“Thank you, it is our honor to work for the good of Korea. Good fortune and safety to all of you.”

Anyway, off to make a phone call, the next appointment isn’t an emergency like this one, but it did get shuffled back a little in order to accommodate this rescue….

"Yoo-min-sunbae, the floor is yours."

Park Yoo-min's been looking at the updated information and ignoring the conversation since Han Ye-rin stepped out, and once Woo-young calls him he grins widely, releases Seungjoo from his one-warmed hug, and claps his hands together once. "Alright, folks, listen up!" he says, stretching his commscreen wide and large enough for everyone else to be able to see. "It's not October but it's spooky times! The dungeon's theme of the day is: haunted gothic catacombs. Ooo, scary! Kim Hye-jin was right on the money when she was thinking about how we don't have good counters to incorporeal threats, because boy oh boy do we have those! Ghost-like monsters, shambling zombies, armoured skeletons, if it's spooky and it's kooky we've got 'em!"

He starts manipulating the updated map of the dungeon as he speaks. "It's a self-readjusting dungeon, everyone's favourite. Divided into modules, big collections of rooms, which change position with respect to each other at regular intervals." He triggers one such change on the map to demonstrate, various parts of the rooms moving around in all three dimensions. "The insides of the rooms are strictly Euclidean, but when the modules get shaken up they can go cuh-razy. Still unclear if a module can get completely cut off from all exits according to Minseo-sunbae so we should all proceed under the assumption that they can.

"But wait! There's more! If the spooky dearly departed were not enough, it looks like the dungeon is having a blast trapping civilians inside crypts. I don't know about you but that is not my kink, and I'm betting it's not most of these people's either. They'll be scared and confused, prone to lashing out, and might cling. Public faces, everyone! Remember to be calm and present a reassuring presence, we're all here to help and they'll be alright, on our honour as Quasar.

"Woo-young, explain your teleportation to Kim Hye-jin, won't you kindly?"

"It's reference-based," he says. "I can do 'the person next to that other person' or 'the green box in that room' or things like that, and likewise for the destination. I don't do distances and directions directly."

"Which is uh-mazing for rescues, especially in dungeons like this! Comms are working fine in the dunj itself, so Woo-young and Tae-hwan will be near the dungeon entrance and whenever we find civilians we'll shoot 'im a message so that he can fetch them to safety. Don't do them one by one, though, because they can feel overwhelmed like that; better to get a few and send them out in groups. Obviously safety comes first, though, and if they're at risk you get them out first, no matter what. Remember, this is Tuesday for us, but for them it may well be scarier than the Blair Witch movie!

"The medical team will be by the exit, too, to check everyone for injuries, monsters hidden in your jacket sleeves, et cetera, and I mean everyone, including all of us. I know this is standard, blah blah blah, but Da-eun-noona will not let me hear the end of it if I don't remind everyone every time! Better bored than exploded, is what I always say." Pause. "It's not, but you get me.

"If anything looks too out of the ordinary, report it at once. If you feel like you bit more than you can chew, there is zero shame in pressing the panic teleport button, it's there for a reason. Also a blah blah blah, especially with our two rock stars here, but, again, I do not want noona riding my ass if anything goes wrong.

"This should be straightforward for this team, but in case it is not, we can and will get more people in. First goal is rescuing all of the civilians, do not engage the boss mob or destroy the core until we are one hundred percent everyone is out." At least everyone who's alive, but he doesn't say that. Everyone here knows this, but they're not so far away from the yellow tape beyond which the media outlets are swarming that they can be confident they won't be overheard, and it's best to project a confident image. "And I thiiiiink... that's it! Other than the tac formation, I guess, but we'll go over that in a sec. For now, does anyone have any questions, concerns, opinions, or a sudden but urgent desire to punch me in the face?"

"Only every other day," Tae-hwan mutters.

"No desire to punch anyone present in the face, but I'm going to have trouble getting civilians out of," she peers at her own copy of the report, "stone coffins on my own safely, fair warning. Are the shields we have available effective against incorporeal monsters?"

"Nnnnope! But on the bright side the ghosts aren't that dangerous—in a fashion. They mess with your perceptions like woooooah, and they can get you real confused. Only while they're around, though! Oh, I bet watching Da-eun-noona find this out would've been hilarious. Ahh, we'll have opportunities to make fun of her in the future, I'm sure.

"Anyway! Got distracted. We suspect that AoE diffuse stuff can get them. That'd be heat, cold, spatial manipulation, wind, lightning, you name it. All of us, really! It'll be fine."

(...Tae-gun's power is shit at diffuse. He can do cold and freezing but it's incredibly inefficient so he mostly doesn't.)

"And if it's not fine, we can call backup," he continues. "That said, jokes aside, we should probably pair up. I know hu—I mean, Tae-gun's not so into the freezing thingy," so he does know, "and Joo-ya's power can't really actually do damage, so that'd probably work best, I think! Unless you all think you can deal fine on your own? I'm staying with my bae but as for the two of you I'll defer to your expertise."

So corny.

Tae-hwan makes exaggerated puking gestures.

"Pairing up sounds good," agrees Hye-jin, as if this weren't the most surreal briefing for a rescue she's ever had. When it definitely, definitely is.

"Awesome! Then, Woo-young, Tae-hwan, if you'd get us started?"

Tae-hwan hops to his feet and pulls Woo-young with him, using the hand that's not holding Woo-young's to hold onto his waist and pull him far closer than professionalism would dictate.

He rolls his eyes. "There are cameras, you know."

"I'm doing this half for their benefit," he says with a sharp grin. "Now let's go."

"Let's," he agrees with a fond look on his face, then follows Tae-hwan towards the portal.

"It's showtime!"

The inside of the dungeon is as advertised: cold dark damp stone, crumbling statues and gargoyles, an incessant sound like dripping water you can't quite place, a suffocating claustrophobic atmosphere pressing onto them from all directions. Like most self-shifting dungeons, the room the entrance leads to doesn't change, and it's been cleared of hazards and monsters. The medical team—mostly non-espers with mundane equipment—has set up a tent next to the portal and is sitting at attention when the party walks in.

Inside, they lose connection to the external network but get access to Yun Minseo's constantly updating map, though since Han Ye-rin walked out of the dungeon with a copy just a few minutes ago they're mostly up to date.

"The dungeon shifts every 467 seconds, give or take five, and the next shift should be in about three minutes," Park Yoo-min says, opening up his console again to look at the map. "Tae-gun and Kim Hye-jin, take the direction I'm linking to you now, and Seungjoo and I are going this way instead." He's adopted a much more serious and businesslike tone now that they're inside and actually working. "In addition to the automated pings I want active check-in from both of you every ten minutes, and we'll be doing the same on our end. I'm not going to waste time repeating what I said outside. Unless you have any questions, we go as soon as the dungeon shifts next."

"No questions," says Hye-jin, nodding. Instead she looks to Tae-gun. "I set myself on fire and go first to clear the way, you cover me and get everyone out?"

Because, uh, the fire specialist trying to get everyone out of stone coffins is. Not going to go well for anyone, okay. She might be able to carefully burn through whatever seams are keeping them locked inside without baking the people she's trying to rescue, but why take that risk ever.

(Yoo-min makes a complicated face when Kim Hye-jin mentions setting herself on fire but Seungjoo gently nudges him and he looks away.)

"Yes, that seems sensible."

Nod.

She waits until the next dungeon shift, and then she's off like a rocket. Somewhat literally, rescues are worth the hack of using her flames as a propellant, and her partner is right there. She is of course careful to make sure that nobody's in the blast radius of said fiery entrance, but most everyone is already situated to stay out of her way for precisely this sort of reason. High powered combat espers: can be very scary, actually.

The undead monsters of this dungeon are accordingly going to have themselves a bad time. Hye-jin is careful not to leave too much ambient heat behind her as she carves through monsters, which means quick bursts instead of sustained flames, but that doesn't make her any less effective.