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The moment she opened the diary, a pretty intense entry jumped out at her.
‘So the same kind of plague spread in other cities too. And over there, they tried to stop it by killing people.’
Considering there were plenty of places on Earth with similar history, it seemed people thought the same way no matter the world.
Hyeonseong kept reading.
Something similar happened here too, in the field called Libra. But thankfully, at some point, it stopped.
‘Looks like someone even staged a revolt to stop the massacre.’
On the surface, it sounded almost hopeful.
But judging by the state of the field, she couldn’t believe the story stayed hopeful.
‘If this were a happy ending, the city wouldn’t be this empty.’
She turned the page.
As expected. A thought crossed her mind: Of course.
‘This is starting to sound like that central management system in the main tower…’
She remembered the overall system they couldn’t destroy and couldn’t shut down.
Since it felt wrong in so many ways, it wasn’t strange that it also felt connected to the “control system” mentioned here.
Of course, that was still just a feeling. She couldn’t be sure yet.
‘I’ll know if I keep reading.’
Further in, the human side’s situation had clearly worsened. The broken control system had seized a massive number of combat robots and fighters and launched a rebellion.
‘A machine uprising, basically.’
On Earth, it was still sci-fi. Here, it had actually happened—interesting in its own way.
And as if that weren’t enough, zombies showed up too. Hyeonseong recalled the zombie monsters she’d encountered in the field.
‘So those zombies were the dead citizens. And if even corpses that didn’t die from the plague are rising… does that mean contaminated soil or air can affect bodies too?’
As she flipped further, the diary owner made a similar guess. It was pretty obvious from the circumstances anyway.
‘Between a machine revolt and a zombie catastrophe… it must’ve been hell.’
Sure enough, the diary recorded, in detail, the chaos that followed.
Survivors and robots alike tried to burn infected people and corpses to stop the spread—
and the war between humans and the rampaging machines never stopped either. It must’ve been beyond a disaster.
‘…What is this?’
As she turned the page, Hyeonseong frowned.
Suddenly, whole sentences were masked with blocks.
‘This isn’t the writer censoring themselves.’
The diary had been handwritten up to now, but these lines looked clean—like typed text. Anyone could see it was deliberate outside interference.
‘What are they hiding?’
She couldn’t tell if it was a clue tied to clearing the dungeon, or something else important.
But she could tell one crucial fact:
‘Whatever it is, the Interstellar Network wants it hidden.’
Aside from the Constellations, that was the only entity that could meddle with the dungeon environment.
‘I’ll check the rest first.’
She skipped the unreadable section and continued.
After that, the diary recorded that the owner had eventually been infected by the Rotting Plague—
and still resisted the rampaging robot army to the end.
‘If there’s nothing after this, then she probably died soon after.’
She checked for any hidden message on blank pages, but blank was blank.
‘So… nothing here directly helps the clear.’
She closed the diary, thinking.
The contents were fascinating—opportunities to learn a dungeon world’s history this clearly weren’t common.
But it didn’t help with the immediate raid. There was nothing about stopping the machines, or solving the debuff problem.
‘The environmental lab documents were more useful.’
More accurately, the purification devices they’d brought were useful. Thanks to them, teammates specialized in close combat and scouting could operate without heavy restrictions.
‘Still—if I can take this out, it’ll definitely sell.’
A record like this could help infer the dungeon’s ecology and history, so a research institute would pay well.
‘Even loose pages go for good money. Something like this… it’d wipe out this month’s deficit and then some.’
Of course, that assumed the diary survived the exit. Record-type items were expensive precisely because the system often deleted them upon leaving the dungeon.
‘Please don’t do that this time.’
She tossed the diary into the Infinite Corridor.
“How long until we arrive?”
Hyeonseong asked the engineer.
“We’re almost there. It’s that building right ahead.”
The engineer pointed. The building was rapidly approaching—so they really were close.
“Then we should get ready to disembark.”
Hyeonseong grabbed the mic again, to issue the order.
“Everyone, final notice. We’ll arrive at our destination shortly, so prepare to get off. You all worked hard on the way here. We’re almost at the summit—let’s push a bit more.”
As soon as she finished the broadcast, she could see teammates on the monitor preparing to move. She lowered the mic.
Right then, the engineer began slowing down. The train, now decelerating, entered the platform.
The train glided in quietly and came to a full stop. Hyeonseong immediately scanned the area.
‘Maybe because we’re inside the building… not many monsters followed.’
A few small drones and androids had tailed them, but the dangerous fighters and kill-robots hadn’t made it in.
‘If we clear these and move fast, we’ll be fine.’
The monsters might get spiteful and bomb the station. They needed to reach the command building as quickly as possible.
No matter how badly they wanted to attack, they likely wouldn’t recklessly bombard a facility like the command center.
“Move out?”
When Hyeonseong stepped into the passenger car, teammates asked.
“Yes. There are monsters outside, so stay sharp.”
At her answer, the team started disembarking.
KWAANG—!
Puk!
The close-range fighters who stepped out first killed the attacking android.
Then the mages blocked the drones’ ranged attacks, and the ranged fighters shot the drones down.
After clearing all monsters that had followed into the station, they exited the platform through the corridor.
“That way.”
A teammate in front pointed at an overhead sign—guiding them toward Libra 1st Command. They followed it.
While moving, loud impacts boomed from the ceiling a few times. Fighters that couldn’t enter the station were probably trying to attack from outside.
Fortunately, the ceiling didn’t collapse. Either the station was sturdier than expected, or the overall system hesitated to bring this place down.
Running the corridor, the raid team soon entered the command building’s first-floor lobby.
“We’re here.”
“Do we look for a control system like before?”
Teammates asked again.
“Yes. There’s a high chance it’s in the commander’s office, so we’ll go there.”
As she answered, Hyeonseong looked behind the reception desk. Here too, a floor directory was posted.
‘Fifth floor? Thank god it’s not tall.’
Compared to the central tower, this was practically ground level. And the fifth floor only had one room—the commander’s office—so there was no chance of getting lost.
‘We could just go straight up… but something feels off.’
Hyeonseong paused and looked around. The first-floor lobby was dead quiet.
‘After all that noise, they would’ve known ages ago this is our destination.’
The fact that there wasn’t a single monster waiting inside the building made her skin crawl.
‘…Wait.’
A suspicion flashed through her mind.
“You two—use your detection skills for a moment. I think we need to check what’s on the fifth floor first.”
She quickly asked Lee Seona and the engineer. They immediately activated their detection skills.
“Ghk…!”
The moment the skill spread, both of them sucked in a sharp breath almost simultaneously. It was an unmistakable reaction: something was up there.
“Why?”
“Is something there?”
Nearby teammates asked anxiously.
“There’s a massive concentration of monsters on the fifth floor.”
“It looked like over a hundred…”
They answered with stunned faces.
“That many?”
“Wait—doesn’t that mean all the monsters that should’ve been here are gathered on the fifth floor?”
“Why would they pile up there…?”
The team’s confusion spread.
“Since they know our destination, maybe they’re planning a last stand up there?”
“Ah… yeah. We talked about everything right in front of the machine with the overall system.”
“And we probably left logs while operating it, too.”
“So we just prepare for a fight and go up, right?”
The discussion quickly drifted toward a reasonable conclusion.
‘If it’s only that kind of scenario, that’d be great…’
But Hyeonseong still felt unsettled.
If they were simply preparing to fight, there was no need to cram every robot onto a single floor.
‘Packing them that tight just makes it harder to move. And the fifth floor’s smaller than the lower floors. Sure, it can block the path… but why that extreme? …Wait.’
As she thought, one idea clicked into place—something you could profit from with a dense formation.
“…Self-destruction.”
Hyeonseong muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Self-destruction. What if they pile them all up and detonate them in one go?”
She said to the teammate who’d questioned her.
“T-that would…”
“The fifth floor would vanish cleanly.”
Kwon Seojin answered for her.
“Right. And in that moment—no, the moment we step onto the fifth floor. What if they trigger it then?”
“We’d have a high chance of getting caught with no time to escape.”
Seojin replied again. The team jolted.
“Ah…! We literally blew up all those robots in that building earlier!”
“If the overall system saw all of that…”
“It might’ve decided to use the same method against us.”
Now the team was loudly connecting the dots.
Still, a few looked unconvinced.
“But we don’t know for sure. All we confirmed is that they’re clustered on the fifth floor.”
Some teammates pushed back.
“Then we confirm. If self-destruction is on the table, rather than going ourselves, we should use a clone skill or a scouting item—”
Hyeonseong said, scanning the team. She remembered a few people had skills that could summon clones or artificial spirits.
“I’ve got something perfect, actually…”
But before she could even pick someone, Kwon Seojin cut in.
“Something useful?”
Hyeonseong’s eyebrow twitched. Again—perfect timing, “I have something.”
“Yeah. So…”
Seojin pulled three magic scrolls from his bag. Before Hyeonseong could even check their info, Seojin tore all three open.
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