Guild (06)
He thought he heard a strange sound. Startled, he looked around, but only saw Jeongwoo and Section Chief Yongtae Lim—no one else was visible.
– Save me, save me…
“Jeongwoo, don’t you hear anything?”
“What sound?”
Seeing the puzzled expressions of Jeongwoo and Section Chief Yongtae Lim, it seemed that sound was only audible to him. Jaehee bit his lips. It was such a small and faint voice that it was barely audible unless he listened carefully.
“What sound do you hear? What sound?”
“Wait a moment…”
Jaehee waved his hand at Jeongwoo’s question and quietly listened.
At first glance, it sounded like sobbing.
– Sa… save me, please save me… save me, please…
The sound, like a strangled moan, had something chilling about it. Jaehee unconsciously looked around the room. His spine felt cold.
“I can hear someone asking to be saved, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from… Co-could it be Kang Mingyu-ssi? Kang Mingyu-ssi’s status window also became blurred at the end and showed a message asking to be saved…”
“What kind of sound do you hear?”
Yongtae Lim asked with a puzzled expression. Jaehee flinched at Yongtae Lim’s question and looked around again.
At first, he thought it was a woman’s voice, but looking at the content asking to be saved, it seemed like it could be Kang Mingyu. However, the sound was so small and faint that it wasn’t easy to distinguish whether it was a woman or a man. He had thought it was Kang Mingyu, but when Yongtae Lim asked back, he wasn’t certain.
Jaehee perked up his ears and listened carefully, wondering if he might hear more sounds, but he couldn’t hear anything else.
Seeing Jeongwoo and Section Chief Yongtae Lim looking at him blankly, he felt somehow strange. Since the others said they couldn’t hear the sound, it felt like he was possessed by a ghost, and he wasn’t even sure what he had just heard.
But to dismiss it as just a hallucination, the voice had been too desperate. Even in that faint sound, he could feel the desperation. Could something like that really be a hallucination…?
“Jaehee, do you still hear the sound? If it’s not a message through the system window, hearing sounds directly is a very unusual situation…”
“Hmm, Jaehee-ssi, did it sound like Kang Mingyu-ssi’s voice to you?”
“I don’t know if it was Kang Mingyu-ssi or not. I definitely heard someone asking to be saved… But since I can’t hear it now, maybe I misheard. Maybe it’s because I’ve been tired lately…”
Even though it was a small sound, he had definitely heard it clearly. The words asking to be saved were repeated two or three times. But when he was the only one who heard a sound that no one else could hear, he lost confidence. Maybe he had misheard.
“No. If you heard it, then you probably really heard it. When you become an Awakened One, your entire body composition changes, so you wouldn’t hear such sounds just because you’re tired. But I don’t understand how you could hear sounds directly when it’s not a message through the system window.”
“Then let’s finish this discussion about the mysterious sound first. If you hear it again in the meantime, please tell us then, Jaehee-ssi.”
At Yongtae Lim’s words, Jaehee nodded. Yongtae Lim gave Jaehee and Jeongwoo each a copy of a report marked confidential. It was about the Bukhansan dungeon.
“The reason I asked to meet you two at the Management Bureau is because I’d like you to enter the Bukhansan dungeon as a rescue team. Currently, the Management Bureau doesn’t have the capacity to send a rescue team. In the report I gave you, you’ll see a map of the dungeon areas explored so far. The Bukhansan dungeon is quite a large-scale dungeon. Sahae Guild finding the boss room all at once was really lucky.”
Jaehee flipped through the report Yongtae Lim gave him while glancing at Jeongwoo. Jeongwoo was sitting slumped in his chair, glaring at Yongtae Lim with a displeased expression.
Actually, he had somewhat expected this from when he first heard about the Bukhansan dungeon.
“Section Chief Lim. Isn’t this too much for a newbie guild that just barely started? Besides, the conquest team was also Sahae Guild members, so it would be better for Sahae Guild to handle it.”
“That’s right. As Jaehee says, tell Sahae Guild to handle it themselves. They call themselves Korea’s largest and best guild, so surely they won’t say they can’t do it because they lack people?”
“I didn’t want to say this much…”
When both Jaehee and Jeongwoo spoke negatively, Yongtae Lim sighed and lowered his voice even more. Jaehee thought there were only three of them in the room anyway, so what difference would lowering his voice make, but he quietly listened to Yongtae Lim’s story.
“Sahae Guild’s reaction is quite strange in many ways. They just say nothing serious will happen so it’ll be fine, and they don’t seem to have any intention of sending people. I’m not asking you two to go into the Bukhansan dungeon and definitely rescue people. I’m just asking you to at least check if there are any other abnormalities. It’s also strange that they’re not showing any particular reaction even though strange things suspected to be amplifiers were discovered in front of the dungeon… I have a strange feeling about various things.”
“Did Lee Shinhoo directly say that? To leave it alone?”
“No. Actually, if I had talked directly with Lee Shinhoo-ssi, I probably wouldn’t be this worried, but it’s been several days since I could contact Lee Shinhoo-ssi. Sahae Guild just says there’s nothing particular happening and he’s just training… Ha, I wish I could believe that. I’m starting to think they might be hiding something that happened to Lee Shinhoo-ssi. If something happened to the guild master of Sahae Guild, Korea’s representative guild, it would be really serious.”
Section Chief Yongtae Lim shook his head. Separate from his close relationship with Lee Shinhoo, Sahae Guild being shaken would be a national disaster.
Yongtae Lim’s biggest mission was to stabilize society. That was the top priority goal of the Awakened Management Bureau.
So the Awakened Management Bureau was doing its best to monitor Awakened Ones to prevent them from causing social chaos with their superior power, while also helping civilians accept Awakened Ones as smoothly as possible.
But if Sahae Guild, which was said to represent Korea, collapsed or if something unseemly happened, the social ripple effects couldn’t be ignored.
“Hmm… Lee Shinhoo is out of contact, and Sahae Guild’s reaction is strange… Interesting.”
Jeongwoo’s eyes sparkled when he heard that Lee Shinhoo couldn’t be contacted.
Jaehee looked at Jeongwoo and wondered inwardly if he disliked Lee Shinhoo that much.
“Jaehee, what should we do?”
“I think dungeon exploration would be fine too. There will be contacts about guild membership before the 2nd mission starts, so it might be better to avoid them during that time.”
“Section Chief. Since our guild master says so, we’ll take on the Bukhansan dungeon.”
“Ah, having you two take it on is a great relief for me. With you two who conquered the practice dungeon and even the Daejeon Station S-class dungeon without casualties, what more do I have to worry about? If you need anything, please say so. The Management Bureau will provide unlimited material support. It would be best if you could rescue and bring out the people who went in first, but even if you can’t rescue them, we won’t hold you responsible.”
“Section Chief, this time you owe Eternal Guild a favor.”
“Haha, understood.”
At Jeongwoo’s words, Yongtae Lim laughed heartily.
Despite being young rather than just youthful, his abilities were extraordinary.
He had subtly erased the debt with this incident, considering how much he had helped with Eternal Guild’s establishment. Yet this didn’t make him seem crafty.
While guilds with Kings would be desperately trying to expand their power until the 2nd mission, he was grateful that they readily offered to go to the dungeon.
Actually, the Management Bureau was currently almost paralyzed.
Due to the suddenly announced 2nd Global Mission, they were so busy they would borrow even a cat’s paws if available. Not only were there civilian complaint calls asking what to do, but also contacts from high-ranking government officials and policy meetings made it impossible to go home, let alone sleep.
Moreover, unlike the 1st mission, the 2nd mission was problematic because it consisted of ambiguous content that was difficult to understand precisely.
It was unclear whether “night” was a metaphor or referred to actual night, and they didn’t know what kind of events would occur.
Everyone was equally ignorant, but from the Management Bureau’s standpoint, they couldn’t answer “we don’t know,” so it was killing them.
“We’ll overlook most things that happen in the Bukhansan dungeon, so feel free to act. Just make sure to report properly on what happened.”
Yongtae Lim thought it was quite ironic that he was placing such great expectations and reliance on two people who were high school students just a short while ago.
