Obviously, the dungeon was too high-level for Shane to clear alone, so he waited for the designated raid parties to get there.

  Now that he knew everyone was real, and weren’t just “NPCs,” he needed to at least try to save as many lives as possible. Though his motivation was pretty low.

  This wasn’t his country. These weren’t his people. What responsibility did he have for them?

  It’s not like he had been competent enough to protect the ones in his world.

  About half and hour later, the rhythmic footsteps of heavy combat boots echoed off the subway tiles, overlapping with the distant rumble of the trains above.

  “I’m telling you, the tank formation on the left flank is sloppy. If the aggro slips, it’s my ass on the line.”

  “Did you see the payout slip?”

  A sea of mismatched gear came into view.

  This was a group made up of several raid parties from different guilds, so across the dozens of hunters, uniforms differed in both style and color.

  The ones with loose postures and a confident stride were probably the veterans, while the nervous ones who’s eyes kept darting around must be the rookies.

  It took them a few seconds to realize that the area wasn’t empty.

  The chatter died down instantly as people noticed there was someone who had arrived earlier than them.

  “Hey, is the portal taken? I thought we had the slot.”

  No one knew why Shane was here. Puzzled, the raid parties walked past him, when Shane spoke in a low voice.

  “You don’t want to go in there.”

  The group immediately stopped.

  Shane was hating every second of this.

  The heat of embarrassment rose up his neck, but it hit the wall of [Behavior Lock], dissipating before it turned into a visible blush.

  “I have [Precognition]. You walk in there, none of you are making it out,” said Shane.

  The more he talked, the more he sounded like he was reciting lines from a bad movie. But he’d never been the best at lying. That was his friend’s specialty.

  But it wasn’t like Shane could tell them he knew what was going to happen because he’d played a game. Beating around the bush wouldn’t help either. And, as an F-rank, he couldn’t physically stop people from entering the portal.

  So pretending to be a hunter with a minor [Precognition] skill was the best he could do.

  A few of the younger hunters exchanged nervous looks, but before the veteran hunter could say anything, a familiar, grating voice cut in.

  “[Precognition]?”

  Whitley Barlowe pushed through the group with a smirk on his face.

  Shit.

  Why was this old geezer here?

  Whitley gestured dismissively at Shane.

  “Don’t make me laugh. I know this guy. Ran a dungeon with him yesterday. He’s a fire-caster, a one-trick pony with a [Fireball]. Since when do mages get seer skills?”

  Skill sets were typically confined to a specific class archetype. A fire-caster having a psychic ability wasn’t impossible, but rarely heard of.

  Shane took a long drag of smoke to numb the sudden spike in his migraine, then flicked the ash from his cigarette, refusing to give Whitley the satisfaction of seeing him startled.

  Of course. Of all the hunters in Manhattan, it had to be the one guy with a fragile ego and a loud mouth.

  He needed to discredit Whitley in ten seconds or the crowd was going to turn against him. But from a quick glance, Shane could see Whitley wasn’t the only hunter he knew.

  A Wynn Guild rookie, a lanky man who had been part of yesterday’s raid, chimed in, eager to back up his guildmate.

  His name was Andrew Benson, another minor character.

  “Yeah, Hunter Barlowe’s right! This guy just tried to show off the whole time.”

  Shane sneered.

  Whitley had friends here. With eyewitness abound, there wouldn’t be a way to discredit Whitley’s claims upfront.

  But he couldn’t let Whitley continue talking, so decided to use his short fuse against him to tie his tongue. The old man seemed to have trouble forming sentences when his small brain got agitated.

  “Precognition is about having eyes, Barlowe. Something you clearly lacked when you shot your own teammate yesterday.”

  “...Wh-wh-what?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Shane ignored Whitley and spoke to one of the veterans in the front.

  “Think what you want. But ask yourself. What do I gain by standing here stopping you? If I’m lying, you lose a few hours. If I’m right, and you walk in there... you won’t be coming back.”

  Shane wasn’t asking them to believe his words, but to calculate the risk.

  The warnings hit the rookies, who had already been nervous, harder than the veterans in the front. Some of them unconsciously shifted their weight back, as if ready to return to the upper floor. Most immediately looked at the backs of their team leaders.

  One of the veteran tanks rolled his eyes when he heard a rookie behind him exhale sharply.

  He uncrossed his arms, turned around to check his squad, sensing the morale dip.

  Even if the veterans preferred to ignore the freelancer’s words, with the majority of the group getting anxious, they’d have no choice but to address Shane’s words.

  The veteran tank physically puffed up before spitting on the floor, and stepped forward, effectively creating a wall between Shane and the nervous rookies.

  But before he could say anything, a dry laugh interrupted.

  It was Andrew, again, and the loud noise diffused half the tension.

  “Christ, Hunter Barlowe, don’t you get it? He’s just trying to scare us off so he can clear the dungeon by himself. He doesn’t want to save your lives, boys and girls. He knows that once the party clears the entrance, there won’t be any scraps left for a freelancer like him.”

  Immediately the rookies stopped shrinking back. The whole crowd now looked at Shane directly in the eyes, their expressions becoming more aggressive by the second.

  The humiliation that a “scammer” had almost scared them off made their frustration boil over.

  “Is that it? You want a handout, buddy?”

  “Move your ass!”

  “Go beg somewhere else.”

  That’s when another hunter shoved his way to the front. It was the B-rank who had warned Shane not to enter dungeons anymore.

  “Alright, calm down, everyone.”

  He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a calloused thumb, then turned his gaze to Shane.

  “Listen, I appreciate the… concern, if that’s what this is. But this is a milk run. We’ve cleared this place more times than I can count.” He gave Shane a look that was half-pity, half-annoyance. “I suppose I might’ve been too harsh on you the last time we met. But, please step aside. We have a schedule to keep.”

  Whitley clapped the B-ranker on the shoulder.

  “See? A man of reason.” He shot Shane a triumphant glare. “Run along, prophet. We’ve got monsters to kill.”

  Well, it had been worth a try.

  Shane would have felt sorry for the hunters if they hadn’t all laughed at him as they marched into the portal.

  He watched the green light swallow the last of them, before turning his head to check the System screen that showed the inside of the dungeon.

  The view panned across a landscape of red rock walls and baking sand.

  ***

  “Hey, long time no see!”

  “Yeah, man. We’ve been pulling a lot of all-nighters.”

  “Is it just me, or are there way more dungeons popping up lately?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The raid teams that had laughed at Shane gathered near the exit portal, exchanging casual greetings.

  Obviously, they’d already said their hellos before entering when they met at the upper floor of the subway.

  But they were laying it on thick for the System camera, trying to look busy and important.

  The portal had opened near the canyon, which was actually lucky. The biggest danger of a monster wave was being surrounded, but here, the terrain would do the work for them.

  The narrow opening would force any monsters into a bottleneck. It allowed the tanks to lock their shields together, forming a wall of steel across the gap. They wouldn’t have to worry about their flanks since everything had to come through the front.

  Confident that the geography was on their side, the veterans followed orders from their Guildmasters to keep things interesting for viewers by chattering as much as they could.

  “Maybe I’ve just been away for a while… was it always this hot in here?”

  “Nah, that’s just all the hot air from the rookies. The rankings are coming out soon.”

  “Already?”

  Before they could finish, a rumble shook the ground.

  “Here it comes!”

  The routine “opening bell” of the show was about to begin.

  Since they knew they were being watched by the System, nobody acted natural.

  The reaction was stylized as they showed small, deliberate movements to display how unbothered they were. A veteran slowly cracked his neck, while another finished a drink of water and tossed the bottle aside.

  They checked their weapons by feel, keeping their eyes on the horizon.

  “Right on time.”

  “Left side’s mine. Don’t steal my kills again.”

  “Shields up! Shields up!” One of the veterans yelled unnecessarily loud.

  The Wynn guild party was the most obnoxious, since they were laughing at the usual sight of monster waves.

  Whitley gestured grandly at the small dust cloud. Through the dust, the silhouette of sharp tusks appeared. Iron-Hide Boars, the size of a small sedan, were charging toward them.

  Though they were massive, their weakness was that they relied on speed to do damage.

  They ran like freight trains, which meant they couldn’t turn to save their lives.

  The rogues had already placed tripwires and the mages had slicked the ground with [Grease] while the veterans had been chatting with each other.

  The moment the monsters got caught in the traps, their own weight and speed would break their bones, making them an easy kill.

  Their dead bodies would then stack up, and as long as the tanks’ [Shield] could hold firm against the wall of corpses, the boars crashing into the pile-up from behind would be crushed by the impact. The ranged dealers could then pick off any stragglers that survived the collision.

  “Just a standard spawn. ‘You won’t come back,’ my ass,” snickered Whitley.

  “If that freelancer was here, he’d be wetting his pants by now.”

  But then, the pebbles on the ground started vibrating even harder before the roar of trampling hooves came from the back.

  From the bend behind them, another dust cloud erupted.

  A second wave.

  The squishy mages and archers, who had been standing safely in the rear, suddenly found themselves serving as the front line.

  “Behind us! They’re behind us, too!”

  “Get off me, watch where you’re stepping!”

  The panic led to chaos.

  Rookies stumbled over their own feet, scrambling to hide behind the tanks, but ended up colliding with them because some of the tanks from the front were also charging to the rear.

  The veterans’ faces paled. A pincer attack in a canyon meant no escape.

  One of them pulled a muscle as he snapped his head around so fast to grab a rookie tank by the collar and physically hurled him toward the new threat to plug the gap.

  “Circle! Form a circle, you idiots!”

  The team leaders’ cool demeanor instantly vanished, replaced by frantic crowd control.

  Whitley kept looking back and forth between the two waves from opposite directions, unable to process what was happening.

  “This... this isn’t right.”

  “What’re you mumbling about, Barlowe? Get in position! Shoot!”

  As if on cue, the quest window in front of them updated.

  [Dungeon difficulty is increasing due to outside interference!]

  [Quest: Defend against the converging monster waves!]

  “Shit!” This time, the reaction wasn’t for the camera.

  What should have been a few dozen beasts had turned into a horde of several hundred.

  The rookies, who had been treating this raid as a training exercise, froze in terror. The veterans, on the other hand, immediately started barking orders.

  “They’re still just C-ranks! Manage your mana potions and take them down!”

  [Monster wave targets are set from lowest rank upward!]

  [Target: Andrew Benson (D-rank)]

  Andrew’s face went pale.