Chapter Text
The gate loomed large behind the scaffolding and safety fences put up by the Hunter’s Association. It swirled languidly, an electric blue colour that shone even in the bright sunshine.
Shizuku stared up at it for a long moment.
Something so dangerous shouldn’t be so beautiful .
To say Shizuku had mixed feelings about gates would be a gross understatement.
On the one hand, it had been a gate that had brought her to this world. Pushed through a swirling portal created by a villain’s quirk she’d ended up in an E-rank dungeon.
Fortunately, she’d been able to find the team of hunters assigned to clear the dungeon and follow them out to the other side.
Unfortunately, the other side of the gate opened up to a world very different from her own.
For one thing, she’d ended up in Seoul, rather than anywhere in Japan.
For another thing, she’d ended up somewhere in the early 21 st century, long before the era of quirks.
Finally, she’d ended up in a world where these gates opened randomly and awakened humans, called hunters, had to go into the dungeons beyond them and defeat the boss monster before the gate opened fully and the monsters inside spilled out into the world and put civilian lives at risk.
In that sense, hunters were kind of like this world’s version of pro-heroes.
At least that was how Shizuku had comforted herself when she’d gone to the Hunter’s Association and put her hand on the crystal that read her mana.
She’d come out with an E-rank hunter’s license, and she’d been grateful for it, at the time, because there was no other way for an underage foreigner from another world to earn a living.
With no home, family, money or identification her options had been limited.
But the Hunter’s Association didn’t care about things like age and gender. At least, they didn’t in South Korea. Maybe in other parts of the world things were different, but here they were desperate to fill the ranks of hunters and clear gates before they broke open.
After her level had been assessed Shizuku had left the assessment center with an informal mentor, an insurance policy and an admonition to be careful.
Speaking of her mentor, she spotted him among the gathered hunters along with a few of the others they’d worked with in the past.
Hunters who worked in the same area tended to know each other relatively well, all the usual suspects got called in by the Association when a gate opened, and there was nothing like nearly dying together to foster feelings of comradery.
That being said, most hunters looked down on her mentor, Sung Jinwoo.
They greeted him cheerfully whenever he turned up for a raid, but that was more because they thought of him as some sort of good omen than because they felt like he was one of them.
Case in point.
One of the fighters Shizuku and Sung had worked with a few times, Kim, greeted Jinwoo with a grin, and then turned to his friend with a cocky look and said:
“There you go, Sung Jinwoo’s here. That means it’s safe.”
The other hunter gave him a quizzical look.
“Is he some kind of big-shot or something?” he asked. “If he’s that strong, why's he working under the association? He’d be better off at a guild or working as a freelancer.”
Kim sniggered.
“It’s the opposite actually. He joined up after you quit, so you wouldn’t know, but that kid’s nickname is ‘The Weakest Hunter of All Mankind’.”
“The weakest? Not the strongest?”
“C’mon! That’s got to be Choi Jongin,” Kim said. “No. Sung’s got to be the worst hunter in all of Korea. Rumour has it, he was hospitalized for nearly a week after he got hurt in an E-rank gate.”
“What? A hunter got hurt in an E-rank gate? What the hell? We’ve got to rely on a guy like that to watch our backs?”
Kim nudged him with an elbow.
“Listen, any raid with Sung Jinwoo has to be pretty easy-going. The association never gives him a dangerous job. They don’t want to be held liable for his death! And look, that kid there—”
Kim waved at her and Shizuku gave him a polite nod back.
“Shit, she’s got to be a high schooler, right? What’s she doing raiding dungeons?”
“She’s a foreigner and underage, this is probably the only job she can get. Anyway, she’s Midoriya Shizuku, Sung’s protégé. She’s stronger than him, but not by much, and the association wouldn’t want to catch flack for sending her on a dangerous raid either. Think of the backlash if the media got wind of her death.”
“Ah, got it.”
“Anyway, I’d hate for them to overhear us, so just leave it at that.”
Too late for that old man .
Judging by the tight smile on Jinwoo’s face he’d also caught every word.
Jinwoo’s awakening hadn’t given him much of an increase in strength, speed, or durability, but his hearing was top-notch.
Shizuku jogged a little to catch up to him, nudging him slightly.
“Those old-timers are going deaf,” she said in lieu of a greeting.
That earned her a little snort from Jinwoo, and he gave her a small but genuine smile.
“Well, it’s not like they’re wrong,” he shrugged. “I don’t let it bother me too much.”
That was almost certainly a lie, but Shizuku didn’t call him out on it.
She was well aware that even the weak had their own kind of pride.
“Do you want a coffee?” she asked. “I was thinking of getting one since it seems like we’re not ready to start yet.”
“They’re out,” Jinwoo said, glancing back at the truck mournfully. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be drinking coffee at your age. You’ll stunt your growth.”
Shizuku didn’t have the heart to tell him that as she’d already outstripped her mom in height, she doubted she’d get much taller anyway.
When Jinwoo had first been assigned as her mentor, he hadn’t been all that enthused, but they’d grown on each other in the months they’d been raiding together.
She suspected that Jinwoo thought of her a little like a second younger sister.
Shizuku had never had an older brother or anyone like that in her life, but it was kind of nice to be fussed over—even if Jinwoo was hardly one to be lecturing others about healthy habits.
“Jinwoo!” called a familiar voice, sharp and scolding. “You’re hurt again?”
Jinwoo and Shizuku turned to face Lee Joohee, a B-rank healer who worked in their area.
“Joohee,” Jinwoo greeted, a bit sheepishly. “Looks like we’ll be working together again.”
“Never mind that. What happened to your face?”
“Ah, well, the same thing that usually happens to it.”
Lee Joohee frowned at him.
She was very beautiful—tall and slim with long red hair—and Shizuku suspected that she had a little bit of a crush on Jinwoo. And although it was a little hard to tell for sure with Jinwoo, she had a feeling he felt similarly.
“I’ll heal you before we get started, but you really need to be more careful,” she said. “What kind of example are you setting for your protégé?”
Jinwoo quirked a wry smile.
“Fortunately, Shizuku has already learned from my bad habits,” he said.
“I wish you would learn from your bad habits already,” she retorted, ushering him down onto a bench.
They weren’t soulmates as far as Shizuku could tell, but if neither of them was opposed there wasn’t any reason why they couldn’t date. Not everyone was fortunate enough to meet their soulmate early in life after all.
Shizuku gave them a bit of space while they caught up and Lee Joohee cast her healing magic, trying to ignore the pang of loneliness that always swept through her when she thought of soulmates nowadays.
She and her soulmate had known each other practically since birth. They’d grown up together. Until now there had never been a time where she couldn’t feel him in the back of her mind.
She could still feel Kacchan if she concentrated but the most that she got out of their bond was the faint impression that he was still alive but far, far away.
She closed her eyes and reached for him, straining, and caught the faintest flicker of him. A flutter as delicate as a butterfly’s wing. Just enough to prove that they were still connected.
Not that their bond had grown much beyond that point even before the start of her unfortunate isekai adventure.
“Everyone, gather round, we’re getting started!”
Shizuku blinked her eyes open and moved to join the loose half ring of hunters gathered around the gate.
Another older hunter she and Jinwoo worked with regularly, Song Chiyul, stood in front of the fencing.
“Alright, everyone, I’ll be your humble leader for this raid,” he said. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Song Chiyul. I look forward to working with you.”
Murmurs of approval rose up from the surrounding hunters.
Hunter Song was well-respected by the local hunters and was widely recognized for his skills and good sense.
He had mentored Jinwoo back when he had first started hunting, and Jinwoo looked relieved to have him in charge of the day’s raid.
“Alright, if everyone’s ready, let’s head in.”
Hunter Song nodded to the reps from the Association and they unlocked the fence, leaving the hunters free to make their way into the gate.
The gate swirled and let off flakes of light and mana that danced around the hunters like snowflakes in the wind as they entered the gate in ones and twos.
“Hey, Sung, try and hang in there behind us, and don’t get injured this time,” Kim said, clapping Jinwoo on the shoulder as he moved past.
Jinwoo managed a laugh.
“Right.”
Joohee offered a more genuine smile, as she moved forward towards the gate.
Jinwoo hung back for a minute, pulling his weapon out from under his shirt.
As long as she’d known him, Jinwoo had always used a knife even though it was a weapon that forced him into close combat with monsters that were inevitably much stronger than him.
It was a cheap weapon, and considering how often they needed to be replaced and how little money an E-rank hunter made, maybe it was the smart choice, but through luck and frugality Shizuku had scrounged up enough money for a short sword and she hadn’t yet regretted the purchase.
“Coming?” she prodded.
Jinwoo let out a heavy breath.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do this.”
***
The dungeon was crawling with goblins.
They were E-rank monsters, not very powerful in the grand scheme of things but their size, speed, and numbers all made them irritating opponents.
Shizuku kicked one away from her with a grunt of effort and swung wildly as it growled and lunged back at her, cutting the beast nearly in half.
She bent to collect its essence stone quickly.
She’d learned that if she wasn’t quick about collecting her loot, oftentimes higher rank hunters would claim her kills as their own.
Behind her Jinwoo, who was having a lucky day, did the same.
The thick of the fighting was in front of them, but Shizuku and Jinwoo hung back with Joohee mopping up any stray goblins that slipped past the other hunters while they were preoccupied with more dangerous—and valuable—monsters.
“Jinwoo!” Joohee shouted. “Look out!”
Shizuku whipped around.
A goblin came at Jinwoo from behind while he was distracted, but he managed to block the strike and dodge its wickedly curved blade.
In an instant he turned to counterattack, striking up under the goblin’s ribs—but with a sharp crack his knife shattered into pieces.
The goblin stabbed back.
“Jinwoo!”
Shizuku ran forward, kicking the goblin off him, he fell with a short cry, bleeding heavily. She turned to rush the goblin only for Kim’s friend to come barrelling out of the tunnel on their left, shouting.
He killed the goblin with a single two-handed swing of his sword, and stood over them for a moment, frowning at the spreading pool of blood.
“I’m going back to the front,” he said, panting. “Hunter Lee, look after these two!”
“R-right.”
Shizuku grit her teeth, angry despite herself at his callousness.
“I’ve got you,” Joohee promised, dropping to her knees next to Jinwoo. “I’ll heal you.”
Ahead of them the group was fighting a cluster of higher ranked monsters. A werewolf and a pair of hobgoblins.
They weren’t having much trouble with the beasts, allowing Joohee to hang back with them, but everyone was eager to get their share of the loot.
None of them turned back to check on them.
One day she’d like to live in a world where a person’s worth wasn’t determined by their power.
If there was such a world in the universe.
Joohee managed to stabilize Jinwoo and sat him up against the cave wall before casting another healing spell.
Shizuku stood guard over both of them.
“Why do you insist on working as a hunter?” Joohee demanded. “You’re not doing it just to be stubborn, right?”
“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo said.
“I didn’t ask to hear you apologize. I’m worried about you. You nearly died today. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before something worse happens.”
Shizuku wished her luck in getting through to him.
Jinwoo had been injured, badly injured, usually, in every raid Shizuku had seen him participate in, but as soon as he was recovered he’d join another.
Jinwoo hummed, but he was watching over Joohee’s shoulder as the group went after the large werewolf that had appeared as the dungeon’s boss.
The fight was winding down now.
Hunter Song was in the thick of it, casting fire magic with deadly precision. And after a few exchanges the werewolf fell and a cheer went up from the others.
“Is there a reason you can’t just…quit?” Joohee asked hesitantly.
Jinwoo turned back towards her and smiled wryly.
“What if I told you this was my hobby?”
“I’d say if you indulge your hobby too much your next raid will be in the afterlife,” Joohee said tartly, surprising a laugh from Jinwoo.
“Ah! Don’t laugh!” Joohee scolded, fighting back her own smile. “You’ll reopen your wound!”
“Has everyone collected their loot?” Hunter Song called.
“As much as we could,” Kim said, frowning. “All these monsters were pretty low rank.”
“There’s not much mana crystal either,” one of the others said. “We’re not gonna earn much from this raid.”
“Did you get something?” Jinwoo asked, nudging her with his foot.
“An essence stone from a goblin,” Shizuku said. “You?”
“Same.”
An E-rank stone generally sold for something like a hundred-thousand won. It was hardly worth almost dying for, but it didn’t seem like the other hunters had done much better.
E and D-rank dungeons didn’t turn much profit as a rule, simply because by their very nature they didn’t contain a large amount of mana, and with over a dozen hunters in the raid the money from mining the mana crystals would be a pittance.
Shizuku would make it work. Somehow she always managed. But Jinwoo had a large apartment to pay for and Jinah to think of. She suspected there was something else going on too, but Jinwoo had never confirmed anything and always changed the subject when she brought it up.
“Hey! There’s something else over here! I think it’s another entrance!”
The three of them exchanged a glance and then got up to join their colleagues, who were all crowded around the entrance to another section of the dungeon, muttering amongst themselves.
“A cave?”
“More like a tunnel.”
“It seems like it goes pretty far…”
Hunter Song conjured a ball of fire with his magic and tossed it into the tunnel, the ball of flame flew through the passage illuminating the interior.
Eventually the flame lost its momentum and fell to the ground where it flickered for a moment before guttering out.
“A double dungeon, huh?” Hunter Song mused staring into the darkness. “I’ve heard rumours about this kind of thing before, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one.”
“We beat the dungeon boss, but there’s no sign of it shutting down,” one of the other hunters put in.
“I noticed that too.”
“Which means—”
“There’s more loot to be found down there,” Kim said.
“Alright everyone,” Hunter Song said, looking out over the group as he addressed them. “Even though we’ve cleared this area, the gate is still open, so I would guess the true boss is down there.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the cave entrance.
“When we run into cases like this, protocol dictates that we report this to the Association and wait for them to assess the risk before continuing. But that means that there’s a chance that, rather than calling us back, the assessment team will clear the gate themselves.”
Everyone grimaced at that.
The boss chambers generally turned the highest profit in the dungeon between the monster loot and the higher number of mana crystals.
“It’s still a part of a D-rank dungeon,” Kim’s friend said. “There’s plenty of hunters here, and our healer’s a B-rank, it should be fine if we clear it ourselves, right?”
“This guy’s got another kid on the way, and we didn’t find many mana crystals, we’ll all be looking at a light payday if we leave the boss to the association guys,” Kim added. “It’s a low rank dungeon, so there’s no harm bending the rules a bit just so we all get paid.”
“I understand how you feel. But the fact remains, it’d be a risk,” Hunter Song said. “We have fifteen hunters here, so let’s take a vote. Majority rules. Does that sound good?”
No one objected, so Hunter Song raised his hand first.
“I’m for going in,” he said, kicking off the voting.
Plenty of the others were in agreement, but there were also plenty who were opposed to the increased risk. The tally on both sides was neck and neck, so the voting continued until Shizuku, Jinwoo and Joohee were the only ones left.
“Sorry, but…I don’t want to,” Joohee said, bowing her head.
Shizuku grimaced, she hated to do it but she nodded in agreement with Joohee.
“If this is a rare phenomenon we don’t know what to expect, right?” she said. “I vote we wait for the association. I think the risk is too high.”
With her vote it was seven for and seven against. A tie.
When Jinwoo hesitated Hunter Song turned to him.
“How about you, Sung?”
“Me?”
He seemed surprised that the final decision had come down to him and his expression twisted for a moment as he wrestled with his own indecision.
He glanced at her and Joohee and grimaced, but he seemed to reach a decision.
“I say we go for it,” he said.
***
The tunnel seemed to go on forever.
Hunter Song led the way with a palmful of fire, and the D-rank mage had summoned a ball of light so they weren’t in complete darkness at least, but the atmosphere was distinctly sinister.
“How long have we been walking?”
“Thirty-seven minutes,” Shizuku called back. “I have a timer running.”
“Good thinking,” Hunter Song said. “We’ll only have about an hour to get back to the entrance once the boss is defeated, so give it another fifteen minutes, after that, we have to turn back.”
“Got it!”
Shizuku shivered as a long gust of air came from further down the tunnel, like the breath of some great beast.
Behind her, Jinwoo and Joohee were talking in quiet voices and Shizuku thought she’d heard Joohee finally ask Jinwoo out for dinner, so she gave the two their space.
She was glad that Joohee didn’t seem to begrudge Jinwoo his vote, and getting to experience a rare type of dungeon was thrilling in a way that made her itch for a notebook, but she wished her erstwhile mentor was just a little less reckless.
“We’re here,” someone shouted from up ahead. “This is it. The boss’ lair.”
“It’s rare to see an actual door on one of these things.”
The door loomed twenty or thirty meters high and was carved from a massive slab of blue-green stone and overlaid with bronze detailing.
“It’s kind of intimidating,” one of the others said.
“Well, I’m going in,” Kim said.
“Same here. Let’s do it.”
“The team moves forward together,” Kim added. “That was what we all agreed to when we took the vote.”
“That’s right,” Hunter Song agreed, approaching the door.
It swung open with a grind of stone on stone.
It was a grand, circular chamber, ringed with looming statues and dozens of torches that lit with flickering blue flame the moment they crossed the threshold.
“Hey, the place lit up.”
“I dig the atmosphere!”
“I’ve never seen a dungeon like this before.”
At the far end of the chamber was a massive idol, sat on a throne, it loomed head and shoulders above the other statues.
“This one’s way bigger than the others,” Jinwoo remarked, craning his head to try and get a better look.
“That’s damn big.”
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“There’s something creepy about it.”
“Alright, I’ve got to say it—I’m not seeing any monsters.”
“Good point.”
Hunter Song knelt next to the intricate carvings on the floor.
“This is a magic circle,” he muttered.
“Hunter Song! Something’s written over here!”
“In the ancient script? Let’s take a look,” he said, peering at the stone tablet. “The Commandments of the Cartenon Temple. First, revere God. Second, praise God. Third, prove your faith to God.
“Jinwoo,” Joohee said, in a small fearful voice. “That statue…it’s eyes. I saw them move. It’s watching us!”
Shizuku turned to look, the statue didn’t seem to have moved at all, but even still. Something wasn’t right here.
“It can’t be. It’s just stone. You must have imagined it,” Jinwoo said.
“Those who do not follow these laws…” Hunter Song continued reading.
Shizuku wasn’t so sure.
This was the end of the dungeon, there was nowhere else to go beyond this chamber logically that meant that somewhere in this area there was a boss.
“…will not leave alive.”
Almost as soon as that final ominous pronouncement was delivered the doors rumbled shut behind them, trapping them in the room.
“The door shut!”
“Are we trapped in here now?” the D-rank mage asked.
One of the bigger guys shoved past her, sending her stumbling with a yelp, as he made for the doors.
“See? This is what I was worried about! You guys didn’t take this seriously and now look! We should never have come this way! I’m leaving. You can have the treasure or whatever else you find down here.”
He put his hand on the door, moving to push it open again, and Shizuku saw it. The statue by the door, the knight, it lifted it’s massive stone weapon—
“Hey! Get away from there!” Hunter Song ordered.
The other hunter barely had time to turn his head before he was split in half.
His head and shoulders were turned to pulp with the force of the blow and splattered wetly across the doors. After a long moment, his legs bent and his lower half crumpled to the ground. A puppet with its strings cut.
Shizuku froze.
In front of her someone screamed.
“It moved! Fuck! It moved!”
“Are we supposed to fight those things?”
That made a terrible kind of sense.
There were no magical beasts in this chamber because the statues were the monsters.
But if that was the case, the guy who’d just died, he’d been one of their stronger members, at least a D-rank, and he’d been killed in an instant.
Which meant that they were trapped in a room with monsters far above their levels and capabilities.
“Everyone get down!” Jinwoo bellowed suddenly, shoving Joohee to the floor.
Shizuku threw herself down next to them, but not everyone was so lucky.
Above them the large statue’s eyes glowed white hot.
One of their comrades was vaporized in seconds, and the beam of blazing light cut through the stone floor like cheese.
Beside her Joohee was curled in on herself with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands clasped over her ears.
“No more…no more!”
Jinwoo hovered over her protectively, covering her body with his own, but from the look in his eyes he’d realized it too.
They were all going to die here.