The People Of Baengnyeong Forest (1)

“Ughh….”

Hyeonseong woke to the alarm, stretched, and let out a groan.

‘It’s been a while since I had that dream.’

She groped for the fading traces of it.

It was an old dream from the past—one she still had from time to time whenever she’d almost forgotten it.

‘Seriously, I’m always exhausted after that one.’

The unsettled dream left her less rested than usual. But she couldn’t afford to laze around. Rubbing the back of her neck, Hyeonseong got up.

‘What’s my schedule today again?’

She checked the schedule she’d saved on her phone. If she finished the B-rank dungeon raid scheduled for the morning, her afternoon would be free.

‘I should see if there are any more runs worth joining.’

After breakfast and getting ready, Hyeonseong headed out right away.

‘People really snatch up any decent dungeon runs fast.’

With a lifeless swipe, Hyeonseong scrolled through her phone.

After finishing the morning raid without incident, she was looking for a team to join in the afternoon. But as always, B-rank and above were hard to find on the recruitment board.

‘And the lower-rank ones are always in places that are a pain to reach on time from here…’

She glared at the board for a moment, but no work was going to fall out of the sky just because she stared at it.

‘…Though if it did fall, that’d be a disaster in its own way. It’d mean another time bomb just dropped somewhere.’

In the end, Hyeonseong closed the board. It looked like she’d be heading home after lunch.

After eating, Hyeonseong headed toward the nearest subway station to go home.

Even on the way, she kept fiddling with her phone. Going home early still felt like a waste.

‘This dungeon raiding thing—if the rank is good, recruitment closes in one second flat…’

She was digging through the board again when—

A message from the Interstellar Network appeared before Hyeonseong’s eyes.

‘What?’

Startled, she looked around. A message like this meant it wasn’t an erosion-type dungeon, but a normal one.

An entrance would appear nearby any moment now.

“Uh…!”

A panicked voice burst out from somewhere.

‘Over there.’

Hyeonseong turned toward the sudden commotion.

Sure enough, the air split open and a dungeon entrance was forming.

Hyeonseong shoved through the crowd and sprinted toward it.

“Hurry up and move!”

“Hey—where do you think you’re going?!”

In the meantime, the entrance fully opened.

The area around it was chaotic—civilians trying to get away from the rift, and among them, a few people craning their necks out of sheer curiosity.

‘If they fall in by mistake, insurance won’t even cover it.’

Hyeonseong clicked her tongue inwardly at the pointless bravado.

“H-Hey! It’s danger—!”

A few civilians shouted as Hyeonseong approached, worrying she was just another ordinary person. She waved a hand roughly to signal that she was fine, though she wasn’t sure they understood.

‘First, I need to check the info.’

You only learned detailed field traits by entering, but things like the dungeon’s rank and player limit could be checked just by touching the entrance.

Without hesitation, Hyeonseong placed a hand on it.

‘People are already inside?’

Hyeonseong’s brow furrowed at the floating info.

A dungeon that had just opened already had people inside—and the countdown had started partway in.

There was only one explanation.

‘This dungeon opened in another world first.’

Dungeons like that appeared once in a while. They weren’t common.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these.’

Hyeonseong hesitated briefly.

This dungeon was inherently higher risk.

‘If someone’s already inside, we can’t send a scout team in first from this side. And we have no idea what the people who went in first are like.’

If those otherworlders disliked people from other worlds—or humans in general—this could get messy fast.

‘…Still. It’s better to go in.’

She didn’t think long. She had to keep earning, one way or another.

Hyeonseong plunged into the entrance.

For a moment her vision went dark, then the scenery snapped into place.

She found herself in the center of ruins enclosed by stone walls, with an old castle—something like a Western fortress—standing in the middle.

‘If it’s a castle… is this actually a “dungeon-like” dungeon field?’

The message that appeared was the usual one she saw every time she entered a dungeon.

‘What—someone else joined just now?’

Hyeonseong reflexively turned around.

“Huh? Mr. Ye Hyeonseong?”

The person who’d made eye contact with her widened their eyes.

It was a face she recognized well.

“…Kwon Seojin?”

Hyeonseong frowned at the unexpected encounter.

“Yes. We meet again here. Have you been well?”

“Well… more or less.”

She greeted him so naturally that she answered without thinking.

‘Why is he here?’

Once the greetings ended, the question hit her harder. The timing was too perfect.

“Still—what brings you here? How did you end up…”

Hyeonseong finally asked.

“I had something to do around here. I was about to head back after I finished, but then the dungeon opened right then.”

Kwon Seojin answered immediately. The reason itself was similar to Hyeonseong’s.

‘There shouldn’t have been any other dungeon openings nearby besides the one I just ran.’

Hyeonseong looked at him with suspicion.

Of course, it could’ve been personal business unrelated to dungeons.

But given how actively his channel updated, it was hard to imagine he’d come out here for anything else.

“Sounds like we’re in the same boat.”

She couldn’t voice a gut feeling without proof, so she wrapped it up with a neutral response.

“Anyway, what do we do? We’re in, but…”

Hyeonseong tossed her gaze toward the old castle.

No one was visible outside the castle walls. The otherworlders who entered first had likely already gone inside.

“There’s no one hiding around here, right?”

She asked Kwon Seojin. The ruined village looked like the perfect place for someone to lie in ambush.

“Mm, I don’t feel any presence right now. If we want to be sure, we’d need a skill or a detection item.”

He scanned the surroundings as he spoke.

“Could you check? I’d rather not leave the risk of getting tailed.”

“I agree with the idea, but you’re talking like you assume I obviously have detection.”

“Don’t you?”

Hyeonseong shot back. After the last dungeon, it would’ve been stranger if she didn’t.

“I do.”

Sure enough, Kwon Seojin calmly pulled an item from his bag.

‘That’s probably… an A-rank item made by Shinwol.’

The item surfaced in Hyeonseong’s memory—something she’d seen while looking for a device to install the Cybernetic Spirit she’d received as a reward.

‘Come to think of it, even that Cybernetic Spirit is a pain to use.’

The summon ticket she’d gotten as compensation from ‘The One Who Created the Mystery of Cybernetics’ was definitely valuable—a growth-type spirit that started at B-rank.

But there was a catch: it needed a physical machine as its core when summoned.

‘And it has to be a device with a certain level of high-end specs, too.’

She’d tried to install it on her current phone, only to get a warning about insufficient specs.

In the end, she’d had to postpone summoning the spirit until she could buy a proper high-performance terminal.

‘I thought about buying one from Shinwol, but anything that meets the requirements is…’

“Yeah. It’s certain there’s no one outside the castle. Same for monsters.”

Kwon Seojin spoke up, snapping her out of her thought as she shuddered at the brutal price tags she’d seen in Shinwol’s system shop.

“Right.”

On the device screen she showed her, both life-sign and mana reactions were concentrated inside the castle.

“Judging by the count, it looks like a scout party went in first and is exploring.”

“So what do you want to do?”

Kwon Seojin asked.

“Let’s approach them for now.”

Since she’d already entered, it was better to join the raid if she could. Hyeonseong decided to meet the people who went in first.

“Will that be okay?”

“If you didn’t plan to get involved, you wouldn’t have entered either, right?”

If she’d weighted the otherworlder risk that heavily, she wouldn’t have stepped into this dungeon at all.

“When you put it like that, I can’t really argue.”

Kwon Seojin gave an awkward smile—and his hand drifted to the longsword at his waist, signaling agreement.

The two of them approached the castle gate. It was tightly shut, but Kwon Seojin placed his hand on it.

Creeeak—

At the moment of contact, the massive gate opened on its own.

“W-What?”

“Who are you?”

Alarmed voices came from inside.

Expecting the possibility of a fight, Hyeonseong stepped through the opening carefully.

“Human?”

Someone muttered upon seeing Hyeonseong.

‘Those are elves.’

Hyeonseong took in the people gathered near the entrance: long pointed ears, brightly colored eyes and hair, bows and staffs, light swords.

They looked exactly like the “elf” image most people on Earth would imagine.

‘Not all elves look like that… But these ones look like they were designed to match Earth stereotypes perfectly.’

“From the looks of it, you’re not from our world.”

An otherworlder holding a staff taller than himself approached Hyeonseong and Kwon Seojin.

They were wary of strangers, but didn’t seem outright hostile.

“Looks that way to us too.”

Hyeonseong answered lightly while checking their clothing. They wore outfits that looked like something Westerners might’ve worn before the 20th century.

“Where are you from?”

An elf with a longbow asked in a guarded tone.

“From a place usually called Earth.”

“And you?”

“Oh—Earth. I’ve heard of it. It comes up sometimes in the mouths of the Sacred Stars. We’re from a place called Baengnyeong Forest.”

Unfortunately, it was the first time Hyeonseong had heard the name.

Either their world had only recently connected to the Interstellar Network, or their world simply wasn’t very powerful.

‘But she seems to know it.’

Hyeonseong’s gaze slid to Kwon Seojin. At the mention of Baengnyeong Forest, his eye twitched slightly.

He quickly pretended it was nothing, but that reaction suggested he’d heard the name somewhere before.

“This is fascinating. I’d heard that you can meet people from other worlds in dungeons like this, but…”

A few of the elves looked at Hyeonseong and Kwon Seojin with curious eyes.

“But isn’t that not the important part right now?”

“Yeah. Before we talk about how fascinating it is…”

Some of them stared at the two with wariness instead.

They were clearly concerned about what variables two outsiders might introduce into the raid.