Heukwol Auction House (5)

“…We’ve settled on that approach for now, but.”

Sitting in the lodging provided by the auction house, Hyeonseong pondered.

There were several ways to investigate information about the item. If one went with the classical methods, there were things like books, internet searches, and asking around.

‘But those only work when the item’s origin is clear. Asking around might help or not depending on who you ask, but….’

Unfortunately, ‘Thread Soaked in Sacred Blood’ was an item with completely blank information. Since there was no way to know what kind of origin the item had, it would be difficult to find information through such simple methods.

‘I did leave the internet search to Nemesis for now, but… I shouldn’t expect too much.’

Hyeonseong’s gaze turned toward the Interstellar Network message window and the Constellation message window.

In the end, at this point in time, those were the only effective means.

‘But among them, the Interstellar Network library is out for now. If it were the kind of information that could be found there, it would have been updated long ago.’

The Interstellar Network also provided a search function covering a broad range of information. When many Awakened wanted to check the details of an unfamiliar item, they often consulted the Interstellar Network library first.

‘Blank item information like that gets updated whenever someone acquires new information. The fact that it’s still empty means there’s absolutely no information in any easily accessible area.’

By that logic, there were really only two usable methods.

‘Ask the Constellations, or else… ask an Awakened who can access the Network.’

In a way, it was no different from asking around. The only difference was that the scope of inquiry was not humans in the same place, but extraterrestrial Awakened or Mysteries.

“What are you going to do?”

Haesu asked.

“I need to think about whom I should ask first.”

Hyeonseong replied as she examined the Constellation messages.

As expected, new messages were still being updated even now. Most of them were meaningless, but here and there were messages that clearly acted as though they knew something and wanted her to speak to them.

‘The problem is that the ones acting like that are all obvious types.’

Most of the Constellations acting as though they had information about the item were ones that had previously shoved troublesome situations onto Hyeonseong or demanded absurd trade conditions.

It was not as though there were no first-time Constellations who had never done such things. But even those were not easy to trust.

‘Not one of those attention-begging types has ever wanted a reasonable price.’

Since she had been deceived once or twice before, now, unless there was a need to show the Constellations that she was having such a conversation, she did not bother reacting at all.

[Search results: 0]

[We apologize for failing to find the information you requested.]

While she was thinking, Nemesis sent a message. She had set a few conditions and ordered it to search for information on ‘Thread Soaked in Sacred Blood,’ but it seemed there was indeed no information at all.

‘So information about the item itself really was a dead end.’

She decided to change the direction of the search slightly.

‘Could you perhaps find the person who first obtained that item? Or which dungeon that item came from….’

Hyeonseong gave Nemesis a new search instruction. Nemesis sent a message saying it would look into the information and began searching again.

‘Come to think of it, the Interstellar Network is also a system called a network, isn’t it?’

A question suddenly occurred to Hyeonseong.

‘Strictly speaking, the Interstellar Network is also a communications network… so can’t Nemesis look into that side too with its abilities?’

Now that she thought about it, some of the Constellations had been able to look over the information reports Hyeonseong had purchased through the Network information broker. She remembered that there had been Constellations who sent messages as though they were reading the report together with her.

‘Some of them may have only pretended they could see it… but there were definitely Constellations that really seemed to have looked inside.’

That meant that information stored inside the Interstellar Network, or the message windows provided by the Interstellar Network, could also be peeked into if one had the ability.

‘I don’t know whether that’s technically an ability or a permission issue… but either way, if the conditions are right, the Interstellar Network can also be viewed the way one searches or hacks the internet.’

And Hyeonseong concluded that the odds of that being possible right now were extremely low.

‘…I’ve never heard of a case involving users. Everything I saw was from the Constellation side. Unless you’re on the level of a Constellation, it’s probably difficult.’

[Search results: 27]

[We have found the information you requested. Ending search.]

Nemesis sent another message. This time, though it was not much, it had definitely found some information.

‘Thanks. Ah, may I ask you for just one more thing?’

Hyeonseong asked Nemesis.

[Please speak.]

‘Could you perhaps….’

Hyeonseong, who had been about to ask, hesitated for a moment. She wondered whether she should really make it do something she had already judged was probably impossible.

‘…Still, it’s better to at least test it once, right?’

Naturally, she had no intention of making it perform actual hacking. That side carried a high risk of drawing penalties from the Network if something went wrong. At best, simple information searches still allowed some room for excuses.

‘Could you look up what you just searched for in the Interstellar Network as well?’

Hyeonseong asked Nemesis. Unlike usual, the reply did not come back immediately. Just as she began to think it might be impossible, a message arrived.

[It is possible. Beginning information search.]

Nemesis began searching for information the same way it investigated Earth’s internet. Since there was no particular reaction from the Interstellar Network either, she decided to leave the search to Nemesis as it was.

“Well then, shall we look at this first?”

Hyeonseong turned on the phone screen. One of the materials Nemesis had found was open on the screen.

“What kind of information can we know about that item at this point?”

Hyeonseong asked Haesu.

“When I checked earlier, it only showed the name and the grade.”

“That’s true if you only look at the item information. But aside from that, there’s more information we can find out.”

“What is it?”

“Who first obtained the item, and which dungeon it first appeared in.”

Hyeonseong answered Haesu while showing her the phone screen. The material open on the screen was a newspaper article.

“That may be true… but does this really help us know the item’s information?”

“If we trace how the item was obtained and the characteristics of the dungeon where it existed, we can narrow down whom we need to talk to.”

“Ah… I guess that’s true.”

“It’s simple enough.”

“I see what you mean… but then why is the item information still blank?”

Haesu asked with an uneasy look in her eyes.

“There are any number of reasons you could attach to that. They might have been blindsided and had the item stolen before they could properly investigate it, or they might not have felt like putting in that much effort to investigate it… or they may have investigated it and still ended up concluding there were no clues.”

“…What if we investigate it too and still end up with no clues?”

Haesu frowned.

“Then there’s nothing we can do. But I think the odds of it really ending with no clues are extremely low.”

“Why?”

“What grave exists without a story? And starting from the name and grade alone, that was already no ordinary item. If something like that had no roots, that would be stranger still.”

“When you put it that way, I guess that also makes sense….”

Haesu muttered with a face that suggested she understood and did not understand at the same time.

“Well, anyway, right now we have clues worth digging into. It would be strange to just sit still when there’s something worth probing.”

“All right…. So what does it say there?”

“That’s what we’ll have to check from now on.”

Hyeonseong began slowly reviewing the contents of the article.

According to the article, the person who had first obtained ‘Thread Soaked in Sacred Blood’ was an Awakened from Vietnam. That Awakened had explained that they obtained the item while clearing an A-rank dungeon that had appeared near Hanoi.

‘They couldn’t determine the item information for certain, but they judged it to be at least a high-grade material item, so they sold it to someone looking for thread-type materials….’

Hyeonseong continued gathering information while checking the article and various message board posts Nemesis had brought her.

‘So it looks like the movement trail became unclear after it was sold once.’

After the news that the person who had bought the skein as a material item had been attacked and seriously injured, it became impossible to estimate the item’s route any further.

The next time the item’s whereabouts became known was after the list of items scheduled for auction at this Heukwol Auction House was revealed.

‘So that means the people I can ask about the item are the person who first obtained it, and the person who first bought it. Those two.’

Hyeonseong wrote down the names of both Awakened on a memo. Since both seemed to be people who had made some contact information public due to dungeon raids and byproduct trading, it looked easy enough to attempt contact.

‘Then what I need to find out now is the environment of the dungeon where this came from… Was it said to be ruins presumed to be a temple?’

She was able to gather at least a little information about the dungeon as well. According to testimony from the Awakened who had cleared the dungeon at the time, the environment of the dungeon was a building presumed to be a temple of some religion and the surrounding area.

Since they had used the word temple instead of words like church or cathedral, the facility inside the dungeon seemed closer to an Eastern religious building than a Western one.

‘Is this the limit of the information I can find through search?’

In addition to the information Nemesis had found, she carried out more searches while changing the keywords little by little. But she could not find anything more specific.

‘Well, even when people go into dungeons, they don’t exactly leave photo or video records on purpose.’

It was not easy for Awakened carrying out dungeon raids to leave photographic records. When all one’s concentration had to be poured into watching the surroundings and fighting monsters, how could one spare thought for taking pictures?

That was why, if someone absolutely wanted to leave photo or video records, they usually used cameras that could be strapped to the body, or items such as filming drones that automatically followed the Awakened.

But sturdy cameras capable of enduring dungeon environments unlike Earth and violent combat situations were, without exception, expensive.

‘They say neither the initial purchase cost nor the maintenance cost is easy to handle.’

For that reason, there still were not many individuals or guilds that consistently filmed dungeon interiors and kept the footage as records.

There had been quite a few credible articles going around in recent years about low-cost filming drones whose production costs had been greatly reduced, but no one knew when those would actually come out.

‘…So in the end, for now, the only option is to ask people who have actually entered the dungeon directly.’

Hyeonseong’s gaze, which had been fixed on her phone the whole time, shifted to the Interstellar Network window.

The Network window contained the search materials Nemesis had found.

At a glance, there was almost no information about the item or the Awakened who had found it, and only a little information about the dungeon where the item had appeared.

But even the dungeon information found on the Network was not very detailed. There were a few attached photographs, but all of them had been taken outside the temple, showing the building and the surrounding scenery.

‘What the inside of the dungeon looked like, where the item had been placed, what the situation was when the item was obtained…. Of course, they wouldn’t just tell people things like that.’

There was a notice attached to the Network information page regarding access to additional information. Naturally, access rights were to be purchased with Ghost Coins.

‘It’s not as though I have money rotting away.’

Once again, her Ghost Coin balance only barely matched the network usage fees. Since she might not be able to enter any decent dungeons this month, she needed to conserve her balance.

‘What the inside of the dungeon looked like is something I can learn by asking someone who went there. What’s unfortunate is that because of that, I still can’t know which world this dungeon is related to.’

No matter how skilled the clearers were, the odds of them knowing information directly related to another world were extremely low.

Even if they did know anything, most would only recognize it as a world that resembled some era or civilization on Earth. Clues that directly revealed the name of the world itself tended to be hard to find inside dungeons.

‘…It’s about time to ask other people.’

Hyeonseong set the Interstellar Network material search screen to shared mode.

“You can see this dungeon information and these photos here, right?”

Hyeonseong said to Hyeonyeong.

“I need to know which world this is related to. To do that, we need to find someone who might know where this place is.”

“You mean I should post on the Network and look for someone?”

At Hyeonyeong’s question, Hyeonseong nodded. Hyeonseong planned to post something herself too, but she thought it would be better if two people posted rather than just one.

“Ah, while we’re on the subject, Ms. Haesu, you should write and post something too.”

“Me too? I’m nothing special in terms of rank or traits….”

Haesu asked in surprise at Hyeonseong’s words.

“There are no such restrictions on writing posts. And anyway, everyone basically writes anonymously there.”

“Uh… really? If there aren’t any restrictions, then….”

Haesu gestured doubtfully in the air. Then, perhaps having confirmed that what Hyeonseong said was true, she nodded.

The three of them briefly summarized the dungeon information they had found through searches and posted it on the Interstellar Network. Soon, three question posts about the world inside the dungeon were uploaded to the Network bulletin board.

‘Whether someone who knows will appear or not is a matter of luck, but… at any rate, we’ve posted them now, so all we can do is hope someone knowledgeable shows up.’

After confirming the upload, Hyeonseong decided to move on to the next step.

Using her phone, Hyeonseong searched once more for the names of the two Awakened she had found earlier.