“Ugh, foam!”
Foam instantly rose from the crisply opened beer can. Eun-chan hurriedly brought his lips to it, drank the overflowing foam, and immediately lifted the can and took a cool gulp. Because of the cold weather, the cold beer passing down his throat felt uniquely stinging and thrilling. Eun-chan squeezed his eyes shut and gave himself over to the sensation. Without resting, he gulped it down. And when his breath grew a little tight, he crumpled the emptied beer can and refreshingly pulled his mouth away from the beer.
“Kyaa, this beer is damn cold!”
Thanks to the bitterly cold weather and the beer freezing his hands and throat solid, his stifled insides felt as if they had been pierced wide open and refreshed.
Eun-chan looked at the beer he had drunk so coolly. He thought beer drunk in winter was not bad at all, as much as beer eaten on a hot summer day. The weather was cold and he was outdoors, so his nose quickly grew numb, but the beer he drank, simply enjoying this situation, was quite something. He tore off a dried squid leg he had carefully brought as a snack and put one in his mouth. And he lifted a can again to drink more beer.
“Huh? What’s this? Is the weather this cold…? Why is there ice on the can…?”
It was a strange thing. Suddenly the cold grew uniquely strong, as if he would get frostbite. A thin layer of ice formed even on the beer he held in his hand, and his hand was so cold it felt as if it would fall off. Eun-chan felt a strange sense of déjà vu and hurriedly tilted his head slightly to the side.
“Am I getting drunk fast because it’s cold? That’s strange…”
Was it because he had drunk cold beer in cold weather? Strangely, his hand turned blue and a biting cold that could cause frostbite was felt. Eun-chan put down the beer and looked around. Behind him, a chilly energy was swirling like the eye of a storm, distorting the empty air.
“A dungeon gate?!”
It was characteristic of gates to occur without warning, but a gate was about to open in the middle of the city, in front of a convenience store where not a single strange thing existed. Eun-chan immediately got up from his seat, preparing to run away. Beer fell to the floor, and the dried squid leg that was his snack fell.
“Of all times…!”
This was the second time. Having a gate open right before his eyes. Eun-chan recalled the terrible nightmare of the first time and tried somehow to get away from the gate. But it was already too late. The gate’s power sealed off the surroundings and blocked attempts to escape.
“Damn it! It’s already blocked?!”
For the first few hours a dungeon formed, the gate sealed off its surroundings on its own to protect itself and to buy time to open fully. Eun-chan unfortunately was in front of the gate at that timing and was trapped. Eun-chan hurriedly took out his phone, but as expected, it was dead.
‘This is bad. This is really dangerous…!’
An ominous energy was damp. Eun-chan kept as much physical distance from the gate as possible. The distance was only about two meters, not much at all. Eun-chan looked around. He saw the convenience store part-timer grasping that a gate had opened and hurriedly filing a report. Eun-chan waved his hands desperately, letting them know he was inside the gate’s barrier.
“There’s a person here! There’s a person!”
He shouted and gestured, but no matter what he did, it was no use. People could not find Eun-chan, as if he were invisible. Eun-chan was at the point of suffocation from tension. He felt even greater fear than when he first faced a gate. As breathing difficulty began to come on from fear, Eun-chan hurriedly covered his mouth and stopped himself from hyperventilating. And slowly catching his breath, he stood at the edge of the barrier and glared at the gate.
‘What should I do? The gate will stay like this for at least a few hours, and in the meantime, if a monster comes out like last time…’
The image of Seol-hyeon being crushed in a monster’s arm flashed quickly through his mind. Eun-chan shook his head and shook off the ominous thought. He had to somehow keep his wits sharp and get through this crisis.
Sluurp.
He flinched?!
Something trying to squeeze out from the center of the gate was visible.
“Ugh, surely not…”
He stepped backward. What touched his back was nothing but the gate’s barrier. It was a dead end. Eun-chan just stood there, stunned.
‘I’m going to die…!’
His head turned completely white with terror. Eun-chan barely squeezed out his strength and stared with trembling eyes at the center of the gate. From the center of the gate, a tentacle with suckers, like the dried squid leg he had just been eating as a beer snack, began to emerge with a skin-crawling movement.
“A, monster?!”
Spewing sticky fluid, the tentacle approached Eun-chan. He squeezed his eyes shut. The tentacle found Eun-chan and approached stealthily from his feet.
“Ugh, disgusting!!”
Tentacles spewing sticky fluid approached. Eun-chan looked at the tentacles and frowned at his physiological revulsion. Compared to others, Eun-chan was relatively strong-stomached, and he was the type who could easily watch cruel, scary horror movies full of blood. But reality, faced directly, was unlike something simply seen through a screen; it turned his stomach. There was an enormous gap between something coming through a screen once and reality right before his eyes.
“Ugh, it feels awful.”
A sour taste was felt in his throat. It was a signal that nausea was about to rise. Eun-chan reflexively covered his mouth. Then he showed his displeasure at the approaching tentacles and kept his distance.
“U, ugh…! No…! Don’t come closer! You disgusting thing!”
He threw whatever he could grab, even an empty beer can. But Eun-chan’s resistance was nothing more than a trivial resistance to the tentacle. The tentacle lightly deflected the beer can Eun-chan threw and approached him stealthily. Eun-chan shuddered at the tentacle drawing gradually closer.
He struggled with all his might to get as far from the tentacle as possible. But the tentacle that had come out of the dungeon gate persistently approached Eun-chan’s side, spewing ominous fluid. Eun-chan felt fear and terror, but he felt disgust and revulsion at the unidentifiable fluid spewing from the tentacle. Goosebumps rose under his chin, and his whole body was covered in chicken skin.
‘Ugh… I feel like my stomach is going to turn over.’
The tentacle was as bizarre in movement as it was in appearance, and this inspired revulsion rather than fear, strongly churning his stomach and bringing unpleasantness. Eun-chan somehow dodged the approaching tentacles and was placed in a confused standoff.
“It feels awful! Don’t come closer!”
Shouting, he fled his body to the opposite side from where the tentacle approached, somehow running away. Fortunately, the tentacle, though its appearance was repulsive and the worst, did not possess great combat ability apart from its disgusting appearance. Thanks to that, if he just dodged well in the direction the tentacle approached, it was not greatly threatening.
Eun-chan gradually mustered courage, stepping on approaching tentacles or hitting them with his bag, escaping from the tentacle’s threat. The tentacle reacted sensitively to stimulation and showed itself retreating even at small shocks. Eun-chan’s physical ability was not outstanding, but with basic stamina and strength he could defend himself. If only his stamina held out, it seemed he could somehow hold on until rescue arrived.
Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle,
A bizarre and uncanny sound was heard, as if a large amount of viscous fluid were being mixed. There were three tentacles in all that had come out of the dungeon gate. The tentacles looked like tentacles with suckers, just like the dried squid leg he had been tearing off as a snack until just now.
‘They look awful, but… they’re definitely a low-grade monster of about D-rank. So if I just dodge appropriately and attack, it should be fine…’
After dungeon gates suddenly appeared, various information about monsters was gathered through research and shared with the public. Some of it was even taught as regular classes, so that people could build up knowledge about dungeon gates and monsters. Because of that, though not exactly, he could roughly grasp that the tentacle corresponded to a low-grade monster of D-rank.
‘Its attack power and speed aren’t great. Just hold on a little longer…’
His gaze turned outside the barrier. Outside, there was a crowd surrounding the gate. They were all ordinary citizens, sending worried gazes toward the gate. Police stopped them, giving strong warnings not to come more than a certain distance and installing barricades. The police prioritized citizens’ safety and were responsible for safety until an esper arrived. But when an esper would arrive was unknown.
‘I have to hold on until an esper comes… Can I do it…?’
Unlike Eun-chan, trembling with anxiety as he waited for an esper, the atmosphere outside was somewhat noisy, but the suddenly formed gate was receiving great attention. Though police blocked the area around the gate, citizens were all busy holding up their phones and filming, sharing it and making a noisy scene. And among them, one citizen sensed something odd inside the gate while filming and shouted loudly.
“Isn’t there a person in there?!”
“What? There’s a person inside the gate?”
As citizens murmured and drew closer, they pushed against the barricade. Police restrained them, looking burdened.
“There’s a monster coming out inside, but the esper hasn’t come yet?!”
A citizen, worried an accident might happen, shouted at the police. The police struggled to calm the murmuring citizens, taking care that the order did not collapse. Taking care firmly not to let them come more than a certain distance and to keep citizens from becoming agitated, they restrained some of those filming for security reasons.
“There, you can’t film! Please refrain from filming with your phones!”
Though restrained, the citizens did not budge at the police’s words. The police looked troubled and tried to physically stop the filming. But then news that would make the citizens murmur again burst out loudly.
“Oh?! Th, there! It looks like a person inside got caught by a monster?!”
“What?!”
Police and citizens alike all turned their gazes inside the barrier at once. Inside the gate barrier, a man whose identity was hard to determine was seen dangling upside down, caught by a tentacle. Citizens screamed and were seized with fear. The tentacles that had come out of the gate multiplied in an instant, covering and blocking the barrier section. Like a wriggling mass of seaweed, they wrapped the gate roundly and completely blocked the inside from the outside, sealing it off.
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