With this massive achievement, he acquired two unique profession-specific skills: King of the Dungeon, and The Gate. Through the King of the Dungeon skill, any ghouls he defeated while it was active would be automatically incorporated as monsters of his very own dungeon. With that, his class change was officially finalized.
In stark contrast to his success, on the outside of that exact same dungeon Manager Lee Han was frantically trying to run back inside to save Seo-yul. The other rescue squad members screamed at him to watch out, because right then the gate simply vanished into thin air. They questioned where on earth the manager even expected to find Seo-yul in a situation like this.
Right at that exact second, Seo-yul himself materialized, strolling out completely unbothered while holding a tiny umbrella and casually eating a popsicle.
He looked at them and asked what they were all arguing about, then smoothly suggested that everyone should just grab a popsicle to celebrate completing the mission successfully.
Later on, during a much more private moment, Seo-yul was thoroughly analyzing his The Gate skill. He understood that it allowed him to trap opponents inside his dungeon, and from the looks of it this would be his main combat tool outside the labyrinth.
It was a terrifying rank S skill, but it came with a massive high-stakes warning. Any trapped enemies could break out of the dungeon if they managed to defeat the boss — and if they actually pulled it off, they would become even stronger. Because of that brutal risk, Seo-yul realized he couldn't just recklessly trap opponents.
The gate itself was completely invisible to other people, making it incredibly easy to snatch someone up and drag them inside. However, to survive the powerful enemies he would inevitably face down the road, he needed to pack his dungeon with high-tier monsters. Up until this point his army consisted of nothing but basic ghouls, and to expand his forces he would have to slaughter fresh enemies using the King of the Dungeon skill.
During this period, he was waiting around for someone who finally made her return: Yun-hee.
She brought over a bag completely stuffed with apples for him, casually mentioning that her house always had a massive surplus of fruit anyway. After all, they had been next-door neighbors for five whole years now.
Seo-yul took the opportunity to ask how things were going at school, and whether everything was all right.
"School's just the same old boring routine as always," Yun-hee replied softly.
Right at that exact moment, the two of them witnessed a sudden emergency breaking out in the immediate neighborhood. A completely hysterical woman was being dragged away from the scene because a dungeon break had just erupted. She was screaming and weeping uncontrollably, because her young daughter was still trapped inside.
As he analyzed the monolithic hotel towering right in front of him, Seo-yul knew instantly that this was a textbook dungeon break. That disaster occurs when a dungeon is neglected for far too long. The monsters inside eventually rupture the gate and cross over directly into the human world.
He quickly apologized to Yun-hee, asking whether he could grab the apples from her a bit later. Yun-hee agreed, but anxiously wanted to know what he was planning to do.
Seo-yul was dead set on doing his job as a rescue hunter.
He stepped right past the yellow isolation tape, flashing his official identification badge. One of the guards on site blocked his path, demanding to know why he was going in entirely alone.
"The rest of the rescue department will be arriving shortly," Seo-yul responded calmly. "I'm heading in first."
The guard fiercely insisted that he absolutely couldn't do that, warning him that a horde of red goblins was swarming inside and that going in without heavy backup was pure suicide.
"That's the exact reason I need to get moving immediately," Seo-yul shot back. He explained that he had heard there was still a child lost inside the hotel, and since the guild that was supposed to be locking down the perimeter hadn't even shown its face yet, he was going to handle it himself. He guaranteed that he would be completely fine, and that in reality he wasn't alone at all.
Originally, the gate at that hotel was supposed to have been cleared by the Heonwoo Guild, the massive corporation responsible for that specific district. Ordinary citizens used to put all their trust in these guilds to close gates so that they could go about their daily lives in safety. However, the corporate guilds frequently neglected gates that weren't highly profitable. As a direct, ugly consequence of that greed, dungeon breaks happened constantly in low-rank gates, leading to massive civilian tragedies.
The moment he stepped inside, Seo-yul was hit with a gruesome scene. Several hotel staff members lay dead right in the middle of the reception area.
Aware of the looming danger, Seo-yul activated his sixth sense and commanded the monsters to quit hiding, announcing that he could already see where every single one of them was crouching — and that he wanted to test out something new.
Sure enough, the red goblins lunged forward in a highly coordinated ambush.
Seo-yul reacted instantly by tearing open his The Gate. The goblins, who were still midair in their attack leaps, were violently sucked directly into the rift, landing straight inside Seo-yul's private dungeon, where they were rapidly torn to shreds by the resident ghouls.
In that moment, he was truly beginning to leverage the genuine potential of his new class.
The red goblin was classified as a one-star monster, a species that always synchronized its movements around its leader. In almost every aspect they weren't much different from ordinary goblins, except for one crucial detail. They were significantly smarter, and they pulled off far more effective ambushes.
In fact, three goblins flung themselves together at the very first ghoul in the labyrinth, trying to bring it down by force. However, Seo-yul wasn't about to let that happen. He smoothly accessed his map functions and spun a wall, completely cutting off the advance of two of the goblins and isolating the third one to be dealt with by his ghoul.
These monsters were plotting a little trick the second he stopped looking, Seo-yul muttered to himself. He noticed that the goblins seemed to be rapidly adapting to the dungeon environment.
Even so, he thought it was fantastic that the ghouls were doing the hunting for him. It was pretty sweet not having to lift a finger.
Nevertheless, since there were so many goblins flooding his dungeon, Seo-yul decided he would keep a very close eye on things. They could keep trying their little treacherous tricks all they wanted, he thought, because inside this dungeon the monsters were the prey and he was the ultimate predator.
Eventually, Seo-yul made his way up to the seventeenth floor of the hotel and located the child, a little girl named Su-mi. The kid was crying, completely paralyzed by pure terror, but he comforted her, saying he had already taken care of everything and that she could step out safely.
On the way down, Su-mi anxiously asked whether the mister had really gotten rid of all the scary goblins.
Seo-yul smiled and said yes, though he secretly thought to himself that technically the ghouls had done all the heavy lifting. Still, since those creatures answered directly to him, the credit was all his.
He reflected on how, as he climbed the hotel, the goblins had been using their sharp sense of smell to track him down, constantly sniffing out any hidden humans. If Seo-yul hadn't shown up right when he did, little Su-mi would certainly have been captured by them.
Just before stepping into the elevator to head down, Seo-yul received a jarring, urgent system alert informing him that roughly fifty percent of his dungeon defenders had just been completely wiped out.
He gently ushered Su-mi into the elevator, telling her that her mother was already waiting anxiously downstairs, and calmly let her know that he would have to stay behind just a little longer to clean up the rest of the bad guys.