Chapter 106
It was nighttime in a dark room. Since it was difficult to tell time in a dungeon, parties usually decided on a specific excavation cycle. They explored and battled at daytime, and rested at nighttime to recover from the accumulated fatigue.
Yuri snored as he was in a deep sleep, and the others were in a light sleep, on the boundary between being asleep and awake. Seong-Hwi had his eyes closed but was examining the Karma he had gathered in the past four days.
[Karma: 3,349,268]
Three million in just four days, huh? he thought.
His teammates were right when they said this dungeon was a Karma mine. Of course, the mine was dangerous enough that one wrong move could cause everything to collapse.
Purchase B-rank Dexterity, Sense, and Strength stat cubes, he said inwardly.
He immediately used all the Karma he collected. He was in an S-rank dungeon; he had no leeway to save enough Karma to open an A-rank cube.
[Dexterity B(4) obtained.]
[Sense B(8) obtained.]
[Strength B(9) obtained.]
[Boosting Strength by B(30) as per the effect of Silver Bracelets of Queen Consort Muryeong.]
[Strength C(99) → Strength B(39)]
His Dexterity, Sense, and Strength stats, which had been C-rank, rose to B-rank. His Strength stat especially skyrocketed thanks to his Silver Bracelets of Queen Consort Muryeong.
“Huuu...” Seong-Hwi exhaled as he assessed the changes in his body with satisfaction, happy that he was gradually getting stronger.
What to do now? He wondered as various thoughts and plans swirled inside his head. We’ve searched the auditorium, the shower room, and Research Sector 1, but nothing.
From what they had discovered, Weishaupt Research Institute was a colossal underground building. It took them over three days to comb through just Research Sector 1.
Based on the wall signs, there are sectors 2, 3, 4, and more... There will be no end to it.
Since they couldn’t comb through the entire research institute, they needed to narrow down their search radius somehow.
But how? There’s not a single clue of where the Elixir could be. Come to think of it... What are the Chaos monsters looking for? Are they really looking for the Elixir?
The assumption made no sense. There was no way they would be causing such a disturbance while looking for something in their territory.
The highest likelihood is... either the dungeon boss has it, or it’s hidden in the boss room.
He thoroughly re-examined the dungeon quest to see if he had missed anything.
[What to do at a Research Institute (Dungeon Quest)
Rank: S
Description: This world is guaranteed to end. There are two things to do at Weishaupt Research Institute.
Condition 1. Defeat the assistant director, the one in charge of Weishaupt Research Institute.
Condition 2. Help the two remaining resident survivors in Weishaupt Research Institute.]
The assistant director is undoubtedly the dungeon boss. I’d bet they’re at least Hispar-rank, Seong-Hwi thought.
If that were the case, they would be far stronger than the Shadow Fairy Queen he had faced at the Forgotten Fairy’s Hideout dungeon.
Not only that, but not all Chaos were equal. The No.789 Test Subject Body they faced today was a Uluhatu-rank Chaos, but he was far weaker than the Shadow Fairy Queen, who had also been a Uluhatu-rank Chaos. She was much stronger because she was a dungeon boss.
I’m sure the assistant director is also hiding a few cards up their sleeve. I’d rather not face someone like that.
Seong-Hwi shook his head. The profits from killing such an enemy piqued his interest, but it was unwise to do whatever one desired without considering the consequences.
Then the only way is to steal the Elixir without the dungeon boss knowing. We’ll find the assistant director’s abode, lure him outside, and search inside. Or, we could aim for when the birdfolk and undead are in the middle of the boss raid.
As he came up with various plans, a thought suddenly popped into his head.
Hm? Wait a second. The Chaos we killed today was called No.789 Test Subject Body. If he were a test subject... it means someone conducted the test!
It was so obvious that Seong-Hwi had completely overlooked it.
Someone has a method to control the test subjects. If that’s the case, one could say that they own the test subjects, right?
His eyes flashed after coming up with an unexpected breakthrough. He pulled a card from the Tarot Deck of Destiny, showing a filthy, smiling serial killer with a .22 caliber handgun in his right hand, extending his left hand with an inverted pentagram drawn on his palm.
If the test subjects are classified as objects, I can track their owner!
***
Once daytime arrived, Seong-Hwi led his party to the corridor where they defeated the No.789 Test Subject Body.
“Why are we back here? We finished searching the area yesterday,” Nakivarro complained.
“I’m sure Seong-Hwi has his reasons,” Frank retorted.
They often clashed over little things lately because Nakivarro disliked Seong-Hwi, while Frank liked him.
“Did we miss something? Leo and I thoroughly searched the corpse yesterday,” Enrique said to Seong-Hwi, who was kneeling on one knee in front of the No.789 Test Subject Body.
“No, you guys didn’t miss anything. I did,” Seong-Hwi replied as he activated his skills.
[Activating Unique Skill: Borrowing Destiny.]
[Devil of Los Angeles]
[Activating Unique Skill: Symbol Embodiment.]
[Night Stalker]
The air around him suddenly changed to that of a vagrant wandering a filthy alley. A .22 caliber handgun appeared in his hand.
“Hah... Now, it’s a handgun? It’s like he has dozens of D Weapons.”
“Enhancement, manipulation, conjuration, emission... All that’s left is transformation, right?”
As Enrique and Frank chatted with each other, Sonya hesitantly asked, “Commander... are you... a specialist?”
Khanh, standing beside her, laughed as if it were absurd. “Haha. How could he be a specialist, Sonya? Do you have any idea how rare—”
“I am,” Seong-Hwi replied.
“Huh?”
“I’m a specialist.”
His teammates showed various reactions to his definitive answer. Enrique and Frank nodded. Sonya, Gardner, and Khanh were dumbfounded. Yuri and Leo seemed uninterested.
As for Nakivarro, he gritted his teeth and mumbled, “A specialist...? Fucking talented prick.”
Seong-Hwi smirked and pointed the Night Stalker at the No.789 Test Subject Body, saying, “Life has always been unfair. Have you just noticed it now?”
He pulled the trigger, and the bullet passed through the corpse as if it had no physical form.
Go! Seong-Hwi shouted inwardly as he stared intently at the bullet that stopped in midair.
The Night Stalker was a symbol that could track down the owner of objects it shot. One wouldn’t normally think someone owned a corpse, but this was a special case because the corpse was a test subject. In other words, it was the result of someone’s test and could be considered a tool that the tester owned.
The bullet in the air trembled. It then turned in the opposite direction and rapidly flew along the corridor.
“It worked!” Seong-Hwi shouted.
If that bullet travels to the assistant director’s abode... We can wait for the perfect chance and search for the Elixir!
“What worked, Seong-Hwi? Care to explain to the rest of us?”
His teammates stared at him in confusion, having no idea what had just happened.
Seong-Hwi smiled and replied, “It means I was born lucky.”
Luck was a part of one’s destiny, and he was destined to grasp his destiny.
***
A battle was in progress against the Chaos in a large, open space, but the ones against the Chaos were not living beings, but pure-white mannequins that clacked with every movement.
Onie Yuki jumped into the air and activated a skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Mannequin Control.]
The mannequins created footholds in midair for her to step on.
“Stop right there!” a Chaos man, covered in flames, shouted as he chased her.
He was a Uluhatu-rank Chaos who underwent his Secondary Transformation.
[Activating Race Skill: Flame Cannon.]
A cannonball made of fire shot down the mannequins forming the footholds. They were burned to ash, and the Flame Cannon continued to fly toward Yuki without losing its momentum. However, she did not feel threatened in the slightest.
She pointed at the Flame Cannon flying toward her with her pale, petite hand and said, “Block it.”
[Activating Unique Skill: Mannequin Control.]
[Mannequin - Ronald Goliath]
She summoned a mannequin much bigger than the others in front of her. It held a giant ice shield that faintly exuded a chilling frost from its surface. The Flame Cannon smashed into Ronald Goliath’s ice shield but was extinguished without a trace.
Ronald Goliath was a Brazilian Ranker who had once reached 89th in the human ranking. His biggest mistake was thinking about defeating Yuki, who was 45th in the ranking at the time, to boost his rank. Because of that, even in his death, he was forced to use Frost Shield, the tank skill he took pride in, to protect Yuki as her living mannequin.
Ronald Goliath was not the only one with such a circumstance.
[Mannequin - Nelson Xavier]
[Mannequin - François Damiens]
[Mannequin - Peter Musevski]
[Mannequin - Ioan Gruffudd]
[Mannequin - Deng Chao]
...
Each living mannequin, created from humans who attacked Yuki to prove their strength, was summoned with their skills activated.
“Kill him,” Yuki said coldly.
The mannequins exacted her command, clacking with every movement.
“Urgh! You coward!” the Chaos man shouted.
However, it changed nothing. Onie Yuki, the Puppeteer and the ninth High Ranker, was a one-woman army who had once closed a dungeon ranked B+++ alone.
[No.813 Test Subject Body of the race Chaos, defeated.]
[Solo hunt.]
[725,180 Karma obtained.]
[Minor purification merits obtained.]
...
***
Yuki stood still in silence after killing the No.813 Test Subject Body and the Failure Bodies he brought.
She thought, That geezer, Filipe Kabuka, must have planted one or more of his people in the party... but who?
An Elixir was on the line, so he would naturally eliminate as many variables as possible so that he had as much control as possible. However, Black Market was not a unified organization; it was simply a group of people under Kabuka for personal interests.
Hence, Kabuka had likely carefully chosen people who he could truly trust and those skilled enough to secure the Elixir.
And I’m one of them. Damn it all!
The weakness Kabuka had on Yuki was Onie Rikako, the first mannequin Yuki had ever made, and her mother. Yuki was currently twenty-four years old, and her mother had gone missing when she was fourteen. She found out later that her mother had been Lost.
Back then, she believed her single mother had abandoned her because she thought of her as dead weight. As she lived on while resenting her mother, she was also Lost.
Yuki, after finding out the truth, searched for her mother in the Mirror World. She managed to find her after a few years but as a cold corpse in a grave. Ironically, that was when Yuki’s D Weapon was perfected. Her desire to see her mother alive again created a living mannequin of her mother.
However, her mother was not resurrected; she just turned into a moving doll. Yuki hid her mother in a secret workshop so that she wouldn’t be broken, and wandered throughout the Mirror World in search of a way to bring the dead back to life.
One day, Filipe Kabuka somehow found out about her secret workshop and kidnapped Onie Rikako. He proposed a deal that he would return Yuki’s mother unharmed if she brought him an Elixir.
However, Yuki knew the chances of obtaining an Elixir in an S-rank dungeon, where the birdfolk and undead were competing against each other, were next to zero. Hence, she thought of other ways to get her mother back, including interrogating Kabuka’s spy, whom she was certain was among her party members.
Who is it? Who works for Kabuka?
There was no need to even think about Le-Yeyo since he was Kabuka’s keeper. Enrique Vidal was worth suspicion since he was a well-known but unaffiliated adventurer. Nakivarro’s reaction when Seong-Hwi brought up the Rwandan massacre was also suspicious.
She also found suspicious parts about Sonya Gerhard, Yuri Nazakov, Frank, Gardner, and Khanh Huyen. Once the seeds of doubt were sown inside her, she found everyone suspicious except for one man—Cheon Seong-Hwi.
Although she had not known him for long, she judged that he would never work under someone; he was a trailblazer. On top of that, he stood out too much to be a spy, which was why she had appointed him as the second commander.
I doubt they’d show their true colors while I’m around, but they’d let their guards down once I’m not, Yuki thought, which was why she decided to stay behind alone to dispose of the remnants.
“Hm?”
Yuki detected a presence approaching her. She quickly withdrew all her mannequins except for nine and activated a skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Mimic Mannequin.]
The nine mannequins changed to take the forms of Seong-Hwi and her other teammates.
A Death Knight raced toward Yuki on a phantom steed’s back and shouted, “Humans! We request reinforcements! We have clashed against Clan Gliders in Research Sector 9!”
“Research Sector 9?”
“We’ve discovered a hidden location there! It seems to be the boss room!”
Yuki expressed surprise.
***
Seong-Hwi and the others sprinted through the engine room on the lowest floor of Research Sector 1, as the heavy sounds of machinery echoed endlessly.
“So what you’re saying is, we’ll reach the boss room as long as we follow that bullet?” Yuri asked.
“I’m not certain, but if the dungeon boss was the one who created the test subjects, then yes,” Seong-Hwi replied.
“Hah! What an unreal skill,” Yuri said as he stared at the bullet flying in front of them.
A skill that generated a guided bullet that flew to an object’s owner was extremely useful for tracking.
“Sheesh... Do I have to share my rewards with you or something? You’re doing my job, but better,” Enrique the volante remarked.
“I wouldn’t turn it down,” Seong-Hwi said with a smirk.
“I’m joking, man! You were hired to be a wing, a support role! You’re just doing your job as a support, haha!”
“Huh? Look!” Khanh shouted as she pointed at a hard concrete wall. “The bullet went through the wall!”
“That bullet is like a GPS that shows the shortest route possible to the target. Meaning... Hup!”
Seong-Hwi enveloped his fist with mana, and he punched the wall with all his might. A massive hole was made in the wall, revealing a new corridor. They saw a sign, clearly much older than the others throughout the research institute, labeled Closed Research Sector. The corridor walls were also showing signs of age.
“Closed Research Sector? Smells pretty damn fishy,” Yuri remarked with a smile.
Enrique nodded and remarked, “A real dog’s saying that, so I think we can trust it.”
“What’d you say?”
“Heh! Can’t argue with that. He’s a son of a bitch, after all,” Gardner, with great dissatisfaction from having to constantly heal Yuri, agreed.
Yuri retorted, “I can’t even with these Americans. I bet you two have never tasted the true wrath of a Russian.”
“Sounds like a line from a B-list noir performance on Broadway.”
“Hey, I’m Spanish, not American.”
The three men snickered as they glanced at one another, but their expressions were frozen. The place they had uncovered was filled with an abnormally thick aura of death. Just standing before it sent chills down their spine. It couldn’t be eased with meaningless banter.
“Advance,” Seong-Hwi ordered as he stepped into the Closed Research Sector first.