Chapter 675 – The Ark
“…Let’s talk for a moment.”
Seong-il begins to calmly recite his condition to Lee Ah-hyun, who asks him back with a firm expression.
“First and leave with me.”
“And?”
“Second. From now on, you will become a subordinate and executive of the organization I will create, and you will run the organization with me. Of course, you will have to devote your allegiance to me from now on.”
“…”
“The third, of course, is to keep everything I’ve said a secret.”
When Seong-il mentions ‘organization’ or ‘loyalty’, Lee Ah-hyun’s expression hardens little by little with tension.
In addition, since Seong-il’s words were simply dismissed as bluffing, Ah-yeon could feel the sincerity in his words, so Ah-yeon felt something trivial and couldn’t say anything.
“…If you accept that condition, you’re going to share the secret, right?”
“Huh.”
Lee Ah-hyeon asks Seong-il back and thinks about something while slightly biting his beautiful lips.
“…Give me time to think.”
For some reason, Ah-hyeon, who smells the strong scent of a secret, feels that her life will change after hearing Seong-il’s secret. So, slightly hesitant, she sighs lightly and tells her Seong-il.
“…Give me some time to think about it.”
“Yes. However, after you hear my secret, your life may change completely, so think about it seriously.”
“Okay.”
Seong-il rarely speaks so seriously, so Lee Ah-hyun listens to him seriously.
“Then… Shall we continue what we’ve been doing?”
“Ah…?”
The time when Lee Ah-hyun, who couldn’t understand Seong-il’s sudden words, stared blankly at him. Seong-il puts her on her bed without hesitation and caresses her cute tummy with her lips.
“Also…!?”
“Yes. Since it happened, I’ll let you lie under my stomach until the sun rises.”
“…”
Lee Ah-hyeon hears Seong-il’s blatant lines and blushes.
Previously, she would have hated it and would have been angry at his words, but for some reason, instead of feeling bad after hearing her words, she feels a strange satisfaction filling her deep.
“Huh…!!”
As she hugged the back of a reliable man who was crushing her body, Ahyeon began to let out her sticky moan without hiding it.
***
“Tough work~!”
“Yes. See you there.”
One of the reasons for returning to reality was the core for the game master, so Seong-il volunteered for the fastest dungeon clearing mission.
‘…It’s been a while here.’
Seong-il is lost in thought while looking at the teleportation device that allows him to move from the dimensional gap to the basement of Seoul.
“Start teleporting to destination. 5… 4…”
After a brief countdown by the operator, Seongil’s body is enveloped in intense light. And when she closed and opened her eyes once, she could see that she had arrived at the collapsed subway.
‘It’s been a while too.’
Seong-il, who has felt the strange feeling of her ark’s teleportation for the first time in a long time, shakes her head and tries to get rid of the motion sickness that came to her.
“The dungeon that Han Seong-il team will clear is near the L-29 area. We will lend you equipment to locate the dungeon, so when you clear it, use the emergency escape device to return.”
Yoo Jun-kyung, who led the three groups of under hunters, looks at Seong-il, who has grown into the leader of the C-class hunters, and explains the precautions to him.
“Hunter Yu Sangjun, the B-class dungeon you will solve is…”
After giving the team leader the coordinates of the dungeon to be cleared, Yoo Jun-gyeong bids farewell to Seong-il and all other team members and moves toward the underground city.
“Hmm… Where is that man going? I know the A-class dungeon marked on the map is not over there.”
As the other hunter team completely disappears from her eyes, her seongil mumbles to herself.
“Oh, that one? I’m going to the Undercity to get the ‘reward’.”
“…Repair?”
After hearing Park Dong-woo, a former underground refugee with whom he has become quite close, Seong-il asks back with a puzzled look on his words.
“Yes. The Under Hunter Association secretly plants ‘informants’ in each underground city. I get various information related to dungeon occurrences, government association agents, etc. From them.”
“Hmm… Are you receiving information in exchange for safety?”
“Isn’t it? If you only offer something like that as a reward, the Under Hunter Association won’t get any cooperation from the underground refugees, right?”
“Hmm…?”
After hearing Park Dong-woo’s words, Seong-il doesn’t understand what he’s saying, so he blinks at him. As if he had seen Seong-il’s reaction once or twice, Park Dong-woo laughed and began to explain to him the close relationship between underground refugees and under-hunters.
“Unexpectedly, the underground refugees do not like the Under Hunter. When they find out that the Under Hunter and the underground refugees collude, the government’s pawns come and slaughter or capture the people of the Underground City.”
The shocking story of Park Dong-woo. At first glance, the underworld is the government. No, it seemed to be free from the oppression of the aliens, but the reality seemed completely different.
‘…You’re leaving the underground refugees alone because they’re nothing more than ‘small fish’ that don’t pose a threat, right? However, since the Ark is an organization that poses a real threat to the aliens, if we find a connection, we attack immediately.’
For that reason, the refugees of the Underground City did not seem to be friendly to the Under Hunters.
Because of this, the Under Hunters usually disguised themselves as merchants, visited the underground city, and secretly made informants and secretly exchanged information from them.
“…So, the informant usually hides the connection between himself and the Under Hunter. Instead, the ark provides advanced equipment and medicines necessary for survival for the informant who does such a hard work.”
“That’s it…”
After hearing Park Dong-woo’s explanation, Seong-il was able to understand Yoo Jun-kyung’s actions. However, at the same time, he comes up with an additional question and asks a question while looking at Park Dong-woo.
“But how the hell do you know that? Are you also an informant?”
“No? In fact, I didn’t know anything until I was captured by an informant and heard the truth.”
Park Dong-woo explains his past to Seong-il in a nonchalant tone, as if talking about someone else’s business.
He tells Seong-il that he collected scraps to survive in the underground city, or worked at a factory where the old psionic machine handed over from the ark was installed.
“My body strength got stronger from one day when I was constantly exposed to psionic energy in the factory? I guess it was because I just grew up… I thought… But my body weight and height were the same. “
“Are you awakened?”
“Yes. I was affected by the psionic waves emitted from the psionic machine every day, so I awakened as a body enhancer without realizing it.”
Park Dong-woo explains that he acted as a vigilante in the underground city based on his ability to strengthen his body.
“…Then, pretending to be a coincidence, I met Yoo Jun-kyung. That’s when I got the offer to scout the Ark.”
“Hmm… Feigned coincidence?”
“Uh. Actually, the informant who was keeping an eye on me explained my situation to the Under Hunter. One of the most important tasks of the informant was to identify the psychic who appeared in the underground city.”
‘It’s good.’
Apparently, wild Awakeners are eventually remodeled to suit the taste of aliens due to constant contamination of the dungeon, so the Ark seemed to actively seek out and scout Awakeners in the Underground City to interfere with the aliens’ plans.
‘Good hair. If you do that, you may interfere with the alien’s plan, or you may supplement the lack of hunter manpower. Even, the limited resources of the ark can be managed in an optimized state.’
Seong-il is bittersweet, but it cannot be denied that the heartless ‘planned management’ of the Under Hunter and the Ark is effective.
“In return, the informant gets advanced equipment made in the ark?”
“No? The ark usually provides cheap equipment. Even the consumption rate is high, so you have to replace it often.”
“Hmm?! Why?! You take such a big risk, and the ark only provides cheap equipment?!”
When Park Dong-woo says that he is helping mankind in the most humane way possible and that he pays for dangerous information gathering with cheap equipment, Seong-il asks in a puzzled tone.
“Ah, that has circumstances.”
Surprisingly, Park Dong-woo does not show any anger at the attitude of the Ark, who is a man of atrocities. In addition, he calmly explains to Seong-il why the Ark provides only cheap equipment in exchange.
“Hmm… You mean using too good equipment will catch the eye of government minions, right?”
“Yes. Even though it is not controlled by the government, what will they suspect if you suddenly use high-end equipment?”
“But…”
Although underground cities are not managed by the government, Park Dong-woo explains that underground refugees cannot completely hide from the government because they set up surveillance organizations to deal with impurities.
“Did you manage to hold on too?”
“Um… I just lived after I was born, so I lived. Well… It was a shame, but what can I do?
After explaining his own life, Park Dong-woo begins to explain the life of a miserable underground refugee.
Underground refugees say that they risk their lives to infiltrate dangerous places to find psionic waste in order to supply scarce food or purify polluted water.
“…That’s why psionic extractors smuggled on the ground or obtained from underhunters are really important. If you extract psionic energy from the blood of tainted mutant monsters, you can get various resources necessary for survival. A typical example is farming. .”
‘They really live miserably.’
Seong-il feels a sense of bitterness when he hears of the pain that nomads will suffer as a price for gaining freedom from alien oppression, even if it is limited.
“That’s why when I was asked to scout from the Ark, I accepted without hesitation. You haven’t eaten artificially cultured meat, right? Eww. How have you lived on it so far?”
Park Dong-woo constantly talks about the miserable life of free people as if joking around.
He explains to Seong-il that underground refugees are exposed to psionic waves for a long time and suffer from all sorts of diseases, and that they also suffer from madness.
“The most terrible thing is, of course, psionic predators. Bastards. Trash bastards who awaken their superpowers and instead of helping people, they rob people…”
‘The lack of public security… Of course.’
When Seong-il hears from Park Dong-woo about the misery of the refugees living in the underground city, he smiles bitterly without realizing it.
‘…I can put an end to this tragedy.’
Hearing the tragic story, Seong-il feels a strong desire to save today’s broken humanity once again.
‘But how do you get them to the ark? Should I just blindly kidnap? That’s too inefficient…’
Seong-il knew very well that although he had become quite strong, in the end he was still just an individual.
‘Whoa… Bringing them randomly is unreasonable at the moment. Should I just delay the plan…?’
Seong-il feels her head getting complicated. In the meantime, he feels intense psionic energy stimulating his senses and looks ahead.
“Whoa~ This is the dungeon we’re going to solve today.”
“…It’s a C-class dungeon. It’s been a while.”
“…? Didn’t you just destroy two C-class dungeons this week?”
“…I want to destroy it every day. I said it’s been a while.”
Seong-il lightly wraps the mistake he made as if it were a joke, and carefully puts his hand in his chest.
‘Shall we start soon?’
As the group begins to break through the psionic barrier to enter the dungeon, Seong-il carefully opens the inventory in his arms, takes out a miniature doll of the Creator, and secretly throws it on the floor.
『Do what I asked you to do well?』
“Believe me!”
As soon as the doll of the Creator is summoned, it immediately uses invisibility magic and hides itself. After that, he picks up a small twig given to him by Seongil and starts to leave.
