Yurian’s face reflected faintly over the dark lenses. Can he even see through something like that? He pushed the question down and answered without resistance.
“Yurian.”
“Ah, then would it be alright if I call you Rian?”
“No, just Yurian.”
“Yeees. Just Mr. Yurian, then.”
The tone carried a strange edge of mockery. Yurian only shrugged.
“You can just call me Yuri, too.”
“Yeees. Just Mr. Yuri. Hunter Gong Siyoung says he found you in a newly emerged A-Rank dungeon. Is that correct?”
“Ah, so you call that place a dungeon.”
So that strange space full of drifting ash was called a dungeon here. Whether he wanted it or not, information about this other world kept steadily piling up.
Yurian swept his gaze around the room with renewed curiosity. If that place was called a dungeon, then what was this? Outside the dungeon? Whatever the name, the difference between there and here was stark.
The environment was different, yes, but above all, the mana density was completely different. Inside the place they called a dungeon, mana overflowed everywhere. Thanks to that, he had subdued the Hellhound easily even without a mana stone.
But not here.
This place was practically barren.
…And yet, even in this near-empty space, there were spots where mana pooled.
For example, the black glasses Gong Sijin was wearing.
Mana was gathered there more densely than anywhere else.
Yurian could see the current flowing through the glasses.
It wasn’t that he was exceptionally gifted at reading flows. Any sword user could see that much movement of force.
And it wasn’t only Gong Sijin’s glasses.
Every man in the room was wearing something similar.
They were disguising it as ordinary accessories, but to Yurian’s eyes they looked like weapons.
Or something close to weapons.
Whether they were magic tools or not was harder to judge, but one thing was certain: they were not ordinary objects.
Well, there was no reason to point that out.
Opening his mouth about things like that would only make them more wary. Sometimes the smart move was to pretend not to know what you knew, and pretend not to see what you saw.
“Right. I got caught in the dungeon and ended up here.”
The other side must have something to gain, otherwise they would never have dragged him all the way here.
What exactly was it?
Yurian studied Gong Sijin’s expression behind the glasses.
“Well… good. There’s just one more thing I’d like to confirm. Will you cooperate?”
“Gladly.”
At the agreeable answer, Gong Sijin smiled softly.
Unlike his warm voice, the next question came cold.
“There is no record anywhere of Mr. Yuri entering that dungeon. Did you deceive the Management Bureau and sneak in illegally?”
Gong Sijin paused for a moment.
At the same time, mana began gathering around the black glasses.
Following the shimmering flow with his eyes, Yurian scratched his head.
“Well. I’ve never deceived anyone…”
If they asked how he got here, he had no real answer.
He couldn’t pretend to explain something even he didn’t understand.
Yurian leaned back in the chair. Crossing one leg over the other, he idly bounced his foot.
“I only just learned that place was called a dungeon. I don’t know what the Management Bureau is, and I’ve never deceived anyone. I don’t even remember entering any dungeon in the first place.”
“Then how were you inside it? You dealt with the monsters alone and cleared the dungeon. Surely you’re not going to say you don’t know that either?”
Cleared it?
What the hell did that mean now?
He swallowed the question. Asking that too would probably only wreck the mood further.
The gazes of the men surrounding Yurian gradually sharpened.
Doubt, and with it hostility, was steadily growing.
Honestly, it was fascinating.
From their perspective, of course he looked suspicious. A man who had practically dropped from the sky. Naturally they wanted to know what he was, and what exactly had happened inside the dungeon.
That part, he understood perfectly.
But there was one thing about them that Yurian simply could not understand at all.
They had captured a suspicious man with no way to verify his identity…
…and they were investigating him this calmly?
With conversation alone?
‘Are they angels?’
What would have happened if this were the Empire?
They would have started by tossing him into an underground prison and beating him half to death.
Or maybe they would have cut off an arm or a leg first.
As long as the tongue stayed attached, questions could still be answered. Everything else could be cut off and reattached later without much issue.
After being tortured day and night like that, right around the moment he started thinking, Wow, I’m definitely dead this time, they would generously send in a priest.
He knew the routine well. He had been through similar things more than once.
After enough time passed in that blur between treatment and torture, truths and lies alike tended to spill out effortlessly.
Compared to those days, his opinion of these people suddenly shot way up.
If calmly pressing him with words instead of torture didn’t make them angels, what did?
For the sake of the angels, Yurian obediently shared what he knew.
“I was in the middle of a monster subjugation campaign, right on the verge of dying. Then all of a sudden some kind of black curtain opened up, and I got sucked right into it. When I opened my eyes, I was inside that dungeon-or-whatever.”
He made sure to add that a Hellhound had come with him, and that he had dealt with it personally.
Spinning the chair in a slow circle, Yurian looked over the men in the room.
“So? Does that answer things a little?”
No answer came back.
* * *
“I told you, he’s a lunatic.”
Why make this so complicated?
Gong Siyoung tossed the question back casually.
He increased the speed of the treadmill and lengthened his stride.
“I heard that whole monster-subjugation nonsense too. He’s just some psycho trapped in a weird delusion.”
During the trip from the dungeon to here, the man called Yurian had said all kinds of insane things besides that.
From the moment he got into the car, he’d reacted like it was the end of the world.
Then he’d stared out at the passing scenery so intensely his eyes nearly fell out, muttering things like—
“If buildings are this tall, how do you deal with griffins or wyverns? If harpies attack, everyone’s dead.”
Siyoung hadn’t understood a word of it.
After listening for a while, he’d gotten so irritated that he finally shoved in his noise-canceling earbuds.
Anyway, that whole ride had made one thing absolutely certain.
The guy he had picked up in the dungeon—Yurian, Yuri-glass, whatever—was insane.
How could he not be?
Leaving aside the exaggerated reactions and over-the-top astonishment, everything that came out of his mouth was bizarre.
“You know how there are hunters like that sometimes. The unstable ones. He’s one of those. Probably escaped some hospital somewhere, got lucky, and hid inside the dungeon.”
“No. We already confirmed he wasn’t lying.”
Gong Sijin shook his head.
He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket.
Seeing the black shades dangling from his fingertips, Gong Siyoung narrowed his eyes.
“You even used an item?”
“This kind of thing needs certainty.”
The ‘Mirror of Truth’ in Gong Sijin’s possession was an A-Rank item.
It judged the truth of every visible target regardless of rank.
Any question asked while wearing it was marked 반드시 as either true or false.
And every single answer Yurian gave had come back as true.
“Siyoung, think about it. What if that man really came from beyond the dungeon—alongside the monsters? We might finally learn the truth about the dungeons we’ve been fighting all this time.”
Yurian had not lied.
He truly had crossed over from somewhere together with the monsters.
This was a chance to approach a truth the dungeon and the system had never revealed.
But Gong Siyoung only looked even less convinced.
He stopped the treadmill with a rough hand and shot Gong Sijin an irritated glare.
“Fine. Let’s say, best-case scenario, every crazy word out of his mouth is true, and there’s some secret behind it all. Sure. Whatever. So what? What does that have to do with me?”
He had been the first to discover the man, yes.
That didn’t mean he had any desire whatsoever to get tangled up with him.
He was already busy enough running dungeons.
Why the hell would he go out of his way for extra trouble?
“We still don’t know Mr. Yuri’s rank.”
Gong Sijin shrugged.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to saddle his precious S-Rank hunter with this kind of cleanup work either.
But what choice did he have?
No matter what skill they used, Yurian’s rank always came back as Unknown.
His skills were impossible to identify, his identity was suspicious, and there was no telling where he might jump next.
At the same time, they couldn’t just keep him bound indefinitely.
There was still a vast amount of information they needed to extract from him, and in that situation, maintaining the most favorable relationship possible was to their advantage.
They had secretly requested a rank evaluation from the Hunter Management Bureau, but until then they needed someone to keep an eye on him.
For that role, Gong Sijin had chosen Gong Siyoung.
As an S-Rank, Siyoung could easily suppress Yurian if anything happened.
And personality-wise, he was the perfect fit.
Gong Siyoung was the type who let other people’s nonsense go in one ear and out the other, which meant even Yurian’s chaos probably wouldn’t shake him much.
“Besides, you’re the one who brought him in. Strictly speaking, you picked him up. If you pick something up, you’re responsible for it to the end.”
Gong Sijin patted his shoulder twice.
His tone was exactly that of an older brother scolding an immature younger sibling who had brought home a stray puppy without permission.
Honestly, the situation wasn’t that different.
“No. I’ve got dungeons to run. You know everything’s in emergency mode right now.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll only be a day or two at most. I can handle that much on my end.”
“And what about sudden dungeon outbreaks? We still need to check those—”
“Mm. It’s fine. We have the rest of the team. The world won’t end just because one Gong Siyoung is missing.”
The hand gripping his shoulder slowly tightened.
Gong Sijin smiled.
Toward his irresponsible younger brother, what sounded like a polite suggestion descended as a threat.
“Do you want to listen while your brother’s asking nicely, or do you want to listen after getting hit once, Siyoung?”