Chapter 311

I was already curious about what had happened, so this worked out perfectly.

I answered the incoming call right away. The moment I did, a sharp cry for help came through the speaker, stirring a deep sense of unease in my soul.

“Giryeo-ssi, please help me!”

What’s more, after taking a moment to compose herself, Esther began recounting the whole story through half-suppressed sobs...

***

Finally, we’ve arrived at the introduction.

[ Why did this mess happen? ]

First of all, the quickest way to understand the incident was to hear the testimony of an Earthling. An S-rank hunter named Esther had actually sensed the first signs of trouble a full 48 hours earlier.

“This involves a gate, so honestly, I wouldn’t say I noticed particularly quickly.”

To explain—this Earthling woman runs a hunter corporation on the scale of a major conglomerate, so naturally, she has access to a tremendous amount of information. And a few days ago, a certain rumor happened to reach her ears.

“CEO Sho, have you heard? I mean, can you believe it? An A-rank gate was sold to a civilian.”

A gate being sold?

Ever since the world entered the era of Dungeon Shocks, governments across the planet had been forced to spend far more money in all sorts of areas.

In the past, maintaining a city might have meant occasionally digging up a sidewalk. But now, collapsed walls had become routine. In fact, during the early days of the Shock, the underground levels of the National Assembly building had once been overrun by ghost-type monsters, and the battle to eliminate them ended with the government bunker being destroyed.

As expected, the most dramatic increase in tax expenditure came from the maintenance and repair of public facilities. Dungeon Shocks not only killed people but also caused trillions in property damage across various countries. Naturally, governments needed far more tax revenue than before. But squeezing a populace already teetering on the edge risked threatening the very survival of democracy.

So, while taking responsibility for the dangers posed by every gate, governments also began claiming temporary ownership over these otherworlds. To secure additional funding, they started selling access rights to the wealthy. Even then, ownership contracts were issued only for short periods—three or five years at most—and could be renewed only after passing a strict re-evaluation process.

In a sense, it was the bare minimum of risk management...

...or so one could say—at least until a week ago.

“A-rank?”

“Yes.”

Selling A-rank gates to civilians?

The same high-level danger zones where even a single monster escaping from the Nest of Grass or the deepest areas could throw everything into chaos?

Just a few days ago, the Korean Hunter Association had carried out an inexplicable transfer of management rights.

Even a dragon that brought tremendous benefits to humanity could cause casualties with the slightest mistake if it was classified as a high-grade magical beast. That was why institutional regulations strictly prohibited the transfer of A-rank gates.

And yet, despite all that, the Association had gone ahead and sold one.

Esther’s first thought had been obvious.

“At first, I thought it might’ve been a clerical error. Like maybe an employee typed the wrong letter when registering the gate.”

Of course, reality turned out to be completely different from her assumption.

“But the more I looked into it, the stranger it got. The deeper I dug, the more unsettling details kept coming out, you know?”

The suspicious points Esther uncovered were as follows.

• First, the rumor that an A-rank gate had been sold—something she had initially dismissed as nonsense—turned out to be true.

The organization responsible for managing dungeon auctions had, in fact, privately sold a portion of another world whose entrance passage measured a staggering 5.4 meters across. Because the spatial rift was so large, the mana leaking from it was easy to detect, which made the phenomenon itself relatively easy to discover.

And immediately after that came the next problem.

• Second, in state-supervised gate transactions, both the winning bid and the owner were required to be disclosed. Yet somehow, only the information concerning this A-rank gate was missing from the database.

That was when an even more serious irregularity emerged.

“So... to sum it up, Esther-ssi noticed a high-level gate transaction and tried to find out what was going on.”

“Yes.”

“Before making any formal inquiries, you first tried to find the name of the gate—but there was no trace of any A-rank gate in the agency’s official transaction disclosures.”

“Yes.”

“So, realizing something was wrong, you went to the site first—just as Executive Director Yoo of Hanshin Guild said—and found someone already occupying the area.”

“Those guys had blocked off the area around the gate with metal construction barriers.”

Sniffle, sniffle.

For reference, this wasn’t Neo Hospital but another medical facility in Seoul. After Esther suggested that we speak in person, I came here—and the Earthling who had summoned this alien was now leaking some kind of fluid. Though whether it was blood or not, I couldn’t quite tell.

The healing ability user had already come and gone, so the pitiful expression on Esther’s face probably wasn’t caused by physical pain alone.

“Sniff... So as soon as I picked up on the clues, I went straight to the Association headquarters. And after cornering the person in charge, I heard something completely absurd.”

“The person in charge?”

Esther was still furious about ‘what happened.’ Even though her injuries had already healed, her face remained flushed as she spoke.

“The ones who bought that A-rank gate turned out to be some unheard-of, small-scale hunter company.”

“Yes?”

“Not our Tower, not Neo, not even Mideum or Hanshin Guild—some brand-new, small-time guild just casually ended up owning one of Korea’s A-rank gates?”

Now that I thought about it, that really was strange.

I only encountered high-ranking gates so often because of my position. In reality, Awakened around the fifty-level tier were extraordinarily rare, so the odds of a newly founded guild having someone that powerful were slim.

And if we were talking about an entire team capable of safely managing an A-rank gate?

That was even less likely.

Yet somehow, out of nowhere, one had appeared...

[QuantumPulse]

How could such a small company possibly have been permitted to own a high-tier dungeon?

• Third, when questioned about the situation, the official ultimately responsible for gate transactions claimed that the missing disclosure was merely the result of a processing delay caused by a junior employee taking summer vacation.

According to the explanation they eventually provided, although the gate had been classified as A-rank, its ownership had been transferred as a special exception because internal research had confirmed the presence of a substance inside it that could have an enormous impact on human advancement.

• Fourth, after hearing that explanation, the head of the Korea Magic Tower guild snapped:

“You passed over our guild and Neo Sisters to grant an exception to some tiny guild—do you seriously expect me to believe that makes sense? Did you even hold a proper auction?”

• Fifth, in response, a senior Association official named Kim OO gave a long, rambling explanation that the exclusive rights to this A-grade gate had been granted because a researcher belonging to the purchasing guild had achieved significant results while analyzing the new substance discovered inside.

That was what Esther had been dealing with for the past 48 hours.

“Complicated procedures, just like Earth.”

The purple-haired woman cast an irritated glance at her bloodstained blouse before continuing.

“Anyway, that official keeps insisting everything was handled legally. But come on—anyone can see this is suspicious.”

“Legally, you say?”

“I checked, and the restriction on A-rank gate transactions really was lifted recently. So at least that part wasn’t a lie. I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to the law. Besides, since it was only an internal organizational regulation, there probably wasn’t much stopping someone with enough influence from changing it through money and maneuvering.”

“Hmm.”

“What kind of shady backroom deal is this supposed to be?”

I had no idea what half those administrative terms meant, but the sorcerer seemed angry, so it was probably best for me to keep quiet.

“So I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and in the end, I... may have threatened the Association President’s life to get the truth out of them.”

Look at that.

“I told the new Association President that if they were going to do their job like this, maybe it would be better if they got charged with dereliction of duty and I got thrown in jail for assault. Then we could be cellmates or something.”

As expected, it was a good thing I had never gotten on her bad side.

“After that, they hurriedly investigated the matter and finally admitted that the person in charge had been bribed. Oh, and I also had a video that was uploaded online without permission taken down around that time.”

“...?”

“Going so far as to use bribery just to own an A-rank gate... It was bound to come out eventually and turn into a massive controversy anyway. Do you understand why they would pour billions into something like this, Giryeo-ssi?”

“Well.”

“Furthermore, once I investigated more closely, the [QuantumPulse] Hunter Guild that purchased the gate turned out not to be some ordinary small guild at all. It was a ‘ghost company’ whose members’ identities couldn’t even be properly verified.”

“I...”

“But the real mystery is... how could such a small company afford the enormous lobbying funds it would take to sway a high-ranking official?”

Tuk.

As if she had felt another stab of pain in her previously injured right eye, Esther raised a hand to her face before continuing.

To be honest, if a crisis ever arose in this country where countless innocent citizens were about to die, she was confident that she could eliminate the root cause—even if the person responsible happened to be a world leader.

“Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem like something that can be solved by simple means.”

Well, that was about the size of it.

“I did manage to threaten the Association President with a curse and got a belated promise that the gate’s ownership would be revoked. But, well, when I tried contacting the other party through the number they had registered, nobody answered.”

Esther lifted her face from her hands again.

“However, the dungeon that was traded appeared a full six days ago.”

“Given the circumstances, a break should be imminent. Or, depending on its size, it may already have passed the limit.”

“That’s why I had no choice but to bypass all the legal procedures and force my way in so I could enter the site immediately...”

It had taken quite a while to explain everything, but the wait had been worth it.

At last, the heart of the entire incident had been revealed.

“I truly had no idea there would be a ‘Beast pack’ inside.”

“Yes. Who could have expected something like that?”

Shockingly, the thug who had attacked Esther’s eye... was a Beast.

“More precisely, it was a fake Beast—someone trying to stop this Earthling from clearing the gate.”

I lay there with my back against the ground, lost in thought.

“The Beast pack that’s been all over the news lately... was inside the dungeon?”

Seriously, what kind of major incident was this?

Until now, almost as if they were engaging in some bizarre form of racism, they had never even set foot in neighborhoods primarily inhabited by Asians. Yet the owners of those bone masks had suddenly appeared in South Korea.

And as a result of being attacked by the Beasts occupying the dungeon, Esther had been critically injured.

“H, heuk. Those bastards... If only my ability weren’t one of those curse-type skills with such low lethality, I would’ve taken down at least two of them... But all I managed to do was break one guy’s rib.”

“Were their ranks high?”

“They weren’t just high-ranking. I knew the moment I faced them directly—all three of those Beasts they’ve been talking about on the news were top-tier!”

Esther was lamenting her crushing defeat, perhaps exaggerating it by half a degree.

But rather than her emotional outburst, what concerned me more were the scars left behind on her skin.

“Ah, my god. How could someone recklessly harm one of Korea’s precious S-ranks...?”

Damn fake Beast b*stards!

“That curse mage is my second bodyguard, responsible for keeping me safe in my old age!”

Feeling sympathetic, I picked up a wet wipe from nearby and cleaned the blood from Esther’s stained tentacle.

Correction.

Come to think of it, an Earthling’s hair wasn’t a tentacle. It was just a mass of dead cells.

“Giryeo-ssi...”

As I wiped the strands of her purple hair with my hand, I thought to myself.

In any case, there was no doubt that something had gone badly wrong in this second home where this alien had settled.

According to Esther’s testimony, there were three S-rank Hunters inside that gate.

“Were top-rankers always this common in this world? I don’t think so.”

As the news had been loudly reporting, three unidentified superpowered individuals wearing bone masks had appeared.

Esther repeatedly voiced her concern over what those people might be planning to do with an unverified A-rank gate.

However, under the circumstances, it would be somewhat inappropriate for an archmage to become directly involved in the incident.

“Haseong-ah, I’m sorry. I know I said that back then, but... it turns out the real loser was me all along...”

Even Brooklyn had barely managed to defeat them despite all the enhancements provided by her equipment.

And now, three enemies possessing S-rank Awakening stats were camped inside a dungeon in Korea.

Still, I couldn’t simply ignore the situation.

The incident had happened practically on the doorstep of the place where I was staying, and the thought of it kept bothering me. After discussing the matter with Esther, I decided to visit the site myself.

Originally, I had only intended to take a quick look at what kind of dungeon they had gone to such lengths to occupy.

—No, damn it, what is that!

However, the instant I laid eyes on the gate in question, every trace of peace within me was replaced by a towering wall of despair.

And once I fully grasped the true nature of the dungeon that had been seized, a powerful sense of urgency struck me.

I needed to call not only Jung Haseong, but even Kang Changho—a third-party specialist—to this place immediately.

The more time passed, the more tangled and complicated the situation became.