The Red Portal (1)
And so, at last, I arrived at the Academy.
If the briefing from a few days ago was anything to go by, today was going to be brutal.
"A practical at the end of the semester..."
It was a class I couldn't begin to understand, but according to the teacher, With grades like yours, you think you have time to sleep?
Of course they weren't the kind of grades that let you sleep. If I so much as mentioned getting a decent night's rest, I'd probably be in for a full personality overhaul. I'd even gotten dumped over those grades, after all.
The site we'd be entering for this Marksman Department practical was an instance dungeon that had appeared nearby — an instanced, as people called them. The word used to belong to games, but a few years back, unimplemented dungeons had started showing up in the real world. Dungeons with no narrative whatsoever, where some of the mechanisms hadn't even been properly built out. Their difficulty and danger were supposed to be lower than those of ordinary dungeons.
"That's what I thought, anyway..."
I muttered it under my breath, too quiet for anyone to hear. Because none of this made any sense.
"This is the instance dungeon you'll be entering today. Take it lightly, let your guard down, and I'll fail you. Keep that in mind."
Didn't the grading already wrap up...?
That was the teacher's call, so I let it slide. But what the hell was this?
This is supposed to be a low-difficulty dungeon?
Anyone with eyes could see that the portal's blazing crimson was a color that screamed Don't come in — a warning that it would kill anyone who did. And in genre fiction, dungeons like this were always either a double dungeon or a ridiculously dangerous one. That was how it went, most of the time.
Anyway, it looked like something you absolutely should not walk into — and yet not a single person was pointing that out.
Can they not see this?
The darker a dungeon's color, the higher its difficulty. That was common knowledge among common knowledge. In this whole gathering, I was the only one looking at this ominous dungeon for what it actually was.
No — there seemed to be one more. But for some reason, she showed no intention of stopping anyone. She looked tense, and yet somehow at ease. Familiar, almost. Something like that.
"Jeong Sowon..."
She was famous for that perpetually deadpan face, and for treating anyone who approached her with ice-cold indifference. Did she know something about this portal? If she understood what this was — how dangerous this situation really was — she should obviously have been stopping us.
Then again, I wasn't moving either, so I wasn't much better. But I couldn't move even if I wanted to.
Because I wasn't sure.
I couldn't be certain, and so I couldn't act. What if the portal being red was just my imagination? If it came to that, there'd be no taking it back. Marksman Department dead last files a false report of a red portal because he didn't want to do the practical. If things blew up like that, I could even get expelled.
That portal, rippling with crimson, was the kind of thing that would take active-duty high-ranking hunters to resolve. A portal that dangerous. And yet, in all this time, there had never been a single report of a red portal appearing in an instance dungeon, nor a single fatality. Instance dungeons were treated like a field trip for kids.
"Group 1, you're up first."
The practical started with Group 1, so if something serious happened up front, there was a good chance the rest of the entries would be halted. The problem was that I was in Group 1. I'd thought, there's no way I'd end up in Group 1 — and then I actually was.
Please let nothing happen...
I could pray all I wanted, but the truth was obvious without thinking about it: if we walked into that blood-red gate, something was going to happen. And that something was almost certainly not going to be good. I hoped I'd just seen it wrong, but...
"Enter."
I checked that the pistols were seated in the holsters on both thighs, and that I had plenty of ammo ready. Then I started walking toward the red portal.
"Gulp."
The sound of me swallowing was painfully loud. There was no way not to be tense. I had no idea how this portal looked to everyone else, but to me, it was the entrance to hell. And yet this was a reality I couldn't refuse. That was the miserable part.
If there was a silver lining, it was that Group 1 was a particularly special group. It had two number-ones from the Marksman Department.
Jeong Sowon, first in the Marksman Department. Park Yeonho, first from the back in the Marksman Department.
First from the back — which was a sad way of saying dead last. Thanks to that, though, the fact that I was with Jeong Sowon was at least a little reassuring. She was the Marksman Department's top student, and the salutatorian among all the freshmen. She was the one ranked just below Rosemary. The very fact that she could compete with that "genius of the century" for the top rank was absurd in itself.
And even if it was red, comparing an ordinary gate to an instance dungeon was a stretch. If I had to put a number on it, maybe it sat around yellow or orange among regular dungeons. Even gates like that were generally too much for Academy students.
I don't know.
Still, I was going in — because I had the ring Amelia had given me. First, I should send a message. Devices didn't work inside dungeons, and if I pulled one out in front of the teacher I'd just get points deducted.
With that message sent as insurance, my preparations were complete. I followed the rest of Group 1 toward the ominously glowing red portal.
Zzzt—
Starting from my hands, I passed through the portal, and the transfer was complete.
The first thing I felt upon entering the dungeon was unease. A clammy, unpleasant, heavily sinking air, felt in the order my body had crossed through — and mana that clung, thick and viscous. If even I, someone who couldn't channel mana and whose sensitivity scores were abysmal, could feel this, I didn't need to ask how the others were taking it.
I opened my eyes in that clinging air and took in the dungeon. A cave, or maybe an underground cavern. It was dark and damp throughout. One wall was thick with moss, and stones that looked like stalactites hung long from the ceiling. A pile of rubble was heaped in one corner, and beyond it, a passage that looked like a fork in the path.
Fragmentary observations, but one thing I could be sure of: this place was anything but ordinary.
"This is weird."
Jeong Sowon grimaced as if the air itself offended her, and one of the others muttered the same thing under his breath. In a silence so complete it felt like nothing existed here but us, I felt something I couldn't put into words.
It really was a red portal?
I'd been through several practicals by now, and I'd had a fair number of chances to enter instance dungeons. But they'd been nothing like this. Not just the look of the place — the atmosphere, the presence of the mana. Every last one of those things was different.
And I'd only just noticed this, but at the very least, ordinary dungeons didn't have what looked like human skeletons scattered around.
"A skeleton...!"
One of the mid-ranked group members had spotted it late, and let out a startled shout. The already grim atmosphere turned vicious in an instant. Glaring at the one who'd shouted would have been justified even after weathering an ambush.
I yanked the pistol from my thigh holster and scanned our surroundings. Tense as we were, watching every direction — there was nothing. But that was only yet. There was no telling if some unseen enemy was already targeting us.
We stayed on alert for a long time, but the dungeon didn't change. At last, we reached a point where we could be reasonably sure we were still safe. When nothing happened even after all that time, everyone finally eased their stances.
"Sorry..."
The one who'd shouted offered a careful apology. Given what had just happened, a bigger apology seemed in order — but raising your voice to bow your head in a place like this? It was no different from asking to be killed. We'd just gotten lucky this time. That was how we had to think about it and move on.
The group accepted the apology and looked around.
"This is... weird. It's alien."
Someone muttered. As if anyone here didn't already know this place was wrong. But there was no way to describe it except "weird" and "alien." Because we didn't know. It was something none of us had ever experienced, something that had never even been documented.
A red portal in an instance dungeon. It was almost impossible to believe. But the abnormally high concentration of mana in the air made the reality of it hit home. High mana density meant high difficulty. The red I'd seen with my own eyes hadn't been just my imagination.
I looked at Jeong Sowon, who'd seemed like she knew something. She was staring at one corner of the fork in the path, her face unreadable.
Does she actually know something...?
Jeong Sowon had always had a habit of staring blankly into space, but she wasn't the type to zone out in a situation that felt this dangerous. One of the group members, still wound tight, asked her.
"Do you see something?"
"No. Not yet."
Jeong Sowon turned her head, gave that clipped answer, and went back to staring down the fork.
Meanwhile, one of the others had been trying to get a connection to the outside for a while now.
"The connection — think it'll go through?"
"No. It's a bust. Instance dungeons are supposed to have reception. This isn't a normal instance."
Radio communication devices were regulated by mana density. Mana was an intangible force that blocked radio waves. In this suspicious instance dungeon, where that force ran so thick, there was no way a signal would get through.
We were cut off.