Chapter 398

It was while I was lost in thought.

Clatter!

At last, the apex predator of the feeding box was dead. The people standing beside me, however, seemed to have other concerns as they looked at the fallen boss monster. Before long, an unexpected topic came up.

“Something about this feels strange.”

Esther, who was handling the monster’s corpse, was the first to speak.

“Strange?”

“You’ve probably already guessed from my name and my brother’s, but most of my family is religious.”

“I see.”

“But lately, whenever I look at the dungeons that appear, I feel a little uneasy. Concepts that used to exist only in scripture are now appearing right before our eyes. On top of that, the monuments standing in front of the castles even use human language to say things like, ‘Don’t live that way.’”

Esther pulled the magic stone from the boss’s chest and continued.

“To be honest, I don’t think the gates were created by beings like us. If that’s the case, could this entire series of Dungeon Shocks really be the will of God?”

It seemed my colleague in the industry had suddenly developed a fundamental question.

“Eh, no way.”

But I quickly dismissed her nonsense.

“We just saw them fail to pinpoint the gate’s location properly and flood the whole place with seawater. What kind of god does that?”

“When you put it that way, you’re right. I suppose the gate is far too flawed to be worthy of that kind of reverence.”

There were so many mistakes that it was difficult to dismiss them as mere trivialities, so naturally, the probability that the master of this otherworld was some higher being was low.

“Oh, my. Then perhaps the theory that this is the work of aliens really is correct?”

“......”

“Come to think of it, there have occasionally been official reports of UFO sightings in other countries. Of course, I never believed any of them before and just laughed them off, but maybe all those ridiculous claims from the past were actually true.”

“......”

“Was that joke not funny? Okay, Giryeo-ssi, so you’re not into the occult.”

At that moment, I suddenly had no choice but to keep my mouth shut, but it didn’t turn into a major problem. The image I had somehow built up as a ‘quiet, indifferent man’ seemed to help. With the crisis thankfully averted, it was time to wrap things up.

“This halo of light is...”

“Ah, that’s right. Once the raid here ended, they immediately kicked the hunters out!”

“Then everyone, hold your breath for a moment. I’ve just stopped controlling the current, and at this rate, we’ll end up stranded in the middle of the sea.”

Even if humans were left inside a dead space, no new glimmers would grow. Therefore, these emotional fry had to be sent back home.

Following that obvious logic of the gate, we soon caught sight of the light from the surface.

“Pfft!”

“Ah, damn it. I’m completely soaked~ My gear!”

“Everyone, it looks like there’s a Korean Coast Guard ship a little farther out. Should I blast us all the way over there with a water cannon?”

“N, no. Hunter Kim. I can swim, so I’ll be fine...”

“What’s this? Sounds fun. I’m in.”

Considering that we had survived the Pride Castle, there didn’t seem to be any immediate aftereffects.

In any case, the dungeon had been cleared.

We returned to the white ship that had been waiting nearby. Once we safely set foot on the deck, we began the final cleanup.

“Honestly, I was worried. But it’s such a relief that the speedrun plan we prepared beforehand worked so well.”

“Still, I suppose this was only possible because South Korea has Hunter Kim Giryeo. At the same time, it just occurred to me that the other countries must have it really rough...”

“Oh, what? I hadn’t noticed because you weren’t saying much, but Jung Hasseong... were you affected by a status ailment?”

Ignoring the occasional nonsense that cropped up along the way, Esther, whose mind remained clear thanks to her innate Awakening ability, smoothly handled the necessary procedures.

“Alright. Once we check this, today’s work is done.”

We had obtained a total of three types of loot from this run.

Magic stones embedded in the bodies of important monsters.

An epic-grade artifact that the top boss was guaranteed to drop.

And a mysterious postcard made of a special material that did not dissolve in water.

Because we had deliberately hunted as few creatures as possible in order to minimize our exposure to status ailments, the overall quantity of loot was inevitably small. However, the mysterious postcard dropped by the boss-level monster turned out to play an unexpectedly important role.

“Oh dear, those Gisimche... they even wrote all of this in English.”

As I had briefly thought earlier, [Sin Classification] always left behind a preview of the next [Sin Classification] when it collapsed.

So I examined the alien document Esther had collected and brought back.

“Since we’ve received so much help up to now, we should share this information with other countries. Not necessarily because of any international agreement, but at least on moral grounds.”

But before the alien could even bring over a translator, she interpreted it instinctively.

I had suspected it for some time, but Esther’s language skills seemed impressive despite the fact that she had never completed university. Using her usual ability, she immediately translated the text before her into Korean and read it aloud.

[To my last lies the Castle that Punishes Gluttony.]

It mentioned the place humans had nicknamed the Castle of Sloth.

In fact, that was only natural. They weren’t called the Seven Sin Castles for nothing. The symbolic sins numbered seven in total.

Now that the identities of six dungeons had been revealed, it was inevitable that this name would appear.

“So, as expected, the last one is the Sloth Dungeon.”

And because all the notes collected so far followed the same format, Esther craned her neck to examine the bottom of the document.

In previous [Sin Classification] dungeon rewards, this part of the note had always revealed the specific method of attack used by the dungeon.

“It’s certain that it’ll hit us, at least. From the Gisimche’s perspective, maybe it’s simply being kind enough to warn us before it happens.”

But I never expected the truth about the final dungeon to turn out like this.

[One must not succumb to laziness.

Doing so is an act of neglect, and the peculiar beings of the world commit a grave error by remaining in a “do-nothing” state of pure idleness.

Extravagance that wastes life without any special reason is an unforgivable waste.

Moreover, such neglect withers not only oneself but also the souls surrounding them.

Thus, my diligent compatriots, unable to bear it any longer, take it upon themselves to punish the slothful.

Those who occupy the surface, beware.

The walls of the next castle will collapse within 365 seconds.]

For reference, all the elaborate lines above could be ignored.

Those were merely the characteristic quirks of the °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° Gisimche species.

‘Judging by how natural the sentences flow, they might even have copied an entire paragraph from a real book that exists on Earth.’

“If we disregard all the unnecessary parts, there’s only one sentence we need to focus on in the end.”

[The walls of the next castle will collapse within 365 seconds.]

Castle walls.

It was a term rarely used before the Dungeon Shock era.

However, there was no way hunters with even a little experience could be unaware of its other meaning.

Ever since the Gate began speaking in human language, it had used the phrase “castle walls” with one very specific implication.

“Castle walls? Wait a minute, this is...”

“It means a ‘Dungeon Break’ in our language!”

Even though the effects of his status ailment had not completely worn off, Jeong Hasseong instantly snapped back to full alertness.

Naturally, a warning that the Sloth [Sin Classification] dungeon would soon explode was serious enough to demand it.

365 seconds.

Converted into a slightly larger unit, that was about six minutes.

It looked like we somehow needed to contact Japan as soon as possible.

“E, everyone! We’re in big trouble!”

At that moment, all of us turned our heads at once toward the human voice coming from somewhere on the deck.

“This is already bad enough. What could possibly be the big problem this time?”

The person who appeared was the Hunter Association President, who had been waiting aboard the Coast Guard ship this entire time.

But the man approaching us, clutching his phone tightly in one hand, looked impatient.

“Our prediction was wrong—the final [Sin Classification] appeared immediately after the Pride Dungeon was cleared!”

Truly the behavior of monsters embodying Diligence and Sincerity.

In that case, rather than making such a fuss, wouldn’t it be better to call the Japanese authorities first?

“Did the Awakening Management Bureau in the neighboring country not answer the phone?”

It was around the time Esther voiced her question that the Association President added in a trembling voice.

“No, that’s not the problem, Hunter Esther.”

“Yes?”

“The dungeon... was observed in Seoul...”

It was an emergency.

“Huh.”

Could this be a joke?

Had someone simply said something ridiculous to calm down the hunters who had just finished clearing a dungeon?

When I first heard it, that thought briefly crossed my mind.

“No, the researchers clearly said that the minimum interval between dungeon appearances was fairly long... Didn’t an article say there was an 80% chance that Masudashi or whatever it was would be the seventh location?”

“Some charlatan did the research!”

“True, according to the usual pattern, it would actually make more sense for it to appear in a densely populated area nearby...”

But the grave expression on the Association President’s face made all of us realize it immediately.

“The final stage of [Sin Classification] isn’t in Japan!”

The deck quickly descended into chaos.

It would have been one thing if the dungeon had merely appeared early, but we had just learned that the Sin of Sloth, like some hot-tempered mackerel, apparently had no intention of easing off the accelerator either.

What made the situation even more serious was that South Korea’s elite hunters were all here.

“Damn it. It’ll take forever to get back to land by boat from here!”

Two immediate solutions came to mind.

First: use the mobility-focused artifact [White Bird].

But even that expensive magic tool could not reliably cover the distance within six minutes. The fact that the Chinese hunters who had been at the scene earlier had taken quite some time to arrive was proof enough.

The second option was to act like a grand wizard and cast a [Teleportation] spell...

“W, what should we do, Hunter Kim?”

“For now, you two use [White Bird] and go ahead.”

“Just us?”

“If two people ride that thing, it’ll become incredibly slow. I’ll handle things on my own.”

There was one fact I had never revealed to my companions.

My body was low on magic power!

In fact, if you really counted what remained, I was almost completely drained, like land suffering from a severe drought.

Of course, why else would a man whose goal was unemployment have come to a gate like this?

“Today, metaphorically speaking, I drugged the dungeon. I wondered whether it would work, so I cast a spell to ‘lower the difficulty of the gates that appear next’...”

Glance.

I continued my thoughts while watching the S-rank hunters board their personal flying devices called [White Bird].

“I tried all sorts of things using those clueless mammals as intermediaries. There’s really no energy left.”

Who could I possibly blame in a situation like this?

In the end, it was the archmage’s own fault for failing to account for such trivial variables.

“Hah... I was too lazy to visit the dungeon multiple times, and now I’m being divinely punished in a way I never could have imagined.”

Still, it was too early to give up.

The distance from here to South Korea’s capital was more than 200,000 meters.

Moreover, teleportation-type magic was not something to take lightly.

To leap through space while nearly out of magical energy, I had to rely on the traditional conservation methods that all mages used.

“Let’s construct the spell as slowly and meticulously as possible to reduce the strain.”

Put more simply, it was like squeezing water from a dried squid.

But if I approached magic that painstakingly, it naturally became impossible to meet the crucial six-minute deadline this time as well.

“Why do they give coordinates in Earth terms! I can’t teleport accurately using nothing but these mammals’ maps!”

Sigh.

Even here, the grand archmage’s all-too-human side ended up revealing itself.

But regrets aside, the conclusion was that no matter what I did, we would be late.

So while one part of my mind prepared the spell, I took out my phone and sent a message to contact someone.

“Hunter Kim Giryeo!”

“Wait a moment. Just a moment. I need to make a call too.”

I had established my base far from the capital.

To an outsider, this incident might easily seem unrelated to an extraterrestrial like me.

The various regions of South Korea were like the veins and kidneys of a body, for example.

And the capital—honestly speaking—was the heart.

In this society, if the nation’s capital collapsed or ceased functioning, the entire system was bound to face a major crisis.

[The Castle of Sloth erupts in Seoul + Reassessment of South Korea’s gate disaster safety + KOSPI drops + Economy crashes + The value of my beautiful mansion, bought with won, turns into trash]

“No. Please, not that one...”

It was enough to make even the most desperate delusions come to mind.

So I spared no effort to protect Seoul.

“H, hello? Is the call connected now?”

Then a certain name left my mouth.

The civilians still aboard the ship widened their eyes in surprise.

“Hello, this is Kim Giryeo. Excuse me, but is this Hunter Kang Changho’s number?”

That’s right.

South Korea had originally had four S-rank hunters in total.

“Why are you asking when you already know?”

And the moment I heard that voice, I quietly cheered to myself.

“Haha, as expected!”

That was why tasks had to be dealt with as soon as they appeared.

Brushing your teeth was a prime example.

Next came washing the dishes.

And, like now, blocking the contact information of an annoying conversation partner, and so on.

Small chores, once neglected, had a tendency to pile up endlessly.

And I knew the acceleration of that kind of laziness all too well.

“He’s an S-rank hunter. No matter what promise we made, I knew he’d eventually come looking for me at least once!”

In fact, I had deliberately treated him as though he were completely invisible all this time.

To put it more bluntly, it was also true that I had been saving the opportunity to use him for when it really mattered.

Now the key question was how to make this embodiment of individualism move.

In a crisis like this, nothing could beat my unique skill, [Eloquence], which had been shining ever since the beginning of my reincarnation.