GGC
"We're going in."
Eleven people entered Kim Nari's Gate in total.
The Gate's owner, Kim Nari herself; five combat personnel including Garam; and five scouts, counting me and Keira. Which meant three specialist trackers had come along besides me.
All three were outside invites—people who'd already made names for themselves. Looking at the roster, you could tell how carefully Kim Nari had put this together. And how much risk she was taking by bringing an unknown like me along.
First up: B-class Keeper Hwang Jinyoung.
His ability was underground vein detection. He had nothing else—and that alone had gotten him to B-class. We weren't hunting ore veins this time, but the man was a master at finding things buried underground. For a team that needed to locate a Poison Mole, he might be exactly what we needed.
Next: B-class Keeper Yoon Miseon.
Yoon Miseon's ability was tied to her nose. She could smell things most people couldn't—scentless things, even. Enemy weak points. The smell of an incident waiting to happen. It was useful for more than just tracking; it had real combat applications too. Plenty of people said that if her accuracy and activation rate were just a little higher, she would've been an S-class Keeper for sure.
Kim Nari was clearly hoping Yoon Miseon could pick up the Poison Mole's toxin. Before we went in, she'd even taken a sample of the poison scent from Kim Nari's sister.
And last: A-class Keeper, Tracker Ria.
Stunning looks, skill that outstripped even that, and the halo of a mega-corp crew membership. Was there anyone in Korea who didn't know her face? Flip through the channels long enough and you'd catch her on at least one of them every day.
True to her moniker, she specialized in tracking. Monsters were the baseline—she could find animals and plants just as well, and her skill worked not only in the real world but online too. Like Yoon Miseon's, a skill that exceptional didn't just affect phenomena; it touched concepts. Of course, that was only possible because Ria's stats were dumped entirely into her senses. That concentration was what let her skill hit maximum efficiency.
People constantly argued about what would've happened if Ria's stats had been more evenly distributed. Some said she'd have been an ordinary B-class. Others insisted she'd have become a perfectly hexagonal S-class. The debates always ended the same way—with Ria herself stepping in to mediate.
What Kim Nari wanted from Ria was obvious: track the Poison Mole itself. Pulling in an A-class Keeper on short notice couldn't have been easy. That was Kim Nari's influence showing—even though she was only a C-class Keeper herself.
And then there was me.
Looking at those three, I finally understood what Kim Nari wanted from me. She was genuinely betting on my ears.
The ears that had heard a person's groans from fifteen meters underground. The ears that had caught twenty rats in an hour inside a ten-story building full of whirring machinery. My hearing wasn't a skill, so it wasn't exactly reliable—but what mattered was that it was a completely different kind of search source. By including me on the team, she now had four distinct abilities hunting the Poison Mole.
She hadn't taken on the risk of "me and Keira" for nothing. She wanted even a slightly better chance of curing her sister. It was a cold, rational, strategic choice. It reminded me all over again that not just anyone gets to lead a crew.
I hoped this choice of hers would pay off. And I'd help—not with my ears, but with magic.
"We'll head to the moles' habitat first," Garam said, taking the briefing. "As you were told beforehand, the moles appear suddenly from underground. Stay alert at all times."
Staying alert didn't make them easy to stop or dodge. The crew leader's own sister had been poisoned when a mole suddenly burst up and raked her ankle. That was why, for this expedition, every Keeper had wrapped their ankles and feet in two or three layers of cut-resistant armor. Before now, that kind of gear hadn't been necessary. Ordinary moles couldn't kill you with a scratch or two. The only real problem was the Poison Mole—and it had only appeared once. The day the leader's sister got poisoned. Before that and after that, nothing.
The two previous expeditions that had gone looking for it hadn't even caught a glimpse of its tail.
"Moles are B-class monsters. The Poison Mole is estimated at A-class. Scout Keepers, please don't engage—leave the fighting to the combat personnel."
The moles were strong. That was another reason the last two expeditions had come up empty. The closer you got to the habitat, the more moles showed up, and hastily assembled teams couldn't hold them off. This time, the team was built from strong people only. The combat roster, including Garam, was two A-class and three B-class. That was enough firepower to beat a mid-tier Drake head-on.
"All right. Moving out."
The team started walking west at a measured pace.
Kim Nari's Gate was mountain terrain. The place we'd arrived was mountains. Where we were going was mountains. Every area already searched was mountains. For the record, the Gate's full size still hadn't been determined—estimates put it at roughly the Korean Peninsula or larger. And moles could appear in any of that terrain. So you always had to stay sharp.
Like right now.
"Everyone stop! They're coming from below!"
Tracker Ria was the first to notice, of course. She pointed at three people.
"Three of them total. There, there, and there! Watch out, all of you—they're coming up now!"
Ria was precise. The moment she finished speaking, moles the size of human heads burst out of the ground right where those three had been standing.
"Kyung?"
Round and fluffy—cute, at a glance.
"Kyaang!"
Then you saw the razor claws, and that feeling vanished instantly.
"Attack!"
And the moles were fast. The combat team's strikes only landed on one of the three; the other two vanished back into the earth.
"They're coming up again. Everyone get ready!" Garam took command of the situation.
Before, everyone would have had to tense up the way he said. Moles underground were fast, and you never knew where they'd surface. But this party had Ria—the one with every stat dumped into her senses. Once again, she pinpointed exactly where the moles would emerge.
"There, and there!"
The two A-class combat Keepers each took a spot. A mole whose exit you already knew was hard to call B-class. The A-class Keepers killed both of them in a single exchange.
"We'll take a short rest to reorganize. Stay alert even while resting."
Once things settled, the group paused. They had mole corpses now, which meant work to do. Ria turned one of the bodies over, examining it from every angle.
"Well? Think you can track them?" Kim Nari's voice was raw with hope.
Ria smiled. "Of course. That way. These little guys came from over there."
"That direction is… the opposite of the habitat."
"Is it? But they definitely came from there."
"Then we should change course. What we call the habitat is just the place where moles show up most often. With your ability, Ria, that direction is more likely to be the real nest."
Kim Nari's face brightened a little. She looked glad that this expedition was already unfolding differently from the last two.
"Thank you. A-class Keepers really are something else."
"Please. Everyone here already knows that."
When Ria said that, the other two nodded.
"No poison scent yet, but I can smell these moles coming from that direction," Yoon Miseon said.
"The mole tunnels definitely lead that way," Hwang Jinyoung added. "All three of them."
Damn. The other two had real expertise too. Naturally, everyone's eyes turned to me.
"Uh… well…"
What was I supposed to say? That I'd memorized the moles' footsteps? Their heartbeats? No—was that even a thing? Farts?
No. Be shameless. It's a persona anyway.
But the more I thought, the blanker my mind went. Maybe I could just coast past this?
Then a resonance carried through my head.
There's still one left in the mole tunnel. It's moving slowly in the direction those people are talking about.
Keira. I said exactly what she'd told me.
"…There's a mole moving in that tunnel right now. If we follow it, we should be fine."
"What?"
The people around me looked at me with skeptical eyes. Inevitable, really. I was only an F-class Keeper, and my ability had nothing to do with scouting.
"Is that so? Should we leave right now, then?"
Still, Kim Nari put her weight behind my words. She'd already tested me—she must have decided to trust me fully.
"No. It's moving slowly, so we should be fine. And since there's a tunnel, following it won't be a problem."
Then an unexpected voice backed me up further.
"He's right. There is one more. About twenty meters out, I think… How did you find it?"
Ria. She'd checked in the span of a few seconds.
"Just how good are your ears? Were they like that even before you became a Keeper? Can you tell me what your Sense stat is?"
Suddenly she was firing questions at me. Even for a specialist scout who'd been through every kind of ordeal, my ability must have been something new. Personally, I found Ria's ability more amazing—spotting a mole twenty meters underground in an instant, and without magic.
"Here isn't really the place… Maybe I'll have a chance to tell you later."
"Ah—sorry. Got a little excited there."
Either way, once Ria confirmed I was right, the way people looked at me changed again. This time it was more like curiosity and respect. That was just as uncomfortable. I hadn't found anything—Keira had.
I wanted to get stronger too. But with a potential of 8/15—no, now 11/15—could I even manage it?
The group kept moving, following the mole shifting underground. With Hwang Jinyoung able to sense the empty spaces—the tunnels—there was no risk of losing the trail. Moles appeared now and then to harass us, but with Ria's senses and the A-class Keepers' strength combined, the harassment barely registered as such.
Three hours like that. The group arrived deep in some remote mountain range.
"The scent is strongest here," Yoon Miseon said. "Still no poison, though."
"Most of the traces are concentrated here," Ria added.
"Dozens of tunnels dug deep underground," Hwang Jinyoung reported. "This looks like the habitat."
Going by the Keepers alone, we'd found the right place. But we couldn't go any further. The moles' nest was a hundred meters below us.
"…Is there another way down?" Kim Nari asked carefully.
All three Keepers shook their heads. No method they could offer. Kim Nari's gaze turned toward me.
I didn't have one either. My magic, Trace, could only tell me where the moles were—it didn't find paths.
"I don't really…"
"I see. All right, then. Let's search the area first."
There was a faint bitterness in Kim Nari's voice.