The Situation Inside the Gate (2)
Lee Hyeon-ah had sharpened her teeth for today.
Because today was the day she'd finally break that insufferable nose of his.
To that end, she had drilled this raid strategy into the ground, over and over. What preparations would make clearing the theme as easy as possible. How to squeeze out every last advantage and carry the bet to victory. How to respond if the other side tried to interfere. What fragments of the incident entangled with this gate might surface.
She had predicted it all, anticipated it all, declared it all in advance.
Except for one single thing.
One thing she couldn't figure out at all.
What on earth… did he prepare?
Lee Jun's strategy.
She couldn't make heads or tails of it.
He's clearly prepared something. So why is there no trace of it anywhere?
He was relaxed.
Same as always — not a flicker of tension to be found. All he did was let out one deep sigh after another, like that was some kind of routine.
"…Tch."
Lee Hyeon-ah clicked her tongue once and stepped through the gate.
Right up to the last moment, Lee Jun was smiling without a trace of worry on his face.
The suffocating heat hit them the instant they entered the gate.
A lava field — the absolute worst possible environment for the snowfields, whose raid teams were dominated by ice-mage casters.
But for hunters above a certain level, environmental affinity was nothing more than a side note. If you couldn't overcome even that much, you could forget ever dreaming of A-Class or any other high rank.
Fine. Whatever that bastard has planned… we just go at our own pace.
She steeled herself that way.
Steeled herself, and steeled herself again.
Getting dragged into Lee Jun's schemes and losing out for it had happened far more than once or twice. This time, she resolved, she wouldn't spare him so much as a glance, no matter what he pulled.
And then.
"Well then — let's run."
What?
Run where?
PAHT—
Lee Jun and Seo Yoon… bolted.
Down the left passage, without a moment's hesitation.
Down a path that was obviously going to twist into a labyrinthine nightmare…
They just ran.
"Wh-what do we do, Vice Guildmaster…?"
"………"
Lee Hyeon-ah thought it over.
That little… what the hell is he playing at…?
And then she decided.
"…Effective now, we're splitting the raid team in half."
Whatever he's got up his sleeve… I am not letting him have everything his way.
Not a chance.
Lee Jun had made his move.
And Lee Hyeon-ah had answered it.
Lee Jun had predicted exactly two options for her, and in a sense, she had blown straight past both of them.
She actually played the worst possible move.
Splitting the raid team in half, here?
That was a choice that threw away every last bit of the return while keeping all of the risk.
And she'd chosen it anyway…?
But soon enough, Lee Jun realized her choice had been the correct one.
She had simply crammed one extra answer into the options he'd handed her.
"………!"
Winter Boreas
KWAGAGAGAGAK—
A blizzard like a wall of blades tore the monsters apart as it came chasing after them.
"What the—…!"
Lee Hyeon-ah had split the raid team in two.
The main force of fifty-seven, led by Lee Hyeon-ah herself.
And… Yoon Seol. Alone.
Lee Jun had invested considerable effort into his build-up.
Refusing to share his strategy with her, as if he were hiding something enormous — all of it had been groundwork for exactly this psychological battle.
But the other side had decided to simply bulldoze the mind game with overwhelming force in the form of one woman: Yoon Seol.
"What kind of absurd nonsense is this!"
Right. In this world, strength was truth and strength was law.
Inside a gate, the stronger hunter was order itself.
Still… that was genuinely, genuinely unreasonable.
…Damn it all.
Lee Jun racked his brain as hard as he could.
No matter how many monsters he let slip past them, in their current state there was no slowing Yoon Seol down. If things stayed like this and she reached the hidden piece first… she would take it. Unconditionally.
Then it has to be Plan 1.
Operation 1 had been drafted on the assumption that the snowfield raid team would accelerate to match Lee Jun's pace. Different circumstances than now, true — but if you squinted, this group functionally was the main force. Nearly half of the snowfields' total combat power was this one woman.
In which case, the right play was to treat it as the main force catching up, then bolt straight for the boss.
The problem was that at this rate, he suspected they'd be caught long before they ever reached the boss room.
"…This is insane. Genuinely insane."
He wasn't about to actually fold here, of course — but getting caught wouldn't lead anywhere pleasant. It was easy enough to picture the future where he got subdued and blocked from running the raid any further.
I didn't want to resort to that one… but I suppose I have no choice.
Thinking of the trump card stored inside his Pocket, Lee Jun pushed his speed as high as it would go.
After several dozen minutes of running, the three of them stopped briefly beneath an enormous boulder.
"Haah… haah…"
Despite how much her endurance had improved through recent training, Seo Yoon already looked badly winded. She could manage an ordinary run for hours on end, but the current situation was a different beast entirely. Yoon Seol closing in from behind, monsters surging out from ahead — running while squeezed from both sides drained you twice as fast.
Time to… settle this.
Even Lee Jun was beginning to feel the strain now.
Yoon Seol, meanwhile, acted as if it were no trouble at all. Not a single drop of sweat. And through it all, she spoke with perfect composure.
"Mm. This is tiring."
Damn her.
"…Why exactly are you chasing us, ma'am?"
"Hyeon-ah said it would be better if I went after you. Though it also looked fun, of course."
"………"
"You're trying to take the boss first, aren't you? That's a rather extreme strategy."
Yoon Seol had apparently read a good portion of his intentions too. No — more precisely, she'd caught the cues he'd deliberately let slip, hoping she'd read exactly that much.
Then the rest, too. If you're going to play along, play along all the way.
"…That's right."
Tik—
Four minutes.
Giving Yoon Seol's words a perfunctory nod, Lee Jun quietly slipped a bomb out of his back pocket. He'd prepared it while they fled, just moments ago.
The boss room is right past this boulder… so we simply break the wall.
A gate-clearing bomb manufactured by the Samhwa Group — the yield would be more than sufficient. He'd blast through the wall, then use the phase shifter and barrier wall in careful combination to seal Yoon Seol inside the boss room. The phase shifter was a custom piece from the Bureau of Technology's director, and the barrier was a prototype Freya had poured real work into.
If Yoon Seol went all-out, trapping her was pure fantasy — but she couldn't ignore the boss inside with her, either. It would buy more than enough time until he and Seo Yoon reached the hidden piece.
When your stats come up short, this is the kind of thing you have to use well.
Standing against Yoon Seol directly had never been a coherent option in the first place. In all of South Korea, there were exactly five hunters who could measure up to her. The guildmasters of the other three of the Big Four, the director of the Bureau of Technology, and the head of the Craftsmen's Union. Beyond them… honestly, there was no comparison at all.
…Three minutes thirty.
Lee Jun waited for the mana reaction inside the bomb to finish stabilizing. Toss it at the wall with about five seconds left, and the timing would be perfect.
But to a hunter, a wait of mere minutes stretches long enough to feel like an eternity. Dozens of life-or-death judgments could pass and still leave time to spare. Getting through that span without incident seemed like a distant hope.
"What is it you're holding in your hand?"
"………"
Even though it had been held at an angle completely invisible to her, she'd caught it with demonic precision. Not that she could possibly know it was a bomb. From here on… he needed to talk. Very, very well.
"Our bet. Do you remember its terms?"
"Of course. I proposed them myself."
"Then you're aware those terms favor the snowfields, yes?"
"I am. That's why I found it strange. Why wouldn't you revise the terms of the bet?"
Her question carried pure, unvarnished curiosity. A perfectly natural reaction, really.
If Lee Jun could have won the gate bid without the snowfields' help, he could have refused such lopsided conditions outright. Which meant there was only one conclusion to draw: ah, this man is holding a hand so large it doesn't care about terms like those.
"Is what you're holding some stroke of genius capable of leaping over even that kind of unfairness?"
That was why Yoon Seol was asking, presumably. And in truth, Lee Jun was planning to overturn the entire bet using the hidden piece — information only he possessed. He'd execute it seamlessly, and should it somehow go awry, he'd stacked double and triple contingencies to respond with.
But none of that would be revealed. A hand of cards gets laid down only after the game is decided — that was elementary. When you're working a play, the cardinal sin is getting careless.
"I don't know what you're expecting from me, but I'm really not that remarkable a person."
"Mm."
"That psychological game earlier was my one masterstroke. And as it turns out, against overwhelming force, it means nothing."
He said it in the tone of a man resigned to defeat, with just a hint of sullenness left in the edges.
And yet.
"But you didn't give up, did you."
She didn't take the bait.
Why?
"………"
What is this dissonance I've been feeling since a moment ago?
Yoon Seol's reactions were not calculated ones. They didn't come from reasoning — she simply knew. The same way it comes naturally to predict the behavior of someone you've watched for years.
And that was exactly what felt wrong.
"Is there a reason you thought that way?"
"Well. I assumed you'd have a card I don't know about. Was I wrong?"
She believed in him.
Believed that what he'd prepared wasn't finished here. She wasn't his ally, wasn't even his comrade — and yet she believed it.
They'd met barely ten times, and their conversations combined hadn't totaled three hours. What could anyone possibly learn about another person from so brief an acquaintance? Could you truly come to understand someone, to believe there was more to come, from so little?
…Tch.
His head was getting tangled. It might be pointless overthinking — but he didn't want to let this dissonance slide past unanswered.
Twenty seconds.
But the clock kept running. What mattered right now wasn't Yoon Seol — it was the hidden piece, and clearing the gate. He needed to cut this thread of thought.
Ten seconds.
Red eyes met red eyes, each fixed on the other.
Five seconds.
Thk—
Lee Jun threw the bomb toward the crevice behind the boulder. In the same breath, his left hand drew two devices from the Pocket. A phase shifter, and a high-density barrier matrix generator — one he hurled toward Yoon Seol, the other he tossed behind his own back.
"Ms. Seo Yoon! This way!"
Seizing Seo Yoon's wrist, he sprinted forward. Yoon Seol — whether flustered or simply choosing to watch — made no move to respond at all.
Is she weighing the mind game?
Does she think I've still got something up my sleeve?
And regrettably, she was right.
What he'd thrown toward Yoon Seol was not the phase shifter — it was the barrier wall. But Lee Jun always moved in a way that kept both directions in play.
KWAAAAAANG!
The bomb detonated on cue, and the boss room's wall came crashing down.
Truly, the power of a mana bomb compressed to its absolute limit defied imagination.
The boss will come out through that gap any second now.
That would cost five seconds. The boss wouldn't move until the smoke cleared — another five seconds there. The fallback Lee Jun had settled on was simple: relocate the boss monster with the phase shifter. He'd set the device's timer to twelve seconds, so in all likelihood it would seal exactly two occupants inside the barrier — Yoon Seol and the boss. Nothing else.
And just as predicted, a lizard draped in jewels from head to tail appeared, breathing fire.
"A Jewel Salamander."
Yoon Seol murmured it just as the phase shifter activated, and—
…activated?
"And after that, I wonder?"
The phase shifter that should have activated was in Yoon Seol's hand. No — more precisely, she had crossed the distance to where the device lay in the blink of an eye.
"I don't believe you had… any movement-type skills."
"I acquired one recently. Come to think of it, this is its debut. Congratulations on witnessing it."
"…Your hearing is excellent as well, I see."
The barrier matrix generator would activate shortly. Then the three of them would be trapped inside the barrier together with the boss. And if that happened… the bet was as good as lost.
Except.
That was only if it failed.
"Though I suppose machinery isn't your field, ma'am."
"………?"
It hasn't failed yet.
With a faint smile, Lee Jun stepped sideways once — and yanked Seo Yoon firmly to him. At the same instant, the device lying abandoned on the floor began to shriek.
TEE— TEE— TEE— TEE— TEE—
PEEEEEEEEEE—
"………?"
FWAAAAAH—
"Ngh…?!"
A violent pulse erupted outward from the barrier matrix generator. The wave spread ring by ring, and everything living it touched—
—it pushed away.
Yoon Seol, toward the boss monster. Lee Jun and Seo Yoon, toward the passage.
To the still-expressionless Yoon Seol, he said it with a smile.
"This model. It's not a projection type — it's a pulse type."
He hadn't sealed her inside the barrier. He'd sealed her out of it.
A double mind game, accounting for both the terrain shifted by the explosion and Yoon Seol's own actions. Even the illustrious Guildmaster of the snowfields hadn't seen this coming.
"Whew… what a damned pain."
He had, of course, known all along that Yoon Seol would acquire a movement-type skill around now. She's a regressor, after all. Whether she used the skill or not, whether she left the phase shifter alone or grabbed it — every branch had been rigged to trip her.
"Right then, Ms. Seo Yoon. Let's head back."
"…Ah. Yes, sir."
Seo Yoon tried to piece together what had happened in those few short seconds. But she couldn't quite grasp it. That was how fast it had all unfolded. Only one thing was certain: Lee Jun had… succeeded in shaking Yoon Seol loose.
"The Jewel Salamander is Yoon Seol's worst matchup. On her own, it'll probably take her several hours to put it down."
And those several hours weren't a guess — they were a precise figure drawn from hard experience in a previous run. The third raid team had been all but annihilated, and Yoon Seol had slain the thing single-handedly. That time, it had taken roughly three hours and thirty-five minutes. It wouldn't be much different now.
"………"
Come to think of it, this really was a peculiar dungeon. Judged the weakest of all S-Class gates in difficulty, yet its casualty count had been among the highest on record.
But of course — in this run, there would be no deaths.
Because I'm going to make sure of it.
"Shall we be going, then?"
"…Yes, sir."
Lee Jun looked back at Yoon Seol standing squared off against the boss beyond the barrier. Even locked in a duel with the Jewel Salamander, her head was turned toward him. Whether it was shock at what had just been done to her, or simple fascination, he couldn't say. Either way, there was an ease about her — as if the boss were beneath her notice entirely.
To that Yoon Seol, Lee Jun spoke with his lips alone, no sound at all.
—We'll be right back.
A taunt, if it could be called one.
And Yoon Seol, watching, answered soundlessly through the transparent wall.
—You really are fun.
As she gathered mana into both hands, it seemed as though a faint thread of delight had been laid over that cold, expressionless surface.