The Writing on the Wall
"I can't believe this..."
Disbelief filled the eyes of the two graduates. I had punched through their formation and their maze at a speed far beyond anything they had imagined, appearing before them before they knew it. They had watched every step of the process through the crystal orb, which only made the shock that much deeper.
The confusion formations inside and outside the building had reacted the instant they showed any sign of trying to muddy my senses, and each time I had slipped free; the rooms they had woven into a labyrinth with Throughwalk spells I had crossed as casually as if they were my own home. Without so much as a glance around, I had picked the right answer every time—which stretch was solid wall, and which was a passage leading somewhere else. From where they stood, bewilderment was the only possible reaction.
At first there had seemed to be a flicker of how dare a first-year be so insolent? in their eyes, but the result had been so overwhelmingly one-sided that any such attitude had been washed clean away. If anything, a trace of awe seemed to have crept in to take its place.
The older graduate steadied himself first and asked, "Do you, by any chance, possess a detection or scouting-type skill or trait?"
By their common sense, nothing short of that could explain what they had seen, so the guess was only fair.
The truth was that I had eaten the whole thing alive on veteran instinct alone—but that was impossible to explain, and harder still to make anyone believe, so I answered with a careful dodge. "I'm sorry. I can't give you a definite answer on that. I hope you'll understand."
That proved to be answer enough for the two of them: I possessed a powerful detection-type skill or trait, and I had no wish to show it.
In this game of a world, prying too deeply into another person's skills and traits could easily become a grave faux pas. Such questions were all too easily read as I'll analyze your abilities, find your weak points, and kill you with them.
So when I politely declined, all they could do was smack their lips in lingering curiosity and let it go.
Just then Dang Gyu-young came stepping through the wall, and the graduate turned to her. "It's a genuine stroke of fortune that this one never joined the Disciplinary Committee. The Thief Club was nearly headed for a dark age. Wouldn't you say?"
"Th-that's right."
Dang Gyu-young did not look entirely able to agree. She was willing to grant that my "instinct" was startlingly sharp—but Inferno Fist, in the Disciplinary Committee?
Still, a senior had spoken, and she apparently judged it wiser to play along than to pick the claim apart.
"And to have spotted a talent like this in advance and snapped him up—your eye for people is truly remarkable, President Dang."
"Haha, an eye for people? Hardly. You give me far too much credit."
Dang Gyu-young waved it off with an awkward laugh. She had never imagined things would unfold this way, and before any of that, I wasn't even a member of her club, so she seemed at a complete loss for how to answer.
The older graduate turned his gaze back to me. "As promised—if it's anything that comes up on the Black Market, I'll get it for you, whatever it may be. Investing in talent like yours is never a waste."
"I accept with gratitude."
"Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"
"I've drawn up a list. The club president is holding it for me."
"Oh? Let's have a look."
Dang Gyu-young let out yet another awkward laugh and held out the slip of paper she had been keeping for me since the road to the downtown district.
The two graduates, curiosity plainly boiling over at what items someone of my caliber could possibly want, read down the list with the utmost concentration.
"...!?"
And at the banquet of murderous, high-risk items laid out before them, their expressions warped into something quite strange.
There had been a small hiccup, but after that the older graduate and the woman with the tear mole continued to lavish attention on me, keeping up their barrage of questions. They even set aside their pride as graduates and asked for serious advice: whether the confusion formation and Throughwalk labyrinth they had designed had any flaws that stood out, and if there were points to shore up, what they might be.
From where I stood, bet reward or not, the grade of what I stood to receive was high enough that I figured I ought to earn at least part of my keep. Besides, it was in my own interest for this Black Market to go off without a hitch—only then could I count on using it without trouble next year, and the year after that.
So I gave them my feedback as conscientiously as I could manage, and on the strength of that advice, the exchange's security was tightened yet another notch.
By the time the Black Market business had been more or less settled, Dang Gyu-young reappeared laden with every snack under the sun, skewers included. Apparently she had swept the street vendors around the rendezvous point clean.
She held a chicken skewer out to me. "Here, eat."
"Thank you."
We bit into our skewers and watched the crowds hurry back and forth.
Once we had both taken the edge off our hunger, Dang Gyu-young tidied up her spot and asked, "Heading off already?"
"I should, yes. Before long."
I had training to do on my own, and the elixir Kim Gap-du had given me still needed to be worked into my body; no amount of time would ever be enough.
...
Then, all of a sudden, Dang Gyu-young narrowed her eyes and studied me. The look went on long enough that I had to ask, "Senior, why are you staring at me like that?"
"Dunno—a feeling just came over me. Something tells me you're going to wander off somewhere else on the way."
Come to think of it, this senior had always had remarkably sharp instincts. In this case it looked like she had simply taken a stab in the dark, but it was the right answer all the same, so I owned up to it readily. "There is somewhere I need to stop by."
"You have somewhere to stop by? In the downtown district?"
"To be exact, something to check."
At that, Dang Gyu-young's eyes began to glitter with interest. "Now I'm curious. I'm coming too."
"You'd be following me for nothing. There's nothing to see."
"That's fine. I won't do a thing. I'll just watch."
She wanted it this badly; shaking her off by force felt petty, and even if I did, she would only tail me in secret anyway. So I started walking, Dang Gyu-young at my side.
Our destination was an alley tucked into one corner of the downtown district. Its broad wall was blanketed in graffiti from end to end, filthy with it.
"What, are you going to write something there?"
"The opposite, actually. I'm looking for something."
"...?"
While Dang Gyu-young looked on, wondering what sort of scribble I could be hunting and why, I began combing the vast wall in minute detail, starting from its far end.
The graffiti came in every variety imaginable. Carelessly doodled pictures; trivial scrawls like Month X, Day X—OOO was here! or a heart drawn between two names, some couple's little monument; behind-the-back insults their authors would never dare say to a face, like Mok Jonghwa, that little shit—non-burnable household trash; and, at the far end of the scale, secret confessions that could never be told to another living soul.
I was a little over halfway down the wall when— There it is. A scrawl at about knee height caught my eye.
It looked freshly made; it had not been there last week, when Seo Ye-in and I had passed through for a moment. A handful of short strokes ran this way and that, with dots pricked here and there among them.
The moment I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at it, Dang Gyu-young craned her neck over my shoulder, eyes bright with curiosity. And then, being the Thief Club president she was, she saw through the scrawl's true nature almost at once.
"Isn't this a coded message?"
"It is, yes."
"It looks kind of familiar, too... What does it mean?"
"Knowing will only get you hurt."
"Agh, come on, just tell me!"
"You said you'd only watch and not do anything."
It was, in fact, exactly what she herself had said, so Dang Gyu-young could only push her lips out in a wordless pout. Ordinarily she would have coaxed and wheedled until she wrung an answer out of me anyway—but not this time. My expression was deadly serious.
And serious I had to be, because whoever had carved this graffiti—this coded message—was no ordinary party. The Secret Organization.
And not just any cabal: these ones belonged to a faction hostile to Dragon Slayer Academy itself. To them, the academy where the heroes of tomorrow gathered was a thorn in the eye. They would never simply leave it alone. They would want its numbers whittled down by whatever means necessary before its students could grow into their full strength—and for that, the first step was slipping past the island's airtight defenses and infiltrating Dungeon Island.
And the perfect window for that was— the mentoring period.
With a flood of outsiders pouring in, graduates included, Dungeon Island's defenses grew comparatively lax around this time. I would wager the event boss staging that magic show downtown had slipped in during the very same window. These people, too, had managed their infiltration—that was why the message stood written here.
And what the message encoded was— a time and a place. In other words: a signal announcing their existence to someone else, along with an instruction to make contact at that time and place.
That the operatives scattered across the island would become a far more serious problem once they banded together was beyond doubt. But judging from the state of the graffiti, one side had yet to lay eyes on it. In that case... things just got a little easier.
I drew my spell dagger and scraped it across the wall, adding a few strokes and a few dots to the scrawl. So seamlessly that it might have been there from the very beginning.
And just like that, the time and place of their rendezvous became somewhere else entirely. The one who had written the message would be left waiting in the wind, and the one who came to read it would set off toward somewhere utterly wrong.
Dang Gyu-young's eyebrows climbed as she watched. "You fixed it? The coded message?"
"I did."
"How did you even know how?"
"That's a secret."
...
I had kept repeating I'm not telling you and it's a secret, but this time Dang Gyu-young did not pout. Instead, she asked in a careful tone, "Is it... something to do with world peace?"
...
World peace and graduating two hundred times were keywords that usually passed between us as running jokes—but every so often, they were meant in earnest. Like the night we had walked out of the Disciplinary Committee room together. And like right now.
When I answered with a silent nod, Dang Gyu-young stepped a little closer and met my eyes. "Kim Ho, I know it's dangerous. I still want to help. I told you, didn't I?"
If my vow—that none of my people would die or be hurt—was truly what I meant, then she would gladly stand as my accomplice from here on out. That was what she was saying. Her resolve came through clear in the eyes that held mine.
I held that gaze for a long moment, then slowly moved my head up and down. But it was not a full yes. "Not yet. When the time comes, I'll tell you everything."
"...Okay. Promise."
Dang Gyu-young held out her pinky, and I hooked mine through it. And so we made that small promise.
— Next Episode: [138] The Support Ate it All —