Dropout. Receives First Request (Landmine)
Dropout. Receives First Request (Landmine)
Outside the building, dew drops fell from the leaves.
Tok.
Gray's eyes opened.
It was reflexive. Her body reacted before consciousness even awoke.
On the creaking bed of an inn, on a pile of hay in a stable, on the cold rock at the dungeon entrance.
A habit engraved into her body after hundreds of repetitions.
Wake up before the sun rises.
Because sleeping in was a luxury impossible for her.
Her eyes scanned the ceiling. An unfamiliar ceiling.
White, flat, seamless.
Ah, right. This isn't an inn.
The magical device on the wall called a clock was displaying numbers. 5:20.
Gray rose from the sofa.
The blanket Suyeon had given her had already slipped to the floor.
The furniture called a sofa was softer than the inn bed, but too soft, which actually made her sleep light.
As expected, a warrior's body suits a hard floor.
Her gaze turned to the corner of the living room.
The armor that had been forcibly stripped off by Suyeon the day before was leaning against the wall.
Along with a nagging that, by this world's standards, seemed perfectly reasonable: 'Who wears armor indoors?'
Gray stood up and faced the armor.
She reached out her hand.
First, the lower body. She fitted the light armor below the knees and tightened the leather straps.
Cheolkeok.
She lifted and fastened the plate enclosing her thighs.
The characteristic cool sensation of magic metal traveled up her skin.
Good metal. Something she couldn't easily obtain even in her days as an adventurer.
With an Iron-rank adventurer's pay, it was tight even to afford a leather armor.
But in this world, she got this for a pittance of 140,000 won—though she didn't really know how much that was worth.
Cheolkeok.
She lifted the upper body armor.
The chainmail flowed down with a jingle.
She passed it over her head, draped it over her shoulders, and fastened the buckles on both sides.
Chalgeurang. Chalgeurang.
The fit was off. Naturally, it was made for the physique of an Imperial knight.
This current body—Gray gritted her teeth—was smaller than before.
Narrow shoulders, thin arms, and the chest area was rather... ...Enough. Let's not think about it.
She pulled the leather straps to reduce the slack.
She adjusted the gaps between plates and fussed with the overlapping sections of chainmail to minimize friction noise.
If she wore it like this for a while, the built-in mana would automatically adjust the size.
Chalgeurang.
She slipped the gauntlets onto both hands and locked the wrist loops.
Kkiik. Kkiik.
The joints were stiff.
Naturally, given the condition, it was armor that had been dormant for at least several hundred years.
It needed oiling, but now was not the time for luxuries.
Gray slowly rotated both arms.
Kkiik, kkiik.
The magic metal at the joints pushed against each other, making an irritating sound.
She shrugged her shoulders, bent and straightened her elbows.
Kkiik.
"Good. Now I can move a bit—"
"SHUT UUUUUP!!"
The bedroom door flung open, hitting the wall.
Suyeon stood there.
Her hair was like a bird's nest, and her eyes were half-closed and bloodshot.
She was clutching a pillow in one hand.
"Five in the morning!! Five in the morning!! Cheolkeokcheolkeok chalgeurangchalgeurang kkiikkkiik!! I thought there was construction next door!!"
The pillow flew.
This time, she didn't dodge.
It hit her square in the face.
A soft texture... and a woman's scent.
"...Sorry."
"Sorry is all you have?! Armor!! In the morning!! Why!!"
And so, the first morning in this world was dawning.
.
.
.
It took an hour to finish preparing to go out.
To be exact, ten minutes to put on the armor.
Fifty minutes to convince Suyeon that she would go out wearing armor.
"Are you crazy? People will think you're cosplaying."
"I don't know what cosplay is, but going out without armor is like going out in underwear."
"...In this world, that's normal?!"
In the end, Suyeon lost. It was close to giving up.
After repeating 'Do what you want, I don't care' three times, she opened the front door.
The moment they stepped out onto the street, Suyeon had a premonition.
Ah, we're doomed.
She had expected it. She had... but...
Eyes. Eyes. Eyes.
Office workers on their way to work stopped and turned to look.
Two students in school uniforms pulled out their phones.
A delivery driver coming out of a convenience store bumped his shoulder against the door.
A woman pushing a stroller pointed and said to her child, 'Look at that.'
At the center of all those gazes stood Gray.
Silver plate armor. Chainmail densely filling the gaps.
A straight sword at her waist.
The magic metal shimmered faintly in the morning sunlight.
An armor so refined it could be believed to be a top-class Hunter's special equipment.
Wearing that, she was walking through the middle of Seoul.
There was one thing she had worried about that morning.
Cheolkeokcheolkeok, chalgeurangchalgeurang.
That the noise that had shattered her sleep at dawn would echo on the street.
But strangely, no noise came from Gray as she moved.
Not the sound of metal against metal, nor the sound of plates shaking.
It was as quiet as if the armor were part of her body.
Was it some kind of skill?
Earlier when she put it on, it was so noisy.
Just because there was no noise didn't mean she was inconspicuous. Rather, it was worse.
Because a medieval knight walking silently seemed to scare people even more.
Suyeon's face grew hot. Red all the way to the tips of her ears.
She bowed her head. Fixed her eyes on the ground.
She walked counting only the seams of the paving blocks.
"Suyeon."
Gray's voice came from above.
"Why are you walking staring at the ground like that? If you don't secure your forward field of vision, you're vulnerable to ambushes."
"It's nothing. Let's walk faster."
Suyeon lengthened her stride. She was almost running. Gray followed with a puzzled expression. It was annoying how her stride didn't break even in armor.
Twenty minutes on foot to the Association.
That time felt like twenty years to Suyeon.
.
.
.
The lobby of the Hunter Association Seoul Branch was crowded from morning.
Suyeon led Gray to the request board.
An electronic board covering an entire wall. Letters and numbers were updating in real time.
"Okay, I'll explain the basics."
Suyeon said, pointing at the board.
"Gate occurrences are completely random. There's no precursor. They just appear out of nowhere. So the Association collects occurrence information in real time, and Hunters like us receive requests based on that."
Gray nodded.
So far, it wasn't much different from the Empire's guild.
"The important thing is this. The resources inside the Gate are valuable. Mana stones, minerals, herbs, monster materials. So there's an unspoken rule."
Suyeon held up one finger.
"When a Gate occurs, they don't subjugate the boss for at least a month. Because when the boss dies, the Gate closes. So they extract as many resources as possible before then."
"Reasonable."
"Well, things have changed a bit recently."
Suyeon's expression darkened.
"The Gate occurrence rate keeps rising. There are days when three or four go off at once. If management fails, it's a Gate Break—monsters pour out into reality. So these days, they're busy handling them as fast as possible."
Suyeon tapped the board.
"Anyway, the flow is like this. Before the boss is subjugated, you take as many requests as you can, enter the Gate, and collect the materials needed for the requests—that's the primary goal. Boss subjugation is the domain of high-rank Hunters; for low-to-mid ranks like us, resource collection is the main source of income."
Gray rested her chin on her hand.
Apart from detailed rules like time limits and rank restrictions, the essence was the same.
Enter the dungeon, collect resources, complete requests, receive payment.
Something she had repeated hundreds of times in the Empire.
"It's almost the same as the dungeons in my world."
"...Is that so...? Lucky you..."
Ignoring Suyeon's sigh, Gray approached the board.
The letters came into view.
And she stopped.
She could read them.
Gray rubbed her eyes. She looked up at the board again.
It wasn't the Empire's script.
The script of this world.
The letters she had seen yesterday on the black panel at Suyeon's house—was it called a television?
She had definitely never learned them. Until yesterday, she clearly couldn't understand them.
But her mind was understanding them. There was no delay in the conversion of letters to meaning.
As if she had known them from birth.
She didn't know why. But she decided to postpone the question of 'how.'
She could read. That was enough for now.
Her eyes scanned down the list of requests.
E-rank — Mana Stone Collection (Small Monsters) / Reward 350,000 won
E-rank — Collection of Discarded Equipment in Gate / Reward 200,000 won
D-rank — Collection of Herbs Growing Inside Gate (List Attached) / Reward 800,000 won
...Boring.
It was no different from the odd jobs given to Iron-rank adventurers in the Empire.
Collect goblin ears, gather moss at the cave entrance. That sort of thing.
Her eyes brushed past and stopped.
'Special — Escort Mission / Client: Magic Society / No Rank Restriction'
The content was concise.
'We request an escort inside a Gate designated by our society. For details, discuss in person.'
It was a strange request.
Having no rank restriction meant it was being ignored by high-rank Hunters.
But what caught Gray's attention was not the content of the request.
Magic Society.
According to what she had heard from Suyeon yesterday, magic does not exist in this world.
She said only superpowers exist.
Not magic that systematically uses mana, but innate abilities granted to individuals at birth.
That was the only supernatural phenomenon in this world, she said.
Yet here was a Magic Society.
Her heart beat a little faster. It wasn't curiosity.
No, it was curiosity, but something more primal.
The expectation that someone in a similar situation to herself might exist.
Or the intuition that if they were researchers of magic, they might know something about the connection between the Gate and the Empire.
It could be a clue.
Gray turned and headed to the reception counter.
"Wait, where are you—"
Before Suyeon could finish speaking, Gray was already standing in front of the receptionist.
"I'll accept that request."
Her finger pointed at an item on the board. 'Magic Society — Escort Mission.'
The receptionist checked the screen and made a subtle expression.
"...This request? Um... understood."
The receptionist stood up and said.
"I'll contact the client. Please wait a moment."
As the footsteps disappeared into the back of the lobby, Suyeon approached.
"Hey, what request did you pick?"
Instead of answering, Gray gestured with her chin toward the receptionist's desktop screen.
Suyeon tilted her head to look at the monitor. Four letters floating on the screen.
Magic Society.
Suyeon's face stiffened.
"...Hey."
"Yeah."
"Why did you accept this?"
"Curiosity."
"Curiosity?! No, but do you even know what the Magic Society is?! That thing is—"
Suyeon's words cut off.
Footsteps echoed from the back of the lobby.
No, not footsteps, but more like the rustling of a robe hem sweeping across the marble floor.
What appeared was a girl.
Violet hair flowed down to her waist.
A black pointy hat was perched on her head, its tip drooping to one side and swaying.
An eyepatch over her left eye. Was her eye uncomfortable?
The black robe seemed a bit small for the girl's frame, giving a tight impression.
Every time she walked, her hands appeared and disappeared from the sleeves.
Visible beneath the robe was a sparkling star-shaped brooch and a self-confident smile as if she had interpreted everything in the world.
Suyeon's lips twitched. Sweat formed on her forehead.
They were in trouble.
That inner thought was clearly projected on her face.
The girl stopped in front of Gray. She grabbed the hem of her robe with one hand and swept it back in a semicircle.
Her other hand spread above her face. She tilted her head slightly, then looked up with sparkling eyes.
"Warrior who answered the contract of darkness, yeo."
Suyeon's eyes half-closed.
"I salute your courage. I am the chairperson of the Magic Society, its sole researcher. The one who sees through the principles of all things and walks the abyss of mana. The pioneer of magic—"
The girl declared, lifting the brim of her pointy hat with a finger.
"I am called Lasteia von Rosewell haji."
Silence fell.
A few Hunters in the lobby subtly averted their eyes.
As if familiar. Suyeon covered her face with her hand. Gray stood motionless, looking down at the girl.
The receptionist returned, sat down, and let out a deep sigh.
"...This is the client for this request, Seo Mun-ah ssi."
"Lasteia von—"
"Seo Mun-ah ssi."
At the receptionist's firm correction, the girl's cheeks puffed up...
'Ah. Damn it.'