Contribution Rate
There was a reason people had suddenly clustered together, lingering outside until the fog finally lifted.
That was the thing about gates — climb even a single rank, and the difficulty spiked like a cliff face.
"We didn't actually do anything wrong, so you don't need to worry too much. They're only writing up an incident report to figure out why the gate's rank jumped, and what we should do so it doesn't happen again."
We hadn't done anything wrong, and yet people kept coming up and pressing us with questions. Maybe that was why Helena had started glancing around so uneasily.
Miso Cheonsa was the one who tried to put us at ease.
Well, I hadn't been worried in the first place.
We were innocent.
Nyangnyangbeam was the one who smashed the mana stone. We never laid a finger on it.
"I keep thinking it might be because of me. That demon... it was definitely one of the ones that operated where I used to live."
Even so, our tender-hearted Helena seemed to be shouldering the guilt — as if she truly believed the demon had followed her here.
Even though, if anything, it was far more likely it had slipped through because I had torn open a rift between dimensions.
"Ah, demons that nest in the human heart exist everywhere. Gods, too. The only difference is how much they choose to intervene in the lives of living things."
I had been about to tell her that myself, to let Helena know she had nothing to worry about.
Miso Cheonsa beat me to it.
Not to be outdone, I scrambled — a little late — to invent something that would lighten Helena's heart.
"Th-that's right. Besides, Helena, you contributed so much to resolving this whole situation, didn't you? Nyangnyangbeam, too. All of you did was give everything you had to protect other people. So don't worry."
Focus on what you put right, not on what went wrong!
It was the kind of excuse that worked in pretty much any era, any situation. It left a sour taste when people used it to rationalize sacrificing the few for the many — but for someone who had saved ten lives and still felt guilty about the one they couldn't reach, this was exactly the comfort they needed.
"Hehe. You're stumbling over your words because you're the one who's actually worried, Yeonmin. Is there something pricking your conscience too?"
"Stumbling? I don't know what you mean. I'm speaking perfectly clearly, aren't I?"
"Yes, well. I suppose you are."
There she went again, picking at that and teasing me. That woman had "angel" in her name, but she was secretly a menace.
Still, she wasn't doing it out of malice — it was only teasing — so I just stuck out my lower lip in a pout.
The truth was, I also didn't really know what I was supposed to say in moments like this. If someone showed me outright malice, I could simply answer in kind. But teasing someone while meaning well...? I genuinely had no idea how to handle that.
Anyway, I figured I hadn't done anything, so I shouldn't have to sit through some annoying investigation. Then one of the agents stationed outside came walking right up to me.
"Excuse me — are you Miss Yeonmin? According to the Overseer System, your contribution rate is showing as thirty percent."
"Pardon? Mine? Why?"
There they went again, talking like everyone already knew what they meant!
But in a world of people with their eyes open, the one who's blind is the one treated as disabled. Ah — is that how the saying goes? Anyway, that seemed to be common sense here, because everyone was looking at me like I was the strange one.
"Operators with clairvoyance record everything that happens inside a gate, and the system calculates the results. Contribution is determined by the number of lives rescued, the strength and number of monsters and magical beasts slain, and whether you healed other hunters or provided other buffs and support. If you leave the handling of all loot obtained inside the gate to the Association, we distribute it according to that contribution rate."
"Ah, I see."
Yegyeong explained it from behind me, so I more or less understood. It was basically like a damage meter in a game — an objective number that said, this is how much I contributed to clearing the gate. With something like that, there wouldn't be much fighting over how to split the loot.
It sounded like a decent system, at first glance.
And then it also struck me as completely perverted. How did they even know what I had done well enough to assign a contribution rate like that?
"Did Miss Yeonmin protect us...? Is that why nothing happened to us in that fog?"
"I thought Miso Cheonsa was the one watching over us, but with a contribution rate that high... You were protecting us the whole time, and none of us even knew. If it weren't for the Overseer System, we never would have realized Miss Yeonmin had been looking after us."
"You even had restraints on — how the hell did you pull that off, nyang? That's amazing, nyang!"
"N-no. I really didn't do anything special. Helena and Nyangnyangbeam took care of everything..."
Yegyeong, Suhyeon — and as if two people weren't enough, even Nyangnyangbeam started fussing over me like a toddler taking her first steps. It didn't make me happy at all.
It meant they had figured out the restraints were completely useless. If I could still accomplish something in this state, they might pile even more restraints on me. That would be a problem.
Would I end up completely immobilized, just tied up and dragged around? My physical body was only a means of communicating with humans anyway. Being bound somewhere wouldn't actually matter to me. But having to stretch out my thought-form every time just to follow Helena around would be a bit much. And if someone like Miso Cheonsa noticed my thought-form and started tagging along going, what's that?, that would be its own kind of trouble.
Then Miso Cheonsa, who until now had done nothing but tease me, actually came to my defense.
"Hehe. You were all too flustered to notice, I suppose. You can't even imagine how elegant Yeonmin's kicks were. Skirt of her habit fluttering, not a single misstep even in heels — she drove back the demon's minions."
A nun who vanquished enemies with kicks. Not exactly an image that helped me. No — I could barely even keep my own body under control as it was. Kicks? Please.
See? Helena, who already knew what kind of state I was in, was staring at me with a very serious look. And Yegyeong and Suhyeon were nodding along...?
Why were Nyangnyangbeam's eyes sparkling, too?
"So Miss Yeonmin possessed tremendous combat power even while wearing restraints..."
"It's a good thing Miss Yeonmin is such a kind person."
"I knew it! All nuns are masters of hand-to-hand combat, nyang!"
And yet none of the three seemed the least bit wary of the fact that I had power. Maybe a bit of martial prowess was something they could accept as ordinary?
Thinking about it, that made sense. The idea that I might wield unknown powers and interfere with their minds had terrified them. But a nun who was just really good at kicking people? That probably didn't set off the same alarm bells. Which might be exactly why Miso Cheonsa had made such a fuss about it on purpose.
"Hehe. That's probably why Yeonmin's shoes and stockings are black, too. Blood doesn't show on them at all. Ah, though someone of Yeonmin's caliber wouldn't get blood on her clothes in the first place."
"No wonder her rank is Unmeasurable..."
"Ahem, ahem. However strong Miss Yeonmin may be, a gate is still extremely dangerous if civilians get caught up in it. Generally speaking, a D-Grade gate is about as dangerous as a place where an ordinary person running around with a blade would be at risk. Of course, if you handle it well, you can still evacuate or hide safely even there. But in a C-Grade gate, firearms often stop working, and things that interfere with the mind can appear even without physical force. Even if highly trained civilians working together could handle a D-Grade, a C-Grade is out of the question."
Since what I had done was being treated as nothing particularly extraordinary, the Association agents thankfully just kept talking.
To summarize: every time a gate went up even one rank, its level changed drastically. And the C-Rank Gate they had meant as a little taste of the real thing had jumped a whole grade. Monsters that guns still worked on had shown up, so I had thought, well, that's about what I expected. But then things that could mess with your mind had poured out endlessly, and they had even affected the surrounding area. So it had been a B-Rank Gate.
"If a mana stone meant to induce a C-Rank Gate summoned a B-Rank Gate once, there's no guarantee it won't happen again. If it can jump one rank, it can jump two. We were lucky Miso Cheonsa was with us, so nothing catastrophic happened. Next time, even if we deploy, everyone already caught inside could be dead by the time we arrive."
"The staff who were at the management office are already suffering aftereffects from mental interference. They said something was tempting them intensely, and resisting it took everything they had. Like being on drugs, they said. They knew giving in would destroy them, but they couldn't hold out."
"So we would be grateful if you could tell us in detail what happened."
If they said so, I supposed that was how it was. And hearing that people had actually gotten hurt, I did feel a little guilty.
"I think it probably followed me because there's a path I came through. I patched it up, sure, but a road that's been packed down once is easier to punch through again. And this time you opened a hole from this side, didn't you? It might have seen its chance and come rushing through."
So before Helena could blame herself any further, I just confessed first.
The agents' expressions turned complicated.
"...Miss Yeonmin, are you able to open rifts between dimensions?"
Uh. Was I not supposed to say that?
Did I... mess up?
Were they going to tie me up even more?
Fortunately, they didn't add any more restraints. They did give me a stern warning that spacetime was already unstable from overlapping dimensional phases, which was why gates opened in the first place — and that artificially creating a rift could lead to who-knew-what. I put on a properly dejected, repentant face, and they let it go without any further sanctions. After all, our crossing over to this side had been something I had done without knowing a thing.
"It's curious, though. You can cross dimensions, but you can't make an inventory? That's no different from being able to paint a still life but not knowing how to sketch. You should try it later."
That was about all Miso Cheonsa had to say to me — even though she knew perfectly well that if I used any ability at all, it would become obvious the restraints weren't working.
So I didn't answer, and just stared at her sulkily.
For some reason, Helena sidled up and whispered to me.
"Yeonmin. Are you sure you're all right? You used your power even though there's already no one offering you their faith..."
Huh. What kind of overprotectiveness was this now?