GGC
We searched all day long, but made no progress at all. All we managed to catch were dozens of ordinary moles.
I had wondered if we might use the tunnels the moles traveled through, but the creatures never surfaced straight from their dens. They wandered every which way first, so the idea was useless.
“We’ll call it a day here,” someone said.
The party moved to a spot known to be relatively safe and pitched the tents.
When we first entered, I had thought finding a mole would be easy. I had magic, after all. Yet the poison moles never showed so much as a whisker, and the countdown kept ticking closer. In a day or two, Kim Nari’s little sister—already fighting for her life outside the Gate—would die.
“Something’s off.”
“Hm? What is?”
Keira was still being treated as a man, so she shared my tent. Not that we could do anything in there, but just having her close was enough to make me happy.
“A poison mole can’t appear in this environment.”
“What do you mean?”
Keira’s real voice—voice-modulation magic switched off—filled the tent. Slightly husky, cool and rational. After only a day without it, I had missed it terribly.
“This mole is a species I know. In my world we call them ‘Moiki.’”
“Moiki?”
Strange pronunciation. I wondered how the name had come about.
“It just means ‘mole’ in the common tongue of Archenia.”
The romance drained out of it at once. Other worlds weren’t so special after all.
“So it’s pretty much the same over there?”
“We’re the same kind of people.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, so?”
“When a Moiki comes into contact with a mana concentration, it mutates. The poison mole—Nero Moiki in my language—is the most common mutation.”
Mutation? Or evolution? What was this, a Pokémon?
“What’s a mana concentration?”
“A place or object where vast amounts of mana have piled up. High-grade Magic Stones, mana plants that have lived more than ten years, or regions where mana has stagnated and can’t flow—those are all mana concentrations.”
“So you’re saying there’s no mana concentration inside this Gate?”
“From everything I saw today, no.”
“Magic Stones are inside monster bodies, so those are out. What about mana plants? This Gate is famous for its plants.”
“Things like wild ginseng count as mana plants. I haven’t seen any of the ones I know around here. The plants this Gate is famous for are good for medicine, not for gathering mana.”
“Then what do we do? We have to find a poison mole. No—why did one appear in the first place if the environment can’t produce them?”
“That’s exactly what’s strange. Unless someone interfered…”
Something flashed through my mind. She must have thought the same thing, because we spoke at the same time.
“Spatial transfer magic!”
“Damn goblins!”
For the record, the “damn” came from Keira. When I stared at her, she flushed a little, looking flustered.
“Ahem… That goblin was probably mutated by a mana concentration too. A goblin that can use spatial magic is on a completely different level to begin with.”
“So someone’s using Magic Stones or something to strengthen the monsters?”
“We don’t know that. Magic Stones would be the easiest method, but once people are involved the possibilities multiply. Forcing a monster to mutate is a very common assassination technique.”
Assassination.
Even as an ordinary person, and even after becoming a Keeper, it was a word I had never really considered. I had never needed to kill anyone, and no one had ever needed to kill me. A chill ran down my spine. There might be an assassin inside this Gate right now, someone targeting another person’s life.
That was why identity checks were so thorough before entering a Gate, and why people still preferred to go in only with trusted crew members. Even then, problems like this happened. Inside a Gate, no one was safe except the Gate’s owner—and even the owner could be in danger. Indiscriminate murder, suicide bombings… those things existed too.
“Who is it? Someone who was in the goblin Gate and is here now… Garam? Garam’s the only one.”
“It won’t be him. We don’t even know if the two incidents share the same culprit. Just now I assumed they did, but pure coincidence is more likely. This method is common.”
Maybe in her world. Not on Earth.
“I think the odds of the same person are high. It’s not a common method here.”
“Is that so? You might be right. Still, it won’t be Garam.”
“That’s true enough. We’ll have to check the dates carefully, but Kim Nari’s sister was poisoned while Garam and I were still inside the goblin Gate.”
The chance that the person who poisoned Kim Nari’s sister had entered this Gate was extremely low to begin with. The culprit had already achieved their goal. Right now they were probably celebrating their success. Just imagining it made me sick, but the culprit could wait. We had an immediate problem to solve.
Our approach had been wrong, so we needed a new one.
“Then what do we do now? I heard that poison mole was already killed. Doesn’t that mean there are no other poison moles here?”
That had been the first poison mole ever sighted, and it had died on the spot. In a way, that was where every problem began. They had brought the corpse out of the Gate, but the venom had lost its potency, so a proper antidote could never be made. That was why we had re-entered the Gate—to find a living poison mole and extract fresh venom.
“We make one.”
“Huh? How?”
“I have magic.”
So this was what a real mage looked like. She was genuinely reliable. Finding a mole really hadn’t been difficult after all. I didn’t just have magic—I had Keira.
The next day.
“What if we look for another habitat? Is that possible?” Kim Nari asked the Keepers.
“It should be,” Ria answered for the group. “A Gate this large is bound to have other dens. We’ll just have to go farther out to find them. All the moles around here seem to come from the habitat we visited yesterday.”
The other two Keepers nodded in agreement.
“Understood. Then we’ll search for another habitat. We stayed a full day and never saw a poison mole, so there probably aren’t any here.”
Kim Nari’s decision was swift. Anxiety showed on her face. Judging that no poison moles existed here was still premature, and there was no guarantee another habitat even existed. She chose to move anyway because time had truly run out. If we failed to find a poison mole today, even leaving the Gate with one in hand would not guarantee her sister’s life.
“We’ll head west. That area has been explored the least.”
The party set off westward. Just like yesterday, the moles appeared the moment we started moving.
“Mole!”
“Mole coming from the left!”
“Mole! Watch out!”
After hearing Ria’s warnings dozens of times, the Keepers dealt with the moles mechanically. Same as yesterday—no poison moles among them. We ran into four packs that way. On the fifth, the chance we had been waiting for finally arrived.
“There! Be careful!”
Ria pointed at Keira. A mole was heading her way. Yesterday, Keira would have simply stepped aside so an A-class Keeper could finish it in one blow.
“Ah!”
Instead, Keira collapsed right where she stood. If I hadn’t known the plan in advance, the acting would have startled even me.
“No!”
That was why my reaction came half a second late. Knowing it was an act had made me too relaxed. No one paid any attention to my performance, though. The mole burst from the ground.
Whoosh.
Keira dodged its attack with perfect timing again—possible only because she already knew exactly where it would emerge.
Hum.
At the same time she stirred the surrounding mana and wrapped it around the mole. Left alone, the mana would slowly seep into the creature and trigger the mutation. But we had no time. So Keira poured in a massive amount of magical power, forcing the mana straight into the mole’s body.
Kiiing.
Thud.
The mole stiffened mid-air and dropped back into the hole it had come from. It looked a little unnatural, but no one was going to call her out on it. Four moles had appeared at once, scattering everyone’s attention. More importantly, I was the only one who knew the entire process. Mana wasn’t something you could see with the naked eye. Ria might have sensed something, but without Affinity or Mana stats, no one could properly feel mana.
Kyaang!
The mole shot back up almost immediately. Its appearance had changed slightly. A green bridge of fur now ran through the fluffy brown fur of its chin.
“That other one—”
“I smell poison!”
I had been about to shout first, but Yoon Miseon’s nose was faster. She pointed straight at the mutated mole. Kim Nari caught it at once.
“Capture it alive! We must!”
The excitement in her voice was no illusion. Her expression was brighter than I had ever seen it.
We captured the poison mole immediately and successfully extracted its venom. Then we left the Gate at once, and the venom was delivered to the hospital. Results would take about two hours, they said.
Those two hours passed quickly. I was at the GGC Crew House, showered and having a short tea break, when Garam arrived with the news.
“They say the detoxification succeeded.”
“That’s a relief. How’s her sister’s health?”
“She’ll need a month of recovery, but they say she’ll regain her health. Keeper work won’t be a problem either.”
“That’s really wonderful.”
“It’s all thanks to you, Jungmin. Master asked me to pass along her gratitude.”
“Not at all. I didn’t really do anything…”
And that was the truth. Originally I was supposed to demonstrate finding the poison mole with magic, but things had gone sideways. Now the plan to show off my abilities and join the crew had fallen apart.
“Has everyone else left?”
“Yes. They all said they had work and headed out first.”
Ria belonged to a major corporate crew, and the other two were also already in crews. I was the only one without a crew, so I had stayed behind—not because I was afraid of being left out, but because I wanted to know what happened to Kim Nari’s sister.
“What do you think of our crew, from what you’ve seen?”
“It’s a good place.”
Except for one thing. Someone who had attempted assassination was inside it. I had been fretting over how to bring that up. To explain it I would have to reveal I was a mage. Was that all right? It felt like something I should only say after actually joining the crew.
“If you’d like, would you join us?”
“Is that the crew leader’s wish?”
“No. It’s my personal opinion. Considering your abilities, I think it would be good for you to be in a crew. Ours would be just the right fit.”
I thought so too. The crew had a decent size and a decent amount of freedom.
“On the condition that I reveal my abilities, right?”
“Of course. That’s the only way I can strongly recommend you.”
I had never imagined receiving a reverse offer like this. Of course, he only said it because he already knew I was a mage.
“All right. Let’s do that.”
I held out my hand to Garam. I didn’t deliberate long. I had come here to join a crew in the first place. Garam took my hand.
“Welcome. Everyone’s going to be thrilled.”
No one disliked having a mage around. Well, almost no one. I didn’t know who the culprit was yet, but they were definitely going to start hating me now.
I was in the crew. Time to find the assassin.