I didn’t know why Mark was in Suwon, but my instincts told me something was wrong.
The fact that the residents evacuated quickly as if they expected the Dungeon Break to occur, Lee Hwan deliberately asking for help in the top 10 ranked Awakened’s chatroom, and Mark suddenly showing up here—
all of it felt suspicious and uneasy.
“Could it be that the Dungeon Management Bureau even sent Mark to stir things up?”
Normally, I’m pretty oblivious unless my life is seriously at risk, but this time my bad feeling was making my mind race.
Mark, noticing I didn’t understand English, quickly pulled out his phone.
Then, as if data wasn’t working inside the dungeon, he waved his phone around in the air.
“Wait a minute!”
He spoke in brief Korean, holding out his palm as if to say “hold on,” then dashed outside.
Soon after, he hurried back inside and showed me his phone screen.
It looked like he’d run a translator, and the English had been translated into Korean.
[I toured Suwon. Dungeon Break happened by chance. I am your big fan. It would be a great honor to close the gate together.]
This world’s translators must be underdeveloped.
Reading the awkwardly translated Korean made me dumbfounded.
“Really?”
I was suspicious but decided I might be overthinking and put my doubts aside.
Then, I gestured for Mark to leave.
I appreciated that he was a fan, but I didn’t want any chance of my identity being revealed while closing the gate alongside America’s top-ranked Awakened.
“Why? why?”
Mark asked again in short Korean.
Even if I spoke, he wouldn’t understand my voice, and I was tongue-tied trying to reply in English, so I just waved him off.
Since it was already well known that I could summon Spirits, I couldn’t call one to forcibly eject him.
“Such a headache.”
Mark stubbornly stood his ground, summoned monsters, and started killing them.
“Now that America’s #1 is here, isn’t it okay for me to leave?”
I briefly thought that, but then worried people would criticize me for abandoning the Dungeon Break to America’s top Awakened.
Public opinion can turn on a dime. I’d experienced that countless times in my previous life.
I’d been tirelessly running around this world closing gates and saving people from sudden gates and Dungeon Breaks, trying to change my image.
If I just left now, my reputation would instantly plummet.
“I didn’t used to care about my image.”
I lived recklessly before possession, but here, I couldn’t.
After enduring constant criticism and risking my body to close gates, I was finally rebuilding my image—and I wasn’t about to throw that away.
“Do whatever you want, then.”
I didn’t care if Mark followed me or not and went my own way.
But since earlier, my eyes kept drifting to Mark’s feet.
The hallucinatory monster I saw at the cafe before was scurrying along in step with Mark’s pace.
The monsters didn’t seem to be showing any illusions, so why did he summon them?
I felt strangely drowsy bit by bit, and that monster kept catching my attention.
“Could he be casting hallucinations on me?”
Half-Blood had said if I had more time, I might have fallen under hallucinations.
If I was slowly succumbing to hallucinations, I needed to act before it was too late.
I grabbed my head deliberately and slowed my pace, watching Mark carefully.
As I slowed down, I saw him watching me without acting like himself.
I flopped down completely, dropped my head, and closed my eyes.
“Last time, it seemed like you couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating or not.”
If I hadn’t met Mark at the cafe, I wouldn’t have known this.
Half-Blood was pretending to be hallucinating when he wasn’t, and Mark was happily cheering him on. That meant there was no way to know for sure if I was hallucinating.
Sitting silently, I sensed Mark approaching quietly.
He cautiously came close and waved his hand in front of my face, as if checking whether I really was trapped in hallucinations.
“I think I get his game.”
I thought that if I stepped outside, neither the Dungeon Management Bureau nor Mark would leave me alone. So I watched carefully to see what he would do.
***
Mark was caught in the biggest dilemma of his life.
His original plan was to lead me out the moment I fell into hallucinations and manipulate the illusions I saw.
Mark and Lee Hwan had agreed that once Mark brought me outside, Lee Hwan would close the gate.
But seeing me collapse right before his eyes made him hesitate.
“Is this the right thing to do?”
He had accepted the mission out of fandom to figure out my identity, but now that it was happening, he wondered if it was really okay.
I must have had my reasons for hiding my identity.
If he revealed it to the whole world, I’d hate it.
“I should see for myself first.”
If he was the only one who confirmed my identity and then lied that I wasn’t hallucinating outside, it would ease his guilt.
Mark tried to use his skill to control the hallucinations I was seeing.
He was about to bring in the hallucination monsters and get started.
“Huh? What?”
His skill didn’t activate.
He hurriedly looked down.
I was gripping his arm tightly, staring up at him with a chilling glare.
Before using the skill, he couldn’t know if I was hallucinating or not.
A shiver ran down his spine as he froze in place.
“What were you trying to do?”
I must have guessed his intentions long ago.
A distorted voice, like noise, echoed in his ear.
He thought, I should’ve learned some Korean earlier.
Mark was agonizing over how to explain this to me.
Suddenly, the surroundings filled with pitch-black fog.
With visibility gone, Mark instinctively tried to escape.
But then something huge appeared behind him and wrapped around him like a constricting coil, binding him tightly.
Even the monsters he cared for seemed bound somewhere, unable to move, only whining softly.
A helplessness Mark had never felt back in America overwhelmed him.
He struggled with all his strength to break free from whatever was restraining him, but the binding thing remained unbroken, no matter how much force he used.
“Why can’t I move?”
He tried to exert power in his arms, legs, and body, but it felt like more than just the solid restraints were holding him down.
His consciousness began to fade.
He tried to cling to awareness, but before long, his head dropped.
***
Using black fog, shackles of darkness, and Spirit Arts, I had barely managed to trap Mark and his monsters.
I looked at Mark, head bowed, and told Tebeo,
[Show me the scene where the director of the Dungeon Management Bureau is pressuring me about why he couldn’t discover Nada’s identity.]
I’d run some experiments alone in the dungeon, including one related to Tebeo’s hallucination ability.
I captured a monster, summoned Tebeo, and tested whether I could create the hallucinations I wanted.
If I got unlucky and someone figured out my identity inside the dungeon, I planned to immediately show illusions.
Then they’d think even seeing me was part of the hallucination.
To do that, I had to check if I could show the scenes I wanted.
After a few trials, I confirmed Tebeo could control hallucinations and decided to use that power on a person for the first time.
If Mark had no ties to the Dungeon Management Bureau, he’d be confused.
If he did, he might understand what was going on.
I took out my phone and turned on the recording function.
Since I couldn’t understand Mark’s words, I planned to play the recording for Half-Blood later and ask what he said.
“Is it because he’s rank 1? Holding him this long is tough.”
Feeling the skill loosening, I recorded Mark mumbling.
“…I’m, Nada big fan… came from New York… that’s not it… Nada don’t go…”
As the skill nearly wore off and Mark’s monsters began moving again, the Spirits killed the boss monster and the surroundings slowly changed.
I quickly withdrew my skill, gathered the Spirits, and hid.
Thud—
Once the thing holding me disappeared, Mark collapsed to the floor.
“Mark!”
As the gate closed, Mark fell from the sky.
Lee Hwan saw this and rushed to him.
After confirming the arrival of the Four Heavenly Kings and Yeon Ha-Yeon, I returned to school.
On the way back, I sent Half-Blood a message.
[See you at 6.]
***
That evening, I met Half-Blood at his place and told him what happened during the day.
“You captured America’s rank 1 and cast hallucinations on him?”
“Ugh, that was tough.”
I hadn’t done much physically, but my shoulders felt stiff, so I rubbed them.
Half-Blood gave me a bewildered laugh.
“Huh, how did I get such an amazing friend?”
“Hurry up and translate the recording. I want to know what the Dungeon Management Bureau was up to.”
“Sounds painful.”
“What would you do if you found out?”
“I’d properly warn them so they never try something like that again.”
If they deliberately caused the Dungeon Break, I wouldn’t just let it slide.
They didn’t know what lengths they’d go to find out my identity, so it was best to scare them properly.
Half-Blood listened to the recording first, then looked back at me with a serious expression.
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