Chapter 207: Bangi-dong Dungeon (2)

TL: SHW

"These things get that big?"

Hong Seok-young split every centipede that passed underfoot clean in two, never letting a single one escape.

We were going to close the Dungeon anyway, so I couldn't understand why he bothered. I hadn't raided many Dungeons with Father, so I wasn't very familiar with Hong Seok-young's habits during a raid. If anything, I'd been through more Dungeons with Yoo Ji-eun than with him. Yoo Ji-eun, or Oh Hyun-wook.... Well, with Oh Hyun-wook, it had technically been work.

When I asked why he was going to the trouble of killing them, Hong Seok-young answered with that same irritating smile of his. The way he stroked his chin and put on airs only made it worse.

"Guess this is one thing I never taught you?"

"Sounds like something I don't need to know."

"Hey, now!"

Hong Seok-young clicked his tongue.

"Well, if I taught you how to raid Dungeons, then I suppose I taught you pretty much everything. This is just a habit."

"A habit?"

"They're right there in front of me. Even if we're going to close the Dungeon, it annoys me to see monsters running around alive and well."

"......"

Hong Seok-young grinned and gave me a firm thumbs-up.

"No monster that crosses my path gets out alive."

"Ah. Right...."

It wasn't as though he was deliberately letting monsters escape. He was killing them. There wasn't really anything to complain about. Actually, it would've been harder to understand if Hong Seok-young let a monster get away.

Hong Seok-young made short work of the centipedes in his way as we headed deeper into the Dungeon.

We already knew where the Core was, but we checked once more to make sure its location was right. The Dungeon wasn't so large that it took long to spot. After clearing out another swarm of centipedes clustered around it, we moved on. I planned to search every corner of the Dungeon before destroying the Core.

Hong Seok-young was still staring at the centipedes with his head tilted.

"If we assume these things feed on rotten meat...."

Hong Seok-young surveyed the damp, moisture-laden forest. I followed his gaze.

"Then if they really grew as large as you said...."

Back when Hong Seok-young first entered this Dungeon.

Someone had dumped corpses here. Along with a Rune that accelerated decomposition.

For a while, we'd considered the possibility that it had been done to conceal the bodies. But why go to all that trouble when there were easier ways? Even if this was only a D-rank Dungeon, it was still in the middle of Seoul. Even if Daseon hadn't come, someone else would have entered to inspect it before long.

If things had gone the way they originally did, we'd have been far busier after Myeong-dong, which would have bought them more time. Then we wouldn't have found bodies that were still barely decomposed despite the Rune, like we had now.

Connect that with the Giant Centipede and... the answer was almost disappointingly simple.

"I guess someone kept coming in here to feed them."

"Oh...."

Hong Seok-young shuddered.

"The good news is there was only one that got that big."

"Is that really something to be grateful for?"

"Hundreds of Giant Centipedes crawling around Seoul would be an eyesore."

"So it's an aesthetic concern...."

That was more important than it sounded. People needed nice things to look at if they wanted to keep from turning unpleasant.

"The bad news is that these centipedes are capable of getting that big in the first place."

"Pests really are best exterminated."

Ark hadn't touched this Dungeon after that. With Hong Seok-young and Daseon watching it like hawks, they might simply never have found another opening.

If Ark had really gone out of its way to feed it and raise it, what exactly had they known about that centipede? Hong Seok-young had said that even aside from Fairies, he'd sometimes encountered monsters that were bizarrely strong and seemed dead set on killing him. Had that Giant Centipede also crossed from the future into the past....

No. It was true that the watch-shaped item had appeared after the centipede's corpse vanished, but was that enough to prove the centipede itself had come from the future?

Besides, going back to the past didn't make a person younger. The body crossed over as-is. There would've been no reason to feed it until it grew, would there?

Maybe it had simply been carrying the item. Dungeon Items were components of Dungeons in the first place. They weren't things monsters dropped when killed, like loot in a game.

Or....

Was that item the only exception?

Maybe death revoked ownership and transferred it to whoever found the item?

"Hey."

Snap.

Hong Seok-young snapped his fingers in front of my eyes.

"...Yes?"

"Now that we've come all the way out here, what else haven't you told me?"

"Uh...."

"Now that I think about it, this is unfair. You know all sorts of things about me, but I don't know a thing about you!"

Well, that's because....

"Because I didn't tell you."

"Exactly! That's why it's unfair!"

Hong Seok-young gesticulated wildly. He had a Wooden Sword for sparring in hand, saying it would be a waste to use a Spear in a Dungeon like this. It was more than enough.

A few trees shattered at the sweep of Hong Seok-young's hand. For all his bluster about blowing away the whole forest, he stopped after breaking only two or three.

He was protesting.

...I was the one who should've been protesting.

Now, after coming all the way out here?

I sighed. Woo I-rok and Hong Seok-young were exactly the same to deal with. One of them was ten, so he had an excuse. There was no excuse for an old man pushing fifty.

Still, I knew one thing for certain. If I kept engaging with him, I'd only make things more annoying for myself.

"I was going to tell you anyway."

"Really?"

"Do you trust me that little?"

"Raising a son who thinks too much and keeps this many secrets comes with a certain amount of heartache. I'm prepared for it. No, wait."

Hong Seok-young put a hand to his temple and pretended to sink into deep worry.

"All right. Now I'm ready. As long as you haven't killed anyone.... Hmm. If there weren't any witnesses, I could probably find a way to cover it up."

"Oh, seriously! If you're going to talk crap like that, forget the whole thing!"

"Hahaha!"

I was trying to have a serious conversation, and he wasn't helping.

Well... maybe it was better to talk about it while the mood was light. Maybe it was.

This time, I pressed my fingers firmly against my temple. Unlike Hong Seok-young, I meant it.

"Anyway. The centipede that came out of here later... saying it destroyed the world would be going too far, but it definitely destroyed Seoul."

"Didn't you say there was something that burned everything too? Wasn't that the one that destroyed it?"

"...Strictly speaking, no, the centipede didn't directly destroy it. All the Dungeons erupted anyway, so I don't think its presence made that much difference."

I began, choosing my words carefully.

I wondered where to start, then decided to simply begin at the beginning.

"So, I went on vacation."

There wasn't much to the beginning, really.

"Ah. Before that, Yoo Ji-eun did suggest raiding this place."

"Ji-eun did?"

"When I asked why we needed to raid it, she couldn't give me a proper reason.... So in the end, I didn't approve the raid and went on vacation instead. But I don't think clearing this one Dungeon would've changed anything."

"You said all the Dungeons erupted."

"Yes. While I was on vacation. This was the first Dungeon to erupt."

I could never forget what happened that day. There was no way I could.

Someone had once given me grief for doing nothing but saving money. I couldn't remember whether it had been Yoo Ji-eun or Han Tae-kyung. Maybe both? Something about not wasting my youth on a place like the Ability Management Agency and actually enjoying it while I had it.

I remembered thinking, with some annoyance, that she was the one who'd devoted her entire life to Dungeons, so it must have been Yoo Ji-eun. She was always all talk. ...Though her fists had plenty to say too.

Walking into a hotel on impulse, splurging on an expensive room, and ordering a cocktail at the bar had probably all been because of what Yoo Ji-eun said. I'd even planned to tease her when she came out of the Dungeon and ask whether she knew how to order a cocktail like that. No matter what, I still had it better than Yoo Ji-eun, who didn't have a single real friend. At least I kept up regular get-togethers with my old university classmates.

In the end, I never got the chance to say any of it. And now, grabbing the Yoo Ji-eun who existed here and saying it to her... what would I even say? She wasn't still getting suckered in by that cult these days, was she?

"As soon as it emerged, I got a report that it had wiped out half of Songpa District."

"Half."

"With all that happening, how was I supposed to enjoy my vacation? That was the end of it. I was flying back to Seoul in a police helicopter when...."

My wrist buzzed, though there was no reason it should have. A vibration.

Inside the helicopter, phone alerts blared incessantly. Mine and the pilot's. Screams rose from the streets below. There was nothing I could do.

"It wasn't just Korea. Dungeons all over the world were doing the same thing."

The news had been updating every second, but at some point the updates slowed to a trickle. Even when I arrived in Seoul, one or two new articles still appeared online, but they were hardly proper news reports. A Japanese reporter called on God. A British reporter wished everyone luck. Where was it? Vietnam? Thailand? One reporter posted a photograph of a beautiful sea.

The world died quickly.

"By the time I reached Seoul, there was already no hope. It was sheer luck that we didn't encounter any flying monsters on the way."

"......"

"Ah. We were talking about the centipede. It isn't venomous now, but once it got that big, that wasn't true anymore. It crossed the Han River, and... contaminated it. Seoul would've been finished even if none of the other Dungeons had erupted."

"...I see."

"And, um. From the centipede's corpse... or more accurately, after the corpse disappeared, I found an item that looked like a watch."

"A watch?"

I scratched my head.

"Yes. And that sent me back into the past."

"......"

Hong Seok-young blinked.

"I don't know why it sent me back to that particular day.... But it turned out to be the day before this Dungeon opened."

"Hmm."

"At first, I thought that meant it was connected to this Dungeon, but...."

Then I started thinking there might have been another reason it chose that particular day.

There was no way to know for sure, so it was only a hypothesis.

The item had been spitting out error codes left and right. It had made a huge fuss about qualifications or eligibility. I still had no idea what qualification it meant.

But I remembered it telling me my chances of survival and saying something about moving me to an arbitrary point in time. Maybe, just maybe... and perhaps I was only interpreting things in the way most convenient for me, but what if it had found the date best suited to changing the future?

If I hadn't saved the kids in Myeong-dong, Hong Seok-young might not have listened to me. And because the kids hadn't died, the things that had tormented Father in the original timeline never happened, so we'd had more breathing room to pursue Ark.

I shook my head.

"Anyway, that's what happened. That's why I wanted to check this place."

"An item.... Should we ask Hope about it?"

"Ask Hope what?"

"Why monsters want to kill me so badly. Dungeons don't have any way to communicate with each other, yet they all come after me."

"Didn't you already ask about that?"

I asked, puzzled.

"No. I asked why Noah Michel was so fixated on me. That's what Hope answered too. It wasn't about monsters."

"You can ask, but... don't tell Hope that I came from the future."

"Of course not. Who do you think I am!"

Who did I think he was? Hong Seok-young, obviously.

Maybe he caught the disrespect in my eyes, because Hong Seok-young bristled again. He wasn't actually angry or annoyed. This was just his way of messing around with me. I was about to play along when....

"......!"

I looked down at my feet.

Something squirmed.

***

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