After a brief pause, Deputy Chief Jeong continued in a firm voice.
“Given the possibility of dungeons whose ranks change after a time lag, the Association will, for the time being, prioritize deploying higher-rank Espers over the gate’s initial risk assessment whenever a Special-Type dungeon occurs…”
The Association’s position was succinct. A new kind of dungeon had appeared—one whose rank rose after entry—so they planned to hedge by adding Espers whose rank exceeded the gate’s level to the raid party. Since they’d already put capital-area Espers on standby after the rank shift, they couldn’t bury the incident outright; it looked like they’d chosen to disclose just enough to the press.
Even though it was an obvious preventive measure, it somehow felt trustworthy—no doubt thanks to Cha-hyeon. Simply sitting there like part of the backdrop, he radiated a quiet sense of reassurance.
“That’s all.”
Flashbulbs popped again. Several reporters raised their voices for questions, their mics catching the clamor. Deputy Chief Jeong nodded calmly.
“Yes, I’ll take questions. You there—MRN?”
Thanks to Cha-hyeon, Ji Se-min had sat in on plenty of interviews, and he was certain that while the Association acted as if it were fielding questions on the fly, it had already coordinated with media outlets and prepared a Q&A. Thinking it was practically over, Se-min relaxed into his chair—only to jolt upright at a reporter’s sudden bombshell.
“I’m Oh Seok-ju, intern reporter with MRN. There’s a point in your remarks I find questionable. Re-assessment of a dungeon’s rank after entry typically happens right after you go in, but that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. In that sense, isn’t this closer to a sign of the Third Gate Flood than to mere re-ranking?”
Sharp intakes of breath sounded across the room. The Third Gate Flood?
The Third Gate Flood. A chill of tension straightened Se-min’s spine.
South Korea had suffered three Gate Floods to date, and the Third—the one the reporter mentioned—was the gate overrun that broke out about eighteen years ago.
It devastated the Gangnam–Jamsil area of Seoul and the southern part of Gyeonggi Province, leaving heavy casualties and damage. Among the victims were both Se-min and Cha-hyeon. Se-min lost his parents and ended up living with his grandmother; Cha-hyeon watched his own parents die before his eyes.
And now they were saying this resembled the early signs of the Third Gate Flood? At that, Se-min searched his memory for what he’d learned in history class.
The Third Gate Flood began with an F-rank gate. Back then, the Center didn’t dispatch on-site support staff to every dungeon gate. So many gates appeared in a single day that they didn’t have the manpower to send to an F-rank gate—one even armed civilians could clear.
Because of that, low-rank gates typically went straight to attack after a brief report. An F-rank gate, with a maximum party of five, was slated to be cleared in about forty minutes, including a five-minute margin of error.
Yet three hours later, for some reason, the Espers who had gone in failed their mission, and that failure snowballed into the Third Gate Flood.
There’d been no on-site support staff then, and CCTV wasn’t installed everywhere the way it is now, so no one could determine how an F-rank dungeon escalated into a flood. Only a few circumstances remained on record, as follows:
- The initial rank assessment is suspected to have been wrong due to the technology of the time.
- The flood occurred well past the predicted clear time.
- The raid completion time recorded by the Center was 35 minutes after entry.
With technology that primitive, the Center could only speculate—perhaps a recording error during the raid, or maybe the dungeon had been a time-distortion type.
And now they were saying the dungeon Cha-hyeon entered alone shared similarities with the one that sparked the Third Gate Flood?
It was a plausible hypothesis with pieces that lined up. Se-min’s back went cold. He leaned toward the TV as if being drawn in. He wasn’t the only one shocked; for a while, the screen showed nothing but the flicker of camera flashes.
Deputy Chief Jeong—usually an open book—merely arched an eyebrow once, then bent toward the mic.
“As I mentioned earlier, undefined, unknown gates have continued to appear of late. Gates that were sometimes re-ranked used to be written off as measurement error, but they’re now classified as a new type. Dungeon gates open to the unknown, so it’s more reasonable to treat them as new-type dungeons.”
“But—!”
“Additionally—”
Deputy Chief Jeong cut the interruption off, crisp and decisive.
“Esper Sung Cha-hyeon succeeded in the raid, and that dungeon has been extinguished. Once it’s cleared, there is no threat. The Republic of Korea has outstanding Espers and ample strength to stop a Gate Flood and protect the public. That is all.”
As he stepped back from the mic, the moderator—rattled by the sudden turn—quickly passed the floor to another reporter. Thankfully, the rest of the questions sounded like they’d been prearranged.
The once-restless room gradually settled, and Se-min slumped back against his chair.
Cold sweat still dampened his palms. He briskly wiped them on his pants. In the meantime, it became the final questioner’s turn.
“A question for Esper Sung Cha-hyeon.”
The man who’d sat like a statue finally tilted his head toward the mic. The reporter asked a question that was clearly part of the script.
“You solo-cleared a dungeon that shifted from C-rank to S-rank. In that case, did it have two bosses, or one?”
“As far as I remember, one.”
With a two-hour blank in his memory, Cha-hyeon couldn’t know for certain, so he added the qualifier “as far as I remember”—a neat dodge that was also technically true. Deputy Chief Jeong hurried to jump in, deliberately.
“That was the case this time, but for any dungeons that might appear later, we’re leaving open the possibility that the number of bosses could vary—or stay the same—depending on rank.”
Bureaucrat to the bone, he’d built himself an escape hatch for the day a similar dungeon appeared and complaints rolled in about why the story had changed. Se-min couldn’t help being impressed.
Another reporter followed up.
“At the time, not knowing it was a dungeon whose rank would change after entry, you recognized it as C-rank, correct? Did it feel like a C-rank gate to you as well? Did it seem harder than usual?”
“Hard to say. It just felt doable.”
So flat it edged into arrogance. The question had likely been designed to spotlight Cha-hyeon’s prowess, but thanks to the earlier ambush, the mood had swung into flag-waving pride—‘Whatever danger comes, as long as Sung Cha-hyeon’s here, Korea’s safe.’
A soft chorus of “ooo” rose among the reporters, followed by a burst of laughter.
Once the laughter ebbed, the room felt palpably looser. The Association’s stance seemed far more realistic than the intern’s conspiracy-tinged question—he’d obviously come in place of a senior.
“We heard it was a solo clear; what strategy did you use?”
There wasn’t a trace of unease left among the press. Even though the final question had technically wrapped things up, momentum carried them into a few extras. Cha-hyeon answered without fuss.
“It was a wave-type dungeon, so there wasn’t really a ‘strategy.’ You just empty your head and move.”
“Impressive. Esper Sung Cha-hyeon, your pair guide—Guide Ji Se-min—must’ve been really shocked since this was a first, right? Did you get a lot of worried calls?”
“A lot, yeah.”
As if no one had ever been murmuring, the place had turned into a near talk-comedy stage. The tension had drained completely—for Se-min, too. He picked up the orange juice he’d bought at the convenience store.
While he slowly twisted the cap open, Deputy Chief Jeong on the TV swept his gaze over the reporters as if to close things out.
“All right, thank you. If there are no further questions, shall we wrap here?”
No one answered outright, but the hum of back-and-forth made it clear they were winding down. That was when Deputy Chief Jeong bent toward the mic again.
“Ah! Just one more—Esper Sung Cha-hyeon! Are you and your pair guide, Guide Ji Se-min, still close like hyung and dongsaeng?”
With the bottle at his lips, Se-min jerked and coughed. Luckily, he hadn’t taken a sip yet, so nothing went down the wrong pipe. Laughter burst again in the interview hall, now fully a comedy stage.
The question was familiar and tedious to Se-min. With only a few swapped words, it never failed to show up in interviews with Cha-hyeon. At first, from the vantage point of unrequited love, it had stabbed him in the heart; by now, he’d reached the point of pretending not to hear it—“There they go again.”
“Ah-ha…?”
On TV, Cha-hyeon drew the sound out, one brow lifting. His lips pushed into a faint pout as his gaze slid left. Reporters tittered at his obvious reluctance to entertain a question he didn’t want to hear.
“Good grief,” Se-min exhaled, turning away from the TV to sip his orange juice.
“We’re dating.”
“Pfft!”
