Parking a Flying Barracuda, Then Straight Through the Flying Door
I’d already stowed the flying barracuda in a safe spot—some quiet pocket of the warehouse, out of the way—and the moment its wings stopped beating I stepped straight into the dimensional doorway.
“Mr. Roman, isn’t it a little hasty?” “Shut it! This is exactly why it’s so refreshing!”
Leaf’s and Ray’s opposite opinions hit my ears, yet I answered with nothing. My mind was already churning over the single name they had both thrown out just seconds earlier.
Yan Bongsik.
The three-syllable Korean syllables that had lodged themselves in my head like a splinter. The very name I used every day—Roman Sun—had only ever been a convenient Earth adaptation. Here, in this world, it was simply a localized approximation. How far had they really come before they’d decided to patch it with something that sounded more “local”?
Maybe Yan Bongsik wasn’t even his real name at all.
“Roman! Hey, Roman!”
“Yeah, I’m listening.” “Uh… no, I didn’t hear a word.”
My pulse was racing. Probably the fastest it had ever gone since I’d fallen into this world. *No, that’s not true.* The only time my heart had ever raced quite this hard was the moment I’d summoned Seir. The fear of it stopping, the terror of it exploding—both had hit me at once.
[Heh. Heh heh. Obviously, right?]
Ah, Seir’s voice must have opened the mental door. Leraje’s head popped up beside her without being asked.
[Must be those eyes of yours. So cold, I sometimes startle myself. Honestly, have you ever heard of a summoner who stopped because he was too scared of what he saw?]
[Is that jealousy I hear?]
[What?]
[More than that, Contractor, you’re being remarkably calm. Dimensional travel isn’t that common. In fact, the very existence of a contractor is almost miraculous…]
“I understand.”
I cut Seir off for the first time in the entire contract.
“I know that too.”
Yeah. I knew it. This hope was nothing but a hollow wind I had chosen to believe in.
But I had no choice but to hold onto it. I had no choice but to hope someone like me still existed.
“Besides, even if something’s already happened… there’s still no guarantee of another one.”
Carrying the last scrap of faith, I walked into the depths of the flying door.
“Any guards around here? Because that guy’s words weren’t lies.”
Clear footprints—human hands, pressed flat against the stone—marked the entrance. Ray was already there, hood pulled low, scanning the shadows with restless energy.
Even with Blink I could have slipped past, but pure physical speed still favored her. I’d gone first, yet she’d caught up long ago.
“Inside?”
“Empty. Looks like the entire underground section.”
The interior of the ruin was cleaner than I expected. No monster tracks, no signs of looting. The only clue that anyone had passed through was the faint digging scars where torch brackets had been hammered into the walls.
“I expected to find a massacre.”
“Underground,” Ray answered simply.
A single misstep could collapse the whole thing. No one would survive that.
“Something about the layout feels familiar,” Leaf said from behind me.
“Layout?”
“Yeah. This… doesn’t look like a normal ruin at all.”
“Normal?”
“It’s like a straight corridor. Not even the dungeons we’ve hit are this simple.”
Ruin or not, there should have been monsters. And even if the previous intruders had cleaned house, there should have been at least some combat traces.
“It’s definitely weird.”
“Maybe Ray and I were rushing too fast. There’s a stone tablet at the entrance. Big one.”
“A tomb that size?”
Ray’s sharp ears picked up every word even from a respectful distance. She tilted her head and made a rough circle with her hands about chest height.
“Like a grave marker?”
“A marker? What are you talking about?”
Ray blinked, completely lost, and I shrugged. I genuinely had no idea what she was on about.
“…You don’t know?”
“We do wind burials.”
The casual way she said it doused the hope I’d been carrying like a bucket of cold water. Ray answered with proud certainty.
“Then that explains it.”
Burning the corpse, scattering the bones on the wind, or simply leaving the body to the elements—wind burial needed no grave.
“Amazing. We always do tree burials.”
“Tree burial? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Really?”
Leaf’s eyes went wide.
I didn’t know something so basic?
Leaf, obviously thrilled to be teaching me something, added a little hum to her explanation.
“After cremation we bury the remaining bones under a tree. Sometimes we just bury the body whole.”
“Is that it?”
Just a different location.
“Speaking of which, Leaf.”
“Yes?”
“If the elves do tree burials, they just dig a shallow hole under a tree, right? How did you figure this one out?”
“Eh? Ah… that… uh…”
Leaf started stammering. Ray saved the day with a quick hand signal—open palm, then index and middle finger pointed up. Leaf immediately canceled her light spell. Darkness swallowed us.
I read the mana in her palm.
‘Enemy. Two.’
‘Confirmed.’
We held our breath. Mana barriers thinned to almost nothing. I froze my heartbeat. The enemy hadn’t spotted us yet; otherwise Ray’s beast-rider instincts would have told her.
“Let’s ambush.”
“How?”
I pointed at Leaf and lifted Axis.
“Take Leaf. Blink us in.”
The moment we were inside, one high-pressure water jet from my staff. That had always been our first-team tactic—me and Leaf set the pressure, Ray finished with Argentooth.
Perfect winning strategy.
The moment I knew what to do, I moved.
Axis extended. In the fraction of a second the spatial coordinates locked, I grabbed Leaf’s arm and tore through space.
*Whoosh!*
“Eh?”
“What?”
If I’d spotted them first, this first strike was guaranteed to be a critical hit. Leaf’s instant magecraft punched straight through before the enemy could even turn. *Puwhaaa!*
The water jet exploded through one body in a single heartbeat. Blood sprayed, but the next instant silver claws flashed from behind the attacker.
*Crack!* *Crunch!*
Argentooth sliced through the defensive magic in one go. Ray’s fist followed, cracking ribs with a sickening sound.
Several ribs had definitely snapped.
“Guh… hah…”
Ray clamped a hand over the man’s mouth before he could scream. The broken ribs had probably punctured his lung; all that came out was a wet wheeze.
“Shhh.”
That wouldn’t fix it.
“No. I didn’t hit hard enough to pierce organs. The air’s just escaping from the punctured lung.”
People really do learn from experience. The first few times I’d overshot and killed them outright. Now Ray could finish someone this delicately.
“What about the others? Still inside?”
The captured man nodded when I asked. His eyes were wide and unfocused—probably too dazed to tell if this was real or a dream. The fight had ended so fast he was still catching his breath.
“Don’t kill them.”
*Thud.*
Clean knockout. One gentle tap to the temple and he slumped.
“Kidnap them for now.”
“Fine.”
Whether we’d get anything out of them later was another question. For now we’d use them as meat shields or, worse, human shields—walking ahead with a trembling captive.
We’d just created a mana trail that would make the enemy realize we’d breached the corridor.
I stepped forward into the final chamber.
And there he was—standing exactly where we expected him, staring straight at us.
I narrowed my eyes and studied him carefully. *Please let my hope be right.*
But no matter how I looked, the man’s face was closer to the other-worlders I’d met than to my own Earth features.
“You took your time.”
The man spoke.
“And it’s over.”
*Clang.*
*Boom!*
The moment he moved, the floor beneath us dropped away.
Yan Bongsik clicked his tongue at the sight of Roman’s group tumbling into the floor trap. *Even this simple of a pitfall and they still fell for it? Four of them? Pathetic subordinates.*
“Hey.”
The voice was light, almost bored, yet it came from right behind him.
Yan Bongsik felt a chill race down his spine. He pushed off the floor and sprinted away from the sound, instincts screaming *run*.
He’d covered half the distance before he realized the clapping behind him was genuine.
*Minstrel?*
He spun mana into a defensive circle.
The man who’d been clapping just smirked. “You don’t know? Korean, right? UN, Olympics, World Cup… you don’t know?”
Yan Bongsik’s brain short-circuited.
What was he even saying?
He’d thought the applause might be a spell chant, but the tone was far too casual for magic.
“Hah… Bongsik-ah.”
“…What?”
“Your name is Bongsik.”
“Bull. My name is Yan. Bongsik is my surname.”
Yan Bongsik answered on autopilot and immediately cranked his mana sight to maximum to study the man.
Whatever that high-speed teleport had been—acceleration magic? Illusion? He had no idea.
But the man’s next words killed even the last flicker of hope.
Roman tightened his grip on Axis. *If you’re not from Earth, you’re nothing to me.*
“You disappointed me.”
[The man’s voice echoed from behind Yan Bongsik, calm and disappointed.]