"Hey! Over there, someone is collapsed!"
An urgent shout came from afar.
A bright searchlight that stung the eyes swept across the dark asphalt, then stopped on Cheol-woo’s face.
The footsteps of heavy safety boots rang out noisily. Two on-site personnel dressed as paramedics ran toward Cheol-woo.
"Are you all right? Are you conscious?"
"Haa. Yes, I am fine."
Cheol-woo raised a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light and slowly pushed himself up.
One of the paramedics hurriedly grabbed Cheol-woo by the shoulder and sat him back down. The paramedic’s expression hardened when he saw Cheol-woo covered in blood and earth dust.
"Good grief, why have you lost so much blood? Stay still. We need to stop the bleeding first."
The paramedic carefully cut away the torn hem of Cheol-woo’s clothes with scissors.
A long laceration along his side and a bluish-black bruise were revealed.
It looked gruesome on the outside, but considering that he had been struck by a hidden boss’s hammer, it was a miraculously light injury. It seemed the mana that had wrapped around his body the moment the dungeon was cleared had prevented the worst fatal damage.
"Fortunately, the wound is not deep. I do not think any bones are broken either. Still, you have lost quite a bit of blood, so once the emergency treatment is done, you need to go straight to the hospital."
"No. Just disinfect it and wrap it with a bandage. I can walk without any trouble."
Cheol-woo staggered back to his feet.
The paramedic tried to force him to go to the hospital, but after seeing Cheol-woo’s stubborn expression, he let out a short sigh.
"I will disinfect it and wrap it temporarily for now, so make sure you go to the hospital tomorrow when it is light out."
"Thank you."
While he was receiving emergency treatment, an Association employee wearing a fluorescent vest approached.
The employee looked back and forth between the field terminal in his hand and Cheol-woo, then tilted his head.
"What happened? The residual mana level in Goblin’s Abandoned Mine is zero. According to the records, it closed normally at the scheduled time. Were you trapped inside the whole time?"
Cheol-woo brought out the excuse he had thought of in advance.
Talking about his authority or the hidden boss would only make things more troublesome.
"I was handling the remaining monsters and doing recovery work when the path got blocked, so I was late. The inner mineshaft started collapsing, and I got swept up in it. I think I was thrown out right before the gate closed."
"Ah, so you were a porter."
The employee looked at Cheol-woo’s worn-out clothes and the battered pickaxe lying on the ground, then nodded as if it was nothing unusual.
It was common for low-grade hunters or porters to be pressed for time during work and barely escape at the last moment. The employee tapped on the terminal screen and spoke in an indifferent voice.
"As you can see, the residual mana has completely vanished. The final recovery work has also just been processed as completed. You were lucky. If you had been one minute later, you might have been trapped forever."
"Yes. I will be careful."
The employee turned away without asking anything further.
To them, the only thing that mattered was the administrative fact that the dungeon had closed normally.
No one cared what had happened deep underground, what Cheol-woo had destroyed, or what he had obtained.
Cheol-woo pressed a hand to his tightly bandaged side and slowly moved his feet.
As he passed beyond the police line controlling the entrance, he fixed his gaze on the air while no one was watching.
‘[Owned Dungeon 1] Goblin’s Abandoned Mine’
That name, which had been completely erased from the Association’s terminal, was still alive and well in Cheol-woo’s status window.
A contradiction in which a dungeon that had vanished from reality existed only for him.
Cheol-woo clenched his fist and slipped into the night streets, avoiding the gazes of others.
An old multi-unit house on the outskirts of Seoul.
Cheol-woo opened the creaking front door and stepped inside.
The cramped, musty room was dark, with the lights still off. He double-locked the front door and carefully lowered the blinds over the window. He blocked every gap through which someone outside might peek in.
After taking off his bloodstained, torn work clothes and tossing them aside, he dragged over the first-aid kit placed in the corner.
He removed the bandage that had been roughly wrapped around him at the scene and poured disinfectant over the wound.
"Ugh."
His face twisted on its own from the stinging pain, but he bit his lip and endured it.
After placing gauze over the wound and tightly wrapping a new bandage around his waist, he pulled on an old short-sleeved T-shirt.
Once he had roughly washed off the bloodstains, Cheol-woo sank down in the middle of the room.
"Phew."
Letting out a long breath, he stared into the air again.
A translucent status window appeared before his eyes.
[Name: Oh Cheol-woo]
[Grade: E]
[Unique Authority: Dungeon Owner]
[Owned Dungeon 1: Goblin’s Abandoned Mine (F-rank)]
It was not a lie.
Cheol-woo lifted a trembling finger and lightly touched the words 'Goblin’s Abandoned Mine.'
Ding.
With a light mechanical sound, a new management window he had never seen before smoothly unfolded.
[Goblin’s Abandoned Mine (F-rank)]
-Owner: Oh Cheol-woo
-Produced Resources: Mana Stones, Iron Ore, Unidentified Mineral
-Resource Status: (Calculating)
-Monster Population: (Calculating)
-Regeneration Standby Time: (Calculating)
-[Enter] [Exit] [Check Location] [Function Locked] [Function Locked]
Most of the items in the management window were either hidden or locked.
The amount of resources and the number of monsters were both simply blinking with the words (Calculating).
But Cheol-woo’s gaze was fixed on a single activated blue button.
‘[Enter]’
It meant he could enter.
Into that wretched abandoned mine that had already been covered over by asphalt in reality.
Cheol-woo picked up the pickaxe he had set down on the floor again.
He gripped the handle tightly and swallowed dryly.
"Let us see whether this is real."
Cheol-woo pressed the [Enter] button without hesitation.
At that moment, the space in front of the old wallpaper on one side of the room distorted strangely.
Flash.
A faint blue light leaked out, and a small gate, just large enough for one person to pass through, formed.
It was much smaller than an ordinary dungeon gate, and the fluctuation of mana was faint as well. There was no fierce wind that seemed ready to suck the objects in the room inside.
A short guide message appeared above the gate.
[This is an owner-exclusive gate. Others cannot pass through.]
It was a door meant only for him.
Cheol-woo cautiously approached the gate.
Beyond the rippling blue surface, the familiar, acrid smell of earth dust drifted out.
His heart beat rapidly with tension.
He took one deep breath, then pushed his body into the narrow ripple.
The tips of his feet touched a hard stone floor.
Cool, damp air swept over his skin.
Cheol-woo’s eyes snapped open.
Rough rock walls surrounded him on every side, along with a dark mineshaft.
It was unmistakably Goblin’s Abandoned Mine, the very place where he had been rolling around only a short while ago.
"Ha."
A hollow laugh escaped Cheol-woo.
What was astonishing was that the place had not merely been preserved.
The corpses of the dead goblins that had been lying on the floor, and the bloodstains that had been scattered everywhere as he swung his pickaxe, had vanished as if they had never existed.
The most dreadful traces had been near the boss room.
The wooden supports he had tied the rope around and brought down, as well as the enormous rock debris that had buried the boss, had been cleared away without a trace.
The shattered entrance passage had opened wide as it originally had been, and the iron minecart that had crumpled like a sheet of paper stood perfectly intact on the tracks.
"It repaired everything as good as new."
Cheol-woo carefully walked along the mineshaft and examined his surroundings.
His hand tightened around the pickaxe.
The space had been restored perfectly, but the most important thing was nowhere to be seen.
Monsters.
There were no crimson goblin eyes that should have flashed in the darkness, nor was there any grotesque cry of claws scraping against stone.
The cave was silent.
Cheol-woo tapped the iron ore attached to the wall.
It was merely a crumbly lump of stone, without the faint mana reaction unique to ore.
"So the space has been restored, but the contents are empty."
Cheol-woo stopped and opened the management window again.
The Resource Status and Monster Population entries still displayed the words (Calculating).
When he checked the lower section, only the [Check Location] and [Exit] buttons among the closed functions were clearly activated.
The detailed control buttons for things like changing passages or arbitrarily summoning monsters remained firmly locked.
‘The space itself, which should have vanished, has been preserved whole by the system. And right now, it is waiting for a resource reset.’
The restoration of the empty mineshaft and the regeneration of monsters were not the same phenomenon.
The building had been rebuilt, but the contents that would fill it had not yet arrived.
He could not hunt monsters or mine ore here right now.
There was no reason to waste his stamina wandering around an empty mine with nothing inside it.
"Let us get out for now."
Cheol-woo pressed the [Exit] button without regret.
Blue light flashed again, and his body returned to the middle of his familiar rented room.
When he looked back, the small gate that had been floating on the room wall smoothly disappeared, returning to the stained wallpaper that had been there before.
Cheol-woo walked over to the old table in the corner of the room.
He opened a drawer and took out a worn notebook and a ballpoint pen.
Sitting on a plastic chair, he began writing down what he had just experienced.
-Association Record: Goblin’s Abandoned Mine vanished normally. Residual mana 0.
-Reality: Maintained in status window as [Owned Dungeon 1].
-Entry Method: Owner-exclusive small gate. Can be opened inside the room.
-Internal State: Destroyed terrain and structures restored. No monsters or resources. Most functions locked.
The tip of the ballpoint pen moved quickly across the paper.
This was not mere luck or a hallucination.
This was a definite opportunity that would change the rest of Cheol-woo’s life.
After finishing his notes, Cheol-woo took his smartphone from his pocket.
He opened the alarm app and set a timer.
‘Twenty-four hours.’
The regeneration standby time he had seen in the status window.
He set the alarm to match that time.
When this time came tomorrow, he planned to enter again.
He had to confirm whether monsters and ores would truly revive in the restored, empty mineshaft.
After finishing the setting, Cheol-woo tossed his smartphone onto the table and lay down on the bed.
"See you tomorrow."
A faint smile spread across Cheol-woo’s lips.
The true first step toward escaping his sickening life as a porter was beginning.