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Chapter 7 - The Goblin Village (3)
Even if they didn’t say it out loud, there was no one who was so absent-minded that they didn’t notice that something was wrong with this situation.
“This is crazy. What happened?”
“I’ve never heard of something like this happening.”
“Are we trapped in this dungeon? No way!! I don’t want to be trapped!”
“Wait! Everyone calm down!”
Everyone started to fall into a panic.
At the same time, the status windows indicating that the exit gate creation had failed continued to pop up.
[Error :: The exit gate has failed to load.]
[Error :: The exit gate has failed to load.]
At this point, it was just about giving me goosebumps.
“Wait… doesn’t something feel off?”
Lee Ye-eun, whose role was to do recon as the team’s explorer, was the first to respond.
“Is it an earthquake?”
Of course, I also felt the disturbance at almost the same time as Lee Ye-eun. I thought it was just an earthquake at first, but then I realized that wasn’t it at all.
It wasn’t just the earth, but it was the whole space itself that was shaking.
My eyes swam as if I’d drank a lot of alcohol. It reached a point where I couldn’t even control my body.
[Those who are not authorized will enter ‘???’]
* * *
We all regained consciousness at pretty much the same time.
“What’s going on? What happened?
“Hey, this isn’t right.”
Nam Woon-ik was the first to break the silence, and Choi Min-hyuk also opened his mouth after taking a look around.
We were on top of a gigantic bridge made out of black bricks. Under it was an abyss so deep that you could hardly see an inch into it.
The bridge fell off right behind the point where we had been teleported.
It was structured so that we could only move forwards, no matter what.
Lee Ye-eun, who had been quietly staring into space, suddenly opened her mouth with a grave expression.
“That’s strange. My status window won’t come up.”
Usually, when one entered a dungeon, the first thing they would see was a window that displayed information about the dungeon.
The only information available outside of dungeons were just the dungeon’s name and its boss. Any other details were unknown until you entered it.
In the present day, it had been 60 years since dungeons had first started to appear, and mankind had become used to things like dungeons and monsters. For any dungeon below A-grade, information about it was publicly available, and the only ones where the details were really relevant were the rare A or S-grade special dungeons.
“This is a strange place, doesn’t it kind of make sense that it’s not showing up?”
“That’s not it! nothing is showing up at all! Not just the dungeon information window, but everything else! There’s nothing!”
Lee Ye-eun’s anxiety won out, and her voice rose to a scream.
Kim Tae-woon and Nam Woon-ik both tried at the same time to open their status window. Of course, I also tried to open my own status window after having quietly been listening.
“Is there anyone whose status window is working?”
“Mine’s not.”
“Nope.”
“Shit, me neither.”
The eyes of four people turned towards me. Like I would be any different. Instead of responding, I just quietly shook my head.
If all of these four people could leave this dungeon, they could officially start living as Hunters. To these four who were all thinking that they could clear the dungeon normally like everyone else, something like this was like a lightning bolt tearing apart the clear sky.
The atmosphere was almost reminiscent of a funeral service.
Kim Tae-woon tried to calm the other party members down.
“For now, let’s try moving forward or taking a look at our surroundings.”
“Damn it. I really thought it was over.”
“No way that we die here, right?”
“Stop saying nerve-wracking shit like that!
The four people started searching around the perimeter of the bridge. Of course, I also participated in the search.
There was no railing on the bridge, and if even a little thing went wrong, the chance that you would fall off was frighteningly high.
I got on my knees and looked down again under the bridge. I couldn’t see anything besides pitch-black darkness below.
It was clear that if you fell from here, there was no chance of coming back alive.
Half of the bridge was made up of black bricks, but there were white bricks embedded in here and there that acted like little lights.
“You’re pretty fearless.”
Lee Ye-eun, who had been standing a few paces behind me with her arms crossed, started to speak to me. I looked back down below me.
It was just that I couldn’t estimate the depth, I hadn’t particularly thought that there was something to be scared about what was below.
It was probably because of all my countless experiences.
“By any chance, do you have anything I can throw?”
* * *
Reaper Scans
Translator: Igixri
Proofreader: Imagine
Discord Link: https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
* * *
I started to respond after slightly turning my body towards her. She quickly caught onto my intentions and started rummaging around in her pockets.
What Lee Ye-eun pulled out from her pocket was a steel ball that was slightly bigger than the size of a coin.
“Something like this could work.”
“What is it?”
“A one-use smoke bomb, I got it from my guild. If it bumps into something, it’ll explode and smoke will rise up.”
“That’s perfect.”
If there was a floor, then smoke would come up to us after the bomb hit it. I took the iron ball she called a smoke bomb down below.
The other party members, who had looked around at their surroundings and hadn’t found anything of note, came towards me and Lee Ye-eun as we were attempting to throw the smoke bomb.
“What did you do?”
“We threw a smoke bomb down there. But it didn’t even make a sound, let alone smoke.”
“It’s either stupidly deep, or something went wrong. Whichever it is, it just shows that if you fall, there’s no chance of making it back up alive. Looks like the only thing that’s left is that.”
Choi Min-hyuk twisted his body towards the building at the end of the bridge.
“What kind of building is that?”
“Rather than a building, doesn’t it look like some kind of tower?”
Lee Ye-eun pointed towards the top of the structure. Looking at it closer, it had a similar appearance to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. However, the difference was that this tower was so tall I couldn’t see the top.
“And then what? Are you saying we should climb this tower?”
“I’ve heard about tower-type dungeons, but this looks like a lot more than a couple ten floors.”
“It’s not about climbing the tower or not climbing the tower, right now our status windows aren’t even showing up? What are we supposed to do in this situation?”
“Why the hell did something like this have to happen to us…”
Choi Min-hyuk’s hot gaze cut through the disorganized and confused party.
He wasn’t the only one that was doubting me.
‘Even though they’d find nothing even if they interrogated me a thousand times.’
Despite this, it was fortunate that the two people who doubted me weren’t just idiots that would get swept up by their emotions.
After stepping off the bridge, we arrived at a small garden near the entrance of the tower. Even just peeking through the garden, we could see that there was an intimidatingly large iron gate. It wasn’t just because it was large, either.
The intimidating atmosphere and pressure that radiated from the door and pervaded through the entire building was no joke.
Even though I considered myself to be someone with a fairly large amount of experiences under my belt, it was enough to make me almost shudder for a moment. That was how huge the tower felt, stretching out so high that we couldn’t even estimate how tall it was.
We couldn’t just stay like this forever.
We’d tried and searched for everything we could do or find on the bridge.
The only thing left was the tower.
The problem now was who would open the door to this unidentifiable tower. Everybody could sense that it was out of the ordinary.
“Hey, you talentless bastard. You go.”
Choi Min-hyuk grabbed my shoulder and pushed me forward.
“I don’t know what these other guys are thinking, but I suspect that you’ve got something to do with what happened here. Admit it, you’re honestly the strangest person here.”
“Even so, this isn’t right. Even if he doesn’t have a god to follow, Kang Han-kyul is still a Hunter.”
“What isn’t right? You’re talking like this now, but you were the very first one to suspect him, Kim Tae-woon. Anyways. Even if we can’t access our status windows, this guy’s still the weakest link out of all of us. If a problem comes up that requires us to be cold and objective, then it’s right that the guy with no power should die.”
Choi Min-hyuk spoke up somewhat coldly and objectively. The situation being what it was, no one was in the state of mind to wrap their head around his remarks.
“Alright. I’ll go.”
“Relax. At the very least, if something happens we won’t just throw you away to die. But if you die before we can help you… Well, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
What uselessly thankful consideration.
Ignoring Choi Min-hyuk’s words, I went down the steps and stood in front of the huge door.
“Is this even a door?”
More than a door, it just seemed like a giant slab of iron. I couldn’t see any gaps, and there was nothing that indicated that there was a way to open it.
I looked back at my party members behind me and let out a sigh before I reached out and touched my hand to the large iron slab in front of me.
Nothing happened.
As my mind swam with thoughts as I stood there with my hand to the door, a single hypothesis brushed through my mind.
‘No way.’
In the status window, Mana was included as one of the attributes.
Magical power had existed when I was in Arbelicia.
In the world of Hunters, Mana seemed to be regarded as simply another energy gauge through which skills could be used. But the truth was Mana was the spiritual power within all living beings. If Stamina was the power of the body, then the root of Mana was the power of the spirit that flowed through the body.
Although I hadn’t used any magical power so far because I didn’t have any skills yet, if this was also true in this world, the use of Mana and the status window had nothing to do with each other.
In the first place, something like a status window was only there for Hunters to easily look at and understand their current state; just because you couldn’t see the status window didn’t mean that your magical power had disappeared.
After taking a deep breath, I released the magical power in my body through my hands.
“Huh?”
A blue pattern slowly started to appear on the gigantic wall.
‘Although, I don’t know if it will be possible with this body.’
I poured all the magical power I had within me into the door.
Although I felt a little exhausted, thankfully the door didn’t consume as much magical power as I thought it would. At the same time, the pattern of blue light was completed.
[The Tower of Trials has identified the tower’s owner.]
[Error :: Unable to identify the number of stories.]
[Destroy the Goblin Troops]
[Number of goblins remaining: 50]
[Error :: Unable to verify the reward.]
Behind me there was a bright flash of light.
From a gigantic magic circle, more than 50 goblins started to materialize.
‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire.’
At this point, it was too much to even try to figure out just what was going on.