Investing In My Lv.999 Devoted Wife Makes Me a Tyrant

9 | The Slum Gate

He walked with his head down, one hand resting on the knife at his belt. A thin dog watched him from an alley and didn't bother barking. Nothing unusual.

The gate Violet had detected was northeast, 2 kilometers out. Allen followed the narrow paths between crumbling buildings, his boots squelching ceplak-ceplak.. through mud that never seemed to dry. He passed the collapsed well where he'd scavenged firewood two days ago. The memory felt distant now, like something that had happened to someone else.

He passed the market square where he'd bought bread and soup. A rat scurried across his path and disappeared into a drainage ditch.

15 minutes passed.

The buildings around him grew sparser, more ruined. He was nearing the edge of the slum now, where the city's neglect was most visible. Collapsed roofs. Streets that had been swallowed by mud years ago. A dead tree with a single crow perched on its highest branch, watching him pass with blank black eyes.

He was maybe 200 meters from the location Violet had given him when the screaming started.

"GATE!.. GATE!!! "

It came from ahead. High and sharp. A woman's voice, then another. Then the sound of many people shouting at once, the kind of noise that meant something had gone terribly wrong in a place where things went wrong every day.

Allen broke into a run.

He rounded a corner of crumbling brick and stopped dead.

A tear had opened in the air above the clearing. Gray light bled through, spinning into a vortex three meters wide. The edges crackled with dirty silver energy, pulsing like a living heartbeat. And the smell that came through it was cold stone and damp rot and something older than both, something that didn't belong in the world of sunlight and mud.

chaos.

A woman was dragging two children away from a vegetable cart she'd abandoned. Another cart had tipped over completely, spilling turnips into the mud where they were trampled by running feet. A man with a hunting bow was shouting orders that nobody followed. Dogs barked frantically from the edges of the clearing. Someone screamed for the Guild. Someone else screamed that the Guild never came to the slums.

Allen stood at the edge of the clearing, watching the portal spin.

He'd seen gates before. Every Hunter had. They were part of life in a world where dungeons bled into reality. But he'd never seen one this close. Never felt the cold coming off it, the way it pulled at the air like a slow, hungry inhale. The Guild training manuals said F-rank gates were the smallest. The weakest. The kind that even a Level 15 Hunter could clear with proper preparation and a decent party.

Allen was Level 7. He had a knife and a jacket that wouldn't stop a real blade.

'Close enough.'

He moved forward, pushing through the fleeing crowd. A man slammed into his shoulder and kept running, didn't even look back. A woman dropped a sack of flour and left it there, white dust spilling across the mud. The panic was the same panic Allen had seen from a dozen gates before, always from the outside, always watching while other people went in. Slum gates never drew Guild Hunters. The Guild didn't care about slums. Slum gates became massacres if nobody stepped up.

By the time he reached the clearing's edge, a small group had gathered at a safe distance from the portal. Men with rusted swords that looked like they'd snap on the first swing. Women with hunting bows that had seen better decades. A boy who couldn't have been older than fifteen clutching a spear too big for his frame. People who had enough courage to fight and not enough money to run.

A heavyset man with a graying beard was waving his arms at the center of the group. E-rank. Allen could tell by the badge pinned to his stained coat and the way he stood, feet planted wide like he expected the ground to shift under him at any moment.

"We need 5 people minimum," the E-ranker said. His voice carried across the clearing, loud enough to be heard over the portal's hum. "Standard formation. Two front, two flank, one rear. Anyone who's cleared a gate before, step up."

Three hands went up. A young woman with a short sword that she held like she'd learned from watching other people. The boy with the oversized spear. A thin man missing half his teeth who carried a mace that looked heavier than he was.

"That's four including me," the E-ranker said. "We need one more. Anyone?"

Nobody moved. The crowd shuffled. Eyes darted toward the portal and away again. Nobody wanted to be the fifth body in a formation that probably wouldn't survive the first chamber.

Allen walked past the edge of the crowd.

"Hey." The E-ranker's voice sharpened. "You. Stop."

Allen didn't stop.

"You're that Veton." Recognition landed in the E-ranker's voice like a stone dropping into still water. "The one they threw out. Married the cripple."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Allen kept walking toward the portal. The cold was stronger now, pressing against his skin through the thin jacket, raising goosebumps along his arms. He could feel the pull of the gate, the way it tugged at something deeper than his body.

"What's your level?" the E-ranker called. "You even ranked?"

Allen didn't answer. The portal pulsed in front of him, gray and endless.

"Level 7," someone in the crowd said. A man's voice, smug with knowledge he had no right to. "I was at the Guild when he registered. Level 7. F-rank. No skills worth a damn."

The E-ranker laughed. It was a short, ugly sound. "7? You'll die before you see a single goblin."

Allen stopped at the edge of the portal. The vortex spun inches from his face. Gray light flickered across his skin, cold and ancient. Calm Mind was working, keeping his thoughts steady, but his body still remembered every story he'd heard about Hunters who walked into gates and never came out. He'd been one of those stories once. The Veton who couldn't. The Veton who stood at the edge and watched while others went in.

'Not this time.'

He looked back over his shoulder. The E-ranker was staring at him, mouth half-open. The three others clutched their weapons. The crowd watched in silence, waiting to see if the discarded Veton would turn back or keep going.

Allen turned to the portal. He took one last breath of the morning air, cold and muddy and real. Then he stepped through.

The gray light swallowed him whole.