No. 640 Daeeung Escort Bureau (1)
Point Explosion rank has increased. F → E
Events really are something else.
Less than a day after I'd learned the skill, and it had already ranked up. My proficiency had been quite high to begin with, and with the mentoring event bonus stacked on top of the extra bonus for the final week, my growth rate was nothing short of staggering. If I spent the rest of this week using the Ogre as a practice dummy, D-rank was well within reach—C-rank, if things went well.
One important objective had thus been revved up and left running. Now I turned to the next: dealing with the Swordsmanship Club. The method I'd chosen to cool their fury was to offer compensation. And to lay hands on that compensation, I would have to descend into the underground dungeon floors. Accordingly, I had placed a guide request with Shin Byungcheol and handed Go Hyeon-woo a strategy guide to study.
Late that night, I met the two of them in front of the Dungeon Hall.
Shin Byungcheol greeted us with his business smile cranked to full wattage, rubbing his hands together.
"Ah, our valued customers have arrived~"
"Brother Shin."
Go Hyeon-woo returned the greeting with his usual easy grin.
We had done this often enough by now that we moved through the routine without needing a word of explanation from Shin Byungcheol. We pinned on our Anonymous Badges, swapped our tie pins for second-year ones, and started down the stairs to the underground floors.
Shin Byungcheol led the way, scanning ahead for any sign of trouble, then asked over his shoulder,
"It's a linked dungeon, right?"
"Yeah."
Most dungeons came with their own self-contained story and objective. But some shared a single continuous storyline—the bond forged with the Priest at the Feathered Serpent Altar carrying over into the Feathered Serpent Temple being a prime example. The dungeon we were entering now went a step further: not only the story, but the very progress made in the previous dungeon would directly shape the next one. Hence the name linked dungeon.
Shin Byungcheol asked again.
"We clear one tonight, and the next one?"
"Wednesday or Thursday night. Preferably Wednesday—I'd like it done and dusted by then."
With no telling when the Swordsmanship Club would come knocking, the sooner I secured a usable card, the better. I shot Go Hyeon-woo a look, and he answered,
"I shall make time whenever Brother Kim wishes."
"Then let's pencil in Wednesday for now?"
At Shin Byungcheol's question, the two of us nodded at the same time. And then his tone shifted, subtle but unmistakable.
"By the way, valued customers—no, forgive me, hyung-nims—might I have a word...?"
When Shin Byungcheol groveled like this, it meant he wanted something. Deciding I might as well hear him out, I answered in my most imperious tone.
"Very well. Speak your piece."
"Well, you see, last time I received a random box as my guide fee, didn't I?"
After we cleared the Feathered Serpent Temple, I had paid Shin Byungcheol a D-rank random box as his fee. Since that was admittedly a rich payment for a single guiding job, however, he had agreed to take on several more requests free of charge—tonight's run and the next dungeon both included.
"Didn't a wooden cup come out of that one?"
"That's exactly the thing."
The great tragedy, of course, was that the box had produced the Wooden Cup of the Feathered Serpent Tribe (F). Which meant Shin Byungcheol had effectively traded three dungeon clears for a single wooden cup—a ruinously lopsided deal. And bringing it up now could only mean one thing.
"So you got nothing but a wooden cup, you've lost your motivation to guide, and you want to quit?"
"Oh my, no, hyung-nim! Quit? Perish the thought. I'm not nearly that much of an amateur."
"Then what?"
"It's just that, well... I was thinking perhaps a small incentive might be in order..."
Shin Byungcheol's voice crawled into its shell by the end. Truthfully, choosing the random box over the other rewards had been his own decision, so even if I cut him off without mercy, he'd have no one to blame.
Still, it couldn't hurt to keep him a little indebted.
We would be in and out of the underground floors once or twice every evaluation week from here on, and I would keep needing Shin Byungcheol's help. Beyond that, the errand center was a convenient hand to borrow for gathering odds and ends of information. So I answered in a noticeably gentler tone.
"Well, it's not like we're such cold, business-only acquaintances. No need to be so heartless about it."
"That's exactly what I keep saying, hyung-nim!"
"As for the incentive—I'll think it over depending on how you perform."
"Just leave it to me, hyung-nim!"
Shin Byungcheol took the lead with a spring in his step. That said, while he had grown more practiced as a guide, his actual ability hadn't changed one bit. After all, even the most practiced walker was still just a walker. Tonight, though, he could afford to trudge a little less than usual—for the simple reason that the dungeon we were targeting was relatively lower-ranked than the ones before. The dungeons of the Advent of the Feathered Serpent series were D-rank, in the 300-to-400 range. Tonight's target, by contrast, was a 600-series dungeon, an E-rank of fairly manageable difficulty.
And so, before we had descended very far at all, we reached our destination.
No. 640
Daeeung Escort Bureau
Shin Byungcheol busily set up several devices nearby to throw off any search parties, then waved us on as if to say, get a move on.
"Off you go, hyung-nims. I'll hold the fort out here just fine."
"Yeah. We're off."
"We shall return."
Go Hyeon-woo and I stepped through the teleport portal one after the other, and the next instant we were standing in a quiet, sparsely trafficked alley. The din and liveliness spilling over from somewhere not far off drew a glance in that direction, and Go Hyeon-woo and I exchanged a look.
"See you outside."
"May fortune ride with you."
Go Hyeon-woo strolled out of the alley first at an unhurried pace. Here, "outside" did not mean out of the alley—it meant out of the dungeon. The idea was to avoid crossing paths inside as much as possible, and if we did happen to meet, to play complete strangers. Splitting up like this was the single most efficient way to clear this dungeon and the linked one that followed.
It was also a strategy that would have been impossible without deep trust between the two attempting it.
He'll manage fine, obviously.
Where Go Hyeon-woo was concerned, I had no worries whatsoever. I had drilled every key detail into him through the strategy guide, and in the previous dungeons he had followed instructions without a hitch. Besides, his task here was nowhere near as complicated as it had been at the Feathered Serpent Altar or the Black Snake Gang, so I foresaw no problems.
Once Go Hyeon-woo vanished from sight, I let a beat pass, then left the alley myself. Following the noise, I soon emerged onto the main thoroughfare.
A crowd flowing in one direction like a tide. Children threading through it like salmon, playing tag. Merchants hawking their wares from street stalls, beckoning every passerby. And—
Martial artists.
There were so many people carrying weapons that it felt almost unnatural. To be fair, martial artists weren't exactly rare; look closely enough and you could pick one out here and there in any crowd. Right now, though, without even trying, at least two came into view every time I turned my head.
And looking them over, their attire was a mismatched mess, far from tidy. A martial artist's garb usually proclaimed his affiliation, which lent real weight to the possibility that these men belonged to no sect at all. And in fact, they didn't.
Wandering swordsmen, then.
Men with no fixed purpose, drifting from place to place with nowhere to call home, lending out their martial prowess to whoever had need of it. And if one observed these wanderers a little more closely, one would notice they were all converging on a single destination—the place that stood at the heart of this dungeon.
The Daeeung Escort Bureau.
Taking part in the affair unfolding there and distinguishing oneself was the objective of this dungeon. For that, I too would have to reach the bureau before long, but there was still time to spare. Rather than arriving early just to twiddle my thumbs, it was smarter to spend the interval on something useful.
So I made a sharp turn and moved swiftly elsewhere. My destination proved to be a manor that looked utterly ordinary. I vaulted the wall and surveyed the grounds—nowhere could have been more deserted. The only souls in sight were a handful of workers listlessly cleaning this corner and that. The master of the manor and everyone connected to him were, by remarkable coincidence, all away. More precisely, I had come here precisely because I knew they would be.
Call it burgling an empty house, I suppose.
I watched a man sweeping the ground with his broom, and the moment his back turned to me, I dropped soundlessly into the compound and moved fast. My Thief's Step, now at B+ rank, smothered my presence to the extreme, and I kept strictly to the blind spots of every line of sight—so even in broad daylight, no one noticed a thing. Thus I roamed the manor's interior as if it were my own home, until I found a room and slipped inside.
The master's study. At a glance, the room might make one suspect the man was a scholar at heart. Books were stacked everywhere, and the walls bore copied lines of famous verse and ink paintings. There was even something on the desk, abandoned mid-brushstroke, the ink not yet fully dry.
All of it a sham, of course.
I looked at the stack of books piled in one corner. Push those aside, and a secret passage would be revealed. But I had no intention of stirring the passage up—leaving it be meant less grief in the linked dungeon to come. Instead, I turned my gaze to the ink painting hanging on the wall.
God, the man paints like a disaster.
Hand Seo Ye-in a brush and an inkstone, and even she would probably do better than this. But this painting was the very reason I had come, so I rolled it up and tucked it into my inventory. Next, I slid a drawer open, and out came a small money pouch. A peek inside showed a respectable sum of silver.
I'll be taking this as well, thank you.
My allowance was just running low, so the timing couldn't have been better. If Dang Gyu-young ever saw this, she'd probably beam with pride and call me a paragon of thievery—club application form thrown in as a bonus, no doubt. In any case, having collected everything worth collecting, I retraced my steps with perfect naturalness and strolled out of the manor without a care.
On the main street I bought some jerky and a few other snacks, stowed them in my inventory, and returned to the alley that served as our starting point. There I built a fire, chewing on jerky as I worked.
— Fwoosh —
Once the flames had grown to a decent size, I tossed in the ink painting from the manor. I watched it blacken and curl away to nothing in moments, then smothered the fire and sifted through the ashes. My fingers caught on a scrap of paper; I brushed off the ash and inspected it. Only one corner was lightly singed.
A treasure map piece, hidden inside the ink painting—yet more proof that the manor's master was no scholar. Moreover, possessing even a fragment of something this rare marked him as a man of no small consequence, which in turn meant the manor was no ordinary place, either.
A hidden den, that's what it was.
And not just any hidden den, either—one where some very bad men made their nest. The wicked business such men would set in motion was, naturally, bound up deeply with the heart of this dungeon: the Daeeung Escort Bureau. The manor standing empty earlier had been part of the preparations for exactly that.
Time to head over, I suppose.
The hour had come, and so I set my steps toward the Daeeung Escort Bureau.