24-Hour Friendly Market, Specializing in Dimensional Items - Chapter 221

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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24-Hour Friendly Market Specializing in Dimensional Items Episode 221

Episode 221. A Ray of Sunlight (9)

The first thing I felt upon stepping outside the Holy Temple was the profound silence enveloping everything.
The relentless patter of rain that had deafened my ears so thoroughly I could barely hear the person ahead of me had vanished without a trace.
I lifted my head the moment my feet touched the surface.
Instead of the rain curtains obscuring my vision, the jungle landscape glistened with moisture in crystalline clarity.
Han Ro-mi, who had climbed the stairs behind me, let out a quiet exclamation.
“The rain has stopped….”
Even spoken in Han Ro-mi’s characteristically soft voice, the words came through distinctly.
During the downpour, this jungle had never known a moment of silence.
The rain hammered against the leaves with such ferocity it seemed like hail, the sound of water overflowing from puddles, and that squelching noise with every step through the mire.
But now.
‘It’s practically healing.’
Water droplets clinging to the dense canopy rolling gently downward, those same droplets striking still water and creating delicate ripples, the breeze caressing the leaves.
Only these serene sounds remained.
The silence felt so unfamiliar it was almost unsettling.
The squelching mud and humid air persisted, but the long, tedious monsoon had definitively ended.
I turned back toward the temple without a word, moving slowly.
The Assault Team following behind me still made splashing sounds with each step, but with my ears finally clear, even that didn’t sound so unpleasant.
Save for the occasional rainwater dripping onto my head from above, it was peaceful enough to call a leisurely stroll.
The moment I reached the temple entrance.
“…Wow.”
A single ray of light descended diagonally through the branches.
I reflexively tilted my head back, gazing upward at the sky.
The dark clouds were parting.
The thick gray clouds that had accumulated in layers like a single mass were gradually being pushed aside.
Through that gap, a brilliant blue sky revealed itself.
A single warm ray of sunlight pierced through that opening and settled upon the earth.
‘Gontawa and his people must be going absolutely wild.’
The increasingly brightening sky was, to be honest, quite beautiful.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, my vision flooded with brilliant white light.

[■ Babel System: The 76th Floor is now open.]

There it was—the scenario completion notification I’d been waiting for!
Kim Seol, Han Ro-mi, and Lee Taek-ju, who had cleared the scenario directly, would be seeing far more notification windows than I was.
Sure enough, when I glanced back, all three of them were busy reading text floating in the air.
Yet their expressions didn’t look happy at all.
‘…Why is that?’
We’d cleared the scenario through sheer hardship, getting drenched in the rain the whole time—so why did they all seem so underwhelmed?
That’s when Lee Taek-ju let out a deflated sigh.
“Ugh….”
It was the sigh of exhaustion, not relief.
I tapped Lee Taek-ju’s forearm, which looked troubled for some reason, and asked.
“You cleared the scenario, so why the reaction?”
“It’s good, sure, but… didn’t it feel a bit anticlimactic compared to what we expected?”
At Lee Taek-ju’s question, Han Ro-mi simply nodded quietly.
The emotion on Kim Seol’s face didn’t look like a sense of accomplishment either.
“I agree.”
“Exactly! There was no ‘wait, that actually worked?’ feeling at all. It felt like a scenario from around the 30s in terms of difficulty.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s the 76th Floor. The Intermediate Station just opened, and this was the first scenario, but the difficulty wasn’t as high as I thought.”
Kim Seol answered calmly to my question—someone who’d never experienced the 30s.
There was no particular change in her expression, but somehow she looked distinctly uneasy.
‘Now that she mentions it, that does seem to be the case.’
I retraced my memories up to this point.
Compared to the other scenarios I’d experienced so far, I’d never felt the threat of death or been stuck on a difficult problem in this one.
Even the tangled problem I’d solved wasn’t honestly that difficult.
‘So did the difficulty suddenly become easier?’
Could Lee Hae-on have failed to adjust the difficulty properly?
…Whenever doubts like this arose, an ominous future always seemed to approach.
Lee Taek-ju, who’d been looking troubled, soon let out a heavy sigh and muttered.
“Anyway, let’s stop by Gontawa first.”
“Yeah, we should explain things to them before we leave.”
Kim Seol, who’d also sighed in agreement, began walking toward Gontawa without hesitation.
She’s moving with remarkable confidence despite having just unsettled me.
Well, my unease isn’t really because of the anticlimactic scenario completion.
It’s because of what that humanlike God said earlier.
After Nianusu used their power in the Underground Sanctuary, causing vibrations and chaos everywhere.
Just as we were about to turn back after finishing our task, a quiet sound echoed in my mind.
Nianusu simply stood there in their sacred form, yet suddenly their voice rang in my head.
It was telepathy—something I’d only ever seen in novels or comics.

—A child who resembles you said there’s a secret right beneath the sky.

It was a brief riddle, but the difficulty was remarkably low.
A child who resembled me would naturally be my Brother, and if I thought of it as a message he’d left for me, it was easy to interpret.
Right beneath the sky meant the very top of the Tower.
It meant my Brother had hidden something there.
I wasn’t sure why he’d conveyed this through Nianusu, but the moment I heard those words, I realized I had to go to the 100th Floor.
Surprisingly, for an outlaw like me who could now access any unopened floor through leveling up the Dimensional Door Skill, it wasn’t a difficult task.
My only concern was that I had no idea what was actually on the 100th Floor, the final level.
Of all places, it was the final floor—surely it wouldn’t be a landscape to laugh about carelessly!
‘But that doesn’t mean I won’t go.’
I had no idea what would happen, who I’d meet, or what my Brother had hidden.
I didn’t even know how long it would take.
I mentally organized my own schedule.
Since I was going to the 100th Floor anyway, I’d first complete a preliminary survey of a few floors beforehand, properly distribute work to the middle managers, and so on.
‘It would be nice to finish all the Title Quests before going.’
To reach the 100th Floor, I’d need to move diligently the moment I left this place.
I’d always aimed for a life of working less and earning more, but somehow it had come to this.
While lamenting my own circumstances, I diligently followed Kim Seol.
I mentally organized what to ask of Kang Yeon-hee and Alessandro, and pondering the remaining Title Quest items was a bonus.
Filling 1,000 product varieties could be resolved by sacrificing a few nights of sleep.
As for middle managers…
‘Maybe I should ask Park Ji-woon or Seo Jae-hyuk.’
Since my network of relationships was narrow, I couldn’t think of anyone particularly worth asking.
In times like these, if I asked someone who owed me a lot, they’d find suitable people without issue.
My plan seemed reasonably plausible.
However, the moment I left the 76th Floor, a message that had been waiting anxiously for me turned my plan into blank paper.

[> New Message
-Could you perhaps meet me at the Market? The sooner the better. | Manti]

It was a message that had arrived five days ago by Babel Tower’s clock.
And with a very uneasy tone at that.

* * *

No matter how urgent, Manti always speaks in roundabout ways, adorning his words with all manner of flowery language.
Even something as simple as “the faster, the better” would have been expressed as something like “the briefer the moment, the more precious it becomes” in his elegantly unparalleled manner.
In fact, he probably wouldn’t have suggested meeting immediately at all.
He would have proposed something vague like “should we meet whenever you find it convenient, that itself would be my joy,” without setting any specific time.
Speaking so directly was utterly unlike Manti.
But the message was from five days ago.
I’d grown careless because the time spent in Raquan hadn’t been long.
While five days had passed outside, time had flowed extraordinarily slowly in Raquan.
After leaving the 76th Floor with the Assault Team, I headed straight to the Dimensional Market without stopping by Babel Square.
The moment I stepped into the alley, now tidied by the opening of the 75th Floor, I broke into a hurried run.
It was Manti—of all people—who was looking for me.
‘What on earth could it be?’
Suddenly, the fact that Manti had recently conducted a transaction with the Broker came to mind.
He’d said things went well, but could something have gone wrong?
Even if a dimension were to perish, that wouldn’t be why he’d introduce me to the Broker, would it?
One worry piled upon another, swelling in my chest.
I walked toward the golden arrow almost at a sprint.
“Manti!”
The moment I arrived at the Stall, I called out his name and stepped inside.
But Manti was nowhere to be seen.
He’d asked to meet urgently, so why wasn’t he here?
I ventured deeper inside, glancing around.
And then.
“…Manti?”
Beneath the shop counter, in a corner, a white mass lay curled up in a ball.
With his front paws neatly folded and his tail drawn tightly against his body, it was an adorably cute posture, but…
Before I could greet him with joy, I sank down with a serious expression.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?!”
I’d wanted to welcome him, but my dear white cat looked far too pitiful!
At the sound of my voice, Manti slowly opened his eyes and blinked with difficulty.
His white fur, once always soft and lustrous, was now matted in twisted directions, and his nose was parched and dull.
His legs, which had always been pristine without a speck of dust, were now caked with all manner of filth.
Most of all, his eyes were different.
Not the leisurely, gentle gaze characteristic of Manti, but eyes so exhausted they seemed to lack the strength to carry on.
I had seen such eyes before.
During my first meeting with Alessandro Hale, the middle manager of Babel Square.
“What happened to you?”
I lowered my head with a worried expression.
Manti looked up at me with clouded eyes and slowly began to rise.
Though “rise” might not be quite the right word.
Lacking strength, he could barely stand, his legs trembling as though they might give way at any moment.
Manti, who had stretched out his front paws as if wanting to approach me, suddenly collapsed with a heavy thud.
Watching the noble scholar cat crumble so ungracefully dealt me an enormous emotional blow.
I carefully picked up Manti, paying close attention to his condition.
‘Why is he so light?’
I’d held Manti countless times before, yet he weighed far less than I remembered—less than the familiar numbness in my arms recalled.
Manti exhaled laboriously in my embrace.
He lacked even the strength to move, let alone headbutt me, and simply leaned his entire body against me.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I asked, my voice trembling with anxiety.
Even opening his eyes seemed to strain him; Manti’s eyelids fluttered before finally opening after a long moment.
Then, in a metallic sound that barely resembled a cry, he let out a brief “mew.”

-I have nowhere to return to.

Seeing the translation window materialize before me, I doubted my own eyes.
“What… are you saying? Nowhere to return to?”
In truth, I’d grasped the meaning immediately, yet I repeated the question because I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.
My reflection stared back at me from Manti’s turbid yet still vivid blue eyes.
An unguarded expression consumed by worry, bewilderment, and shock.
As if reading my face directly, Manti let out another strained cry.

-My homeland no longer has a place for me.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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