[The Hidden Dungeon and the Echoes of the Past]
The chill that crawled up my spine the moment I read Seo Ian’s text was instantaneous.
Goosebumps erupted along the path of that cold shiver.
“That’s not it, Ian.”
I muttered to myself, and just as I was typing a message telling her ‘Don’t go in,’ a new notification popped up.
It was as if she were feeding me a bitter pill, sending the message before I could even finish my warning.
“Are you insane?”
She didn’t even give me a moment to breathe before the next messages flooded in.
…I sometimes wonder. Seo Ian seems to move her fingers faster than she speaks, so why does she prefer calls over texting? It’s a mystery.
I deleted the hollow text of ‘Don’t go in’ and instead sent, ‘It’ll take some time to prepare and get in. Can you hold out?’
A short, firm reply. I expected her to add something else, but that was it.
“Ah… I should have just called.”
I slumped my shoulders, chewing on my belated regret.
“Uju-nim, what’s with that look, nyang?”
“Ian entered a Hidden Dungeon.”
At those words, Rackcho’s tail curled tightly.
“Why on earth did she go in there, nyang? Hidden Dungeons are different from regular ones, nyang! They are places the Tower has ‘hidden for a reason,’ nyang!”
“Hidden for a reason?”
“The Tower observes the evolution of life forms, nyang. Hidden Dungeons are where it traps ‘exceptions’—bosses that don’t fit the Tower’s logic, or existences that leaked in from other dimensions, nyang.”
“It was tough last time, too.”
“It’s not about being tough, it’s that the difficulty levels vary wildly, nyang!”
“Vary wildly….”
“You never know what might pop out, nyang. The clear conditions are all different, too, nyang.”
Rackcho was uncharacteristically restless.
“I mentioned Hidden Dungeons just now, but I never meant for you to go in, nyang! They don’t even appear that often anyway, nyang!”
“This is Seo Ian’s second time already.”
“It seems like Ber has done something, nyang! Since her disposition is similar to his, she’s likely being funneled into routes for rapid growth, even if they are dangerous, nyang!”
At that moment, my phone vibrated. It was Seo Ian.
I hurriedly typed a reply.
[Don’t touch anything, find a safe zone, and just wait for me.]
The reply came back instantly.
She’d shortened ‘Yeah’ to just ‘K’—we must be getting very close now.
Ian, that’s not the problem right now.
“Rackcho, I’m heading out. There are things I need to pack.”
“I don’t want you to go, Uju-nim, nyang.”
“If the Guild Leader doesn’t save our guild’s ace, who will?”
I smiled lightly to reassure Rackcho, but the cat’s expression showed no signs of easing. Rackcho even climbed out of its box and approached me.
“Then take this… it’s a request, nyang.”
Rackcho opened a sales window.
“Tower Merchant Room Forced Teleportation Pass…?”
“You can come to my Blue Room with this, nyang. I won’t be going anywhere today, so if you feel it’s dangerous, use it anytime, nyang!”
“But only one?”
“If you hold Ian-nim’s hand tightly when you use it, she’ll be treated as an equipped item and come with you, nyang.”
The price was a staggering 10,000 T.C. Now I knew why Rackcho hadn’t even shown me the sales window before.
“Well… it’s cheap for the price of a life!”
If I didn’t think of it that way, I’d feel like I was throwing the price of a car into the dirt.
After purchasing the pass, I returned home and began organizing my inventory, packing the items Seo Ian had requested. In the middle of it, my phone vibrated—a long, continuous buzz. It wasn’t broken; Seo Ian was just sending messages in rapid succession.
I reflexively started to type a reply: ‘Don’t go.’ But before I could send it, the phone buzzed again.
The messages stopped there. My own train of thought seemed to snap as well.
“……Damn, what a foul smell.”
Seo Ian, who had such a sensitive nose that she’d have a fit if a hearse even passed by, scrunched up her face at the stench that grew worse by the second.
“And I got stuck in a shitty environment, too.”
The ground clinging to her ankles was damp, and every time she inhaled, the hot geothermal heat stung her lungs. It was an environment that was uncomfortable just to walk in.
At first, she thought the background was just a ‘jungle.’ But it wasn’t. If it were a jungle, there should have been the sound of insects, but this place was deathly quiet. Furthermore, if the wind blew, it should have carried the scent of grass and wet soil, but instead, it carried the sickening, blood-tinged smell of a corpse.
“Is it a carnivorous plant? Sigh. I’d rather be in a labyrinth.”
She grumbled while searching for the safe zone Uju had mentioned.
“They said the name of this place is ‘Lumen’s Jungle,’ so I guess I just have to find this ‘Lumen’ and beat the crap out of it to clear it. But why is the map so huge when it’s hot and annoying as hell! DAMN IT!!”
Seo Ian vented her frustration as she hacked through the jungle. Just then, a ‘thud’ sound came from beyond the forest.
“What’s that?”
The sound of leaves being pushed aside. Seo Ian reflexively reached behind her back. Her fingertips touched the cold handles of her twin blades.
A dark shadow cast itself through the bushes. A human shape. But something was off.
“Hey, you there. Stop moving if you don’t want to die.”
The shadow stopped slowly.
“Ian.”
It called her name as if it were familiar. The voice was trembling, making it feel both recognizable and alien. Ian pulled out her phone to send a quick text to Uju with one hand.
Just then, the sunlight shifted, revealing the face.
“Ian.”
The voice, now devoid of trembling, was one she knew. A voice so familiar, it was achingly missed. Her heart reacted before her body did.
‘……Senior Ryu?’
For a moment, her eyes wavered. ‘No, that’s not it.’
The eyes were dead. The Senior Ryu she knew was someone who kept a spark of light in his eyes even when his life was hanging by a thread, even when he knew he was walking to his death. He didn’t have eyes as dead as those.
And above all……. Senior Ryu had died in front of her eyes during a building collapse. ‘I even stood guard at his funeral, damn it.’
“Ian.”
The one wearing Senior Ryu’s face called her name again. She felt every hair on her body stand on end. Don’t be fooled by the voice. She told herself.
“Ian, help me.”
But the lip movements, the intonation, even the sound of the breathing—it was all the ‘image’ of Senior Ryu she remembered. Even if she knew it wasn’t him, her heart wavered because she was human, too.
Her trembling fingertips tucked the phone away and scraped against the sword hilt. Having steeled her resolve, she drew the sword from her back without hesitation.
Clang!
She deliberately clashed the blades together to create a threatening sound.
“……You’re Lumen, aren’t you? I’m so glad you appeared as a dead person.”
Her eyes flashed with madness behind her helmet. It seemed this dungeon master, Lumen, liked to covet the appearances of others like a doppelgänger. That only made Seo Ian’s fighting spirit burn hotter.
“What? ‘Ian, help me?’ Just ‘help me?’ Help with what, exactly?”
She let out a chilling, cackling laugh, then added in a low, growling voice:
“Hey. If you’re going to ask for help, at least show some sincerity in following the format, you bastard.”
This was inside the Tower. A Hidden Dungeon. It wasn’t a reunion with someone she missed; it was a mockery of someone who had died honorably. That was why rage surged from the pit of her stomach.
How dare you insult the dead?
“I won’t let you go easily.”
She didn’t care if it sounded like a third-rate villain’s line. She meant it. She kicked off the ground and lunged forward without mercy. And at that moment, a small smile bloomed on that nostalgic face. Not a normal smile, but a strangely twisted sneer.
The moment she realized something was wrong—
“Shit, what is this!?”
The ground beneath her feet gave way with a ‘crunch.’ A faint light leaked through the crack. The sensation of her toes wobbling.
“Damn it.”
Ian tried to move her feet to step back, but the speed at which the ground was collapsing increased.
“Argh, damn it, seriously!!”
Her body began to plummet in an instant. Seo Ian opened her eyes wide, preparing for a safe landing.
Thud!
“……This much is easy-!!”
Seo Ian, having landed perfectly, dusted off her armor and surveyed her surroundings. The jungle heat had vanished in an instant.
“……Where is this now?”
It was a gloomy ruin. And it was covered in fog. She had expected a tunnel or a cave after falling, but this was a landscape beyond common sense.
“Well. Expecting common sense in the Tower is a stupid thought anyway. That’s why that Lumen bastard is running wild without any manners.”
The fog obscured her vision. Seo Ian narrowed her eyes to examine the area more closely. On the ground, dark red stains, as if blood had dried, were scattered here and there.
“Doesn’t look like anything special yet….”
Just then, a notification rang out.
You have entered ‘Lumen’s Detention Center’!
“Lumen’s Detention Center…? What?”
She narrowed her eyes even further. “Is something trapped here?”
It seemed certain that a multitude of things would block her path. “I can just leave once I catch Lumen, but this is so annoying.”
Just then, a faint sound drifted from afar. The sound of something dragging across the floor.
“……Damn it. The benefactor I told to come isn’t coming.”
She instinctively gritted her teeth and drew her twin blades. Soon, ‘it’ revealed itself through the fog. A bizarre shape. It was clearly a human form, but it had… no face.
“Hey. You’re the bastard who was mimicking Senior Ryu earlier, right?”
The creature tilted its head. Even though it had no mouth, a wheezing breath leaked out of it.
“He… lp…”
For a moment, Ian’s hand faltered. She gritted her teeth. A blue energy surged fiercely around her twin blades.
“It’s no use begging now. I won’t let someone like you go easily.”
Then, the creature changed its appearance to Uju’s. She, who had been charging forward with great momentum, stopped in her tracks. The fact that it had turned into Uju specifically pricked at her memory.
[Don’t touch anything, find a safe zone, and just wait for me.]
She regretted sending the reply ‘K’ and stepped back for now.
“You bastard! Just you wait, I’ll be back to finish you off!”
She didn’t forget to leave behind a third-rate villain’s line.
“There’s no smell at all?”
Just as Seo Ian had said, the dungeon’s concept seemed to be a jungle. It was hot, and the sunlight stabbed at her eyes like crazy, but unlike what she’d heard, there was no stench.
“Anyway, where did she go? Without even contacting me?”
A harvestable area appeared before her eyes, but she couldn’t pay attention to it. Because what she’d said—‘There’s a person here?’ and even ‘They know my name?’—was bothering her too much.
For one thing, it couldn’t be someone with the same ‘Intrusion’ trait as me. If they were, there would be no reason for the whole world to be focused only on the rabbit mask. That made me even more anxious.
“Why are you so fearless….”
I spat out a complaint to no one and pushed back my sweat-drenched hair. I walked, constantly checking my silent phone out of the corner of my eye. My target was the pillar of light soaring high into the sky ahead.
If there’s something particularly eye-catching in the Tower, it’s a trap. But that trap comes with a prerequisite: ‘You must step on it to clear it.’
I approached cautiously and saw that the ground was pierced, with a pillar of light shooting out from below.
Tap!
Just in case it dealt damage, I broke a nearby branch and poked it. It seemed safe for now.
“Ian!”
I called out loudly toward the ground, but there was no answer. She wasn’t picking up the phone. She wasn’t reading the text. Ian usually answered my calls instantly, unlike anyone else’s, so my anxiety grew.
“…It looks high.”
I hesitated, but what could I do? I had to jump. The fact that the Tower hadn’t closed meant the Tower Master was still alive. It meant I wouldn’t die even if I jumped. Still, just in case, I took some doping items and threw myself off.
Crunch!
……Thud!
I misjudged the timing, vaporizing a capsule recovery potion in mid-air before slamming into the ground. But my life was safe.
‘Legendary Hero’s Gloves’ have negated fall damage!
As expected of our Rackcho! There was a reason it forced that sale on me!
“Anyway, an abandoned building?”
The building was filled with thick fog, making it hard to see ahead. As I looked around, a familiar voice drifted from within the fog.
“Uju-nim!”
The tone, the intonation, even the breath at the end of the sentence—it was Seo Ian. But, Uju ‘nim’…?
“Uju-nim, over here!”
…Honorifics?
I didn’t even need to use Hawk’s Eye. That wasn’t Seo Ian. I didn’t answer and instead put distance between myself and the voice in the fog.
‘Is the person Seo Ian saw also this kind of thing?’
Scrape, scrape, scrape…
The sound of something dragging got closer. I immediately drew my crossbow and blinked. Fortunately, it wasn’t fast. As I pulled the trigger, I saw the damage numbers and the fog of damage-over-time rising. Since it was a Hidden Dungeon, it didn’t go down immediately.
‘Should I catch this, or not?’
I was pondering for a moment when—
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
A powerful sound approached from one side, as if it were going to smash the ground to pieces. And then—
Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape!
And for some reason, the sound of several things dragging across the floor, as if they had high academic achievement, approached from multiple directions.
‘Is the loud one the boss?! No, why is the boss coming at me?!’