one place those saved resources could be going.

"Just what is waiting in the boss room?"

"I wonder."

This dungeon's boss room.

Right beyond the door we were standing in front of.

A dungeon that happened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to spit out mobs tied to our past. Some unknown someone had taken a classified dungeon and released it into the world in the shape of a game.

For us—former test subjects of the Northern Supernatural Research Institute—stopping was never an option.

So we threw the boss room doors open without hesitation.