Heukwol Auction House (10)

‘Ah, I know who that is. It’s that person who spoke with us at the market.’

The owner of the voice was the A-rank Awakened from whom Hyeonseong’s group had extracted information about the coordinate note at Yeolha General Mall.

‘So he wasn’t alone. He had companions. Hm….’

Hyeonseong’s gaze turned in the direction the A-rank Awakened’s voice had come from.

She could not spot the person immediately. There were simply too many people in the café. But after looking more carefully, she found an outer garment she recognized.

‘What should I do… should I pretend to know him?’

After a brief moment of thought, Hyeonseong soon shook her head. There was no particular reason to do that when there was no information she needed to squeeze out of him right now.

‘If anything, getting entangled with him right now could just become a headache.’

Hyeonseong withdrew her interest from the A-rank Awakened and focused only on collecting conversations.

It was about an hour into gathering conversations like that. Just when Hyeonseong’s concentration was starting to slip because she still had not obtained any worthwhile information.

“Huh?”

A familiar voice sounded loudly from nearby. Hyeonseong’s gaze unconsciously turned toward the source of the sound. And then she saw the figure of the A-rank Awakened she had decided to ignore.

“Why? Someone you know?”

One of the Awakened’s companions asked.

“Ah, no, I think I just got mistaken….”

The Awakened fumbled out an excuse. Then he soon left the café with his companions. Since the other side also clearly did not want to acknowledge her, Hyeonseong decided not to pay any more attention to it.

‘Is this place a dead end?’

Still concentrating on gathering conversations, Hyeonseong narrowed her brows. She could not hear any usable conversation at all.

‘…No. It’s not a complete dead end.’

Hyeonseong’s gaze turned toward Hyeonyeong. Even with her face covered, her approximate mood could still be read from small gestures. Up until now, Hyeonyeong had shown no sign of being displeased.

That most likely meant that Hyeonyeong had heard at least one meaningful piece of information.

‘She may have heard something outside the effective range of my item.’

Just knowing that at least someone in her group had heard something allowed Hyeonseong to let go of her impatience. For the rest of the remaining time, she continued the task with a somewhat lighter heart.

“…The time’s almost up now.”

Around the time their café usage period was nearly over, Hyeonyeong spoke.

“Uh… really?”

Haesu lifted her face from behind the wall she had made with the magazine.

“We’re not extending the time, right?”

“No. It doesn’t seem like there’s much point in staying seated any longer.”

Taking off the headphones, Hyeonseong answered Haesu.

“Let’s talk about the rest once we’re outside. They’ll probably come ask whether we’re extending soon.”

Hyeonseong stood up from her seat. Just then, a café employee was approaching their group. When Hyeonyeong told the employee that they were leaving now, the employee answered in acknowledgment and returned to the counter.

[Did you hear anything?]

The moment they stepped out of the café, Hyeonseong typed a message on her phone and showed it to Hyeonyeong.

[I did.]

Sensing Hyeonseong’s intent, Hyeonyeong typed the same way on her own phone and replied.

[The people who were there when they used the priority claim?]

[Yeah.]

For a moment, Hyeonseong’s fingertips twitched when she saw Hyeonyeong’s reply. She had expected that Hyeonyeong might have heard something plausible,

but she had not imagined it would be something that big.

“Uh… if it’s that, then I did too.”

After seeing the silent written exchange between the two, Haesu cautiously inserted herself into the conversation.

“…Looks like I’m the only one who didn’t hear it.”

Hyeonseong muttered in a half-deflated voice.

“It was almost at the farthest possible distance.”

Hyeonyeong replied in a voice that sounded as though she were trying to comfort her.

“…Well, at least it means we didn’t waste the whole two hours.”

Hyeonseong shrugged. In any case, they had been lucky that at least someone had managed to catch the conversation in question.

[So what did you hear?]

Hyeonseong asked the two again by message. At that, both of them quickly typed on their phones.

Once they were done typing, the two of them showed their screens at the same time. Hyeonseong’s group looked over the phone memos and organized the information.

[We’ve already taken something from the auction house, so we’re doing this for now, but I can’t understand why they’d go out of their way to use such a troublesome method.]

[We somehow avoided the duel, but is it okay that we couldn’t force through the condition that said to push harder?]

[Shouldn’t we figure out something, one way or another? If the auction house is going out of its way to act like this, then that item really must have something to it.]

Once they extracted only the meaningful parts and organized them, about three lines of conversation remained.

“The possibility that they said that on purpose for us to hear….”

“Wouldn’t that be low?”

At Hyeonyeong’s answer, Hyeonseong nodded. It was true that this felt too sloppy to be a fabricated conversation spoken under instructions.

“Anyway, if this conversation is accurate, then it means these two haven’t been motivated to investigate the item information until now. Though I don’t know about the side with only one person.”

“Isn’t that side investigating too, like we are?”

Haesu asked in a worried voice.

“They might be, or they might not be. There’s no way to know until we face them directly and probe a little.”

“So in other words, that side could turn into a dark horse.”

“At this point, yes.”

There was no longer any need to continue writing things down in silence, so Hyeonseong slipped her phone into her pocket.

After that, the three headed to the grand banquet hall on the third floor. There, they carried out work similar to what they had done at the café.

They received the conversations of other guests who occasionally approached them, while also collecting the conversations passing through the banquet hall.

“There wasn’t anything about that side, but there was some pretty interesting talk.”

As they came out of the banquet hall, Hyeonyeong said.

“Rather than interesting, wasn’t it just obvious and disgusting?”

“That was irony.”

“…Judging by the way you’re saying it, I guess we are talking about roughly the same thing.”

Hyeonseong recalled one of the conversations she had collected through the headphones. It had been about the gambling hall.

“If you get caught there the wrong way, you might end up becoming the next auction item…. Honestly, isn’t that way too obvious? The whole purpose of a gambling den being run in a place like this couldn’t be more obvious.”

“That’s true.”

“…But because of that, are we really going to look around the gambling hall too?”

Haesu asked in a voice thick with tension. She had clearly been frightened by the implication that if someone had nothing left to lose there, they might end up losing their organs instead.

“We can’t just not go. There’s hardly any place better than that for raw stories to get exchanged.”

“But I still feel really uneasy about it….”

“Stay close to us the whole time. Then if something really happens, we’ll notice it right away.”

“I’m asking you to stop something from happening before it happens.”

At Haesu’s grumbling voice practically right into her ear, Hyeonseong hurriedly covered her ear with her palm. In that state, they headed back to their lodging.

“It’s about that time, so let’s roughly eat something and move…. There’s nothing weird inside, right?”

Hyeonseong asked Hyeonyeong, who opened the lodging door first and checked inside. Hyeonyeong nodded. Once the inspection was done, the three immediately went inside.

“Every time we go in and out, it has to be this much of a production….”

“With what’s already happened to us, there’s no helping it.”

Hyeonseong brushed off Haesu’s grumbling and took food out of Infinite Corridor.

“The buffet there looked pretty tasty earlier. What a waste.”

“Well, I can agree with that much too.”

As she opened the food they had bought in the free market, Hyeonseong nodded. The buffet laid out in the banquet hall had looked convincing enough, at least on the surface.

‘The problem is whether it’s actually safe food at all.’

Of course, no one in that banquet hall had shown any problem after eating the food.

The issue was that the people eating it seemed to fall into two different categories.

‘The ones who looked like they were eating it without knowing anything at all… and the ones who looked like they knew and still ate it. Looking at the second group, it feels like there’s some kind of drug in it.’

She had no way of knowing whether that was true or not, but if it was true, then Hyeonseong thought that too would be ridiculously obvious.

“So… are we really going?”

Around the time she was finishing the food in the pack, Haesu asked again.

“If you really don’t want to go, you can stay here… but will you be okay with that? In that case, we won’t be able to guarantee your safety.”

With an utterly calm face, Hyeonseong tipped the rest of the food into her mouth.

“…I’ll just come with you.”

Haesu let out a sigh. It seemed she had judged that following them would still be safer than being left alone in the room.

“Then… before we head out, let’s check whether any more messages came in.”

Hyeonseong pulled the Network screen in front of her and checked the updated comments and messages.

The comments still contained nothing special. But surprisingly, there was a message.

‘The name is “Lotus That Gazes Down Upon the Six Paths”….’

The sender of the message had introduced themselves that way at the beginning.

‘That kind of name format is the sort Constellations use a lot….’

But the content of the message was too thin to be sure it was a Constellation. Other than some impressions about the information on Hwasen, the actual point of the message was simply that if she needed a more specific conversation, she should reply.

‘And the name definitely did look related to that world….’

Hyeonseong shared the message screen she had received and asked her companions whether they had gotten any new messages.

“I didn’t.”

“I did. Something similar to Mr. Unwol’s message.”

Hyeonyeong shared the message she had received with the group. Sure enough, only the sender’s name and tone were different; the content being explained was not very different from Unwol’s message.

“Well, he said he escaped through the same dungeon as Mr. Unwol in the first place.”

“Then naturally what he knows would be similar to Mr. Unwol’s too. If he lived in a similar region, then the level of news he’d have encountered would also be similar.”

Hyeonseong nodded.

“Still, it had value as a cross-check at least. What should we do about this?”

Then Hyeonseong pointed to her own message screen.

“Try talking to them at least once. We don’t have any other clues besides that right now.”

At Hyeonyeong’s words, Hyeonseong answered that she understood and immediately wrote a reply.

“Let’s check for the response while we’re moving.”

Hyeonseong’s group stepped outside the lodging once again. This time, their destination was the gambling den disguised as a tavern.

“Unni, I think we came to the right place.”

As soon as they stepped into the tavern, Hyeonyeong spoke in a low voice and pointed somewhere. Turning her gaze in that direction, Hyeonseong saw a person sitting alone with a glass of alcohol, handling a phone.

“That’s the one from earlier. The one who interfered with the priority claim.”

“What should we do? If they’re there, then we don’t necessarily have to go all the way into the gambling den….”

It was just as Hyeonyeong was asking that question. The guest in question set down the empty glass and rose from the seat, heading toward the counter.

For a moment, it seemed they might be going to settle the bill and leave, but instead the guest received a pouch from the manager and then went through a door in the corner of the tavern. It was absolutely not the direction leading outside.

“That, no matter how you look at it….”

“So that’s exactly the place.”

Hyeonseong and Hyeonyeong muttered.

“If we want to see what kind of state that person’s in now, we’ll have to go in.”

Hyeonseong shook her head. She had been foolish to expect, even for a moment, that this would be easy.

“Let’s at least probe how to get in.”

Hyeonseong’s group headed toward the counter.

“It looks like this is your first time here…. am I correct?”

The manager standing at the counter smiled pleasantly as he spoke to Hyeonseong’s group. Hyeonseong nodded at those words. Even if she lied, there was no way they would be able to hide the fact that they were beginners.

“In that case, it seems I’ll need to explain the menu….”

Saying that, the manager opened a menu. The explanation that followed was exactly what one would expect.

Seeing him explain the route to the gambling den as though it were some kind of special service, Hyeonseong made a dubious face. It was fortunate she was wearing a mask.

Once the explanation was over, Hyeonseong’s group immediately chose the route leading into the gambling den. At that, the manager praised them for making an excellent choice and handed each of them a pouch. Hyeonyeong paid the charge.

“Then I hope you have an enjoyable time.”

The manager bowed with a kindly expression. It was, as expected, a deeply unsettling attitude, but Hyeonseong did her best not to show it.

“…As expected, these are chips for use inside.”

Hyeonseong muttered as she checked inside the pouch. It contained game chips worth roughly the same value as the money they had paid as an entrance fee.

“Did you get a reply?”

As they entered the door in the corner of the tavern, Hyeonyeong asked.

“No. Not yet.”

Glancing sideways at the Network screen, Hyeonseong replied. ‘Lotus That Gazes Down Upon the Six Paths’ had still shown no particular reaction.

‘If they weren’t just poking at me at random, they’ll probably contact me later.’

“Huh? That person….”

The moment they entered the gambling den, Haesu pointed at someone. It was not the guest from earlier.

“That person, they’re the one from yesterday, right? The one who asked us that….”

“…That’s right. The one who asked how to get an entry ticket.”

Hyeonseong answered Haesu in a dubious voice. She had thought they had simply brushed past each other, yet here they were meeting again in an even stranger place.

“In the café earlier, I thought I heard a voice that sounded familiar somehow….”

“Then it was probably that person.”

“I couldn’t check the face because I was using my skill, so I wasn’t sure…. We’re not going to act like we know them separately, right?”

“Don’t ask about something that obvious.”

Hyeonseong quickly scanned the surroundings. More urgent than some passerby she had no meaningful connection with was tracking the guest who had interfered with their priority claim on the item.

‘There.’

Hyeonseong soon spotted that guest taking a seat at one of the card game tables. Bringing Hyeonyeong and Haesu with her, she quietly approached the game table where the guest had sat down.