The Mark's Intervention
“Feeling better now?”
“What's wrong? Something happen?”
Seoya blinked in confusion as she came to, looking around her surroundings. The hundreds of millions of books still encircled them, and above, red eyes glared down. Nothing seemed drastically different from before she fell asleep, but Go Heejae wore a rare look of fluster, while Ji Sein and Jeong Sira were pale-faced and grim.
They saw me drink the sleep potion and pass out—why are they so freaked out?
“Y-You… you were acting weird just now…”
As if sensing Seoya's bewilderment, Jeong Sira spoke in a trembling voice.
“Suddenly, light came from your forehead, and your eyes turned yellow. We thought you'd woken up, so we called out to you… but you didn't react at all. You just stared at us…”
“Me? I just woke up.”
Seoya had no memory of staring at them. Pushing her questions aside for the moment, she pushed herself up from the floor first. She'd put on the cloak before entering the dungeon to avoid the Greek officials at the entrance, so now it had slipped down to her shoulders. She straightened her clothes and shook her head. Only now did the fog in her mind start to clear.
Do not dare to peek into higher realms.
“It's still there.”
Seoya glared at the system window hovering in front of her. She turned toward Ji Sein and Jeong Sira, who looked worried, as a sudden question popped into her head.
“Come to think of it, you said light came from my forehead just now?”
“Y-Yeah…”
The man from her dream had said something like that before she woke.
-I'll give you a mark. It should help you once or twice.
He'd said that and kissed her forehead—and Jeong Sira was clearly saying light had emanated from that spot.
“Is it still doing it?”
“No… it stopped after you woke up.”
“It looked like some kind of pattern.”
Go Heejae began describing the 'pattern' that had appeared on Seoya's forehead.
“A blue triangle glowed near the center of your forehead, with unreadable characters inside it.”
“It was geometric, right?”
Ji Sein picked up the description.
That's the mark, huh. No idea what it is, though…
The system windows kept piling up in front of Seoya—thousands overlapping now, constantly dinging and making her dizzy.
How's this mark supposed to help…?
Recalling the man's words, Seoya looked up and locked eyes directly with the red gaze—that instant, the barrage of system windows cut off abruptly.
“What the—?”
“Huh? The system windows stopped?”
Like Seoya, the others had been eyeing the windows irritably, so Ji Sein immediately reacted to the halt, tilting her head.
Soon, another system window appeared before them.
The dungeon is forcibly destroyed due to the intervention of '■■■'.
“What’s that?”
Go Heejae frowned at the unreadable text. Even Seoya, who’d never failed to decipher such script, strained her eyes but couldn’t make it out.
What? Why can’t I read it?
Is this what he meant by helping me?
Clueless about what was happening, Seoya looked back up at where the red eyes had been.
But.
“It’s gone?”
“What is?”
“The red eyes up there!”
“No way, for real?”
The red eyes had vanished while they were focused on the system windows. The others, excluding Seoya, hadn’t even noticed.
At that moment, a fierce wind suddenly whipped around them. The surroundings shifted abruptly as the dungeon began to crumble.
“Eek!”
Jeong Sira, nearly swept away, screamed and flattened herself to the ground.
“Ugh, what the hell is this? Suddenly clearing? What did you just do?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
“Didn’t you do something after waking up from that nap?”
Even in the howling gale, Go Heejae gritted his teeth and questioned Seoya.
Seoya fumbled for an excuse, flustered.
“No, that message about someone’s intervention clearing the dungeon doesn’t make sense to me either.”
“Kyaa! What is this?!”
As the wind intensified, the hundreds of millions of books encircling them began spinning wildly again. Despite winds strong enough to lift a child, not a single page tore free.
“Argh, seriously! What the hell!”
Ji Sein, stumbling repeatedly, whined in frustration.
The books spun faster. Faster. Even faster…
“Nooo! The book!”
In the storm threatening to hurl their bodies away, Jeong Sira clutched the jade-green book in her right hand tight. It was the one about Earth.
The unrelenting wind forced even Seoya to hug the ground, muscles straining to avoid being lifted.
“S-Seoya! Put the cloak back on! The dungeon’s breaking apart!”
“Oh, right.”
Hearing Jeong Sira, Seoya hastily pulled the cloak over her head, gripping it with one hand to keep it from flying off.
“It cleared! Why won’t this end?! I’m holing up at home forever when I get back to Korea!”
“I’ve never heard of a dungeon being forcibly destroyed!”
And as they shouted, praying for the wind to die down—
“You’re out already?!”
Seoya shot up at the sound of Park Haejun’s voice. The wind cut off; when she came to her senses, they were sprawled on the stone pavement before the Parthenon Temple.
“I thought it’d take longer—you’re out early. It’s only been an hour since you entered.”
Greek officials approached the disheveled Jeong Sira, speaking to her. She conversed with them about the dungeon in a voice weary enough for anyone to hear.
“Seoya, any injuries?”
“Nah, seems fine.”
Confirming her cloak intact, Seoya brushed off the dirt from her clothes. Looking at Jeong Sira’s ashen face, she thought,
Time to talk to Sira-unnie about that guy’s cryptic words. Safeguard… mark…
Oh, and what was that last thing he said?
-Remember, what matters is your perception.
Hmm.
It made no sense to Seoya.
That mark he left cleared the dungeon… Did the red eyes, sensing a higher being like itself had decided to help me, withdraw on its own? Or did he lend me power from the higher world?
The mark was clearly from the higher world, so it had to be something special.
If it’s higher world power, it’s weird he could plant it on my forehead even briefly.
As far as Seoya could tell, the gap between her and the higher world was vast. They’d always warned her not to dare peek into their realm, yet she’d taken their power momentarily without issue.
Hope it doesn’t cause problems later. Higher world beings erode mental strength, so maybe that mark’s harmful too…
The exact moment that thought crossed her mind, Seoya felt something off.
Damn, what’s this?
Oh.
Realizing what was coming, she instinctively grabbed Park Haejun’s collar tight.
“What’s wrong?”
Heat surged through her body at an unnaturally rapid pace. Her forehead burned, and her breath grew scorching with each exhale.
Why does it hit my body the instant I think that…
And with that, her consciousness snapped off.
“Hunter Go Heejae, what exactly happened inside the dungeon?”
“Damn it, there’s so much I can’t explain…”
Go Heejae glanced anxiously at Seoya lying in the bed.
Right after exiting the dungeon, she’d spiked a high fever and collapsed. Shaking her awake didn’t help—her delirium from the heat made normal conversation impossible. Rushed to a Greek hospital, multiple doctors examined her but all said the same: “No physical abnormalities; the fever’s just too high for her to regain consciousness.”
Medications and ice baths yielded no results. A week passed without her waking, fever unrelenting.
“I don’t know how she cleared the dungeon either. As Ji Sein told you, after the weird red eyes appeared, she took a sleep potion and dozed off on her own. Then a strange pattern appeared on her forehead; after she woke, nothing happened, and the dungeon cleared.”
“A pattern on her forehead?”
“Yeah, it glowed once and vanished. The clear happened right after. Unreadable pattern.”
“Did Seoya explain it herself?”
“She seemed clueless about it too. Up to drinking the potion, she was convinced falling asleep would solve it. But after waking, she said she had no idea how it got resolved. Damn it, why so many unknowns?!”
Frustrated, Go Heejae slammed the bedside table.
It had been a week since Seoya lost consciousness. Everything was chaos. Governments worldwide demanded full reports on what they’d seen; Korea’s hunters were ready to fly over upon hearing she was hospitalized. At least the public back home remained in the dark about her location and condition—small mercy.
“What the hell went wrong?”
While Go Heejae and the other hunters fretted over Seoya,
she was dreaming.