Labyrinth Exploration 101 - Chapter 35

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Labyrinth Exploration 101 Episode 035

Hate you(2)

The combined team of cargo and escort was completed, and in the Kang Hyeon A4 – Im Hae-jun B12 team conference room.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: First, I see about three routes. The loot is in the underground tunnel, and when we bring the cargo out from there, there are three forks in the road. I’ll recommend the third route.

Yoon Hwa-rim recommended a route. Since I already knew all these stories, I watched comfortably.

Is there any popcorn around? I’d like to munch on some.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: How about it?

Yoon Hwa-rim confidently asked Kang Hyeon, and at this moment Kang Hyeon looked at me.

─Kang Hyeon: What does the escort team think? I heard you were in the military.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: There wouldn’t be any objections. Just according to my plan-

Just as Yoon Hwa-rim was trying to push through with her plan without even listening to my opinion.

─Seol Ha-woon: No.

“…Hm?”

A strangely uneasy sense of discord flashed through my mind as I watched.

The editing just now was a bit strange. Something like double editing was inserted, and quite a few cuts were captured of team members turning to look at me sharply.

Huh? Why? Suddenly? It’s good but why? These kinds of close-ups of gazes.

That never happened.

─Seol Ha-woon: More than 70% of escort work is about movement routes. If the movement route goes wrong, situations arise where even escorting becomes meaningless. In that regard.

Seol Ha-woon on screen took a deep breath and refuted Yoon Hwa-rim to her face.

─Seol Ha-woon: This third route doesn’t look good at all.

The editing became even more intense. Not only Yoon Hwa-rim but all the other team members were dramatically close-upped.

Their expressions were very strange. Most were distorted, looking at me with quite worried faces.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: Why? It’s the easiest path.

─Seol Ha-woon: That’s true when entering the cargo location. But when we start transporting the cargo, there’s a section where we get surrounded.

Yoon Hwa-rim bit her lips. She looked around the conference room, observing the team members. They shrugged their shoulders or shook their heads as if they understood Yoon Hwa-rim.

That never happened.

Well, it did happen, but the time and space were different.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: An open field would actually be better. We can fight together.

─Seol Ha-woon: Escorting isn’t about fighting together, it’s about preventing enemy approach itself. Therefore, we keep the entry route the same, but change the escape route.

The team members looked at Seol Ha-woon, who was completely revising Yoon Hwa-rim’s route, with eyes full of suspicion.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: …Then we’d have to go through the forest. If visibility is hindered, how do we transport the cargo-

─Seol Ha-woon: The escort team will lead. Also, hindered visibility is the same for orcs. We’ll divide and conquer the orcs that enter the forest.

After that, there was silence.

No one said anything.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: No, I, still-

─Seol Ha-woon: Shh.

Shh?

Shh?

I said “shh” to Yoon Hwa-rim?

That was said to Im Hae-jun!

Seol Ha-woon on TV continued speaking.

─Seol Ha-woon: Yes. In this operation, my words will definitely be right.

My exact wording was “In this operation, my words will be right. At least I’ll try to make it so,” but no matter how long I waited, the latter part didn’t come out.

It was edited.

Silence fell over the conference room.

No one looked at my face, and only their disgusted expressions were shown one by one.

─Kang Hyeon: The escort team’s…

A sigh was mixed between his words. He didn’t sigh.

Is this AI regeneration?

─Kang Hyeon: We’ll follow your opinion.

As if it was an unavoidable choice. Seol Ha-woon twisted the corner of his mouth with a sneer. It was a rotten smile that didn’t even look like a smile.

─Seol Ha-woon: Yes.

“…Ugh. This is confusing.”

Did I just have a dream?

It felt like I got hit in the back of the head several times, but the live broadcast was ongoing.

Next was Yoon Hwa-rim’s perspective. She was crouched down leaning against the wall looking dejected, and Lee Jong-soo approached her.

─Lee Jong-soo: Just bear with it. It’s a joint team. We have to give those people a chance to be active too.

─Yoon Hwa-rim: …Be active? What if the team gets ruined?

I nodded belatedly.

So this is that devil’s editing I’ve only heard about.

“…Kim A-rang.”

So the pendant’s boomerang from the final preliminaries is coming back like this.

I glanced at the real-time chat.

-What’s that? What the ♬♪ is that ♬♪♬♪♬ doing?

-Did Seol Ha-woon get shot in the head or something?

-No lol I don’t really know about the strategy but why is he talking like that

-lololol he’s really like an old fartlolol

-He’s got that old fart vibe, damn;

-Tell that idiot to get lost

-Why does Kang Hyeon listen to that guy again?

-Hwa-rim is so pitiful really

-That bastard is just crazy lol lololol

The chat window is exploding. Without even having time to properly read each line, they shoot up like lightning – papapapat!

My head was throbbing.

“Ah, headache.”

Just then the screen switched, and Lee Jun-ho’s team started their labyrinth conquest.

The cargo location was the Lizard Spawning Pool. Lee Jun-ho, who had received all sorts of formulas from Kim Woo-hyuk, a buff-type mage, moved almost single-handedly to extract the cargo and handled over 70% of the transportation himself.

“He’s good.”

He is good.

I watched the live broadcast while smacking my lips. It seemed like I’d need Tylenol more than popcorn.

* * *

Episode 2 of [Labyrinth Exploration NaN] ended after showing 6 teams’ conquests. Our team wasn’t among them. Thanks to that, my image remained screwed.

A world full of talk about Labyrinth Exploration Season 3, not just online including communities and SNS, but offline as well.

[ Spoiler Alert) Today’s undeniable villain from Labyrinth Exploration NaN ]

I clicked on one of the countless posts in the community that was about to explode with Labyrinth Exploration NaN content.

The content was just one meme.

Seol Ha-woon being cocky saying ‘In this operation, my words will definitely be right.’

Just that alone, but the upvotes were in the thousands and there were almost over a thousand comments.

─My-words-are-right lol damn lololol

─Yoon Hwa-rim who entered Magic School at 16 and completed the American Lemiere Mana Course vs former soldier who brags about breaking through circuits in 3 months

└What’s the Lemiere Mana Course?

└It’s a mage education course run by the mage Lemiere. It’s government-funded study abroad. It means she’s a talent recognized by the nation.

“Ah, Lemiere was a mage?”

I thought it was some kind of wild vegetable bibimbap or something.

─He did seem like a fucking idiot while watching lol

─This bastard is the villain of episode 2 yeah

─I heard he’s UDT, so I understand. He probably has more real combat experience. But labyrinths and the military are completely different. Yoon Hwa-rim is probably a much more elite mage than him.. disappointing

└People think UDT is fucking amazing, but honestly compared to 707 they’re inferior in every way lol Unless it’s UDT Black team level.

“I am that Black, you bastard.”

UDT BLACK. The official name is Battle Line Assault and Covert Kill-team, or so they say, but I don’t know the details. It might just be the color of gum for all I know.

I clicked on another post.

[ Spoiler) Today’s Labyrinth Exploration NaN three-line summary ]

‘Martial God Lee Jun-ho’

’96th place My-Words-Are-Right’

‘Yoon Hwa-rim who’s about to die from frustration’

Lee Jun-ho became a hot topic by almost grinding through the labyrinth alone, and 96th place My-Words-Are-Right is me. Seol Ha-woon.

Yoon Hwa-rim was the scene where she leaned against the wall and kept hitting her chest, like a mother-in-law having a fit.

─I really don’t like people like My-Words-Are-Right..

─People who’ve met such dogmatic bosses at work will know,, When things go well it’s their credit, when things go wrong it’s others’ fault. Just annoying, and he’s not even a boss lol

─Yoon Hwa-rim is pitiful,, Isn’t Kang Hyeon’s head completely empty? Why does he listen to that crazy bastard?

└It’s not that he listened to him, they were a joint team from the start, not the same team. If the escort team wants to do something, they have no choice but to do it.. They also need to show their skills. It’s a loophole in the rules.

Suddenly, I had this thought.

Why am I deliberately torturing myself?

Yet I clicked on another post.

[ Spoiler Alert) Analysis of this cargo dungeon ]

First, as everyone knows, labyrinths have very diverse specifications, sizes, and purposes.

Among them, cargo escort dungeons are selected by the Association as ‘labyrinths that must be cleared first’, because if not eliminated quickly, the monsters inside the labyrinth come out of the labyrinth, that is, onto the streets, causing civilian damage.

Moreover, reconnaissance specialists are really incredibly important in cargo dungeons.

You know reconnaissance specialists work as freelancers these days, right? The reconnaissance specialists whose names you know don’t earn hundreds of millions annually, but earn in units of tens of billions per year, and corporate reconnaissance guilds have revenues exceeding hundreds of billions lol

But Kang Hyeon’s team had a C-grade reconnaissance specialist. That’s ambiguous. About 70% would be accurate, but 30% would be inaccurate.

Yoon Hwa-rim seems to have chosen the open field considering that the reconnaissance specialist was C-grade. Because if you go into the forest, there are many variables, but if you go to the open field, you can rely on Kang Hyeon’s force.

Seol Ha-woon didn’t know that.

Of course, Seol Ha-woon’s words weren’t wrong either. If you lead the cargo into the forest, the orcs can’t even surround you because of the trees…

3-line summary) My-Words-Are-Right is military style. Yoon Hwa-rim is explorer style.

─Really fucking annoying lol reminded me of my boss at work the whole time

─After acting like that, he’ll 100% blame others when things go wrong, right?

─Even armchair viewers could tell that going into the forest was a fucking trash strategy lol damn doesn’t he know orcs climb mountains really fast? Just an idiot

Seol Ha-woon is getting quite a lot of hate, but as Seol Ha-woon himself, it’s not entirely bad. This is what happens when you succeed in objectifying yourself.

Moreover, recognition is rising tremendously.

Though not as fast as I thought.

“…Is it because it’s negative issues?”

[MoMo]’s recognition system is quite in-depth.

The 1st level is simply being known, the 2nd level is what kind of impression and influence you have on what kind of people and how much, the 3rd level is whether you’ve achieved particularly great feats, and so on.

Come to think of it, it’s incredibly detailed. For a mobile game.

Anyway, at this rate of increase, recognition level 8 is coming soon too.

Knock knock.

“?”

Is it staff?

I opened the door.

“Hi?”

It was Seo Ji-woo raising her hand high up.

I immediately closed the door.

Bang bang!

-Ah why are you closing it! Open it!

I opened the door again. Seo Ji-woo, frowning, stuck her front paw through the door gap first.

“Come out in 10 minutes. They say we need to do an interview.”

“Interview?”

“Yeah. And…”

Seo Ji-woo held something out to me.

“What’s this?”

It was a ping-pong ball-sized object that sparkled blue.

Seo Ji-woo’s eyebrows twitched.

“It’s a Mana Socket. Don’t you know?”

Mana Socket. It refers to an object that contains Magic Power. Like a portable battery for cell phones, it’s a socket that supplements some of a mage’s Magic Power, but it’s incredibly expensive. This tiny thing probably costs around 20-30 million won.

“I’m grateful you helped me. And I don’t use this anymore. It’s not compatible with the socket I use separately. I was going to sell it secondhand… but think of it as repayment for the cabin~”

Basically, you can only use one Mana Socket. Since it’s an artifact that supplies Magic Power to circuits, it’s very sensitive, and wearing two or more causes conflicts.

I shook my head.

“I don’t need it.”

“Oh really? What a coincidence. I don’t need it either.”

Seo Ji-woo threw the Mana Socket over the threshold. Grinning mischievously like a little imp, she ran away with quick pattering steps.

“…”

I watched her retreating figure before closing the door. I picked up the Mana Socket from the ground.

When you put Magic Power into a socket, you can change its size as the user desires.

I made it into a bracelet and put it on my wrist.

Since I received it anyway, it would be a waste to throw it away…

Knock knock-

“Who is it now?”

I opened the door.

This time it was someone with brown curly hair, grinning unnecessarily.

“Hyung~”

It was Im Hae-jun.

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