Heukwol Auction House (15)

‘Who is this now?’

At the Constellation name she was seeing for the first time, Hyeonseong unconsciously narrowed her brows.

‘Just from the name, it feels like Odin’s one eye.’

‘Looks like Loki thought something similar too.’

But the possibility that it was really Odin was extremely low. The Constellation name Odin commonly used was also widely known.

‘If it’s a myth that famous, even if he could change his name, he wouldn’t bother changing it. Unless he was plotting some major event or sinister scheme.’

The unidentified Constellation sent another message. This time, it came with an incomprehensible string.

‘What is this? It looks exactly like a Wi-Fi password…….’

Hyeonseong, who had unconsciously thought that, hurriedly turned her gaze to the door lock.

‘……No way?’

Hyeonseong hurriedly pressed the numbers and letters that had appeared on the door lock screen. Naturally, what she entered was the string the Constellation had thrown to her.

Two lines of messages appeared in succession, and the sound of the lock being released rang out once more.

“Oh, it opened.”

Hyeonyeong said while pulling the warehouse door.

“N-no……!”

The office employee screamed. He urgently stretched out his hand as if to close the door.

But before his fingertips could even reach the door, his body was thrown far away. Hyeonyeong had discarded the employee who was now useless.

As soon as she threw the employee away, Hyeonseong’s group entered the warehouse.

“Uh, uh……!”

“Aaaagh!”

Right before the warehouse door closed, Hyeonseong closed the Infinite Corridor she had left spread out.

Then the people who had been caught between the spatial barrier and the people tumbled forward in a crowd. Under those people, the employee Hyeonyeong had thrown a little earlier was also caught.

— Thud.

As the warehouse door closed, the outside noise was completely blocked off. Even the screams of the people being crushed and stepped on by others could no longer be heard.

‘Well, if they’re Awakened who came this far, they won’t die just from being stepped on that much.’

Having completely lost interest in the group of pursuers, Hyeonseong operated the locking device installed inside the warehouse. Then the external door lock was set to locked.

Now, for the time being, no matter how much they operated the door lock from outside, they probably would not be able to open the warehouse door.

‘Unless a Constellation acts on a whim like just now, or they know some way to force this open.’

Hyeonseong turned her gaze inside the warehouse.

The inside of the warehouse was much wider than she had expected, and the ceiling was higher than the hallway outside. Countless shelves and cabinets filled that wide space.

“Are all of these…… auction items?”

Haesu asked while looking around.

“Hmm…… there might be fewer goods than expected.”

Hyeonseong said while stepping between the shelves first. The shelves had far more empty compartments than compartments with items in them.

“Still, if each shelf has this many items, it seems like there would be quite a lot if we gathered them all.”

“We’ll only know that after checking.”

“But…… why did we come here?”

Perhaps the question occurred to her belatedly, Haesu asked.

“We came looking for the place that seemed the safest. And…… now we don’t have a reason to follow their rules anymore.”

“If we don’t need to follow the rules…….”

Haesu, who was reviewing Hyeonseong’s words, soon trailed off.

“……To put that simply, aren’t you basically saying we’re going to rob the place?”

“Oh……? I suppose that’s what it becomes.”

Only then did Hyeonseong realize that this was theft.

“You scolded me so much when I was packing my tools…….”

Haesu glared at Hyeonseong with a sharp gaze.

“Back then, I really didn’t intend to do this.”

Hyeonseong replied calmly. Since that had truly been what she thought back then, she had nothing to feel guilty about.

After hearing that answer, Haesu stared at Hyeonseong. Her expression could not be seen because of the mask, but she was definitely making a face of disbelief.

“……Then give me back my tools.”

Haesu held out her hand to Hyeonseong.

“I should.”

From this point on, Haesu’s tools and skills might truly be needed. Hyeonseong took Haesu’s bag out of Infinite Corridor and returned it to her.

“What about the other things?”

Hyeonyeong asked.

“Other things? Is there something you want?”

“Rather than that, the bigger point is that we don’t have any reason to preserve this warehouse intact.”

“Hmm, now that I hear it, that’s true.”

Hyeonyeong’s words were right. The items piled up here had probably been collected through shady routes anyway. There seemed to be no reason anywhere to acknowledge legitimate ownership over such items.

“Then let’s try becoming righteous thieves.”

Hyeonseong opened Infinite Corridor toward a nearby shelf.

All the items placed on the shelf were sucked into Infinite Corridor. Hyeonseong checked the messages announcing item acquisition that were added one after another.

‘Are the things here special materials between B-rank and A-rank? Since they’re right near the entrance, I guess they placed relatively less valuable things here.’

After confirming that item acquisition was possible normally, Hyeonseong began sweeping up the items inside the warehouse without hesitation.

‘This side is accessory-type, huh. Oops, another famous item has appeared. This side seems like special enhancement items……. Wow, isn’t this the thing that caused such a fuss because it was stolen just recently?’

Every time she cleaned out one side of a shelf, at least one stolen good whose name she had heard of popped out.

‘If I bring all of this back to the original owners…….’

The talk of becoming a righteous thief that she had jokingly said was about to become reality.

“……Seriously, what exactly was all the theft I’ve done until now?”

Haesu muttered in a hollow voice.

“Cheer up. You have hand techniques, don’t you, Haesu-ssi? I can only sweep things up crudely like I’m doing right now.”

“Do you call that something to say right now…….”

Haesu replied to Hyeonseong’s words in a disbelieving voice.

“……Are all S-ranks like this?”

Haesu asked, still sounding dumbfounded.

“Like what?”

“Everything from when you threatened the employee upstairs until now. I know I’m not one to talk, but Ye Hyeonseong-ssi and Ye Hyeonyeong-ssi both seem really…… strange.”

At Haesu’s words, Hyeonseong fell into thought without saying anything for a moment.

‘Well…… it’s true that we aren’t exactly mentally normal either.’

Hyeonseong readily acknowledged Haesu’s point.

Hyeonseong herself, Hyeonyeong, and even Hyeonju.

No, it was not only the three of them.

The way S-rank Awakened thought tended to be warped somewhere, whether greatly or slightly.

Normally, they consciously tried to follow society’s moral and legal standards. Even an S-rank called a quasi-transcendent could not live alone in society, so it was only natural.

A bastard who trusted only in the S-rank grade and openly acted violently toward ordinary citizens was low-level. Even if they caused trouble like that, what would remain at the end would only be fame buried in the ground, countless lawsuits and criminal complaints, and a punitive force composed of A- to S-rank Awakened.

But if one looked at those words in reverse, it meant that if the opponent was not an ordinary citizen, they could reveal their warped way of thinking as much as they liked.

In fact, there were countless S-ranks who ran wild as if their personalities changed the moment they entered a dungeon raid. It was also not rare for S-ranks to become especially bizarrely cruel toward fellow Awakened.

‘Still, Hyeonyeong and Hyeonju are on the docile side. The targets they reveal their character to are sharply limited to rotten bastards like these auction house guys.

……The problem, if there is one, is that when they do it, they’re half unaware of it.’

In truth, she was not in a position to talk about others. Hyeonseong herself was no exception. Even now, had she not only realized after Haesu pointed it out that every process from threatening them to robbing the warehouse had felt natural?

‘Is this because I’ve lived stuck in dungeons for so long, or what……?’

If one looked into it, even if they were not S-rank, many Awakened who went in and out of dungeons, commonly called hunters, had subtly twisted moral standards or ways of thinking.

However, among A-rank and below, they were merely many, not everyone or an absolute majority. The only rank where nearly everyone was like that was S-rank.

‘……This isn’t the time to think about this.’

Hyeonseong quickly organized her head, which had become briefly complicated at Haesu’s point. This was not a good place to contemplate such things.

“Well…… for now, let’s just continue what we were doing.”

Hyeonseong passed over Haesu’s words without properly answering them. Haesu also did not bother pressing that matter any further.

The group continued going between the shelves. While sweeping up all the items, they also obtained the box containing the ‘Thread Soaked in Sacred Blood.’

With this, the purpose of coming to this auction house had been accomplished.

‘Since I also separated the thread and the storage box, there shouldn’t be any chance of the storage box backstabbing us later.’

Hyeonseong glanced sideways at Haesu, who was following behind. Haesu was poking at the lock attached to a notebook-sized box with her tools.

On the way, Haesu had said she was bored, so Hyeonseong had taken out a locked auction-item box and tossed it to her. When she asked whether Haesu wanted to try opening that at least, Haesu very eagerly picked the lock.

Thanks to that, they were also obtaining all the items inside locked storage boxes in clean and perfect condition.

‘Haesu-ssi’s skills seem high compared to her comprehensive rank. Even accounting for the performance of her tools……. Is she the type lacking in stat numbers?’

The levels of the storage-box locks were uneven. The higher ones were around B-rank, but Haesu somehow opened even those locks.

Seeing her open locks two ranks higher than herself as long as she had equipment assistance and time, Haesu’s skills alone were already ready to rise to the next rank.

‘It looks like there are quite a few Constellations showing interest too……. At that level, at least one of them seems likely to sponsor Haesu-ssi.’

Hyeonseong’s gaze headed toward Haesu again. The messages she had just confirmed were likely sent to Haesu herself as well, but even so, Haesu was absorbed only in opening the lock as if she knew nothing.

‘She’ll check on her own later.’

Hyeonseong continued checking the next shelf.

‘It looks like this is the last shelf of this form.’

Hyeonseong briefly looked toward the wall visible beyond the open compartments of the shelf. She saw a temporary wall that had been erected to divide the inside of the warehouse in half, and a door built into the wall.

‘Come to think of it, I haven’t seen even one monster-capture item until now.’

If the monsters had been captured from a dungeon, she thought they would be inside special capture items. But until now, she had not seen even one such item.

It seemed there was a place where only items containing captured monsters were collected separately. Or perhaps they had released the capture items and confined them in cages or something.

‘The one more likely to be true is that side…….’

While putting the items remaining on the shelf into Infinite Corridor, Hyeonseong looked again at the temporary wall.

If the rumor that they also captured and sold people was true, then with high probability, people would also be beyond that wall.

‘If my thought is correct…… that means they put monsters and people in one place.’

Of course, they might have spaced them apart in their own way or built more walls to isolate them. But just imagining that possibility made her feel quite sick to her stomach.

‘I’ll have to go there as soon as the cleaning is done.’

The only sounds inside the warehouse were still the three people’s conversation and footsteps. According to Hyeonyeong, who was in charge of keeping watch, no one had entered and opened this warehouse yet.

“Now then, with this, I think all the items are done…….”

Hyeonseong muttered while neatly taking even the item box remaining at the very end of the shelf.

“Now it’s time to check over there, right?”

Hyeonyeong pointed at the temporary wall.

“What kind of place is over there?”

Haesu asked.

“Who knows. But I can roughly guess what will be there.”

“……I asked because I was hoping it wouldn’t be that.”

After hearing Hyeonseong’s answer, Haesu replied in a horrified voice.

“I hope it isn’t either, but we didn’t see even one of that kind while taking the items, did we? Unless there’s another warehouse in this basement, it looks like the only place left is over there.”

“I really hate this…….”

“Just because we hate it doesn’t mean what we hate will suddenly disappear.”

“But what are you going to do when you go there? Whatever is over there isn’t something we can just take with us, is it?”

Haesu asked Hyeonseong, who was moving her steps.

“We’ll have to think about that after going in. For now, let’s go.”

Hyeonseong moved her steps toward the temporary wall.