[Gate cleared.]
[Returning to the real world…….]
[Return… failed… unknown… error occurred…….]
The world tilted dizzily before his eyes, and the system text shattered like broken glass. Then, Yihyeon was thrown onto a cold floor.
Thud.
His blood-soaked body collided heavily with the ground. It was pain and injury he hadn’t experienced in a long time. This Gate and its horde of monsters had been unfathomable in their strength. So strong that everyone except Yihyeon had become cold corpses, vanishing along with the Gate.
Only Yihyeon, who possessed an EX-tier skill, had barely kept breathing long enough to subdue them. Losing comrades was nothing new to him. Every hunter always went into battle expecting death whenever they cleared a Gate — and Yihyeon, having lost so much, had grown numb to loss itself.
But the one called “Yuan” alone had carved a deep wound into Yihyeon’s heart, which had long since gone cold.
Even though they had only just met, Yihyeon had sincerely hoped he would survive and make it back home. Deep down, he had wished Yuan would right the wrongs he had confessed like a man unburdening his soul, and go on to live a new life.
Perhaps it was because Yuan’s face was identical to his own.
Unlike himself, Yuan still lived in a world where he hadn’t lost everything — and if he could just start living properly from here on out, Yihyeon thought he might find some comfort in thinking of him from time to time.
But none of that came to pass.
Because in the end, Yihyeon was the only one who survived.
“Cough…….”
Yihyeon spat blood and barely managed to drag his heavy body upright. Through his blurring vision, a crowd of people came sprinting toward him.
Hunter Association personnel?
Most likely paramedics.
They said something as they supported his body and hurriedly began treating his wounds. Among them, someone walked forward. His eyes, slowly coming back into focus, took in the figure before him.
“The nerve of you.”
The moment their eyes met — those sharp, icy blue eyes — a cold rebuke came crashing down on Yihyeon.
“Because of your little stunt, hundreds of soldiers are stuck dealing with a rift they can’t even resolve.”
He was a foreign man Yihyeon had never seen before. His face, twisted in cold displeasure, was strikingly handsome to the point of being unsettling. His golden hair was blindingly bright, and his clear blue eyes were frigid as a lake in winter.
Only then did Yihyeon’s eyes fully take in his surroundings. Armed figures and an unfamiliar landscape. Places and people that belonged nowhere in Korea surrounded him on all sides.
“Is this what you wanted?”
An unfamiliar world. People he had never seen.
And yet, Yihyeon didn’t find them entirely strange.
Amid the disorientation clouding his mind, Yihyeon understood.
This was the world Yuan had told him about.
“Yuan.”
And the man from the pendant Yuan had shown him snarled at Yihyeon.
Ten years ago, the world changed in an instant. Gates of unknown origin appeared without warning, unleashing hordes of monsters. The creatures spilled across every city like a tidal wave, swallowing the world whole.
Buildings crumbling was the least of it — countless people lost their lives. Everyone around Yihyeon was swept away by the disaster that day, leaving him behind alone.
Humanity was helpless, stripped of its homes and its safety by the Gates and their monsters.
But balance exists in all things.
Even as the Gates opened and the hordes poured out, a special power awakened within humanity as well. Supernatural abilities capable of countering or destroying the monsters, and physical bodies strengthened to a remarkable degree.
Those who awakened gathered together and drove the creatures back. In a mere two weeks, the chaos the monsters had wrought began to stabilize.
From that day on, people called those who had gained power Hunters.
Humanity adapted swiftly to the transformed world. Hunters banded together to suppress monsters, and the strongest among them established companies to build a formal structure.
Thus, with official government recognition, a special corporation — the Hunter Association — was founded.
Yihyeon, too, was a Hunter who had manifested power.
He had awakened seven years ago.
During the first great calamity — “The Return of the Titan.”
A colossus had risen over Seoul like it meant to swallow the sky whole, tearing free from a Gate that had failed to be cleared. A single exhale from the beast sent everything in its vicinity hurtling away, and each footstep triggered an earthquake.
Its fist came crashing down as though to flatten all of Seoul, and countless high-ranking Hunters barely managed to block that single blow. The creature was a disaster unto itself.
Yihyeon had been deployed immediately after awakening, specifically to stop it.
The appraiser who confirmed Yihyeon’s skill tier had reported it to the senior executives of the Hunter Association — and thrown him into the field before authorization had even come through.
With Seoul potentially on the verge of total destruction, Yihyeon moved on the appraiser’s word alone.
When the Titan’s second attack covered the Seoul sky, Yihyeon moved.
If I fail, I die anyway.
With that resolve, he launched himself off the helicopter and fell straight down onto the Titan’s head. Hovering above the beast, Yihyeon clenched his fist and drove it into the crown of its skull.
The power Yihyeon had awakened was nothing special.
Just a body that got a little tougher and a little stronger — the Diamond Body.
But he’d heard that the tier of that skill was absurdly high.
EX-tier.
The appearance of Korea’s first Hunter with an EX-tier skill.
The Titan that had blanketed the Seoul sky was split in two from the head down that day and dissolved into dust. Yihyeon’s existence and name rose to prominence alongside the “Return of the Titan” incident.
Korea’s hope. The hero who had driven back a calamity single-handedly.
Titles he had no interest in clung to his back like a shadow.
In the seven years that followed, Yihyeon dealt with countless calamities and Gates. It was the only thing that kept him fed and the only thing he was good at. Hunter life was brutal, but he grew used to it — and before long, it had become something close to an obligation.
Everyone took his success for granted.
Success and expectations, now just a matter of course.
They assumed those expectations would keep being met.
Until the unranked Gate appeared.
The world’s first Gate of undefined rank.
The Korean Hunter Association immediately convened all executives and the highest-ranking Hunters for an emergency strategy meeting. A marathon session stretching well over five hours, with countless proposals exchanged. The debate that refused to narrow eventually converged on a single direction — clearing the Gate.
Once consensus was reached, preparations moved fast.
Yihyeon, holder of an EX-tier skill, was naturally appointed as the leader of the clearing team. An assembly of sub-elite Hunters, each possessing S-tier skills or above.
Headlines declaring it the highest-firepower clearing team in history flooded social media and every major portal site.
People who caught wind of the news were tense — but not one of them doubted that Yihyeon, the team leader, would succeed.
And so, at noon the following day, Yihyeon and ten sub-elite Hunters entered the unranked Gate.
The moment Yihyeon came to, he steadied himself and scanned his surroundings. There had been a slight variable when they entered the Gate. Under normal circumstances, they would have moved through the darkness and arrived inside — but midway, the space had twisted and sucked them in.
If Yihyeon had been knocked unconscious by it, the damage the other Hunters sustained had to be considerable. And true to his estimate, among the headcount he ran, two figures with grotesquely twisted limbs came into view.
Yihyeon stared blankly at the two who had already stopped breathing, then slowly dragged a hand down his face. This wasn’t something he hadn’t prepared for. Even during the strategy meeting, he’d anticipated that an accident might occur the moment they entered. Two people was, if anything, getting off lightly.
He looked over the Hunters who were slowly regaining consciousness and spoke.
“Everyone, gather up. We’re doing an injury check right now and then moving into clearing preparations.”
At Yihyeon’s words, the remaining eight Hunters quickly assembled, tending to their bodies as they readied themselves. Hunters who had recovered with potions drew their weapons and kept watch of their surroundings.
Yihyeon slowly scanned the inside of the Gate as well. The first things he noticed were the dark, overcast sky and the crumbled ruins around them.
Ancient stone buildings — collapsed, or eroded — made up a landscape that bore no resemblance to any world Yihyeon and the Hunters knew. Only the scattered remnants of a civilization at some point in its development lay strewn across the ground in disarray.
And those ruins had been smashed into even cruder fragments by a powerful impact.
Boom!
A massive shockwave swept through Yihyeon and the Hunters. Yihyeon deflected a chunk of building debris flying toward him and pinpointed the source of the shockwave.
At the center of the ruins, two figures were locked in combat.
One looked human. The other was unmistakably a monster.
The man in a tattered robe — having dodged the monster’s attack — struck again, and the air around him distorted.
The invisible attack let out a sharp shriek as it struck the monster’s body, and the moment its shoulder was cleaved nearly in half, dozens of daggers rained down from the sky.
When the last dagger had pierced through the monster’s body and brain, the creature crumpled with a heavy thud, its form broken.
In that instant, a system window appeared before Yihyeon and the Hunters.
[43rd-ranked C-tier Sabnack — eliminated.]
What’s this ranking system?
Even Yihyeon, who had lived as a Hunter for seven years, had never seen a ranking list like that.
He was scrutinizing the notification, trying to make sense of the situation.
Whoosh!
The same invisible attack that had carved through the monster’s flesh was now heading straight for Yihyeon and the Hunters. With a sharp tearing sound, the deadly strike gleamed clearly through the gap in the distorted air.
