Nonhyeon-dong Dungeon Explosion Incident (8)

At Hyeonseong’s continued answer, the tactical staff stared hard at Hyeonseong.

“That could also be understood as you telling us to hand command authority over to you.”

Soon, someone spoke in a doubtful voice.

“Oh…… come to think of it, I kind of fit the conditions too, don’t I?”

Hyeonseong put on a surprised expression as if she did not know.

“You’re talking as if you never thought about yourself at all?”

“Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I said I didn’t think about it at all, right?”

Glancing at the incoming Constellation message, Hyeonseong answered.

‘If I’d said I had no such intention, it would’ve spread them immediately.’

While Hyeonseong mentally sent a middle finger at the contents of the message, the tactical staff watched Hyeonseong with suspicious eyes.

“It’s good that you’re honest, but…….”

“To be frank, Ye Hyeonseong isn’t exactly in a situation we can fully trust right now. The timing of these people throwing punches is just too perfect, isn’t it?”

“Usually, when something lines up that perfectly, the culprit’s obvious, right?”

Ignoring the Constellations’ needling, Hyeonseong answered.

“Even so…….”

“No, and this is seriously unfair to me right now, you know?”

At the sight of the one responsible for that “unfairness” cackling, Hyeonseong rubbed the back of her neck.

“That’s…… uh……. For now, I’m sorry……?”

Perhaps sensing the sincerity in Hyeonseong’s expression as her blood pressure seemed to rise, the person who had voiced suspicion apologized with a flustered face.

“Fine. As long as you know.”

Still ignoring every single teasing message flying in from this Constellation and that, Hyeonseong replied.

“Even if we assume Ye Hyeonseong is innocent, command authority is still a separate issue.”

The conversation that had briefly veered off returned to its original track.

“Right. There are more than one or two things that bother us…….”

“First, tactical command experience. It looks like you’ve been doing tactical outsourcing for Ten Thousand Swords lately, but moving a single raid is completely different from moving all those people at once.”

“And your position being ambiguous is a big factor too. It’s true you’re not affiliated with any guild, but that also means those unaffiliated guilds might not recognize you as a mediator or commander. Sorry to say it.”

In short, it meant Hyeonseong did not have the name value to rein people in.

“Well, you don’t need to feel sorry. I hear that all the time anyway.”

Hyeonseong replied with an indifferent face. At that reaction, a fleeting trace of pity crossed the tactical staff’s faces.

“What is that—your reaction makes me feel even worse, you know?”

At Hyeonseong’s sudden flare of irritation, the tactical staff averted their eyes awkwardly.

“……Anyway, if you’re going to seat someone else as commander, it has to be someone those guys will follow without complaining—that’s what we’re saying.”

“Or at least, something Ye Hyeonseong can show right now that…….”

“About that.”

With her fingertips, Hyeonseong tapped the pocket where she had put her phone. At the same time, she called the spirit in her mind.

Then, a dialogue window of a different format from the usual system and Constellation messages appeared before Hyeonseong’s eyes.

“If I can use this one, then what?”

Hyeonseong asked as she showed Nemesis’s message to the tactical staff.

“A Cybernetic Spirit……?”

“What’s the rank? What skills can it use?”

Perhaps because of the dialogue window’s format, the tactical staff quickly accepted that the Cybernetic Spirit was real.

“B-rank. It can do everything we’d need right now. Drone footage analysis, or sending messages to everyone over there at once.”

“Then…….”

It was when the tactical staff were about to respond.

Thump—

Thump—

Two people, who had been restrained by others as they went berserk, struggled again. Their wild kicks struck the Infinite Corridor Hyeonseong had left open.

“These crazy people—what is it now?”

“This won’t do. Someone put them to sleep or something!”

The people holding them shouted urgently. At that voice, Hyeonseong briefly withdrew the Infinite Corridor.

‘I should have a sleep potion.’

From the compartment where she had stored potions, she quickly pulled out two bottles of sleep potion.

After taking out only what she needed, she opened the Infinite Corridor again between the two people. The feet that had been slamming into each other’s knees kicked into the reopened space instead.

“Alright, then you two get some good sleep for a bit……. Ack! Hey, why are you biting my hand?”

Hyeonseong personally poured the sleep potion into the two people’s mouths. There was a minor mishap, but in the end, she succeeded in putting them to sleep.

“Either separate them far apart or tie them up. We don’t know what kind of debuff the Constellation applied.”

Hyeonseong spoke as she tossed the empty potion bottles into the Infinite Corridor.

She could roughly guess the range of the debuff the two had been hit with. But that did not mean she could identify how to dispel it. There were countless debuffs that made people go mad and rampage.

‘A debuff that makes you lose your reason and a mind-control-type debuff are worlds apart in method and difficulty.’

The tactical staff tied up the two unconscious people’s hands and feet and handed them over to the staff of the Jinri Workshop branch nearby.

The staff looked flustered, but they accepted them. It seemed they had been watching how things were unfolding.

“Alright, then shall we get back to what we actually need to do?”

With the atmosphere mostly settled, Hyeonseong turned her gaze back to the battlefield.

The battlefield was still deadlocked. Even if there were two S-rank bosses, there was one S-rank on this side as well. And there were also multiple A-ranks, plus dozens of lower-ranked Awakened supporting them.

Even accounting for differences in how Awakened and monsters were graded, they should have fully killed at least one, or inflicted a mortal wound.

‘And that thing—no matter what name it wears, whether Four Fiends or Four Horsemen—it’s still a chimera. An artificial creature made by imitating an original, so it should generally be weaker than the original.’

Hyeonseong quickly sifted through the network logs. There might have been messages she missed while talking with the tactical staff.

‘Sponsorship or whatever……. Found it.’

Sure enough, the Constellations that had been trading jabs were competing to grant all kinds of buffs and skills to their chimera.

‘Just how much Ghost Coin do these things have to be doing this?’

At the sponsorship messages that did not end with a single one, Hyeonseong furrowed her brow.

“Why is there so much damn sponsorship today…….”

“At this rate, how are we even supposed to kill that? It looks like whenever it’s about to get dangerous, they revive it with sponsorship.”

The tactical staff, having grasped the same situation, looked bewildered. Hyeonseong opened her mouth.

“One of three options. Either hold out until the Constellations’ Ghost Coin balances run dry, or hold out until the monsters can’t handle the ultra-fast regeneration or strengthening anymore, or land a single overwhelming blow that the sponsorship buffs can’t keep up with.”

She excluded the option of persuading the Constellations to stop sponsoring. The competitive atmosphere between the two Constellations was far too overheated to ask for anything.

‘Most Constellations don’t listen in the first place, and if they’re in a gambling mood, they’ll listen even less.’

Not only the battlefield, but the Constellations’ message window was a complete mess as well.

“Which one is the most realistic?”

The tactical staff asked Hyeonseong.

“If we can create an opening, landing one decisive blow is best. If that’s hard, then at least we have to hold out until the monsters show signs of self-destruction. Holding out until the Constellations drop out is the least realistic choice.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. That’s the hardest one to predict.”

“But someone who can land that kind of blow…….”

After hearing Hyeonseong’s answer, they watched the battle again.

“It doesn’t look like Guildmaster Song can do it alone, right?”

“To break through super regeneration or real-time recovery, Song Jiwoo and the A-ranks would have to combine their efforts.”

“But if we actually pull the A-ranks out…….”

“It won’t be easy for the rest to hold back the other one.”

“Ah, about that.”

As she listened to their worries, Hyeonseong pulled several skill cards out of the Infinite Corridor.

“You don’t have to pull out the A-ranks. Just pick a few people who can aim properly and have them use these.”

“What are those…….”

“Mana Thrust A, S-rank…….”

The tactical staff’s eyes widened as they checked the striking skills distributed from A-rank to S-rank that Hyeonseong showed them.

“That’s Ye Hyeonyeong’s skill.”

“How is this even……. Ah, come to think of it, that could be possible. Since it was said to be one of Ye Hyeonseong’s subspace effects.”

“Then why are you only pulling this out now? If you’d pulled it out earlier…….”

Someone challenged her in a dissatisfied voice.

“In that situation?”

Hyeonseong gestured toward the battlefield. The battlefield was still hopelessly chaotic. More than one person was clinging too close to the monsters.

In the middle of that, Song Jiwoo was still firing powerful attacks at the monster. Song Jiwoo’s aura skills occasionally swallowed attacks with middling firepower.

“In more ways than one, it’s a perfect environment to bash our allies in the back of the head. And if we mess up, forget amplifying firepower—we’ll end up cutting it in half instead.”

As Hyeonseong answered while pointing things out with her fingertips, the person who had complained fell silent.

“And even if I’d asked for cooperation earlier because I needed to use skills, do you think those people over there would have listened?”

“Well…….”

After thinking briefly at Hyeonseong’s words, they soon shook their heads.

“Right. That’s exactly it. First they’d have thought, ‘How is that person going to use skills?’ and second they’d have thought, ‘Who does Hyeonseong think she is, acting up like that?’”

“…….”

The tactical staff looked at Hyeonseong with an expression hard to describe.

“What.”

“No, nothing…….”

Sensing that unpleasant pity again, Hyeonseong glared, and they averted their eyes.

“……Anyway, that was earlier. Now it might be different. If they want to go home and lie down even a second sooner, they’ll have to listen to the tactical staff, right?”

“What are you going to do?”

Someone asked Hyeonseong.

“First, we need to reorganize that disaster of a frontline. No matter what we do, we can’t do anything until we clean that up. Ah—can I look at all the drones currently on-site?”

Hyeonseong asked as she shifted her gaze to the drones hovering over the battlefield.

“Of course…….”

“Wait—are you sure? We’re not really in a position to authorize things freely like that…….”

Someone cut off the person who was about to approve. It was the usual responsibility argument.

“If I have the Cybernetic Spirit do it, it doesn’t need authorization anyway. I’m only asking because it’s polite.”

“If you hadn’t said that, it would’ve sounded more polite.”

Someone replied with an awkward face at Hyeonseong’s words.

“Is now really the time to nitpick that? If responsibility is the issue, argue about it after this is over. We do the work first.”

They could not waste any more time on pointless nitpicks. Hyeonseong decided she had permission and called Nemesis again.

“Hack the drones filming the battlefield. Every single one, without missing even one.”

With Hyeonseong’s order, Nemesis switched modes and began hacking the drones.