Chapter 1

Mansu Realty

When the bell on the office door rings, I look at three things out of habit. Shoes, hands, and eyes. Shoes tell you how far someone has walked. Hands tell you what they came holding. Eyes tell you what they lost on the way.

The bell went ding-a-ling at ten past four in the afternoon. Second floor, a back alley in Sillim, the sign's paint peeling in patches. Mansu Realty.

The one who came in was a young guy, maybe twenty-three. He wore hunter-issue safety boots, and the soles were clean as new. That meant he'd barely been inside a dungeon. In his hand was a document envelope, gripped so hard the corners had crumpled.

His eyes were red.

"Um, do you... do you handle dungeons here too?"

The hand stirring my coffee mix stopped. It was my seventh cup of the day.

"Dungeons are real estate. Have a seat."

The moment he sat down, he started crying. I slid the whole box of tissues over, made one more cup of coffee mix, and set it in front of him. That was my eighth. After more than ten years doing real estate in this neighborhood, I can usually tell why a crying client walked in before he says a word. A contract happened to him.

He pulled three tissues, blew his nose, and carefully set the crumpled envelope down on the table.

"Let's start with your name."

"Na Cheolho. I'm twenty-three, and... I'm an F-rank hunter."

His voice dropped a notch on the F-rank part.

Five years ago, on D-Day, dungeons burst out of the ground all over the country, and ever since, hunter has been a common job. Awaken and anyone gets called a hunter. The catch is that an F-rank's best use at a dungeon is carrying bags, and Cheolho said that was all he'd done so far—hauling gear in other people's dungeons.

"So I wanted a dungeon of my own. Even a small one."

What he pulled from the envelope was a jeonse contract for a dungeon. Yes, dungeons can be leased on jeonse. Under the Dungeon Management Act, a dungeon belongs to whoever owns the land, so the owner can sell it, rent it out monthly, or lease it on jeonse. Jeonse means you hand over one big lump-sum deposit, mine whatever resources the dungeon produces for two years, and when the term ends you get the whole lump sum back. If you get it back, that is.

"The deposit's... 80 million won?"

"Yes. I took out a loan..."

"Grade?"

"C. There's a state-certified appraisal, too."

The appraisal he handed me said, in neat print, Sillim 7-2 Dungeon, semi-basement type, Grade C, and the appraiser's seal was stamped on it crisp and clear. The paperwork was clean. So clean that not a single corner was bent.

"How long since you signed?"

"Three months. But when I go in, all that comes out is slimes. If it's C-rank there should be orcs at least, right? So I called the landlord, and..."

"He doesn't pick up. He reads your texts and doesn't answer, and then since yesterday the number's been disconnected."

Cheolho's eyes went round. They were asking how I knew, but there was no need to explain that kind of thing one by one. I flipped to the last page of the contract. Lessor: Cha Gapdon. Address: an officetel in Gangnam. The seal was a cheap stock stamp, the kind you buy at a stationery store.

It was Gap-dol.

A fairly well-known name in this business. He takes a hollow dungeon with an inflated grade, leases it out on jeonse, uses the deposit to buy another dungeon, and leases that out on jeonse too. He keeps rolling the gap between price and deposit like that, and when one of them blows up, he cuts contact and goes under. So everyone calls him Gap-dol—the gap guy.

I took a sip of coffee. It was sweet.

"Cheolho, you want your deposit back, right?"

"...Of course."

"Then let's go look at the dungeon. Right now."

Sillim 7-2 Dungeon was in the semi-basement of a low-rise apartment building. It might have been a storeroom once; rusted shelf marks were still on the walls, and from a round hole in the middle of the cement floor, a bluish light leaked out like breathing.

While Cheolho switched on his flashlight, I crouched in front of the hole.

I'm a hunter too. Same rank as Cheolho: F. I awakened on D-Day five years ago, and my skill was called [Location Appraisal]. Going by the name, it sounded like a dungeon appraisal skill, and that's what I thought too. That winter alone I went around more than ten dungeons. Ward-office public dungeons, Hunter Association tour dungeons, dungeons I tagged along to on bag-carrying gigs. Every time I stood in front of a hole I strained my eyes, but nothing ever came up. Same at the agency re-test. The examiner wrote "manifestation condition unknown" and stamped an F.

After that I didn't go near dungeons. The dungeon market was just opening up then, and every neighborhood had pre-sale seminar flyers going around. The phrase "lifetime returns guaranteed" matched the shopping-arcade pre-sales of ten years earlier word for word. I hated that smell, so whenever a dungeon brokerage request came in, I passed all of them to Mr. Wang. Which means that in five years, I had not once looked at a dungeon as a client's listing.

But that day, looking down into the hole, the air in front of my eyes itched. Like the afterimage you get when you stare at a monitor too long and turn your head—something that tried to surface and didn't.

"Boss, are you okay?"

"Too much coffee, I guess. That's eight cups today."

"That's bad for you."

"I know."

Instead of the hole, I looked at Cheolho once. New soles, crumpled envelope, red eyes. Eighty million won, put down by a twenty-three-year-old who took out a loan for it.

Something from ten years ago came back. At twenty-four, I had added a loan to what I'd saved at my first job and bought one unit in a shopping arcade in front of Sillim Station. The lecturer at the pre-sale seminar stood on the podium and said it was the people who studied who got to eat, and within a year that unit was hollow. I still remember the lecturer's name and face. These days he does investment lectures on TV.

I folded that thought away and looked at the hole again. This time I looked the way I look at a commercial listing. Location, structure, defects, title. What this dungeon was really worth.

The itch came back in front of my eyes, and this time letters came up.

【Listing】 Sillim 7-2 Dungeon (Semi-basement type)
Listed grade: C │ Actual grade: F
Deposits: Slime gel (small amount)
Defects: Grade appraisal forgery history ×1

"Cheolho, do you see this here?"

When I pointed into the air, Cheolho stared at my fingertip for a long time, then tilted his head.

"A cobweb?"

Apparently only I could see it. A skill that had kept its mouth shut in front of dungeons for five years finally opened it when I looked at one as a client's listing—and of all things, it was in the format of a real estate listing sheet. I laughed. Cheolho took a step back and said I was scaring him.

Once the laugh died down, doubt came up. A man who's had eight cups of coffee can see all kinds of things. I'd slept four hours last night, and this morning I'd gotten a text from the landlord about three months of unpaid rent. On a day like that, you can see anything.

I closed my eyes and opened them. The letters were still there. I turned my head and looked back. Still there. Look somewhere else and they vanished; look at the hole and they came back.

"Boss, um... do you think I can get my deposit back?"

Cheolho asked. I didn't answer right away; I glanced at the crumpled envelope in his hand. If I said yes, this kid would sleep properly tonight for the first time in three months. And if it then fell through, he'd never believe anyone again.

"I'll be honest with you, Cheolho. I can't promise. People like this have most likely already sunk the money somewhere else. If you sue, you'll win, sure, but if there's no money to collect, the judgment is just paper."

Cheolho's face caved in again. To keep from looking at that face too long, I moved my eyes to my phone. I wasn't in a position to worry about other people's problems either. The back rent was already being eaten out of my 20-million-won office deposit, and if I didn't get through this month, I might have to take down the sign.

"If you still want to do it, there are conditions."

"Anything."

"If you get it back, ten percent success fee. If you don't, zero."

Cheolho blinked. Then he nodded hard. An eight-million-won nod.

I opened a dungeon listing app and searched for the lessor, Cha Gapdon. Four jeonse listings came up. All in the Sillim and Bongcheon area, all C-rank or higher, all about twenty percent under market. Textbook bait. And also, as it happened, four listings I could use to check whether my eyes were real.

I sent an inquiry on one of them.

"Hello, this is Mansu Realty. I saw your listing. I have a client looking—could we view it tomorrow?"

The reply came in three seconds.

"Yes yes~ You won't find this price anywhere these days! How about 2 p.m. tomorrow in Bongcheon~"

Cheolho peered at my phone screen and went white.

"Boss, why are you contacting him? He's a scammer."

"That's why. I want to know whether all of this guy's listings are fake, or whether my eyes are. One look tomorrow and I'll know one or the other."

"...Your eyes?"

"It's a coffee thing. Don't worry about it."

After Cheolho left, I sat on the semi-basement steps and tore open one more coffee mix. Number nine. Eight million won would cover three months of back rent and still leave enough to repaint the sign.

I crushed the empty paper cup in my fist and went back down the steps. I crouched at the hole and looked into it the way I'd look at a commercial listing, and the letters came up again.

Listed grade: C │ Actual grade: F

☾