Chapter 7

Chapter 7. The System of Salvation

***

I sat cross-legged on the altar's cold flagstones.

I let out the stale air in my lungs in one long breath.

Above my head, in that virtual space, I floated a single droplet of water.

The purest crystallization of mana.

'Drip—.'

The droplet fell onto the crown of my head, soaking into my brain and flowing down my spine.

This wasn't simple meditation.

This was circuit refactoring.

Mana and aura.

I was redrawing the map of my nervous system so those two alien energies could flow without colliding.

If blood vessels were a road network, then what I was doing now was rebuilding the traffic light system.

'Clear the congested sections. Secure detours.'

[Successor, 24 hours have elapsed in real time.]

Airi's dry notification.

A day had already passed.

"My body in reality must be asleep on an IV."

The geometric patterns engraved on the altar floor were pulsing faintly.

My body felt light.

It felt as if the circuits twisted by mana backflow had been neatly aligned.

I stood.

Crack, crack.

Even though this was a virtual body, the sensation of my joints loosening was vivid.

"The spell optimization is done."

[Optimization? A concrete explanation is required.]

Curious thing.

Still, I didn't think teaching it information was a bad idea.

I drew mana in the air as I answered.

"Think of it like reinstalling an OS on a computer. I was forcing a swordsman's program to run on an OS made exclusively for mages, so it bugged out. That is why I applied a compatibility patch."

[Understood. You have constructed a hybrid operating system.]

"Close enough. Now I cut out the unnecessary calculation process."

Magic is the realization of an image.

Recalling complex formulas one by one in the middle of battle was inefficient.

I needed triggers.

Macros that could immediately execute complex spells with a single word.

"Airi. Change the skill names. [Quick Slash] to 'Slash.' [Heavy Slash] to 'Breaker.'"

[Confirmed. Mapping spell data to the corresponding keywords.]

The altar's patterns flashed.

The intuitive commands were driven into my mind.

Now, the moment I thought 'Slash,' acceleration magic and aura would activate at the same time.

Without even the slightest delay.

I adjusted my grip on the shortsword.

The sensation wrapping around my fingertips was much smoother than before.

This was the result of work that had taken dozens of hours.

I looked toward the altar's exit.

The real me was probably lying in a hospital bed.

Assuming Airi had properly called emergency aid.

I just hoped I wasn't lying in the street.

"Let's go back."

***

The smell of disinfectant.

The first thing to wake my senses was my sense of smell.

Next came the fluorescent light stabbing into my vision.

When I opened my eyes with a grimace, I saw a white ceiling.

Fortunately, I hadn't died far from home.

"Oh my, oh my, he's awake! Mom!"

"Do-jin!"

Familiar voices. Voices I had missed.

When I turned my head, I saw two women.

My mother and my older sister.

"Hey! Kim Do-jin! Are you seriously out of your mind? Were you dying to get yourself killed?"

My older sister, Min-seo, struck my shoulder with reddened eyes.

My mother held my hand and kept murmuring, "Oh dear, oh dear," while stroking her chest in relief.

"............"

My throat tightened.

In real time, it had been ten years.

Before my regression, when this very Donggureung Gate finished 'hatching' and went berserk, these two had been the first to be swept up and killed.

The memory of finding only my mother's worn wallet in the rubble of a collapsed building and sobbing over it was carved into my bones.

But this time was different.

I stopped it.

Before that horrible future could arrive, I had cut the sprout away with my own hands.

They had crossed that hellish fate and were alive before my eyes now.

Alive, with warm body heat.

Pathetically, my eyes grew hot.

Relief and guilt mixed together and surged in as if a dam had burst.

"Hey, are you... crying?"

My sister asked, flustered.

It was understandable that she was shocked when a younger brother who would normally have recoiled in disgust was tearing up.

"No, it's just dusty in here."

"As if. You're bawling your eyes out."

My sister teased me mischievously and pulled my cheek.

That hurt.

Which made it feel real.

This wasn't a dream. It was the reality I had changed.

"Oh dear, my son. You must have been in so much pain......"

My mother wiped the corners of my eyes with a handkerchief.

The feel of her rough knuckles.

These were the hands that had raised my sister and me alone after losing our father to a gate accident.

The fear left by my father's absence still lingered in my mother's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mom, for making you worry."

I bowed my head. I didn't need the grand dignity of a regressor.

Right now, it was enough to be a thoughtless son.

"Do-jin. They said... you Awakened. Are you thinking of becoming a Hunter?"

My mother's voice trembled faintly.

What had to come had come.

She probably didn't want to send her son to the same place that had swallowed his father.

But I couldn't lie.

False reassurance would only become greater despair later.

"Yes."

My mother's eyes wavered. Before anything else, I gripped her hand tightly.

"I should protect our family. Father's share included."

A trite line.

But both before my regression and now, it was what I truly felt.

Silence passed for a moment.

My mother let out a long sigh and lowered her head.

"Who could ever break your stubbornness? You are exactly like your father......"

"Mom, he has to pass the Hunter exam first before he's a Hunter anyway."

As if trying to change the mood, my sister jumped in with forced brightness.

A red sunset was falling outside the window.

If I wanted to make sure that sunset did not turn bloodred, I couldn't rest.

But my body was honest.

Maybe it was because of the harsh training at the altar, but once the tension loosened, sleepiness swept over me.

"Get some sleep. At least until the IV is finished."

My sister's voice grew distant.

I sank into a deep sleep.

***

When I opened my eyes again, the sun had completely set.

The hospital room was dim, and beneath the light of a stand lamp by the window, my sister was tapping away on a tablet PC.

"You awake?"

"Yeah. Where's Mom?"

"She went home for a bit to get your clothes. You're being discharged tomorrow."

My sister pulled a chair over and sat beside my bed.

She looked me over with the sharp gaze unique to reporters.

"The doctor was horrified. He said your body was practically a rag. Something about your mana circuits being tangled and whatnot. Where the hell have you been, and what the hell have you been doing?"

"I just... overdid it a little."

"One day after Awakening?"

My sister clicked her tongue.

Kim Min-seo, a social affairs reporter for South Korea's Daily Gate.

She was a veteran who specialized exclusively in incidents related to Hunters and gates.

A stubborn woman who became a reporter to find out why our father had vanished.

My gaze drifted to the screen of her tablet.

Complicated relationship charts and blurry photographs were open on it.

"Sis, what are you investigating these days?"

"Same as always. Digging around behind some stinking rats."

My sister turned off the screen.

But I didn't miss it. The keywords written in the corner of the screen.

[Light of Salvation], and [Administration Bureau].

"Are you talking about... the Gate Cult?"

At my question, my sister's eyebrow twitched.

"Where did you hear that?"

"Just rumors I heard in passing."

"Hmm."

My sister gave me a suspicious look, then turned the tablet back on.

A photograph appeared on the screen, showing a bizarre symbol that combined a cross and a gate.

"That's right. These lunatics have been running wild lately."

The Gate Cult.

A cult that believed the appearance of gates was 'God's judgment' and 'salvation.'

Before my regression, I had thought they were just common doomsday fanatics.

Mold that naturally grew as the world went to ruin.

But just before the apocalypse, the frenzied way they behaved was not that of mere believers.

'Glory to the God of the Gate!'

The voice that had shouted that while cutting down a comrade still rang vividly in my ears.

"Their influence has been growing in a disturbing way lately. It isn't simple proselytizing. It is highly organized. There are even rumors that someone called a prophet is making prophecies and all that."

My sister lowered her voice.

As if the real story started now.

"The problem is, we've found signs that these bastards are linked to the Gate Administration Bureau."

"To the Administration Bureau?"

My heart thudded.

It was also called the GAB for short.

At some point, it had pushed out the Hunter Association and become an all-powerful authority that even seized and controlled gate entry permits.

It was arrogant and corrupt, but still a government agency.

And they had joined hands with a cult?

"Are you sure?"

"That is what the circumstantial evidence says. We've got a tip that a cult member and an Administration Bureau official came out of the same gate. But the higher-ups are blocking the article."

My sister smiled bitterly.

In a world crawling with trash journalists, she had the eyes of a real reporter.

"Those GAB bastards are shady beyond belief. As if sucking Hunters dry wasn't enough, now they're hand in glove with a cult."

I felt as if a piece of the puzzle had slid into place.

Why information about Zephyros had been blocked before my regression.

Why the Donggureung Gate had been neglected through poor management.

It might not have been simple incompetence.

'Intentional neglect?'

What if the Administration Bureau wasn't controlling gates at all, but someone else's will had been involved?

"This might be a little dangerous."

"It is dangerous, so a reporter digs into it. If someone wants safe news, tell them to watch the weather forecast."

My sister shrugged as if it were no big deal.

But I knew. The anxiety hidden behind that confidence.

She knew it, too.

That what she was touching wasn't a beehive, but a minefield.

"Sis."

"Why? Are you going to lecture me again?"

"No. If you learn anything more about the cult, share it with me too."

My sister looked at me with surprise.

"What's gotten into you? You should be preparing for the Hunter exam. You were the type who hated complicated stuff like this."

"It's good to know."

"You sure have a silver tongue."

"And be careful."

"You should worry about yourself."

My sister gave a small laugh and closed the tablet.

Then, with a playful expression, she changed the subject.

"By the way, Mr. Scaredy-Cat Kim Do-jin. Are you confident you can pass the Hunter exam?"

"I won't know until I try."

"Hey, last year's pass rate was 8%. It's the kind of exam where every Tom, Dick, and Harry fails. For a coward like you, it'll be a relief if you don't piss yourself in front of a monster."

My sister cackled.

The old me had certainly been like that.

A coward who ran away, saying he would prepare for a safe civil service exam.

Even the few exams I barely managed to take, I failed every time.

But now I was different.

"Because I'm a coward, I need to prepare even more thoroughly."

The laughter left my sister's face. She tilted her head and stared intently at me.

Had her reporter's instinct activated?

"Hey, Kim Do-jin."

"What?"

"You've... changed a bit."

"What has?"

"Your eyes, I guess... How should I put it? In the old days, there was something slippery about you, but now you look like an old man living alone after going through every hardship in the world."

"What old man living alone?"

Was family impossible to fool after all?

"Can't you just say I've matured? I nearly died and came back."

"Hmph, matured, my ass. They say even rolling in a field of dog shit is better than the afterlife, and that people die when they change."

My sister grumbled and started peeling an apple.

Shick, shick.

The sound of the paring knife cutting away the peel filled the silence of the hospital room.

Outside the window, darkness had settled completely.

The lights of the city were switching on one by one.

Beneath those peaceful lights, someone was praying for the end, and someone else was looking the other way and growing fat off it.

'The Gate Cult, and the Administration Bureau.'

These were keywords I had missed in the last world.

Then I would have to cut them out.

I needed a bigger, sharper knife.

A Hunter license was the first admission ticket to grasping that knife.

"It's good."

I put a slice of peeled apple into my mouth.

It tasted sweet and cool.

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