Chapter 2

Before I could even process the status window floating before my eyes—

Thud!

A floor materialized out of nowhere, and I slammed my tailbone straight into it.

“Ow……”

I rubbed my lower back and climbed to my feet—then had to question everything my eyes were telling me.

“What the……?”

I’d been sure I was the only one who’d fallen into the intersection gate, yet hundreds, thousands of people surrounded me, their faces pale and drawn as they took in their surroundings.

“I wasn’t the only one who fell in?”

And every single one of them was craning their necks upward, murmuring among themselves.

I followed their gaze.

“Wh—?”

A dumb sound escaped my mouth. I looked up again just to be certain.

Above me, instead of an open sky, the ground itself curved in a great arc overhead.

The realization hit me all at once.

This gate was a space shaped like an enormous hamster wheel.

Standing there feeling very much like a hamster, I took in the scene around me and arrived at one conclusion.

“We’re screwed.”

Twenty years had passed since gates first appeared in the world. South Korea had made dazzling technological advances in that time, and more than a few exceptional hunters had risen to prominence.

Which meant that for any ordinary surprise gate, hunters would have arrived swiftly to mount a rescue.

But this—

The reason I’d called it screwed was that this gate was a labyrinth. And not just any labyrinth—it was a rare gate that had appeared only once in the twenty years since gates began manifesting, leaving almost no data trail whatsoever.

Just find the exit, you say? How hard could it be?

Rrrumble—……

Easier said than done. The labyrinth walls stood five meters high and shifted position every three minutes.

A gate with no proper strategy guide, and a massive maze whose paths changed constantly.

Even if a top-ranked hunter showed up, without a tracking or search skill, the odds of starving to death while hunting for the exit were higher than the odds of actually finding it.

“The hunters will come rescue us soon.”

“Everyone, please stay calm!”

The people who’d dropped into the same open clearing as me were rallying one another, trading words of encouragement.

If only I’d known nothing about gates, I might have shared their hope. But I knew too much for that.

“Why did I even bother finishing hunter training school……”

Just then, a man’s voice cut through the murmuring crowd.

“Let’s all stick together and wait until the hunters arrive!”

A sensible call. When you’re stranded, the safest thing to do is stay put and wait for rescue.

Under normal circumstances, that is.

“Everyone, run!”

Unlike that man, I was shouting at the crowd to scatter and flee. Because in the distance, I could see a swarm of winged monsters bearing down on us.

“There are winged monsters coming!”

But people just looked around in confusion, asking why and what are you talking about.

Of course they couldn’t believe me—they couldn’t see anything yet.

But my senses were honed to a level no ordinary person could match. My eyes and ears could already feel them coming!

“Flying-type monsters are about to attack! Run!”

By my estimate, at the speed they were moving, the monsters would reach us in thirty seconds. In about ten, people would be able to see them with the naked eye.

But by then, it would be too late to run. The distance from this clearing to the maze was too great.

“Get into the labyrinth! Out here in the open like this, you’ll be picked off immediately!”

I screamed until my throat felt raw, grabbing at the clothes of anyone near me, pleading with them over and over to run with me.

But the crowd seemed to feel safer huddled together—nobody had any intention of listening.

‘This is out of my hands.’

I bit down hard on my lip.

“If you want to live, run!”

I gave up trying to convince them. I left those words behind and turned and ran. Hoping, desperately, that at least one person would follow.

Behind me, voices called out, trying to stop me from entering the labyrinth.

Then, seconds later, terrible sounds erupted at my back.

“Kyaaaak—!”

“Help! Someone help me!”

I clenched my teeth and ran, eyes fixed straight ahead, as if I couldn’t hear any of it.

Hah! Hah!

My breath was clawing its way up my throat—I felt like I was dying—but I couldn’t make my legs stop.

If I stopped, the monsters would tear me apart!

‘Left! Straight ahead!’

The one mercy was that my sharpened senses let me pick out only the paths where I couldn’t feel any trace of monsters.

As time passed I pushed deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, but I was still alive.

If I’d stayed in that clearing where we’d all landed, I’d probably already be on my way to the afterlife.

‘Haah!’

After running for what felt like forever, the moment I sensed no trace of monsters anywhere around me, I threw myself behind a labyrinth wall and pressed flat against it.

“Ha—hah. Status window.”

I sharpened my senses as much as I could, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, then immediately called up the status window.

Earlier, I’d been too panicked to think straight—part of me had wondered if I was seeing things. But—

[Hidden Class: Healing Therapy Shop Novice Owner]

[Skill: Absolute Sense (EX-Rank)]

The moment the neat little box materialized before my eyes, a hollow laugh burst out of me.

‘Ha. What even is that nobody class——’

Most hunters awakened the way I had—when they found themselves in danger. And according to what I’d learned at training school, you awakened with the skill or class you needed most in that moment.

For example: if you needed to protect your family, you’d awaken with a defense-type class. If you needed to heal an injured lover, a healer-type class.

‘Then shouldn’t someone who just fell into a labyrinth gate get, I don’t know, a search skill for finding paths!?’

Fine. Search skills were notoriously rare—I could let that slide.

But at the very least, shouldn’t I have gotten higher strength, agility, or stamina so I could survive long enough to find the exit? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

What even were these stats—vision, smell…… What kind of garbage stats were these? I had never seen or heard of stats like these in my entire life.

‘I’m losing my mind……’

I scrubbed the sweat from my face and forced myself to think clearly.

That system window was fairer than I’d expected — a real stickler for give and take.

Even if a class or skill looked worthless on the surface, it must have been given for a reason, useful somewhere.

I tried to think as calmly as I could.

Two residual stat points remaining.

I’d been running from monsters by listening for their approach, so investing in hearing would—

My hand hesitated over the hearing stat.

I wasn’t sure that choosing purely for escape was the right call.

I’d cut ties with exercise the moment I graduated from training school. How much longer could I realistically keep outrunning monsters?

Even if I could hear them better, what good was that without the stamina to back it up?

Thump, thump.

Beneath the rapid pounding of my own heart, I could hear the heavy footfalls of monsters striking the ground somewhere in the distance.

I needed to find a way to end the running. That was what mattered.

‘Eighteen years ago, the hunter who cleared the labyrinth gate said in an interview that——’

In a labyrinth gate, you didn’t need to defeat the boss. Find the exit, and every monster vanished—the gate would clear itself.

Not evading monsters. Finding the exit.

The moment I reached that conclusion, there was only one stat left to choose.

A way to find the exit.

That meant vision.

Tap.

I pressed the vision stat. A strange sound effect chimed, and the status window reappeared.

[Error Detected]

[Skill level too low for caster to use directly. A medium is required.]

A medium?

I quickly rummaged through my pockets, and my fingertips found the small oil bottle I always carried out of habit.

The moment I pulled it out, the oil—clear until now—began to glow blue and swirl, as if begging to be let out of the bottle.

I carefully unscrewed the cap, and the oil rose into the air as a shimmering haze, stretching out in a single direction.

As if guiding me toward the exit.

---

Weeeeee—!

Beeeeee—!

February 19th, Year 26. 6:06 PM.

Emergency alerts blared across the entire country.

[Surprise gate outbreak across all of Seoul. Exercise caution. February 19, 6:06 PM.]

[Catastrophe-class labyrinth gate outbreak. All hunters report for emergency deployment. Dongjak-gu, Mapo-gu, Songpa-gu…… February 19, 6:07 PM.]

“Eleven surprise gates at once? How is that even possible?! And they’re all—what? All labyrinths?”

Maeng Seokwoo, chairman of the Korea Hunter Association, stared at eleven pulsing red dots scattered across the Seoul map and could barely contain his horror.

“Because the outbreak coincided with rush hour, the number of civilians swept into the eleven gates is estimated in the tens of thousands……!”

“Reports confirm that multiple labyrinth gates have appeared in capital cities worldwide, mirroring the situation in Seoul!”

“Radii range from a minimum of three meters to a maximum of one kilometer!”

Damn it! Damn it!

Maeng Seokwoo slammed his thick hand down hard on the desk.

Not only had eleven surprise gates appeared simultaneously, but they were labyrinth gates—a type that had occurred exactly once in twenty years!

One week into his appointment, and this was the crisis he had to face……!

“The labyrinth gate strategy—get it out to every hunter in Korea!”

“There’s—there’s nothing that could really be called a strategy, sir! The only known method is to accompany a hunter with a detection or search skill and locate the exit…… That’s it.”

“Search skills, he says!”

The rarest awakening skill in the entire world!

“The last hunter registered with that skill disappeared years ago! Isn’t there even an F-rank hunter with a search skill on record?”

”……Not in Korea. Worldwide, there are only three, including the one who vanished.”

“Damn it all!”

Chairman Maeng wiped the sweat streaming down his face and tried to shake off the worst-case scenarios crowding his mind.

The labyrinth gate. In the twenty years since gates had first appeared in Korea, it held the record for the highest casualties of any gate type. Bar none.

He remembered that day’s chaos like it was yesterday.

”……No. No.”

He swallowed hard and gave his head a sharp shake.

Eighteen years ago was different from now.

In that time, Korea had produced four S-rank hunters.

S-rank hunters—anomalous awakeners, as they were called—might be able to clear the gate even without a search skill.

But one of Korea’s S-ranks was partially paralyzed. Another was a healer. And the third had been dispatched to assist with a gate in Japan at the worst possible time……

Tsk.

That left Chairman Maeng with exactly one card to play.

Korea’s first S-rank hunter. Ranked first in Korea, fifth in the world.

“Kang Jinseo! Where is Hunter Kang right now!”

“He’s currently in the middle of a solo run on an AA-rank dungeon……!”

“What? How long until he comes out?!”

“He entered three hours ago, but as for how long the clear will take……”

“Even solo, an S-rank should be done by now!”

“Well, the thing is……”

The employee broke into a nervous sweat under Chairman Maeng’s shrill outburst.

“H-Hunter Kang Jinseo has a rather severe…… sense of direction problem, so dungeon clears do tend to take him a little longer……!”

Yes.

Korea’s top-ranked hunter, the illustrious Kang Jinseo, had a catastrophically bad sense of direction. The closely guarded secret of the number-one ranked hunter in Korea—exposed at last.