Finally, a Dungeon Hunter

Finally. Finally, I was a hunter too. My photo was stuck to a hunter's license no bigger than a business card. I should've at least combed my hair. When your face isn't much to look at, you want to pick up points wherever else you can — but it hadn't worked out that way. Anyway. I was a licensed hunter at last. And not just any hunter: a Dungeon Hunter, the hunter among hunters.

The instant Sujin saw the license, she burst into tears. The clerk at the issuing desk looked at her with the weary familiarity of someone who'd watched this scene a hundred times. Apparently it wasn't uncommon for people to cry with emotion the day they became Dungeon Hunters.

Lina kept her usual poker face, but I caught the excitement flickering in her eyes. When someone maintains a poker face as relentlessly as she does, even the smallest shift in expression stands out. Looking at her like that, she had a cute side to her.

Anyway. I had officially class-changed from erotic novelist to Dungeon Hunter. I couldn't even begin to count how many rungs of the caste ladder I'd just vaulted. On the way home I bought myself a Tropical Variety Box of jelly donuts — my favorite.

This was a present from me, to me. I'd bought the same box the first time I ever made money as a smut writer. It ran about ten bucks, and inside were twelve jelly donuts in sweet tropical fruit flavors. I might have been a Dungeon Hunter now, but my bank account was still basically empty, and a snack like this was a genuine kindness.

Once I got home, I studied my hunter's license all over again. It looked far more luxurious than an ordinary ID card, and I didn't think that was just my imagination. The registration clerk had mentioned in passing that each one cost over a hundred dollars to produce. It certainly looked like they'd spent that much. The weight this license actually carried, though, was thousands of times greater than its price tag.

"Finally a hunter… but this is only the beginning, I suppose."

Could I actually do this? The worry surfaced out of nowhere. The sole, fatal drawback of being a Dungeon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hunter was that it was dangerous. Could I keep myself alive and still keep moving forward?

I'd posted a remarkable score on the Dungeon Hunter exam. But that was only because my ability had a type advantage against the monsters involved. There was absolutely no chance that Dungeon Hunter life would keep handing me convenient matchups like that.

I had a variety of skills, true — but putting a variety of skills to use came with constraints. Dungeon raids were done in teams, period. Which meant I would have to expose my abilities to the rest of the party.

"Or I could just conquer every last one of them with my cock the way I did Sujin… well, that only works if every teammate is a woman."

If I wanted to pick my own teammates, I'd have to build the team myself. In the Dungeon Hunter world, the smallest unit assembled for a raid was a party. The party leader accepted whoever they wanted and took that team into a dungeon. In other words, if I became a party leader, I could fill the entire roster with beautiful women.

There were a few problems with that, though. The most important factor in selecting teammates was individual ability. If I filtered for gender first, could I even put together a functional team? Hmm. I honestly didn't know.

Worrying about the future just tangled my head into knots. I bit into a jelly donut. Mmm. That sweetness. The sweet-tart burst of passion fruit yanked me right out of my brooding. For now, I should just enjoy the now.

After two donuts or so, an old quest suddenly surfaced in my memory. I'd been so overwhelmed at the time that I'd shoved it aside for later.

Spaceship Unix. Something that, together with the Unix Cube, had clearly granted me tremendous power. I still barely understood the Unix Cube, and I understood Spaceship Unix even less. Now that I was a full-fledged Dungeon Hunter, clearing a quest I'd been putting off didn't seem like a bad idea.

Besides, as in any ordinary game, clearing a quest would obviously come with a reward. And if I got a reward, dungeon hunting from here on out would get that much easier. Whether the payout was Bonus Points or Credits, the result was the same: I would get stronger.

"Right. You can't put homework off forever."

Things like this were best handled the moment they came to mind. I tucked the leftover donuts back into the box, closed my eyes, and pictured the spaceship I had visited before. The instant I willed that enormous hull into focus, I felt my body begin to float.

"I'm going to Unix."

My body rose, slow and weightless. Then a nasty thought hit me. Last time, a strange beam had lanced down from the ship and hauled me upward. If it tried that here, was I going to punch through our villa with my skull?

I told myself that was ridiculous, but the ugly future still painted itself across my mind. Would a product of super-science so advanced the future itself probably couldn't replicate it really be that inflexible? Then again, I knew perfectly well how foolish it was to expect flexibility from a machine, and I couldn't quite swallow the worry.

I was still wondering whether I ought to get outside first when my body lurched with a heavy thud. My vision blinked black. When I came back to myself, I was already inside Spaceship Unix. The same vast hall I'd seen last time. The central section of the ship, if I had to guess.

"Oho. This machine's got some flexibility after all."

Stranger than any ability I'd seen. Fortunately, I'd made it aboard in one piece. Let's call it the Unix Vessel for short.

"So I just have to explore this place, huh?"

Simple enough. At least, it looked that way from the quest text. But I still knew next to nothing about this ship, and I had no idea what kind of danger might be lurking here.

The information I'd been given was far too thin. This vessel could be a nest of horrific monsters, or it could be a wreck abandoned by unknowable aliens. I had no way to tell which. All I could do was desperately hope it wasn't the former.

I'd learned a handful of skills, but if a real monster showed up, I doubted there was much I could actually do. I was still a rookie Dungeon Hunter who hadn't even gone through training yet.

With that worry riding my shoulders, I started walking. The ship was immaculate. From the enormous central hall, bland white corridors stretched away in every direction.

Fortunately — and in a way that made my worries look foolish — there was nothing inside. Truly nothing. I was relieved that no savage monsters came lunging out of the dark, but the emptiness had an eeriness all its own.

A short stretch of exploration was enough to sketch the Unix Vessel's rough layout. Doors opened off the central hall in every direction, each one leading to a different section of the ship, and every last space was maintained in a state of cleanliness so absolute that not a single mote of dust had settled.

The smell of living things was eerily absent. Wait — I don't mean it literally didn't smell. That's a figure of speech. Anyway, the more I explored, the more confused I became about what this place even was.

I tried to picture an Earth spaceship. Not that I'd ever actually seen one. Astronaut had never even made ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the dream-job list back in kindergarten.

"Well, I can tell it's enormous, at least. Something's off, though… no matter how I look at it, this doesn't seem like a passenger vessel."

I'd been moving for nearly an hour and still hadn't covered the whole ship. The scale was nightmarish. It would dwarf an Earth aircraft carrier without breaking a sweat — and it almost certainly did. Even allowing for the maze of twisting corridors, I'd been keeping a decent pace, and I was still circling the outer corners.

The Unix Vessel seemed to be divided into zones. A little way down any corridor, I'd run into a solid gate. Fortunately those gates posed no physical obstacle to me. The moment I approached, they slid open without a sound.

For how thick they looked, they opened in total silence. Like automatic doors. Maybe obtaining the Unix Cube had made me the ship's owner.

After walking the Unix Vessel until my feet were sweating, I'd learned two things. One: this ship was ungodly huge. Two: it had not been designed to carry living creatures. The second one was the fact that stuck with me.

"What the hell is this. Not a single break room anywhere — nothing but bizarre machine rooms as far as I can go… was this thing built by a machine race? That would actually make sense, but…"

Somewhere in the far reaches of space I knew nothing about, there might well be a species made of machines. If there weren't, a ship like this would never have been built. Every so often the corridors opened onto enormous chambers.

Calling them rooms was a stretch — they were the size of an airport hangar — and they were packed with intricate machinery. The chambers themselves were wide enough to park an airplane, but the giant apparatuses left barely enough space for a single person to squeeze through.

You wouldn't call a room like that a personal quarters, that was for sure. I'd covered maybe ninety percent of the ship by now, and I hadn't found a single space where a person could rest. No bathrooms, either. Well, there might be a species that doesn't piss or shit, so I'd table that one.

From an Earthling's point of view, though, one thing was certain: this was a ship from which life had been ruthlessly erased.

"Is that the last room, then?"

Following the door that opened straight off the front of the hall, I walked and walked until the final chamber appeared. I had covered every corridor radiating from the hall and explored the ship down to its corners. Unless there were sections reachable only by secret passage, this would be the last unexplored zone. And this last zone was different from the rest.

"That door looks a lot heavier."

Every gate I'd met so far had looked sturdy, but this one looked sturdier than all of them put together.

A commander's quarters, maybe? Perhaps I'd finally catch that scent of life I hadn't felt anywhere else. The thought made me a little tense.

Honestly, somewhere past the midpoint, the feeling of exploration had evaporated completely and been replaced by the feeling of a forced march.

Ah. Right.

Come to think of it, becoming a hunter meant a year of military service. Damn it. The army. I'd gone through life assuming I'd never have to enlist.

I shoved the thought aside and approached the massive gate. Fortunately, it opened automatically just like all the others. It only looked different. Functionally, it was no different at all.

The tension in my chest eased a notch. How much grease had they packed into these doors, anyway, that they could move without making a single sound? Genuinely impressive.

The door opened, and I stepped through. And in that instant, a new notification window appeared. The one I'd been waiting for.

Bonus Points. And Credits. The quest's own reward was stingy as hell, but the first-clear bonus was enormous. Either way, I had just gotten a whole lot stronger. And yes — this really had been the last section of the ship.

"So what is this place supposed to be, anyway?"

I turned my head slowly, taking in the surroundings. Same as everywhere else: a dense tangle of machinery that belonged in a science-fiction film. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠difference was that here, there was actually enough floor space to walk. It felt like I'd stepped into a physicist's cutting-edge laboratory.

"Hn?"

My gaze drifted from dead ahead to a point slightly above. A massive sign hung there. A plaque, more accurately than a signboard. Enormous letters were carved into it — and astonishingly, they were in English I could actually read.

Unix. The name of this ship. I swallowed. There was a language on this vessel that I could actually read. Then again, considering the staggering power of the Unix Cube, maybe that wasn't so strange. I told myself that and walked slowly forward.

"……What are those? And this place is…?"

Hemmed in by colossal machines, the chamber called to mind the server room of some IT corporation. Unidentifiable rectangular units were stacked everywhere, and they asserted that they were still running by blinking green and red lights. I walked on, slowly.

Small plaques were mounted on the machines. I read the one at the very front. The lettering on every other plaque was black; the lettering on this front plaque was white. A great deal of the text had been worn away, but I felt a jolt of familiarity all the same. Because it was written in Korean.

That was what remained on the front of the worn plaque. Because it was my mother tongue, I could just barely reconstruct the original shape of the letters that had faded almost to nothing.