The Blood-Shedding Corps' Challenge
“Go see for yourself, and you'll find out what the Cheolhyeoldan is.”
The shopkeeper waved a hand as if he had no intention of saying anything more.
Ryu Hwi gave him a polite nod, gathered up his purchases, and headed for the plaza. There, he witnessed something truly fascinating.
A man stood at the center of the crowd — a powerfully built figure hardened with muscle, holding aloft a sign that read Cheolhyeoldan (Blood-Shedding Corps).
“This is our world, our land! We were born here, and here we will die!”
Ryu Hwi settled himself a little apart from the residents and watched the scene unfold. He knew the residents harbored deep resentment toward gamers, but he hadn't expected it to mobilize on this scale.
“This is no gamer's world! We must drive out the vermin who crawled in from the outside and take back what is ours!”
An extreme position. And yet this world, in the end, needed gamers. Most of the resources the residents relied on had come from dungeons cleared by gamers in the first place. Conversely, gamers couldn't survive in a game labyrinth on their own either — establishing a foothold there was impossible without the residents' cooperation.
“Our Cheolhyeoldan will prove once and for all that this world has no need of gamers! Tomorrow, we challenge the dungeon!!”
At that declaration, Ryu Hwi immediately clamped a hand over his mouth. Otherwise, a laugh would have slipped out.
Not because he was mocking the Cheolhyeoldan — quite the opposite. He felt genuine interest in the sight of a game labyrinth's residents attempting to clear a dungeon themselves. He'd never even imagined such a thing. A resident of a game labyrinth, raiding a dungeon with their own hands!
[It is impossible.]
YggON offered a negative assessment.
“Impossible?”
“Residents can enter a dungeon, yes. But they too are bound by World of Phantasm's system restrictions. Clearing the dungeon is simply not within their reach.”
“System restrictions?”
“They cannot level up. World of Phantasm's system has locked resident level progression outright.”
In a game like World of Phantasm, built around a level-status system, being unable to level up was a crippling limitation. Ryu Hwi was a special case — he belonged to the separate system known as YggON and had no need of levels — but the residents here had no such luxury. With growth denied to them, no amount of resident strength could carry them through a dungeon.
“Surely that Kugan and his crew know all this. So do they actually have a shot at pulling it off?”
The man of the Cheolhyeoldan kept bellowing to the crowd, and the residents who had gathered in the plaza responded with fevered enthusiasm, cheering him on. It was a scene that laid bare just how far their rebellion against 'gamers' went.
The crowd in the plaza dispersed. The gamers, for their part, seemed to write off the residents' fury as a minor incident — some even speculated it might be a new event. Not a single person understood the residents' anger for what it truly was. Even now, they saw them as nothing more than data belonging to a game labyrinth. And even if someone did understand, they would either decide it was none of their business, or judge the roots too deep for any solution to exist.
“Why did you want me to see that Cheolhyeoldan thing? To show me how far the residents' anger has grown?”
“Meaning there's something else.”
It had certainly been entertaining, but not enough to justify summoning him specifically.
Ryu Hwi recalled the burly man raising his voice at the center of the square. Had that hardened body of his been the result of struggling against the 'level status' system?
“So he's found some kind of hint for clearing it?”
5555 fell silent for a moment. Then—
That was not something he could ignore.
“GA-ES?”
Ryu Hwi thought of Asea. The woman who had framed him had, at some point, become a gamer.
Bugs. In that instant, a certain possibility bloomed in Ryu Hwi's mind.
“Did the Cheolhyeoldan learn how to wield 'bugs' from GA-ES?”
He had no particular grudge against GA-ES itself — but Asea was among their number. Asea was undoubtedly scheming something, which meant he couldn't simply leave GA-ES alone. And above all...
He wanted to see how a game labyrinth's residents would go about raiding a dungeon. He wanted to confirm whether GA-ES had truly pulled something underhanded here.
“Let's check it out, then.”
The next day, the Cheolhyeoldan under Kugan's command set out for the dungeon located near the town: Predator's Nest. In the middle of the forest on the town's outskirts lay a vast, funnel-shaped depression, carved into the earth like an antlion's trap. That pit was the entrance to the dungeon known as Predator's Nest.
Nearly fifty people, Kugan included, arrived at the dungeon's mouth. There should have been a limit to how many could enter at once — fifty should have been impossible.
That was how it should have been.
Ryu Hwi, who had been shadowing the Cheolhyeoldan in secret, watched them file into the dungeon entrance without a moment's hesitation.
“What the hell? Even if they all rushed in like that, they should've been split up according to the max party size, right?”
“Confirmed. This game labyrinth is, systemically speaking, staggeringly half-baked in a great many ways.”
YggON let out an exasperated sigh.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“It has been confirmed that the dungeon's population limit applies to 'gamers' only.”
Ryu Hwi was momentarily speechless.
“So you're telling me that if they're residents, it's not fifty — a hundred of them could waltz right in?”
“Yes.”
Absurd. Absolutely absurd.
“But even with fifty inside, there's no way residents alone could clear the dungeon... I suppose I'll just have to see it with my own eyes.”
Ryu Hwi activated Disguise Set mode, reverting to his original appearance.
“YggON, get ready.”
“I shall deceive the dungeon's system and register Master as a member of the party that entered ahead of you.”
The world's only UR. World of Phantasm's system was far too primitive to stand against it.
Ryu Hwi stepped straight into the dungeon entrance.
Dungeon Information:
Predator's Nest
— Once fallen into the antlion's pit, no one returns. Monsters dwell there. Those who wish to live must abandon all hope. —
Dungeon Ranking:
1st — Asea's Party (GA-ES)
2nd — ──.
Beyond the forest's antlion pit lay an underground expanse. The moment Ryu Hwi entered the dungeon, he checked the party information.
Through YggON's manipulation, the party information had been altered. Of course, he wasn't actually a member of the Cheolhyeoldan — he had merely tricked the dungeon's system on a temporary basis.
“Looks like the Cheolhyeoldan already headed deeper. Fast, aren't they?”
No hesitation in their movements — proof enough that they'd attempted this dungeon more than a few times already. Ryu Hwi began tracking the trail they'd left behind, and before long, the sounds of the Cheolhyeoldan reached his ears. Suppressing his presence so as not to be noticed, he advanced slowly.
In the distance, the Cheolhyeoldan was battling monsters.
Ryu Hwi activated Mind's Eye mode, expanding his field of vision. Centered on Kugan, the leader, some fifty residents moved in perfect coordination.
Blocking their path was a monster known as the Red Scorpion — true to its name, a crimson scorpion whose body alone, tail excluded, exceeded two meters in length. To a seasoned gamer it was hardly a fearsome opponent, but for residents it was a formidable enemy.
The residents raised their shields against the Red Scorpion.
“Guh—?!”
“Ugh!”
A single sweep of its tail sent the front line staggering. The moment they lost their balance, the Red Scorpion lunged at the opening and lashed out again — but then the second rank, standing behind the first, sprang forward and caught the tail on their shields.
“Oh.”
Ryu Hwi couldn't help but be impressed by the residents' reactions. The instant the second attack was blocked, the third rank moved.
Every one of them advanced with grim resolve, spears in hand. At a glance they looked like ordinary spears — but a sinister black aura writhed around each blade.
The residents drove their spears straight into the Red Scorpion's tail. It was disciplined, well-drilled movement, but Ryu Hwi judged it nowhere near enough to crack the scorpion's carapace.
And yet—
“?!”
The moment spear met carapace, the black aura clinging to the blade bored into the Red Scorpion's body. The residents carved the tail clean off.
The Red Scorpion thrashed in agony. Under the residents' relentless spears, its pincers shattered to pieces. Robbed of tail and claws alike, the Red Scorpion could no longer pose any threat at all, and the residents hunted it down without mercy.
Having watched the whole process, Ryu Hwi took a keen interest in their weapons. A spear steeped in black aura. The moment that aura seeped into the Red Scorpion, its carapace had split like tofu under a blade.
“It appears to be a kind of bug. The moment the black aura permeated the Red Scorpion, I observed its carapace's defense dropping to an extreme degree.”
“Meaning it can interfere with a target's data? Isn't that the kind of thing only possible at SSR grade?”
“Master, please secure one of those spears. I wish to determine its structure.”
Ryu Hwi wanted to know the true nature of that black aura himself. He resolved to take a spear by force, if that was what it took.
Is this what GA-ES handed over?
If he wasn't careful, GA-ES could become an even bigger nuisance than Linzea. For now, though, he decided to keep observing the residents.
The Cheolhyeoldan swept through the dungeon's monsters in an unbroken advance. They knew exactly how to respond to every threat, exactly how to fight every enemy. And above all, they had the 'Black Spear' — even a low-level resident's strike dealt a fatal wound with it. The Cheolhyeoldan had prepared dozens of those spears, each one a walking bug.
“It's already the sixth day.”
Each dungeon in World of Phantasm had a time limit for clearing, and once that limit expired, the attempt was deemed a failure. Predator's Nest's limit was ten days.
The Cheolhyeoldan pressed their exploration slowly, without rushing. To accomplish a dungeon clear without a single gamer among them, they must have prepared for a very long time.
Midway through the raid, two men took critical wounds in a fight against a swarm of Ironshell Spiders. Their bodies were already beginning to break down. Even World of Phantasm's recovery potions would not save them now.
Ryu Hwi kept watching from a distance. Beside him lay the corpses of countless monsters — Red Scorpions, Ironshell Spider swarms, and a line of higher-tier species, all dissolving one after another into nothing.
“What happens when a resident dies?”
“Their data returns to Yggdrasil and is reborn somewhere else in a different form. Something close to the concept of reincarnation in the human world.”
“Reincarnation... would memories of a past life remain?”
“It varies by individual. Some may retain them; some may not.”
“Hmm. Reincarnation, huh. If the memories carried over...”
At that moment, Kugan drew something from his coat. A glass vial meant for holding recovery potions — filled with a pitch-black liquid. Kugan forced the medicine down the throats of the two critically wounded men.
Their collapsing bodies began recovering at a startling pace. A short while later, both men rose to their feet as if nothing had happened.
“Residents on the verge of death have been restored. Some manner of bug appears to have been injected into their bodies.”
“Something like that can actually exist?”
It was like touching the very domain of the system — just as YggON did.
“Did you just elevate a mere bug to the same tier as a UR system? How dare you?”
“Oh? Then can you do something like that?”
“Spin the Random Box, Master. Right now. Immediately. The primary culprit behind the numerous limitations on my current abilities is your utter lack of luck.”
“Tch.”
He couldn't bring himself to deny that his luck was wretched.
Black spears, black potions. Suspicious items kept surfacing, one after another — and there might be more beyond what he'd seen.
The Cheolhyeoldan paused to rest. YggON relayed their conversation to Ryu Hwi in real time.
“The guy who was about to die came back to life. This medicine is unbelievable.”
“This feels even more dangerous than the spears.”
“Just like that gamer said. I hate relying on gamers' power, but...”
“If it's something we can use, we use everything. Gamer or whatever else — we use it all.”
“But Boss — GA-ES, was it? Why is that gamer helping us in the first place?”
“Their words: they want to show us that not every gamer is an 'enemy.' Obviously they're scheming something. But I have no intention of being used.”
“Let's show these gamers what we're capable of.”
So GA-ES really is involved after all. The suspicious items they were using had all apparently come from GA-ES. Use everything that can be used — Ryu Hwi agreed with that mindset, but the very existence of GA-ES grated on him terribly.
Asea. Merely thinking of that woman made fury boil up in his chest.
That aside... these spears and this medicine feel unnaturally ominous, don't they? When Asea used her bugs before, I never detected any danger at all. Does it have something to do with Intuition's level?
As Intuition's level rose, more things could be perceived. It was entirely possible he'd failed to detect Asea's bugs simply because his level had been too low back then.
Before long, the Cheolhyeoldan was on the move again.
