Chapter 29 - The Explorer I

1

When a void erupted in the heart of Seoul, the Gangnam area was devastated.

I’ve mentioned this several times in my stories already, so it should be familiar to you by now.

The incident known as the “Gangnam Void Disaster,” the “Gangnam White Night,” or “Seoul’s Summer.” Old Man Scho’s wife was also caught up in that “Summer” and passed away.

And yet, even in Gangnam, which had been completely engulfed by the void, a few buildings remained intact.

Assuming “intact” means that their exteriors looked perfectly sound from outside, that is.

Here’s a question for you.

Q. If a building remains as perfectly intact as ever on land consumed by a void—goodness, what a surprise!—how on earth is that possible?

A. It’s a void too.

That’s right. An eye for an eye, poison for poison.

Just as you fight fire with fire, the only way to withstand a void is to overpower it with an even stronger void.

In other words? If you spot an “intact” building in Gangnam, it means that even in the middle of the void that wiped out half of Seoul’s population in one fell swoop, that building pulled off an “It’s fine. I deflected it.”

Dungeons of the highest difficulty, every last one.

Almost all the toughest, scariest, most savage voids on the Korean Peninsula were concentrated in Gangnam, Seoul.

The human real estate market had gone to shit, but among anomalies, Gangnam was still enjoying its reputation as the place to be.

One particularly famous dungeon was the hotel operating inside the building nicknamed “Sauron’s Tower.”

That’s right. Since the last episode was about an inn, I thought we might talk about a hotel today.

2

As you all know, the building nicknamed “Sauron’s Tower” is that very skyscraper boasting the most floors in Seoul.

The nickname was originally something of a joke. But when the void erupted in Gangnam, every resident, office worker, hotel employee, and so on inside the building vanished. Now it really was “Sauron’s Tower.”

In fact, immediately after the void erupted, people had very high hopes for Sauron’s Tower.

["That building’s still intact!"]

["Couldn’t there be lots of survivors inside?"]

It had already been the tallest building on the Korean Peninsula. Naturally, now that the average height of Seoul’s buildings had regressed fifty years, it stood out all the more.

["Oh. Come to think of it, I think I heard somewhere that tower was designed to withstand even a magnitude-nine earthquake..."]

["Maybe the inside’s intact too?"]

["They say there’s a portal to another world near the top of that building."]

["Let’s go in! Let’s check it out!"]

And so the first people to enter Sauron’s Tower were residents from north of the Han River.

They disappeared immediately upon entering.

Of course, with the apocalypse only just underway, nobody cared about three or four missing people. Adding two zeros to that number didn’t change matters either.

But as one month passed, then two, strange rumors about Sauron’s Tower did indeed begin to circulate.

It was “a place you could never leave once you opened the door and took even a single step inside.”

["We’re putting together an investigation team."]

The Republic of Korea Armed Forces, which were still managing to hold on at this point, launched an operation.

Tenlegs was in the middle of hunting soldiers down en masse, considering them a special treat. Any unit that had survived this long had to be elite.

The soldiers decided to borrow the wisdom of the ancients. Some very ancient ancients, admittedly.

["We will enter the tower in two columns. Every soldier will tie a rope around his waist."]

["Sir? A rope?"]

["Yes. We’ll use it to link every soldier together in a single line. We’ll call this Operation Ariadne."]

The officer commanded the operation in the same spirit as Theseus long ago, when he landed on Crete and faced humanity’s greatest labyrinth.

["The front rank will enter first. If there are no abnormalities, they will back out of the hotel again. If the soldiers in the front rank stop responding, cut the rope immediately with your knives, and everyone else will retreat. Understood?"]

["Yes, sir!"]

["Good. Prepare the ropes."]

It was a cautious, sensible approach.

The problem was that Sauron’s Tower wasn’t some ordinary dungeon. It was a demon king’s castle that had survived “Seoul’s Summer.”

["The men who went through the door aren’t responding!"]

["Pull the rope!"]

["Th-the rope won’t budge. Urgh, it won’t move! It’s as heavy as a rock!"]

["No choice, then. Abort Operation Ariadne. Cut the rope!"]

["Yes, sir. Huh? The rope—what’s wrong with this? Huh?"]

["What are you doing, you little shit? Cut the fucking rope!"]

["I-it won’t cut! The rope won’t cut!"]

["What the fuck are you talking about...? Whoa! It’s dragging us in!"]

["Aaaagh! Help! Help!"]

["No! Hold on! If it drags you in, you’ll d—!"]

Astonishingly, at some point the rope’s material seemed to have been replaced with titanium. The military knives couldn’t even make a dent.

Sauron’s Tower’s glass doors swung wide open and hauled the soldiers inside. It swallowed the rope in one gulp, as though slurping up noodles.

A truly flawless mukbang.

["A-aaagh...!"]

Even the last soldier, who had clung to the doorframe in a desperate attempt not to be dragged in, vanished into the darkness in a flash. His screams continued for about two seconds, then rapidly faded into the distance.

CREAK

The glass doors settled quietly back into place. From Sauron’s Tower’s perspective, it probably wanted that to be a burp.

The investigation team was annihilated.

Once word of this incident got out, the line of civilians fearlessly charging into Sauron’s Tower dried up completely.

Yes. The civilians, that is.

I, Undertaker, lived with my sense of self located a considerable distance from ordinary human sensibilities.

What if I went into the tower and died? Sure. I’d just regress.

And so I looked for a sacrificial lamb to join me on my hotel outing. Going alone would be boring.

“Aryeon. How about a hotel staycation this summer?”

“A-a staycation?”

Sim Aryeon’s ears perked up. Just what you’d expect from a born loner whose yearning to be one of the cool kids had sprouted on her heart like a pimple.

“That sounds nice, but... J-just you and me, Guild Leader?”

The pimple spoke.

“Even so, th-that’s a bit...”

“Well, look at you. Don’t worry, it’s not that kind of trip. I’m just planning to spend a few days in the finest hotel on the Korean Peninsula. Come along if you’re interested. Otherwise, I’ll ask someone else.”

“Uh...”

Sim Aryeon blinked several times.

My cool, nonchalant response seemed to have tempted her into thinking, ‘Is he serious?’ Honestly, she’d been consistently easy to fool from my very first run to this day.

“Th-then... Okay. I-I’ll go!”

Two days later.

With a travel backpack on her back, Sim Aryeon stood at the hotel entrance screaming.

“You said it was a hotel! A h-hotel! Guild Leader! This is Sauron’s Tower—we’re at Sauron’s Tower!”

“What are you talking about? There’s a hotel here too.”

“Not ‘there is’! ‘There was’! It’s ruined! This, that, e-everything’s ruined! It’s all been Gangnam-ed!”

“Tsk. Stop complaining and follow me. You need to come inside and draw landscapes and maps for me.”

“Aaaaah! I-I should’ve known the moment you said staycation! Somebody help! NoThousandsOfPeopleHaveDiedHereIDon’tCareIfYou’reTheGuildLeaderNoMeansN—”

Undertaker’s exciting void exploration: begin.

3

The moment we opened Sauron’s Tower’s glass doors and entered, an astonishing sight greeted us.

“Huh? The lights...?”

The building had looked pitch-black from outside, but from inside, we found it brightly illuminated.

And that wasn’t all.

Two elevators stood waiting neatly on either side of the entrance—four in total. The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was spotless, without a speck of dust.

As though—

“It’s like no time at all... has p-passed. How is this possible...?”

“Hmm.”

I nodded.

As a test, I pressed an elevator button. The doors slid smoothly open without any trouble.

“Eek. I-it’s working...?”

“Remarkable. Time hasn’t simply stopped—the building is actually functioning. And Aryeon, have you noticed?”

“Y-yes? Noticed what?”

“Look outside the door.”

Distracted by the chandelier and elevators, Sim Aryeon only then turned around. With her trademark “Eek!” she latched onto my forearm like a caterpillar.

“Wh-what is that? Who is that?”

Outside the door. In other words, beyond the glass doors we had just passed through... a man in a suit stood with a courteous bearing.

“Probably a hotel employee. The kind who opens the door for arriving guests.”

“B-but there wasn’t anyone there before...”

“Aryeon, remember this. In a void, you mustn’t interpret your senses through your existing preconceptions. The glass doors we saw from outside and the outside we’re looking at from here are different spaces. It’s easier to think of that as a picture in a frame.”

“Oh...”

“The problem is, we’ve stepped inside that frame. Trying to open the door probably won’t work. Go test it.”

“...”

Sim Aryeon cautiously tried to open the front door. Nothing happened. The hotel employee standing right nearby, separated from her by only a pane of glass, didn’t even glance at her.

“You’re right...”

“This is why ‘void’ is a better term than ‘gate.’ Things that look like doors no longer mean anything, either as entrances or as exits. To get out of a void, you have to follow the proper procedure or defeat the boss.”

“The boss...”

“Of course, plenty of voids don’t have bosses. That makes clearing them a little trickier. Now, shall we see how faithfully this void imitates a hotel?”

I took Sim Aryeon into the elevator.

It retained all its former glory as one of Korea’s finest hotels, so even the elevator was luxurious.

The building boasted 123 floors, but we had chosen the hotel’s main entrance as our route into this void. Perhaps that was why the elevator had only four buttons.

[81F - Western Restaurant, Korean Restaurant, Bar]

[79F - Lobby, Guest Lounge]

[76F - Grand Ballroom, Small Banquet Hall]

[01F – Entrance]

Apparently both fascinated and anxious, Sim Aryeon kept squirming her shoulders.

“What if we press a button and the elevator suddenly falls while we’re going up...?”

“That would be a relief.”

“Huh? W-we’d die, though?”

“Yes, we might die. But the course would become extremely short. It would mean this enormous void was satisfied with making a single elevator and enjoying dropping people in it... Its threat level would go down considerably.”

In that case, Sauron’s Tower would simply be registered as a void or anomaly called “Hotel Elevator,” and that would be that.

Not only would it pose no danger whatsoever, but dealing with it would become incredibly simple. Just don’t ride the elevator. The end.

Unless you were some pervert who got sexually excited by elevator vibrations, from the next run onward you could afford to pay it any mind at all.

“Wh-what on earth are you talking about, Guild Leader...? I’m saying we’d die?”

“A truly frightening void doesn’t kill people. Instead, it makes them want to keep living here.”

“What?”

I pressed [79F] firmly.

Because we had come in through the hotel entrance. That meant there was a very good chance we were guests here to stay.

And guests naturally had to visit the “hotel lobby” first and take care of “check-in.”

She flinched!

As the elevator began moving, Sim Aryeon’s shoulders hunched up. I patted her back and said,

“How long you successfully survive in a void depends on understanding its ‘personality.’”

“...”

“There was a hotel employee standing beyond the glass doors earlier, right? You can’t overlook even little details like that. Not a single clue in a void is meaningless. If a hotel employee is standing outside the door, you might guess that it’s ‘because the void believes itself to be a hotel.’”

“Believes itself to be a hotel...”

“Yes. Just as you do as the Romans do when in Rome, unless you intend to wreak havoc right from the start, you should obey the void’s rules for now. In that sense, the soldiers who tried to enter this place back then were unlucky.”

“Huh? Wh-why?”

“What guest in the world walks into a luxury hotel wearing a full military uniform and carrying a gun? They were probably identified as terrorists and wiped out the moment they entered.”

“...”

Deep down, I hoped the elevator would plunge right then. If I wrapped my entire body in aura and protected Sim Aryeon as well, we had a good chance of surviving anyway.

But this world was deeply committed to fucking humans over. Especially me: it liked serving me every variety of fuck-you candy—pumpkin taffy, sweet potato taffy, stick taffy, syrup, the whole assortment.

The doors slid smoothly open.

In less than a minute, the elevator had arrived at the seventy-ninth floor.

And the moment its doors opened elegantly, I became certain that this void, too, belonged to our proud world.

“Oh m-my goodness. Guild Leader! Look! I-it’s so luxurious here...!”

A perfectly cleaned, gleaming marble lobby welcomed me. Even the employees at the distant check-in counter stood there perfectly intact, smiling at us.

“Hmm.”

Now this was one king-size fuck-you.