A Busy Weekend (1)
In this world, North Korea had collapsed long ago, and the northern half of the Korean Peninsula had been absorbed under South Korea's influence. Not entirely, of course.
The northern lands had already been scorched once when the North fell, and with an S-Class gate near Pyongyang plus a dense concentration of high-grade dungeons and gates cropping up across the region, proper residential districts had never really taken root.
What rose in their place was the Pyongyang Magic Special Self-Governing City — a vast research complex packed with facilities, world-class researchers, and a constant stream of rare specimens collected in real time. All manner of studies were underway there.
In the original novel, it was a region you only visited in the mid-to-late story.
"Pyongyang? You want to go to Pyongyang?"
Whatever had been decided between Baek Woohyun and Yeon Hajin clearly hadn't been mutual, because Hajin recoiled and shot the question straight back at him.
"I want to investigate the history of the northern peninsula."
Baek Woohyun answered with brazen calm, but not a single person present believed a word of it.
Assuming for a moment that Woohyun wasn't on his second run through this world, I tried to guess why he would name Pyongyang as a destination.
Even if we were a party of regressors and transmigrators, our current strength was barely enough to scrape through a B-Class gate, let alone an S-Class. And the Union Church operatives meddling around that S-Class gate were no pushovers either.
We can't clear the gate. We can't fight the Church people either.
So why?
Is there something I don't know? Some special plan that could wreck the Church's scheme, or some massive hidden piece that would beef up our combat power?
Woohyun sipped his barley tea with a face of pure shameless steel, while Hajin looked lost in thought. Min Haryeong watched the two of them, thoroughly confused. I decided to put the situation in order.
"Anyone who doesn't want to go to Pyongyang, raise your hand!"
Honestly, I didn't mind either way. He was probably doing this because there was something worth picking up.
I'd originally been thinking of something light for our first outing — Jeju Island, maybe Gangwon Province — but Pyongyang wasn't off-limits. I knew the original novel's info too, and there were a few things in Pyongyang I could snag for myself.
Nobody raised a hand.
"Then it's settled! Next week we head to Pyongyang! Is there anything we need to prepare?"
I wrapped it up and looked to Min Haryeong, who shook her head.
"…Anything administrative, I'll handle as club president. You kids just need to show up."
She looked distinctly unenthusiastic, but she made no move to change the destination.
And just like that, our trip to Pyongyang was decided.
Since it was the first day, the club only sketched out a rough itinerary and plan for Pyongyang before wrapping up.
Afterward, I filled out an overnight leave form and left the dorms. There was a lot to prepare over the roughly three free days stretching through the weekend.
The reason on the form: "visiting home." Of course I didn't have a home to visit, but I trusted the Academy wouldn't dig into every student's family situation that carefully. If they had, they wouldn't have fallen apart in the original novel — and the place wouldn't be crawling with Church spies the way it was now.
Lucky or unlucky, my overnight leave request went through without a single hitch.
I boarded a subway bound for the mainland and killed time reviewing the original novel's information.
What I needed to prepare for right now was the Dungeon Practice Terror Incident — the assault the Church would launch on the Academy with Kang Hyun at the head.
In the game Yeon Hajin had loved before transmigrating — the one with Baek Woohyun as the protagonist — there was only one main character, so you could stop either Kang Hyun's Han Yeoreum rampage terror or the Church's backdoor installation, but not both.
In the original novel, though, Hajin got greedy and tried to stop both at once. Together with Woohyun he opened a two-front war and succeeded in shutting both incidents down simultaneously.
That was where the real problem started.
The Church's scheme hadn't merely been half-blocked — it had been completely dismantled on both fronts at the same time. Naturally, they suspected an internal information leak.
After that, the Church calculated a high probability that even the identities of their infiltrators inside the Academy had been exposed. Before those operatives were discovered and their usefulness exhausted, the Church moved first to inflict maximum damage.
Indiscriminate suicide bombings.
Shortly after the backdoor team and Kang Hyun died and the Church's strategy failed, the higher-ups assessed the situation and ordered every infiltrator still inside the Academy into a full rampage and indiscriminate chaos.
At the same time, they tampered with the "Lava Dungeon" currently being used for dungeon practice, evolving it from an artificial fake dungeon into a genuine B-Class dungeon.
Academy administrators, who had only been watching the Church-manipulated feeds, had no idea what was happening inside the dungeon. They moved instead to suppress the rampaging Church personnel erupting across campus.
In the end, with Hajin, the Academy principal, and the instructors joining forces once they grasped the situation, casualties outside the dungeon were minimized. But the students trapped inside suffered catastrophic losses.
Led by Baek Woohyun, they twisted themselves inside out and barely managed to clear the B-Class dungeon on their own power — but the student survival rate was under thirty percent.
Naturally, chaos followed, and the Academy started going to hell. That was how the original novel played out.
To prevent that disaster, I needed two things above all.
A reliable way to stop the Church faithful planted among the students from going berserk, and a means to clear the B-Class dungeon Lava Depths with as little damage as possible.
Right now, I was on my way to obtain a material item for the dungeon clear: the Ice Dragon's Scale (A).
The Ice Dragon had been the boss of an S-Class gate subjugated long ago, and its corpse was still circulating as a prized material at enormous prices. Even a single small scale sold for tens of millions of won — far beyond my current finances — so I had to take a few shortcuts.
This was the same route Yeon Hajin had used to get the Ice Dragon's Scale in the original novel. The guy had plenty of money at the time and still freeloaded his way to a free scale with some veteran gamer exploit. He could have just bought it.
So I didn't feel particularly guilty about snatching the scale first. If he needed one later, he could pay for it himself.
I already knew he was a vicious rice-grubber from the way he insisted on the subway instead of a portal last time. Probably never kicked the freeloading habit from his pre-transmigration gaming days.
After several transfers, I arrived at the place where I could get the Ice Dragon's Scale.
…It was a zoo.
Being a Friday afternoon, a moderate crowd had formed. I joined the line and made my way to the ticket booth.
The line slowly shrank until I was standing at the counter, speaking to the clerk inside.
"One youth ticket, please."
I set my Academy student ID on the counter while still in uniform. The clerk gave it a cursory check and charged me the youth rate.
An admission band went around my wrist.
That same absurdly tough, hard-to-break friend.
I lined up again at the entrance, fidgeting with the band for a moment, then crossed the zoo threshold with a strangely complicated feeling.
Looking around, the place was packed with little kids who'd come with their parents.
"Whoa, it's so big!"
Every time my eyes met a child's, some indescribable sense of self-loathing washed over me, so I picked up my pace.
Past the eighty-percent parent-and-child groups and the twenty-percent couples, I arrived at the polar region corner.
Specifically, the penguin exhibit.
The zoo's famous mascot, Penglu — celebrated for its adorable looks and extraordinary intelligence.
I had come here to claim the Ice Dragon's Scale sleeping in Penglu's secret stash.
True to its status as an internet sensation, the area around the Penglu course was swarming with people.
I checked the leaflet in my hand. The Interaction with Penglu segment was in ten minutes.
I pushed through the crowd and claimed a seat in the front row, right in front of the enclosure-slash-stage set dressed up like Antarctica.
I sat quietly, scrolling on my phone, and soon the surrounding seats filled as people — kids especially — poured in and sat down.
By the time every seat was taken and the standing-room crowd had packed in as well, a zookeeper climbed onto the set ahead. Music started, announcing the beginning of the show.
"Hello, everyone!! Thank you so much for coming to see Penglu……."
The show kicked off with a level of energy that commanded instant respect. When Penglu appeared, the cheers only grew louder as the zookeeper and the penguin ran through routine after routine in perfect sync.
I found myself staring blankly, half-wondering whether that thing was even an animal, and the time flew by until we hit the show's highlight: a raffle event to pick one lucky person for a direct interaction with Penglu.
"And now, the highlight of the show!! The lucky person who gets to meet Penglu!!! Anyone who wants it, raise your hand high!!!!"
I set aside human dignity for a moment, thrust my hand into the air, and shouted.
"Me!!"
If I didn't get picked here, I'd have to wait for the next time slot. But…
I believe in my face. I have never in my life seen anyone prettier than me. And right now I'm wearing the uniform of Inatium Academy, the most famous school in Korea. I didn't put this on for nothing. This is a guaranteed pick. The structure of the universe demands it.
On top of that, I used an Awakener's privilege to react half a beat faster than the kids, raising my hand and projecting my voice so the brats' pathetic aggro and self-promotion didn't stand a chance against me.
"Aha! The high school girl sitting right up front? You look very determined~! Come on up to the stage!!"
The host's public roasting pinned every gaze in the area on me at once.
Hostile stares from kids who clearly wanted to know who the hell this interloper thought she was. Adults looking at me like I was being ridiculous.
Incredulous snorts of disbelief, and soft little chuckles from people who thought I was cute.
My fragile self-esteem was being shredded to ribbons.
It's fine. I can endure this. All of this is for the sake of protecting the world.
…I carefully ignored the burning heat in my ears and the wetness gathering at the corners of my eyes.