The leader was thrown by Geon-mu's words.
The time counting down on the Wager Pledge had not yet passed even five minutes.
Had anyone else behaved that way, the leader would have flown into a rage first, but there was something different about Geon-mu.
'Why does it look like he really did clear it and come out?'
The charisma that seeped through his easy smile.
The rightness and confidence that came through in his words.
A man far ahead of him in build and level was momentarily cowed.
"Not even five minutes have passed and you're saying you've cleared it?"
"That is right. I killed every monster inside the dungeon. Are there no signs of it?"
"What ridiculous nonsense are you...... Hah!"
The thug leader's eyes went round.
Gates always manifested and held a fixed form.
For the entrance to suddenly begin losing its shape was a sign that the dungeon was disappearing.
That sign arose only when a gate had been exposed for a long time and lost its power and faded,
or when the monster treasure inside the gate had been recovered.
The dungeon had only manifested three days ago, so the former was certainly not it.
"You look like you don't believe me, so go in and check for yourself."
For a leader, the shape of the gate alone was already sufficient proof.
But this situation was far too abnormal to accept.
If he accepted it just like that, he thought he would look like an utter fool, so in the end he set out to confirm it with his own eyes.
And the leader, having gone in through the gate,
"......Insane......."
could not manage another word.
The gremlins lived in a dungeon set against a forest at daybreak.
That forest had been turned entirely into open plain, as though a bomb had struck it.
After staring vacantly for a long while, the leader remembered the terms of the wager and felt a chill.
'My van!'
Recalling what he had wagered with Geon-mu, he scrambled back outside.
And there, Cha Geon-mu was nowhere to be seen, and the van had vanished right along with him.
The leader stared blankly at the spot where the van had been and asked the subordinate standing there with both hands clasped.
"Th-the car?"
"Well...... he took it."
"A-and you just handed it over!? If anyone was going to give it up it would be me, so why did you lot hand it over so meekly!?"
"......He asked what we were going to do about him making you wash it with your tongue when you came out of the gate......."
"......."
Whether to scold them for letting Geon-mu go, or to praise their loyalty to their leader.
In the end the leader could not manage a word and only stared blankly at the empty space.
While the leader stood there dazed, his men talked among themselves.
"Come to think of it, doesn't that guy look familiar somehow?"
"So I wasn't the only one thinking that? Where did we see him?"
"I'm sure I saw him on YouTube......"
"Ah, Tapgol Park!!"
By the time they realized who he was, the storm had already passed.
***
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Heo Jin-ho arrived at the location the woman had sent him.
The scenery beyond the car window was an office much like a real estate agency.
On the glass front, clearly written, were the words 'Licensed Dungeon Brokerage.'
The man parked the car and reconnected his Bluetooth earphone.
"I've arrived."
-Yes, I can see you.
"What, you're already here? Where are you?"
-Somewhere with a clear view of you and the brokerage, right into the inside of it.
Heo Jin-ho swept his eyes over the surroundings, but the figure he assumed owned that voice was nowhere to be seen.
"We've already been working together three months, so how about telling me who you are? Let me see that precious face just once."
-I only follow the rules. Until I am told to disclose my identity, I have not the slightest intention of showing you my face.
"Tch, what a joyless bitch. Anyway, I'm going in. Cover me properly."
-Ending transmission. Until the day the dra......
CLICK—
Heo Jin-ho cut it off just like that and went into the brokerage.
At the sound of the bell hung on the door, a middle-aged man wearing the title of director greeted him warmly.
"Well now, welcome, sir."
Perhaps because of the neat suit, he was even more punctilious than usual.
The shaggy-haired man swept the space unconsciously.
One non-Awakened, three Awakened.
The Awakened were seated on a sofa, glancing over at him.
If he moved to do anything, they would lift their heavy backsides.
"Is this the place that sold case number N-383125?"
"Sorry?"
"Number N-383125."
"Ah...... one moment."
The director picked up a tablet and checked.
"Yes. It's a listing sold yesterday, sir."
"Would it be possible to find out who that person is?"
The director's face creased.
The look lasted a very brief tenth of a second before returning to his sales smile as he spoke.
"Oh dear, I'm sorry, sir. We can't tell you who we sold it to, so that's not possible. Telling anyone would put us in legal trouble, so we can't share it."
"Ah, this must have been passed along wrong."
Heo Jin-ho scratched his head with a sheepish face.
His restless shaggy hair bobbed.
"So, I'm not asking, you understand? Tell me while I'm being nice about it."
"Sorry?"
"Didn't you hear me? Are those holes in your head decoration? If you don't want to die, tell me."
The director's face turned bewildered, and as the mood turned ugly the Awakened seated on the sofa moved.
"Freeze right there. The first bastard to stand up loses his wrist."
Even hearing Heo Jin-ho's warning, one man did not back down and set his left hand down.
"Has this bastard lost his mind, does he know where he i—"
SHNK—!
No sooner had he lifted his backside from the sofa than a sharp sound and a streak of light burst out.
"Huh?"
The man who had stood first felt no sensation in his arm and dropped his head.
He saw that everything above his wrist had completely vanished.
"Ah, aaaargh!"
The scream came belatedly.
His wrist had been severed, but the shaggy-haired man had not moved in the slightest.
At that, the Awakened drew their weapons at once.
"You crazy bast—!"
FWIP! FWIP!
The very moment the guards moved to draw their weapons, something came flying into their shoulders.
They were short arrows.
They had punched through the glass window, disarming and subduing them at the same time.
Heo Jin-ho watched that and clicked his tongue.
"Count yourselves lucky."
The shaggy-haired man said that and looked up at the director.
From the moment the wrist was taken off, the man's complexion had twisted pale.
'They may not be much, but they're C-Grade mercenaries. And they went down this easily?'
By the nature of a brokerage that Awakened came in and out of, it was exposed to danger.
That was why keeping guards on hand was essential.
"Excuse me."
"Y-yes!"
"Let's...... not make me repeat myself, shall we. I absolutely hate being bothered."
"Yes! Yes!"
The fist is closer than the law.
To the director, his life at this moment mattered more than confidentiality, and he obeyed meekly.
"H-here it is!"
Heo Jin-ho took the document and wore a satisfied face.
He draped an arm around the director's shoulder in a friendly way and patted him.
"See? Why drag out something that could be settled this easily?"
"I'm sorry! P-please, at least spare my life......!"
"Ah, don't be so frightened. If I killed you I'd get an earful, after all. Ah, and this goes without saying, but you know what happens if you report this to the police?"
"Yes, yes! I will keep my mouth shut."
"Then I'll be off."
Heo Jin-ho took the document and slipped serenely off into the night streets.
What remained in the brokerage after the storm had passed was nothing but fear.
***
"Work's done."
-.......
"Hello? Can't you hear me?"
-Why do you cut off a person's arm so casually?
Was that it?
Heo Jin-ho was smiling on his end of the line, but his voice answered calmly.
"Self-defense. My life was threatened."
-They were obviously small fry. With your ability, knocking them out would have been more than enough. Did you have to use that technique?
"Doing it that way isn't any fun."
-We don't do this work for fun. I told you not to blow things up unnecessarily.
"You can handle riffraff like that. That's what the hypnotists are for, and from the look of those men they'll fold to our hypnotists in no time."
Hypnotists, who manipulated human psychology and memory.
Once they went through sufficient healing, it could be made to seem they had merely had a terrible nightmare.
Heo Jin-ho had created situations like this countless times already, and he had watched them clean each one up.
The woman did not want to continue the squabble any further and moved on to the main matter.
-So who is the buyer?
"Hmm...... here it is. A man named Team Leader Kang Ho-seok of Cheonho Guild."
-Cheonho Guild? Damn it. He bought it from a guild that's hard to touch.
"What's hard about it? I 'ask' him the way I did just now, right?"
-You want to start a war? No. The hypnotists have done good work so far, but touching Cheonho Guild is too much, and if we set off an incident on top of this one, they will stop trusting us and we'll be dropped from the great undertaking.
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
-If he bought that dungeon, doesn't it mean he's going to the dungeon one way or another? We wait out front and buy it off him at about one and a half times.
"Not double?"
-Double would only draw more suspicion, so one and a half is the most appropriate.
"Seems much the same to me."
-That's the difference between a professional and an amateur.
"Listen to you."
With the plan set, what he had to do was decided.
Heo Jin-ho turned the car toward the dungeon manifestation site listed in the information.
It would be good if the matter was handled amicably, but the shaggy-haired man did not want that.
'I hope a situation worth calling self-defense comes up.'
Heo Jin-ho wanted to fight.
Blood running everywhere, and the sight of fear born from an opponent's helplessness.
That was his own wish, and his Patron Star's desire.
He could only hope that such a thing would be possible at the site of case number N-383125.
***
Having acquired his first car through a wager, Geon-mu hummed a tune as he drove down the road.
The reason Geon-mu had been able to dispose of his first dungeon within three minutes was simple.
He had used the same power he used when he sent Anubis off.
[<Nine Dragon Divine Meridians> stirs.]
The power of the Dragon of Destruction, one of the Nine Dragon Divine Meridians.
He had used the first dungeon both to test that power and to learn his own current limits.
The technique he used was the same eleventh form of the Heaven-Breaking Divine Art, the Torrent Dragon Flash Wave.
It was weaker than the first power he had felt in the battle with Anubis.
'It'll be because I'm not yet fully qualified.'
It was his own body, so he could tell for certain.
Even so, it boasted power high enough to blow away every gremlin in the area.
In fact, doing only that had taken no more than thirty seconds.
The rest was the time it took to gather the usable parts from among the gremlin corpses and come out.
[Nine Dragon Divine Meridians]
Type: Passive
Grade: SSS
Nine dragons that reigned over the continent of Yuresian and ruled it with blood and iron.
The Slayer who defeated all nine of those dragons seized their power completely.
That perfected power crosses time and space and dwells within the Slayer.
Dragons Released: 1
Dragon of Destruction: the dragon that destroyed mountains and dried up rivers (State: Unstable)
The egos of dragons are, every one of them, strong of self.
A dragon would sooner die than acknowledge someone and place itself beneath them.
Subduing one is possible only when every condition of mind, qi, and body is met.
In Geon-mu's case, qi and body were unsatisfied conditions.
Since it dwelt in his soul it did lend him aid, but that too was limited.
'Once a day will be the most I get.'
Break that rule, and the Dragon of Destruction and even the other sleeping dragons would run wild and try to swallow Geon-mu whole.
The power he could use today was finished.
Geon-mu recalled the gremlin dungeon and wore a bitter expression.
'Should I have left the bodies in one piece so I could pick up some side income?'
If they had been creatures worth money, he would simply have killed them one by one even if it took an hour.
But he had needed to grasp the power's force and its conditions, and thanks to the thug agreeing to a foolish wager, Geon-mu had had no need to hesitate.
"My status window."
Name: Kim Jin-hyeok
Level: 24
Patron Constellation: None.
Lineage: Asura
Titles: <Heaven-Breaking Divine Lord><Dragon-Slaying Emperor><Asura King>, <Untouchable Man>, <One Who Faced the Trial Alone>, <Golden Wind>
Traits: <Heaven-Breaking Divine Art (EX)Ⅰ>, <Myriad Phenomena (S)>, <Nine Dragon Divine Meridians (SSS)Ⅱ>, <Great Azure Internal Energy (A)>, <Exceptional Dexterity (C)>
Strength: 52
Agility: 40
Perception: 43
Stamina: 38
Magic Power: 20
Remaining Points: 79
The remaining points that had come out as Geon-mu raised his level were still unspent.
Even so, his stats were abnormally high for his level bracket.
"Shall we move on to the next one?"
Geon-mu looked at the list of dungeons he had bought.
He ran his eyes over the ones he had purchased and picked one.
"Number N-383125. This one will do."
The reason he chose it was simple and clear.
It was the closest one from here.