TRPM 422

chapter 422

I sent Yeon Mirae and Sophia a message suggesting that the mastermind behind this incident might be someone from the Association.

It was only a guess, but both of them replied that they agreed with my opinion.

“All right, then…”

I decided to leave the investigation of who was behind the incident to the police and those two, and I neatly organized the materials that had been handed to me.

“…That’s a lot.”

The materials I organized were the Association’s reports on the concealed dungeons. They analyzed each discovered concealed dungeon from multiple angles; the documentation for a single dungeon could fill about thirty sheets of paper. And there were hundreds of discovered concealed dungeons.

Of course, the amount of material was enormous.

“I put in the coordinates where the dungeons appeared, the terrain features, the coordinates on the gravity map… basically almost every piece of information they thought might be needed, so it’s bound to be bulky.”

I read the report the World Awakened Association headquarters had sent. It said they’d built a device to detect the common mana pattern of all concealed dungeons, but the device was judged to be practically useless.

That mana pattern turned out to be a mana pattern that appears not only in concealed dungeons but in all dungeons. If that were the only thing, then the device could have been used to detect all dungeons, including concealed ones.

“They detect anyone who uses mana… so they detect every mage too, and that’s why it’s useless…”

Even with that drawback, it was still true that the device could detect concealed dungeons, so they were trying to find a useful way to employ it. For example, they might track all mages’ locations in real time and then subtract detections that match a mage’s location.

Of course, that approach would provoke strong objections from the mages.

“Hmm…”

I set the materials down and thought for a moment. The fact that there was no unique mana pattern for concealed dungeons meant… could it be that each concealed dungeon avoids detection in a different way?

If so, that would be troublesome. Unless you could identify every method a dungeon uses to evade detection and prepare countermeasures for each, the Association’s impractical device might be the only solution.

“…There’s no information about how the dungeons avoid detection.”

It looked like the people who examined the materials had tried to find out somehow, but they hadn’t discovered anything. They had rushed to assault the dungeons as soon as they were found, so they likely hadn’t had time for proper investigation.

“Hmm…”

I spent a long time considering the data. Was there truly no connection between the dungeons?

After examining the materials for about two hours, the conclusion I came to was…

“…I don’t know.”

If there had been a connection, the Association’s research lab would have discovered it already. They must have computers for comparing and analyzing the data. If I could sort the data and find commonalities, surely their computers could too.

‘Not just the computers—Arthur as well.’

Arthur, who was better than me at analysis, had only gathered the data and couldn’t propose a clear solution either, so it seemed unlikely any conclusion could be reached using only the data in these reports.

‘That means the problem must be something not shown in this data.’

So why did the flow of mana through the gate take a shape different from that of ordinary dungeons? It didn’t seem like a meaningless detail…

“…Or maybe it really is meaningless?”

I considered the possibility that other conditions determined whether a concealed dungeon formed, and the manner of mana flow might be irrelevant. I mustn’t forget that the black mist that creates dungeons possesses an intelligence. It learns ways to exploit human weaknesses, though slowly. If the black mist is capable of that, it could also leave meaningless false clues.

‘It hasn’t happened before, not even before the reset…’

The black mist had blatantly made the mana flow differently from other dungeons, almost as if to make it obvious that the mana flow was important—perhaps to distract us so we would fail to respond properly to concealed dungeons.

“Ugh, that’s creepy.”

Suddenly, I remembered something the Oracle had said in the past.

[(Someday the black mist will attack in a way humanity can never respond to. The black mist’s rate of growth isn’t that fast, so it’ll be decades from now, but…)]

The Oracle must have foreseen the black mist pushing humanity this way. Thinking of that, I felt a little sympathy. But that wasn’t the main point.

“Still, it’s not at the level where we can’t respond at all—yet.”

We were still far from being unable to cope with the black mist’s attacks.

‘So what should I do about this…?’

No matter how much data there was, if it didn’t explain why concealed dungeons escaped existing detection, making a proper detector would be difficult. Would the device the Association made, which supposedly detects all dungeons and mages’ locations, be the most efficient solution after all?

Bark!

“?”

As I scribbled the ideas that had popped into my head onto the whiteboard, a dog barked very close by.

Bark!

“Sarang, when did you come in this time?”

For some reason, I Ha-eun’s familiar Sarang had come into my room.

“When did I come? I came a while ago.”
“…I Ha-eun, when did you come?”
“A while ago. I came with my mom. Your mom said she’d be late today and told us to feed you.”

So get out here quickly and eat dinner.

“……”

My mom, too. I can take care of myself just fine…

‘…Now that I think about it, I’ve skipped meals a lot when I was home alone.’

I could go months without eating and still be fine…

“What are you doing? Come out already.”
Bark!
“Okay, I’m coming. I’m coming.”

I followed I Ha-eun, who was beckoning me to hurry, and Sarang, who was tugging at my pant leg, down to the living room.

“What were you doing in your room? What are all those papers stuck around the place?”
“Because of the concealed dungeons. I was trying to find a way to detect them.”
“Why are you the one trying to find that? The researchers should be doing that.”

…That was a fair point. Of course, the World Awakened Association asked me for help because they assumed I was an expert in this field due to the low-frequency generator, but still.

“…Hm?”

Wait. Concealed dungeons are affected by the low-frequency generator, right? If they weren’t, they would have popped up inside the generator’s influence area as well. But I’d never heard of such dungeons appearing there.

‘If the low-frequency generator affects where a dungeon appears… then maybe we can use that to find concealed dungeons?’

The low-frequency generator only emits waves with frequencies and waveforms that push dungeons away, but what if we built radar that used those low frequencies? Of course, you’d need sufficient data to see a reliable effect, but it’d be more realistic than trying to track every mage in real time.

“Then let’s—”
“Sarang! Bite!”
Woof!
“Argh?!”

As I tried to go back into my room to write down the idea I’d just had, I Ha-eun ordered Sarang to bite my head. It didn’t hurt, of course. No matter how much Sarang was a Fenrir, the attack power at “Aura Master” level only applies when it takes on the form of a giant wolf; as an ordinary puppy it only had normal dog-level bite strength.

‘I should be worried first whether the teeth broke my self-defense pal.’

While I was thinking that, I Ha-eun’s mother looked at me and said,

“Hahaha… Geon-woo? It’s good to work hard, but let’s eat first, okay? If you don’t eat today, I’ll get scolded by Jae-hee.”
“Y-yes…”

I removed Sarang from my head and sat at the table. I Ha-eun and Sarang, seemingly satisfied, went to their spots and sat down.

“…Hey, Ha-eun.”
“Yeah?”
“Does Sarang sit at your table too?”
“Yes. If Sarang were an ordinary dog it’d be different, but because it’s a familiar, it eats human food fine.”

Ah, right. Also, Sarang, who was created by I Ha-eun’s aura, wouldn’t really need to eat, but…

Heh heh…

Seeing Sarang looking forward to dinner, it felt awkward to tell it not to eat.

That night, I called Sophia to my house after she got off work at the Steel-Blood Guild.

“Did you call me?”
“Master. Isn’t it a bit much to call at night like this?”

Then, Yeon Mirae, who lives with Sophia, also came to our house naturally.

“Huh? What about your mother?”
“She said she’d be late because of the hostage incident today. She might get in at dawn or maybe in the morning.”

After all, the child who staged today’s hostage incident was one the Shinse-kyung had been protecting. There was no denying that Shinse-kyung bore some responsibility for the incident, and so Iha-eun’s mother was being questioned at the police station…

“Do we really have to do this tonight?”
“No. The police said we could come later, but my mom said she couldn’t leave the kid alone…”

So she was getting questioned in front of the juvenile detention center because she felt responsible and couldn’t leave the child alone.

“She seems to feel responsible.”
“Probably. By the way, Sophia.”

I was about to tell Sophia why I’d called her.

“Yes?”
“We need to make a detector for concealed dungeons.”

“! I see. How are you thinking of building it?”

Sophia looked a little surprised that I wanted to build a detector in a single day.

“Using the low-frequency generator’s low-frequency waves…”

I explained the idea I’d come up with in the evening. Sophia, who had the necessary knowledge to build a detector, nodded as if she thought it was quite possible.

“…If that’s the case, there’s a good chance we could find concealed dungeons. Given that the low-frequency waves pushed not just concealed dungeons but also conventional and erosion-type dungeons, we could probably detect those as well.”

Yeon Mirae, who was listening from the side, also nodded and added,

“Nowadays, places where people live tend to have low-frequency generators installed anyway, so using them could save installation costs.”

I hadn’t thought about installation costs, but that was certainly an advantage.

“Let’s build it right away.”
“Where should we build it? Master’s room? No, that’s too small. How about the mid-slope of the back mountain where we always go?”
“Both of you calm down.”

I told the two excited girls that we would actually start building the detector tomorrow.

“Why? Isn’t it better to make it as soon as possible?”
“Right. We should make it soon and experiment…”
“Making it now would be impossible.”

I summed up for them why we couldn’t build the detector right now in one sentence.

“We don’t have the materials.”

I dug through my pocket dimension where I keep all sorts of things, but even in my pocket space there were no materials suitable for building the detector.