No.88 Gathering of Villains (2)

Friday night.

Go Hyeon-woo and I headed for the Dungeon Hall a little ahead of our appointed time. We had only been waiting there a short while when Jang Mu-geuk came into view, approaching from the far end of the corridor. True to his trade as an assassin, his stride was as even as if ruled off with a measuring stick, and his footsteps made scarcely a sound.

Jang Mu-geuk's eyes gleamed as he came face to face with Go Hyeon-woo.

"It has been a while."

"I have been awaiting the day we would meet again."

"Likewise."

Going by the exchange alone, it looked as though blades might come out and a duel begin at any moment, yet both men's tones were surprisingly mild. Faint smiles even played at the corners of their mouths — they were clearly quite happy with the arrangement.

Go Hyeon-woo spoke up.

"Today circumstance demands we join forces, but should the chance arise, I would gladly ask another bout of you, Brother Jang."

"Such a day will come. When the time is right, I will not run from it."

Jang Mu-geuk replied in an even, unhurried tone.

Next, Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin appeared, arriving on the very stroke of the appointed minute. The two martial artists bowed their heads with formal courtesy.

"You have arrived."

"Right, let's get moving."

Dang Gyu-young returned the greeting lightly and took the lead. Then she stopped before the door down to the underground floors, swept her gaze over us, and said,

"Come down five minutes after us."

"Yes, Senior."

"See you below."

There was no issue with accessing Floor F in itself, but five of us traipsing around in a pack was bound to draw the Disciplinary Committee's attention — all the more so when two of that five were the Thief Club's president and vice-president. If word of it reached the floors below, they would only grow needlessly vigilant, so the plan was to move separately, at least until F.

And so Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin descended first, while we waited a short while before following.

The moment my foot touched the first step of the spiral staircase, one thing struck me at once.

'Frosty in here.'

The atmosphere pervading the underground floors was markedly stiffer than usual. The faces of the students passing to and fro were grim as graves, too. And at a single glance I could count three Disciplinary Committee armbands. If even Floor F, where incidents were rare, was covered this heavily, there was no guessing how many more lurked below.

All of it was the aftershock of an A-Rank villain running wild.

I moved my lips only slightly, issuing instructions to the two of them.

"Act natural."

"Understood."

It wasn't as if this were Go Hyeon-woo's or my first or second trip down here, so keeping a poker face posed no difficulty. As for Jang Mu-geuk, stealth was literally his profession — he was beyond seasoned.

'If only his naming sense were half as polished, he'd be perfect.'

Apparently "Jang-Oh-Wangon" had issues.

Walking along in that frame of mind, we passed a second-year committee member. He flicked a glance our way, but when we dipped our heads in a polite bow, he answered with a light tilt of the chin and withdrew his gaze. Every committee member we met afterward was the same.

Without rousing any real suspicion, we transferred between lifts several times and made it to the very bottom of Floor F.

The next moment, a small shadow butterfly came fluttering up before us from somewhere. Following its guidance, we found Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin stepping out of a shaded nook.

"It starts now. Everyone, focus."

The instant we linked up, we entered Floor E. As expected, the number of committee members on patrol had grown compared to F.

Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin exchanged a look.

Dang Gyu-young's usual guiding style was to scatter her shadow butterflies far and wide, then push boldly ahead on the intelligence they gathered. Now, however, a single butterfly catching even one eye would put the entire floor on alert, so a different approach was called for.

Shadow welled up from beneath our feet, swelling into the shape of a great hemisphere before clinging to every one of us like ink. A skill that granted allies within range a stealth buff for a fixed duration. Extremely useful — with one small regret attached.

'It has a cooldown.'

At B-Rank, it lasted three minutes, with a five-minute wait between uses. Which meant two minutes of moving either without stealth or under cover of some other stealth skill.

'Of course, that's when one person casts it.'

With two people alternating, the math changed entirely.

A three-minute skill cast once by A and once by B gave six minutes of coverage in total. By the time B's buff ran out, A's five-minute cooldown had already expired. In other words, the stealth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could be sustained indefinitely.

Confirming Dang Gyu-young's skills and their ranks the day before had been, on the surface, about sizing up her strength before drawing up the plan — but it had also been very much about meeting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the conditions for a copy.

Dang Gyu-young asked, shaping the words with her lips alone.

"Done? You copied it?"

"Done."

A fair measure of trust had built up between us by now, so I had given her advance notice about the copying. Not the whole truth, mind — only the fact that I could duplicate a handful of skills.

"……"

But even that much was cheat-tier enough that Dang Gyu-young kept shooting me looks of open suspicion. The unspoken question plain on her face: just who are you, hauling around cheat skills and traits by the fistful?

Meanwhile, Chae Da-bin was tapping away busily at her tablet. The screen split into a lattice of windows, calling up views of every corner of Floor E. In a matter of seconds she had hijacked the surveillance crystal balls across the area and stolen their eyes for herself.

'No matter how I look at it, that is not second-year skill.'

As already proven at the Black Market, Chae Da-bin's magic engineering ran circles around most graduates. Chart her on a hexagon graph and the shape was practically a single spike.

Chae Da-bin stared hard at the tablet screen, then raised a hand to point out the passage on our left.

"That way."

She had marked a stretch where the guard coverage thinned. We quickened our pace, slipped through, and Chae Da-bin set our heading once more.

Then, just as Dang Gyu-young's stealth buff was about to lapse—

—I took over the baton. A shadow hemisphere identical to hers swallowed the party whole, renewing the stealth buff.

At the sight of it, something flickered in Chae Da-bin's eyes. Befitting a vice-president who worked at the president's side day in and day out, she caught the discrepancy at once.

"President, did you rank that skill up?"

"Rank?"

"The cooldown seemed shorter."

"……About ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the same."

Dang Gyu-young glanced my way, lips all but itching to blurt something, but in the end she brushed it off with a vague non-answer.

Chae Da-bin kept plotting our course, and we descended, trading casts of Shadow Shelter back and forth.

Regrettably, the lifts and teleportation circles had to be written off entirely. There were far too many watching eyes; we'd be made the instant we used one.

Dang Gyu-young and Chae Da-bin each had something to say about it.

"Huh. Walking on my own two feet. Takes me back."

"So this is what it's like to be Byung-cheol."

Holding to stealth-and-shuffle mode the whole way down, we reached Floor D. Here the committee members were deployed yet more densely — most sightings of the Wooblek had been concentrated in the C- and D-Rank dungeons, after all.

Chae Da-bin still had every crystal ball in the area under her thumb, but the stretches where she stopped to think grew longer. With more committee members to slip past, the route could hardly help but tangle.

"One moment."

"……?"

"Back up the stairs. Quickly."

Every so often we even had to climb back up flights we had already come down. Even so, thanks to Chae Da-bin grinding away at the problem, the party inched forward all the same.

Then, mid-descent, Dang Gyu-young stopped dead and hurriedly herded us into a patch of deep shade — and heaped shadow up and over us like a blanket.

Kugugugu……

A wooden door shot up out of the floor. It swung open, and out walked Gwak Seung-jae with a squad of second- and third-year committee members.

'Were we made?'

Every one of us went stone-still, barely breathing, eyes fixed on them.

But Gwak Seung-jae's group never so much as glanced our way. They walked straight up to the other members out on patrol.

"Time for your rotation."

"Right. Good work out there, everyone."

It seemed the shift-change hour and location had simply happened to coincide. Gwak Seung-jae's gaze did flick toward us for the barest instant, but he appeared to sense nothing amiss.

The committee members dispersed to their respective posts, and we too stole carefully out of the shade.

I gave Dang Gyu-young a long, fresh look.

"……"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"That's one for you."

All I'd ever witnessed was her getting spotted and run down by Gwak Seung-jae, but this time her stealth work had been flawless.

Dang Gyu-young, however, looked distinctly unappreciative of the verdict.

"Excuse me? This is my actual skill, thank you very much?"

"Let's go with that."

"No, I'm telling you it IS my actual skill! When I play tag with Gwak Seung-jae, I'm up 8 to 2. Da-bin, back me up here?"

Called upon for supporting fire, Chae Da-bin reluctantly obliged.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"……Yes. That's right."

"Why so half-hearted? I'm telling you it's true."

Amid the whispered bickering and playful swatting, we kept on down.

One last barrier remained: Floor C. The moment we set foot inside, Dang Gyu-young let out a hollow laugh.

"Good grief, it just keeps getting worse."

The security here was tighter still. The Disciplinary Committee was packed in thick from D-Rank upward, and faculty members could be spotted here and there besides. This was where the Wooblek was likeliest to show itself, and the damage would dwarf anything on D — hence the deployment.

Chae Da-bin worked her tablet feverishly, checking sightlines all over the floor. Then her expression dimmed a shade.

"Even I don't think I can manage this one."

However airtight her hold on the surveillance, it meant nothing if no route could be threaded through it. At those words, Dang Gyu-young and I traded a glance.

"Use it here."

"I suppose I must."

There had been one more card agreed upon with Dang Gyu-young the day before, and the moment to play it had arrived.

Shadow Leap — the high-tier movement skill Dang Gyu-young had trained herself in. A skill that teleported you instantly to wherever another shadow awaited.

Like [Blink] or [Teleport], the tools of mages who had attained the very peak of their art, spatial-lineage skills and traits could fairly be called endgame-grade. Naturally, the difficulty of growing one was astronomical — even Dang Gyu-young, a third-year club president, still had it at C-Rank. That alone was more than enough to do its job, of course, but raise it to A-Rank and it became something else entirely.

'The headcount goes up.'

C-Rank carried two, caster included. A-Rank carried five. Which meant it could move the whole party at once.

Dang Gyu-young sent a shadow butterfly winging across to the far side of the floor. The moment the fluttering messenger reached its destination, it spread itself wide and cast a broad, deep shadow.

Shff—

It felt like being drawn down through the floor beneath our feet — and then the world snapped sideways. The next instant, we were standing exactly where the shadow butterfly had been sent.

Chae Da-bin, looking mildly startled, threw out the same question as before.

"Did you rank that one up too?"

"……About the same. Anyway — how's this?"

"I think we can work with this."

Chae Da-bin's face brightened anew. She bored her eyes into the tablet and racked her brains so hard I could almost hear a GPS voice droning, Recalculating route.

Before long, Navigator Chae Da-bin pointed out a heading.

"That way."

Dang Gyu-young flitted another butterfly across, and Shadow Leap carried us all in a blink. Navigator Chae Da-bin marked the next gap, we jumped, and the cycle repeated itself, over and over.

That was how we came skipping down through Floor C — and just as we were drawing near the Deep Layer, Dang Gyu-young edged close and murmured in my ear.

"……Kim Ho."

"Yes, Noona."

"The Amplification…… it just ran out."

The duration had expired, and [Shadow Leap] had reverted to C. C-Rank Amplification lasted a scant five minutes, with a thirty-minute cooldown — which was why she'd hoarded it until the very last moment. Apparently, even that hadn't quite been enough to clear Floor C in a single bound.

"That way."

Navigator Chae Da-bin, blissfully unaware of any of it, went right on pointing the way.