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“Ah, don’t worry. I’m not planning to stab you in the back or sabotage your run.”
Hyeonseong reacted on reflex.
“That just makes you sound even more suspicious….”
“But it doesn’t look like she’s lying. This kid says so.”
One of the Otherworlders spoke to the still-wary group. It was someone with a bird shaped from wind perched on their shoulder.
“Beter? Then it’s not wrong, but….”
‘So that bird’s name is Beter? It looks like a wind spirit.’
Listening to the Otherworlders’ conversation, Hyeonseong started piecing information together bit by bit.
“…Since you look like you don’t know, I’ll tell you—this friend’s spirit can also read a person’s emotional state to some extent.”
Someone pointed at the bird-shaped spirit and explained to Hyeonseong and Kwon Seojin.
“That’s right. I can’t swear it’s perfect, but it’s still highly reliable. What it says is that you really don’t intend to get in our way.”
The spirit’s owner said, stroking it.
“Then….”
“First, we need to know what you can do.”
Before Hyeonseong could even ask, an Otherworlder cut in.
“Yeah. We need to know your level—whether we take you as temporary teammates, or just kill you and make space.”
An Otherworlder who used a rather heavy-looking longsword said so. The way she toyed with the hilt made it look like, if she judged them useless, she truly meant to kill them and open a slot.
“Wow, you’re really going for blood there.”
Hyeonseong answered in a deliberately light voice, though she didn’t feel light inside.
‘If they find out I have no real combat ability, they’ll probably try to kill me.’
She had discovered a few new uses for Infinite Corridor, but she had no idea how those abilities would look to people from another world.
“You’re not going to tell me you’re actually nothing, right?”
“H-ha, ha, of course not.”
After giving an awkward smile to the Otherworlder glaring at her, Hyeonseong turned her gaze to Kwon Seojin.
“As you can see, I…”
Kwon Seojin, catching Hyeonseong’s look, tapped the sword at his waist with a fingertip.
“A sword? We don’t really need a sword….”
“If you don’t like the sword, I have other options too.”
When the Otherworlder responded curtly, Kwon Seojin loosened his bag and reached inside. Spears, a mace, a hammer—various weapons popped out.
“Y-you don’t need that many.”
The Otherworlder replied, looking uneasy. It was when about five weapons had come out of Kwon Seojin’s bag.
“Anyway, you can use all of that, right?”
Another Otherworlder asked with a doubtful look.
“At least I won’t hold you back.”
Kwon Seojin answered in a calm voice.
“…Fine, you’re good. Then what about you?”
Now it was Hyeonseong’s turn. The Otherworlders’ sharp gazes converged on her.
‘Sigh. Yeah, there’s no way I can just quietly tag along.’
Hyeonseong ruffled her hair.
“My ability is… this.”
She raised her index finger and moved it lightly. Following the motion of her finger, Infinite Corridor opened.
“A subspace?”
Someone jolted in surprise.
“Just so you know, this is my only ability. I don’t have a single combat-related skill, so don’t expect anything.”
Hyeonseong replied in a flat voice.
“Wait. If you’re from Earth, and your only ability is subspace… then….”
“Ah…!”
A few Otherworlders let out exclamations as if something clicked.
“…What?”
Their odd reaction made Hyeonseong blurt out loud without thinking.
“So you were that Ye Hyeonseong?”
“Wait, what do you mean by that?”
The strange emphasis bothered her a lot.
“No, before that—how do you even know me?”
“How else? It was all up on that network or whatever.”
“And your story came up now and then in the High Gods’ chatter, too.”
The Otherworlders answered right away to the flustered Hyeonseong—needlessly kind about it.
‘Ah, right. That damn S-rank info disclosure… it was shared across the entire multiverse!’
She’d known from the start, but she’d forgotten because there was no reason for even an Otherworld S-rank Awakened to need to know her.
‘Even so… which Constellation went around spreading my business?’
The guilty ones “paid their taxes” on their own at the perfect timing. Thanks to that, she could at least tell two of them were involved.
“Come to think of it, not long ago I definitely….”
The Otherworlders’ eyes shifted to the still-open Infinite Corridor. Unlike before, their gaze had changed noticeably.
“If those stories are true, you’ll be more than helpful.”
As they spoke, the Otherworlders briefly brought up Infinite Corridor’s skill-absorption ability and its defensive power. If what the Constellations had casually said was true, it would be plenty useful.
‘God, my ass.’
From the way the Constellations talked, she could guess it. That thing’s “rank” was, at best, a low-tier god among low-tier gods.
Sure, it was still technically a god—but not something grand enough to puff out its chest and call itself one.
‘…Still, I guess it’s a relief I won’t get kicked out or killed.’
No matter the route, because the story had circulated on the Interstellar Network, they cleared the proof step easily.
“With your abilities, you’ll help plenty.”
“…I’ll admit it.”
While a few Otherworlders spoke in bright voices, the one who’d been playing with her sword hilt tossed out a blunt line.
“There’s a group that went on initial scouting. Once they’re back, we leave right away.”
“Before that, let’s at least know each other’s names.”
Now that the mood had loosened enough, Hyeonseong and Kwon Seojin formally introduced themselves to the Otherworlders.
As she listened to their introductions, Hyeonseong updated the information on her hunter device. Otherworlders encountered in dungeons could become allies—or enemies—so she had to set the raid team manually.
‘So theirs is the blackboard type.’
Hyeonseong also glanced at the Otherworlders’ hands as they updated their own party info. They were holding black boards about the same size as her device.
She’d heard the hunter device’s form could vary by dimension—apparently Baengnyeong Forest was a world far removed from machine civilization.
“What are you all doing?”
In the middle of introductions and info updates, a few Otherworlders approached with puzzled faces. They were the ones who had gone out scouting and returned.
“Ah, well.”
The Otherworlder who had been talking with Hyeonseong’s party explained the situation briefly. When the spiritmancer Yana, who handled the spirit named Beter, vouched for the two of them, the scouts more or less accepted it and introduced themselves.
“Alright. Now that everyone’s here, should we talk about where to start and how we’re going to check this place?”
Milena, holding a large staff, said. She was the one acting as this raid team’s leader.
“About that—we think it’s better to investigate from the top down.”
The scouts shared the information they’d gathered. The explanation wasn’t long. There were only two floors they could properly enter right now.
“So the basement and anything like a tower are all locked.”
“And upstairs, the only place we can open right now is the second floor directly above.”
“This structure… if it’s familiar, it’s familiar.”
The Otherworlders each muttered a line.
“So basically, there’s only one place we can look.”
“That’s how it is. Then we should head to the second floor first.”
After the exchange, the Otherworlders turned their gaze to Milena.
“Everyone ready?”
Milena asked, lightly tapping the floor with her staff. The Otherworlders nodded.
“You two are ready as well, right?”
Then Milena’s gaze shifted to Hyeonseong and Kwon Seojin.
“We’ve been ready for a while….”
“Yes, we’re ready.”
The two answered.
“Then let’s move out.”
At Milena’s words, the raid team started moving.
“There really was nothing on the first floor, right?”
Walking beside Milena and Yana, Hyeonseong asked.
“There was nothing. More precisely—nothing except for one key.”
“It was the item those people used when they went up to the second floor earlier.”
They answered right away.
“And no monsters?”
“Nope. Didn’t even see monster scraps.”
Another Otherworlder answered Hyeonseong’s follow-up.
‘Did they set the first floor as a pure waiting room? Or is it one of those where something hidden appears only after you do something upstairs?’
She recalled a time she’d cleared a dungeon with a similar structure. In her experience, it was always one of the two.
‘They’re starting to gather again.’
Once the raid truly began, the Constellations started making it obvious they were watching.
‘The White Soul looks like it’s from Baengnyeong Forest… and the others—there are a lot that seem tied to undead or occult themes?’
Words like eternal sleep, death, and ghostly wailing kept showing up in their names. It looked like they’d swarmed in after seeing the dungeon’s shape.
‘It does look like the perfect place for hauntings. And in reality, it’s the kind of environment where undead or chimera-type stuff shows up often.’
“This whole ‘message’ thing… I can’t get used to it no matter how many times I see it.”
One Otherworlder said in a curt voice, pointing at the air—probably at the Constellation messages.
“Same. Even without this, we could hear their voices well enough.”
“And ever since this appeared, it’s gotten harder to hear the real voices.”
‘…Was their world able to communicate with gods even before the Network arrived?’
Listening to them, a question surfaced in Hyeonseong’s mind.
“××-nim, you don’t need to feel sorry!”
The Otherworlders flinched at the new Constellation message.
‘The name part is still garbled this time too.’
The “true name,” presumably belonging to White Soul, was drowned in heavy noise and couldn’t be made out.
‘And they don’t even acknowledge the usurper guy at all.’
Hyeonseong watched the Otherworlders speaking with the Constellations for a moment.
They answered White Soul respectfully and showed goodwill. But they consistently ignored the Constellation bearing the usurper’s name.
Apparently, there was some kind of history in their world.
‘Not sure if it’s okay to ask. More importantly….’
As the conversation died down, Hyeonseong refocused on observing the first floor. She truly couldn’t sense any monster presence, and nothing that could count as a clue stood out.
‘I’ll only know after checking other floors.’
With that in mind, she walked—soon they arrived at a place with stairs.
“That’s the staircase down to the basement, right?”
One Otherworlder pointed at a barred door. Beyond the bars, a staircase descending was faintly visible.
“This is definitely… locked.”
Ivan, the Otherworlder with the longsword, grabbed the bars and shook them. Only a clanking sound rang out—the door didn’t budge.
“There’s a padlock.”
Kwon Seojin pointed at the keyhole.
“So the idea is we find a key and open it?”
“Can’t we just break it?”
Ivan and a few others acted like they might smash the lock on the spot.
“Now, now. Isn’t there something we should do first before that?”
Milena said, tapping the floor with her staff.
“Right. We said we’d start with the second floor.”
“And did you all forget? If you break doors recklessly in a place like this, who knows what’ll happen.”
The Otherworlders who’d been waiting quietly spoke up.
‘They’re right. Dungeons like this are often designed so you have to follow the clear order in a straight line.’
In these dungeons, you had to follow the set route to clear safely—so you could disable traps and gain clues for hunting special monsters.
“…Fine.”
Ivan stepped away from the basement door, grudgingly.
“But just in case, shouldn’t we at least see what it looks like inside?”
“Ah, that. We tried earlier, and we couldn’t see.”
To someone’s question, another wind spiritmancer on the raid team, Danilo, answered.
They’d sent a spirit to check during scouting, but it was impossible to go farther than the entrance.
“What about Yana’s Beter?”
At that, Yana sent the bird-shaped spirit that had been perched on her shoulder flying through the bars. The spirit slipped inside the basement door, then quickly returned.
“Same thing. From the bottom of the stairs, it couldn’t go any farther.”
When Yana gave the same answer, the group decided to give up on peeking into the basement first.
Leaving the basement door behind, the group immediately went up the stairs to the second floor.
As they stepped into the second-floor corridor, they saw that every room’s door was closed—except for one.
‘Don’t tell me we have to hunt keys and investigate one by one again?’
Hyeonseong’s brow narrowed slightly at how annoying it sounded.
“What about the stairs going up?”
“Over there, and over there.”
In response to someone’s question, a scout pointed to both ends of the corridor.
“They’re still locked, right?”
“We can just check.”
Ivan and a few impatient people ran to one end first. The rest had no choice but to follow.
“Same as earlier.”
Soon they confirmed that the stairwell to the third floor was locked as well.
“And you can’t scout it from ahead, either.”
Danilo and Yana sent their spirits to check upstairs. Just like before, the spirits quickly returned to their partners.
“Then we really have no choice but to investigate the second floor first.”
“And starting with that one open room.”
As they headed for the open room, they tried twisting the knobs on the closed doors once each. Without exception, every single one was locked.
“Seriously, the ones who build dungeons like this are all the same.”
A few Otherworlders grumbled.
“Sounds like you’ve been through a lot of dungeons shaped like this.”
Hyeonseong said.
“Yeah. I mean, when we said ‘dungeon,’ this was basically what we meant from the start.”
“More precisely, places like this are often either fortresses built by gloomy nobles who hide a lot, or laboratories built by mages and shamans obsessed with illegal experiments.”
“And when something goes wrong with those, it becomes a dungeon. Don’t you have things like that on Earth?”
They asked Hyeonseong, after explaining.
“No. In our world, the idea of a dungeon was originally just fiction—something that only existed in stories.”
“That’s incredibly fascinating.”
“Well, even I still find it surreal, but… shouldn’t we start investigating now?”
Hyeonseong pointed at the open room. They had reached their destination, so it was time to investigate.
Since the room wasn’t very large, they decided only a few people would go inside to look around. Along with Danilo and a few Otherworlders with abilities suited to investigation, Hyeonseong entered the room.
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