Thud thud thud thud!
If it hadn't been for the brief silence between songs, the resident probably wouldn't have heard the noise at all.
"Uhm?"
A few seconds later, the young man in Unit 102, who had been quietly enjoying his hobby, finally noticed the disturbance at his front door.
"What—was that thunder?"
That was his first thought.
But the moment he took off his headphones, the situation became clear.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
Someone outside was pounding furiously on the metal door.
"Huh?"
The thunderous noise made his heart jump.
The resident of Unit 102 instinctively hunched his shoulders, but the people outside gave him no time to recover before shouting again.
"Come out!"
"Come out!"
"Neighbors! Open the door right now. Oh dear, oh dear!"
Correction.
Now that he listened more carefully, there seemed to be several people outside.
During the three minutes he had spent listening to music through his headset, the atmosphere in the hallway had changed completely.
The resident of Room 102 rose from his gaming chair and hurried toward the entrance, grumbling inwardly as he went.
F*ck, that scared me.
Come to think of it, isn't today my day off?
This crappy building... What the hell happened to cause this much commotion in the middle of a weekend afternoon?
For reasons completely unknown to him, his precious day off was being disturbed, and irritation naturally began to rise.
But that confidence disappeared the moment he opened the door.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming! Ugh, that noise is deafening—could you please stop banging on the door..."
Beep.
The instant he saw the person standing beyond the narrow crack of the open door, the resident froze with his headset still hanging around his neck.
"You... you know my face."
Kim...
"Kim Giryeo?"
S-rank Hunter Kim Giryeo.
The man who had been pounding on his door all this time was none other than him.
A striking-looking man in his twenties stood there, asking whether the resident recognized him.
For some reason, he was dressed lightly today, wearing only a black cotton T-shirt instead of his usual suit.
Even so, there was no difficulty recognizing him.
Kim Giryeo was a famous Hunter who appeared frequently on the news broadcasts of all three major terrestrial networks.
More than that, he was also the unusual neighbor who lived in the same shabby building.
The resident who had opened the door stared at him in shock.
"Heuk!"
Just as he had once thought after catching a glimpse of him through the window, television didn't capture even a fraction of that Hunter's presence.
Kim Giryeo normally suppressed his power almost completely for the sake of ordinary civilians, so there was none of the blazing pressure usually associated with an awakener.
But did he really need it?
The pressure in that gaze alone was more than enough.
The resident of Room 102 instantly transformed into a meek lamb under the man's piercing, three-white eyes.
Only moments earlier, he had been prepared to complain about someone hammering on his door so obnoxiously.
Now, under the chilling stare of the Hunter dressed in black, he found himself worrying that even the sound of his breathing might be too loud.
But none of that mattered right now.
"Looks like you really do recognize me."
"Ah, yes. Yes!"
The blond man, one arm resting against the doorframe, tilted his head slightly.
Then, after receiving the resident's frantic nod of confirmation, Kim Giryeo immediately explained why he had come.
"Then listen carefully. From this moment on, take only your most essential valuables and leave this building immediately."
"Yes?"
"Evacuate! I'm not telling you to run out with nothing but the clothes on your back. Grab your wallet or whatever you absolutely need within 30 seconds and get out. Now!"
It was a bolt from the blue.
Only minutes ago, he had been enjoying a peaceful weekend afternoon with his favorite band's music playing through his headphones.
Now someone was suddenly telling him to grab his valuables and abandon his home.
Under normal circumstances, he might have argued on the spot and demanded to know what the hell Kim Giryeo was talking about.
But the resident of Room 102, headset still hanging around his neck, immediately turned and sprinted back inside without a word.
That was the kind of weight carried by an S-rank Hunter's reputation.
More importantly, the atmosphere made one thing obvious.
Something was seriously wrong.
"Everyone, come out!"
"B, book... Where's our bank book?"
"Grandma, leave that! It's fine—we can do everything through internet banking these days anyway!"
The neighbors shouted frantically at one another.
At least humans were social creatures.
Once panic had spread through the building, the residents began urging one another to evacuate at the top of their lungs.
Before long, every occupied unit had been alerted to the situation.
"Haa..."
The blond figure, who had been rushing through the low-rise building with grim urgency, finally caught his breath after dragging the last remaining resident outside.
"I've done everything I can. Seriously, I've done everything I can..."
He muttered the words under his breath.
No one nearby heard him.
"...But what on earth is happening?"
"Hunter Kim Giryeo..."
"Kim Giryeo?"
"He suddenly started banging on our doors and told us to evacuate. Something about a dungeon and it being dangerous."
"A dungeon?!"
"Oh, that must be it. Maybe one of those red things appeared nearby."
"A Red Gate? How did he know a gate had appeared before anyone else and tell us to evacuate?"
"I don't know. Anyway, if an S-rank told us to leave, that's enough for me."
"Ugh, I should've brought an umbrella..."
Murmur.
Fortunately, every resident of the one-room building managed to evacuate within only a few minutes.
The weather had cleared somewhat around lunchtime.
But not long afterward, thick storm clouds covered the sky and rain began pouring down.
The mammals, who rarely bothered to look upward, craned their necks and stared at the ceiling of their planet.
Tuk, tuk.
The blond man, however, was accustomed to water.
He let the rain soak him from head to toe without bothering to quicken his pace.
He switched on his phone.
Several missed calls were displayed on the screen, but he made no attempt to return them.
He hadn't had the opportunity to check his phone while evacuating the building.
[Phone]
[Seo Esther (3) 2:58 PM]
[Seo Esther (6) 2:59 PM]
He had clearly expected Seonwoo Yeon to be the first person caught in trouble.
That was why he had arranged for someone to be stationed near her.
And yet, almost as though the enemy had been waiting for that exact moment, the incident had still erupted before the date had even changed.
"This fcking crazy bstard..."
A curse slipped from his lips.
It wasn't entirely clear whom it was directed at.
Rain continued pouring over his shoulders as the fugitive from the binary star system released a hollow, defeated sigh.
Part of him already felt as though he had lost.
Before he could mount even the slightest meaningful physical resistance, his opponent had launched a surprise attack.
The ceasefire was over.
Giiing.
And then, at last, disaster began.
At a specific set of coordinates in Mapo District, the radiant glow of a Blue Gate suddenly erupted.
Its emergence point, which the archmage had sensed in advance, was directly beneath a certain studio apartment building.
Worse, its radius was enormous.
Large enough to swallow the entire foundation of the cheap, rundown structure.
What had first appeared as a faint crack in space rapidly widened into a massive rupture.
"Haha."
The studio apartment building, from which the blond man had been the last to escape, began sinking into the passage of the newly formed Blue Gate.
"Kyaaah!"
"M, my home! My home!"
"Crazy."
"Who are we supposed to call for this? The Association? Should we call 119 too?"
The gateway to another world continued expanding without pause until it swallowed the entire building.
Krrrr.
The only shelter that had given him a second chance at life was disappearing.
From beyond the gate came an endless scraping sound, like dry sand grinding against itself.
But there was no reason to care about a space he had no intention of entering.
After all, this was nothing more than checkmate aimed at someone else.
"Well, no matter how stubborn someone is, if their entire house disappears, they don't really have a choice but to leave their room."
Just as a certain alien had analyzed Seonwoo Yeon's character and tried to recruit her as an ally.
Could this person have spent all this time analyzing his behavioral patterns as well?
Kim Giryeo watched dryly as the building's outer wall began to twist when its center of gravity collapsed.
"I..."
His instincts were sharp.
He had sensed the magic heading in this direction long before the gate fully manifested.
"...Excuse me. But isn't it a little late to come asking for reconciliation now?"
No answer came.
Which meant this could hardly be called a normal conversation.
A moment later, S-rank-level magic struck his skin like a downpour.
Then several magical tools, some of them disturbingly familiar, entered his field of vision.
A ribbon woven from red and white strands.
A shadow-like pattern spreading across the ground.
And on top of that, one mysterious item so unfamiliar that even a miserable wretch like him had never seen anything resembling it before.
Once he fully understood the situation, Kim Giryeo squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for what was about to happen.
Thud!
Within seconds, a tingling sensation shot through the nerves of his scalp, right where the sensory blocker had been installed.
***
...When I opened my eyes again, an unfamiliar space stretched out before me.
"_"
I came fully to my senses and slowly looked around.
It was a neat, somewhat spacious rectangular room.
A shabby light fixture, the kind one might expect to see in an interrogation room, hung from the ceiling and swayed faintly.
The walls were bare.
Nothing surrounded me but gray.
This was hardly a place one would associate with wealth.
"To think he'd use all those unidentified restraint items those cult kidnappers had... along with the [Shroud of the Underworld]."
But the person responsible for this incident possessed a terrifying collection of artifacts.
At least four different types.
The items used in the ambush each had a distinct function.
Memory-coordinate displacement.
Restraint.
Mana-use inhibition.
Casting disruption.
Aside from the Shroud of the Underworld and that particular ribbon, their appearances were unfamiliar to me.
But based on their effects alone, estimating their value wasn't difficult.
To capture a mere F-rank like me, my opponent had deployed expensive equipment likely worth tens of billions of won in total.
"Gathering all this equipment when you can't even use the auction house..."
So even if the Earthling standing in front of me chose to spend his time in a room without so much as a single piece of furniture, there was no questioning the fact that he was a capitalist.
I quietly shifted my gaze.
At the same time, I concentrated my senses, trying to determine exactly where I had been taken.
"Uh."
By sensing that all the nearby Blue Gates were positioned far above me, I realized that this room must be located considerably underground.
"Looks like you're awake."
The Earthling who had been standing with his back to me finally moved.
He stood tall, shoulders squared, and looked down at me for a long moment.
When our eyes met, he broke the silence with a greeting I had absolutely no desire to become accustomed to.
"Hello."
His voice was unusually deep, especially for an East Asian man like Kim Giryeo.
On top of that, there was something enormous about his presence, as though he were some deep-sea creature native to Earth.
There was really nothing more to say.
"By the way, it's 10:03 PM on Sunday. But since you don't have anywhere to go to work tomorrow anyway, I suppose the time doesn't really matter to you, does it?"
The perpetrator was Kang Changho.
And one unfortunate alien, ambushed by that S-rank Hunter, had now been transported to an unknown gray room.
"Phew, damn it..."
The very kidnapping trilogy I had feared so much had finally become reality.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter