Chapter 132

Because Nam Shin-hoo and Kwon Haeju had not ventured far, they quickly caught up to Glys Roban’s party. The scene unfolding before them, however, was entirely unexpected.

“Please, save us!”

“C-careful! I said stop thrashing!”

“I’m falling! Aaaah! I’m really falling!”

It was absolute chaos. Clusters of tentacles sprouted from the walls, suspending civilians high in midair and swinging them helplessly overhead. Beneath the pale, terrified captives—who were too paralyzed with fear to even attempt an escape—Glys Roban’s party stood in utter disarray, struggling to find a solution.

“What happened?” Kwon Haeju demanded.

Olive turned to him, his face rigid with tension. “I’m not sure. The tentacles suddenly lashed out and snatched the civilians. This has never happened before…”

“Those idiots pulled on the tentacles while they were just hanging there!” Silveron’s irritated voice cut in. Despite the roughness of his words, his frantic, restless gestures betrayed his deep worry. “I mean, if they’re weak, the least they can do is sit still and shut up!”

The captives caught in the twisting appendages were not Hunters. They were ordinary, fragile humans; a fall from a mere three meters could severely injure them or shatter their bones. If the tentacles were recklessly provoked and the civilians took the brunt of the impact, the aftermath would be too grim to contemplate.

Nam Shin-hoo stepped up to Glys Roban’s side. “What’s the plan?”

“…We’re looking for one,” Glys Roban replied grimly.

“So you don’t have one.”

Even as Nam Shin-hoo assessed the crisis, he kept a sharp eye on Glys Roban. It could not be a mere coincidence that civilians had been dragged into the dungeon at this exact moment, only for the dungeon itself to suddenly turn hostile.

In his past life, the Cradle of Genesis had taken hostages to leverage against Kwon Haeju. There was a very high probability they were employing a similar tactic now, most likely targeting Glys Roban amidst the brewing confusion.

“Shin-hoo hyung.”

Kwon Haeju reached out and grabbed one of the tentacles writhing from the wall. The moment his palm made contact, the appendage closest to the floor froze. The thick strand that had been violently shaking a civilian slackened helplessly, sagging toward the ground.

The civilian, whose feet finally touched solid earth, stared at Kwon Haeju with wide, stunned eyes. The other Hunters reacted with equal shock. It was only natural; none of them had ever witnessed Kwon Haeju controlling the dungeon’s flora before.

“H-how did you control that…?” someone muttered.

“That’s not what matters right now,” Nam Shin-hoo interrupted. Having already experienced Haeju’s unique ability, he moved quickly to formulate a strategy. “Kwon Haeju, can you release all of them?”

“Yes,” Haeju replied, sweating slightly. “But it’s risky. Someone needs to catch them at the bottom.”

The captive trapped by the highest tentacle was currently being tossed around more than ten meters in the air.

“I’ll handle that!” Olive called out, raising his hand. Reaching toward the ceiling, he expanded his shield. It spread wide enough to span the entire room, then curved inward to form a concave net specifically designed to absorb the kinetic impact of a fall.

Once he confirmed the safety net was secure, Kwon Haeju thrust his arm directly into the wall. The coral-corpse-covered surface crumbled, swallowing his limb up to the elbow. A breath later, the violently thrashing tentacles drooped limp, one after another.

“Catch them properly!” Glys Roban barked.

Silveron and Havirain, waiting on the floor, sprung into action. They carefully lifted the civilians who had tumbled safely onto Olive’s net and brought them down to the ground. Even through the rush of the rescue, Nam Shin-hoo never took his eyes off Glys Roban.

“Please help with the other side!” Olive shouted urgently.

Reacting instantly to the cry, Nam Shin-hoo leapt into the air and caught a civilian plunging toward the floor.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the man sobbed.

Setting the trembling, curled-up civilian gently onto the ground, Nam Shin-hoo turned to rejoin Glys Roban. But as he did, something bizarre caught his eye. He froze, staring intensely at the rescued men.

“…”

“Why… What is it?”

“These people,” Nam Shin-hoo said, his voice dropping. “They said they were all fishermen, didn’t they?”

They had been described as ordinary civilians dragged into the dungeon together after their fishing boat was swallowed. Because they were unawakened individuals without a single Hunter among them, Nam Shin-hoo hadn’t thought to inspect them closely before.

But now…

“Y-yes. That’s right,” came the hesitant reply.

“Then when exactly were they stranded? How long have they been inside this dungeon?”

“What do you mean by that…?”

“That isn’t the kind of workwear people wear these days,” Nam Shin-hoo stated coldly.

Looking closer, the discrepancies were glaring. Their clothes. The thick gloves on their hands. Their worn, scuffed boots. Everything belonged to a period noticeably older than the present.

Having recently spent time on fishing boats himself, and having grown up in a port city surrounded by the fishing trade since childhood, Nam Shin-hoo couldn’t mistake the details. Five years at least. No, perhaps closer to eight.

Every single civilian was clad in the exact style of heavy work clothes popular around the time Nam Shin-hoo had first awakened as a Hunter. Furthermore, this entire commotion had been triggered because these supposedly terrified civilians, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly ‘provoked’ the tentacles.

What if the ‘long-sleeping crow’ in the cipher Bale Taylor had decoded didn’t refer to a hidden Hunter at all? What if it referred to enemies who had waited inside this dungeon for years, lying in ambush for the perfect bait to arrive?

Nam Shin-hoo’s eyes widened as the horrifying truth struck him.

“It wasn’t a single crow. It was a flock.”

From the very beginning, he had found it strange that the dungeon looked so ancient. He should have weighed that detail more carefully. In an ordinary dungeon, no human could survive for years.

But this place was a distorted space where time itself twisted. Worse, the longer one remained inside, the duller their perception of time became, until their sense of duration vanished entirely. That meant these people could endure for years—long enough for the dungeon’s original generated materials to deteriorate—and use that monstrous patience to lay a trap. The sheer malice of the plan made his skin crawl.

“…Hee.”

Suddenly, the eyes of the civilian who had been trembling in terror turned ice-cold. The man’s gaze shifted, glittering with a manic, cultish devotion as he reached inside his jacket.

“Beneath the Blood Lotus!”

“Everyone, move!” Nam Shin-hoo roared.

Behind him, a synchronized chant burst out like a thunderous chorus from the rest of the captives.

“Maitreya Manifest!”

In an instant, the civilians transformed. Those already on the ground and those still waiting to be brought down from Olive’s shield all brandished thick glass ampoules in their hands. Every single ‘civilian’ who had entered the dungeon was a crow planted by the Cradle of Genesis.

They hurled their entire bodies like suicide bombers toward the Hunters. Caught off guard by the sudden betrayal, the Hunters twisted frantically to avoid the collisions.

The room devolved into a chaotic brawl. Amidst the madness, Nam Shin-hoo shattered the unknown ampoules before they could be used and slammed the disguised crows forcefully into the floor. Beside him, Kwon Haeju moved in tandem, binding them securely beneath a thick bundle of controlled tentacles.

“Is everyone all right?”

The moment Nam Shin-hoo brought his side of the room under control, he checked on Glys Roban. They were all elite Hunters, so ordinary humans shouldn’t have been able to inflict physical harm, but the contents of those ampoules remained a dangerous wild card.

To his relief, Glys Roban stood unharmed. Nam Shin-hoo let out a tense breath. “Any injuries?”

“I’m fine,” Glys Roban replied, his expression deeply grave as he pointed to the floor. “But…”

“Urgh…”

One of the Hunters who had entered the dungeon with them lay collapsed among the subdued remnants of the Cradle of Genesis. It was Havirain, gasping harshly and clutching his arm in agony.

“It seems he was injured while trying to protect me,” Glys Roban said, his face dark as his gaze shifted between Havirain and Olive.

“No. It’s my fault,” Olive’s voice trembled with guilt. “I couldn’t move because of the shield. Master tried to save me, and then Havirain…”

From those few words, Nam Shin-hoo pieced together what had occurred in the split second his back was turned. Glys Roban had moved to protect Olive, whose hands were tied up maintaining the safety net. Seizing that brief opening, the enemy had struck, and Havirain had thrown himself into the gap.

He had used his own body as a shield.

“Ouch. This… ah… hurts a bit,” Havirain groaned, slightly loosening his grip on his arm.

Through the shredded fabric of his sleeve, sharp shards of the broken ampoule could be seen embedded deeply into his flesh. He broke into a heavy cold sweat, his muscles convulsing from the effects of the unidentified liquid.

“You idiot,” Silveron grumbled, though he rushed over to examine the wound without a moment’s delay. “Getting taken down by mere civilians?”

In truth, Silveron’s complaint highlighted one of a high-ranking Hunter’s greatest psychological vulnerabilities. On paper, it seemed absurd that S-Rank and A-Rank powerhouses could be caught off guard by ordinary humans. But the very fact that their attackers were civilians made it impossible to strike back effectively.

Even after realizing the people they were rescuing were spies and enemies targeting their lives, it was instinctively difficult to subdue them with lethal force. To Hunters, civilians were fundamentally something to be protected. Years of deeply ingrained conditioning would not allow them to immediately unleash a counterattack against someone who might die from a single stray graze.

That psychological hesitation was exactly what the Cradle of Genesis had calculated from the beginning. Even if it cost them the lives of their own operatives, the trap was perfectly designed to land a single, debilitating blow in the exact instant the Hunters hesitated.

“Hold still,” Silveron muttered, his face hardening as he tore away the remnants of the sleeve.

Havirain’s exposed flesh was already necrotizing, darkening into a deep, bruised purple. With a grim expression, Silveron unsealed a high-grade potion and poured the familiar, glowing liquid directly over the wound.

He emptied the entire bottle, letting the potent medicine soak into the lacerations, but Havirain’s condition didn’t improve. Instead, the injured Hunter grew even paler, his lips trembling violently as the necrosis spread.

“Fuck! What the hell is this?” Silveron’s roar was loud enough to make the dungeon walls ring. Whirling around in a frenzy, he grabbed the collars of the subdued cultists pinning them to the floor. “Hey! You bastards! What kind of drug did you use on him?!”

Even under his murderous, terrifying glare, the zealots showed no hint of fear. They merely stared back with vacant eyes, muttering their twisted prayers into the dark.