The Espers Who Regretted Losing Me Chapter 97

The Director didn’t answer for a long time.

And I couldn’t bring myself to ask again.

They were people I hated. I really hated them.
But imagining that they were dead still felt strange.

No… I didn’t even know what this feeling was.

Even before I had been trapped inside the gate, I would have felt uneasy hearing something like that.

Back then it would probably have been something like, “Huh? They’re dead? …Really? Why would they…?”

But now… I couldn’t think of anything at all.

Even after the tea had completely gone cold, the Director and I didn’t say a single word.

I don’t know how much time passed like that.

When I finally murmured, “Are they really dead…?” without realizing it, the Director answered.

“…Actually, all three of them are missing. Right now we don’t know where they are or what they’re doing, but don’t worry too much. Those three are very strong.”

It was a lie.

Because I was sitting so close, I could clearly feel the emotion in his voice.

What part of it was a lie?
Was it that they were missing?
That he didn’t know where they were?
That I didn’t need to worry?

…Or that they weren’t dead?

I couldn’t tell which one it was.

And because of that, I couldn’t ask anything else.

I just nodded blankly again and again, clenching my hands.

The Director probably knew what I was thinking.

So instead of continuing to talk about them, he naturally changed the topic to what had happened three years ago.

“You probably feel very confused since you simply entered a gate and came out again. But you should know why the world has become like this. It’s possible that the strange hole Dogyeong saw caused the flow of time inside the gate to become distorted.”

“The flow of time… Now that you mention it, when I was falling from the sky, my speed kept changing. Sometimes I stopped, sometimes I sped up, sometimes I slowed down. Could that be related?”

“That’s very possible. Changes in speed like that have never been reported in either Citadel Hidden by Clouds or Liar Fairy’s Forest. It might have been the fairy’s prank manifesting in a very strange way.”

“But Mister… when I was falling, I saw the world notification. It said the gate was cleared, and it showed the clear time too. The text was broken so I couldn’t see everything, but I’m sure it said one hour. After that, a crack appeared and I came through it immediately… so why is there a three-year difference?”

“…That’s where the discrepancy is. The gate wasn’t cleared in one hour. It took 201 hours.”

“W-what? Two hundred… one hours?”

“Yes. After receiving a call from Eunhwi, the Geumgang Unit went in to support. The named monster split into hundreds of copies and ran away. If they couldn’t kill them all within a certain time, they kept multiplying. That’s why it took so long.”

He paused before continuing.

“I heard the call connected to you only once. After that, there was no signal at all.”

Even though three years had passed, the Director explained everything as if it had happened yesterday.

201 hours.

The number felt completely unreal, and I couldn’t say anything.

The Director looked at me with a bitter expression and continued.

“But still… I’m glad. At least you didn’t experience anything terrifying during that long time.”

“Yeah… for me it was only about ten minutes.”

“According to the Geumgang Unit’s report, even after the gate was cleared, the three of them refused to leave. During the only call that connected, they only heard you saying you were falling. They kept looking at the sky. They could sense your presence but couldn’t find your body anywhere. In the end, the Geumgang Unit had to drag them out by force.”

“….”

“…After that, merged gates began appearing on a massive scale. And before even half a year had passed since you disappeared, a strange wave was detected from every gate. Then the disaster we now call the Gate Rampage occurred.”

So that was the event Seung-gwon had mentioned earlier.

If monsters really poured out of all the gates, it made sense that the gate zones had turned into such a mess.

“As you know, monsters could normally move freely only between A-rank and B-rank gates. Of course, those ranks were assigned by the Association. But monsters began emerging even from gates that had been classified as C-rank and D-rank. And there simply weren’t enough Espers and Guides to stop all of them.”

Just imagining it gave me chills.

Even before this, there had already been too few Guides, so most Espers couldn’t use their powers properly.

If monsters were pouring out of every gate…

“Mister… did that also happen with irregular gates? The ones explored by expedition units…”

The Director nodded with a dark expression.

His voice remained calm, but I could tell he was suppressing his emotions.

“If it had only happened inside headquarters, we might have been able to contain it and prevent damage outside. But since gates outside had already gone out of control, that became impossible. Even if we wanted to solve it quickly, we couldn’t.”

He paused before adding quietly,

“And the biggest problem was that the Espers and Guides who were inside gates at that time became trapped.”

“I heard a little earlier… Does that mean they couldn’t come out at all?”

“…Hyea. You came out through B Zone, didn’t you?”

“Huh? Ah, yes. That place was strangely clean. There was one orc, but the monsters didn’t seem to approach it. The other zones were… much worse.”

As I said that, I started to realize the answer myself.

Why B Zone alone had been so clean.

The Director confirmed exactly what I had suspected.

“Before Dogyeong, Eunhwi, and Shinra left headquarters, they completely cleared B Zone. They used every possible method to prevent monsters from building nests there.”

At the same time, I realized something else.

The Espers and Guides who had come out of the gates in the other zones probably didn’t survive.

But I couldn’t call that selfish.

Dozens of gates must have released hundreds or thousands of monsters.

And unless someone entered the gates to clear them, monsters would keep spawning.

As the Director said, they simply didn’t have the luxury to take that risk.

The fact that they managed to secure even one zone was already incredible.

And yet…

it still didn’t feel real.

“…Did the world really end? Not just headquarters?”

My voice sounded hollow.

The Director didn’t answer.

But I hadn’t really expected an answer anyway.

After that, he poured me another cup of warm tea and continued explaining.

“This didn’t only happen in our country. The same phenomenon occurred all over the world at the same time. Not only Espers and Guides but also the military tried to respond. But once A-rank gates began appearing, the situation became impossible to contain.”

His calm voice described events that sounded completely unbelievable.

“If they were ordinary monsters, modern weapons might have been able to eliminate them. But there were monsters that caused severe hallucinations affecting human perception, and plant-type monsters that spread dangerous viruses. Because of that, the world collapsed quickly.”

I didn’t want to believe it.

“Some countries, including ours, had already installed devices to force gates to appear only in certain areas, so they had some time to evacuate. But other countries… suffered enormous damage.”

It was so absurd that I couldn’t even imagine it.

“There are no cracks in the sky or the sea, but some monsters that escaped from the gates can fly, and some can move across water. So attacks happened everywhere. There was no safe place left in the world, and a global state of disaster was declared.”

No matter how much I listened…

it all sounded like a lie.