Chapter 117: The Trap (3)
Chapter 117: The Trap (3)
A portal emitting a purple light, radiating a malevolent energy that even a civilian could sense.
Every portal discovered until now had emitted a blue light; this one was different in both appearance and aura.
The Japanese Awakeners who witnessed it firsthand swallowed hard, gripped by an ominous feeling and a growing sense of dread.
Normally, any newly discovered phenomenon had to be reported to the outside world immediately.
However, the Japan Branch of the Awakener Association—which essentially functioned as a lobby for the interests of Japan's large clans—hesitated to follow protocol.
It was absurd that they were even debating the matter, but their judgment had been clouded by the high-quality artifacts they had acquired over the past month. They didn't take the potential monsters lurking inside the dungeon seriously.
They were blinded by the thought of the artifacts that might be sleeping within this new dungeon.
Their confidence stemmed from the belief that Japan's Awakeners had grown significantly stronger by farming those recent artifacts. Although the dungeon’s appearance was unprecedented, their pride was at an all-time high after successfully clearing numerous Reinforcement Portals over the last month.
Still, attempting to be "cautious" in their own way, they decided to form a reconnaissance team to enter the purple portal first.
The reconnaissance team was composed of agile, quick-footed individuals from the lower-ranked Awakeners.
For those rank-and-file members who actually had to step inside, the prospect of entering a completely new type of dungeon was a heavy burden. Unlike the executives of the Association or the large clans, they were naturally anxious about heading in without any information.
However, the mission came with hazard pay, allowing them to earn far more than they would in a typical dungeon, so no one backed out.
The Japanese reconnaissance team stood before the portal with uneasy faces. The purple radiance reflected off their skin; they tried to steel their nerves, but it wasn't easy.
"Let's go!"
At the captain's shout, the scouts—wearing gear that was a modern adaptation of traditional Japanese samurai armor—stepped into the purple portal.
Upon entering the dungeon, the first thing they saw was a massive canyon.
A winding path about ten meters wide stretched out before them. While it curved, it maintained a generally straight direction. The cliffs on either side were steep, rising at an angle of over 80 degrees, and appeared to be at least 20 meters high.
Dungeons were usually pitch black due to a lack of light, but this one was a rare exception.
The Japanese scouts, aware that such cases existed, weren't entirely shocked, but they felt an instinctive alarm ringing in their heads.
The interior was dim, like a hazy dawn, but it was bright enough to clearly distinguish the shapes of their surroundings.
The captain used hand signals to order an immediate scout of the area.
Following the command, the team members scattered, searching for clues about artifacts or a way to climb the cliffs. In this kind of terrain, securing the high ground to gain a clear line of sight was the priority.
Despite moving quickly and quietly, the scouts found no significant traces in the desolate, arid, rocky canyon.
When the appointed time came, the team reconvened.
"There's no way to climb up."
Everyone had searched thoroughly, but they had come up empty-handed.
The captain was deeply conflicted.
If we keep going... it's too dangerous...
As a seasoned veteran, his instincts told him that continuing the reconnaissance in this terrain was a massive risk.
But... he had no choice.
If they stopped now, they would have almost nothing to report.
This was a fact known to every member of the team, and they ultimately reached the conclusion to push forward.
"We continue the reconnaissance."
With a collective nod, they cautiously advanced along the canyon path.
The canyon was eerily silent.
The only sounds were their own breathing and the crunch of their footsteps, which felt unsettling. The sense of wrongness persisted. They wondered if, like a Reinforcement Portal, the monsters would only appear later.
After a long, tense period of scouting, they finally reached the end of the canyon.
"What...? Why is there nothing?"
They had traveled the entire length of the path between the cliffs, yet they found no traces of anything.
It was utterly baffling. They had spent two hours advancing with extreme caution, only for nothing to happen—a first for any of the scouts.
They hurried back to the entrance to report their findings. Seeing that nothing had changed even then, they finally exited the dungeon.
Unbeknownst to the Japanese scouts, demons were watching them in silence from atop the canyon cliffs.
They had intentionally left the scouts alone, watching them quietly. The very structure of the dungeon was a trap designed to avoid detection; the narrow canyon kept the humans below while the demons remained hidden above.
The demons' goal was to cross over to Earth and establish a foothold, which required them to hold out for a week. Therefore, they had absolutely no reason to reveal themselves early.
They had watched the handful of scouts enter and leave, choosing not to strike simply to sow confusion among the humans.
The Japan Branch of the Awakener Association found the scout's report strange, but they didn't feel a major sense of crisis. They assumed that, as with Reinforcement Portals, the monsters might appear later, and they figured they could just proceed with caution by sending a few more scout teams.
After one more reconnaissance mission turned up nothing, their greed to excavate artifacts took over, and they began the operation immediately.
The demons had even hidden a few artifacts at the bottom of the canyon on purpose. Because of this, the Japanese Awakeners felt no sense of danger as time passed.
Having successfully unearthed over ten artifacts, the Japanese Awakeners even began to consider themselves lucky.
A dungeon with no monsters and only buried treasure.
The Japanese Association, viewing it as a "bonus stage" in a game, grew giddy as they excavated the entire canyon.
They even refrained from making a formal announcement, claiming the investigation was still ongoing, out of a paranoid fear that other countries might demand a share of the spoils if the news got out.
And then, on the seventh day.
The demons began to move.
The laborers, who were deep into the excavation, suddenly felt shadows falling over them.
Even in the dawn-like light of the dungeon, the shift in shadows was impossible to miss.
They looked up, their mouths hanging open as they saw monsters—the very image of demons from human legend—flapping their wings and descending from the canyon walls.
After a week of finding nothing, these never-before-seen monsters had appeared. And because so many of these literal demons were swarming down from above, the scene felt surreal.
"Uh..."
At the sound of a worker's dumbfounded groan, the people around him, who had been hunched over with shovels searching for artifacts, looked up to see what was happening.
The canyon became a literal slaughterhouse.
Because they thought there were no monsters, they had used F-Rank Awakeners as laborers, with D-Rank Awakeners being the strongest among them to act as supervisors. Even if they had been armed, they wouldn't have stood a chance; caught unarmed in the middle of an excavation, they were slaughtered without being able to lift a finger.
Against a force they couldn't resist even under normal circumstances, the surprise attack left them with no recourse.
"Aaaagh!!"
"Save me!"
Screams echoed through the canyon. The Awakeners who tried to flee in a panic fell into despair when they realized the demons had already seized the exit.
The demons, relishing the long-awaited slaughter, immediately surged out of the dungeon.
At the purple portal in Aokigahara, at the foot of Mt. Fuji.
The area was being heavily guarded, but demons suddenly poured out of the portal and ambushed the sentries.
Fortunately, the guards were of a higher caliber than the laborers inside and were spread out over a wide area, which allowed them to buy a small amount of time.
However, they could not escape the demons' superior physical abilities, and in the end, they were all killed.
The only silver lining in this catastrophe was that the news was being relayed to the outside world in real-time.
Because the clans had been monitoring each other to prevent anyone from pocketing artifacts, they had installed CCTVs and various sensors around the purple portal. This allowed them to witness the anomaly as it happened.
Watching the screens as demons manifested in reality, the executives of the large clans were struck dumb with horror.
Only then did they realize just how foolish they had been.