Factory of Bones

I brought the stamp down with a satisfying thunk. The loan would bleed us, no question — but for a Dungeon Hunter, that wasn't a real problem. Not as long as we were ready to grind dungeons until the debt screamed for mercy. I guess people really are meant to spend whatever they earn.

We moved without a second thought. The move itself was quick — Sujin and I had never owned much to begin with, and Yeonji, thrifty as she was, didn't have a lot to pack either.

The house would need some work, but there was nothing stopping us from living there immediately. Water and electricity ran just fine, rain and wind stayed outside where they belonged, and we had the internet up in no time. As a Party House, it was ideal. Even the fact that monsters had attacked the place wasn't a downside for Dungeon Hunters like us. A Dire Wolf or two? Any one of us could take those now.

Once we'd settled in, we put together the next expedition schedule in a hurry. We'd spent a fortune. Time to earn it back. Choosing the dungeon was my prerogative as party leader, so I combed through the Dungeon Hunter community and looked over everything on offer.

I hunted for sites we could actually clear, with profitability as the other priority. Somewhere more dangerous than Emerald Riverside last time felt like the right call.

There weren't as many dungeons that fit as I'd expected. Real money meant going into places above our level, and as much as I cared about cash, it wasn't worth more than our lives. That option went on hold. After weighing every condition I could think of, I landed on the Siseong Industrial Complex.

"Siseong Industrial Complex. How about this one?"

The small room the previous owner had used to store artwork had become our lab. We'd installed a round conference table, a whiteboard, and a projector, and once it was set up, it made a surprisingly decent laboratory-slash-meeting room. So this is the joy of buying a house.

"Siseong Industrial Complex?"

Sujin tilted her head at the internet page the projector was throwing across the wall. Photographs of the complex sat alongside a dense block of related information.

"Yeah. It's a closed-type dungeon in Siseong-gu. Among the places nearby, this looks like our best option."

The profitability was decent, and it sat right at our level. Officially it was a dungeon for Rank 9 to 8-Rank parties, but with Sujin's abilities and mine, we could explore it without any real trouble.

"It's different from Emerald Riverside last time. This one looks a lot bigger."

Yeonji was studying the dungeon map as she spoke.

"Right. It's split into five major zones: the General Warehouses, Cold Storage, the Cargo Loading Dock, the Undeveloped Area, and the Office Building."

"What kind of monsters are there?"

Sujin asked, examining the map with care. The monsters that spawned in a dungeon were the single most important piece of information we had.

"Specters, slimes, skeletons, and Big Rats show up in droves. A whole roster of S-names. Nothing to write home about, though. The only one that actually makes money is the skeleton."

"Mmm~ Specters and slimes, huh."

Specters and slimes were infamous, same as goblins, for having nothing worth harvesting. Specters at least dropped a Phantom Core every now and then, and those sold for a fortune — slimes didn't even have that. They said the fluid from a boss monster called a King Slime fetched a high price, but a King Slime had never been found in the Siseong Industrial Complex. Ordinary slimes were useless trash.

The one mercy was that, unlike goblins, they didn't move in packs, and they were slow enough that the actual danger stayed low. That didn't mean we could afford to get sloppy. A skilled Dungeon Hunter getting taken out by a slime was one of those clichés you saw in fiction all the time.

"Still, at least skeletons spawn a lot. Most of our profit's going to come from those."

Skeleton bone was one of the more important resources in modern industry. They were bones, sure, but they apparently shared properties with metal. Alloyed with steel, they produced a material with outstanding wear and corrosion resistance — superior even to titanium alloys. On top of that, they were remarkably easy to refine, so they got used across every industry you could name. Unlike titanium alloys, which stayed expensive because the metal was abundant but a nightmare to process, skeleton bone was limited in supply, which made it even pricier.

I looked at other dungeons, but nothing nearby came close to matching these conditions. The heavy specter and slime population was a drawback, but that couldn't be helped. You can't take everything. We set the Siseong Industrial Complex as our next destination.

Unlike the Emerald Riverside run, we finished our expedition prep at home and left from there. The plan was to enter the dungeon the moment we arrived, and that came down to the dungeon's particular nature.

Barring special circumstances, a dungeon expedition started in the morning by real-world clocks. On a day trip, you went in during the morning and came back late in the afternoon. If you were staying inside for several days, the return date and hour varied wildly depending on how the run went — but even then, you started in the morning.

In other words, the usual sequence was to reach a lodging near the target dungeon the day before, unpack, and head in early the next morning.

The main monster of the Siseong Industrial Complex, though, was the skeleton — and skeletons came out at night. So we had to match them and explore after dark. Time inside a closed-type dungeon sometimes lined up with the outside world and sometimes didn't; the Siseong Industrial Complex supposedly ran on a clock almost identical to Korea's. We scheduled ourselves to arrive in the evening and left from the house.

We were hauling military-style rucksacks, so I called a van. Korea had no shortage of companies running daily van services specifically for Dungeon Hunters like us. Since the clientele was Dungeon Hunters, the prices were outrageous. Once we made more money, buying a van with a dedicated driver wouldn't be a bad call at all. We rode it all the way to the front of the Siseong Industrial Complex.

A backwater landscape unrolled in front of us so rustic it was hard to believe we were still in Seoul. The house we'd just bought had a bit of a countryside feel, but nothing like this. Siseong-gu sat so far out on Seoul's fringe that the moment we stepped out of the van, I could have sworn I smelled cow dung.

"Packed with people, just like last ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time."

Sujin said it with a toss of her hair. The front of a dungeon was always a marketplace. Merchants who made their living off Dungeon Hunters locked onto a hunter's wallet with eyes like radar.

The approach to the Siseong Industrial Complex was packed with salespeople buying monster byproducts. A good number of them belonged to major corporations; they'd set up enormous booths and hurled their pitches at every Dungeon Hunter coming out of the gate. Watching them load what they'd bought onto the ten-ton trucks parked beside those booths, I felt it all over again — dungeons were the resource depots propping up modern society.

"That must be the entrance."

Yeonji pointed off to our right. The entrance to the Siseong Industrial Complex looked exactly like what the name promised: a real industrial-park gate. A bulky checkpoint booth and a barrier arm came into view.

It looked man-made, but that thing had appeared with the dungeon itself — a door into another world. I looked up. A beautiful sunset was just beginning to sink.

We gave our gear one last check. The lights mattered most. A headlamp, a chest-mounted body light, and a spare flashlight, all accounted for.

Night, with its pinched field of view, smiled on most monsters. Humans, who leaned so hard on their eyes, had to be especially careful. Even as a Light Control user, I wanted to conserve mana wherever I could. That was just common sense in a dungeon.

"Alright. Let's go in."

Prep finished, we entered the Siseong Industrial Complex. The instant we passed through the gate, the merchants' racket vanished as if a ghost had snuffed it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out. A new landscape unfolded in front of us — one we'd already confirmed on maps and photographs. Factory buildings packed the world in every direction.

"This is Zone 1. It connects to the General Warehouses."

Yeonji was right. When I turned my gaze left, several huge warehouse buildings sat clustered together. Seven of them in total. That was Big Rat territory, and we had no interest in it. We walked right.

If Emerald Riverside had been a long, linear stretch of riverbank, this place was simply a factory district sprawling in every direction. We had to find the exact spot we wanted and head straight for it. Skeletons spawned at the Cargo Loading Dock and the Undeveloped Area — Zone 3 and Zone 4 by the usual numbering.

On the way to the loading dock, we crossed paths with a party taking a rest. They looked like they'd been hunting specters.

Specters spawned across the entire dungeon. They were soul-type monsters that usually dropped nothing at all, but on rare occasions they left behind a Phantom Core. That item traded for an absurd amount of money — enough that if a five-person party got one, they could call the expedition then and there.

That party was probably aiming for exactly that. If it were that easy, Phantom Cores wouldn't cost what they did. Honestly, just hunting skeletons without the drama, the way we were about to, was a hundred times smarter.

"Finally, the loading dock. Whoa...! Look at that. Skeletons."

The Cargo Loading Dock was shaped like an enormous athletic field with a colossal warehouse attached. Skeletal humans wandered across it. Skeletons.

"Look at those scrawny bones. That's so weird. They look like toy soldiers."

Yeonji said it with a little snicker.

"Yeah. They don't look like they'd last a second against us."

Skeletons weren't powerful monsters, but you still had to treat them with respect. The bone was extremely hard, so physical attacks didn't land well — and those skinny fingers would punch straight through human skin. Their agility, though, sat at average or below, so if you stayed careful you almost never got hit. The only real variable right now was the dark, which made it hard to hold a field of view. That was why we'd packed lights until we were overflowing with them.

"Skeletons. About four of them? I'll pull aggro."

Yeonji drew the skeletons' aggro exactly as we'd practiced. The defining trait of a stupid monster was that it attacked whatever enemy stood closest. The moment Yeonji closed in, the brainless skeletons started chasing her. They followed at about the speed of an ordinary person running, which was nothing to a Dungeon Hunter like Yeonji.

Sujin's attack flew toward the skeletons. The night had stolen too much of her vision, though, and the arrow missed. The field of view was already narrow, and a skeleton was nothing but a scrawny bone soldier — landing a hit on one was harder than it looked.

"Tch! In that case—"

Sujin used a technique she'd only just learned. Water Cannon. A water cannon, exactly as advertised — and not something to shrug off. It had more than enough force to blow a scrawny bone soldier clean off its feet.

The instant she called it, a jet of water far more powerful than anything a fire truck could put out erupted from around her. It flung a spray of glittering droplets in every direction and slammed into the skeletons.

A deep, rolling roar filled the loading dock.

The bone soldiers chasing Yeonji took the blast, went flying through the air like something out of a cartoon, and came apart joint by joint as they hit the ground. The bones, disassembled along every articulation with an almost beautiful precision, shuddered like mudskippers flopping on dry land — then ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went still. Sujin's new technique had slaughtered all four skeletons in a single breath.

"Nice work, Sujin!"

"Hehe. Guess all that practice was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠worth it."

Each skeleton yielded about ten kilograms of bone. Only some of it was worth anything. The extremities — hands, feet, the skull — were useless, and the hip wasn't worth keeping either.

The expensive cut was the ribcage. Shin bones and arm bones sold for a little less, but they still fetched a strong price. Strip out everything we didn't need, and you were left with about five kilograms of real byproduct. I'd checked the market rate outside earlier: about a hundred thousand won per kilo. Hunt ten of them and that was already five million won.

A skeleton's combat power sat below a Gray Wolf's. Because they were nocturnal, though, you could argue they were more dangerous. They also had a habit of roaming in packs. Of course, as long as you prepared properly, slaughtering them wasn't hard. We carved through skeletons and piled up the bone.

The inventory proved incredibly useful. Not having to haul cargo was worth more than mere physical comfort. Being able to keep a dungeon expedition going without any drop in combat power was a massive advantage all by itself.

The closest equivalent in the real world was a subspace bag, and those started at tens of billions of won. Even then, high-rank hunters said you couldn't get one no matter how much you offered.

"Hah...! Hah...! That's the tenth one already. There are more skeletons than I expected."

Yeonji said it between breaths. The hunt itself had been easy. After putting down the tenth skeleton, we decided to rest for a while. Yeonji, who'd been pulling aggro up front, had picked up a few minor injuries that needed treating.

We settled into a corner of the Cargo Loading Dock. The skeletons on this side were almost entirely cleared. It would take a little time before they respawned.

"Want to rest a bit, then head for the Undeveloped Area? Doesn't look like there are any more skeletons around here."

"Sure. Though they say specters spawn a lot over there too."

Sujin said it while looking toward the Undeveloped Area. Compared to a stretch of water mixed with trash fish, this place — where you could cast a net and pull up fresh tuna — was better, but this particular spot had been fished dry.

"Well, it is what it is. Specters aren't that strong of a monster anyway."