Chapter 7: I didn't an for this to happen…..(2)
I simply walked in silence, saying nothing.
Ah, but walking like this is a bit boring.
Well, since the road ahead is dull too, let just ramble on for a bit.
Dungeons and Gates.
This ga defines these two concepts differently.
Sowhere created artificially—in other words, a man-made place—is a Dungeon.
Sothing that appeared naturally is a Gate.
That's how the two are distinguished.
Since the entrances look different from the start, you can tell them apart quickly.
Like just now—if you open a door and walk in, it's a Dungeon.
If it looks like a portal, it's a Gate.
Simple, right?
But why am I even bringing this up.
You'll understand soon enough.
I pressed onward through that darkness.
A corridor lit by torches appeared.
And at the end of that corridor.
A single mask was sitting there.
Dented here and there, with a little rust on it too—
but it was unmistakably a mask, with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth.
I casually stretched a foot forward.
Clunk!
The mont I heard the sound, I snapped my head to the side.
Imdiately after, ca the sound of sothing embedding itself into the wall.
CRACK!
An arrow—more like a spear, if you're going by size—had lodged into the wall.
If you asked whether I dodged it on reflex.
No.
I didn't even see it coming.
I simply. Purely. Dodged it because I already knew.
The problem, though, is that the things coming next can't be avoided just by knowing.
This was never a Dungeon that an E- or D-rank Superhuman like could clear.
For an ordinary E- or D-rank, that is.
I stepped forward without hesitation.
I know where the traps co from.
And even though it's only for a split second, I can see when they fly.
That much is enough to dodge them all.
The only problem is—
"Huu……"
This isn't a ga.
In the ga, I could get through without making a single mistake.
But now that it's beco reality, will my body actually keep up?
That kind of doubt creeps in.
But.
That doesn't an I can simply not do it.
I'm going to have to throw my body into situations far more dangerous than this.
If I hesitate here, then that would be……
"Disqualifying for a veteran."
Slap!
I smacked both cheeks with my own hands.
"Let's go!"
I thrust my foot forward.
—Perception (D~) has been activated.
All stats related to the sixth sense are temporarily increased.
In that instant, the world I could 'feel' expanded.
The positions were the sa.
Above my head, my left thigh, and my heart.
I knew how to dodge each one too.
The reason I activated Perception—
was to make it easier to ti those dodges.
I felt the arrow being fired from above my head.
In that instant, I angled my legs slightly to the right of a straight line.
This simultaneously dodged the arrows aid at both above my head and my left thigh.
Thwack! Fwiiing!
I heard the sound of sothing burying into the floor, the cutting of air—but I ignored it and ran.
At the sa ti, a smile spread across my face.
My body was keeping up.
Exactly as I wanted.
Without any resistance whatsoever.
In a mont, one more arrow was going to fly at .
Perception had detected it a little late—
but I had already ducked down on the spot to dodge the arrow.
When you know where an attack is coming from,
nothing is easier to dodge.
A cool breeze passed over my head.
I ran, weaving through the cascade of endless arrows that followed.
And so, the mont I reached the one-third point of the corridor.
I ca to a dead stop.
BOOM!
A massive blade fell right in front of .
I imdiately leaped over it.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!!
There was no ti to stop!
Instead of arrows now, blades were falling like mad.
And not in a straight line, either.
They rained down in all directions, zigzagging wildly.
Perception enhancent was starting to wear off.
I need it to last at least until here!
"Haah! Haah!"
I'd been sprinting at full speed this whole ti and my breath was nearly choking —
but I couldn't slow my steps.
If I slowed down even a little, I'd die. As if I could just slow down!
It really felt like forced physical training.
One blade ca down with the force to split my body clean in two, vertically.
I wrenched my body sharply to the left and crab-stepped sideways.
And so, when the last blade in the final stretch fell—
the chains connecting the blades began to wind back up.
The blades slowly started rising again.
I hopped onto one of those rising blades.
A blade, slowly climbing upward.
Perception enhancent had switched off.
But it didn't matter anymore.
There was nothing left to dodge through physical movent.
When the blade had risen about one ter—
A cylindrical device suddenly burst up from the floor.
And then, flas so powerful it was nearly impossible to breathe erupted from it.
And not from just one direction—four of them!
A device that, naturally, also rotated clockwise on top of it all!
But I had already escaped the reach of those flas.
The blade had risen to just the right height to stay out of range.
My current height.
Perfect.
I slowly built up montum in my body.
"One……. two……"
And jump!
The distance was enough.
The height too.
Though, it felt just a tiny bit short……
"Kweeeck!"
I fell face-first.
But that wasn't even the problem.
The problem was that my upper body was on top of the device and my lower body was dangling below it.
And right beside , fire was spewing out.
"Hwaaaaah!"
The instant I registered that fact.
I pulled the mirror shard out of my Inventory and jamd it into the top of the cylindrical device.
Using it as a handhold, I barely managed to haul myself up onto the device.
"Phewwww……"
I almost got roasted alive.
"Huff! Huff!"
S-, still, I'm almost there.
There's nothing particularly harder after this part.
I hopped across the spots where the cylindrical devices had burst out of the floor
as if hopping across stepping stones, leaping over the flas.
Isn't this too easy, you ask?
Hey, you! If it were that easy, I wouldn't have put in the grind.
If you can't even breeze through this much—
would you have poured that much ti into this lousy ga?!
And so I arrived at the end of the corridor.
A single chest, lit by sothing that could have been moonlight or artificial light—impossible to say.
But I didn't open that chest.
It was technically a reward, yes.
But it was a fake reward.
Its stats were a fair bit below the real thing I was after.
I walked toward the blocked-off wall.
It looked like there was nothing there.
But—
Tap.
A gentle push like this—
Creeeeak!
And it swings open like a hinged door.
Revealing a single room beyond.
A room surrounded by nothing but walls.
In the center of that room—one antique table and one chair.
And floating above that chair, a thoroughly rusted iron mask.
Those were the only things in that room.
Whoever made this Dungeon and for what purpose, and why they hid it here—I had no idea.
But what was certain: the real reward was here.
At first, I honestly hadn't even known a space like this existed.
It was sothing I found by accident—just tapping on all the walls out of boredom before collecting the reward, nothing more.
They hid the space itself so thoroughly it was hard to find, yet for so reason the way to get in was absurdly simple.
There were a few unanswered questions like that—
but that was none of my business.
All I needed to do was take what I wanted.
I reached out a hand toward the iron mask.
Ding!
With a crisp chi, a blue window appeared before my eyes.
—Iron Mask of the Hidden One
Grade: A
Trait: Capable of erasing one's presence. If in a dark place or in a stationary state, the effect is dramatically increased.
I had obtained an A-rank item while being E-rank.
"Heheheh!"
It was all thanks to the special perk.
—The Extre Han Tae-won (EX)
Normally, this was an item I wouldn't have been able to get until much, much later.
The ti it takes to obtain Perception delays how soon this item can be acquired.
But I obtained Perception right from the start?
This was practically the item saying 'Please co pick up!'
With this……I could carry out the Villain concept play even faster.
If I could do Villain play significantly faster in the early stages—
there would be far more things I could prevent.
That much more would the odds of stopping this wretched world's destruction go up.
And……the calamities would beco easier to stop too.
That's enough.
And so, the mont I obtained the iron mask and stepped out of the room—
I found myself already outside the Dungeon.
Now that's convenient.
The mont you claim a Dungeon's reward, you're imdiately returned to the entrance.
I don't know the cause, but that's how it works.
Anyway.
My phone's clock had just ticked past midnight.
Hmm……if I head back to the Dormitory right now, I could still get about five hours of sleep.
Honestly, I'm tired. Worn out.
I really don't need to train separately, I'm telling you.
Just running around collecting Hidden Pieces like this is already building up my stamina this much.
Why would I bother training on top of it.
Still, I had obtained a Hidden Piece, so I set off with light footsteps.
To test the mask's performance while I was at it.
While wearing the mask.
And indeed—no one in the Underground Market seed to register that I was there.
People walked straight toward even when I was right in front of them, with no awareness of my presence.
No signs of hesitating or flinching.
Had I not barely stepped aside, I would have gotten walked into.
The presence-erasing effect was impressive—
and given the Underground Market's nature of having far more shadowy corners than bright spots, the stealth effect was dramatically amplified.
On top of that, it wasn't ordinary stealth, but a form of stealth that lowered one's presence.
And if on top of all this I could obtain enhancent materials……
It would be a true end-ga item.
Even as it stands, it was already a near-end-ga item—
but naturally, I'm not the type to settle for that.
And so, just as I was about to leave the Black Zone—
I stopped in my tracks and turned around.
For a mont, I thought I'd seen wrong.
I genuinely, truly thought I had.
So I looked again, openly and directly.
One person, walking with their body covered head-to-toe in black cloth.
But that gait was far too familiar to my eyes.
The stride, the habits they carried while walking, the footwork.
I could tell at a glance.
That's Yoon Se-a.
You might ask—couldn't it be soone else?
No chance.
I've studied that gait and burned it into my eyes too thoroughly for that.
Huh? You can look at soone else's walk and know imdiately who it is? Aren't you a total creep?
You might think that—
but no.
This was simply… what I'd call my desperate struggle to defeat Yoon Se-a.
It was only because I'd fought her so many tis that I studied her from every angle trying to find a way to beat her—that's how I ended up like this. It's not like I'm a creep who was thinking 'hehe, so this is how Yoon Se-a walks' and researching it for that kind of reason.
You get it, right?
Han Tae-won is not a creep!
No, no!
Sohow the story went off on a tangent there.
Why is she here right now?
Yoon Se-a is a variable by her very existence.
There's no telling what might happen.
That ant the option to ignore her and walk past never existed in the first place.
Ugh! Today's also a lost cause for getting a decent amount of sleep.
I started following Yoon Se-a.
Sure enough, with an A-rank item and its amplified effect on top—
even that monster of a Yoon Se-a couldn't perceive my presence.
Though, being a little scared, I was walking about 50 ters behind her.
Anyway! Thirty minutes of tailing her without getting caught.
At so point she casually yanked off the hood of the black cloak that had covered her all the way to the top of her head.
She was wearing a bizarrely shaped goblin mask—
but her dark brown hair that fell to her waist.
And that sword of hers, with its distinctive shards of ice clinging to the blade.
Anyone could see it was Yoon Se-a.
Uh, but—why did she draw her sword.
On top of that, the amount of Mana gathering in that sword was deeply unsettling.
As if it carried the will to smash the entire building right in front of her to pieces.
That kind of sword.
W-, wait a second.
Sh-, she can't destroy this place right now!
I-, if this place gets destroyed, just imagining what would happen going forward is horrifying.
The tip of her sword rose higher and higher, pointing toward the sky.
Damn it!
I started running.
My legs were already trembling from all the running I'd done earlier—
but this was no ti to ask questions.
I prepared to raise my voice.
Ahem!
No need for voice modulation.
With this iron mask on, my voice already wouldn't co through properly anyway.
An iron mask that covers the entire head—practically a helt.
This mask always carried that distinctive gloominess mixed with the tallic sound of a clang.
Before her sword rose completely toward the sky—
I was able to plant myself right beside her.
And in the lowest voice I could possibly produce.
And with a line that sounded as unlike as possible—I called out to her.
"Good evening, my lady."
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