This Is Insane, Really

Unbelievable. This is actually insane.

The world lurched.

Space itself twisted as the grasslands filled to bursting with the light of circulation, and before I knew it, I had arrived in yet another prairie. I swept my surroundings with a strange, off-kilter sensation crawling over me.

"Well. We're screwed. Ah."

Beside me, Jeoksa, the Guild Master of Red Moon, had slumped down in utter desolation—so thoroughly hollowed out that he looked like a man watching the world end.

"...Wow. Just wow. What the hell am I supposed to do about Min-hyung now?"

"Jeoksa-nim?"

"Yes."

"Do you know something about this?"

What kind of boss pattern causes the difficulty to spike with the number of loops and drags you all the way to a place like this? Jeoksa glared at me with eyes full of resentment, then quickly let out a long sigh.

"Forget it. Min-hyung's the idiot who told us to catch it on a whim. His fault, not mine."

"What do you mean?"

"This is a Loop Dungeon. It repeats over and over until you clear it."

A Loop Dungeon?

"What's a Loop Dungeon?"

"I told you. It repeats until you clear it. You can't leave until you break the 'Circulation.'"

Breaking the intermediate tier alone had taken us a week, and if this was the highest tier...

Jeoksa scratched furiously at his head, muttering under his breath like a man doing arithmetic he didn't want to finish.

"So we just have to break it, then?"

"Easier said than done. Three stacks of Circulation already turns this place into a war zone. At eleven? There's no answer."

"Hmm... I see."

"Exactly. And it's not something you can brute-force, either. Besides, why would I even worry with you here? You've beaten both Sword God and Leo."

With that, he drew the twin swords strapped to his back.

"Everything happens for a reason."

Jeoksa's twin swords swept through the air.

The crimson aura steeped into his blades erupted upward like something detonating, and the horned red horses were mowed down where they stood, tumbling across the ground. No wonder—he was a ranker, after all. His older brother was fighting better than his buffed-up younger brother ever had.

"Whew... this is genuinely insane."

"They're level 92."

Level 92. For regular monsters. Not a field boss—ordinary trash mobs. And the field was carpeted with them, while behind them loomed three more red horses each the size of the Red Horse of Circulation itself. Worse, killing them granted no experience, no resources. Nothing.

Jeoksa looked perfectly fine even after cutting down six level-92 red horses. If anything, his physical specs and stamina seemed to have climbed even higher than when we'd first met. It would be a stretch, but at this rate, clearing it didn't seem impossible.

"At this pace, we can clear it, right?"

"...Ohhh, no. Killing them doesn't end anything."

Jeoksa sheathed his swords and pointed at the empty sky.

There it was—the red ring that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had been gazing down at the earth with lofty indifference from the prairie heavens this whole time.

"When the gauge hits 100%, the loop triggers. Everything resets to the beginning."

"What if we kill them all at once?"

"Won't work. The gauge fills by exactly as much as you kill."

"Hmm."

So killing one horse reduced the gauge by 2%, but the Ring of Circulation simultaneously raised it by 5%. Which meant, in practice, every kill netted a 3% gain. The problem was that at least thirty of the horses still remained.

"Killing our way through isn't the answer, then."

"Normally killing them would actually drain the gauge, but the difficulty has gone completely off the rails..."

"It rises under other conditions too, doesn't it?"

"Yes. It climbs over time, and it climbs if you touch the horns wrong. And the ring itself? Touch that and you might as well consider the whole thing looped."

"How did you clear it before?"

"We kept killing the horses to grind the gauge down. Once it hit 0%, the boss's revival stopped, and in that window, we killed it."

To summarize: when the Circulation gauge reached 100%, everything reset to the start. The gauge rose and fell according to certain conditions, and if it ever dropped to 0%, the boss's resurrection would halt—leaving a window to finish it off.

"Hold on. Then clearing it has nothing to do with preserving the hunting ground?"

Resurrection out here in the prairie should surely have fallen under the horses' influence.

"......"

Jeoksa went tight-lipped, hoarding his words. He was hiding something—something that could do harm to his guild, or to this place.

"You know what's up, don't you?"

"I don't."

"Didn't you say you can't leave until it's cleared? Planning to spend the rest of eternity with me, then?"

Jeoksa pressed hard at his temples like his skull was splitting, then finally turned his eyes back toward the red ring. Still unwavering. Still governing its eternal circulation.

"...Haa. Fine. I'll have to confiscate every last item, then. He's completely lost it."

"What's the answer, then?"

"Follow me. I need to see it before I decide."

...Though I doubted seeing it would change his choice.

Muttering low, Jeoksa gestured loosely with one sword and led the way.

Nicker...

Whinny...

Pfffrrt!

"...What is this."

The place Jeoksa led me to was a small cave, far removed from the prairie we'd just left. Inside, foals with stubby little horns jutting from their foreheads lay sprawled fast asleep.

Between their faces and the way they'd all piled into one huddled heap, they were honestly rather adorable.

Their levels barely scraped past thirty. Foals that couldn't even open their eyes properly yet, whimpering and whining in soft, frail voices.

I demanded an explanation from Jeoksa.

He answered by raising his sword, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"This is the most efficient method."

"Killing babies is the answer?"

"It's better than facing the adult red horses head-on, at least. More importantly, killing the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠foals drains the gauge even faster. Something about them having so many years still ahead of them, apparently."

Shhk.

Crimson aura surged up from the tip of his blade.

"Kill them all, and the gauge drops to 0%. After that, we take down the boss—"

"You never did that, did you. Because if you had, this Circulation Dungeon wouldn't still exist."

"......"

Just like the Interference and Ruins dungeons before it, dungeons this close to being hidden content tended to vanish entirely once cleared—or at best, leave behind their bare skeleton of a frame. It meant the dungeon was converted into a lower-difficulty version with reduced rewards. And if the reward quality had degraded and the Ring of Circulation had already been shattered, then logically the prairie's horses should no longer be able to resurrect at all.

Even if they did come back, their experience and resource yields should have plummeted by a huge margin.

When I laid all of this out, Jeoksa's expression turned strangely unreadable.

"...Well. That's one way of putting it. You're right—we never killed the boss. Grinding the Boss Penalty just to take it down was nowhere near as profitable as keeping the hunting ground intact and farming experience and resources off it."

"So what's the other method?"

"A more... peaceful one. Not peaceful for everyone, mind you."

Jeoksa swung his sword and sheared off one of the sleeping foal's horns.

The moment a piece of it clattered to the ground, the foal whinnied in pain, tears welling in its eyes.

The moment the horn was struck, the Circulation gauge naturally began to climb. Jeoksa scooped up the severed horn and handed it straight to me. A strange, alien power was coiling through it.

"You shear off horns until the Circulation gauge hits 99%, then log out on the spot. Oh, and the horns all go into the subspace inventory."

"...Huh?"

"After that, the dungeon loops once enough time passes. The world resets—but the horns are still sitting in your inventory. Two sets of horns, one world."

According to him, one of his guild members had been grinding the dungeon for so long that something urgent came up in real life and they logged out mid-run. While they were gone, the dungeon looped, and that was how the trick was discovered. Normally, logging out mid-dungeon kicks you out to the entrance—but under the rule that "a Loop Dungeon cannot be exited by one's own will," they hadn't been ejected.

Well, technically a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠logout counts as "leaving," I suppose, but Deoen prioritizes its users' real lives. There's even a re-login penalty for logging out mid-combat or inside a dungeon, after all.

"It cost an enormous amount of time to test, but we pinned down the conditions. Roughly three of them. First: when the dungeon loops, you must be in a logged-out state, or the horns in your inventory won't carry over."

"The other dimension probably can't register them, I'd guess."

"Sorry? Anyway—second: collect more than a hundred of those horns, and something special happens."

Eternity, bloated far past what a single world was meant to hold. When the Ring of Circulation that had sustained that eternity warped, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an anomaly began.

And that anomaly was...

RRRRRRRRMM—!!

"?"

"?"

The world convulsed.

The Ring of Circulation, which had flaunted its eternity since the dawn of this place, rattled violently, and beyond the cave's mouth something vast and red—impossible to miss at a glance—fixed its gaze upon the world. A mass of crimson easily the size of a colossal fortress.

The master of this place. The scarlet horse that granted life and death.

Jeoksa's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped.

"Level 130?! Are you kidding me—it jumped thirty levels! Why is it waking up right n... Ah."

Then it dawned on him.

Why the boss—a boss that must never, under any circumstances, be awakened unless the gauge hit 0% or a hundred horns were gathered—was rising now. The one person who had entered this dungeon alongside us, yet was nowhere to be found.

"Looks like somebody got greedy."

"......Unbelievable. This is genuinely insane."

Our very own Wind Gale Sword had gone off to challenge the boss alone.