Chapter 363

There were several criteria for choosing a Dungeon. The most important was that the Dungeon’s Rank had to be high enough.

‘A-rank. At the very least, it has to be B-rank or higher.’

That way, it wouldn’t be strange even if Sung Uijae and Im Haekyung entered at the same time. If I cited compatibility within the Dungeon as the reason, I thought I could make it work even with a B-rank. Unfortunately, Dungeons weren’t events that happened every day, so I calculated the timing as much as possible.

They said Dungeons were opening more frequently, but there was still a limit. In other words, I absolutely had to take the next high-rank Dungeon that opened. Even if I had to put Im Haekyung forward to do it.

‘Still, I got lucky.’

To think I’d managed to find a Dungeon on my own without Im Haekyung. Of course, it wasn’t like I personally went around handling everything. I did borrow the power of another group.

The Church of Heavenly Decree. This was the moment when the relationship I had steadily maintained with the Church of Heavenly Decree finally began to become useful in earnest. The Church of Heavenly Decree regularly searched nearby Dungeons for Jin Haedo’s ‘residence.’ They focused mainly on secluded places, and had outright occupied several of them. Naturally, in those cases, it was illegal.

As for me, access to the inside of the Church of Heavenly Decree was now... practically unrestricted, so intercepting one of them wasn’t much of a problem. Im Haekyung asking where the information had come from made answering a little bothersome, but anyway, this was an excellent sequence of events.

And after staying on good terms with this fucking cult, I happened to pick up one more thing.

‘Wait a moment, believer. Is this bastard a VIP?’

‘What? Yes....’

Namely, the fact that Chairman Shin of the Hunter Association was a VIP of the Church of Heavenly Decree. Based on that, I changed the plan for how things would proceed afterward a little.

If he was enough of a VIP, there had to be something fairly deep going on. When I looked into it, sure enough, there was talk that Chairman Shin’s wife was receiving treatment where she repeatedly witnessed the ‘miracles’ led by the Church of Heavenly Decree.

‘I’ll have to rebuild the plan around Chairman Shin.’

If the Church of Heavenly Decree was above his head anyway, he would be easy to wield. It would be quicker to gather up all of Chairman Shin’s faults, dump them onto someone else, and stick this bastard in as the head of the Hunter Association.

The Hunter Association’s current situation wasn’t particularly good. Director Choi’s death had left a hole in practical operations, and the fans and citizens who had supported Director Choi had joined together and begun to suspect the Hunter Association. No matter how much the government was backing the Hunter Association, it was only natural that a show investigation would be carried out at least once.

What would bring that forward was today’s Dungeon clear.

And at that point, excluding Chairman Shin, I intended to bundle Executive Director Yoon, another major figure in the Hunter Association, together with the identity-erasure corruption the Hunter Association had hidden so well and send them off together. Of course, I had no intention of sending Executive Director Yoon to prison. I planned to fit all the circumstances together and then make them disappear. After that, whether the investigation ended or not, what mattered was changing the current landscape.

Well, in conclusion, manipulating the Hunter Association’s internal affairs wasn’t especially difficult.

‘Right now, I’m focusing on something else.’

Neither Im Haekyung nor the Hunter Association counted among the variables. At least, not right now.

Then, what was the factor I needed to pay the most attention to at the moment?

‘Sung Uijae, obviously.’

Sung Uijae was, after all, a bastard who cared about justification. On top of that, he wasn’t all that humane either. Since he knew that himself, wasn’t that why he clung even harder to that ‘humanity’ and to compensation?

There was no way he didn’t know that I had used Chase to kill him in Australia. You could tell just from the way he talked about poisoned cupcakes after everything was over. If he were really that humane, then he should have been uncomfortable with either himself or me.

Sung Uijae’s convictions ultimately took the humanity he had lost upon awakening as their standard and changed however suited his tastes. That was probably why he could lecture the terminally ill lover of the ‘benefactor’ he had searched so desperately for and tell her not to take revenge.

‘Well, that works for me.’

Because that ridiculous conviction of his ultimately happened to align with what I wanted.

If he had clearly defined morals like Joo Seowon or Kwon Taehan, and what bothered him changed flexibly according to those morals, it would have been difficult. But in Sung Uijae’s case, it was nothing more than ‘a guy with nothing in particular to regret searching for his own identity,’ so it was convenient. In the first place, the ‘concerns’ a bastard gained from becoming S-rank were bound to have limits.

I could make more than enough use of him.

‘As long as there’s something to restrain him.’

And I was bringing Im Haekyung along to guarantee that.

‘Easy.’

Instead of combat gear, I put on a neat suit and threw an outer coat over it. I didn’t bother bringing Do Yehyun with me. If there was a healer around, it would become difficult for there to be injured people.

Ah, for reference, I was the first one entering the Dungeon. It wasn’t because I intended to do something alone in there, but because I needed to carry out one part of the plan.

I drove a Hunter Association vehicle and glanced at Executive Director Yoon through the rearview mirror. I pushed my glasses back up after they had slipped slightly while I lowered my head, then adjusted the angle of the rearview mirror a little. Executive Director Yoon, who thought they were going on a business trip today, was sleeping remarkably well.

There really was a business-trip schedule. I had simply swapped the driver out for myself halfway through.

‘That bastard should still be sleeping, right?’

I had knocked him out and left him somewhere around the emergency exit of the Hunter Association building, but judging by the time, it seemed like he should be waking up soon.

I quietly turned off the navigation and drove straight toward the Dungeon.

“Executive Director, wake up.”

Only then did Executive Director Yoon raise their head and look around. Seeing how dazed they still looked, I added another sentence as though urging them along.

“We’re at the site.”

“The site?”

Executive Director Yoon forced strength into their eyes, which had gone completely slack from sleep, cleared their throat once, and asked,

“What do you mean, the site?”

“What...? I was just told to bring you here....”

“What are you talking about! We were supposed to go to the branch.”

“No, they told me to have you check the Dungeon site once before going to the branch.”

At those words, Executive Director Yoon’s eyes snapped open. They looked at me as if I were insane, then pointed a finger at me in frustration.

“Hey, you bastard. What the hell am I supposed to do by looking at a Dungeon? Huh? When they said to check the site, they meant have some other bastards do it. You think they meant I should go personally?”

“Ah, then should I call them now?”

“What? Call who?”

“The Hunter Association Hunters.”

“Yeah, call them. You’re asking something obvious. Huh?”

“Yes.”

I answered lightly and pretended to make a phone call. Executive Director Yoon glanced at me, sighed, and looked out the window.

“Ah, they say they’re coming.”

“Ha.... You handle work strangely. Why the hell did they hire someone like you? Then hurry up and move the car. What kind of goddamn country road did you come down? You could’ve at least woken me up halfway.”

“Yes, Executive Director.”

Instead of driving, I threw the car key onto the passenger seat, got out, and yanked open the door on Executive Director Yoon’s side. Executive Director Yoon followed my movements in confusion before asking,

“I said let’s go?”

“Still, shouldn’t we at least check outside first?”

“What?”

“Come out. Let’s check.”

I had no intention of arguing any longer, so I grabbed them by the collar and dragged them straight out of the car.

“Hey, hey!”

I easily subdued Executive Director Yoon as they flailed and dragged them all the way to the front of the Dungeon. Terrified, they desperately tried to pry my hand away while pouring out curses one after another.

“You bastard, where the hell are you really from? Are you even a Hunter Association employee? What the hell are you trying to do right now! Let go of me! If I report this to the police, you bastard, you’ll be arrested on the spot!”

“.......”

There was no point in saying anything more anyway, so I threw them straight into the Dungeon.

“No, no!”

After confirming that they had fallen into the Dungeon, I belatedly opened the Status Window.

Paradise (A)

A new world where you can taste the height of pleasure.

No suffering or pain exists.

A beautiful place where you can feel yourself, and nothing but yourself, in full.

Dungeon Boss - ‘Me’

Other creatures inside the Dungeon...... View More

There is no need to view information on ‘Me.’

It was a strange Dungeon.

It was also a Dungeon that had never appeared in the original work.

Based on the Status Window, the most I could infer was that it was close to a mental-type Dungeon. The final line in particular was striking.

‘Has anything like this happened before?’

If I had to compare it to something, maybe it was similar to a quest-type Dungeon.

Anyway, I didn’t bother going inside to kill Executive Director Yoon myself. If you abandoned an unawakened person inside an A-rank Dungeon, dying was only natural. To give them time, I drove the car I had brought right up to the Dungeon to a place fairly far away, parked it, then pressed the call key.

‘It’ll take some time for the Association Hunters to get here.’

I headed back toward the Dungeon and checked Sung Uijae’s location one last time.

‘Good.’

The moment I stepped into the Dungeon, I felt a violent wind sweep across my body.

Whoooooosh–

For an instant, it felt as though my breath had suddenly caught. Immediately afterward came an intense pleasure strong enough to make my head spin. No, rather than pleasure... maybe it was closer to a slightly more fundamental kind of ecstasy?

‘Ah, fuck....’

I slowly opened the eyes I had closed without realizing it and looked ahead. It was a bizarre space where the ground and sky couldn’t be distinguished. Looking around for Executive Director Yoon’s corpse, I saw a single shoe floating on a lake positioned roughly in the center far away.

I walked over and lowered my head to grab the shoe, and saw the smooth surface of the lake. More precisely, I saw ‘me’ reflected in the lake. A version of me with the corners of his mouth raised so high it felt bizarre was quietly staring at me.

It was strange.

It was called a lake, but it didn’t feel like water at all. It seemed as though if I reached out, I would feel a smooth surface. I slowly reached out and put my hand into the water. The still water gradually devoured my hand. It felt as though I were being sucked into the water.

But was that side really beneath the water?

The ground and sky were indistinguishable anyway. The surface of the water didn’t so much as move even when I put my hand into it. The ‘me’ looking at me was different from me. Then could I really say that side was below and this side was above?

I grabbed Executive Director Yoon’s shoe, threw it outside, and grinned. Just before almost my entire upper body sank into the water, I raised myself back up.

Mental Strength (S) activates.

Blink, a dizzying haze of smoke wavered across my vision.

“Ah.... I almost got fucked.”

If I had known it would be like this, fuck, I would’ve brought Im Haekyung with me.

To think a Dungeon could make me feel sensations like this. At the same time as all the tension drained out of my body, it felt like my mind kept slipping somewhere else. I felt as though I could grant anyone’s request, and at the same time, as though I could display an extremely high level of concentration.

I lay down on the ground, stared into empty space, then closed my eyes for a moment.

At this point, I became certain.

Sung Uijae and this Dungeon were a bad match.

That was what I had wanted.

* * *

How much time had passed? It felt like I had spent almost half a day asleep. But that probably wasn’t how much time had actually passed. Sung Uijae still hadn’t arrived.

At that moment.

My shoulder was grabbed hard, and my body was forcibly pulled upright. When I raised my gaze, I saw Sung Uijae staring at me with a frown.

“What did you do?”

I tried to read the emotion wavering in his voice, then lowered my gaze.

“Hey, Hunter Seo.”

“.......”

“You... what the hell did you do?”

And there, I saw his hand and arm soaked in blood. As if he had shoved his arm into someone’s body.

I slowly raised my eyes and met his gaze.