Hana couldn’t help but feel the pit in her stomach grow as they followed Seunghyo through the tunnels. He moved without hesitation, taking branching paths with a second thought. The halls here were clean, too. They looked as if the residents had been here one moment and disappeared the next. There were no tell-tale signs of chaos or a scramble to escape. Just neatly kept homes and workspaces. Compared to all the other dungeons they’d walked through, this felt wrong.

But this isn’t a dungeon, Hana said to herself. So then, where did everyone go?

The pathfinder led them through the passages until they arrived at a wide open staging area. A large glass dome allowed light from the sky to filter in and illuminated the entire space. There were several exits leading back up to the surface. Players would have used this space to double check their gear before heading out on missions.

"Is that where we're going?" Willow asked.

The novice pointed at a large gate that led deeper into the structure.

"Yes, but there's a problem."

"As if there weren't enough going on," Jinyoung muttered.

"We have to get through an underground gate lock which'll feed into a series of passages that'll get us to a bunker where the rest of my team is gathered,” Seunghyo explained. “The bunker is far enough underground that we won't freeze at night and the gate lock itself is concrete reinforced with steel. It's basically a bank vault."

"The rest of your team. You mean survey-2 and survey-3?"

Seunghyo paused for a second and nodded.

Willow gave a knowing glance at Hana..

Sunbae, we are supposed to get them all out of here. We can't just leave the others behind.

They're not the ones I'd like to leave behind.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Willow snickered.

"I still don't hear a problem," Jinyoung said.

“Sigh. The gate is actually two gates. One outer gate which you can open from the outside, followed by the gate lock chamber where you can close the outer gate. Once the outer gate closes, you can open the inner gate. The last time my team and I went through, we were being chased by something big. We were on our last legs, so we couldn't put up much of a fight and..."

"You trapped it in the gate lock chamber," Hana finished.

"Is there any other way in?" Hana asked grimly.

"The nearest entrance besides this one is half a day's journey. We'd freeze to death before we got there."

Willow's voice was tinged with concern. "What... was it?"

The pathfinder shook his head at the memory of it. The monster had been covered in fur, but it moved on two legs. The speed and ferocity of it had been beyond anything he'd encountered, certainly not this far north.

"It has to be a boss, right?" Willow asked.

"Possibly, if they were experimenting with opening gates up here, who knows what they let through," Hana said.

"There's something else though. Something that didn't look right," Seunghyo continued. "It wore armor and... it looked like the armor was moving. As if the texture itself was shifting."

The description raised Jinyoung's eyebrow and sparked a memory. Something about that felt familiar.

He drew a short breath and released it. [Scan+].

He could see it. A glimmer of light like he’d seen twice before in Seorak.

Okay, don’t react, but there’s a Hidden Quest here.

Jinyoung could see both of them stiffen and he could imagine the chill running through Willow’s spine. He wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but a second he thought he noticed a tremble in her voice.

“Well, whatever it is. We don’t have to kill it, right? We just have to get it out of the gate lock so we can pass through?”

Seunghyo’s response was less than enthusiastic. “Yes, but I don’t like the idea of whatever that thing is on the loose. If we can, I’d like to end it here and now. It’ll be one less thing to keep an eye out for.”

Hana looked around the staging area. “If this thing is as fast as you say, we can’t fight it here. Willow, take Seunghyo and scout the area above us. Look for anything we can use as cover to mitigate this thing’s speed.”

Before Seunghyo could respond, she turned to Jinyoung and pulled him with her. “We’ll go check the gate lock.”

A flash of annoyance cross Seunghyo’s face before he quickly removed it.

“I guess that means you, newbie. Let’s go.”