Something Keeps Appearing in My Subspace - Chapter 235

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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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235. Suspicious Phenomena in the Underground Sewers (1)
[The Lord of Space summons the past time within the space.]
A message I hadn’t seen in a long time appeared. A Hidden dungeon right from the start? Even I was taken aback. I hadn’t discovered anything special.
This was my first time experiencing something like this.
“Oh?”
“Already?”
“It’s been a while.”
“…?”
Mister was experiencing this for the third time, and the other guild members for the second. However, Han Chul was encountering it for the first time, so his expression showed more confusion.
“It seems you’ve all experienced this before.”
“Yes. Once last time….”
“My job class sometimes transforms the Gate.”
“Your job class? But the guild master said you were a Space Mage….”
Han Chul trailed off mid-sentence. Glancing sideways, I caught Mister smirking.
He’d known all along, then.
It seemed he wasn’t teasing me because of all the favors I’d done for him over the years. True, I had changed considerably.
Back when I worked part-time, I’d get flicked on the forehead if I stepped out of line, but these days that hardly happened anymore.
I almost mouthed “Spear Technique Secret Manual,” then sighed instead. Well, might as well come clean now.
“Actually, my job class is Lord of Space. It means the master of space, but the nuance is a bit….”
Seeing that Lee Shin-hee and Min-jae didn’t look surprised, they must have all figured it out last time.
They hadn’t mentioned it until now—everyone was remarkably considerate.
“Yes. Space Mage does sound better. People can be quite mischievous.”
Han Chul nodded in agreement. Even ordinary Awakened ones got called all sorts of crude nicknames, so the fallout from a job class called “Lord of Space” was predictable.
Mister chuckled.
“Why, people have been calling you a real princess lately. Last time in the Garden, they called you the masochist princess.”
“Sigh….”
He was teasing me as if he’d been waiting for me to speak.
“Well, anyway, that’s how it is. It’s not important though. When the Gate transforms, we enter the past.”
“Does it become harder?”
True to his serious nature, Han Chul quickly steered the conversation forward, and I was grateful for it.
“It has so far. But the rewards are guaranteed. At a lower level, I obtained a job skill acquisition ticket, and next time I got Blaze.”
“Interesting….”
“When I obtained Blaze, I was A-rank, so considering the level difference, it wouldn’t be strange if there’s an S-rank reward this time.”
“Worth attempting.”
Han Chul nodded. And in that moment, the surroundings began to transform rapidly.
Originally, our surroundings were dingy and musty Underground Sewers. The stench was nearly unbearable, almost like a sewage system.
Even with a gas mask equipped with odor-blocking magic, the unpleasantness was still palpable.
Black mucus of unknown origin clung to the walls and the ground beside the water channels.
“It’s becoming cleaner.”
The regression of the location accelerates. The surrounding landscape transformed rapidly. The black mucus disappeared, revealing moss, then the walls’ original appearance emerged.
The interior, which had been completely dark, grew somewhat brighter. Torches appeared to be hanging at intervals along the passage.
“At this level… it seems we’ve traveled back to the early days when these Underground Sewers were first constructed.”
“We’ve gone quite far back in time, it appears.”
And then, finally, the message updated.
[Suspicious Fugitive of the Underground Sewers]
-Recommended Level: 56~65
-Entry Limit: 10 people
-Apprehend the suspicious fugitive. Time remaining: 47 hours 59 minutes.
Nothing had changed dramatically. The recommended level had risen by five, and the Gate’s name had shifted slightly. The latter was what deserved attention.
“A suspicious fugitive, then…”
“So it’s not just an ordinary fugitive? Could it be incredibly strong?”
“It might be something else entirely.”
The words came from Lee Shin-hee, one of our Guild’s two brilliant strategists alongside me.
“Something else?”
“If it were simply strong, I’d expect a descriptor like ‘vicious’ or ‘brutal.’ But ‘suspicious’ changes the implication.”
“There’s a backstory to this?”
“Yes. Perhaps the reason for the bounty, or there may be room for this to develop in a different direction.”
True enough. There had to be a reason the word ‘suspicious’ was attached. It certainly felt suspicious. I nodded and added my thoughts.
“I was thinking along similar lines.”
Genuinely, probably.
“Let’s proceed assuming it’s an enemy for now.”
In any case, this speculation wasn’t 100% certain either, so we couldn’t afford to be careless when we encountered it.
“We’ll move forward now.”
Of course, even though the surroundings had been cleaned, the fact remained that we were in Underground Sewers. Wearing odor-blocking gas masks, we advanced.
* * *
“There are quite a lot of slimes here.”
“Their color is completely dark brown.”
From the start, following the water channels beside the path, we spotted quite a few slimes. They weren’t attacking us.
Chun-bae provided the explanation.
-The slimes here were placed by the Urban City and are tasked with consuming the sewage waste.
You might call it medieval fantasy-like. Rather than displaying aggressive behavior, they were consuming filth and garbage from the water and its sides.
According to Chun-bae, if we approached, they’d mistake us for waste and try to absorb us. As long as we didn’t attack first, there was no problem.
There was no reason to deliberately cause trouble, so we moved forward. By our level range, they weren’t particularly strong—just ordinary creatures.
I’d been concentrating on spatial awareness the whole time, and my head was starting to ache a bit.
“It’s quite complex. It seems the entire Underground Sewers beneath the Urban City are connected.”
“No enemies yet?”
“We might need to meet the suspicious person for the quest to progress.”
If Lee Shin-hee was right, either we’d capture that fugitive or hear their story and things might change.
Because of that, it seemed unlikely enemies would appear. However, Mister was holding his spear with gleaming eyes.
He was brimming with enthusiasm. The situation was quite favorable. Since we were in Underground Sewers, I couldn’t summon Yong-yong. Mister knew that and came anyway.
Right now, though, enemies and such weren’t the real concern.
“But more than that, this place is a complete maze, isn’t it? How are we supposed to find the Wanted Criminal?”
The Underground Sewers I was entering for the first time were far more complex than I’d expected—not just a Labyrinth with its deep passages, nor simply a few branching paths to choose from. It was bewilderingly intricate.
I paused mid-step. There had to be some clue.
They wouldn’t have designed this place just to make us wander aimlessly through the Underground Sewers. There had to be traces left by the Wanted Criminal, or something like that.
This was where I missed the Rogue. My spatial sense could substitute for most things, but… finding traces like this wasn’t easy.
‘Even Seo Seung-yeon was able to track Rung Wei before.’
I couldn’t change what I didn’t have. Let me think this through. I needed to find clues in my surroundings, even now.
“Should we go back and look again?”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea either.”
There had to be something worth finding from the starting point of the Gate. The path back was marked as we came, so there was no problem retracing our steps.
It was at that moment, turning back, that I felt something odd.
‘There aren’t many slimes around here?’
Now that I thought about it, slimes had appeared sporadically from the beginning. Some areas had quite a lot of them. Something flickered across my mind.
“Slimes?”
“Why slimes?”
“What if the slimes are the clue?”
In any case, without the Rogue here, it was better to verify something rather than waste time searching for traces.
“That makes sense. If the Wanted Criminal is here, they’d be in a place people wouldn’t want to go.”
Lee Shin-hee nodded in agreement. With the Guild members’ consent, we followed the path where slimes were most abundant through the Underground Sewers.
And we definitely found something unusual.
“The further we go toward where the slimes are, the more of them there seem to be, right?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
Slimes that should have only been in the sewage channels were crawling up onto the very path we walked.
We had to detour slightly, but something felt off.
“As if… they’re trying to keep us from going this way. Right?”
“Yeah. Your instincts were spot on.”
Mister looked at me and spoke, but I needed to correct him.
“Instincts? That’s superior intellect, thank you very much.”
It was obvious. I was one of the brains of our Guild alongside Lee Shin-hee, wasn’t I?
Mister let out a soft chuckle, but I let that slide. I’m magnanimous, after all.
We pressed forward a bit longer.
Now we’d gone beyond merely suspicious—the slimes were actively blocking the path.
“How are we supposed to get through here?”
The slimes themselves weren’t a problem. They weren’t particularly strong creatures. The issue was simply that there were too many of them.
Given the nature of slimes, touching one would provoke them all. Taking down a group was manageable enough.
The problem was that this path almost certainly led closer to the Wanted Criminal. An enemy that appears in 55-65 level Gates.
Even if we tried to minimize noise, defeating all the slimes crowded around us would alert the enemy.
‘They probably set up this slime wall with exactly that in mind from the start.’
Mister was looking at the slimes with a sense of helplessness, but there was no reason for that.
“See those footholds?”
“Huh?”
The Subspace had a way of making almost any situation manageable.
I created footholds in the empty space above the slime, so passing through wasn’t particularly difficult.
Then something strange appeared.
As I advanced using the Subspace footholds and changed direction, a figure caught the edge of my spatial awareness.
‘A swordsman?’
A person carrying just a single sword. He glanced in my direction from the corner of the passage, then his eyes widened and he bolted away at full speed.
“A fugitive?”
His running speed was quite impressive.
This wasn’t the time to be standing on Subspace footholds.
“Chase him!”
* * *
We were already committed. I dashed forward.
“Just run! If they swarm us, I’ll block them with the Subspace!”
There were no slimes where the fleeing person had been. In other words, this place resembled the final gate.
No wonder there were so many slimes here.
From what I’d observed while waiting, he didn’t seem to be the fugitive himself—more like a servant under his command.
Still, for a servant, his speed was remarkably fast.
‘I’m going to lose him.’
With Lee Shin-hee and Min-jae on our side, it was difficult to chase at full speed. At this rate, we’d leave my spatial awareness range.
My spatial awareness extends only 50 meters, which isn’t particularly far. It seemed better if I pursued him directly.
“I’m going ahead! I’ll follow his trail!”
“Understood!”
“Got it!”
Min-jae acknowledged and chanted a spell. Since we were already committed, flames flew toward the slimes.
-Boom!
I kicked off the ground while hearing the slimes burst. I left scorch marks at the corner as a trail.
He was already at the opposite corner. I used Leap immediately. Not too close, though.
‘So I need to chase after him.’
Or was it? If he was truly a servant of the fugitive, was he trying to lead us somewhere dangerous?
Suddenly, my mind flashed with clarity. Two choices presented themselves. But one of them was dangerous.
With the sound of magic echoing, if the fugitive escaped, this Gate would become severely problematic.
Given we had only two days, this vast Underground Sewers could turn into a time attack.
‘Catch him.’
I used Leap. Consecutively.
-Whoosh!
-Whoosh!
The moment I reached ahead of the fleeing figure, I got a good look at him and couldn’t help but be taken aback.
‘A child?’
No, he wasn’t quite a child. I’d say he was a Young Boy, maybe sixteen years old. He held a sword, but I wouldn’t call him a swordsman.
More like a swift-footed kid? Did they really bring in some pickpocket and post him as a guard?
“Deron!”
When he saw me, rather than drawing his blade, he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Please spare me!”
Was this real?
I drew Escirel to subdue him with the blade, though hesitation flickered through me. Still, I didn’t lower my guard.
I had to consider the possibility he was using deception tactics. Yet something about him suggested he absolutely wasn’t the type.
“What are these monsters…!”
Speaking of monsters—that’s harsh. We look similar enough. Ah, is it because of the gas mask?
It was then that a measured voice reached my ears.
“It appears you are not Emperor’s Servants, but rather bounty hunters. Might I suggest you cease your efforts here?”

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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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