Chapter 5

Chapter .5

“It is a shame I do not have any friends to brag about this to….”

No, to be precise, I did have friends. Quite a lot of them, in fact.

I just did not have any now.

Because they were all dead.

…Literally.

“But I have NPC friends.”

I dispersed all the Permafrost spheres except for one.

‘I should see how long it stays active like this.’

I clicked the mouse and moved my character to my hideout.

[Artier: Hello, Savior! How are you feeling today?]

Neatly dressed in office wear, with a sharp bob cut and a monocle, the beautiful NPC Artier greeted me.

She was the caretaker NPC of my hideout.

“How am I feeling today? Fantastic.”

In that mood, I typed “/dance” into the chat window, and my character broke into a stylish dance.

After watching for a moment, Artier began dancing in front of him as well.

Then the maids and butlers working in the hideout came rushing out in a pack and started dancing beside my character and clapping along.

[Rif: That is our Savior for you~ I knew I could count on you!]

[Billy: Yippee-ki-yay~!]

“Heh.”

People who did not discriminate against me.

People who were happy because I was happy.

That was what real friends were.

And just as I was soaking in that lingering warmth,

something changed.

Shhh—

“Huh?”

The Permafrost sphere I had been keeping afloat behind me suddenly vanished.

And that was not all.

“What is going on?”

The mana that had been filling my entire body began to scatter.

“N-no! Do not leave!”

I shouted like Batman clinging to the souls of his parents and begging them not to go.

“Please do not leave me!”

But my mana, which had begun to disappear, left me anyway.

My mana hall emptied out.

In an instant, my body reverted to that of someone incapable of Awakening.

“How did this happen… Hm?”

[The trial period of Skill: Synchronization (EX) has ended.]

“A trial? It ended?”

At the system message floating before my eyes, my heart sank.

The chaos in my head cooled instantly, as though someone had flipped a switch.

One of my greatest strengths was the ability to snap back to “normal” quickly, no matter what happened.

Right after Awakening, I had been so dazzled by the surge of EX-rank frost mana that I fixated only on the result.

“I see.”

A sensible Awakening-defective should never doubt for even a moment

that something as absurd as “Awakening” could not possibly happen.

“So it was a dream.”

I wanted to Awaken badly enough that I often dreamed about it.

Apparently, that dream had now gone so far that it was appearing in reality in the form of a hallucination.

“…No, no. Calm down. Get a hold of yourself!”

No. There was no way it had been a dream.

“Damn it. I was so disappointed I almost fell apart.”

The name of the skill I had obtained.

Synchronization.

Taken simply, it meant the skill’s duration had ended.

So I just had to use it again. Use it again.

Gulp.

“…Synchronization.”

I carefully spoke the trigger word.

Then I waited.

A tense moment.

I waited.

…And waited.

“?”

Nothing… changed!

‘Was it because I said it too weakly?’

“Synchronization!”

I said it again with more force, but it was the same.

There was no sign whatsoever of the frost mana I had felt earlier returning.

‘That is not it?’

I felt like my mind was about to collapse…

“Huh?”

At that moment,

my wavering gaze caught on something strange.

My character, Nebula’s MP value had dropped drastically.

MP: 10,000/99,999

By a staggering 90,000 MP, no less.

In Lost Honor, there was only one reason a character’s mana decreased.

When a skill was used.

‘What? What skill got used?’

I swore I had not used any skill powerful enough to drain 99,999 MP from Nebula.

In that case—

‘No way?’

I opened the skill window.

There, I found a skill marked with a golden “NEW!” tag.

Its icon was a spinning silver circle that looked like a recycling symbol.

‘I have never seen that icon before.’

I had raised every class in this game to the extreme.

There could not possibly be a skill I had never seen.

There was only one exception.

A newly added skill.

Gulp.

I forced my trembling mouse forward and hovered the cursor over it.

[Skill: Synchronization (EX)]

“…This is it.”

There it was.

However, there was no additional explanation beneath it.

Normally, a skill would have some description like, “Throws a spear to deal physical damage,” but this one was empty.

Instead, there were a few extra lines below that.

[Corridor of Constellations]

[1/99]

[Unlocked Class]

[Frost Sorcerer — Han Seol-ah’s ‘Ice Crystal’] (Active)

‘This is basically just a written summary of what I learned inside the Corridor of Constellations.’

Click.

The moment I clicked and used the Synchronization skill—

Flaaash!

Frost mana flowed back through my entire body.

Click.

Then I moved the mouse again and stopped using the skill.

Shhhh—

…the frost mana disappeared, and I became a pitiful Awakening-defective once more.

“So that was how it worked….”

It was not something I could activate.

My character had to activate it.

I turned it on again.

“It is decreasing.”

Nebula’s MP bar slowly began to fall.

Just like the other skills, Synchronization used Nebula’s MP as its cost.

The amount decreased roughly… about 170 per second.

And since the maximum MP was 99,999—

“By simple calculation, about ten minutes.”

Ten minutes.

The amount of time I could be an EX-rank Hunter.

Short, perhaps, but that depended on how I used it.

‘What if I use a skill?’

“Ice Arrow.”

Crackle!

The instant Han Seol-ah’s basic attack, Ice Arrow, formed, the MP bar dropped.

“500 MP. A fixed cost.”

To confirm it, I created ten more arrows.

Exactly 5,000 MP disappeared.

“Then what about this?”

I tried using Permafrost.

A compressed orb of icy energy floated above my palm…

“Good grief.”

A single shot cost 50,000 MP. More than half of Nebula’s MP vanished.

The moment I fired that, I calculated that the remaining duration would not even be four minutes.

‘If I spam high-powered finishing moves like Permafrost, Synchronization will not even last a second before shutting off.’

I immediately turned off the Synchronization skill.

“Hoo….”

Feeling a massive wave of exhaustion, I focused on the MP bar.

[MP: 43,510] [MP: 53,510] [MP: 63,510]

My character’s MP bar began filling back up at a terrifying rate.

“Mm. This feels rewarding.”

The label “endgame character” was not something you slapped on just anyone.

“Ten seconds.”

The time it took for the MP to completely refill again—in other words, the cooldown on Synchronization—was effectively ten seconds.

“That settles it.”

I leaned deeply back into my chair.

The power of an EX-rank Hunter.

A duration of ten minutes.

Skill costs.

A cooldown of ten seconds.

“And….”

I glanced over at my PC Tower.

“It looks like my area of operation is limited to the radius of this house, where this PC is.”

If I moved too far from the PC and could no longer click the Synchronization skill, I would fall right back into being an Awakening-defective.

“This is not a Hunter. This is an earthbound ghost….”

At that moment—

Beep! Beep!

“Hm?”

The alarm installed in Cheol-su’s home next door suddenly blared.

That sound. That pattern.

It was the warning that went off when a demonic beast appeared near the neighborhood.

“Of all times, now?”

There was not a single person left in this villa.

Or in this area, for that matter.

Under normal circumstances, I would have panicked.

Grin.

But right now?

This was the perfect chance to test my abilities to the fullest, with absolutely no risk of anyone discovering them.

This was a showcase prepared just for me.

“It is time to properly show what I can do.”

EX-rank Hunter Ha Seong-un.

Sortie.

Click!

***

Inside the Hunter Association’s operations room, ahead of the third subjugation of the Ice Dragon, the atmosphere was icy.

And understandably so.

Han Seol-ah, the core of the entire subjugation plan, had vanished in the middle of her press conference.

Today came after two full days of wide-scale search efforts that had failed to uncover even the slightest clue.

They were already facing an unprecedented crisis over whether the Republic of Korea was about to fall or not.

If the atmosphere had been cheerful in a situation like this, that would have been even more terrifying.

It would have meant everyone had gone mad from giving up.

In the silence, the tapping of employees at their keyboards, the occasional sound of someone swallowing, even the slightest noises of daily life sounded like thunder.

‘…Please, let it not be that.’

Kim Jin-cheol, a Grade 2 office worker in charge of monitoring Incheon, was drenched in cold sweat.

“Report every single ‘variable’ without exception.”

It had been about two hours since Vice President Min Ji-hee had made that cold, sharp declaration.

And in that short time, three monitoring staff members had already had their heads lopped off.

Not literally.

They had reported “variables that were not variable enough,” only to be branded useless by Min Ji-hee, who was already like a powder keg on the verge of explosion, and demoted to field duty.

The end of those who were demoted always looked much the same.

They were people who had never become Hunters in the first place because they lacked combat ability.

If they were sent to the front lines, they either died quickly or disappeared.

‘…Even if the front lines have to be held that way, I still do not want that kind of ending.’

No one wanted to become the sacrifice.

That was why everyone was desperately praying that nothing would happen in the area assigned to them.

And yet, of all things, an anomaly had been detected in Incheon, the district assigned to Kim Jin-cheol.

[Incheon Gate Alert]

And not just any alert.

A Gate alert.

Kim Jin-cheol squeezed his eyes shut.

‘I did not see anything.’

But what if this really was a “variable”?

‘…Let me watch it just a little longer.’

Right. It could still be a false alarm.

The odds might only be 0.1%, but he had to bet on that…

[Gate confirmed]

‘Damn it.’

All right. So at the very least, it was not a false alarm.

‘…It has to be Grade 3. It has to be Grade 3.’

If it was Grade 3, then it definitely was not a variable.

Grade 3 Gates dissipated on their own quickly, and the enemies that emerged from them were only goblins and the like, minor threats that even an armed adult non-Hunter could kill.

‘Even Grade 2 would be fine.’

Grade 2 was dangerous, certainly.

Those monsters killed people, but they could not inflict property damage on buildings and the like.

If you stretched things a bit, you might call that a variable.

Still, it would be fine.

Because there was no one in Incheon right now.

‘All the Hunters in Incheon had already been summoned to the Hunter Association building for the third subjugation of the Ice Dragon, and all the civilians had evacuated to safe shelters.’

So there was nobody left in Incheon now.

Which meant it was not dangerous, which meant it was not a variable.

‘That is logical.’

Gulp.

‘Right. As long as it is not Grade 1.’

From Grade 1 onward… there was no burying it, even if you wanted to.

Above that, there was only Grade 0, which meant a boss-class Gate.

And considering that boss Gates occurred on a regular cycle once every three months—

A Grade 1 Gate was the most dangerous kind of guerrilla Gate.

The employees’ slang for it was a “mid-boss Gate.”

If Grade 0 was the boss, then Grade 1 was the mid-boss beneath it. That was how the nickname had come to be.

[Grade: 1]

And that Grade 1 Gate

had opened in Incheon.

‘Shit.’

If he ignored it at this point, that would be outright dereliction of duty.

In the end, Kim Jin-cheol leaped to his feet.

“A Grade 1 Gate has appeared in Incheon!”

“…Hm.”

Min Ji-hee’s eyebrow twitched.

Kim Jin-cheol felt his heart plummet.

It felt as though she was about to say, “Get out.”

“Report on the situation in Incheon.”

‘Whew.’

“All Hunters stationed in Incheon were already fully mobilized for Grade 3 subjugation duty, leaving zero remaining Hunters in the area. All civilians have also completed evacuation to shelters, leaving zero people in Incheon.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Completely certain. We even ran mana scans several times. There is not a single ‘person’ left in Incheon.”

Min Ji-hee nodded.

Mana scans.

A pinnacle technology of the magitech era of Hunters, capable of scanning mana density in an area to distinguish between monsters and humans.

Any human possessed at least a trace amount of mana in their body.

Therefore, no human could escape a mana scan.

The Association had obsessively run mana scans over Incheon in case any Hunters had fled conscription.

And was that not how they had achieved “100% Hunter mobilization across all of Incheon”?

There was no one left. That much was certain.

‘…Something like a human without mana does not even exist.’

Having organized his thoughts, Kim Jin-cheol continued.

He could not stop at merely reporting the situation.

He had to suggest a response as well.

“….”

But Kim Jin-cheol could not open his mouth easily.

Under normal circumstances, this would have been a simple question.

Because the solution was obvious.

‘Under normal circumstances I would have just said, “Let us dispatch Hunter Han Seol-ah”…’

What? Is it dangerous?

Call Han Seol-ah.

An easy, intuitive, perfect solution.

But now?

Han Seol-ah was gone.

“…Uh.”

Then what now?

“W-well….”

…He did not know.

“There is no choice but to dispatch a Hunter team. Since Hunter Han Seol-ah is absent… at minimum, an A-rank squad would need to be sent to close a Grade 1 Gate—”

“Rejected.”

Min Ji-hee cut him off sharply.

“A Grade 1 Gate. An A-rank Hunter team. There are two likely outcomes. Failure to prevent damage to Incheon. Failure to prevent losses in the third subjugation force.”

“….”

“You have just destroyed the Republic of Korea.”

Cold sweat broke out all over Kim Jin-cheol’s head.

“Another solution.”

“Uh, uh….”

But what was he supposed to do?

There was no answer.

Kim Jin-cheol felt his vision darken.

Beep!

At that moment,

another piece of dreadful news came through his headset.

[Gate Boss: Ogre ‘Big Boss’]

‘Gasp!’

“The b-boss is an Ogre. Designation, Big Boss!”

“…What?!”

“An Ogre! And Big Boss at that!”

The staff who had been listening in silence fell into a panic.

The operations room became noisy in an instant.

Ogres were powerful creatures known as the kings of ground-type monsters.

Their appearance was the worst possible outcome even for a Grade 1 Gate.

In terms of Tower floors, that was around the 70th floor.

And the designation “Big Boss” was the epithet given to a mutated, enhanced specimen afflicted with the abnormal status Giantization.

An Ogre Big Boss would place it in the 80th-floor range—and among those, in the boss category.

‘Why would a monster like that appear now of all times…!’

It was the same kind of monster that had once turned an entire district of Suwon into ruins.

Even if the Republic of Korea was a hellscape constantly suffering Breaks in the 90th-floor range, boss monsters in the 80th-floor range did not appear often.

This truly deserved to be called a variable.

“V-Vice President. T-this cannot be helped.”

Without Hunter Han Seol-ah, sacrifices among Hunters will have to be accepted…

Kim Jin-cheol swallowed the rest of the sentence.

That was normally what the operations room did.

It treated the Hunters fighting in the field like game pieces.

You go there and die. You go over there and die.

And then, in order to stop them from breaking, it fed them hope—hold on until Han Seol-ah arrives.

Even Kim Jin-cheol, who was more used to such “sacrifices” and “deceptions” than anyone, could not bring himself to say the rest aloud.

Because this would just be a meaningless death.

A boss in the 80th-floor range was not something you could kill in a single blow unless the entire operation was built around creating an opening for Han Seol-ah to ambush it.

Put another way, it meant that even Han Seol-ah herself could not confidently promise a flawless victory against such an opponent.

And given the Republic of Korea’s Hunter structure, where Han Seol-ah was the sole damage dealer and everyone else below her was effectively a tank,

dispatching a Hunter team would only result in people being destroyed instead of buildings.

‘…And the bigger problem is that there is no way to know how many Hunters would have to be ground up for this.’

Because Han Seol-ah is not here now.

No one could bring themselves to speak.

Min Ji-hee’s eyes shone coldly as she made her decision.

And the order that left her lips was colder still.

“Incheon will be abandoned.”

“Gasp…!”

The meeting room recoiled in shock.

After Busan had fallen to the invasion of the Kraken, Incheon had come to function as the Republic of Korea’s second capital.

Abandoning such a key location was no small decision.

Most of the staff seated in this operations room had built their lives in Incheon, after all.

To abandon that place?

For some of them, it meant losing the home they would have returned to.

“This, this cannot be.”

“Vice President, please reconsider!”

“If we abandon Incheon, we are finished!”

The meeting room turned into a shouting marketplace in an instant.

But Min Ji-hee remained resolute.

“I will not entertain objections.”

“….”

At Min Ji-hee’s declaration, the once-noisy operations room fell silent as a grave.

Everyone knew the words she had not spoken aloud.

If the country falls anyway, then it is all over.

Everyone shut their mouths.

To live in a nation on the brink of destruction meant enduring sacrifices that could not be avoided.

There was no madman who would choose “die” over “offer up an arm and live.”

‘…The day the Republic of Korea runs out of limbs to sacrifice will be the day it finally falls.’

Kim Jin-cheol gave up.

As he always did.

***

“So it dies in one hit?”