Chapter 51 (1/2)
Siheung 8 Dungeon (4)
“Look over there!”
At that time, in front of the gate in Siheung. There was a great uproar between government officials and hunters who had gathered.
“There is a system message!”
Even an Awakened person couldn’t recognize real-time messages that could be heard inside when they were outside the gate. There were only a few simple lines of the notes available outside.
– Dungeon Information
Level: S Maximum number of entrants: 40 (Current gate entrants: 39) Clear conditions: Eliminate all monsters at the last stage of the dungeon Time to evolve: Indefinite Status: Very unstable (Clear complete)
Current entrants told how many of the people who had passed through this gate were still in the dungeon.
“It’s down to 39!”
The news that the remaining time until evolution had been changed to indefinite and that the phrase ‘Clear complete’ had been added to the dungeon state had been reported in almost real-time and delivered to the media. The country and the whole world were in a festive mood. Nearly all the press on Earth were reporting this as breaking news. Many people were wiping away their tears, too. All that was left was to wait for the Hunters who had completed the attack to return in triumph. Suddenly, news like a bolt from the blue sky spread.
“Who’s dead?”
“Send backup immediately!”
Quickly, a hunter on standby threw himself into the gate.
*
“It’s bad!”
At the same time. Similar disturbances occurred in front of the portal leading to the third stage of the dungeon. The festive mood cooled rapidly.
– This is the door to the third stage of the dungeon.
– Limited personnel: 3 persons (current portal entrants: 2 persons)
– Door closes when exposed to an unstable environment.
The portal’s system message was still displaying information limited to the third stage of the dungeon.
“Who’s dead?”
“Send telepathy to the Expedition Leader! You know how! A strong determination to ‘report’ Han-Seol in your head,”
“I’m already doing it. But there’s no answer,”
“She stamped the soldier class insignia on all of us just in case! Send telepathy to her all at once! Then she can’t miss it!”
“But she’s still not responding! It seems like Han-Seol is dead!”
The faces of the hunters turned pale. For now, an S-Rank Hunter jumped into the portal as the protocol discussed in advance. The rest of the hunters were thinking the same question in confusion.
“What happened?”
Was the dead person really Han-Seol? And if she died, how did she die right after the Clear was completed? These were questions that could not be resolved in the future where Choi Seung-Hyun lived.
“It’s sure that Han-Seol is dead. How else wouldn’t she respond to seventeen persons’ telepathy!”
Nobody guessed that the reason why Han-Seol connected the strings to all 17 Hunters was that it was an arrangement for her to later return safely to the second stage by following it in the fog.
*
‘Captain Han-Seol, if you’re alive, please respond! Captain Han-Seol!’
Han-Seol frowned because of the overlapping telepathy in her head.
‘I’ll have to turn it off for a while.’
In a way that only the operator of the skill and commander could, she maintained the connected strings but closed her mind for a while and locked them out. Then, in an instant, her head became calm and clear.
Ging!
After a while, one of the strings leading to the portal was slightly diverted. Then, a message rings that could only be heard in there came out loud.
– A new Awakened has entered stage three of the dungeon!
Han-Seol knew that this was a response to a predetermined protocol. But even if he came in, he wouldn’t be able to do anything in this fog. She had all the time in the world. This was because the only hunter who could see through the fog has already died. No one other than her, Han-Seol, removed that person with her own hands. She thought of the corpse lying around in her head—a terrible sight of one’s head blown off. Han-Seol then asked herself.
‘Why did I have to blow her head?’
Heart, or head. Mashing, one of the two, was the most efficient way to kill someone. However, it was a little hard to understand why she left her body there instead of burning it completely with a bit more effort. No, she may have tried to turn a blind eye not to accept the truth.
‘I smashed her head because I wanted that mouth of hers off.’
Those words Nicole Thompson whispered to Bill Russell that night. She remembered what she had said about Han-Seol. Every word was annoying.
‘Is that why I killed her?’
Pessimism and optimism mixed in her heart. The pessimistic voice was a little louder.
‘That’s not the reason.’
If Nicole Thompson was alive, there was a risk of being caught with whatever she would do from now on.
She said she needed another half an hour to avoid the shock, but only she knew how quickly she would recover. That was why she killed her. She decided to think so.
‘Anyway, I’m happy with the result. That’s enough.’
Whether others worshipped or condemned her actions, Han-Seol did not care about it.
‘I shouldn’t care.’
Though she needed to think her acceptance was the most important thing, she did not notice the contradiction in her thoughts.
‘Forget about everything else. It’s a small sacrifice for a great cause. Thompson’s death is a small sacrifice.’
Yes, a great cause. The cause was important. Han-Seol deliberately murmured with her voice.
“I saved people. I stopped the dungeon break,”
Inside, she swallowed the words that followed.
‘So I’m a great person.’
Han-Seol learned something a long time ago. In 2038, the Siheung 8 dungeon collapsed. No one found the gate because it spawned from a closed ventilation system under an apartment complex, and when it collapsed, it even had evolved into an SS-Class. When Han-Seol learned about the future, she was so terrified that she couldn’t drink or eat for a few days. This was because she had seen Han-Seol herself die in the future when the Dungeon Break swept Korea.
‘But I changed the future. I cleared the dungeon.’
It saved countless lives. Han-Seol herself escaped being swept away to death by the collapse of the dungeon.
She tried. She tried pretty hard. There was a reason why she participated the most in the exploration of the Siheung 8 dungeon among all the hunters in Korea. In the first place, the one that discovered this gate was a hunter under the Celestial Dragon who followed Han-Seol.
‘I changed my future, too.’
Instead, from now on, Han-Seol didn’t know how she would die.
‘I want to see more of the future. Now that I’ve changed past events, I want to see how this aftermath will be reflected in the future. I want to know what will happen to me after preventing the collapse of the Siheung 8 dungeon.’
Han-Seol had several secrets that most people didn’t know. One of them was her unique skill [Prophecy]. The skill’s existence had been confided to Seo Gyu-Cheol and Seo Jin-Wook, but she was the only one who knew exactly how it worked. For example, Seo Gyu-Cheol didn’t know. Borrowing his expression, the predictions that Han-Seol often received nowadays that ‘technically a prediction, but it was too far in the future that it was not beneficial’; it was actually made up and was not a real prediction.
‘I can’t see the future.’
It had already been three months since she last saw the future, ever since it had constantly decreased.
‘And so many things have changed since then.’
As a representative example, the person waiting in front of her with cold eyes did. The closer she approached, the clearer the shape of him in the fog became.
‘The suggestion to delay the Awakening was to check the reaction.’
After waking up after being unconscious, she heard that he was different than before, so she went and said that on purpose. If he were him in the past, he would have once again been at odds with Seo Gyu-Cheol following the words of Han-Seol. But he flatly refused. This was a thing that could not have happened before.