S-Rank Corrosion Dungeon (2)

“……Damn it.”

At the same moment the system message was displayed, the office scenery instantly turned monochrome.

It was the phenomenon where a specific area of reality transformed into a dungeon. This situation was commonly called a corrosion phenomenon, or a corrosion dungeon.

“W-What is this?”

A blacksmith shop employee looked around with a flustered expression.

“It’s a corrosion dungeon. Please wait a moment.”

After replying, Hyeonseong opened the office door. Outside the office, things were already in an uproar. Ordinary employees who had witnessed the corrosion were panicking.

‘What about the customers?’

Stepping into the lobby, Hyeonseong quickly identified the people who looked like customers.

“It’s okay. Please calm down for now…….”

Three customers were trying to soothe the employees and calm them down.

‘Judging by how calm they are, all three must be Awakened.’

Given that they weren’t particularly surprised and were prioritizing ordinary people first, the three customers were clearly Awakened.

“A-Are you sure it’s really okay?”

“We don’t even know what kind of dungeon this place turned into yet…….”

The lobby staff’s voices could be heard. Despite the three Awakened trying to calm them, the atmosphere refused to settle.

It was an understandable reaction. Even Awakened who frequently entered dungeons often felt tense whenever they did. This time, ordinary people who would never normally enter a dungeon had been forcibly trapped inside one.

If they could calm down from just a few reassuring words in a situation like this, that would have been stranger.

A message announcing the dungeon information appeared before Hyeonseong’s eyes as she surveyed the situation outside the office. She checked it immediately.

“……Wow, life really is something.”

A hollow voice escaped Hyeonseong’s mouth as she looked at the recommended rank and personnel limit.

The personnel limit was already full. It seemed the capacity had been set according to the number of people inside the area when the corrosion occurred. And yet the dungeon rank was S.

‘No matter how I look at it, this seems screwed.’

Most of the people inside the dungeon were obviously blacksmith shop employees. There was practically no chance that high-rank combat-type Awakened were among them.

If it were S-rank, their faces would have been known system-wide. And if it were A-rank, they wouldn’t be doing clerical work in a place like this; they’d be treated well in a guild and clearing dungeons instead.

‘And non-combat types aren’t even worth considering.’

Hyeonseong looked again toward the lobby and waiting area.

She didn’t think there was an S-rank combat-type Awakened among the three customers. Judging from the employees’ reactions and the faces she could glimpse from here, it was clear there were no well-known S-ranks present.

‘If there were a face-hidden S-rank, they wouldn’t keep hiding it in a situation like this.’

If one of those three were an S-rank hiding their identity, they would have revealed themselves immediately. That was the fastest way to reassure ordinary employees and rally other Awakened.

‘Which means, at best, the strongest here would be A-rank…….’

Hyeonseong grimaced.

If the dungeon rank was S, the monster patterns would be one of two types: a single overwhelmingly powerful monster of S-rank or higher, or multiple monsters at roughly A-rank.

Either option was far too difficult for a single ordinary A-rank hunter to handle.

And even if one of the customers was A-rank, there was no guarantee they were combat-type. There were plenty of Awakened whose traits and skills had nothing to do with combat.

Her own older sister, Hyeonju, was a non-combat alchemist, after all.

‘……And the time limit is awkwardly long, too.’

When she considered everything one by one, even the clear time limit was a problem.

‘If we want nobody to die, we either have to hole up until the end or keep running around and stall until a break triggers…… but six hours isn’t exactly easy to endure.’

Unless there was miraculously an S-rank combat Awakened customer in the workshop area, there was generally only one way to resolve this dungeon.

That was to blow up the dungeon itself. Unless special penalties were applied, detonating a dungeon allowed the people trapped inside to escape together when the monsters spilled out into reality.

Of course, releasing monsters into the outside world was a problem in its own right. From that point on, a monster raid would have to be conducted while accounting for potential civilian damage.

‘At least I should inform them.’

Hyeonseong took out a dungeon-use hunter terminal from the Infinite Corridor. She composed messages to the numbers for Hyeonju and Hyeonyeong saved on the device.

After sending the message, she opened the dungeon map. Only the office where Hyeonseong was standing was clearly marked.

‘For now, it doesn’t look like there are any monsters in this building.’

Hyeonseong gestured for a frightened employee to follow her. Even if there were no monsters visible at the moment, there was no telling when some trap might suddenly appear. It was better to keep them close.

Once the employee followed, she immediately stepped outside the office. Everyone gathered in the lobby turned their eyes toward Hyeonseong and the employee at once.

“That person…….”

One of the customers widened their eyes upon seeing Hyeonseong’s face.

Another customer beside them started to ask who she was, then trailed off as if something occurred to them. The way the guy deliberately scowled made it obvious what was going on in his head.

‘In a situation like this, I can’t exactly punch him.’

That was why Hyeonseong discreetly raised her middle finger at the Awakened who scowled at her. The look on the guy’s face was truly something to behold.

“Y-You……!”

‘Anyway, since everyone’s gathered here like this, there are no monsters on this floor at least. I don’t know about upstairs, though…….’

Cleanly ignoring the Awakened who was pointing and trying to shout at her, Hyeonseong looked up at the ceiling.

A space where corrosion occurred became half an otherworld. Unlike normal reality, spaces could be severed from one another, and completely different physical laws could apply.

In other words, there was no way to know how the dungeon area had changed without seeing it with one’s own eyes.

Hyeonseong entrusted the employee who had followed her to the three customers and searched for the stairs leading to the second floor. The stairs had also turned gray, meaning the upper floor was within the corrosion zone as well.

She went up to the second floor via the stairs. Since not a single person was visible, she walked around the entire floor to check if there really was no one left.

‘If anyone were here, it’d have to be this place.’

Hyeonseong soon found a storage room with its door locked. Even when she knocked, she couldn’t detect any sound or presence.

Still, it was clear there were people inside. The lack of response to knocking was undoubtedly due to the response manual for when a corrosion dungeon opened.

She took out glasses equipped with an A-rank clairvoyance skill from the Infinite Corridor. Putting them on, she peered through the locked door. As expected, she could see employees gathered inside the storage room.

‘Forcing a conversation or dragging them out won’t work.’

Perhaps because she had made her presence known while confirming people were there, the employees looked visibly terrified. Even if she tried to talk more, it didn’t seem like she’d get any proper answers.

At least none of them appeared injured or mentally unstable beyond fear. Having confirmed there were no monsters on the second floor, she decided to say what she needed and leave.

“You don’t have to answer if you’re scared. I’ve confirmed you’re all together, so I’m leaving. If anything happens, come down to the first floor.”

After saying what she needed to, Hyeonseong turned to head back down.

At some point, one customer and two employees had followed her up. The customer was the one who hadn’t shown much reaction earlier when seeing Hyeonseong’s face.

Hyeonseong told the three that the employees were safely gathered inside the storage room. The two employees looked relieved.

The Awakened customer looked doubtful, so Hyeonseong lent them the clairvoyance glasses. Only after looking inside with the glasses did the customer drop their suspicion.

‘Then all that’s left is outside the building and the workshop, huh?’

After taking back the clairvoyance glasses and putting them on again, Hyeonseong headed downstairs. When she returned to the first floor, the Awakened customer who had received the middle finger earlier shot her a sharp glare.

Ignoring the gaze, Hyeonseong opened the entrance door leading outside. The moment she stepped out, she saw a black curtain covering the sky.

The range of the black barrier clearly wasn’t very wide. It included a bit of the sidewalk and road around the blacksmith shop. Nearby blacksmith shops and metal workshops only had parts of their buildings’ edges inside the corrosion zone.

‘At this scale, it’s basically just this one blacksmith shop that got corroded.’

There were no monsters visible on the street. That meant the only place left was the workshop.

“Could you guide me to the workshop? It seems like the monster is probably there.”

Hyeonseong asked the blacksmith shop employee who had followed her out. The employee replied that they would guide her and started walking. Hyeonseong followed behind.

“Hey!”

Someone called out to Hyeonseong the moment she took a step.

“What?”

The other party’s tone was clearly picking a fight, so Hyeonseong responded curtly.

“I’ve been calling you for a while and you keep ignoring me. What kind of manners is that? And you’ve been walking around alone like you’re something special…….”

She’d guessed it, but sure enough, it was pointless provocation. The guy who had picked a fight just by looking at her face was now acting like this—truly shameless.

“Ah, yes, yes.”

Hyeonseong ostentatiously ignored him while picking at her ear. She was busy enough as it was—there was no time to entertain such forced harassment.

‘If it were Hyeonyeong here instead of me…… no, even Hyeonju would’ve shut him up.’

Usually, when someone was S-rank, people tended to show respect whether their trait was combat or non-combat.

But Hyeonseong was an exception. The reason was obvious: despite being S-rank, her job amounted to little more than a porter and gatherer.

Work typically done by low-rank hunters was often looked down upon as trivial. On top of that, her stats didn’t live up to her S-rank title at all.

So it wasn’t strange that she became a public joke or target of scorn despite her rank.

‘……If anything, it’s worse because I’m S-rank.’

With other S-ranks, people would usually keep their mouths shut out of fear of retaliation. But Hyeonseong lacked the power to retaliate. Both physically and financially.

‘It’s not that I can’t do anything at all, but it wouldn’t be worth the money I’d lose.’

There were people she wouldn’t mind taking revenge on regardless of the cost—but the idiot constantly throwing cheap provocations behind her wasn’t one of them.

Without sparing even a glance at the Awakened who kept making noise as he followed, Hyeonseong approached the workshop.

“It’s over there…… but it’s strangely quiet.”

The employee guiding her pointed to the workshop attached behind the office and spoke with a puzzled voice.

It seemed strange to Hyeonseong as well. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been odd at all. Workshops located in the middle of a city typically used magic items for soundproofing as a matter of course.

But this was an emergency. In situations like this, the soundproofing items should have been deactivated so people outside could notice what was happening inside.

Hyeonseong immediately checked the dungeon information. Fortunately, the number of people remaining inside the dungeon was unchanged.

“It seems some kind of distortion that blocks sound has occurred over there.”

After replying to the employee, Hyeonseong ran toward the workshop entrance.

Everyone was still alive, but several minutes had already passed since the corrosion occurred. Most of the people inside the workshop were likely non-combat Awakened or ordinary people, so delaying any further would be dangerous.

Fortunately, the door opened normally. Hyeonseong rushed into the workshop.

The moment she entered, a single large monster came into view. As soon as she saw it, the system displayed its information.