Chapter 203

The moment Han Jewoon opened the Old door and stepped through—

Kreee-eek—.

Along with a chill in the air, his vision blacked out for a beat, then came back up.

Han Jewoon instinctively pulled up his senses and checked behind him.

"…"

The raid members who'd been following him were gone without a trace.

A perfect silence — not so much as a breath audible.

Wrapped in that strange isolation, he calmly took stock of the situation.

"Is this… a cathedral?"

Where he was standing wasn't a dungeon corridor.

Soaring ceilings, sacred light pouring in through brilliantly multicolored stained glass — the middle of a textbook medieval cathedral.

Even the suit he'd been wearing had, at some point, changed into a set of sacred priest's robes.

Just as he was about to start scouting the interior—

Thunk.

A firmly shut side door opened, and someone approached with the sound of footsteps.

A man dressed as a medieval monk.

"Father! It's time to depart. Have you finished your preparations for the ceremony?"

The instant Han Jewoon looked at the man's face, he nearly flinched.

The monk didn't have a face.

Where his eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, everything was grotesquely warped into broken pixels — as if someone had deliberately mosaicked it out.

"Ceremony? What are you—"

The moment Han Jewoon answered without thinking—

Bweeeek— bwik—!

Along with an ear-splitting noise, time inside the cathedral froze cold.

The light pouring through the stained glass, the dust drifting in the air — all of it stopped in an instant.

Krrrk, snap.

Inside the frozen time, only the monk twisted his head with a grotesque grinding sound.

His neck twisted to an angle no human joint could reach, and out came a mechanical, metallic-edged voice.

[Father. Why do you speak in that way? That is not the correct line.]

[Father. Why do you speak in that way? That is not the correct line.]

[Father. Why do you speak in that way? That is not the correct line.]

The man repeated the same line over and over, like a broken machine.

The scene was ghastly enough that an ordinary person would have screamed and passed out — but Han Jewoon had crossed too many killing floors to flinch at something like that.

Looks like I'm the cathedral's priest right now, and I've got a ceremony to officiate.

Catching that the dungeon was demanding some kind of role-play, he immediately smoothed his expression and cleared his throat.

"Hm, hm. My apologies. My prayers have been so deep lately that I've been forgetting things. So we're setting out now?"

Perhaps the natural performance had done the trick.

With a whirr, the monk's distorted head returned to place, and the frozen time began to flow again.

"Yes. The carriage is waiting — you may set off whenever you're ready."

Led out by the monk, Han Jewoon climbed into a rough wooden carriage — the sort you only ever saw in history books.

The jolting of the ride was vivid enough to pull a dry laugh out of him.

The monk sitting across from him let out a small sigh and spoke.

"Ah… so it's really come to this."

When Han Jewoon just gazed back at him without much of a reaction, the loose-tongued monk started pouring out a story he hadn't been asked for.

"Count Belders is positively over the moon. Well, of course — he's about to take the fief's greatest beauty, a woman a third his age, as his bride. How could he not be?"

The monk glanced around briefly, then dropped his voice and whispered, conspiratorial.

"The rumor's everywhere — her father, blinded by money, sold his daughter off. And on top of that, they say the young lady already had a commoner knight she'd pledged her future to. She was practically imprisoned in the castle without even a proper farewell… truly a pitiful business."

Han Jewoon nodded blandly, as if he'd known all of it already.

Inside his head, though, he was rapidly piecing the puzzle together.

An old, greedy count. The fief's most beautiful woman, sold for money. A knight fiancé torn away from her.

And a tragic wedding forced through tomorrow to top it all off.

The most tired medieval-romance cliché in the book.

…The bride monster's backstory?

Han Jewoon narrowed his eyes at the scenery passing the window.

A dungeon that made you personally experience a monster's story.

He'd been through anomaly-type Gates a few times, but a dungeon this elaborately staged as a play was a first.

If the dungeon had set this space up as one massive stage, then the rest of his raid members had almost certainly been assigned parts of their own.

Suho had better be all right…

While he was worrying about Suho, alone somewhere, the carriage arrived at the count's massive, opulent castle.

Out in the garden, preparations for tomorrow's grand wedding were in full swing.

"That arch's floral arrangement is looking sparse! The count's paying special attention to this — hang more, make it lush!"

"Are the top-shelf wines for the banquet hall all moved over? Hurry — the ceremony's tomorrow!"

"Careful you don't track dirt onto the carpet!"

The clamor of servants' shouts and the bustle of hurried footsteps filled the castle inside and out in a chaotic din.

Stepping out of the carriage and through the castle's entrance, Han Jewoon saw the figure who'd come out to meet him — and nearly stopped in his tracks.

A man in a sharply cut tailcoat, hair neatly combed back.

Unmistakably Cheon Sangmin.

Cheon Sangmin, too, spotted Han Jewoon, and his eyes widened a fraction.

But as one might expect from a conglomerate CEO who'd weathered every kind of storm, his read on the moment was uncannily fast.

"You must be weary from the long journey, Father. I am butler to Count Belders. I look forward to your officiating tomorrow."

Swallowing a private snort at the perfect tone and delivery, Han Jewoon put on a benevolent, unhurried smile.

"Have no worry. All will proceed as the Lord wills it. Hoho."

"Thank you. You must be tired — allow me to show you to your quarters. This way, please."

The clamor of wedding preparations pouring in from the garden, and the castle's quiet corridors closing in around the tragedy waiting to unfold.

Fully sunk into their assigned roles, the two of them moved deeper into the massive castle.

The heavy door closed, cutting the corridor's noise off entirely.

In that instant, Cheon Sangmin's gaze reverted to its usual sharpness.

"Guild Master."

"Cheon Sangmin. Let's compare notes first. What's your role?"

At Han Jewoon's direct question, Cheon Sangmin adjusted his tailcoat with unruffled precision and answered.

"The butler, as you can see. The moment I opened my eyes, the servants were swarming me for orders on tomorrow's wedding. I distributed the work reasonably, sent them off, and was in the middle of taking stock of the situation."

The response of an executive who'd truly weathered every storm.

"I've been in the mana stone distribution trade and dealt with data on countless dungeons — but not one of them ever forced role-play."

At his observation, Han Jewoon answered, coolly cynical.

"Who knows. Maybe it's just that no one who's entered a dungeon like this has ever made it back out to leave a record."

"…So it's very likely a hundred-percent-annihilation dungeon that hasn't even left records behind."

A heavy silence lingered in the room, but rather than let it shake him, he accepted the reality on the spot and moved to the next topic.

"You haven't seen the others?"

"I have a rough sense of where the rest of us landed. My sister's a maid in the castle, and our youngest a knight in the count's service. The problem is—"

"The problem?"

"The young healer Awakened who came in with us. He seems to have been assigned as a castle servant, but he wasn't in good shape."

"Not in good shape?"

"I only glimpsed him in passing, but his face was drained bone-white. I used the butler's authority to order him to rest in his room for now."

Suho wasn't feeling well?

Han Jewoon bit down on a rough curse inside.

Damn it.

As a support-type healer, Suho was exactly why he'd brought the boy into this room in the first place — to keep him safe.

And now he was down.

Through Han Jewoon's head flashed the face of Chae Junhyeok — the man who went wild the second the kids so much as scraped a knee.

"Which room is Suho in?"

"One of the ones in the annex."

Just as Cheon Sangmin was walking him through the rough layout—

Knock, knock, knock!

"Butler! We need to hang the chandeliers in the banquet hall — you'll need to come inspect them!"

Servants' voices came through the door, calling for Cheon Sangmin.

Without a second's hesitation, the two of them slipped back into their kindly-priest and able-butler faces.

"Until tomorrow, then, Father."

"May the Lord's blessing be with you. Hoho."

Wrapping the exchange up with practiced ease, Han Jewoon took the moment when Cheon Sangmin led the servants off and moved quickly and quietly toward the annex.

Kreak—

The room at the far end of the annex Cheon Sangmin had described.

The first thing to catch Han Jewoon's eye as he carefully opened the door and stepped in was a brown-curled child, huddled tight on the bed and struggling for breath.

"Suho!"

Han Jewoon rushed to the bedside, alarmed.

The child, who'd been perfectly fine back in the banquet hall, was now burning up with a raging fever.

"Cap… tain…"

Suho looked up at him with eyes hazy and glazed with fever.

Han Jewoon hurriedly pulled a top-grade healing potion from his inventory artifact and carefully trickled it into the corner of Suho's mouth.

"Cough — gulp…"

As the liquid, glinting with a jewel-like light, went down his throat, Suho's labored breathing steadied by degrees.

Setting the empty potion bottle aside, Han Jewoon asked, voice low and settled.

"You back with me? Can you remember what happened?"

Suho pushed himself upright with difficulty and answered in a rambling stream.

"I followed you in, Captain… and when I opened my eyes I was standing in a weird castle… somebody told me to come to this room, so I did, but then all of a sudden my body hurt so much… I tried to use my healing, but my core was so scalding hot I couldn't use mana at all."

Han Jewoon's brow furrowed deep.

A cold? No — healers don't catch diseases under normal circumstances. And on top of that, the core's overheating so he can't use his ability?

"Did you eat anything that didn't sit right, or overuse your ability before coming in here?"

At the sharp question, Suho searched his memory carefully.

"Now that you mention it, back in the banquet hall the Director gave me some kind of potion. Could that be why?"

A potion from Chae Junhyeok?

Han Jewoon tilted his head inwardly.

There was no way Chae Junhyeok would give Suho anything that could harm him.

If anything, the problem might be that he gave him something too potent.

The man was, on any normal day, the very incarnation of vicious overprotectiveness — eyes blazing at the slightest threat to a single hair on the kids.

"Still, I feel a whole lot better since I had the potion. But… using my healing ability right this second is a little beyond me."

As Suho mumbled it out, glancing up for a reaction, Han Jewoon stroked his head.

"It's fine. Don't push yourself. More importantly — let me walk you through what's going on here."

In a calm voice, so as not to startle him, Han Jewoon briefed Suho on the medieval role-play dungeon they were caught in.

As he listened, Suho's eyes went wide and round as a rabbit's.

"Role-play? Then I—"

"When you first opened your eyes, did anyone tell you what part you were supposed to play?"

Suho gripped a fistful of the blanket, thinking back.

"Now that you say it… when I was heading to this room, somebody told me I had to be the first one to walk into the wedding hall tomorrow — that I couldn't be late!"

At that, Han Jewoon looked down at Suho's face, quiet.

A young child who'd just turned seven.

A soft, adorable little face.

And the order to be the first one into the wedding hall.

"…A flower kid."

"A flower kid?"

Just as Suho was blinking those round eyes, plainly at a loss—

KA-THUNK—!!

The heavy door slammed open with a roar that sounded like it might tear straight off its hinges.

"…!"

Han Jewoon's hand shot to his belt as his head snapped toward the door.

And there—

"D-Director?"

"Junhyeok?"

Chae Junhyeok stood there, chest heaving as if his last breath might tear loose any second, eyes wild and desperate — a cornered beast's.