# Chapter 13
If I were to rank the strangest things you could see in a dungeon where monsters are lurking, this action would definitely take first place.
While I was wondering what on earth he was doing, something strange happened.
Suddenly, the air seemed to ripple, and the objects around us became distorted and twisted.
At first, I thought it was because of the monster’s heat, but then colors were added to the changing surroundings and different shapes appeared, until finally everything around us completely changed.
It was so different that I almost forgot we were in a dungeon. Before I knew it, the monster had disappeared, and only Shim Woo-jin and I remained in that space.
Woo-jin played the violin and occasionally looked at me, checking my expression.
‘…What? Was this Woo-jin’s ability? Something like switching senses?’
The sound he created not only stimulated the hearing but was also creating images.
What he created was an endless ocean.
I was standing on a hill with a gentle breeze, looking at a sea with shimmering silver waves, and Woo-jin was beside me.
He wasn’t holding a violin anymore; he was just looking at me.
He wasn’t wearing the clothes he had on when he came to the dungeon with me. Instead, he looked unbelievably beautiful and handsome as he smiled warmly.
Now he was even making his own appearance look like an illusion.
The place that unfolded before me looked peaceful and cozy.
The monster must be seeing something completely different.
That would be Woo-jin’s attack.
I didn’t know why Woo-jin was showing me these things, but it wasn’t helping me at all.
We hadn’t moved to a different place, but the monster that had been there until just now was no longer visible.
I couldn’t see the monster I needed to fight and kill.
Even if Woo-jin thought he was being considerate, I didn’t need that kind of consideration.
Several times, his figure became blurry and tore apart like a shredded flag before coming back together again.
This happened more frequently as time passed, and a few times his form completely disappeared.
This meant the monster wasn’t something Woo-jin could easily handle.
I wanted to ask him to remove this illusion, but worried that it might break his concentration and put Woo-jin himself in danger, I drew my mind sword.
It was a sword technique I rarely used, but it seemed necessary now to remove the illusion blocking my eyes.
With just one swing of the formless mind sword, the space returned to its true appearance.
If I had used this mind sword, which only masters of the extreme can use, in the martial arts world, everyone there, no matter how skilled, would have knelt down. But there was no such acclaim here.
There was no one who would recognize it, and the only human with me seemed too distracted to expect anything.
I stood blankly at the scene unfolding before my eyes.
‘Why is that…?’
The scene revealed when I cut through Woo-jin’s illusion wasn’t the dungeon I knew.
It was like when I hurriedly shot an arrow to catch a pursuing wolf, but ended up killing several beasts at once.
Monsters from the abyss-like darkness were dying, spilling their bodily fluids, and that darkness was collapsing.
‘A Gate…?’
Could that be a Gate?
At first I was confused, but soon became certain.
I had only heard about Gates appearing in dungeons, but the moment I saw it, I realized it could only be a Gate.
My mind sword not only tore through the illusion covering my eyes but also cut down the monsters coming out and even collapsed the Gate that was spewing them.
Woo-jin stood in a daze before slowly turning toward me.
Knowing he was about to turn around, I turned my head away, pretending not to know anything about what had happened.
‘No. I shouldn’t turn away. Woo-jin probably thinks I’m still seeing the illusion and feeling safe. So what should I do in this situation? Should I act like I’m seeing an illusion?’
But it seemed too late.
Woo-jin appeared to have come here without properly checking the dungeon that had appeared, just wanting to bring me here faster than the other S-class Espers.
And it seemed he had brought me to the most dangerous of the newly appeared dungeons, wanting to show off his skills to me, but unfortunately a Gate had opened there.
Even if he had tried to find out more details, the existence of a Gate inside a dungeon wasn’t something the Center could know beforehand.
Once every few years, a Gate would open inside a dungeon, and what happened to people who entered such dungeons at those times was unknown.
Even I, who had read the novel, didn’t know, so no matter how hard the Center’s researchers worked on it, there would be no way to know.
People who entered those dungeons never came out, and when others went in later, only traces of the Gate that had completed its mission remained.
People said monsters came through the Gate and took away the Espers, and that’s exactly what happened this time.
If there had been only one or two monsters, things would have gone according to Woo-jin’s plan, but what an unlucky coincidence.
Woo-jin must have realized his ability was almost useless in this case and felt sorry for bringing me there.
Woo-jin kept looking at me.
Even the world’s number one ranked Tae-young couldn’t eliminate a Gate.
That wasn’t just a guess, but a proven fact.
Tae-young and Kyun In had once entered a dungeon where a Gate appeared to clean up the aftermath, and more than half of the Espers who went with them died.
That was after other people had gone to tackle it and disappeared, so they were deployed later and survived. Many people said that if it hadn’t been that way, they might have died together that day.
After barely sealing the Gate, both of them lost control of their powers, and Ha-min had to risk his life to perform Guiding that day.
This was content that appeared in a flashback scene spanning one or two paragraphs in the novel, and after I woke up here, I had heard other Espers talking about it.
Sealing.
Right… sealing.
What almost every Esper from the Center could barely do was gather Espers with barrier abilities to create a barrier and seal it.
They blocked the Gate to prevent more monsters from coming out, and even after that, dozens of Espers lost their lives before they finally succeeded in sealing it. When the dungeon disappeared, the Gate also vanished with it, and that was the end of it.
After that, everyone was on alert, not knowing when a Gate might appear in a dungeon again, and it just happened to appear today.
“Eunwoo… sir?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do that?”
“Do what?”
Now there was no choice.
I had to pretend I didn’t know.
“Just now, that Gate…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was surprised when the sea suddenly appeared, and when I came to my senses, we were here?”
“…”
Woo-jin tilted his head.
Yes, think it was just your imagination.
But he turned his head back toward the Gate.
The Gate, which had collapsed so completely and miserably, was a new reminder that Gates could look like that.
The boundary was collapsing, and the darkness seemed to be retreating stealthily as the gap closed on its own.
I could understand how confused Woo-jin must be right now.
“Shall we go if we’re done?”
Feeling that staying here longer would only be disadvantageous for me, I spoke up, and he nodded as if he had no choice.
As we left, Woo-jin looked back several more times.
He might be wondering if he had done it himself.
Although I was a physical enhancer, it would be hard for him to imagine that my ability could destroy a Gate.
The attack methods he could imagine for me would be punching or kicking, which would make it even harder to imagine.
On the way back to the Center, I drove the car while Woo-jin had to make a report.
Normally, there would be no need to report urgently on the way back.
They would just report that they had cleared the dungeon as they exited.
But this time, we had to inform the Center that a Gate had appeared in the dungeon we had cleared.
The moment the word “Gate” was mentioned, the people who received his call made such a fuss that even my ears hurt sitting next to him.
He seemed to feel the same way and moved his device away from his ear.
[“Where are you now, Esper-nim?”]
“On my way back to the Center.”
[“…What? What about the dungeon… Did you just leave the dungeon?”]
“We cleared it.”
[“But you just said a Gate appeared…”]
“I said we cleared it and are on our way back.”
[“But how? Didn’t you only go with Seo Eunwoo Esper? Was it definitely a Gate? If a Gate appeared, this doesn’t make sense.”]
“I’ll give a detailed report when we get there. I’m hanging up.”
Then he ended the call.
He sighed quietly, seemingly annoyed by the repeated questions, then turned to look at me.
“You drive well.”
He spoke in a tone that contrasted with his previous manner.
“Yes.”
“Nothing else you want to talk about?”
“No. I’m tired.”
“Really? You’re tired?”
Was he asking what I could be tired from, since I hadn’t done anything in the dungeon?
Or was he asking if it had something to do with making the Gate collapse like that?
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
