"How long have they been inside?"
Jin-Woo asked urgently. The longer it took, the deeper they ventured, the lower the chances of the Hunters returning safely. The female Association employee answered absentmindedly.
"About two hours."
Two hours. It was an ambiguous amount of time—too long to call it quick, too short to call it long.
Then.
"Who are you? Are you with the Association?"
A guild employee grabbed Jin-Woo by the shoulder and tried to spin him around. It seemed he didn't like that someone had shown up uninvited, ignored him, and was spouting unlucky words. The grip on his shoulder was negligible, but Jin-Woo turned around cooperatively. In a situation like this, showing his face once could be more effective than a hundred words of explanation.
"When someone asks you a question, you answer..."
The guild employee trailed off the moment he locked eyes with Jin-Woo.
'Wait a minute, I've seen this face somewhere...'
Where was it? The employee groped through his memories until he finally recalled a name, then asked in disbelief, stammering.
"S-Sung Jin-Woo Hunter?"
He'd never imagined he'd run into an S-rank Hunter in front of a C-rank Gate. And here he was, having grabbed the man by the shoulder and glared at him? Startled, he instinctively raised his hands and took two or three steps back.
"I-I'm sorry." "..."
Even at this moment, time kept passing. Jin-Woo had no luxury to waste on a guild employee. He turned his gaze back to the female employee.
"I'll go in and bring those people out."
The female employee was flustered. This was the man who had walked out of a Red Gate—formerly a B-rank Gate—smiling. Yet now, standing before a plain C-rank Gate, he was urgently telling her that people were in danger.
"What on earth is going on? If you could at least explain something—" "There's no time for that."
Jin-Woo cut her off flatly. In truth, he could have gone invisible and slipped straight in. There were countless ways to evade their eyes and enter the Gate. The reason he hadn't done so was that he didn't know what awaited inside, and he wanted to follow at least the minimum procedure to avoid getting dragged into unnecessary trouble. The female employee's lips parted and stopped several times. She was torn. Could she really allow another Hunter to barge into a Gate that a guild had officially been cleared to raid, with no evidence whatsoever? Under normal circumstances, it would have been unthinkable. But after seeing the look in Jin-Woo's eyes, she simply couldn't bring herself to stop him.
"...Go ahead." "I'll see you later."
Jin-Woo gave a brief nod and leaped into the Gate.
[You have entered the Dungeon.]
Inside the DungeonThe request was rejected because it was considered high risk