Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 

The world had long since become a banquet hall for monsters.

On streets where the asphalt had been ripped away, people's screams and wails mingled with the roars of unknown beasts, playing a symphony of hell.

But there was one place where not even a single span of that pandemonium could intrude.

Hundreds of meters above the ground, within the thick soundproof walls of a penthouse, Bach's Suite for Solo Cello flowed with ghostly quiet.

“Hoo.”

Hunter Yang Ju-young had just zipped up his suitcase. Breathing hard, he faced Go Gyeol, who had stepped into the entryway. There was not the slightest trace of guilt or agitation on his face. Only a terrible weariness clung to it.

“Why are you here?”

The low question was as sharp as a blade. Forgetting even the state of his ruined clothes, Go Gyeol shouted urgently.

“What are you doing here? Why aren't you answering your phone?! Don't you know <Loser Round> has started?! The kids? Where did the others go?!”

Unlike Go Gyeol's bloodshot eyes, Yang Ju-young merely gave a faint laugh.

“It's right in front of you. Why ask the obvious?”

His gaze turned to the huge suitcase at his feet. Inside it lay his future, the future in which he would escape this country, this hell.

“…No, right? You're not trying to naturalize, are you?”

Go Gyeol's voice trembled with desperation. Instead of answering, Yang Ju-young tapped the suitcase with the tip of his foot. To Go Gyeol, that light gesture fell as heavily as a death sentence.

“Can't you see?”

“Why! Don't you know what state this country is in right now?! If we can't stop the ‘Loser Round,’ this place is finished! Everyone's going to die!”

“Heh, kheh-kheh....”

Yang Ju-young laughed, his shoulders shaking. At first it was a small laugh, but it soon spread into uncontrollable mad laughter. As if he had heard the funniest joke in the world.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Hey. Yang Ju-young!”

Even at Go Gyeol's furious shout, Yang Ju-young calmly picked up the glass of whiskey on the crystal table. The brilliant amber liquid swayed softly inside the glass.

“Do you think this place, this country called the Republic of Korea, has any hope?”

“Yang Ju-young!”

“I don't want to stake my life on something that stupid. My one and only life-”

“The Hunter Administration will support us! If we just get through this crisis, they'll definitely…!”

Clack.

With a cold sound, the empty glass was set on the table. After draining even the last drop of liquor cleanly, Yang Ju-young tossed out the explosive truth as if it were nothing.

“You still don't know, even at this very moment. Lee Seung-hwa, Shin Jun-ho, Ban Gi-ung. They've all naturalized.”

Go Gyeol's world collapsed. His vision spun, and his legs shook.

Those names were not simply Hunters.

They were people he had personally discovered, people he had rolled through all kinds of Dungeons and the Tower with, people he had raised with blood and sweat, people who had been like his own sons and daughters.

They were the crystallization of hope into which he had poured everything.

But they had all naturalized? When? Why had he, their manager, known nothing?

As if savoring Go Gyeol's reaction, Yang Ju-young finally burst into loud laughter.

“Hahaha! I know how devoted you were to us. I won't deny it. But you know, Go Gyeol. When the chance to have something better is right in front of you, letting some worn-out conscience hold you back is a foolish thing, isn't it?”

“You… traitor....”

A sound like an animal's growl leaked through Go Gyeol's clenched teeth, but Yang Ju-young pretended not to hear and glanced at the luxury watch on his wrist with shameless ease.

“Oops, it's about time to go.”

“What?”

The moment those words ended, the air screamed and tore apart. Space split open, revealing a black door.

It was the skill of an S-Grade spatial movement Hunter.

Beyond the wide-open door, foreigners in neat suits were looking this way with smiles like they were appraising merchandise.

Yang Ju-young lightly lifted his suitcase.

“Thanks for everything. If it weren't for you, I never would've gotten such an incredible opportunity.”

“Yang! Ju! Young!”

As if sneering at Go Gyeol as he charged in screaming, Yang Ju-young lightly turned and vanished through the door. The door closed without a trace, as if it had never existed.

In an instant, the penthouse sank back into deep silence. Only the faint sounds of destruction from outside awakened any sense of reality. Bach's melody was still flowing from the speakers, and the clothes strewn across the floor proved the traces of the traitor who had been here until moments ago.

Thump.

Go Gyeol sank to the floor where he stood. The S-Grade Hunters remaining in Korea were, for all practical purposes, all the ones under his management. If they had all left, this country had no future. Ruin, and nothing else.

“The Hunter Administration… I have to go to the Hunter Administration....”

But he could not give up like this. Go Gyeol forced strength into his loosened legs and staggered to his feet. The very moment the last handful of responsibility and duty moved his body—

—SHATTER!!

With a thunderous rupture, the huge bulletproof glass that had reflected the cityscape cracked like a spiderweb and burst apart.

And through the gap, a sharp wooden stem flew in like a flash of light and pierced Go Gyeol's heart without the slightest error.

“Guhk....”

Red blood erupted like a fountain over his white shirt. The spraying blood poured over the pure-white White Jade hanging from his neck.

As if quenching its thirst, the once-pure jade absorbed Go Gyeol's blood with chilling speed, and his vision rapidly dyed itself red.

Darkness came with the pain of his heart being pierced. That was the last thing Go Gyeol remembered.

But then.

“…So, are you really going to resign?”

A brutally realistic voice dug into his eardrums.

* * *

Familiar yet strange, acrid cigarette smoke pricked the tip of his nose. Go Gyeol lifted his head, creaking like a machine.

A middle-aged man wearing a cheap tie and frowning. The cigarette between his lips was burning down precariously.

‘…Team Lead Han Jeong-su?’

A face he had not seen even once since leaving the company, a face he had shoved to the far side of his memory. And yet something was strange.

The deep wrinkles around his eyes were faint, and his graying hair was black. He looked worn down by brutal office life, but he was clearly several years younger.

‘Why is this person… here?’

Was this a dream? But the terrible smell of nicotine and the stale office air clawed at his senses, screaming that this was reality.

“Assistant Manager Go Gyeol. Think it over one more time. Have you already forgotten how damn hard it was to get into our company?”

In that instant, Go Gyeol's heart plummeted to the floor.

Assistant Manager Go Gyeol.

It was an old title he had been called only years ago, long before he walked the path of a Hunter manager. And that line was exactly, down to the last syllable, what Han Jeong-su had said when Go Gyeol handed in a resignation letter for the first time in his life.

Without letting Han Jeong-su notice, Go Gyeol pinched his own thigh hard beneath the table. Tears sprang to his eyes at the sharp pain of his nail digging into his flesh. If this were a dream, it could not be this vivid.

‘A dream… it isn't?’

“Assistant Manager Go Gyeol?”

Perhaps frustrated by the sight of him frozen without a word, Han Jeong-su stubbed out his cigarette and urged him on. Go Gyeol sprang to his feet.

“Excuse me… I need to use the restroom.”

Turning his back on the voice calling after him, Go Gyeol ran into the nearest restroom. His heart was pounding like mad. He did not even think to wash his face with cold water and charged straight to the mirror.

“This is… impossible.”

There was an unbelievable face in the mirror.

The ugly burn scar on his left cheek, gained one year ago when a flame monster caught him as he tried to save an F-Grade Hunter.

The deep wound from two years ago, when a monster bit and tore into his shoulder in a Dungeon.

The countless traces of glory and pain that had been carved into his body.........

Not a single one of them was there.

Clean.

Go Gyeol touched his face with trembling hands. The skin that should have been rough and shriveled was only smooth. This was not a hallucination. It was the sensation of living skin, perfectly real.

Then.

The despair of being betrayed, the pain of having his heart pierced. If all of that had been the end, then this was…….

“…Have I… come back to the past?”

That was the very moment he muttered without realizing it.

A rush of heat flared up at his chest.

Startled, Go Gyeol shoved his hand inside his shirt. His fingertips touched something hard and cool.

‘Why is… this here?’

It was the White Jade necklace he had always worn around his neck when he was a manager.

If he had truly regressed, then this necklace should have been gone too.

The moment he gripped the necklace in confusion, blue light burst in midair like a flash, and a translucent message window appeared before his eyes.

【White Jade's Repayment complete.】

“White Jade's Repayment…?”

As if unable to believe it, he looked down at the small pendant in his hand.

“Did this… did this send me back to the past?”

This pendant, which had looked like a simple accessory, was in fact an item he had obtained from the Tower in his previous life.

A manager who managed Hunters. That was his job.

Most ordinary managers stayed in the safe rear, but Go Gyeol was different.

He personally accompanied Hunters into Dungeons and the Tower, took charge of cleaning up after them, devised clear strategies with his sharp analytical skills, and sometimes even became bait to save them.

This White Jade was a gift from a Hunter he had saved that way at the risk of his life. It was said to be an item dropped by a boss monster, but no matter how many times it was appraised, nothing special was discovered, so it had been treated as a mere accessory.

“So this was it....”

Go Gyeol discovered a small red spot like a droplet of blood stamped on the surface of the snow-white jade and furrowed his brow. Originally, this jade had been a flawless, perfect pure white.

“Did this appear as the price of regression?”

Before his mutter had even ended, a new message appeared.

【Connecting to System.】

【…S7KD87 System connection complete.】

【Please state the user's name.】

Before the blinking cursor, Go Gyeol drew in a deep breath. Then, as if resolved, he opened his mouth.

“Go Gyeol.”

【User ‘Go Gyeol’ confirmed.】

【Transferring past records and information for smooth adaptation.】

“Ugh!”

No sooner had the words ended than an agonizing pain, as if a chisel and hammer were smashing his skull apart, struck his brain.

It was not a simple headache.

It was a vast torrent of information about how humanity had perished and why he had been returned to this time.

“…What a shitty fate.”

20XX, a meteor fell into the Pacific Ocean. Humanity's awakening followed.

The conflict between those with power and those without. A calamity that appeared amid the chaos, ‘Dungeons’.

The Awakened, who became the only beings capable of stopping Dungeons, called themselves ‘Hunters’ and enjoyed godlike power.

And at last, the omen of the end rose as if to pierce the sky, the ‘Tower’.

The Tower proposed a cruel game to humanity. Along with it came the threat that if they failed to clear the Tower within the time limit, it would release monsters into the world.

At first, people did not think much of it.

So from the 30th floor onward, when the Tower demanded the selection of ‘representative Hunters,’ they chose Hunters based not on skill or mindset, but only on appearance.

That became the seed of every calamity.

From the 30th floor onward, the games proposed by the Tower were far too difficult for the Hunters chosen that way.

The result was the destruction of the Republic of Korea, and the annihilation of all humanity spreading outward like a butterfly effect.

It was a tragedy in which the people had chosen ruin with their own hands, with no one to blame.

“Assistant Manager Go Gyeol? Are you sick?”

At a colleague's voice, Go Gyeol suddenly came to his senses and stood up.

“No. I was just dizzy for a moment.”

He refused the hand trying to support him and entered the nearest empty conference room, then locked the door.

“…System?”

【Speak.】

“What… exactly is the Tower?”

【An AI entrusted with executing the Humanity Extermination Project.】

A soulless mechanical voice. At an answer beyond imagination, Go Gyeol let out a hollow laugh.

“Who is trying to exterminate humanity, and why?”

【Information unavailable for viewing.】

“Then… did I awaken, by any chance?”

【No.】

It was a firm answer that shattered even his last handful of hope. He was still a powerless ordinary person.

“Then what are you? You said you're an AI that exterminates humanity, so why are you helping me?”

【I am System S7KD87, assigned the mission of protecting humanity.】

“Protecting humanity? Does that mean there is something opposing the forces trying to exterminate us? And they implanted you inside the item?”

【Yes. It activated under specific conditions, and because the probability of protecting humanity at the time of activation was 0%, the protection program's final function, 'Regression,' was used.】

His head felt as if it would burst from the flood of information. Go Gyeol scrubbed his dry face and spoke like a sigh.

“Explain only the information I can view.”

【Viewable information: system functions, purpose, and activation conditions.】

【The system presents the user with optimal Hunter selection and guidance to increase the probability of protecting humanity.】

‘Selection and guidance.’ Before Go Gyeol could mull over the meaning, a new window appeared with a ‘ding-dong’ sound.

〔Mission 1: Recruit 'Lee Seong-ha.'〕

〔Time remaining: 71:59:58〕

“Lee Seong-ha? You want me to recruit that guy?”

【The first condition for protecting humanity.】

“What… if I refuse?”

【If the user refuses the condition, the system will determine that humanity has no will to be saved and initiate automatic destruction procedures.】

【Destroy System?】