Chapter 164

'Do you remember how to use it?'

“Yes.”

Right. I’ve made him try it a few times when he was about to die—if he still couldn’t, that would be the problem.

“Keep it active. I’ll contact you if I need you.”

“Should I wait here?”

“Yeah. But hide yourself a bit. Just in case.”

“Okay.”

“If it gets dangerous, contact me.”

After confirming Do Yehyun understood, I left.

On my way back, I turned a few more things over. What to do with Ryu Taejun, what to do if the bastard who found us really was out of his mind and had no teammates to receive comms, and how to get a handle on this maze.

All I could do was leave a simple plan and goals, and handle the rest on the fly.

'And what the hell is Im Haekyung doing?'

Since entering the dungeon, the one-way comms he’d been pushing had also cut off. Whether the dungeon blocked external comms or not, there was no response even when I pinged him a few times.

'If things go south, I’m screwed.'

Even if I activate the Teleport Box on this end, will Im Haekyung show up properly? He’s busy as it is; I had doubts he’d keep his promise cleanly.

I was about to re-enter the clearing when I saw suspicious status windows beyond the wall.

'What the hell?'

Name: Lee Gyutae

Age: 22

Rank: F

Title: —

Main Skills: Speed Boost (F), Search (F)

Growth Limit: F

Name: Kim Heechan

Age: 29

Rank: F

Title: —

Main Skills: Recon (F), Skin Hardening (F)

Growth Limit: F

Name: Seok Heejeong

Age: 31

Rank: F

Title: —

Main Skills: Insight (F), Agitation (E)

Growth Limit: F

.

.

.

There weren’t just one or two status windows past the wall.

'At least... five?'

And that didn’t even include the two who should be lying there—meaning a whole group had converged.

I slowly took the Stealth Orb from my clothes and held it between my teeth. A guy with an Insight-type skill was annoying, but fortunately both their skills and hunter ranks were low, so as long as I didn’t do anything flashy, I shouldn’t get caught.

When I slipped into the clearing with my sound buried, a scene I hadn’t expected unfolded.

'The fuck is this?'

There were five people in sight—every one of them low-rank Awakened. Four F-ranks and one E-rank.

The funny part: the lunatic who came looking for me was D-rank.

'I thought their teammates were stronger and sent the easiest mark... guess not?'

And what the supposed “teammates” were doing was even more ridiculous.

One was checking on Ryu Taejun’s condition; another was practically barking at the tied-up, sniveling lunatic on the ground.

Even if I’d tied him up, there shouldn’t have been enough rank gap for them to rush in so fearlessly.

Their conversation was worse.

“Ah... fuck, what do we do? You said there were three. Where are the other two?”

“Lay off. Talking like that won’t make him understand.”

“Understand or not, we’re fucked—what do we do then? You wanna be the one to die next time?”

“Use this guy. Send him. One left, right.”

“Hey, relax. Relax. Why do you think they left one behind? He’s a teammate. They’ll come back one hundred percent. They probably left the sick one here and went to scout nearby.”

Just from the dialogue alone, it was a gathering of fuckers.

They didn’t explain the background clearly, so the content cut off here and there—but I could infer the gist from context.

There’s an order in which it’s your turn to die—must be this dungeon’s trait—and to slip that “order,” they kept using newly arrived people as bait while they huddled together to survive?

'Why aren’t they thinking about escaping. Are they dead weight?'

I was genuinely curious, but shelved it and focused on their movements again.

They argued hotly over whether to take the lone Ryu Taejun or leave him, then decided on their own.

“Leave him for now. They’ll one hundred percent come back. Those guys.”

“But can we take three at once?”

“Try to coax them, and if not, knock them out. You’ve got that item. The one we stole.”

“We should knock them out from the start—what are you saying. How does persuasion even happen? They’ll be on guard there too.”

“Enough. We’ll do that later and split. Dokyeong, ping us when they come back.”

They couldn’t even keep their own story straight—“teammates,” my ass. If they’d at least gotten their lines straight, I might have responded seriously; watching them fight here just made it funny.

They bickered a while longer, then tossed out a final warning. The one who seemed to be playing leader twisted his face into a nasty scowl and said:

“If we shoved the item into your mouth, then speak properly. If you can’t talk because it’ll show, you can at least say: ‘They came,’ ‘They arrived.’ That much.”

“Hey, we’re leaving.”

“For fuck’s sake...”

With that, they started filing out of the clearing.

'Hmph.'

So they had embedded a comms device in his mouth?

'Impressive.'

It was genuinely clever enough to make me want to applaud. How did they think to embed a comms device in a mouth? You can’t remove it at will, and it’s not likely to be discovered.

It was such a decent solution it made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

I admired it inwardly and doggedly watched them leave the clearing, one after another.

Once I confirmed the last straggler had vanished, I cut straight across the clearing and began tailing them.

They wound through the maze like they knew the route by heart. They didn’t hesitate at turns—looked like they had a fixed hideout.

Keeping about ten paces behind, I checked each corner before following.

One odd thing: the same guys who’d been yammering a moment ago all shut their mouths as if on cue. They even placed their steps carefully, like getting caught by someone would be a serious problem.

'Why’s that?'

I quickly sketched a few hypotheses and erased the ones that didn’t fit.

How long did we walk?

After roughly twenty minutes of following them around corners and past forks, they finally stopped.

'We there?'

They halted at a point where the wall bent and exchanged hand signals. It looked like they were saying the area was clear, but guessing their private signals from my side wasn’t realistic.

While I watched quietly, the guy who’d been leading this whole time slowly backed up.

Then, bracing a hand on the wall, he gestured for the men behind him to go in one by one.

After the ones in back slipped behind the wall in order, the last man pulled something from his pocket.

'Well, fuck.'

At a time like this, what else would he pull out but an Insight tool?

Instead of °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° checking the item, I decided to pull out and backed up fast.

Just turning a single corner would make it impossible to see me from their side anyway.

I put a little distance between us and started running—quietly.

'Either way, I confirmed where they gather. That alone is good enough.'

We’d come farther than I expected, but it wasn’t so far I couldn’t remember how I got here. At worst, a few direction changes—so what.

I only stopped running after taking two corners.

'Ah... this is fun.'

Before the situation had fully arranged itself in my head, long-dead dopamine began to rise, slow and warm.

So, there’s a place where the ones who’ve been stuck here a long time stay, and those guys go hunting people to have them die instead of them?

'And on top of that, F-rank punks treating a D-rank like a dog...'

I had a gut feeling that just bagging those clowns would make the questions collapse all at once. No—at this point, it wasn’t gut. It was certainty.

I spat out the Stealth Orb, headed back toward the clearing, and tightened up my plan.

'I’ll stash Do Yehyun and head to where those bastards are. A few complications...'

It was a little inconvenient that there were still two people left in the clearing.

'Should I use this chance to make the first move and kill them?'

We’re inside a dungeon anyway; staged as an accident, there’s no way it gets traced back.

'No.'

If the gains from killing aren’t obvious, there’s no need to take out two at this timing. I only wanted to make the job simpler.

'Just trim the parts that annoy me.'

When I re-entered the clearing, the same Ryu Taejun who hadn’t stirred even with a circus going on next to him was now sitting up, dazed.

He hadn’t woken even with all that racket, so I’d thought he was pretending to be out cold. But judging from the way he couldn’t grasp the situation, he must’ve genuinely been dead asleep.

“Ack!”

And he threw in a scream the moment his eyes opened.

'Man... this guy is impressive in so many ways.'

I walked up to the flailing Ryu Taejun and started a somewhat tedious task I had to do.