Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Episode 1. The Day the Dungeon Break Happened, I Was Out Making a Delivery

“Not there. Next to it.”

Kang Jinho stopped his knife.

After looking back and forth between the pork on the cutting board and Yoon Heeseong’s face, he silently changed the angle of the blade.

The hand gripping the handle was sweaty.

His greasy palm and the wooden handle clung together as though stuck, then slipped ever so slightly.

“No, I’m telling you, if you cut it like that, it’ll all get crushed.”

Yoon Heeseong stood right beside him. Close enough for his breath to reach him.

The kitchen was already hot to begin with, but whenever that bastard stood pressed up close, it felt even harder to breathe.

“You’re calling that the right thickness?”

Jinho did not answer.

If he answered, this would drag on. If the conversation dragged on here, he would be the one who lost out.

Having no way of knowing what Jinho was thinking, Yoon Heeseong gave a short scoff, as though his silence irritated him even more.

“This isn’t a school, you know? If I have to teach you everything from one to ten, I should be charging tuition.”

The kitchen was chaotic.

Flames kept leaping above the burners, and the sharp clang of woks striking iron rang out.

Someone ran past carrying sliced onions, while someone else hauled down a large pot and swallowed a curse. It was just before the dinner rush, so everyone’s voices were louder than usual.

It was a battlefield that went by the name of a Chinese restaurant.

A battlefield invisible to the customers.

“Can’t you hear me?”

Only then did Jinho answer briefly.

“I’ll do it again.”

“Of course you have to do it again. What, are you going to serve that?”

Yoon Heeseong let out a long sigh and tapped the cutting board with his finger.

That was always how he showed off. When he was wrong, he quietly let it slide, but when someone else was wrong, he acted as though the world had ended.

Jinho pushed the meat back to one side and arranged it again. His hand moved diligently as he cut, but inside, he was quietly boiling.

Ever since joining as the youngest kitchen worker, he had done everything from washing dishes and prepping ingredients to odd jobs and deliveries, yet all he heard every day was that he was slow, clumsy, and had no sense.

Of course he was. His entire work history consisted of washing dishes at a snack shop, working night shifts at a convenience store, a logistics center, deliveries... That was all.

He had not graduated from some prestigious culinary school, nor did he have experience working in a hotel kitchen.

For someone like him to suddenly land in a Chinese restaurant, franchise or not, it was only natural that he would have to start from the very bottom.

That much was true, but... There were plenty of times when he wondered whether there was really any need to remind him of it so relentlessly that he could barely breathe.

In any case, Jinho endured it again. After all, this place paid more than a part-time job.

Why did he need money this badly? Well, that was...

“Enough. A delivery just came in, so go make it.”

Yoon Heeseong called out to him again while he was lost in thought. Jinho raised his head.

“...Right now?”

“What, are you planning to go tomorrow?”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Yoon Heeseong jerked his chin toward the delivery bag propped against the wall.

“Don’t just stand there. Hurry up and go. I’m sick of looking at you.”

Jinho swallowed the words he wanted to argue back with.

Why send him when they had a dedicated delivery driver?

Why suddenly send someone who had been cutting meat until a moment ago?

No, at the very least, was there really any need to say it like that?

After biting down hard on the inside of his lip, he picked up the delivery bag without another word.

_____________

The delivery ended quickly.

As he came out of the building, he fanned himself with his hand. It did not make the hot air disappear, but it helped a little.

His mood, however, did not improve. Yoon Heeseong’s voice still seemed stuck in his ears.

You’re calling that the right thickness?

This isn’t a school, you know?

“Fuck, I’m so damn sick of this.”

A low curse slipped out.

He did not want to go back to where Yoon Heeseong was at all.

“...I just want to clock out like this. Can’t some natural disaster happen or something?”

Jinho muttered to himself as he sat on the motorcycle and reached to start it.

His hand stopped before turning the ignition. There was no reason for it. And yet, as though his body knew before he did, a chill ran down his spine.

There was no strange smell.

The noise had not grown louder either.

But something about the air was definitely different from usual.

The sensation against his skin was subtly off. It was the same sort of wrongness he felt when he held a knife incorrectly in the kitchen.

It was difficult to explain, but it was the kind of wrongness his fingertips seemed to notice first. The wind was not blowing in a strange direction, nor had the temperature dropped, yet a cold sensation swept down his spine.

Jinho paused at the light and slowly looked around.

The people nearby were the same as before.

Two students in school uniforms stood in front of the crosswalk looking at a phone together, while at the bus stop, a woman holding a child stared somewhere with an exhausted expression. A delivery worker pushed a handcart while muttering curses, and in front of a convenience store, an office worker holding a cup of ice let out a sigh.

Everyone was moving as usual. That only made Jinho standing still look even stranger.

But at that moment.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

His phone rang like crazy.

And not just Jinho’s.

It seemed as though every phone on the entire street was ringing at once. The hands of people reaching into their pockets froze, and even people crossing the road stopped in their tracks. Some immediately turned on their screens, while others looked around with blank expressions.

Jinho pulled his motorcycle close to the sidewalk, lifted his helmet slightly, and took out his phone.

[Emergency Disaster Alert]

[Dungeon break reported in the nearby area. Evacuate immediately to the interior of a safe building.]

It took less than a second to read the sentence.

But it took far longer for its meaning to sink into his chest.

[Dungeon Break]

Literally, it meant monsters were pouring out of a collapsed dungeon nearby.

“What?”

Someone nearby let out a dumbfounded voice.

The next moment.

Vwoom—

A low, unpleasant vibration rose from beneath his feet.

The ground was not shaking, yet his stomach churned first. It felt like the organs inside his body had shifted slightly out of place, the way they did when an elevator stopped abruptly. Jinho instinctively raised his head.

And froze.

The sky was splitting open.

Literally.

A black crack appeared in the middle of the blue sky. It was such an unreal sight that at first he thought it was an optical illusion.

But the fracture quickly grew longer, and the thin line widened in an instant until it was clearly visible to the naked eye. Space split apart like the gap in a shattered pane of glass, and something impossible to distinguish as light or darkness seeped hazily through it.

“Aaaaaah!”

One person’s scream became the signal.

The entire street erupted into chaos.

Cars slammed to a stop. The screech of brakes overlapped with blaring horns. Someone flung open a car door in the middle of the road and ran, while someone else grabbed a stroller and sprinted madly toward a building across the street.

The woman holding the child tearfully repeated, “Quickly, quickly!” and the two students on the crosswalk tugged at each other’s arms, unable even to decide which direction to go.

Jinho moved reflexively as well.

He pushed the motorcycle toward the sidewalk and pressed his back against the wall of a nearby building. Logically, he knew he should get inside immediately.

Standing out on the street at the site of a break was practically suicide. But there was no other choice.

Because a small shadow had just dropped from the crack in the sky.

Thud.

What landed was a green monster about waist-high on an adult.

Damp, dull skin, unnaturally long limbs, and a rusty knife gripped in one hand. It was much smaller than the monsters he had seen on screens, but up close, it looked even more dangerous. Something that size could easily stab straight through a person’s thigh.

A goblin.

Jinho felt his mouth go completely dry.

A monster he had only ever seen in disaster reports on TV was now standing in the middle of the road.

The goblin straightened up as though the impact of the fall had meant nothing. Then it swept its narrow, gleaming eyes over its surroundings. The people fleeing while screaming, the stopped cars, the open convenience store door, even an abandoned cup of iced coffee.

Jinho pressed himself even tighter against the wall. He had no intention of fighting.

He was not a hunter, and he had no weapon. The only thing on his back was a delivery bag, and the weapon he was most familiar with was a kitchen knife, but in any case, he did not have one now.

Please, just don’t look this way.

As he desperately prayed.

The goblin sniffed the air, looked around, then began to move.

...Phew.

‘Am I safe?’

Just as he relaxed and unconsciously followed the creature with his eyes.

He saw an old wall. Faded paint. Rain-stained concrete. A crooked sign.

[Hope Orphanage]

Jinho’s pupils trembled slightly.

The goblin lowered itself toward a gap beneath the broken wall. It was a narrow opening that a person would have trouble squeezing through, but the creature naturally crawled inside as though folding its body in on itself.

Jinho swallowed.

An orphanage.

No, don’t tell me... It went in there?

Several minutes had already passed since the emergency alert, so the teachers must have taken the children and fled. If adults had been there, there was an even greater chance they had evacuated already. There was no reason anyone would still be inside now. At the very least, they should have made it into the underground shelter.

That had to be the case.

Logically, it was.

Jinho tried to turn away. Staying here any longer was madness. He needed to find a shelter and stay there until the situation was resolved, or else act crazy and use the motorcycle to escape the area altogether.

He had been getting chewed out for cutting meat in the Chinese section until just moments ago, and now he was suddenly going to chase after a monster?

Don’t be ridiculous.

Ridiculous...

“Waaaaaah—!”

Then a child’s crying came from beyond the wall.

It was not just one.

Two, three...? Maybe more.

Several sharp, broken sobs overlapped and leaked outside. Jinho’s feet stopped where they were.

His heart dropped heavily once.

‘This is insane.’

That was true.

His opponent was a goblin.

He was just the youngest kitchen worker with a delivery bag on his back. He had no knife, he was not a hunter, and he had no ability to save anyone.

And yet he could not run away.

The children burst into tears again.

“Teeacheeer...!”

He bit the inside of his lip without realizing it.

Jinho closed his eyes, then opened them.

‘Maybe it’s not too late yet?’

The moment that thought occurred to him, it was already too late.

He could not tell whether the thought came first or his body did.

Before he knew it, he was running toward the wall.

_____________

The delivery bag thumped against his back.

The sole of his sneaker stepped on broken glass and nearly slipped. Up close, he saw that one of the windows had been smashed inward. Shards of glass glittered across the floor, and the window frame was bent, as though the goblin had forced its way through.

The front door was locked.

Jinho grabbed the handle and yanked it hard.

It did not budge.

Crying erupted from inside again.

This time, it was closer.

“Ah, please...”

Gritting his teeth, he pulled again with more force.

The door rattled.

Once.

Twice.

On the third pull, the latch seemed to come loose, and the door opened inward. It looked as though someone had rushed out without managing to lock it properly.

The moment the door opened, the scene inside rushed into view.

Low chairs and toys were scattered across the floor. Colored paper decorations that had been attached to the wall hung half-torn and fluttering, and the emergency exit at the back stood open. There were signs that people had fled.

But not everyone.

Children were huddled in one corner of the room. Little kids crying with their faces buried in their hands. Five or six years old at most.

And in front of them.

A woman who appeared to be a teacher stood holding a kitchen knife in both hands.

The tip of the knife was visibly trembling.

Across from her stood the goblin.

It was approaching slowly, without any sense of urgency. The rusty knife in its hand gleamed beneath the lights. That was no warning.

It knew its opponent was weaker than itself.

Jinho froze in the doorway.

‘...I can still run away, right?’

If he did it now, he could.

Who could blame him?

At that instant, the goblin turned its head. Its narrow, gleaming eyes fixed directly on Jinho.

The air in the room stopped.

The teacher, the children, even Jinho himself froze beneath that single gaze. The corners of the goblin’s mouth spread strangely. It looked as though it were smiling. Or perhaps it was the excitement of someone about to smash a toy that had just begun to cry.

Jinho’s gaze dropped to the floor.

A small wooden chair had rolled to his feet.

He picked it up.

And hurled it with all his strength.

Bang!

The chair struck the goblin squarely in the torso. It staggered and reeled to the side. At that moment, the teacher’s eyes widened.

Jinho shouted until his throat felt ready to burst.

“Throw me that knife!”