Chapter 61
It was like the surface of a calm sea.
Behind the scientists moving quietly yet busily, Park Chung-ho stood with his arms crossed, watching like a captain aboard his ark.
The Forced Dungeon Development Experiment, which had begun in the morning, had long since passed lunch and was now nearing 3 p.m. Yet Park Chung-ho’s group simply waited, patient and unhurried.
Crackle.
A blue spark suddenly flashed inside the lab where the Dungeon was being generated.
Park Chung-ho, who hadn’t paid it much mind until now, lifted his head.
Crackle, crackle.
Had the experiment failed?
The second spark was larger, spreading with a sharper, more brilliant glow.
“What is it?”
Perhaps because he was the one who had devised the entire plan, a startled Jang Han-bit hurried over.
“G-Guild Master?”
“I’m watching.”
“This can’t be going wrong… I’m sure they followed the instructions exactly…”
Park Chung-ho pushed Jang Han-bit aside as he scratched the back of his head in confusion.
“It’s not going wrong.”
A faint smile spread across Park Chung-ho’s lips.
“It’s proof it’s going very well.”
“Pardon?”
He pulled a giant axe from his [Inventory] and set it on the floor.
Thud!
Even though he had placed it down lightly, the blade sank into the floor as if it were tofu.
The sight of the warrior preparing for battle stirred the dormant wildness in everyone who had been crouched down.
Right beside him, a fan snapped open.
The Western Shaman, Ahn Hyunwoo, approached and took his place in front of Park Chung-ho as he loosened up, while standing behind Jang Han-bit.
“It is just as he said. Blue Electricity is a phenomenon that appears when a Dungeon is being generated.”
“Th-That is?”
“You’ve done well. Now, you should start backing away. Park Jae-hyun?”
At the Western Shaman’s call, Park Jae-hyun, who had been standing by obediently, ran over.
“You called for me.”
“You should protect your own master, shouldn’t you? The Dungeon will open in one minute.”
Park Jae-hyun’s eyes widened at the mention of one minute.
Still not understanding what was going on, Jang Han-bit kept staring at Park Jae-hyun, as if demanding an explanation.
The Western Shaman smiled brightly, then tapped his bare wrist.
“Time is ticking, you know~”
Park Jae-hyun’s eyes widened.
He hurriedly grabbed Jang Han-bit by the shoulders and shouted.
“Land Cleaning Guild!”
“What are you doing! Let go! I said, let go!”
At Park Jae-hyun’s shout, people who looked like members of the Land Cleaning Guild came running in from all directions.
‘What do I do.’
There was no way to get out of here within one minute.
Park Jae-hyun spoke in a grave voice to the struggling Jang Han-bit.
“I need your cooperation. A Dungeon is about to manifest.”
“Of course! That’s what we’re trying to do.”
“When the Dungeon manifests… most people, aside from them, will die.”
Park Jae-hyun’s gaze shifted to Park Chung-ho’s party.
“What does that mean!? Why? Why will they die!?”
It was a typical reaction from someone who didn’t know much about Dungeon manifestation.
But anyone who understood the power of the shockwave produced when a Dungeon appeared couldn’t possibly stay this calm.
As Park Jae-hyun wrestled with how to explain it—
“It’s because their bodies will explode if they can’t withstand the Dungeon’s shockwave.”
The Yaksha, with his massive frame, approached and stopped in front of Jang Han-bit and Park Jae-hyun.
Then, without fully turning his head, he spoke.
“Gather your people behind me. If you’re even a little late… they will die.”
Park Jae-hyun’s eyes widened.
“Don’t tell me… you’re going to withstand the Dungeon’s shockwave…”
The Yaksha’s body swelled slightly, and silver fur began sprouting over his enormous physique and bulging muscles.
In seconds, the Yaksha—now a werewolf—answered with a gaze fiercer than any he’d had as a human.
Awoooo~~~
‘He’s really… going to withstand it.’
Park Jae-hyun’s eyes went as wide as they could.
Shhnnk.
Park Chung-ho pulled the giant axe from where it had been embedded.
He lowered his stance, and the Western Shaman scattered talismans to form a barrier.
Finally, as the Yaksha enveloped his entire body in red mana with a low growl, Park Chung-ho’s low voice rang out.
“It’s coming.”
FWOOM!!
A tremendous explosive force erupted in a blinding flash.
“Heuk!”
For a moment, everything flared white, and short screams burst out here and there.
= = =
Rumble!
A sudden quake struck the department store building that was still under construction.
Workers on the upper floors stumbled, fell, and clung to anything they could.
“Wh-What in the world is happening!”
The startled workers looked at one another with wide, shocked eyes.
They tried to move to the edge to see what had happened below.
None of them knew that the rumbling earth that had swallowed death wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning.
Rumble! Crumble, crumble!
An earthquake far stronger than anything they had ever felt shook the building violently.
Solid exterior walls tore apart, and steel rebar was exposed.
Unlike before, it didn’t stop.
It kept shaking the building, the people, and even the equipment.
“Whoa!”
“Agh! Somebody help!”
Workers were thrown to the ground, cut and bruised as chunks of stone fell from above.
In the chaos where no one could get their bearings, a man working along an exterior wall with no windows stumbled and nearly fell out.
“Kim Ban-jang!! Kim Ban-jang!!!”
Then—
Whoosh!
Someone snatched Kim Ban-jang’s body before he could fall.
A man dropped with him from three stories up.
The worker who had cried out, certain he’d witnessed a death, soon felt relief when he recognized the attire.
‘That person is one of the guild members guarding downstairs, right?’
Even the ignorant knew what it meant.
The people guarding the building were adventurers with monstrous abilities that ordinary people couldn’t compare to.
They wouldn’t die in an earthquake like this—and they could save others, too.
Clinging to that hope, the worker shouted.
“Me too, save me too!”
By now, Kim Ban-jang should’ve been set down somewhere safe.
Thinking he would surely be next, he screamed with everything he had.
“Help me!!”
But…
Rumble!
No one came.
“There’s a person here! Help me!!”
No matter how much he shouted, only the roar of the quake answered him.
Not even a shadow appeared.
Relief turned into fear.
Tears welled as the dread of death tightened around his throat.
He gripped the floor.
He couldn’t die like this.
He wasn’t even near the windows, and he was still in decent shape, flattened against the ground.
Just as he forced himself to think that way—
“Huh…? Huhhh!?”
As if his sixth sense had kicked in, the worker slowly lifted his head.
Why were anxious instincts never wrong?
His eyes went wide as he saw a massive chunk of rock swaying loose overhead.
“Ahhh… Aaaack!!!!!!”
The rock finally tore free, about to crush him.
The moment he squeezed his eyes shut, certain he was dead—
BOOM!!
A sound like an explosion.
The worker jerked his head up.
“A-Am I dead?”
And he found himself staring at a man who looked like a grim reaper.
“You’re not dead. So hold on for thirty more seconds. The moment the earthquake stops, run down without looking back. Got it?”
No long explanation was needed.
He understood.
He was alive—and this man had saved him.
“Wh-Who are you?”
“Me? No Death. There are a lot of people to save. From now on, you’re on your own.”
Wearing a black leather long coat and an old, strange helmet, the man left those few words and vanished.
“I have to hold on! Subin, Dad will definitely make it out alive!”
Now that the immediate danger had passed, the hope No Death had tossed him—thirty seconds—made him cling even harder to life.
“I’ll definitely make it!”
He clenched his teeth and tensed his whole body, waiting for the timing No Death had promised.
= = =
Crumble, crumble.
The first tremor, which lasted about a minute and a half, finally ended.
More than twenty Azure Lake Guild members gathered in the first-floor space that would become the department store’s elevator bank.
“Is everyone here?”
“Yes!”
Among them, a few dust-covered workers could be seen, still dazed.
“Wh-Where is this?”
“Are we trapped?”
Unlike the workers, who looked lost and terrified, the Azure Lake Guild members were calm, as if they had expected this.
But the workers couldn’t steady their pounding hearts.
Held in place by the guild members, they looked around with pale faces.
“One, two, three, four… the last one, number ten.”
The Azure Lake Guild member who pointed at the final, utterly bewildered worker nodded.
“That’s all of them.”
Perhaps enough time had passed for one of the younger workers to regain his senses. He shouted, trembling.
“Our! Our boss is missing! I’m a window fitter! Please find our boss!”
At his voice, the other workers began snapping out of it, too.
“Oh god, I’m dying. I’m dying.”
“What is all this. I don’t think we’re trapped. I can see outside over there.”
“My leg… my leg hurts. Ugh.”
“Help! There are people here!”
The area quickly filled with shouting, the kind that echoed across construction sites.
An Azure Lake Guild member frowned faintly and spoke in a low voice.
“Everyone, quiet.”
“Oh god! Help!”
“I said, be quiet. Do you think I’m joking?”
“Let’s go out that way! We can survive if we go out that way!”
The shouting didn’t stop.
In the end—
“Everyone be quiet!!”
Mana laced into the shout, and the voice reverberated as if it would tear the building apart.
The workers flinched, stunned by a sound they’d never heard in their lives.
But the guild member didn’t stop there.
“That way… if we go that way…”
Thwack!
He drove his fist into the abdomen of the worker pointing outside.
“Keoheok! Ggeuk… kkeuk…”
The man’s face turned red. Veins bulged in his eyes as if they might burst.
He couldn’t even scream—only drool as he curled up, twitching on the dusty floor.
Flinch.
The workers who had been about to raise their voices instantly clamped their mouths shut.
Only then did they truly see the expressions of the Azure Lake Guild members.
‘What the.’
‘They… didn’t save us?’
The guild member here.
The guild member there.
As the workers looked around, they finally realized something was wrong.
The people they thought had saved them looked far more menacing than they had imagined.
“Wh-Why are you doing this?”
In response, an Azure Lake Guild member slammed his fist into the face of the worker who had spoken.
Thwack!
Blood sprayed, and the worker toppled backward.
Like an ordinary man taking a boxer’s full straight, his consciousness vanished instantly. Only because an Azure Lake Guild member behind him caught him was his skull spared from cracking against the floor.
That was enough to make it certain.
They hadn’t saved anyone out of kindness.
Faced with the fear of death, the workers went silent.
“Hoo, that’s more like it. Fucking hell, it was too noisy to live.”
The guild member grinned, as if the violence had eased his stress.
He looked over the trembling workers, then pasted on a friendly smile.
“Shut up and stay still. Got it? That way, we can do our job, right?”
The workers nodded frantically.
They had no choice.
Whatever they said, whatever they did, their lives were in the Azure Lake Guild’s hands.
It was then.
An Azure Lake Guild member scanning the area tilted his head.
“Huh? What’s that over there? Something’s strange.”
“What is it?”
“Isn’t the number of workers over there more than we thought?”
Workers were pouring toward the exit, scrambling down the stairs.
Not one or two—already more than ten.
“Well, I guess they were lucky. There are more than expected.”
But it didn’t stop there.
Countless workers kept rushing down the stairs from both sides.
As the numbers climbed—twenty, then thirty—the expressions of the Azure Lake Guild members darkened.
“Huh? What the.”
The number was absurd.
This had been an earthquake strong enough to half-destroy the building and expose its steel frame.
Yet so many survivors were spilling in that it felt like nearly everyone had lived.
“Aren’t there too many survivors? I’m sure the team leader said ninety percent would die, and we were supposed to take care of the lucky ten percent…”
“Ah, fuck, what is this. Why are there so many.”
The steadily growing crowd left the Azure Lake Guild members baffled.
Then—
“What’s that.”
Someone was running down with the last wave of workers.
No Death, wearing that strange helmet and the black leather long coat that didn’t belong here, and—
“Who the hell is that bastard!?”
Hyun-jung, in the form of a middle school girl, kicked and shattered the last falling rock in mid-air.
“And what’s with that kid?!”
The moment they saw them, it clicked for the Azure Lake Guild members.
“Ah!”
Those bastards had saved the workers.
“Take care of those bastards first…”
The Azure Lake Guild member who realized it first tried to shout while pointing at No Death and Hyun-jung.
But no sound came out.
Thump.
His body froze mid-motion.
Then his neck fell diagonally, and his head rolled across the floor.
Most of the Azure Lake Guild members still hadn’t processed what they’d just seen.
Hyuk-min, gripping the red-bladed Immortal Demon Sword, cut down two more guild members and shouted coldly.
“A beating is too good for you sons of bitches in human skin. Just die.”
Rumble!
Fountains of blood erupted here and there, along with a second, even more violent earthquake.
As the quake roared, a white fox mask slowly covered Hyuk-min’s face.