Chapter 23: The Cave of Death (1)

Where am I?

Darkness pressed in from every side. A place where nothing could be seen.

Flash!

Light flooded the world in an instant, and with it a massive bulletin board took shape before my eyes.

Just an ordinary board?

I walked toward it slowly.

Rankings?

I looked closer. Names unfurled from first to one hundredth in a long, cascading list.

Is it ranked by level?

I had no idea exactly how the order was calculated. What I did know was where I sat on it.

Hmm.

A faint sting of disappointment settled in. I'd been too busy juggling everything else to hunt as many monsters as I could have, but I'd still figured someone like me would be sitting among the very best.

Ninth wasn't low, of course. If this was the ranking for the entire country, ninth place was enormous.

Let's see.

I started looking through other people's ranks as well. There was a search function that let you pull up even the lower names, so I looked up Jin-hwan.

"Whoa. That's high."

Jin-hwan was up there too. There was a gap between us, sure, but in a ranking of millions of people, that still put him in the absolute top tier.

"But why is there a ranking board here?"

They'd called this the Reward Room, so I couldn't help wondering what the point of showing me this was.

Then a message appeared.

My eyes flew wide.

A skill!

A skill — the kind you could only get by completing a quest — had just appeared. And I knew better than anyone how powerful skills were.

Heart pounding, I walked over to the skill book that had materialized. It was about the size of a small volume, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it settled into my hand.

Is that even a question?

Of course I was going to use it.

Sensory sharing.

In other words, I could see and hear whatever my summoned monsters were seeing and hearing.

High utility.

I already had a rough idea of how I'd use it. At a glance it might not look like much, but depending on how you applied it, it was more than good enough.

Whether there were any other rewards or not, my body ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠began to glow the moment I used the skill book. Honestly, this one skill was more than enough for me.

Flash!

Two days had passed since the event ended.

Thanks to it, a fair number of people seemed to have become Awakened. Going by our shelter alone, more than half of the non-Awakened had obtained a class. Well, assuming our shelter's ratio ran a bit high, the average was probably somewhere around thirty to forty percent.

The newly Awakened were all testing out their class traits, hunting the monsters nearby. For two days straight they had been diligently leveling up and growing stronger.

"Whoa, is that really your class?"

"It sure is, oppa. Jealous?"

"I want a flashy class like that too, not something like Healer."

Jin-hwan looked at Jin-ri with naked envy. Her class was a 4-star Mage — the same kind of wizard everyone knew from games — and she was waving her class weapon, a staff, this way and that, trying out her magic.

"Still, I'm more jealous of Ah-ra."

"Come on, what's there to be jealous of about me?"

Ah-ra's class was a 4-star Elementalist, the same star rating as Jin-ri's. A cute little water spirit was currently fawning over her at her side.

"Ah, I'm just jealous of everyone. Everything looks good except Healer."

"Why~ Healers are great too."

"Of course they are... they are, but. Haa..."

Jin-hwan slumped in his chair and let out a sigh.

Then again, he'd only ever played offensive classes in games, so of course he'd feel that way stuck as a Healer. But there was another reason he was acting like this. He was picking little fights and striking up conversations just to keep from drowning in grief over his parents. In this godforsaken situation, he'd told me, if he didn't do at least this much, he felt like he'd lose his mind.

Everyone else was the same. They'd all lost family, friends, comrades. But they knew that sitting around grieving wouldn't bring those people back, so they were all doing their best to keep their faces bright.

"But Ssaem, is ninth in the rankings for real?"

"What, is it that big a deal?"

"That's actually incredible."

The rankings had shown up on the regular bulletin board now, too. Unlike the ranking board from before, though, the ordinary board only seemed to display the top one hundred.

"But there are a lot of real monsters out there. I thought Ssaem was a monster too."

"Hey. Who are you calling a monster."

"Come on, you know what I mean. I'm barely around eighteen hundredth."

"Don't worry about the rankings. Our goal is survival."

The truth was there wasn't much point putting stock in the rankings. Sure, like just now, a slightly better reward might come with a higher place — but that was all.

Still, things are ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠starting to stabilize, little by little.

It was a world that handed out classes and spawned monsters, but safe zones had appeared and the food problem had been solved. It wasn't the comfortable life we'd had before, but people seemed to have adapted to the situation, hunting the monsters that wandered nearby and gathering food. Powerful creatures still roamed through now and then, and there were dungeons so dangerous you couldn't even approach them — but as long as you were careful, daily life wasn't disrupted anymore.

People really were creatures of adaptation, I supposed.

Still, I can't let my guard down.

There was no telling when more powerful monsters might appear, and the shelter itself couldn't be called completely safe. If we didn't keep getting stronger, we'd be in danger. That much was obvious.

I was thinking through what I needed to do next when Kang Hyuk hyung came over to me.

"Min-sung. Someone's here looking for you."

"Who?"

"No idea. They seemed to be asking for you, though."

Someone had come to the shelter. If they were looking to move in, they would have contacted us first — and beyond that, I couldn't think of anyone who'd be looking for me right now.

I went out to the entrance. A bald man who looked to be in his thirties was waiting in a crisp suit.

"Good afternoon. You would be Kim Min-sung, correct?"

"Yes. And you are?"

"Ah. This is who I am."

What he handed me was a business card — the kind of thing that should have long since lost all meaning.

What is this?

It looked like a regular business card, but that affiliation. There was no way a company like that existed.

"What's Cheonha Tongil?"

"Ah. That's a guild name."

"A guild?"

A guild. The kind of organization you formed to operate in a game. There hadn't been anything like that on the bulletin board yet — had they just made it themselves? Or was there a system for this?

"Would you have a moment to talk?"

"Sure. Come on in."

"No. We'll escort you to our office."

With that, he pointed to a car waiting just beyond the gate.

"A car. Isn't that dangerous?"

The Harpies from not long ago flashed through my mind. You didn't see them in the sky much these days, but if one did show up, a car that drew the eye looked like a liability.

"It's fine. Watch."

Ha-jin gestured toward the vehicle. In an instant, the car turned transparent.

That's impressive.

Was he an Awakened with a cloaking ability? Even with the engine running, the car didn't make a sound.

"Still, I'd rather not go anywhere."

I couldn't just follow someone I didn't even know. I shook my head and declined.

"Can't we talk here?"

"I'm afraid not. There's someone at our office who would like to meet with you, Min-sung-nim."

Someone who wanted to talk to me. More to the point — how did they even know who I was? This was looking more and more suspicious.

"I'm sorry. I really can't leave here. I've got a lot to do."

"Ah, in that case, when you have time, please send a message to the ID on this card. I'll come pick you up right away."

The man bowed politely and climbed into the car. A moment later the vehicle vanished from sight, as if it had never been there.

Alright. Sensory sharing, was it?

A screen-like window appeared before my eyes. The scene inside the car unfolded across it.

"Let's hear what they have to say."

They'd seemed a little too suspicious, so when the guy got in the car I'd secretly summoned a Venomous Fairy and slipped it into the back seat.

"Ha-jin hyung. Weren't we supposed to bring that guy? Hwang Min-soo's going to lose it if we go back like this."

"Well, nothing we can do. Honestly, wouldn't it have been weirder if he'd just come along?"

"That's true, but..."

"Haa. If we hadn't signed a contract with that bastard, we wouldn't even have to listen to the shit he says."

Hwang Min-soo?

That seemed to be the name of the person looking for me. A phrase flickered through my memory.

The "Hwang hyung" those two talked about — is that this guy?

The person the two who'd tried to kill me had mentioned. There was a good chance that person was Hwang Min-soo.

"His ability is seriously terrifying."

"Yeah. Break the terms of the contract and you turn into a monster."

A monster.

The guy who'd transformed into a giant octopus came back to me. It was all but confirmed now — the Hwang Min-soo these people were talking about was the same Hwang hyung.

How do they even know about me?

They'd never even seen me in person. It was strange. Then a possibility occurred to me. If they had a sensory-sharing skill like the one I had now, it wouldn't be strange at all.

Are they trying to kill me?

I'd killed their subordinates. It stood to reason they were looking for me to get revenge.

I wanted to hear more about that, but they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠moved on to another topic.

"By the way, why is he looking so hard for Golden Keys?"

"He probably wants to hog all the items that come out of the golden chests."

"I heard this guild came out of one of those chests too?"

A guild came out of a chest?

I'd thought guilds were just something that existed as a formality. Apparently not.

"Yeah. If you grow a guild, you can take over other shelters. That's probably what he's after."

"Well, that's not bad news for us."

"Whether it's bad or not, we'll have to get there and see."

Before long they seemed to have arrived at their base, and they got out of the car. I tried to have the Venomous Fairy sneak out after them, but I could see a protection tower activating at their shelter.

Yikes.

The screen vanished from in front of my eyes.

Taking over shelters... does that mean they can just come and attack?

I still didn't know exactly what a guild was. And there was a real possibility they'd attack this shelter — the one where I, the person who'd killed their people, was staying.

I can't just let that happen.

Things were finally starting to stabilize. An attack was out of the question. I had to prepare for the worst.

After several days of thinking it over, I made my decision.

Inventory.

I pulled out the dungeon scroll sitting inside. The golden chest that was supposed to be in there. The secret of the guilds those guys had just been talking about would be inside that chest.