Chapter 7: Preparing the Way (1)

"We're sorry. Right now, the underground train is facing problems, hence, cannot operate as usual…"

At the central station of the capital city, people, in a long line, were whispering to each other.

More than ten minutes had passed but there was no sight of the train arriving at the platform. The number of waiting passengers kept increasing, and so did their anger. Each of them looked at the sign updating the train current whereabouts and saw that the whole line was still red. Only a handful of people here knew the real reason for the delay.

A young man on his phone was standing in front of the glass door on the platform.

On his phone screen, there was a message box.

[Do not panic. You are arriving closer to the mutated area of an A-rank dungeon.]

Han looked at the map that came with the message. A circle flickered in red light indicating the level of danger and covered the area of the underground tunnel that was located near the Hunter Guild station, where he was heading to. Another message appeared again.

Buzz.

[As you are close to the dangerous area, we'd like to ask you to join the mission of clearing the dungeon.]

He was used to seeing this message.

Every hunter in the system would receive an invitation to clear dungeons in close proximity since both hunters and dungeons were watched by the government constantly. But whenever it was a dungeon in large cities like the capital city, Han never accepted the invitation because these kinds of dungeons always had hundreds of hunters lining up to clear.

Especially dungeons that appeared near the Hunter Guild like this.

However, this was the first time that Han did not immediately close the message box right away. He stared at the radius of the mutated area inside the A-rank dungeon, his heart only focusing on the word 'closest to the Hunter Guild station.'

Han remembered what the nurse told him before.

'Mr. Klein has left the hospital. I heard that he's going to the Hunter Guild.'

He narrowed his red eyes.

Hunter Guild…

[If you want to participate in the mission, please press 'accept' within 5 seconds.]

[5… 4… 3…]

Beep.

His thumb pressed the 'accept' button in an instant. Then, Han looked up and put the phone to his ear. He tried to call someone one more time.

But Raydel still had not picked up his phone.

It was the twentieth time…

*

"We'll have two teams, each consisting of twenty-one people. The last one can go with the second team. Is everyone okay with that?"

The hunters that volunteered to go into the mutated area split into two teams. The first team had Sheryl as the team lead while the second team had Shane. Now, Sheryl took the role of making important decisions and ordering what they should do next. She rolled up her sleeves, transforming her work uniform into something much more fitting for the situation.

Raydel was in the second team. He looked at the train that was still parked at the platform of the dungeon's arena. The other hunters that did not volunteer were guarding the train and watching over the ordinary people in the train. They had to wait till the dungeon was cleared for the tunnel to return to normal.

"Our jobs include only two things," Sheryl said and raised her phone up. "One, use our phones to record the pathways in dungeons, and two, leave necessary items along the way for the high-ranking hunters. I know that a lot of us might have something like signal senders or monster detectors. Please leave those things along the pathways. The government will reimburse us after the dungeon is cleared. Well then, does anybody here have the power to summon magical beasts?"

A secondary schooler raised her hand, so Sheryl told her to come closer. The girl mumbled, "I might not be that good." She raised both of her hands up in the air and suddenly, a light blue ball of energy appeared before transforming into a big bird in her hands.

She threw the bird up and let it fly deep into the dungeon, disappearing behind the curtain of darkness.

A few moments later, the girl frowned. She said, "my power could not go very far, but there are lots of crossroads inside. About seven or eight of them."

Sheryl nodded. "Then, each team should split up into several small teams and explore different paths to reduce the time for the mission. You, the student, come with me."

While the hunters split up into small groups to explore the dungeons, Raydel, who still could not get the old lady's words out of his head, walked to his team lead. He admitted that he was quite worried, especially when he had to enter a mutated A-rank dungeon.

"Mister," Raydel called Shane.

Shane seemed to be an office worker and was many years older than Raydel, so he called him with great respect. He was just a high schooler who had just graduated from school anyway.

"Do you remember the old lady sitting next to me?" Raydel got straight to the point right away. "She… predicted something."

Shane had just taken out his ordinary artifact. It became a silver sword. Shane practiced swinging it around to get used to it.

"Predict?"

"She said…" Raydel spoke carefully, "that twenty-one hunters will die."

Silence.

A glimpse of fear appeared on Shane's face for a second. He took a deep breath, trying to act calm as an adult should.

"Did she really say that?" He asked, adjusting the way he spoke to Raydel. "Can you take me to her?"

Raydel nodded, looking like a compliant junior. He rushed back toward the train with Shane following closely behind. He knew where he sat, so he looked towards his seat first, but he stopped when he stepped into the train. His eyes went a little wide as he looked around, not believing what he saw.

The old lady… disappeared.

The train still had other passengers that Raydel remembered, all the children and other elders. But the old lady that told him the future was not here anymore.

Raydel looked at the next train and could not find even the shadow of the person. She just vanished completely.

If she had just got up, she must have still been on the train, but Raydel could not find her even after he walked around everywhere. He stood there, baffled, and suddenly recalled a part of the novel. His whole body lost the ability to feel when he realized something. The old lady… is she…

But this was just the beginning of the novel, wasn't it?

"Where did she go?" Shane, who stood behind him, asked.

Raydel tightened his lips. "I don't know either. But she was just here a few minutes ago."

Shane put his hands on his hips before letting a deep sigh.

"We probably have no time to look for her anymore. It's okay. Thank you for telling me, but don't be too worried. This is an A-rank dungeon. I'm sure the others know that it's highly dangerous." Shane led Raydel back to the dungeon. The other hunters had already finished making up teams. Shane took out his phone and turned on his flashlight. "Everyone here knows that if they enter the dungeon, they can die anytime. And um, let's stay together in the same team."

"Thank you."

Sheryl had already led her team into the dungeon. Raydel swallowed a big lump down his throat when he had to follow Shane in there. The haunting and cold atmosphere of the dungeon instantly enveloped him in its claws as if they were walking in a narrow and dark cave. Everyone had to walk in single file and the flashlights from mobile phones shining on the walls made it even more daunting.

The pathway gradually widened as the hunters arrived at the eight crossroads. The ceiling of the quarry in the area was high up and the walls were made from an endless sight of bones, scaring everyone away from it.

The air was freezing and the atmosphere made everybody shiver. A hunter whispered, "this is literally a graveyard," and Raydel wholeheartedly agreed. This place looked just like a cemetery.

"We'll gather here again in ten minutes," Sheryl announced before leading her team into the first crossroad.

Many hunters were encouraged by her bravery, so they started walking into their appointed crossroads. Raydel followed Shane into the last one. He eavesdropped on what the other hunters were saying, and everyone seemed to wonder what rank Sheryl was because she looked like an incredibly experienced hunter.

Raydel still had the prediction of the old lady buried deep in his head. Twenty-one people dying was not a concern he could easily brush off. It stressed him out so bad that he heard his own blood pumping in his ears.

As he was thinking what he should do next, suddenly everyone who was recording the dungeon pathway and leaving items along the way exclaimed.

"What, so they all lead to the same destination."

All of the eight crossroads led everyone to this same huge chamber.

The hunters turned around to look at the chamber curiously. Sheryl raised her flashlight high up in the air and walked around the place. She stepped on a puddle that made a disgusting sound, but the light that shone on the walls revealed a new part of the dungeon. The walls were no longer made out of bones, but rather worn-out stones with a foul smell as if they were kept in here with all the humidity for years.

The woman wrinkled her nose and raised her brows.

Everyone heard a sound of something crawling toward them, and before anyone could say anything, they saw a rat the size of a dog leap out from the dark.

All the hunters shone their flashlights at the monster like it was their instincts. In the novel 'Ways to Become the No.1 Hunter,' the government borrowed the power of a high-ranking hunter and used it as the structure of all hunter's systems. So, the programs in their phones could scan and detect monsters' levels and power.

The information of the monster popped up on everyone's phone screen.

[Monster: 'Giant rat']

[Level: 74]

Sheryl dodged the monster in the blink of an eye, but several of them started pouring out of the dark before she even had the chance to draw her weapon.

The rats attacked other hunters that were stunned by the incident. However, they were all familiar with encountering monsters in dungeons, so they took out their weapons in an instant, ready for a fight.

Clang!

The monsters were high leveled, but when a group of hunters kept stabbing them in unison, they could kill them easily. The rats vaporized into hot steam, and many ordinary artifacts and sparkling crystals dropped on the floor, causing a lot of the hunters smile gleefully. They fought over the items dropped by the monsters. Some even pushed each other out of the way.

"I could sell this crystal for 500 del! Ouch."

"Back off. This is mine!"

"Hey, it's mine!"

Everyone went from suspecting the dungeon to smiling widely and talking aloud happily because of the items from the monsters.

They fought over the drops for a while before someone screamed softly and jumped away from tiny monsters running all over the floor. They all looked like insects, but they were incredibly swift. When hunters shone their flashlights on them, they realized that the monsters were 'cooties.' They were low level monsters that hid in the rats' furs. When the rats were killed, they also fell onto the ground.

Splat!

The hunters collectively stomped over the monsters. Suddenly, someone screamed again because when the cooties were killed, they exploded instead of vaporizing!

"Ahh!"

Blood sprayed all over the nearby hunters.

About ten hunters were showered with the blood droplets. They coughed and tried desperately to wipe the disgusting liquid out of their faces. The other hunters that were luckier stepped away from the blood. Raydel, who was at the back and spent most of his time laying things along the way, was far from the cooties, so no blood splattered on him.

Amidst the coughing and spitting sounds, someone pointed up.

"That's…"

A message box suddenly popped up above everyone's head.

[Start the countdown of 30 minutes.]

Raydel frowned.

[29:59 minutes]

The countdown started, but they got no information about what its purpose was. Everyone looked at the message box, not knowing what to do with it. Someone suggested, "is it the countdown to the boss spawn time?"

"Could be." The others agreed. "Maybe we're near the boss room already?"

"So, we no longer have to wait for the high-ranking hunters?"

"Wait," Sheryl interrupted, "are you thinking about defeating the boss by yourselves?"

"Yeah, we have a lot of hunters here. If we work together, we might be able to kill it and keep the drops to ourselves."

"Right. We just killed level 74 giant rats. It should be harder to kill, but we can get it done easily when we work together! If the boss level is around this as well, we'll be able to kill it for sure."

The hunters were getting excited because A-rank dungeons were known for dropping a lot of precious items.

"Look, the government just sent a message saying they'll reward us more if we go deeper into the dungeon!"

A notice from the government appeared in the hunters' phones, indicating that the prize would get higher the deeper they went into the dungeon. If they got to the boss room, they would receive ten thousand del.

Sheryl crossed her arms, seriously considering everyone's reasons. In fact, she agreed with them that if they could easily kill such high-level giant rats, the boss of the dungeon might not be that hard to defeat. They had forty-three hunters here. If they planned well enough, they might actually beat the boss.

They were sure that items the dungeon would drop must be more valuable than what the government offered, and it would be long before the high-ranking hunters arrived here. They would have to walk through the train tunnel from the nearby train stations. At that time, the dungeon might have mutated further and swallowed other stations as well. So, the faster they cleared the dungeon, the better.

"Be careful," Sheryl decided to only say that.

After getting the green light from the team leader, the other hunters put on their weapons and armors and walked deeper into the dungeon. They still remembered their main mission and kept recording the dungeon pathways with their phones. They only had to kill the giant rats that attacked them in small groups from time to time.

The hunters were even more joyful right now.

Not long after, they arrived at a new chamber. This one was bigger than the first one. On each pillar there was a torch that brightened the place up with its faint light. Everyone shone their flashlights at the floor and saw that it was divided into two large blocks. At the end of the chamber stood a figure. It was a skeleton with a broom in one hand and a rake in the other.

When they moved their lights to the skeleton, its level showed up on their screens. Everyone knew right away that it was a dungeon's miniboss.

As soon as the last hunter stepped into the chamber, a glowing message appeared above their heads.

[The last defender before the boss room]

[The condition to awaken the boss: let destiny decide.]

Raydel heard the others instantly sighed with relief. Nobody expected that they would be this close to the boss room in such a short amount of time. Raydel thought that an A-rank dungeon would have a lot more challenging obstacle. He looked at the other hunters and saw that they were singing and talking cheerfully as if they were partying. One of them was so hyped that he walked to the skeleton.

When the rest saw him, they could not stand behind and do nothing, so they followed him.

"Be careful. There might be traps on the floor," Sheryl, who didn't go after them, shouted a warning. So, the hunter slowed down a little and looked around carefully to find traps. Even though they were in such a high-spirited state, none of them charged straight to the monster.

Tap. Tap.

The sounds of footsteps destroyed the silence prevailing in the dungeon.

Raydel saw the confident smiles of the hunters nearing the skeleton. When it sensed someone approaching, it slowly looked up.

The skull with hollow spaces that were supposed to be its eyes seemed to try to get closer to the nearest hunter like it was… smelling him even though it had no nose anymore.

The skeleton moved and raised both of its hands before handing the rake to the hunter closest to it.

The hunter stopped midway, his eyes staring at the rake with suspicion. The monster waved the rake slowly… so slow that he almost did not notice.

A moment passed. It plunged the rake into the ground, making a soft 'thud' sound.

Silence.

Then, the skeleton raised the hand that was holding the broom up.

At the same time that its hollow eye sockets gleamed with red light, Raydel heard one single sweeping sound and three hunters that were standing on the same side as the broom vanished!

'Vanished' here meant that… nothing remained but puddles of deep red liquid on the ground where they had stood.

Blood…

"..."

Not a single sound could be heard.

Then, the hunters started to whimper to one another.

"Hey, did you hear that? Is it something like 'slash…?'"

Yes, Raydel thought to himself.

He let out a long sigh. His whole body shivered with the sight even if it happened in just the blink of an eye. He believed he and the other hunters saw something run past the three hunters.

It happened so fast and left behind just puddles of blood, or whatever remained from the vanishing body…

Someone vomited.

"Oops!"

Raydel immediately covered his mouth with his hands. He could feel the vomit soaring up in his throat. Both Sheryl and Shane's eyes widened because of what happened. They looked at each other. The hunter that stood the closest to the monster swung his sword at it before the two of them could say anything.

Clang!

"?!"

A clear shield suddenly appeared and blocked the attack.

The skeleton raised the broom and rake up, slashing the hunter. It threw him flying back to the entrance of the chamber with a single hit.

"Its level is increasing!" someone shouted.

Raydel hastily checked the monster's level again. His eyes went wide when he saw the updated information.

[Miniboss: 'Skeleton']

[Level: 86]

Level 86!?!

"Stand back!" Sheryl yelled, "stand back…?!"

Everybody heard another sweeping sound!

This time, four hunters vanished, leaving behind only the blood and legs that were cut off.

"...!!"

The hunters started to panic. They went from running toward the skeleton with confidence to running away in all directions. Some tried to run back to the entrance, so Sheryl and Shane had to order the others to give them the way. However, there was still a long way to go. The skeleton raised the rake and the broom up again. This time it switched hands and then raised its right hand that was holding the broom…

Raydel found himself yelling.

"Run to the left!"

All the hunters that ran around absentmindedly were shocked and jumped to the left altogether.

Another sweeping sound came. This time, there were movements from both sides rushing toward the hunters.

They were huge blades. Raydel looked at them with his eyes wide open. He did not turn away or close his eyes, but kept staring at them as they approached the hunters on the left side.

In the blink of an eye, the swift blades dashed through them.

Everyone was holding their breaths. Then… the hunters on the left side looked up.

They blinked, looking confused. They did not understand why they were still alive.

"Run back here now!" Sheryl reminded them with a shout.

They stood up and ran instantly.

Raydel stepped aside to give way to the hunters that were running back. He looked into Sheryl's eyes. Sweat broke out all over her face. She, like him, must have understood the mechanism of the dungeon by now. She focused at the skeleton that was raising its hands, preparing to switch the broom and rake it was holding.

Raydel stared at the rake, its prongs, and the space between each of them. It reminded him of the blades he witnessed from the left side that had similar characteristics to the prongs of the rake. Those spaces were why those hunters survived. On the other hand, the blade from the same side as the hand holding the broom was a single large blade. It could wipe everyone on the team off of the earth surface with one slash.

"When it switches the broom and the rake, we just have to choose the rake's side," Sheryl said.

Others were heaving. "Is this what it meant when it said let destiny decide?"

"Yes," the woman nodded before stepping on the large block on the floor. "Now, we wait for it to switch the tools again."

However, this time when it started switching the tools, both of them gradually became transparent till nobody could see them.

…All that remained was the hazy fog, revealing only the tools' silhouettes in the monster's grips.

A new message box appeared above everybody's head.

[New Condition: The tools will be invisible from now on.]

"No way…" Sheryl murmured.

They had no way of knowing which one the rake was anymore.