Chapter Text
Despite the Korean Hunter Association's best efforts, Dungeon Breaks still occurred from time to time.
Jinchul growled, slamming a hand down on the table in front of him. "Why didn't this get dealt with earlier?!"
Lee Soojin, his right-hand man blinked, not even bothering to flinch at the noise that reverbted off the walls. "Sir, your mana is flaring again."
Jinchul took a deep breath, loosening his posture a little; he reigned his mana back in, calling the maelstrom back to settling under his skin. "Soojin, why was no raid organized to deal with this?"
Soojin sighed, opening the folder in his hands. "The majority of the hunters we had scheduled for this raid… died in the Double Dungeon incident. And we were unable to get enough hunters off higher-priority gates in time to deal with this."
"Then why was I not notified of this? You know as well as I do that I could've taken that gate solo," Jinchul sighed, sitting back down in his chair. Soojin scoffed.
"'Chul, it's been at least five years since you soloed a gate. I know you're still plenty strong, but you told me yourself that it was tough work knocking out gates like that. There's a reason the KHA—you—implemented the minimum gate requirement."
Jinchul pinched the bridge of his nose, tilting his head back. The memories poked and prodded at the edges of his peripheral: bloodied rough stone walls, knuckles shredded beyond belief, a mountain of mana crystals that he couldn't even touch, those faces—
He waved them away, forcing them back into a world he swore to never touch again. "There's nothing to be done about the current situation; get me a list of gates that still need team members before a Dungeon Break. In the meantime, I'll head down to the Broken gate myself."
"We've already got a team onsite; a nearby hunter party from an E-Rank gate came as the call was sent out."
"That rank was a D-Rank gate, Soojin, and you sent a team for an E-Rank gate to it? You'll get them killed."
"It's better than nothing, Jinchul—"
"I'm going." Jinchul pushed his chair out and ripped open his drawer; he pulled out the pair of padded black leather gloves and replaced the silken ones on his hands. The discolored and misshapen knuckles breathed fresh air for a few moments before being hidden once more. "If there's no one else you could've called, then there's no one else able to deal with it."
"Then I'm going with you," Soojin declared. Jinchul turned with a frown but the man raised a hand. "It may be a D-Rank gate and you may be able to solo the damn thing, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use my help."
Jinchul stared at him for a long while before sighing. There's no chance I'm convincing him otherwise—he's a stubborn mule. "Alright. You ready?"
Soojin nodded, his eyes ablaze. He grabbed the nearby clipboard and began trifling through it, but the door to Jinchul's office slammed open right as Jinchul reached for the door handle. The only reason he wasn't slammed by the door itself was due to his reflexes sending him back a bit. A Monitoring Division employee hunched over, hands on his knees.
"What's wrong?" Jinchul demanded. The employee looked up, and that's when Jinchul noticed—the hopeful glimmer in his eyes.
"Sir, the Dungeon Break has been dealt with!"
…What?
He couldn't believe his eyes, But the report sitting on his desk in front of him told him everything he needed to know: the team of hunters from the nearby gate struggled against the golems that poured out suddenly got the upper hand and managed to defeat the boss. It was, by all accounts, a miracle.
And yet one line of the report stuck out to him, tucked away at the end: "The party leader asked if there was another hunter around. Military personnel confirmed that another hunter had been found coming out of Hapjeong Station Exit 3, but the hunter in question was nowhere to be seen in the aftermath. The leader believes that this hunter threw a piece of a broken sword, causing the golem to stumble.
"The rank of the hunter has been estimated to be at minimum C-Rank. Military personnel mentioned that the hunter was not aware of the Dungeon Break. The identity of the hunter is still unknown as camera footage around the Dungeon Break was broken, and there is no footage of anyone inside Hapjeong Station around the time of the Break."
Why would a C-Rank or higher hunter appear on the scene, almost single-handedly defeat the boss, and then disappear without another word? Jinchul wasn't surprised that the hunter wasn't summoned onto the scene initially; a hunter of that rank would've been contracted by a guild for sure.
But then why were the unknown hunter completely unaware of the gate? Someone of that high rank would've noticed it passively for sure. And somehow, they had disappeared under the cover of night as well. An Assassin class, perhaps? But that still didn't answer why they hadn't shown up to the gate—any self-respecting hunter would have, and would've gotten more flack for being seen not doing so.
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose again. With no possible leads, there was nothing he could do to find this unknown hunter. And realistically, finding such a hunter wasn't his problem; the situation was handled and dealt with. He put the report down and filed it appropriately before turning his attention to the mountain of paperwork sitting neatly on his desk.
And yet… He wanted to find out who this unknown hunter was—who wouldn't claim glory like that? What sort of… self-righteous hunter existed now?—regardless of the fool's game he would be playing. If he had even the tiniest bit of a clue as to who they were, he could find them. Finding things with next-to-nothing was what he had done for years.
…But there's nothing I can do here.
He grabbed the next report and let time slip through his fingers uncaringly.
These all started out the same. Staring up at a blue swirling portal, the sun nowhere to be seen. The dilapidated warehouse, with the roof falling apart and the rain puddling on the muddy ground below.
There was nothing to be heard around him. No cars or buses or trains running into the late night, no footsteps or rings and dings of convenience store bells. He couldn't even hear the low hum of the portal in front of him, the hum that all of them gave off if you listened just carefully enough.
Even the people crumpled on the ground behind him—their cries of pain fell on ears that couldn't hear.
They were broken into pieces; blood was everywhere, clothing ripped to shreds. Some of them were already dead from the blood loss. Others were slowly dying. They would all be dead by the end of the day. He'd never left survivors.
He had names. "Clouded Leopard" was the most common one; "murderer" was another. The others never stuck in his head. The latter one he didn't care for—it wasn't true in the slightest. He had studied law before the gates broke loose and he became sucked into an endless vortex.
It wasn't murder when it was performed in self-defense. When the other side attacked first.
One of them tried to speak; he could tell with how they choked on their own blood. He slowly turned around to give them the attention they deserved. They looked up at him from where they laid on the floor, eyes so bright in a way he'd seen time and time again and yet hadn't felt himself in…
How long had it been since the gates opened? Two years now? A long time, for all it mattered to him. Nothing mattered in this day and age except to wake up every day.
"You… I hope you rot and burn… in hell…" the hunter choked out, coughing up blood that splattered on his shoes. He sighed, glancing behind him.
The gate had closed. His job was complete. He walked the way where the gate had been before and grabbed the handle to the warehouse's sliding doors.
Sometimes, there would be a cthulu monster behind the door. Other times, there would be a real monster behind the door. Sometimes, it was a horde of hunters to ambush him and kill him. Other times, it was someone he knew from sone period of his life—the past, present, or future.
The truth of the situation was that it was Lee Soojin behind the door that day, soaked to the bone. The truth of the situation was that that gate was his last one for at least a year and that Soojin had dragged him out of that hellhole that day.
This time, there was nothing behind the door. Just a lifeless city, soaked to the bone. And that hurt more than anything else.
The Monitoring Division was designed for a single purpose: to keep an eye on all the hunters within the KHA's system. Often, enforcement of the law fell to them as well. Don't fix something that's not broken, as the old saying goes.
But enforcement was hard in the dungeons. No electronics worked inside gates, and the KHA was severely understaffed to be able to reliably put a "monitor" in every gate. Hell, a numbe rof gates were having to be covered by parties consisting mostly of KHA hunters. Guilds only took higher-ranked gates to make a profit—sometimes a D-Rank gate if they had recruits they were training—so all the lower-ranked gates fell to the KHA to complete.
Jinchul and his mentor-slash-boss Go Gunhee had been working on a solution to this problem for a long time, but they kept running into the same barrier: without an S-Rank willing to put in the work for us, we're just spewing hot air. Jinchul was only an A-Rank, no matter how on-the-line his score had been, and his boss's doctor had outright forbidden any and all physical work for him due to his strained heart.
—For now, though, taking them gate by gate was all they could do.
Tracking gate-related crimes weren't particularly hard once you knew the pattern. A smaller group of hunters would bring people onto their team as slot fillers to meet the minium 10-person requirement for C-Rank and above gates, and the party would return without their slot fillers. Other people used the gates to perform their dirty works, like assassinations or kidnappings.
Thus had the phrase "what happens in the dungeon stays in the dungeon" been birthed. With no reliable way to prosecute the hunters as criminals—and worse, no proper way to truly contain them, so any form of modern jailing was moot for them anyways—they were allowed to keep going about their ugly lives.
That didn't mean Jinchul didn't try, though. The lizards—those who cut off their own tails by letting their slot fillers die—he tried to leave for gates where there weren't minimum requirements, and the wolves—the ones who used gates for their dirty business—he stuck with their prisoner proabation program, which was disgusting in and of himself but he had no hand in that decision whatsoever and he knew his boss had only allowed it because South Korea had few hunters to begin with.
Dear lord did he want another S-Rank. They would solve so many of his problems. Maybe.
Jinchul rubbed his temples; even just trying to think about the entire hunter system was giving him a headache, and his major was Pre-Law before the gates broke loose and turned his university into scrap concrete. He tried to turn his attention back to the mountain of paperwork looming over him, but as soon as he did his body began to clock out. He sighed, glancing at his watch.
Rap-tap-tap.
"Come in," he echoed manually, deciding to put himself into some semblance of work even if it was all the mundane proceedural signings. One of his employees peeked her head in (Haewon, a D-Rank Mage, his brain supplied immediately) before stepping in fully.
"Sir, I have a report here for you," she said, walking up to his desk and handing him a document. He skimmed the report before letting out an internal groan.
Hwang Dongsuk. Leader of one of their biggest lizard groups.
Jinchul had evidence on them thanks to their long raiding record, but the backlash of an S-Rank was too powerful for Gunhee to authorize any moves. Even Jinchul had to admit it: if they got Hwang Dongsoo on their bad side, they got all of America on their bad side, and South Korea couldn't take that.
(Traitor, he spat weekly anytime he had to think about the man. Whenever it was just him and Gunhee, he would do it verbally and his boss would nod solemnly. It wasn't really a secret how the two highest-ranking men in the KHA felt about the Korean S-Rank who left them for Thomas Andre.)
So he called for a tight surveillance of Hwang Dongsuk's raiding party to ensure as few as possible lives were taken at the hands of evil people. Jinchul couldn't do anything with how his position was situated, but he could do that much. Issue a nonverbal warning against them: you are being watched.
Thankfully, this time, no lives were lost. It seems the B-Ranked hunter they had gotten to fill their slot was just cunning enough to recognize the trap as it was set and got him and his companion out of there. Or something like that; none of the KHA employees could exactly find them for an interview, and so the only words they had were Hwang Dongsuk and his party's. They weren't the type to lie about a death, though, so if the hunters high-tailed it out of there, they ran.
"See if you can find the hunters who fled for an interview, then continue with our normal procedures." Keep them away from as many gates as possible without raising hackles. Let them clear gates so none Break, but don't let lives be lost in the process. If people have to die for gates to be cleared, then there wasn't a point in not just letting them Break.
"Sir," Haewon nodded before leaving. When the door closed behind her he let himself lean back in his chair and breathe. Darkness danced behind his eyes in an hypnotic spiral, the pinkish hue of the light shining through his eyelids dimming. When he started to see a field of moonflowers he forced his eyes open and straightened himself and reached for his pen.
It was going to be a long time before he could close his eyes again, even for a few precious seconds.
It was a miracle that he was able to get a couple of hours of sleep that night. Even more so when he was able to spend that night in a field of moonflowers as far as the eye could see. It was calming, relaxing. Nothing could get to him in the space shared with his soulmate, no matter how hard it may try.
So, as a small luxury and as a reward for completing quite a lot of paperwork—no matter how refilled it would be come the next morning—he laid down against the flowers and let out a long sigh.
"Long day?"
He hummed, just letting the windless breeze wash over him. He heard the cruch-cruch of the flowers as Crow approached him then sat next to him.
(Jinchul couldn't explain how he knew, just that he did. He couldn't see his soulmate since they hadn't shared their true names, but he could tell how he moved, when he sat down, when he was pacing in anxiety and when he was pacing in hopelessness. It was probably the four years they'd spent connected yet unseeing, like a telepathic bond unable to be broken.
Sometimes he swore, on days when he would wake up and be unable to move, that some of that weight was Crow's too. But that was probably the sleep-deprivation talking.)
"Nothing crazy, just a lot of the mundane. Makes my brain melt," he admitted, his chest simultaneously tightening and loosening. He knew Crow wouldn't tell anyone—they'd both silently sworn to take everything said here to their mutual graves—but it didn't help. And yet, at the same time, it was nice to tell someone. Gunhee wasn't exactly someone he wasn't to tell his anxieties to.
"You could always enter a dungeon," Crow joked. Jinchul rolled his eyes.
"I almost did the other day; there was a Dungeon Break because no one was able to get to it in time. Only reason I didn't go down and solo the Break myself is because right as I was gonna leave my office someone had solved it."
"I bet Lee was happy about that."
Jinchul snorted, but all the words he wanted to say clogged in his throat. Something was… off. It took a couple of moments, but he finally placed it.
"—Your voice sounds different."
"…Does it?" Crow was quieter. This would be the point where he would curl in on himself, and yet—
"Something happened," he murmured. "Your voice is different, and you're not acting like you usually would right now. What happened?"
There was silence for a little bit, and Jinchul took the moment to sit up and stare off into the distance. It had surprised him how well their internal landscapes melded together; he had heard dozens of stories about completely bizzare places where soulmates met, and yet his and Crow's was perfectly normal. The only obstruction in their entire world was a single tree atop a hill where they often met. It never blossomed with flowers or fruit, but it never withered either.
It had come out later that although the moonflowers were Jinchul's—a memento he often associated with his late mother and other parts of his life—the endless sea of flowers was Crow's, a memory he saw as a kid before the world went to shit. Back when his father was still alive, back when his mother was still awake, back when his sister was still a kid, back when the only things he worried about were his next test and what to do that weekend. That sea of flowers had been of all shades under the rainbow, but the feeling was still there.
"…I don't want to talk about it right now," Crow finally spoke up—quietly, kept to himself.
"That's okay," Jinchul immediately replied. "As long as it's not anything bad."
Crow hummed in response and they dropped the topic. They moved onto more mundane topics—Crow landing himself in the hospital again, Jinchul and the many dumb proposals that crossed his desk, and all the unfortunate things they witnessed between their co-workers.
"—Wait, Guildmasters Choi and Baek are soulmates!?" Crow cut Jinchul's long rant about his latest escapades with the S-Ranks off.
"Okay, look, you didn't hear it from me, it's technically information I was given because they trusted me," Jinchul sighed. "I don't want to betray that trust. You can't tell anyone."
"My lips are sealed, but also I would have never guessed. Are they playing it up?"
"Nope, that's just how they are. They're not together as far as I'm aware, but I do know they're soulmates."
"…That's wild," Crow muttered. "Two of the country's strongest hunters are soulmates."
Jinchul scoffed, a smirk rising to his lips. "Does it top Junseok and—"
"Nope! Don't want to hear it!" Crow began to la-la-la Jinchul's laughter away. As Jinchul quieted, he laid back on the flowers, staring up at the tree above him. They fell into a peaceful silence, one that Jinchul felt himself dozing quietly in. There was a quiet rustle-scuttle as Crow laid back next to him; Jinchul could feel the quiet tendrils of mana whispering off of him.
(He could also feel how they were just a little bit different. But he only tucked that info away in the back of his mind and would let Crow come to him when the time was right. One day, hopefully before they both died. He'd waited four years just to get his name, he could wait on this too.)
But in this dream, there was nothing except a field of moonflowers, a soft breeze, and the person he knew inside and out despite never having seen him before. And that was enough.