Chapter 457

"Where on earth does your confidence come from?"

The mage's shadow was already descending silently, unnoticed by anyone.

"But well, honestly, whether it's artificial awakening or whatever else, there's still no mercenary more reliable than a seasoned, naturally awakened one."

For reference, the practitioner operating this place had deliberately sacrificed a certain degree of security in order to lure ordinary people in. Some information was presented as though it were highly classified, while those who learned too much were thoroughly silenced through contracts. Occasionally, a few test subjects were even released without restriction, allowing rumors to spread through the market naturally.

So, in a sense, it was only natural for outsiders to find their way here.

But that one of those outsiders would be a cold-hearted alien—or perhaps a sociopath—was something only a shaman could have predicted.

"Let's see... Is the artifact really fully charged?"

The relentless alien creature was already close enough to strike.

"OK, OK."

Amid this quietly escalating crisis, an Earthling completely unaware of what was happening outside casually lifted an object.

[Rank: Unique]

Its magically measured power was relatively low, making the result somewhat ambiguous.

[Instructions: ① Before use, insert enough magic stones to fully charge the energy.]

The mid-tier "Unique" rating that had just appeared was merely the result of measuring the empty shell of the object.

Now fully charged, the artifact glowed continuously with a vivid grape-colored light in the man's hands. For reference, it was an item expensive enough that even someone who made a living through divination might hesitate to use it carelessly. The bowling-ball-sized object had even been wrapped in soft velvet to prevent so much as a single scratch.

Tak.

The elderly practitioner placed his hand on the orb-like artifact and poured a powerful stream of thought into it.

"When I see something like this, I sometimes find myself wondering about the true nature of Gates."

What followed was merely the practitioner's personal opinion.

"Come to think of it, I've occasionally seen signs on the streets calling for the complete eradication of both superhumans and superpowers."

"..."

"But the argument that all supernatural phenomena should be avoided at any cost is rather ridiculous."

"..."

"Dungeons are places that grant humanity blessings like this, after all. Getting rid of them entirely would be a problem."

The man wearing sunglasses remained silent.

While the Korean pretended to be distracted, the Unique-grade magical tool had already begun carrying out its function.

Creak...

The dungeon underwent a drastic transformation, almost like cells dividing.

The Gate inhabited by Ant-Envious Spiders was divided like the fruit of a wax tree, consisting of an outer shell and a white inner layer. But now one side of that space had been disturbed.

And along the blurred boundary, the scenery of another world slowly began to seep in.

[How to Summon the Iron Palace]

The item the practitioner had just activated was, in truth, a tool with a rather ominous name.

[Description: ① You can control certain types of EX-grade Gates.]

It was precisely because of this feature that such an extraordinary ability was possible.

***

Close your eyes.

Open them again.

On a street in South Korea, a new structure appeared within literally the few seconds it took to blink.

It was long and towering, its peak barely visible even when one craned their neck to look upward.

Yet despite such a conspicuous object suddenly appearing in the city, none of the citizens wondered whether tax money had been spent on it.

"Huh?"

Above all, its shape was already familiar to the people of this East Asian country.

"Isn't that the same thing?"

On Alpharet, structures like this were commonly used to mark areas where feeding boxes had appeared.

But on this new planet, they possessed a shocking function.

A black, pointed stele.

"Ah! That's it! That's the one."

"I should contact the Hunter Association."

For reference, this black obelisk had once reflected faces during a snowfall and instantly dragged S-rank hunters into a place called the [Labyrinth of the 13th Month].

That incident had been widely reported under a special alert, so even ordinary people with little interest in Gates remembered it to some extent.

"Hello?"

One non-Awakened person immediately raised an electronic device and made a report.

However, the current obelisk was slightly different from what the citizens expected.

Its appearance was identical to the one from before, but the place it summoned was completely different.

Yes. This is the Gate Disaster Safety Reporting Center. How may I help you?

"Operator, I was on my way to a convenience store, and I just found some kind of stone pagoda standing in the street."

A stone pagoda?

"I mean the thing that captured three S-rank hunters from our country before? It looks exactly like that one, but..."

Sir, if that's what you're referring to, you probably mean the Gate called [Labyrinth of the 13th Month].

But this wasn't the previously mentioned [Labyrinth of the 13th Month].

It was the [Iron Maiden] Gate.

In other words, the nightmare that had once briefly demonstrated its might in the Nordic region had finally reared its head again.

First of all, thank you for reporting this! We'll immediately handle the matter through the Hunter Association.

Furthermore, there was an especially malicious aspect to the appearance of this black monument.

The people occupying the illegal clinic had no intention whatsoever of leaving the selection of entrants in South Korea to chance.

You're probably familiar with the raid strategy as well. Moreover, since the [Labyrinth of the 13th Month] Gate doesn't spawn high-grade monsters, we may extend a proposal to Seo Esther-ssi...

The crystal orb in the elderly man's hands was, in fact, a controller capable of manipulating the dungeon.

And the black obelisk already contained the mana data of countless Awakened individuals gathered from around the world.

[Before Modification: The entrants are determined in the order of who last touched the marker stone.]

How those stored records were used depended entirely on the will of the dungeon's controller.

[After Modification: Entrance participants are selected in any order the controller desires from the mana signatures recorded in the monument.]

Roughly twenty-four hours later, when the time came for the monument to be destroyed, a fire-attribute Awakened was supposed to be dragged into the subspace.

Had nothing unexpected occurred, that was exactly what would have happened.

"..."

But when had the world of ordinary humans ever been free of unexpected variables?

"Ahem."

The story returned abruptly to its main thread, accompanied by a weak, hollow cough that no one would ever believe had come from a being of transcendent strength.

In the darkness, the Archmage named Kim Giryeo opened his eyes.

'Oh my.'

After entering the ant nest overseas and sensing a distortion within the dungeon, he had personally made his way toward the source of the phenomenon.

Of course, entering the newly formed [Iron Maiden] Gate itself hadn't been particularly difficult.

All he had to do was walk.

And walk.

And walk through the organically connected tunnels of the ant nest.

Repeat that tedious process about three times, break through the final chamber where the dungeons had merged together, and that was it.

'To think I'd get to witness something this extraordinary on Earth.'

A familiar sight unfolded before him.

A hunter standing in another world.

But once one realized that this Gate was quite literally a dungeon nested inside another dungeon, a strange sense of peculiarity began to settle in.

'Qisimche aren't the sort of race to carry out pointless experiments like this. This must have been the work of some shaman.'

In any case, he had already suppressed his mana to the level of an insect, so there was no chance of anyone detecting him.

Thus, the alien scholar entered the feeding box completely, eager to observe this mysterious Earth phenomenon for the first time.

He became its very first entrant.

An entrant the ritualists could never have imagined.

Thanks to the inherent characteristics of his soul, Kim Giryeo easily recognized the true nature of the trap.

'Still, this would be impossible without some kind of magical device. These primitive sorcerers on this planet would need to live for a few hundred more years before they could manipulate space like this on their own.'

For some reason, the word matryoshka came to mind.

But whatever.

Earth's strange vocabulary didn't matter right now.

'A remote control that can create dungeons. Was it really possible for a reward with this much power to drop in the first place?'

The figure disguised behind a freckled face moved forward.

"Hmm?"

What immediately came into view were walls made of dark bluish-black bricks and magical lamps formed from crystal.

Yet despite someone as powerful as him going to the trouble of entering the place, not a single monster appeared.

'Fitting for an EX-rank.'

The only thing that entered his field of vision was this.

Something roughly the height of a human.

A face so unpleasant that it looked as though it had been drawn by cheap AI, complete with two mouths.

And beneath that grotesque face was an object roughly 190 centimeters tall, colored like brass.

"Huh?"

Should he call it a statue?

Or would it be more accurate to describe it as an enormous bungeoppang mold?

The blond alien blinked as he examined the strange hinged object.

'It's similar to the White Maze. Looks like the challenger gets inside that thing, and then the door to the next room opens. Well, this is something I already checked before entering the dungeon anyway.'

The man stood with both hands stuffed into his pockets and stared blankly up at the ceiling.

First.

There was no trace of the disturbing attention of the Gisimche.

Second.

This was an unidentified illegal clinic that had been inflicting suffering on countless people.

Third.

And for the record, he currently had magic power to spare.

After contemplating the situation for a long moment, the Archmage analyzed it as objectively as possible.

And given all of that, was there really any reason to leave alone a feeding box that had clearly been tampered with by mammals?

'I don't know the details, but the practitioner probably summoned this thing for some pointless scheme.'

The alien had no idea what the humans intended to accomplish with it.

But whether he possessed that information or not made no real difference to the aquatic creature.

'Then let's get this over with quickly.'

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

A series of explosions followed in rapid succession, each separated by no more than 0.01 seconds.

Grrrk...

Kim Giryeo focused his mind for a full minute.

The air around him seemed to tremble in fear.

The [Iron Maiden] was originally a Gate with an exceptionally high casualty rate, so high that it had significantly dragged down the average survival rate of EX-class Gates.

Its method was simple.

Entrants were forced through one torture chamber after another, bleeding and weakening each time they advanced to the next room.

Thunk!

Had Korea's hero been dragged inside as planned, there probably wouldn't have been any foolish remarks about giant bungeoppang molds.

Jeong Haseong would have quickly grasped the nature of the Gate.

Then, room after room, he would have been forced to shed blood and gradually weaken.

That was precisely what the group of practitioners had intended.

Thunk!

But what happened when someone appeared who possessed an absurdly vast supply of magical power?

Kim Giryeo merely did what needed to be done.

And in doing so, he inadvertently saved Korea's hero.

At the same time that he destroyed the mechanisms inside, the black pillar that had appeared in South Korea was also destroyed.

"..."

Once every torture device had been obliterated, the feeding box could no longer collect any suffering.

As though it had lost all motivation, the dungeon opened the way to the exit.

The sight of the doors arranged in a straight line swinging open one after another, almost as though they recognized their master, was quite spectacular.

'Damn it, what the hell!'

Honestly, everything would have been fine if not for the ridiculous special effect triggered whenever one of the human-faced coffins exploded...

'It was a liquid with no magical power, so I couldn't detect it.'

Squeak!

Absurdly enough, each of the dungeon's torture devices contained a pouch of artificial blood.

As a result, Kim Giryeo's chest was unintentionally drenched in red.

On top of that, the metal structures shattered violently, sending fragments flying in every direction.

'Good thing I wore cheap clothes... right?'

The Archmage's precise handling of magic had somehow resulted in an embarrassing outcome.

Perhaps because he had compressed his magical power into tiny points and kept it concealed, his T-shirt hadn't received any proper protection.

By the time he finished destroying the coffins, the cloth had been torn to shreds.

His clothing was practically in rags.

His skin, on the other hand, remained completely unharmed.

"Huh?"

He had been pretending to possess the weakness of an ordinary human while keeping his claws hidden.

But there was no longer any reason to continue whining about preserving his disguise.

The objects that had dominated this Gate had all been destroyed.

And clearing the [Iron Maiden] had confirmed one more thing.

This place was anything but ordinary.

From this point onward, all that remained was a one-sided interrogation.

'If anyone tried to run, I was planning to chase them immediately... but I guess this saves me some mana.'

A short while later, Kim Giryeo quickened his pace and headed toward the exit.

Naturally, since this was an artificially constructed space, once the exit opened, the ant-nest dungeon inhabited by the spiders was exposed beyond it.

"Hmm?"

But even a mage with an exceptionally vivid imagination couldn't help but be taken aback by what he saw next.

Tak, tak, tak.

Tak.

The people from the illegal augmentation clinic had rushed over the moment they realized that a trap which should never have been broken had somehow been destroyed.

"This isn't exactly a cold country, is it?"

And among them, unsurprisingly, was a familiar face.

Covered in artificial blood, Kim Giryeo didn't even think to use [Clean].

He simply froze awkwardly in place.

'Damn. So there really are entrances to this ant nest connected to other countries too.'

Who could have imagined that he would encounter a Korean S-rank hunter inside an illegal clinic overseas?

And for the record, the blue-haired Awakened looked every bit as startled as he did.

"..."

At first, Kang Changho's face was completely expressionless.

Then, as the seconds passed, he reached up and adjusted his sunglasses.

Eventually, the enhanced superhuman gave an awkward smile and scratched his forehead.

"Ah, this is a bit..."

A completely natural reaction slipped from his lips.

After all, instead of Korea's hero appearing through the opened Gate as planned, some perfectly ordinary-looking Westerner had suddenly walked out.

Fortunately, even the alien understood exactly why Kang Changho was reacting that way.