Sinuiju Free Market (16)

“Why the fire?”

Hyeonyeong asked.

“It feels a little unfair if only we get screwed over. Things should go both ways for it to be fair.”

“Sometimes I really think you’re the most extreme one, unni.”

“That’s because there are far too many things I want to burn down.”

Hyeonseong shrugged.

‘More importantly, it should be reacting by now.’

Hyeonseong thought as she looked at the ember that had spread to the transfer device. Soon, the message she had been waiting for appeared before her eyes.

—Whoomph

At the same time the message was displayed, the ember instantly swelled in size. In the blink of an eye, the entire transfer device was engulfed in flames. The fire that devoured the transfer device quickly spread to cover the entire transfer room.

“Oh, it burns insanely well. So this thing could do that?”

As the machinery wrapped in flames let out a loud explosion, Hyeonseong exclaimed in admiration.

Even without being able to see it clearly, she could tell that the device was being completely destroyed.

‘The rate at which the firepower is rising is absurd. Does that mean the karma piled up here is no joke?’

“…Is this really the time to be admiring it? It’s already coming out!”

Haesu shouted at the top of his lungs. Just as Haesu said, the flames that had taken over the transfer room were already poking their heads out past the door.

“I know. We’ve checked the firepower, so let’s go.”

She had also confirmed how the restricted Fire of Judgment functioned. Hyeonseong decided to flee without any lingering attachment.

“Where are we going!”

Haesu shouted as he followed after Hyeonseong and Hyeonyeong, who had already started moving.

“There’s no way we’re making it back to the arena. We have to go somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else where?”

“Where doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it’s somewhere else.”

When a fork in the corridor appeared, Hyeonseong changed direction. It was one of the places with a stairwell they had passed on the way to the transfer room.

“You’re really just going to head out wherever?”

“That’s the plan.”

“If we’re getting out that way, shouldn’t we at least mix up the route a little? If it’s the closest place, it seems like they’d be able to guess that too and already have people waiting there…”

“Honestly, the other places probably aren’t much different either. You saw that room earlier.”

They were people who had even acquired and were operating machinery bordering on overtechnology. There was no way people who could monopolize and run something like that would fail to have a stranglehold over a single underground black-market district.

“If every exit’s going to be about the same anyway, then it’s better to break through the closest one… right?”

Hyeonseong asked Hyeonyeong. Hyeonyeong answered with a nod.

“Well… either way, it looks like there’s no avoiding a fight, so brace yourselves.”

“Damn it, I really should’ve bolted somehow back then…”

“What was that?”

“No!”

At Hyeonseong’s remark, Haesu answered in a loud voice. The way his reply swelled with grievance was painfully obvious.

“Then…”

“Ah, before opening the door, block your breathing if you can.”

Hyeonseong said as she pulled gas masks out of Infinite Corridor.

‘Honestly, if it were me, I’d start by setting off gas or poison here first.’

At Hyeonseong’s warning, Hyeonyeong activated a skill that blocked debuffs that worked through breathing.

“Mr. Haesu, use this.”

After tossing an extra gas mask to Haesu, Hyeonseong took off the mask she had been wearing on her face until now and put on the gas mask instead.

“Then I’m opening it.”

Hyeonyeong kicked open the stairwell door in front of them. With a bang, the door itself came crashing down.

“Urk!”

An enemy hiding behind the door was hurled into the stairwell together with the fallen door.

“Stop them!”

“If you don’t stop them, later you’ll… urk!”

Enemies came rushing in from both above and below the stairs. But not one of them managed to land a proper attack. The moment they came close, they were either struck by Hyeonyeong’s hand or thrown aside.

“Fire!”

“Can I throw this?”

“Throw it! Attack with whatever works!”

Long-range attacks like bullets and magic came flying from above the stairs. Of course, none of those attacks could so much as graze a single hair of Hyeonseong’s group.

‘Didn’t they even check the information on us?’

With an indifferent face, Hyeonseong opened Infinite Corridor. Any skill she could swallow turned into a skill card inside Infinite Corridor, and attacks she could not swallow were deflected back toward their attackers.

“Aaagh!”

“Which lunatic fired that thing… urk!”

“Go up!”

Ignoring the loudly shouting enemies, Hyeonseong shouted to Hyeonyeong. At those words, Hyeonyeong began opening a path upward.

Hyeonseong and Haesu stuck close behind Hyeonyeong as she pushed enemies away. Hyeonseong occasionally unfolded Infinite Corridor in front or behind them to block long-range attacks and ambushes. She also used skill cards to fire back.

While they climbed the stairs, messages occasionally appeared saying that status ailments had been blocked by the gas mask’s effect. Just as expected, it seemed they had sprayed some kind of gas-like substance as well.

‘If it’s something the item can block, it doesn’t seem that strong, but…’

Hyeonseong’s gaze shifted to Haesu, who was keeping pace beside her. He too was following along just fine, with no apparent problem.

‘More importantly, we’ve gone up two floors now.’

Hyeonseong’s eyes caught sight of the door at the end of the stairs. Enemies were still coming out through that door.

Because of the limited space in the stairwell, large numbers could not come out at once. But even at a glance, quite a lot of enemies were waiting behind the door.

‘If we go any farther up, then from there on it should be ground level.’

That was what the ups and downs they had gone through so far suggested. If her calculation was right, from floors higher than this, they would be entering areas connected to aboveground buildings.

Hyeonseong considered whether it would be better to go straight up to ground level, or to force their way through the door right in front of them.

‘…Still, going up to ground level is probably better, right?’

No matter how she looked at it, running away through the surface seemed easier than underground. Underground had only limited routes for breaking through and escaping.

“Let’s go higher.”

Hyeonseong said to Hyeonyeong. Hyeonyeong nodded.

“They’re going higher!”

“Contact the upper floor!”

“Damn it, which bastard set off the tear gas… kgh!”

—Crash!

No matter how the enemies reacted, Hyeonyeong’s momentum did not weaken in the slightest. Another enemy was hurled down the stairs. Hyeonseong did not bother mourning the bastard in the least.

‘It’s not like he’s dead anyway.’

Blocking the approach from behind with Infinite Corridor, Hyeonseong glanced down the stairs.

She could see several people who had fallen over along with the person who had been thrown down. They had twisted or broken something falling on the stairs, but no one had died. That was all the result of Hyeonyeong controlling her strength.

‘There’s no particular reason to kill them anyway. All it would do is pile up pointless grudges.’

The current situation was one where grudges could certainly pile up as well, but compared to killing them, it was minor.

‘And leaving them alive like that is better for tripping up the ones behind them… More importantly, what kind of building is this?’

A window covered by an opaque shutter caught Hyeonseong’s eye. A new question rose in her mind at once.

‘Judging from the current situation, this building is highly likely to belong to the people running Heukwol Auction House. Even if it isn’t directly theirs, there’s little chance it connects to some perfectly normal legitimate shopping center aboveground.’

Hyeonseong glanced sideways at Haesu. Perhaps realizing that Hyeonseong was looking at him, Haesu asked what she wanted.

“I was wondering whether you had any guess where this place might be.”

“Well, I’m not sure either, just from looking at this…”

Haesu shook his head.

‘Even if I don’t know exactly what building this is, I do want to know roughly where we are.’

With someone’s scream—another person thrown by Hyeonyeong—serving as background noise, Hyeonseong thought for a moment.

‘…Come to think of it, there was a simple way.’

Having finished thinking, Hyeonseong lightly tapped the pocket containing her phone with her fingertips.

‘Find out whether there are any communication lines installed inside this building.’

As soon as Hyeonseong gave the command, Nemesis immediately displayed a list of communication lines before her eyes.

The list included every line Nemesis could identify, whether wired or wireless. If a user had assigned a name to a line, that name was displayed as well.

‘Free Market 1st Office Center… what?’

Hyeonseong’s eyes widened when she spotted an unexpected name on the list. It was a name she had never anticipated.

‘If it’s an office center, wasn’t that basically the merchants’ association and information desk? Are they causing this kind of mess in a place like that?’

Thinking maybe she had read it wrong, she scanned the list again. But she had not.

If there had only been one line carrying the office center’s name, she might have taken it as a joke, but regrettably there was not just one.

‘God damn it. Don’t tell me they made an entire center their own?’

Naturally, there had been nothing about anything like that in the information Hyeonseong had investigated. But it was not an impossible situation.

‘Right, if you want to run a black market with tacit permission, they’d have to have a firm grip on at least one center.’

Hyeonseong clicked her tongue without thinking.

“Why? Is there a problem?”

Hyeonyeong asked, having just thrown yet another two enemies away.

“I think this is the office center building.”

“Huh?”

The one startled was Haesu.

“…You didn’t know?”

“I-I really didn’t. The staff here, no matter how you looked at them, didn’t seem like people from that side, they seemed like ordinary civilians…”

At Hyeonseong’s question, Haesu answered as if making excuses. Apparently there was no obvious sign on the surface connecting them to that side.

‘So you only notice something odd after you know, or maybe except for the underground part they really did draw a line and run the upper part like a normal place… something like that.’

Come to think of it, after they had come up to the aboveground floors, every stairwell door had been shut. All the enemies were coming down from stairways on floors even higher than this.

‘Looks like they really separated the zones thoroughly. If that’s how it is…’

Hyeonseong lifted her gaze a little higher. She could see an emergency exit with a sign for the third floor above the stairs.

‘What would happen if I opened that and went in?’

Without knowing for sure, Hyeonseong thought it would probably cause quite a commotion. Soon, an A-rank Mana Thrust skill card made by Hyeonyeong dropped into Hyeonseong’s hand.

‘Guess I’ll find out if I try it.’

—Kwaang—

The skill card activated instantly in Hyeonseong’s hand. A white flash cleanly blew away the lock on the stairwell access door. The door opened, revealing the scene beyond it.

—WEEEEE-OOO—

“Eek!”

“Wh-What is that?”

“Where did these people come from…?”

The people who looked like center employees jumped in shock at the loud noise and the appearance of an unfamiliar group.

‘What? Why are they all outside?’

Hyeonseong frowned when she saw the employees gathered outside their offices. It was still not quitting time, so it was strange that they were all standing outside together.

‘…No. There’s a reason for that.’

Come to think of it, the siren had been blaring without pause from the moment she opened the stairwell door until now.

This was clearly the sound of a fire alarm.

‘We dropped Fire of Judgment into the transfer room and ran. If it spread beyond there into the entire underground passageway…’

Then every place connected to that underground passageway was bound to be in chaos.

‘That arena too, and all that karma worth burning… It would be stranger if things didn’t turn into a disaster.’

In any case, if this was a fire alarm, then the cause of the disaster was obvious. Unless someone else had caused a similar accident at around the same time, the cause was Fire of Judgment.

‘If that’s the case… then this is what I have to do!’

Having finished thinking, Hyeonseong pointed at the black-market hired thugs who had chased after them and shouted,

“It’s those guys! Those guys are the culprits!”