Hounds of the Womb
The girl with the snow-white hair spoke first, her voice bright and a little nervous.
“My name is Jenia. I’m the vanguard. A junior adventurer… and a winter mystic.”
“Moare. Rearguard and support. Mid-class adventurer. Mage.”
We left the table and crossed the street with the three of them in tow, stepping into the café opposite. A café. It was a facility I had never once used before the war. And yet here I was, long after the war, after the world had fused with a fantasy realm. I glanced at the honeyed liquor placed in front of Vertea and spoke.
“Ha Jinwoo. Vanguard, beginner adventurer. This is Bell, my servant.”
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. This unit is Bell, a halfling and fire mystic, rearguard, and a junior adventurer.”
Mystic. The unfamiliar word made me look at Vertea, but she simply sipped from the cup she held in both hands. Perhaps it was too basic a concept to explain. I was just about to swallow my curiosity when Jenia’s eyes widened.
“Beginner…?”
“Yes. I only became an adventurer today.”
“That explains why your gear looked so sparse…”
Jenia glanced at her companion with those drooping, worried eyes. Her concern was so palpable I could almost reach out and touch it. She was probably wondering whether it was safe to adventure alongside the lowest-ranked beginner. But there was no need to worry.
“I may be a beginner adventurer, but I have plenty of combat experience.”
If anyone in this entire labyrinth had more battlefield hours than me, I had yet to meet them. Of course, if some fantasy native claimed four thousand years of experience I would have nothing to say. Still, these blood-stained girls were nowhere near that level.
“You mentioned something about eastern nobility?”
I even had a convenient cover story. My East Asian features led them to assume I came from the East, a land where the warrior class formed the privileged elite. They supposedly trained from childhood and frequently entered labyrinths for martial pilgrimages. Vertea had whispered that this explanation would suffice, so I answered without hesitation.
“I don’t recall saying that.”
“Who do you take us for, idiots? It’s obvious from a glance that you have noble blood.”
She was right. That same noble air had made it awkward to dig through trash cans as a child. “All right, then let’s do this. We’ll take one request as a test run. Just so you know, we don’t have a single coin to our names.”
“Fine by me.”
“We won’t pick anything dangerous. We have to be careful too, and we’ve already sold everything we could.”
“I understand. I already told you that.”
“We really don’t have anything.”
“How many times do I have to—”
“It needs to be crystal clear.”
Moare crossed her arms and snorted. She clearly didn’t trust me much. I couldn’t blame her.
“It’s not like money appears if we sit still, and we have debts to repay.”
Yet the real reason they were willing to hire me was simpler. They needed to pay compensation for the death of their previous party leader—who had turned into a monster and been slaughtered—along with the debts claimed by the Adventurers Guild.
I was grateful Vertea was with me. Many adventurers borrowed startup funds from the guild and literally fought until they died. How fortunate I was to avoid that fate.
Once the decision was made, things moved quickly. I led the three girls—who were each two to three heads shorter than me—toward the guild. The old district office building lay one block south of the café where we had drunk tea.
“Ah, party registration? May I see your adventurer tags?”
The clerk took the four tags, examined them carefully, then offered us available requests. We chose one, formally added our names to the party roster, and the process was complete. All that remained was to travel to the request site ourselves.
I stepped out of the guild building and looked at the paper in my hand.
Request Overview: Eliminate 12 fairy entities in Dongdaemun District.
Details: As proof of subjugation, extract and submit the fairies’ tongues. The entire tongue from root to tip must remain intact.
Reward: 50 Labyrinth silver coins, 50 adventurer reward points.
For some reason I could read the text perfectly. It wasn’t surprising anymore, but the more I saw it, the more questions it raised. What principle allowed this? It had been the same since waking from cryosleep—Russian sounded like Korean, and I could communicate with Vertea. There had to be something behind it, yet asking would sound too strange. Maybe I should have questioned Vertea earlier.
Anyway, the request didn’t look difficult. The part about hunting fairies did nag at me, though. Then again, the Church of Light turned out to be villains, and the Dark God was… well, an evil god, but still. Whatever.
I handed the request sheet to Vertea.
The road to Dongdaemun District was long. A car would have made it quick… I wondered if any vehicles still ran.
“Don’t we take a car?”
“A car…?”
“I mean one of those labyrinth carriages.”
“Ah, you mean a labyrinth carriage? Hehe, we don’t have the funds for something like that… Oh, but we used to have a labyrinth cart!”
“Labyrinth cart?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you? Umm… it’s a cart with four wheels that folds and unfolds easily! It’s made of light material so you usually strap it to your bag. It’s really handy for carrying lots of stuff!”
As expected, anything modern found in the labyrinth seemed to earn the “labyrinth” prefix. Shopping carts became labyrinth carts, cars became labyrinth carriages. Still, it was reassuring to know they existed. Walking across Seoul without a vehicle would take forever.
“Ah, but… we sold it, so we don’t have one anymore. It was really convenient…”
“You were short on money, I take it.”
“Yes… that’s how it went.”
Jenia let out a big sigh and slumped her shoulders. She was clearly the sociable type—talkative, energetic, friendly. The way her eyes sparkled without prejudice at almost anything was rather cute. If I had a child, she would be about… no, she was probably older than that. Before I knew it, a satisfied smile had formed on my lips.
“Ah, I’ve been talking about myself again! Jinwoo, if you have any questions, ask me anything! I’ll answer everything!”
“How old are you two?”
“Oh, Moare and I are both seventeen this year! We came from the same orphanage!”
“Jenia.”
“What? We’re in the same party! It’s fine to tell him this much, isn’t it?”
Orphan. A sense of kinship rose inside me. As a senior orphan myself, I wanted to share all kinds of stories in sympathy, but that would leave Vertea—who might not even be an orphan—feeling excluded. I held my tongue.
“Are there orphanages in the labyrinth?”
“Yes! Well, it’s a dangerous profession, right? There are just so many cases where adventurer couples die.”
It made sense. At the same time, it gave me a strange sense of déjà vu. It felt similar to how government orphanages in South Korea had multiplied during the war and been converted directly into soldier training centers. Whoever had designed this Adventurers Guild was a capable person. Not necessarily a good one, though.
But even that conversation gradually died out. Once we left the central district, the massive wall I had seen upon first entering the adventurers’ street came into view. The towering barrier that divided districts looked less like medieval fortification and more like a giant bunker. It was impossible to tell how long it had taken to build. Was this too the work of magic? Or a natural change caused by the labyrinth?
While I was lost in thought, the other three approached the gate with practiced familiarity.
“Passing through?”
“Yes! Adventurer Jenia and three companions!”
The man in full plate armor accepted the offered tags, inspected them thoroughly, then returned them.
“Very well. May your exploration be safe.”
“Thank you!”
Following Jenia’s polite bow, we passed through the open gate and the labyrinth unfolded once more. This was no longer the relatively safe fragment of Seoul that could still be called a city. This was the real thing—a place where genuine danger lurked. The place that had promised me blessings and remained a seductive unknown. My old hometown, Seoul.
With anticipation in my heart, I followed Jenia outside. The labyrinth stretched before us.
I had no memory of actually visiting Dongdaemun District before the war. At most I had passed through it; I had never done anything there. When I wandered the streets clutching my starving stomach in search of anything to eat, I had no real sense of geography. The same went for Seongdong District. I could not claim that the sights before me felt familiar.
“Can’t we head straight to Dongdaemun?”
“No, there’s no direct path that way. The bridge at Cheonggye 8-ga intersection collapsed… We’ll cut through the residential complex ahead, head north, and cross Biudang Bridge.”
“Stay alert. At this point, nothing that appears should surprise you.”
Jenia and Moare spoke to me in turn. I nodded while using my micro-current to sense Vertea taking position in the rear. Vigilance was second nature to me. There were almost no gaps in my detection, and if I was willing to endure the strain on my brain and nerves, I could keep it active permanently. If I had time to rest afterward, there was no need to bear that burden at all.
I immediately expanded my awareness across a wide area, strapped the shield to my left arm, and drew the mace with my right hand. We passed through an apartment complex that had once been luxurious. Towers rose on both sides, paths cut between them, grass grew wild. Yet the park remained. Simple slides and play equipment, weathered by time until only fragments of their shapes remained, still stood their ground.
As we walked between them, I spoke.
“Is there anything I should know?”
The answer came from an unexpected source—Vertea.
“As this unit understands it, Seongdong District is also known as the Womb. Inside its various structures, unique monsters native to the district are incubated. If they detect intruders, they burst forth to intercept them.”
She had been refraining from speech to avoid drawing attention, so this was surprising. The information must be that important. According to the map Jenia had produced, our destination was only about three hundred meters away.
“The entities we must be especially wary of are…”
I felt approaching presences and cut Vertea off.
“They’re here. Five of them.”
“Eh? Jinwoo?”
“Prepare for combat.”
“Understood, Master.”
I didn’t know how to handle a mace properly, but I had learned some suppression martial arts. I drew the mace back, raised it to head height, and extended my shield. Keeping my stance firm, I watched the presences drawing closer through the undergrowth.
Something burst from the bushes with loud barking. Black fur, faces resembling the fiercest dogs, and muscular bodies that evoked tigers. Hideous hounds that looked as if they had climbed straight out of hell.
“Labyrinth hounds!”
I tightened my grip on the mace and stepped forward.
“Jinwoo, when I stop them—”
They were fast. Their momentum was ferocious. They looked like tigers and dogs crossbred after being pumped full of steroids. Their appearance was designed to instill terror. Yet I remained unmoved.
I exhaled, releasing the tension in my body. My coiled muscles screamed as they launched the iron mass forward. With a sharp whistle of tearing air and the familiar recoil against my palm, the accelerated mace—timed perfectly for the moment they lunged—smashed into a skull. The hound’s head exploded without even a yelp.
One down. Four remained. Normally I would be bitten now. Overwhelmed. Even the foot I had stepped forward with would become a weakness. They hunted in packs and turned even the instant their prey attacked into an opportunity. But not this time.
Using my planted foot as a pivot, I dragged the lowered mace back and swung it upward with all my strength. The sensation was different this time. I had noticed it before—each strike seemed to carry increasing impact. I had aimed to shatter the neck bones, but the head had disintegrated into scattered fragments. I had planned to use the corpse as a meat shield. My calculations had been off.
Even as the chunks of flesh flew, my shield was already moving ahead of conscious thought. The third hound charged. Its gaping maw clamped onto the shield instead of my body.
CRUNCH!
The impact shoved me backward. I lowered my stance and endured. The moment the force subsided, I thrust the shield forward and the dog was flung away.
“Jenia, now!”
She had already closed the distance. Cold energy glowing pale blue gathered in her hand as she swung a blade-shaped mass of frost with a sharp cry. To my eyes it didn’t look like a cutting edge, yet wherever the icy blade passed, heads fell from frozen necks.
A beast lunged at the opening left by Jenia’s swing—only to be skewered through the head by a flying piece of rubble and sent tumbling. Then—
WHOOSH!
Familiar flames surged up and consumed the final beast with perfect accuracy.
All five hounds lay dead. It was an impressive feat for a squad without even a machine gun. But there was no time for celebration or self-congratulation. In the heavy silence that followed, I shook the blood and flesh from my mace and spoke.
“Shall we keep going?”
They were Russia’s biological weapons. Sabaka. The familiar shapes were unmistakable. Nightmares of the trenches born from military dogs refined beyond mere improvement and remade into living weapons. My old enemies, whom I had slaughtered endlessly across eighty years of battlefields.
Somehow the sight felt almost welcome. I let out a dry chuckle and quickened my pace.