13
13 - Warning
The manager had made an appointment, and Jin-woo visited the Management Bureau. When he arrived, he found the Management Bureau in a very busy state.
"Contact all the hospitals and secure as many hospital rooms as possible! Also, look into temporary shelter locations we can use!"
"How many portable beds do we have left? No! That's not enough, so get more! What if we have too many leftovers? It would be a relief if we had extras, you fool!"
"Hunter supply requests are pouring in. Where's the person in charge? I can't handle all of this by myself!"
Whenever a special Gate opened, the Management Bureau would always be in chaos.
Special Gates like '0th Floor' offered great rewards, so a tremendous number of Hunters would challenge them.
Accordingly, there were many who requested supplies and support, many Hunters looking for teams, and at the same time, many Hunters who would get injured.
The Management Bureau had to prepare as much as possible to smoothly handle all situations.
"Ah, Hunter Jin-woo, you've arrived! Please come this way."
The manager was also moving busily and was sweating profusely.
In the midst of all this, Jin-woo was guided to a small private room where he sat down with the manager.
"You look busy. Do you have time for a one-on-one explanation like this?"
"The Mayor instructed us to provide maximum convenience to Hunter Jin-woo."
"I appreciate that. I'll try not to take up too much time and only ask what I need to ask."
"It's about 0th Floor, right?"
"Yes."
Jin-woo first talked about what he knew about the 0th Floor. Though he had never experienced it himself, he had gathered as much information as possible through internet searches.
0th Floor Trial Seat.
A single-person Gate, where, unlike regular Gates, where everyone enters the same world, each Hunter is guided to a different world to undergo trials.
Those trials usually involved facing large-scale enemies. Small ones ranged from a monster village to large ones spanning cities or nations.
Usually, novice Hunters like Jin-woo, who had awakened not long ago, would mostly face trials at the level of dealing with Goblin villages or Ratman lairs in sewers.
Since they had to face village or town-level enemies alone in a Gate, the difficulty was quite considerable.
Nevertheless, these special Gates had two elements that Hunters welcomed.
└ Give me that 0th Floor reward right now, I've been sharpening my blade just for today
└ My abilities are good, but won't a really amazing item drop? One item is better than mediocre abilities
└ If I search hard enough, there should be something lol
First was naturally the reward. In 0th Floor Gates, you would awaken at least one ability or obtain an item worthy of being called treasure. If you were lucky, you could get both an ability and an item.
While Jin-woo obtained abilities rapidly by slashing black flames, ordinary Hunters weren't like that. Many Hunters made efforts by going in and out of Gates more than 10 times to awaken a single ability.
The scary part was that even doing so didn't guarantee they could obtain an ability.
So when clearing 0th Floor trials guaranteed at least one ability or treasure equivalent to an ability, everyone's eyes would go wild.
Moreover.
└ Everyone, be careful. If you die instantly, you can't even escape, so don't get too careless
└ You can escape immediately just by giving up, but people still die every year
└ If the difficulty is too high, you'd give up quickly, but if it's ambiguously high, you can't give up and die suddenly? Anyway, be careful
Special Gates, including the 0th Floor, allowed immediate return to Earth if you gave up on the given trial. This meant you didn't have to wander around looking for Blue Portals like in regular Gates.
That meant the risk converged to nearly zero. You could just enter, try the trial, and if it seemed too dangerous, you could give up, and that was it.
You wouldn't gain abilities or items, but at least you wouldn't die. As long as you didn't die instantly without realizing it.
'They say there are deaths every time, though.'
Even with this kind of emergency escape insurance, there were still those who died in special Gates.
So you couldn't be completely at ease, but still, the death rate was significantly lower than regular Gates. Traffic accidents actually had a higher death rate.
Because of this, among Hunters, there were those who ignored dangerous regular Gates with variables and only selected special Gates when they opened.
The number of these special-specialist Hunters was by no means small, so every time special Gates opened, the Management Bureau's workload would increase exponentially.
Those who didn't operate in regular Gates and continued their livelihoods would all come to the Management Bureau at once.
"Wow, there's almost nothing for me to tell you?"
When he finished talking about everything he knew, the manager was impressed.
"I searched for this on the internet, is it all the information correct?"
"Yes. There are no wrong parts, just a few more things you should be careful about. Hunters who enter special Gates don't only die from instant death. There are also cases where they can't escape because they're poisoned by strange drugs inside or caught by mental magic."
"That's definitely scary."
"For example, you need to be careful even with Goblin villages. You should assume there's almost always a Shaman in Goblin villages, and if there happens to be a High Shaman who can use mental magic, it would be big trouble."
"How can I defend against it?"
"Mental magic is like a disaster for lower-tier Hunters, so you have no choice but to keep a sharp eye out... If you really want to be safe, just come back as soon as you spot a Shaman. Even if it doesn't go as far as hypnosis, if you get caught by sleep magic, it's over."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"And another thing to be careful about is..."
The manager pointed out several more precautions and cases. Listening to all of them carefully and pondering them, Jin-woo organized the precautions.
However, no matter how much he heard, he couldn't be completely prepared. The trials that came down from the 0th Floor were different for each Hunter, and there had never been an identical case.
In the end, it meant that adaptability and coping ability were most important.
"Prepare thoroughly, and I'll say it again, escape immediately if there's even a little danger! Life is most important."
"Don't worry. I value my own life the most, too."
Especially in Jin-woo's case, he didn't need to be obsessed with obtaining abilities. He could gain new abilities just by finding and slashing Erosion Cores.
'What would be more dangerous, wandering around outside the city looking for Erosion Cores or special Gates?'
Actually, the conditions and environments were too different for simple comparison. Still, he didn't need to risk his life for special Gate rewards.
"I'll be going."
"I wish you good fortune. If it's dangerous, definitely! Definitely run away!"
The manager emphasized once more while seeing Jin-woo off.
***
Jin-woo didn't enter the special Gate right away that day. After that, he gathered more information and also contacted Shartia to hear about precautions.
Not only that, he adjusted his rest and diet to maintain his body's condition at its peak, and honed his body's tension as sharp as polishing a blade.
All preparations were completed three days later.
'Let's go. Keep my mind firmly focused.'
Unlike regular Gates that dropped you at random locations in Primeval Forests, 0th Floor dropped you directly into enemy territory. Therefore, he had to switch his body and mind to combat mode even before entering.
The next moment, Jin-woo was in a different world, not Earth.
[ 0th Floor: Trial Seat ]
[ Destroy the seed of those with long ears. ]
It was a dark forest. A nighttime forest with the sunset.
In that forest was a mansion of considerable scale, not built in a clearing but an amazing architectural structure cleverly woven with the forest trees. An architectural style he had never seen before.
That mansion was blazing fiercely, illuminating the dark forest with light.
'...This is too devastating.'
Jin-woo immediately crouched down and frowned at the scene before his eyes. Fragments of corpses were scattered everywhere, horrible corpses that had been clawed, torn, and bitten.
Only the corpse that had fallen right in front of Jin-woo was relatively intact, but even that had its right arm torn off with bone and muscle exposed at the rough cross-section.
Looking at that corpse's head, he could see long ears.
'Elves... Is this a world where Elves live?'
The content of the trial that came down was to destroy those with long ears. In other words, it meant to subjugate the Elf group in this place.
If it had been an intact Elf group, it would have been an absurd level of difficulty. A difficulty that would have made him turn around and escape without looking back.
But the mansion was engulfed in flames, and the Elves were already all dead.
'Is there anything for me to do?'
Not a single living Elf was visible. Suppressing nausea at the terrible scene, Jin-woo expanded his Ki sense and counted the blue flames.
He felt blue flames throughout the mansion, but those weren't from Elves.
Bipedal monsters with wolf heads and fur. The species commonly called Werewolves.
Just in the mansion alone, there were dozens... No, he felt countless flames from the nearby mountains, too. A pack of Werewolves numbering at least in the hundreds was completely massacring one Elf mansion.
'Let's not get involved.'
If he intervened carelessly, he would be in danger too. Since the trial seemed like it would be resolved just by staying still, Jin-woo covered his mouth with his hand and hid in the forest shadows.
Then one blue flame caught his attention. Even though he felt over a hundred flames just in this vicinity, that one particularly stood out because it was a very small and dim flame.
It was a small child. Maybe 4-5 years old? The black hair was almost as long as the child's height, dragging on the ground.
The child couldn't open its eyelids, and blood was trickling from both closed eyes. It looked like it had been injured not long ago.
With unseeing eyes, the child was groping the ground looking for something.
"&@#, &@#."
Continuously muttering words of unknown meaning while continuously groping the ground.
What word could it be? Since he didn't know Elvish or anything like that, he had no idea. Still, foreign languages and such could usually be guessed through gestures or context.
Behind the child was a Werewolf that looked about 3 meters tall, licking its lips while looking at the child.
"&@#, &@#."
The child who couldn't see didn't notice the danger and only crawled on the ground. Even if it had noticed, it didn't seem like a child around 4 years old could do anything about a 3-meter wolf monster.
Jin-woo had said he wouldn't get involved, that he would wait like this until the trial ended.
But when he came to his senses, he was running.
He had imagined it. In this situation, when he imagined what a child who couldn't see might be desperately searching for, he absolutely couldn't stay still.
Even though reason was warning of danger, his heart moved forward.
While running, he tried to take out a sword from his inventory. But the sword didn't come out. Neither the white gem sword nor the standard-issue iron sword, nothing came out.
'Why is my inventory like this!? Is it broken?'
He was flustered by this first-time occurrence, but now wasn't the time for that. Fortunately, there were many swords scattered on the ground that the Elves had used while resisting.
While running, he pulled out a longsword stuck in the ground. Just by grabbing it like this, it stuck to his hand as if it were familiar, like his own body.
'Shadow Sword.'
The sword hid in the darkness, concealing its presence. Though the sword's presence was hidden, Jin-woo's presence couldn't be concealed, so the Werewolf turned to look this way. It roared and swung its claws.
The longsword from the shadows cut off that arm.
Kuheeong!?
The Werewolf was greatly flustered by the completely undetected sword strike that seemed to have come from a blind spot. In that moment, Jin-woo stabbed the monster's core with the retrieved sword, piercing the blue flame.
Hwareuk-
The flame shattered and was absorbed into the sword. And the Werewolf collapsed with a thud, its body pierced through.
...He had done it. He should have just stayed still, but he had unnecessarily intervened and drawn attention. The Werewolves nearby immediately all turned their heads toward Jin-woo.
Breathing roughly, Jin-woo's chest rose and fell.
[ Warning. ]
[ Destroy the seed of those with long ears. ]
'Werewolves have long ears too, but they don't count as the trial?'
[ Warning. ]
It was nonsense that wouldn't work.