Nonhyeon-dong Dungeon Explosion Incident (17)

After she finished entering the question, a confirmation message appeared again. When she waited briefly, a new message popped up soon after.

‘This, too?’

Hyeonseong checked the question she had typed in again. The long-winded phrasing she’d written to squeeze out as much information as possible caught her eye.

‘If I have to make it clearer here…’

Hyeonseong narrowed her brows. It seemed she had to specify the Constellation to be killed, or narrow the range of where to search for the means.

She revised the question twice, as the Interstellar Network demanded. This time, after the “please wait” notice, the system window went quiet.

Before long, another message arrived. This time it was a provisional invoice.

‘So you really are trying to shave it down to the exact last coin.’

The moment she saw the amount, Hyeonseong’s eyes naturally narrowed. Since it was priced so close to what she’d received as her quest reward, it made her suspicion feel almost confirmed.

‘This feels like I’m getting robbed in broad daylight…’

For an instant, she considered backing out—but thankfully, reason returned before she canceled.

Separate from how unpleasant it felt like a rigged game, information about the question she’d just asked was worth buying even at a steep price, if she could obtain it.

After sorting out her thoughts, Hyeonseong decided to pay the fee. When she selected the payment option, a confirmation message appeared again. Naturally, she chose to pay.

As the fee was deducted, she was left with only a balance about the size of ordinary Network usage costs.

‘Sheesh. Skill enhancement, my ass—like my life would ever let me.’

It was a conclusion she’d reached after weighing everything, but it still felt painful to lose it.

‘Fine. If it’s come to this, at least give me something actually useful.’

Hyeonseong glared at the post-payment message. And not long after, a new 안내 message arrived.

Thankfully, it looked like there really was information. Following the Network’s confirmation, Hyeonseong opened the file.

‘Huh? Is this for real?’

The moment she saw the table of contents on the first page, Hyeonseong’s eyes went wide.

‘There are two of them in our country alone?’

The number of entries listed in the table of contents exceeded ten. And in slots one and two, there were place names located within the Republic of Korea.

For Hyeonseong—who would have considered it a success even if she’d only gotten one location on the opposite side of the globe—it felt like striking the jackpot.

‘…No. Getting excited already is too soon. What if it only works if I gather all of them, not one by one?’

If it was a clue that had to be completed by collecting pieces, then this wouldn’t be a jackpot—it would be a trap. Hyeonseong decided to check the first entry first.

The first location pointed to a free market near the Amnok River.

‘There’s no way it’ll be in a normal, legitimate shop.’

That was Hyeonseong’s immediate thought the moment she confirmed the exact place.

Aside from the border-region bustle, the Sinuiju free market was an ordinary marketplace. At least, that was how it was generally known.

But in reality, all kinds of illicit deals and illegal activity were happening all over the Sinuiju free market. It was an open secret—something you could learn as long as you could connect to the Interstellar Network.

‘Constellations with loose lips are never just one or two.’

In truth, it wasn’t only a Sinuiju problem.

After humanity came into contact with the Constellations, humanity effectively lost the ability to create secrets.

You could fool human eyes, but you couldn’t fool the eyes of Constellations gazing down from on high—or the Interstellar Network.

In the early days of the dungeon-and-Network era, some people realized that fact quickly. When those people decided to use the Constellations and the Interstellar Network like spies, there was a time when the entire world was thrown into chaos.

As Interstellar Network regulations were revised again and again, that overheated information war had long since died down. But information leakage through Constellations was still frequent even now.

There were plenty of Constellations who responded to information transactions requested by Awakened people. And there were even more who, out of sheer boredom, “accidentally” sprinkled information into the public message feed.

On top of that, there were countless Constellations offering the age-old leak repertoire of “a secret just for you.” In a sense, it wasn’t exactly the black market’s fault that black markets had become de facto public knowledge.

Even so, despite their existence and nature being known, black markets around the world were still alive.

In a way, it was a natural result. A black market wasn’t a place an ordinary person—someone who only knew scraps—could easily access.

It also wasn’t easy to clean up black markets through public authority. If Awakened people who managed and used black markets decided to resist or hide, there was little that police forces made up mostly of ordinary people could do to suppress them.

And there wasn’t even a strong reason to be relentless about eradicating them. Those “important people” liked to pretend otherwise, but they tended to use places like that, too.

Even if you wiped one out, as long as demand existed, a black market would be rebuilt—or a new one would appear—in no time.

So unless public opinion was boiling over due to some issue with massive social impact, the modern stance was to simply not acknowledge black markets on purpose.

‘…And what I’m looking for is definitely on the black-market side, not in the sunlight.’

After checking the item information, its location, and the route to obtain it, Hyeonseong frowned.

She had expected it the moment she saw the regions in the table of contents, but as suspected, there was no legal or clean path.

‘Joining an illegal auction where stolen goods might appear, or preemptively raiding the warehouse before the auction even starts… what exactly are you recommending?’

It was absurdly “kind” of them to go so far as to recommend outright theft as one of the options.

‘For now, I should check the other entries too…’

“What are you doing?”

It was just as she was about to flip to the next entry. Hyeonju approached and spoke.

“There’s something I need to check.”

“What?”

At Hyeonju’s question, Hyeonseong glanced sideways at the updating Constellation messages.

There were still quite a few Constellations watching this way. And it wasn’t only the scammer who was curious about what Hyeonseong had gained from the raid.

“It’s nothing.”

As she answered, Hyeonseong instructed Nemesis and sent a message to Hyeonju’s phone.

Even Constellations who could look down on the surface couldn’t see every single detail. Unexpectedly timed communications—messages sent back and forth—were things even Constellations often missed.

When the notification sound rang, Hyeonju checked her phone. After a quick glance at the screen, she pocketed it again and nodded once.

“More importantly, is all the accounting finished?”

This time Hyeonseong asked.

“It is. That’s why I came,”

Hyeonju answered.

“Then they’ll start now.”

“Probably. Let’s go.”

Hyeonju moved first.

‘I’ll have to finish checking this after distribution is done.’

Hyeonseong tucked the information she’d been reading out of sight, then quickly followed at Hyeonju’s side.

The dungeon explosion incident that occurred here in Nonhyeon-dong has now been fully contained after all monsters were eliminated. The damaged roadways, sidewalks, and facilities have also entered restoration work……

‘…Did something like this happen?’

Watching the news, Kwon Seojin slightly furrowed his brow with a puzzled feeling.

It felt like there had been a similar incident, but in any case, it shouldn’t have happened at this point in time.

If it had occurred around the same time, he wouldn’t remember it as such a vague impression.

‘But it definitely happened.’

Of course, dungeon explosion incidents themselves weren’t rare. The higher a dungeon’s recommended rank, the higher the odds of such accidents. And there were cases where a dungeon formed in a remote area and no one even noticed it existed before an explosion occurred.

But today’s incident had a clear distinguishing feature: the way the dungeon exploded.

A dungeon that exploded the moment it formed—an unforgettable kind of abnormal dungeon.

‘The pattern itself was shocking… and after that pattern appeared, a lot of things changed too…’

After thinking a bit more, Kwon Seojin used a skill. There was a convenient way to recheck an ambiguous past memory.

As he used the skill, a loading screen appeared along with a familiar message.

When loading finished, the same familiar confirmation message and a simple search window appeared.

Kwon Seojin typed “Nonhyeon-dong dungeon explosion incident” into the window. He added the date and ran the search.

As expected, nothing appeared. Instead, the system offered him nearby, similar information.

‘If it’s similar info, that means it’s an incident that happened before or after today’s date.’

Anything earlier than this date was meaningless. Kwon Seojin changed the search condition date to after today and searched again.

This time, a long list of search results printed out along with the message that information existed. Only after skipping several entries did Kwon Seojin find what he wanted.

The information Kwon Seojin was looking for sat at a date roughly two months after today.

‘Right. It was around then.’

As he checked it, his blurred memory returned vividly. It had definitely been an incident that happened around summer.

‘But it’s still spring right now.’

Something that should have happened in summer had been pulled forward dramatically. Small changes were countless, but this was the first time the time discrepancy had grown this large.

And besides the time gap, there was another big difference.

‘I’m sure Ye Hyeonseong wasn’t there back then.’

That was how Kwon Seojin remembered it. And the incident summary in the search results said the same.

Ye Hyeonseong’s name wasn’t listed among the key parties.

‘Let’s confirm more clearly…’