Chapter 28

“Wait.”

Suddenly, Suho felt a sense of déjà vu. Looking back, all the recent incidents were connected.

Gwanaksan Field.

The Hyena Guild.

Seoul Station Field.

And they all had one thing in common.

“... They all came into existence a year ago.”

[Keh? Now that you mention it! It seems those outer-universe bastards started sneaking onto Earth a year ago!]

“A year ago...”

Suho decided to start there for now.

“Then why don't we work backward? If we dig through the dungeons, fields, and guilds that appeared a year ago, we're bound to turn up something, aren't we?”

If he found demons, he could strengthen Vulcan's Horn further. And if he discovered other traces of the outer universe, that would be useful in its own right.

[Oh! You truly are brilliant, Young Monarch! Sniff. It feels like only yesterday I was teaching you addition and subtraction...]

Suho decided to ignore Beru's fussing for the moment. Something had just occurred to him.

“Right. There was that place.”

The place that had been the most infamous in Korea a year ago.

The site of that horrific disaster.

“Magok.”

Suho's eyes flashed.

* * *

Hunters Association Surveillance Division.

“... No matter how much we dig, there's always more.”

The more Team Leader Han Jaehyuk investigated the destroyed Hyena Guild's headquarters, the more appalled he became. Even a hundred-page report wouldn't have been enough to list all the atrocities the guild had committed.

All matters involving criminal offenses had been handed over to the police hunters. The Association was focusing its investigation on things that fell outside the existing legal framework.

Stardust was a prime example.

... Strictly speaking, Stardust wasn't a narcotic. Using it wasn't technically illegal, either.

But that didn't mean they could keep ignoring a substance whose very nature was unknown. The Hunters Association had continued investigating how Stardust was made and who was making it. Now, at last, they had found a lead at the Hyena Guild's headquarters.

A transaction ledger.

They had found records of when the Hyena Guild had purchased Stardust and in what quantities, along with whom they had resold it to and how.

This confirmed that the Hyena Guild had been one of its distributors. By following the chain up from them, they might even discover who was manufacturing it.

“But to think some people even went into debt to buy Stardust.”

“You could call it investing on borrowed money. If they used Stardust to raid higher-level dungeons, they could have paid off that much debt in no time.”

“And then they would've come back to Hyena and bought more Stardust with their earnings?”

“So Hyena just kept raking in money as the middleman. Talk about a creative economy.”

The real problem, however, was that most of the hunters in the ledger were people who had gone missing over the past year. Most of them had probably ended up as food for the boss monster that had been controlling Hyena from behind the scenes.

But as they continued examining the ledger, they noticed something strange. Some of the missing people had been marked in red. Among them were a considerable number of debtors who weren't hunters and hadn't even awakened.

“Who are these people? Is there something different about them?”

“Huh? Team Leader! Take a look at this!”

A subordinate showed Han Jaehyuk some documents.

“Look here. The dates when Hyena received bulk shipments of Stardust match the dates these marked people went missing. Every single one.”

“... You're right.”

“Could there be a connection?”

“Hmm.”

Only one possibility immediately came to mind.

“... Could they have traded them for Stardust?”

“People for Stardust?”

Han Jaehyuk went through the ledgers again from the beginning. At last, his eyes flashed as he discovered something.

“I'm certain. The ledgers record how much Stardust Hyena bought, but nowhere do they say how much money they paid for it. That means they didn't pay any.”

“Y-you're right! Could they have paid for the Stardust with people instead of money? But why?”

“That's what we need to find out. If Hyena wasn't making the Stardust themselves, then whoever was...”

Just then, an urgent call came into the Surveillance Division.

“Team Leader! We've received a report!”

“What kind of report? I'm busy right—”

“Someone says they found a Stardust factory...”

“Put them through now!”

* * *

By the time Team Leader Han Jaehyuk arrived outside Seoul Station Field in response to the report, everything was already over.

“What on earth happened here?”

The survivors who had been held in the factory and the hunters who had rescued them sat slumped on the ground, looking exhausted.

“It's a long story...”

The raid leader explained everything that had happened.

“A factory? You're saying they were making Stardust in there? Who was? Demons?”

As Han Jaehyuk listened, the pieces of the case he had been investigating lately gradually fell into place in his mind. But there was no time to sit down and think it through.

“What? Is that true? Someone's still down there fighting the demons alone?”

“Yes. He said he'd buy us time to escape... He told us to go ahead... Sob! Please, hurry in and save him!”

Teaching Assistant Im had been pacing anxiously for some time, worried about Suho's safety. To his eyes, at least, Suho had barely managed to defeat the very first demon they encountered. Yet there had been no fewer than ten such demons in the factory.

'Suho told us not to worry, that he'd find his own way out, but he must have said that just to reassure us. That idiot's doing it again...! He's trying to sacrifice himself for us, just like in the Hankuk University dungeon!'

Having heard the full explanation, Han Jaehyuk gripped the weapons he had brought, his expression grim.

“Understood. We'll head in right away.”

THUD!

His weapons were two steel shields, each large enough to cover half his body. The moment he took a shield in each hand, a transparent aura enveloped him.

'Iron Wall Fighting Aura?!'

Only upon seeing that did Teaching Assistant Im recognize him. This was Han Jaehyuk, the C-rank tank whose skill had once earned him offers from several famous guilds.

Now that he looked, every hunter lined up behind Han Jaehyuk seemed formidable as well.

'We're saved! Suho's going to live!'

Looking utterly dependable, Han Jaehyuk led the Association hunters into Seoul Station. Then, at the entrance, he suddenly turned back for one last question.

“Oh, what rank is the hunter still down there?”

“Ahem. Well...”

Looking a little uncomfortable, the raid leader hesitantly answered.

“He's an E-rank collector.”

“... What?”

“...”

The raid leader felt wronged. Suddenly, the Association hunters were all looking at him as though he were the worst scoundrel alive.

It really wasn't fair.

* * *

“I'll have to look into Magok as soon as I get back.”

With everything taken care of, Suho left the factory. But as he prepared to head up to the surface, something made him reluctant to leave.

Broki.

“It's not every day I get to extract someone this strong as a shadow soldier. It'd be a shame to just let him go.”

An extracted shadow soldier lasted roughly a day. After that, the extraction would automatically end, and the soldier would return to nothingness.

Since he had no idea when he would find another magic beast of this caliber, Suho wanted to make the most of him.

[Then why not make a round before we leave? There are still plenty of lizards nearby.]

“Good idea.”

While he was at it, Suho decided to clean out the entire field.

“Broki.”

[ Grrr! ]

Broki had lost the ability to speak upon becoming a shadow soldier. His intelligence remained intact, however, so there was no need for lengthy explanations.

“Go hunt them all down and bring them here.”

[ Raaagh! ]

As a beast, Broki had an excellent sense of smell. At Suho's command, he tracked down every lizard hiding throughout the field and bit them all to death. Then he carried their corpses back in his jaws and piled them neatly before Suho.

Suho's level was now so high that the lizards yielded little experience, but every little bit added up.

“Besides, this is all money.”

[Slurp. Young Monarch, forgive my impertinence, but since there are so many, might I have just one bite...?]

“You one-bite pest...”

[I am indeed an insect.]

Beru tilted his head at Suho's joke.

As Suho hunted lizards with Broki leading the way, he found himself wearing the crow mask again. Earlier, he had worn it to impersonate the rookie demon, but this time it was for an entirely different reason.

The item actually had a handy little function.

[Item: Crow Mask]

Acquisition Difficulty: E

Type: Miscellaneous

A suspicious mask worn by demons.

Brightens your field of vision when worn in dark places.

Can be stored in your inventory or sold at the shop.

'It's better than night-vision goggles.'

His increased Perception stat let him make things out even in the dark, but he liked how wearing the crow mask eliminated the difficulty entirely.

Every demon had possessed one of these useful items, so Suho had collected all the masks from the demons in the factory as well.

That, however, was where the trouble began.

“A demon!”

“Huh?”

[Skree?]

The Association hunters had entered the field just in time to run into Suho wearing the crow mask. They had already heard from the hunters on the surface that the demons wore crow masks.

To make matters worse, the giant hyena Broki stood beside Suho, looking utterly evil.

“Attack!”

“No, wait...”

Before Suho could get a word out, the hunters began raining attacks on him without warning.

DING!

[An Emergency Quest has arrived.]

DING!

[Emergency Quest: Defeat the Enemies!]

There are people nearby with murderous intent toward the 'Player'—

“Oh, no. Not this. Decline, decline.”

Their murderous intent had even triggered an Emergency Quest. Suho hastily declined it and was about to remove his mask to reveal his identity when—

WHOOSH!

“I'll take this one!”

Han Jaehyuk had already closed in and swung a shield at Suho. At the same moment, the other hunters all charged Broki.

“Wait, hear me—”

“Iron Wall Fighting Aura!”

A flash of light erupted, and a transparent shield aura bore down on Suho like an enormous barrier.

[Young Monarch!]

At Beru's urgent cry, Suho finally clenched the hand he had raised to remove his mask into a tight fist.

'I'll subdue him first.'

WHOOSH!

A black aura instantly enveloped his fist. He drove a single powerful punch straight into the transparent shield pressing down on him.

But that one punch...

[Strength: 45]

CRACK!

“Huh?”

Han Jaehyuk's charging body folded at a right angle, and he shot straight backward, shields and all.

Then—

CRASH!

He slammed into a wall far in the distance.

“... Huh?”

Suho was so dumbfounded that he froze with his fist still extended. The Association hunters who had witnessed it stared wide-eyed.

“Team Leader...?”

“What just...?”

RUMBLE.

The wall Han Jaehyuk had crashed into crumbled away, revealing his face, eyes rolled back.

He had been knocked out cold.

[Hmm. So this is about how humans fare. Well, you have been putting all your stat points into Strength.]

Beside him, Beru nodded as though this were the most natural outcome in the world.

Looking awkward, Suho removed his crow mask.

“Shall we talk this out?”

“...”

Every last hunter promptly nodded.