Chapter 206

"Is that… an altar? And fabric?"

At Lee Sea-ah's murmur, everyone who had stepped into the room froze as if on cue.

The center of the dark-shrouded room.

There, an enormous stone altar — big enough for a grown man to stretch out on — sat at the center, and beneath it, unspooling endlessly, ran a length of pure-white fabric.

The length of the fabric defied belief.

Trailing off into the dark like a snake's shed skin, at a rough estimate, it stretched easily over a kilometer.

Leo clicked his tongue at the eerie sight, revolted.

"What kind of sick taste is this? A wedding hall, and there's an altar?"

Seo Jihyeok, who had been studying the altar closely, pushed his glasses up and spoke.

"Right — the clear condition here was [Pave the new path with your crimson essence so the bride may walk.]"

"A path for the bride to walk on… don't tell me it's the aisle?"

At Sea-ah's guess, Leo let out a dry, incredulous laugh.

"Crimson essence obviously means blood, and the point is to soak that white fabric in it, right? An aisle drenched in blood. It's so blatant it's almost ridiculous."

Just as everyone was puzzling over how in the world they were supposed to soak that much fabric through with blood—

Thud, thud.

Along with heavy footsteps, Kang Taemin stepped forward.

Not a flicker of hesitation in his walk.

He came to a stop in front of the altar, drew a dagger from his coat, and, without a beat, drew it clean across his own forearm.

Slash—!!

"Teacher?!"

As the flesh parted and red blood came bursting out in fat drops, Sea-ah cried out, appalled.

Kim Sihyeok, standing behind her, flinched too, eyes going wide.

But Kang Taemin answered without a trace of pain in his face, blunt as ever.

"The Director's been taken. No time to hesitate."

Loyalty that bordered on blind.

Kang Taemin laid his blood-dripping arm across the altar.

The moment his hot living blood met the cold surface—

Shhhhrrrrrrk—

A bizarre rush of sound rang through the room.

The altar, like a starving beast, drank Kang Taemin's blood down greedily.

Not a drop pooled — the blood evaporated the instant it touched, without a trace. A skin-crawling sight.

Leo jerked his chin toward the space beneath the altar.

"Look over there."

Where his finger pointed, the blood Kang Taemin had just spilled was soaking into the pure-white fabric.

But against the overwhelming length of the cloth, the patch stained red by his blood was pitifully, wretchedly small.

Seo Jihyeok narrowed his brow.

"He poured out a fair amount of blood, and that's all it managed… there's a reason the cap for this room was set at a hundred to begin with."

"To soak that whole length, even a hundred wouldn't be enough. You'd have to squeeze about a liter out of every single person, wouldn't you?"

At Leo's revolted tone, Sea-ah added, face taut.

"Taking a full liter out of a grown man is enough to put him into shock and risk his life. For kids our size, much less would already be fatal."

A heavy silence settled.

The conclusion was simple.

Wring every drop out of the five of us and we still won't come close.

The brains of the group started working fast, hunting for a way through.

"How about I forge blood with my artifact?"

"Faking it a hundred percent won't be possible. Better to cut real blood with water and stretch the volume—"

"A Gate on this level will measure the composition of the blood down to the last variable. A sloppy dilution job might get us killed instead."

"If any blood at all will do, what about hunting the monsters outside and using theirs?"

Every eye turned to Sea-ah for a beat, but she shook her head almost immediately.

"Ah — no, that won't work. The monsters we saw outside were all ice sculptures, flowers, and tableware. They're not living things that bleed."

As they wrestled with it and no clean answer emerged—

Thud—!

A dull sound from behind them.

They spun in shock, and there — Kim Sihyeok, who'd been quiet as a mouse the whole time, had collapsed to the floor.

"Sihyeok!"

Alarmed, Sea-ah and Kang Taemin rushed over.

Sihyeok was burning up, his body scorching to the touch.

"When did this — how long have you been…!"

Sea-ah cried out, horrified.

A face drenched in cold sweat, bleached white.

Lips clamped shut hard enough to shatter.

Only then did she realize Sihyeok had been holding through this horrific pain, pigheadedly, the whole time.

These symptoms—!

Sea-ah knew them on instinct.

Pain she'd been through herself.

The cause had to be the black potion the Director had fed Sihyeok.

He said it was medicine that would make us stronger.

Sea-ah knew instinctively that the potion had been what tipped her over the edge into her second awakening.

Which meant, right now, that same brutal growth pain was starting inside Sihyeok's body.

"Teacher! Please lay Sihyeok out flat!"

At Sea-ah's shout, Kang Taemin immediately, carefully lowered Sihyeok onto the floor.

Meanwhile, Sea-ah dug urgently at her waist.

An S-rank healing potion, gleaming with a jewel-like light — the one the Director had pressed into her hand with the strictest instructions to use it if she ever faced real danger.

"Sihyeok, hold on a little longer."

She parted his lips with practiced hands and tipped the potion into his mouth.

Leo and Seo Jihyeok had come over asking what was going on, but she couldn't exactly let on about the potion the Director had given them, so she brushed it off with a casual shrug.

"He's running a fever from stress, I think."

Thankfully, the S-rank healing potion worked wonders.

The searing fever came down and the ragged breathing steadied.

But whether it was the shock of the fall or the growth pain, Sihyeok didn't wake right away.

Sea-ah opened her inventory artifact and pulled out a blanket and a plush cushion she carried around for the little ones.

Then, with practiced hands, she settled Sihyeok comfortably to lie on.

Hummm—

Mana flowed from her fingertips and spread over Sihyeok in a transparent, solid dome-shaped barrier.

An absolute sanctuary — thrown up by an S-rank barrier user, no less — that would shut out any outside blow or threat, perfect and complete.

"I'll leave Sihyeok resting here. Let's go ahead without him until he wakes up."

No one objected.

Then Seo Jihyeok, who had been silently studying the door they'd come through, pushed his glasses up and spoke.

"You remember the raid leaders earlier — how they crossed the threshold and came back out again without any restriction?"

"What about it?"

"It means this door lets you pass freely in both directions. Which means we don't necessarily have to shed our blood inside this room — we could just as easily bring blood in from outside."

At the radical suggestion, everyone flinched in surprise.

"Bring blood in?"

"There are still about two hundred survivors out in the banquet hall. Take a small amount from each of them, and we'd have more than enough to soak that fabric through."

The theory was airtight.

But Leo tilted his head, skeptical.

"But blood on its own, without a person attached — can that even make it through this door? Besides, the people out there don't have any ties to Chae Junhyeok."

"Only one way to find out."

Seo Jihyeok moved without hesitation.

Kang Taemin, Leo, and Lee Sea-ah left Sihyeok resting there and followed him out of the room.

Kreak—

The door opened, and the moment they stepped out into the banquet hall, the non-Awakened who had been clumped together in terror under the massive clock tower came rushing at them in a wave.

"W — what's in there?!"

"If we go through there, can we escape?!"

"For God's sake, get us out of this place!"

The cries of a crowd flailing to survive.

Leo scowled, irritated.

But Seo Jihyeok fixed the crowd with an unmoved, level look and began his briefing.

"Everyone, calm down. What's beyond that door is not an exit — it's a gateway to the next area. And to pass through it, we need a small amount of blood from each of you."

Seo Jihyeok laid out the room's layout and the clear condition for them.

"There are just over two hundred of you here, so about a cup's worth per person will be more than enough."

Coherent, reasonable, laid out cleanly.

But—

The moment the words left him, the banquet hall exploded.

"What? Blood?! Who the hell do you think you are, deciding to bleed us?!"

"Th — these little bastards have all lost their minds! I'm CEO Choi of HN Construction! How dare you try to put a mark on my precious body!"

"Get the Bureau Chief on the line, right now! One word from me and your guild is finished, you understand?!"

"Lay a finger on me and see what happens! I'll turn every top law firm in Korea loose and have you rotting in a cell for the rest of your miserable lives on aggravated assault charges!"

The petty power and arrogance they'd wielded from inside their safe greenhouses came bursting out now, twisted up with terror, into ugly thrashing.

Seo Jihyeok tried, calmly, to bring the situation back under control, but on a crowd that had already lost its reason, it made no impression at all.

The screeching of a man with veins standing out at his neck, spraying spit in every direction, tangled messily with the harsh cursing of others who weren't about to be outshouted.

The vicious heat of two hundred people ready to grab each other by the collar filled the cramped space, and the whole scene was tipping into a full-blown, out-of-control madhouse.

Leo, watching the revolting display in silence, felt his brow twist hard.

"Ugh, my ears."

At Leo's snide, irritated crack, the noise cut off as every eye in the place snapped to him.

"Hey. You lot still think you're at a five-star hotel banquet? This is an S-rank anomaly-type Gate, crawling with monsters that'd kill you as soon as look at you."

"Wh — what?! You insolent little brat, how dare you speak to your elders that way—!"

"One word and you'll wipe out a guild? Yeah? Go on, try. In a place where cell signals don't reach, who exactly are you going to call and how? That grand, precious body of yours might mean Chairman out there, but in here, you're nothing but a high-protein snack for the monsters. If a single drop of your noble blood is really so precious to you, be my guest. We'll just scrape it off your corpses later, either way."

Bone-deep, unvarnished venom.

The crowd, faces bleached white, flinched back a step, but their thin-skinned pride wasn't so easily beaten down.

"Y — you little bastard! Instead of protecting us you threaten us?!"

"You think being world-rank-one gives you the right?! Who are you to lecture us!"

Crushed under terror, they began howling back, thrashing all the harder.

The banquet hall was tipping over into an out-of-control madhouse.

That was when—

"Fusion — [Permafrost Wall]."

A cold, level voice cut through the space.

RRRUMMMMBLE—!!!

The ground heaved violently, and the banquet hall's marble floor cracked as a massive wall of earth thrust up out of it.

At the same time, that wall of earth was sheathed, in an instant, in a vivid blue ice that looked like it would never melt.

The heavy ice wall that had burst up through the ground closed around the hundreds of shrieking people in one stroke, sealing off every route out.

"Eek!"

"Wh — what is this?!"

The overwhelming scale of it sent the crowd scattering to the floor in wide-eyed shock.

His back to the vicious ice wall, spellbook in hand, Seo Jihyeok stepped forward wearing a cool smile.

"Now — may I have your attention, please?"

But even under the fear, a few of them still had working mouths.

"Y — you undo this, right now! Do you think you'll walk away in one piece for shutting me in here?! Do you have any idea who I—"

Seo Jihyeok wasn't about to sit through that tired little speech to the end.

His smile deepened, and at the same moment, an immense surge of mana burst out of his fingertips.

"Fusion — [Storm of Ice and Lightning]."

Krrrzzt! KRA-KA-KRAK—!!!

A bizarre storm of razor ice-blades tangled with blue lightning began to sweep through the interior of the ice wall.

Thunder that split eardrums.

Sub-zero lightning bolts danced madly right in front of everyone's noses.

Faced with that hideous destructive power dancing right at their faces, the people couldn't even manage a scream — their jaws chattered as their mouths locked shut.

The hands that had been jabbing furiously in the air a moment ago were now planted on the floor in pure terror.

In the face of overwhelming force, their petty little scrap of power wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

In the perfectly imposed silence, Seo Jihyeok looked down at the crowd and pronounced his verdict in an ice-cold voice.

"Those who don't cooperate get no protection. That's my rule."

"…!"

"Since you all love the law so much, you should know this better than most. Gate Special Management Act, Article Four. Inside a dungeon, the hunter's orders take priority. Interfere with the operation, and we have the legal right to remove you from our list of 'protected persons.'"

Seo Jihyeok crooked a finger, and the storm ripping through the air died away, just like that.

"Choose."

He drove the final wedge into the frozen crowd.

"Cling to that grand pride of yours and end up a monster's next meal, or hand over a little blood and walk out of this Gate alive. Smart as you all are, I'm sure you already know the answer."