VSP 130

The dungeon Sejun was set to clear alongside Jeong Siwoo appeared within the city limits of Seoul.

Seoul is a broad term, and travel times can vary wildly depending on the specific neighborhood. Fortunately, this dungeon manifested near Jamsil, so the drive from Gangnam wasn’t too long.

These two areas boast the heaviest foot traffic in the city, and Sejun felt a headache coming on the moment he heard the location. He couldn’t exactly choose where a dungeon spawned, so he opted to leave early on the day of the raid.

Since the dungeon was scheduled to open in the morning, Sejun found himself trapped right in the middle of the rush hour commute. He tapped his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. Even the music playing in the car felt grating, so he just switched it off.

Normally, Sejun would have passed the time by talking to the System.

He would have wondered aloud what on earth the car in front of him was doing to cause such a backup. The System would have likely offered a dry response, stating that as long as humans drove without a centralized automatic control system, traffic jams were inevitable.

Then Sejun would have teased it by asking if it was a “T” personality type, and they would have shared some pointless banter. (Thinking type in MBTI)

“Haa.”

Sejun exhaled a long breath. He had reached the point where he was imagining conversations he might have had if the System were still around.

“System.”

He called out without much hope. As expected, there was no answer.

“System!”

He shouted in frustration, but his surroundings remained silent. Sejun chewed on his lip, filled with a mix of helplessness and anxiety.

Five years. It had been five long years. Ever since his awakening, this entity had been by his side every single day. Whether he wanted it there or not, the System had been part of his daily life, yet he hadn’t shown his face for days now.

The System had taken brief leaves of absence before, but nothing like this had ever happened.

He tried to brush it off during the first couple of days, but as the silence stretched on, his anxiety grew. He couldn’t even begin to guess what was wrong.

He couldn’t even ask anyone for advice. Systems with actual personalities were beyond rare, they were practically non-existent.

He knew that worrying wouldn’t change anything. He simply had to wait for the System to return on his own and hope this damn settlement process would eventually end.

“I wish I could just turn it off and on like a machine,” Sejun grumbled.

He checked his phone to force his mind off the System and the missing rewards.

He saw a new notification from Cha Dogyeong. Their conversation had been a continuous stream since yesterday, lasting well into the morning. Dogyeong’s latest message read:

[What should I do?]

[I already don’t want to go.]

The message included an emoticon of a chubby fox rolling on the floor and crying. It was quite cute, but Sejun groaned because he knew exactly who Dogyeong was meeting today.

While Sejun headed out to clear an A-rank dungeon, Dogyeong had an appointment. And it was with none other than Ryu Sehyun.

Cha Dogyeong and Ryu Sehyun? If he pictured them standing together, they certainly made for a striking pair, regardless of whether they actually suited each other.

However, that was only a pretty picture in a vacuum. The moment it became a moving video, it was a tragedy. He couldn’t believe those two were meeting up.

Dogyeong looked like a social butterfly, but he was actually the type to push people away. Meanwhile, Ryu Sehyun was the type of person no one could easily approach in the first place.

They were different yet similar, and similar yet polar opposites. They just didn’t click.

If you hate it this much, why did you agree to meet him in the first place?

Sejun had plenty of questions, but he held them back. He felt a bit awkward asking. Dogyeong didn’t seem particularly eager to talk about it either, so Sejun didn’t ask for details.

It didn’t really have much to do with him, anyway.

Aside from the unpleasant schedule, the message itself was sweet, and he didn’t want to ruin the mood. After all, they were in the early stages of a relationship.

Their constant contact was proof of a sparking flame. It felt good and gave him butterflies.

In the end, instead of prying, Sejun just replied with an emoticon of a cat patting someone’s head.

•••

Jeong Siwoo. He was three years younger than Sejun and the youngest among the S-rank hunters.

Technically, he wasn’t that young, considering most S-ranks were in their mid-twenties, excluding the “older” crowd like Na Yookyung or Ryu Sehyun. But since he was the youngest, there was a general atmosphere of everyone pampering him.

As for Sejun, he was naturally far removed from that dynamic. It wasn’t that he didn’t treat Jeong Siwoo like the youngest member; he just never had the chance.

They weren’t close. They had absolutely no common ground.

They hadn’t crossed paths during the original story, nor after its conclusion. Sejun couldn’t even remember ever having a proper conversation with him.

Because of that, Sejun had no memories of him, good or bad. Jeong Siwoo had mostly ignored him in the past, just like everyone else did back then, and Sejun never really paid much attention to him either.

His most recent memories of the guy were limited to handing him a lemonade or a brief encounter on the day of his physical exam. Even those moments were blurry. Their relationship was exactly that superficial.

So, when he ran into Jeong Siwoo at the raid site, Sejun greeted him first without much thought.

“Hey, Siwoo.”

A blank face looking down at a phone turned toward Sejun. Without a hint of a smile, Jeong Siwoo looked quite cold.

He really is pretty, though.

His looks were impressive every time Sejun saw him. Now that he thought about it, he remembered that Jeong Siwoo’s grandmother was a famous celebrity, maybe an actress? At any rate, between his status as an S-rank hunter and his family background, he had been quite the hot topic when he first awakened.

While Sejun stood there admiring his looks, Jeong Siwoo abruptly turned his head away.

…Wait.

“Hunter Seo Sejun! Hunter Jeong Siwoo!”

Sejun stood there blinking, stunned by the snub, when an Association employee called out to them. The staff had arrived early to prep the entrance. Jeong Siwoo immediately headed toward them, and Sejun followed with a sour expression.

It had been a long time since someone had ignored him so completely. He couldn’t even chalk it up to a misunderstanding; he had greeted the guy right in front of his face, and their eyes had definitely met.

There was no way Siwoo hadn’t noticed the greeting.

Sejun scratched his cheek as he tried to remember if he had done something to offend him. He soon realized they hadn’t interacted enough for him to have even caused a problem.

It takes two to tango, and you need some kind of connection to even start a fight. Jeong Siwoo and Seo Sejun simply had zero history.

Maybe he’s just in a terrible mood today, Sejun told himself. He decided to just accept it. He really couldn’t think of any other explanation.

“The entrance spawned a bit high off the ground today, so it took us a while to set up the temporary stairs,” the employee quickly explained. Staff members knew that high-ranking hunters hated delays.

“Are you entering immediately?”

The moment the words were out, Jeong Siwoo headed for the dungeon entrance without saying a word.

The employee looked flustered by the sudden movement. Sejun watched the younger man’s back and scratched the back of his head.

“I think something upset him today.”

“Ah, I see…”

Sejun offered a strained smile to the staff member to smooth things over, then followed Siwoo into the dungeon. It was a joint raid, after all, and it wasn’t a good idea to let his partner get too far ahead.

With that familiar sensation of passing through a portal, Sejun stepped inside.

“Cough!”

A brutal sandstorm hit him the moment he entered, making him choke.

The interior was a desolate city. It felt like a ruin from a blockbuster movie after a massive battle between heroes and monsters. Not a single building remained intact.

Everything was shattered, cracked, or halved. Debris littered the ground. Unless a superhero had been throwing a tantrum, it felt like it would take a magnitude 20 earthquake to cause this level of destruction.

The fact that the area looked endless was another problem. Sejun coughed again and sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

He watched the dust clouds swirl instead of fresh air and wondered if he should have brought a mask. Then he shouted to Jeong Siwoo, who was already walking off into the distance.

“Jeong Siwoo! Don’t wander off alone!”

Even if an S-rank hunter cleared an A-rank dungeon, unexpected things could happen at any time. Sejun remembered the time he was caught by a mana-absorbing plant monster in a forest.

That risk was exactly why two-man cells were the standard. It was a safety rule written in blood.

Even setting that aside, it was practically a taboo for someone with a mental-type ability to lead the way, since their physical stats were usually much lower.

It didn’t matter if this was “just” an A-rank dungeon for an S-ranker.