Chapter 1: The Wrong Rebirth
Chapter Text
It was dark.
Not the kind of dark that comes with nightfall, nor the dim gloom of a power outage. This was a deeper black—so complete it smothered depth and erased edges, as if the world had given up trying to shape itself. The taste of stone dust clung to the back of Jinwoo’s throat. Something heavy pinned his ribs.
A voice groaned. His own.
He tried to move, but his arm refused to obey. Broken? No—numb. His body was still reeling, caught somewhere between E-rank fragility and S-rank memory. Breath hissed through clenched teeth as he twisted beneath what felt like a slab of fractured pillar. Cracks spiderwebbed the stone above him. Loose gravel scraped across his shoulder as he pushed.
The pressure shifted.
With a grunt, Jinwoo rolled onto his side, gasping. The world tilted. For a moment, all he could hear was the sharp static hum in his skull—like a thousand radios whispering in a dead language just beyond hearing.
And then—quiet.
He blinked. Blinking hurt.
Above him, a faint green glow pulsed in broken intervals—runes etched into the dungeon wall, flickering like a dying heartbeat. He was in a low-rank dungeon, that much he could tell. Stone corridor. Generic architecture. No trace of design or identity, just the brutal uniformity of system-generated death traps.
He touched his temple. Blood.
Something hard and round rolled against his hip. His old guild-issue mana gauge—cracked and flickering.
He sat up, slowly. Vision swam, steadied. The sounds came next: booted feet, panting breaths, someone sobbing softly a few meters down the corridor. A voice barked orders—young, male, trembling with fear poorly hidden behind bluster.
“Formation! I said formation! That thing’s still back there, we need a circle, now—where’s the healer?!”
Jinwoo’s fingers closed around the wall as he stood. His legs wobbled. Every muscle ached as if he’d been reassembled wrong.
This body… was his. But not.
It had been years since he’d felt so slow, so weak, so painfully breakable. But the eyes—his eyes—cut through the dark like a hawk’s. He could count the flecks of rust on the nearest blade lying abandoned on the ground. He could feel the vibrations of each footstep on the stone through his soles.
S-rank perception. E-rank bones.
His lips curled. A dry, bitter sound escaped his throat. Half a laugh, half a cough.
Someone turned toward him. A girl—mid-twenties, staff glowing weakly in one hand. She squinted through the dust. “Wait—are you okay? You were—You weren’t moving.”
Jinwoo tilted his head, then looked past her.
A corpse. No—a body. Still breathing. Crushed leg, blood pooling. They’d dragged the man out, but not far enough. A trail of it led from the far hall. Whatever attacked them had been big, fast, and smarter than it looked.
He inhaled sharply, and that was when he felt it.
Faint. So faint he almost missed it.
A presence. No, not presence—presences. Dozens. Hundreds. Lingering just at the edge of awareness, like fingers brushing silk. No visuals, no voices.
But he could feel them.
The shadows were with him.
Dormant. Distant.
Waiting.
He closed his eyes.
Then opened them.
And took a step forward.
*****
The second step was worse.
His foot slipped slightly on the cracked stone, and his balance pitched forward—not because he tripped, but because his body couldn’t correct itself in time. The lag between decision and execution was only a fraction of a second. But to him, with eyes sharpened beyond human norms, it was an eternity. That delay might as well have been a death sentence in any real fight.
He steadied himself on the wall, jaw tight.
A growl echoed from deeper in the dungeon. Low. Wet. The kind that burrowed into your spine and made your lungs feel too shallow.
The woman beside him—the healer—flinched. She wasn’t looking at him anymore.
“Formation!” the team leader shouted again, louder now. “I said move! It’s circling back!”
Jinwoo blinked toward the sound of the voice.
There he was—young, barely older than Jinwoo, sword held in a stiff grip he clearly didn’t trust. His eyes darted toward the side tunnel. Panic masked as command. His armor was second-hand, scratched along the sides, probably hadn’t been repaired since his last raid.
Jinwoo knew the type. First-time leader. Desperate not to lose anyone on his record.
Not out of kindness—out of fear of paperwork. And lawsuits.
The growl came again, louder this time.
Something heavy thudded across the stones behind them. Two beats. Then silence.
Jinwoo’s hand brushed instinctively toward his side—nothing. No dagger. No sword. Just the crumpled half of a gear pouch with half a healing potion bottle shattered inside it.
He scanned the corridor.
Too tight to flank. No alcoves for cover. A single narrow hall led into the chamber they’d just fled—caved-in at one end, collapsed door at the other. They were boxed in.
He turned to the healer. “Your mana?”
She blinked. “Wh-what?”
“Can you still cast?”
“I… I think so. But it’s low. I used—on Daejin’s leg—”
“Good. Save it. For yourself.”
That shook her.
Jinwoo didn’t wait.
He stepped forward, past the groaning swordsman slumped near the center of the group, and stooped low, snatching a fallen weapon—a short sword, chipped along one edge, barely balanced. It felt foreign in his grip, like he was trying to hold water.
Behind him, someone hissed, “Hey! What the hell are you—”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
Every step closer to the tunnel was agony. His muscles screamed. His breath came in short bursts. The low thrum of incoming mana—the predator’s aura—was like iron scraping against his skin.
Then it charged.
It burst from the left—eyes gleaming red, skin a jagged gray, claws long enough to split bone.
A C-rank dungeon beast. Ugly. Quick.
Jinwoo moved.
But not fast enough.
He barely twisted out of the way. The claws grazed his chest, shredding the edge of his hunter’s vest. The pain came after, but not sharp—dull. Distant. The adrenaline was kicking in, masking everything but motion.
He dropped low, twisting the sword around in his palm, and stabbed upward—not a strong blow, just precise.
Right into the beast’s armpit.
It howled.
Didn’t die.
Slammed him against the wall with its free arm.
Stone cracked. His shoulder screamed.
Then someone else struck—a firebolt from the rear, slamming into the creature’s back. A shout. Steel clanging.
Jinwoo didn’t hear the rest. He was already sliding down the wall, vision flickering.
Weak.
His own word. Carved into the silence.
But before the dark could take him, before the static returned, he saw the shadows again—no shapes, no names.
Just a cold patience.
Watching.
Waiting.
Still there.
Still his.
*****
Pain flared down his ribs like a hot wire.
Jinwoo coughed and spat red, tasting iron and grit. His shoulder was screaming, but it wasn’t dislocated—just crushed under impact. He could move it. Barely.
The dungeon beast snarled, whipping its gaze from him to the team now scattering behind him. Smoke still curled from its shoulder where the firebolt had landed, but the burn was shallow. Annoying, not fatal.
“Get back—get back!” the leader shouted. His voice cracked.
Too slow.
The creature turned toward a swordsman with a limp, bloodied leg—one Jinwoo hadn’t seen in the fight before. The man was dragging himself backward, sword forgotten, panic frozen in his face.
The beast leapt.
Jinwoo moved.
His body didn't want to. His nerves were dulled, reflexes lagging behind instincts—but his perception fed him everything. The angle. The trajectory. The weight distribution on the creature’s haunches. The target. The gap in timing from the others.
He ran straight into the beast’s path.
“Move!” someone shouted.
He didn’t.
Jinwoo’s foot caught under him—intentional. He dropped low just as the beast lunged, driving his full weight into its chest. It wasn’t strength that stopped it.
It was placement.
He redirected it—slightly—just enough that it missed the swordsman and crashed into the ground, claws raking empty air.
They rolled. The beast slammed him hard against the floor once, twice, trying to dislodge him.
He didn’t let go.
Couldn’t.
His arms wrapped around the creature’s throat. One of its claws tore through his side, but he didn’t scream. He bit down on the pain. Blood bubbled at the edge of his lips.
“Now!” he croaked.
A blur of fire hit the beast from behind. Another hunter charged in and slashed—messy, desperate—but it worked.
The beast shrieked and finally staggered off of him, bleeding from three new wounds. It turned to flee—limping—and vanished into the corridor’s dark curve.
Gone.
Breathing filled the silence. Shaking. A sob. The team leader shouted for a count—checking who was still alive.
Jinwoo lay on the stone floor, chest heaving, vision swimming.
Hands reached for him.
He waved them off.
“I’m… fine,” he said. It was a lie, but the kind he knew how to tell.
No one questioned it.
They were too busy pulling the wounded swordsman back to his feet, too stunned by the near miss.
Too busy trying to make sense of what just happened.
“Did he—did you see that?” one muttered.
“Was that… timing?”
“Luck,” someone else said too quickly.
Yeah.
Let them think that.
Jinwoo sat up, wiping blood from his lip.
He could still feel them—the shadows.
They hadn’t spoken. They hadn’t moved.
But they’d watched.
And they hadn’t left.
*****
The corridor narrowed ahead.
Old mana lanterns flickered overhead, shedding just enough green-blue glow to cast distorted shadows across the cracked stone. The team moved slowly, limping and leaning into each other. No one spoke now.
The high from survival had faded into that post-adrenaline hollow where fear didn’t scream—it whispered. Jinwoo knew that silence. He’d walked through it thousands of times.
He walked last in the line.
Not by accident.
His breath was shallow. Every step pulled at the torn muscles in his side, and his left shoulder ached with a pulsing throb. But he wasn’t watching his own wounds.
He was listening.
There it was again.
A click. Too sharp. Not a loose pebble under a boot. Not human.
He half-turned his head, letting his gaze trail behind without moving his body. The corridor bent slightly around a protruding section of wall, masking most of the rear path. Nothing visible.
But something was there.
It wasn’t the monster they’d fought. Too light. Too soft. But fast.
Scouting behavior.
A secondary hunter? A carrion-class predator?
He whispered low, mostly to himself, “You didn’t come alone.”
His fingers brushed the pouch on his belt.
Nothing useful.
A half-unwrapped binding rune tag—damp and unstable. A pit trap orb, half-charged. And a roll of fine string used for tripwire alerts.
That would have to do.
He slowed. Bent.
Pretended to tie his boot.
Carefully, using his good hand, he ran the wire across the narrowest point in the corridor, anchoring it with tiny crystal-bond tack at ankle height. He coated it in dust with a quick brush of his fingers.
Then he stood and moved again—faster this time, letting a limp show.
To bait.
By the time he reached the group, they were near the exit gate—runes spiraling on the wall where the dungeon’s core had been claimed.
They didn’t notice the way he angled his stance, eyes fixed backward.
The trap snapped.
A high-pitched snarl tore through the silence.
A blur of gray-black muscle slammed into the tripwire, crashed to the ground in a spasm of limbs, and hit the collapsed wall hard enough to knock loose a spray of dust.
Everyone jumped.
Swords half-raised. Cries of confusion.
But the beast didn’t rise.
Jinwoo was already halfway there. Not running—walking. Calm. One motion. He grabbed the broken short sword he’d dropped earlier and drove it into the creature’s neck.
It spasmed. Shuddered.
Died.
The others stared.
“You… caught it?” one finally asked.
Jinwoo glanced at the body.
Skeletal frame. Thin tail. Probationary beast—often used to test response teams before the final chamber.
“Yes,” he said simply.
The leader walked over, face pale.
“That was a stealth variant. They don’t usually…”
He trailed off.
Jinwoo didn’t offer anything else.
Just wiped the blade against the creature’s fur, dropped it again, and turned back toward the gate.
His hands were shaking again.
Not from fear.
From exhaustion.
And something else.
The silence in the back of his mind… was beginning to fill.
*****
The gate spat them out with a hollow sound, like a seal breaking underwater.
Jinwoo stepped into the dungeon lobby’s artificial light and squinted. Fluorescents buzzed overhead. Cheap tile floor. Plastic chairs lined one wall like broken teeth. The Association rep—barely older than Jinah—stood frozen behind the desk, mouth open slightly.
No one looked good.
Blood, dirt, and monster filth clung to everyone like smoke. Most collapsed into chairs without speaking. One of the mages was crying silently into a towel. Another held an ice pack against a bruised eye, staring at nothing.
Jinwoo didn’t sit.
He moved to the far wall and leaned his back against it slowly, breath tight in his throat.
His body screamed with every motion. The kind of slow, spreading ache that didn’t speak of damage—it spoke of limits. Of a body pushed just beyond what it could handle, still wobbling on the edge of collapse.
But that wasn’t what made him tremble.
He looked down at his hands.
Faint tremors ran through his fingers. His knuckles were red from strain. Dirt had settled into the creases of his palm. He turned them over, stared at the skin.
This was wrong.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The Cup had promised him time. A clean return. His mother. His sister. A world before the rot set in.
But he hadn’t gone far enough.
He was still too late.
And his body—this body—was a cage. Every instinct he had screamed for movement, for force, for power. He knew how to kill the things that had stalked them today. He knew how to turn shadows into blades, how to split mountains in half with thought.
But the strength wasn’t there.
Not yet.
He exhaled slowly, forced the rage down.
Then he did something dangerous.
He reached inside.
It wasn’t a physical motion. It was deeper—a mental stretch, a reach into the reservoir that had once been infinite. Into the space where the System had lived, where the cold blue text had once filled his thoughts like a second language.
Nothing.
Then—
[Error: Core Access Incomplete]
A flicker of light. Faint. Blue.
Gone as soon as it came.
He blinked. His breath hitched.
It’s still there.
Damaged. Quiet. Fragmented.
But not gone.
Not erased.
He opened his inventory.
Empty.
Just a flicker of static at the edges.
A soft chime, half-heard, in the back of his mind.
Not a word. Not a message.
Just…
waiting.
He closed his eyes.
The shadows did not speak. But they stayed close.
Still here.
Still his.
He let out a breath. Then, as casually as possible, straightened off the wall and limped out of the room without a word.
Let them think whatever they wanted.
He had work to do.
Chapter 2: Welcome Home
Summary:
As he cleans up the dishes, a single, cold notification flickers across his vision—an old voice from a fractured place:
[Quest Generated: Restore Core Access. Daily Training Initiated.]
Jinwoo laughs once, low and empty.
He has no strength left.
But the game has begun again.
Chapter Text
The key turned with a soft click.
Jinwoo pushed the door open and stepped into the apartment like a stranger.
Same hallway. Same cracked light above the coat hooks. Same faint scent of detergent and rice—an echo of meals cooked long ago, now ingrained in the wallpaper. The air was warm, still, lived-in. He stood there for a long moment, one foot inside, the other still on the threshold.
He didn’t belong here.
Not really.
The door closed behind him with a soft thud.
He moved on autopilot, shoes off, backpack half-zipped and bleeding shredded cloth, sword case slung over one arm. The strap broke halfway down the hall and the case thudded to the floor. He didn’t pick it up.
The bathroom light buzzed when he flipped it on. Yellowed tiles. Slight mildew near the tub.
He stared at himself in the mirror.
His reflection stared back—twenty-one years old, bruised, gaunt, blood smeared down his collar and neck. One eye already purpling. A shallow gash curved over his jawbone like a smile.
He looked… small.
Not frail, but unfinished. The body of a boy still losing fights with gravity.
He undressed slowly. The shirt peeled off like second skin, stiff with dried blood. Underneath, new bruises had already bloomed across his ribs. A long scrape ran down his side where the beast’s claw had dragged along him.
He stepped into the shower and turned the water on full.
Hot. Scalding.
He stood under it, unmoving, while the blood ran off him in slow, lazy streaks. Red turned pink, then clear.
The sting felt distant. The heat, too.
He watched the blood spiral down the drain and thought of the first time he died. The third. The hundredth. All the ways a body could fail. All the ways a soul could splinter.
His hand pressed against the wall, water hitting his shoulders like rain that wouldn't end.
He waited for a voice.
A prompt.
A whisper from the shadows.
Nothing.
The silence was heavier than the water.
When he finally moved, the tiles beneath his feet had gone cold.
*****
The steam from the rice cooker fogged up the window above the sink.
Jinwoo stood in front of the kitchen counter, towel still wrapped loosely around his shoulders, his wet hair dripping onto the back of his shirt. The bathroom light was still on down the hall. He hadn’t turned it off. Couldn’t remember if he meant to.
The knife in his hand was old. Dull. The handle chipped from years of use. He tested its weight, then lowered it to the cutting board.
Kimchi first. From the plastic container in the fridge, still sealed tight. He peeled the lid back slowly, trying not to let the brine splash.
His hand trembled once.
Just once.
He stilled it by gripping the handle tighter.
Slice. Press. Fold. Stack.
Each movement methodical. Familiar. The kind of rhythm that came not from thought, but from repetition. A daily dance he’d long since memorized.
Eggs next. Pan hot. Oil slicked in a slow spiral.
He cracked them one at a time, separating yolks from whites without effort. A pinch of salt. A whisper of soy. Just like their mother used to do before she fell silent.
He didn’t think. Just moved.
When the rice cooker clicked, he opened it and stirred the grains, letting the scent wash over him—simple, warm, human.
He didn’t feel hungry.
Didn’t even know if he could eat.
But Jinah would ask questions if dinner wasn’t ready when she came in.
That was the rule.
He ladled soup from a leftover container into a pot and brought it to a slow boil, adding sliced tofu and seaweed for texture. The knife clinked as he set it down. The pan sizzled. The rice steamed.
Normal sounds.
He set the table without looking.
Two bowls. Two spoons. A pair of chopsticks slightly warped from heat.
He stepped back and stared at the spread.
It looked right.
Smelled right.
But none of it felt real.
*****
The door opened with a sudden bang against the wall.
“I’m home!”
Jinwoo didn’t flinch.
From the kitchen, he heard the thud of shoes being kicked off, the rustle of a backpack dumped onto the entry mat, the jingle of keys hitting the catch dish like a practiced routine. He turned slowly, wiping his hands on the towel draped around his shoulders.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Jinah poked her head around the hallway corner, mid-laugh at something only she knew.
Her eyes lit up when she saw the table.
“Oh my god—is that egg? You actually cooked something other than microwaved noodles?”
“Had time,” he said.
She blinked at that, a little surprised. “Didn’t you have a raid today?”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t long.”
Not a lie. Not exactly.
She breezed into the kitchen, still in her school uniform—tie crooked, sleeves rolled up, skirt dusted from gym class. Her hair was pulled into a loose braid with a few strands sticking out like antennae.
She sat down and immediately began scooping rice into her bowl. “Teacher Kim finally lost it today. Someone hid his thermos, and he screamed so loud in the teacher’s lounge, we heard it across the courtyard.”
Jinwoo sat opposite her, slowly, hands folded in his lap.
She barely looked up as she talked, too busy stirring her soup, complaining about homework, mumbling through bites of kimchi between stories.
“And then Jisoo tried to—what happened to your lip?”
He blinked.
She was looking at him now, halfway through chewing, eyes narrowing slightly.
“Training accident,” he said smoothly. “Tripped. Guy next to me didn’t.”
“Right,” she said slowly. “And the bandage on your arm?”
He smiled, small and thin. “Same training.”
She frowned, then blew air through her nose in mock frustration. “You’ve gotta stop being the designated meat shield. You’re not invincible, you know.”
“Sure.”
She kept eating.
He watched her.
She talked with her hands, like always. Animated. Expressive. The room felt warmer just from her voice. She asked him how his shift went, if he was gonna apply to the Association full-time eventually, if he remembered to buy more soy sauce.
He answered every question with the same tone. Soft. Even. Almost like he was there.
Almost.
She didn’t notice when he stopped eating after the third bite.
Didn’t notice the way his eyes glazed over halfway through her story about a chemistry mishap.
Didn’t notice the way he kept touching the table with one hand, grounding himself.
He smiled when she laughed. He laughed when she smiled.
And when she yawned, stretching with a groan and complaining about homework again, he told her gently to go shower and sleep.
She grumbled, grabbed her phone and earbuds, and shuffled off.
He stayed at the table.
Soup cold. Rice untouched.
The silence returned, slow and heavy.
He didn’t move.
*****
The sound of the shower ran for ten minutes.
Then ten more.
When it finally cut off, Jinwoo was still at the table, elbows resting loosely on either side of his untouched bowl, fingers laced together. The towel around his shoulders had slipped halfway down his arm. A drop of soup clung to the side of his spoon and didn’t fall.
Jinah shuffled down the hall in oversized socks, her earbuds already in, mumbling along to some pop song he couldn’t hear. She gave him a sleepy two-finger wave as she passed.
“‘Night, oppa.”
He raised a hand. “Good night.”
The door to her room clicked shut behind her.
Silence returned—not like before, not like the dungeon. This was domestic silence. Soft. Dim. Familiar.
He stared at the flickering bulb above the kitchen sink.
His breath slowed.
He exhaled once, long and silent, and let the smile he’d been wearing dissolve.
His body slumped forward slightly. The mask slipped off like an afterthought.
The pain returned in full.
His side throbbed, dull and pulsing with each heartbeat. His shoulder felt wrong again—twisted, bruised. His temples ached. But the worst pain wasn’t physical.
He looked at the table again.
Two bowls. Two spoons.
One full. One untouched.
He reached out and slowly turned his spoon over in the rice. The texture felt wrong on his fingers. Grainy. Warm. Human.
Too human.
He stood, chair scraping softly against the floor, and began clearing the table.
Bowl. Bowl. Chopsticks. Napkin.
He washed everything by hand, slowly, one by one. The hot water stung his fingers. The scent of soap reminded him of his mother’s hands.
His eyes stung, too.
When the last bowl was on the rack, he turned off the water and dried his hands. The towel was damp from earlier. He didn’t care.
He leaned forward against the sink, palms pressed flat against the countertop.
That was when it came.
Not a voice.
Not a whisper.
A flicker.
In the corner of his vision—like a hallucination, like déjà vu dipped in static:
[ ]
No words. No box. Just the flicker.
A presence.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Only closed his eyes, let his breath hitch once, and stayed there in the darkened kitchen while the world turned silently on without him.
*****
The apartment was quiet.
He had turned off the light in the kitchen, letting the warm glow of the hallway lamp bleed faintly across the floor. The soft hum of Jinah’s playlist drifted under her door, a muffled thump-thump of idle music.
Jinwoo stood alone, towel now draped over the back of a chair, his bandages damp with sweat. His hands were dry, fingers sore from scrubbing ceramic clean.
He moved to the window and looked out. The city below flickered with its usual chaos—headlights, neon, the buzz of life that didn’t know it was on borrowed time.
He closed his eyes.
Then it came.
Sharp. Cold. Mechanical.
[ALERT: Daily Quest Generated.]
His eyes snapped open.
The text floated midair, no sound, no flourish—just stark, glitched lettering flickering slightly at the edges.
[Daily Quest: Preparations to Become Stronger]
-
Do 100 Push-ups
-
Do 100 Sit-ups
-
Do 100 Squats
-
Run 10 kilometers
[Failure to complete the quest will result in a penalty.]
There was no voice attached. No second message. No countdown.
Just that old, familiar command—like a joke from a dead man.
He stared at the prompt for several long seconds, unmoving.
Then, very quietly, he laughed.
It was dry. Hollow. One breath. Almost a cough.
He turned away from the window, pulled the towel from the chair, and walked toward his bedroom.
No, he didn’t have the mana.
No, his body wasn’t ready.
But the System didn’t care.
It never had.
And now, apparently, it was back.
He dropped the towel beside his bed, sat slowly, and let his head fall back against the wall.
The screen still hovered in his vision, flickering faintly.
He didn’t dismiss it.
He just let it float there in the dark as his breathing slowed and his eyes, at last, began to close.
Chapter 3: Nobody Dies
Chapter Text
The floor was cold.
It pressed against his palms like stone, biting up through the skin of his hands, anchoring him to the apartment’s narrow living room. Jinwoo didn’t feel the cold. Not really. Not anymore.
His arms trembled with the thirtieth push-up.
His breath came shallow and sharp through gritted teeth. Sweat rolled down his forehead and pooled at the base of his neck, soaking into the collar of his threadbare T-shirt.
Thirty-one.
His elbows flared slightly—bad form. He adjusted on the next rep.
Thirty-two.
His vision blurred for a moment. Not from fatigue. From rage. From memory. The kind of rage that didn't scream. It just… stayed.
Thirty-three.
A sharp pulse in his shoulder—the same one that hit the dungeon wall yesterday. It hadn’t healed. It wasn’t going to. He’d wrapped it himself, but tape only went so far.
Thirty-four.
The System hadn’t offered healing potions. No stamina restoration. No shortcuts.
Just the task.
One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. One hundred squats. Ten kilometers. Every. Single. Day.
He finished the push-ups with a growl low in his throat, barely audible. Rolled to his back, began sit-ups. His ribs creaked. His abdominal wall felt like raw canvas stretched over bone.
He didn’t stop.
Not when his muscles shook.
Not when his breath came in gasps.
Not even when the System flashed a faint prompt in the corner of his vision:
[54/100 Sit-ups Complete]
As if it were checking.
As if someone were watching.
He didn’t care.
Outside the apartment, Seoul was just waking up. The morning light slid over the floor like a whisper. A truck honked two streets over. Jinah’s alarm buzzed faintly through the shared wall. She’d be up soon.
He wouldn’t stop.
Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.
He fell back onto the floor and stared at the ceiling, chest rising and falling.
Then he got up. Slowly. Body stiff. Limbs leaden.
And began the squats.
Every movement screamed at him.
The human body wasn’t made for repetition without recovery. And his was still very, very human.
But that was the point.
To break it.
To rebuild it.
He finished the last squat, stood there swaying for a second, then limped to the door, laced up his old running shoes, and left the apartment.
The sun had just crested the skyline.
Ten kilometers to go.
And he was only just starting.
****
The confirmation pinged at 3:04 a.m.
[Gate 43B: D-rank – Temp Party Slot Confirmed. Arrival Time: 07:30. Minimum Team Size: 10 Confirmed.]
Jinwoo didn’t sleep.
He trained. He stretched. He cleaned his gear.
And by the time the morning broke, he was already dressed in a faded jacket, fingerless gloves, and scuffed boots that no longer quite fit right. His ID badge hung from a cracked lanyard under his coat—still marked “E-RANK // CLEARED: 26 GATES.”
Most of those were nothing jobs. Easy sweeps. Haul runs.
He remembered all of them.
Especially the ones that almost killed him.
The raid team gathered outside the gate—a plain warehouse lot cordoned off with folding barricades and yellow hazard lights. Most of the hunters were young. Some were familiar.
He saw the flickers of recognition in their eyes.
The too-fast glances. The way they leaned toward each other and murmured.
“That guy.”
“No way.”
“Thought he quit.”
“He’s still alive?”
One even said it aloud—just loud enough: “Is that Sung Jinwoo?”
Someone snorted. “Seriously? That guy?”
The team leader was a tall, lean D-rank who clearly wanted to be anywhere else. He didn’t bother addressing Jinwoo directly—just glanced over him once, expression unreadable, then turned back to the group.
“Same rules,” he muttered. “Stick to your lanes, don’t panic. Keep your damn spacing. No heroes. You see anything weird, don’t solo. Ping it, pull back.”
No names were exchanged.
They rarely were. Too many hunters in rotation, too little reason to remember people who didn’t matter.
Jinwoo stayed near the back, adjusting the wrap on his right wrist. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
He was the eleventh member. The expendable one. The dead weight.
No one wanted to walk next to him.
Perfect.
The gate activated with a low groan of mana folding into itself. The warehouse shimmered. The world blurred—and then broke open into cold, wet stone and dim, humming corridors.
Dungeon light.
They entered.
And once again, Jinwoo walked last.
Just the way he liked it.
*****
The dungeon walls dripped.
Moisture gathered along the seams in the stone, collecting in slow rivulets that traced old claw marks and cracks left by earlier teams. The corridor was narrow enough that two people couldn’t walk shoulder to shoulder, so they filed in a staggered column.
Jinwoo kept to the back, eyes scanning every surface.
The others joked softly near the front. Half the party had grouped into familiar pairs—guild freelancers who ran dungeons together often. A healer in the middle hummed under her breath, softly shielding the bruises of a bruiser who’d misstepped on the descent.
They weren’t careless.
Just underestimating.
Jinwoo saw the first threat before anyone else did.
It was the slight ripple in the mist that clung low to the ground. A shift in ambient mana—too quick, too thin. The kind of thing no E-rank should even notice.
The team’s lead swordsman stepped forward, blade drawn. His stance was good, form clean. His eyes locked onto a shadow at the edge of a crumbled archway.
Too late.
The beast lunged.
It came from the side wall—not the arch. Camouflaged. Fast. Long-limbed. Sharp-toothed.
Jinwoo’s voice cut across the corridor, sharp and flat:
“Step left.”
The swordsman didn’t question it.
Maybe it was the tone. Maybe the fear.
He moved just as the monster’s jaws snapped through empty air where his throat had been.
Steel met flesh a second later as two other hunters moved in on instinct. The beast went down under weight of numbers.
The swordsman stood frozen, breathing hard.
“...What the hell,” someone muttered.
Jinwoo said nothing.
They moved on.
Further down, it happened again.
A floor trap—old, barely visible, mana-dulled. The kind that wouldn’t kill, but would break a leg.
“Jump,” Jinwoo said, just before the frontmost scout stepped.
The scout didn’t react in time.
But the person behind him did—grabbing his arm, yanking him back.
A burst of stone spikes shot up with a crack.
The scout stared at the hole in the floor, then back at Jinwoo.
“How—?”
Jinwoo walked past them both, not looking up.
“Watch your spacing.”
No thanks. No awe. Just confusion. A tension starting to build.
By the third time he gave a warning—this one a silent hand raised and a pointed look—they began watching him instead of the corridor.
He didn’t care.
He wasn’t here for them.
He was here to see how much he could endure.
The monsters came in waves after that—nothing dangerous. Just enough to make the weaker team members stumble. But each time, Jinwoo was already moving.
A low whistle came from one of the backliners.
“Guy’s got freakin’ precog.”
The swordsman—now walking just behind Jinwoo—grunted. “No. He just sees it faster than us.”
Another whisper: “Isn’t that the E-rank guy? What’s his deal?”
No one had an answer.
And Jinwoo wasn’t offering one.
*****
The dungeon core shattered with a soft ping, like glass breaking beneath silk.
Mana bled from the ceiling in thin strands of light, drifting upward as the walls around them began to ripple. The gate wouldn’t collapse immediately—not yet. They had time. An hour, maybe more. Standard sweep protocol: secure the boss chamber, then begin the real work.
The miners were already unloading packs, hauling tools, starting core extraction.
The rest of the hunters milled near the edges, nursing wounds, arguing over kill shares, taking inventory.
No one was dead.
That alone made this run unusual.
Jinwoo moved wordlessly past a pile of corpses, dragging one leg slightly. His thigh burned, but the bleeding had stopped. He’d wrapped it in silence during the post-fight chatter. No one noticed.
They were too busy whispering about him again.
He caught the edges of it.
“...saw the trap before it even clicked.”
“Didn’t flinch when the boss screamed. Who does that?”
“Pretty sure that guy’s the one they call the Weakest Hunter—what’s his name? Sung-something?”
“E-rank? Nah. That’s not an E-rank.”
He didn’t wait for the rest.
The extraction would take time. The Association reps would sort out the loot later. His cut would be there, processed to the account linked to his license. He didn’t need to linger.
He turned and began walking toward the gate.
The leader’s voice called out behind him, “Hey—don’t want your share?”
Jinwoo didn’t answer.
He stepped into the gate’s threshold, the light curling around his shoulders.
And vanished.
*****
The city outside his window was a dull smear of orange light and evening silence.
Jinah’s room was dark. No music now. Her fan spun lazily in the summer heat, soft and low.
Jinwoo sat on the floor beside the couch, one arm resting on his bent knee, head tilted slightly back against the wall. His bones throbbed. Not sharp pain—just the heavy, slow protest of a body worked to its limit and offered no reprieve.
The notification appeared without flourish.
Just a simple flicker in the air.
[Daily Quest Complete.]
+0.5% Mana Core Restored
Total Restoration: 2.0%
He exhaled. Not a sigh. Just breath escaping the cage of his ribs.
The next line appeared.
[Reward Acquired: Random Loot Box (Unopened)]
Followed by:
[Skill: Instant Status Recovery (Cooldown: 12 Hours)]
[Stack: 4/4]
His eyes stayed fixed on the glowing text.
Four days. Four stacked recoveries. Not one used.
He knew this skill. The original System gave it freely—one of its early kindnesses. A safety net for the fool too weak to live without it.
He could use it now. The ache in his ribs. The deep bruise on his thigh. The growing burn across his shoulder where a monster’s claws had grazed him too closely today.
One thought. One flick of will.
All of it gone.
But he didn’t move.
Didn’t call it.
Not because he couldn’t.
Because he wouldn’t.
He was saving it—for when it truly mattered. For the moment things slipped again. When someone else’s life, not his, was on the line.
Until then, he’d hurt.
Because pain reminded him this was real. This wasn’t a dream. Not some pocket between timelines.
This was the world he failed to save.
Another notification rolled up.
[New Quest Unlocked: Instance Dungeon Key (Locked)]
[Progress to Next Key: 7 Days Remaining]
And beneath that:
[Optional Chain Quest: Tactical Awareness Calibration]
-
Detect Three Ambushes Before Activation
-
Predict Movement Trajectories (Minimum: 3 targets)
-
Intervene in Fatal Wound Events (Min. 2)
Reward: +0.3% Mana Core Restoration / Per Objective
[WARNING: This Quest Will Expire in 72 Hours.]
He stared at the list.
Didn’t react.
Just closed it.
And sat in the dark a little longer.
The shadows behind his eyes stirred faintly—quiet.
Still with him.
Chapter Text
The gate buzzed like a live wire.
It shimmered faintly under the early afternoon sun, nested in a cordoned alleyway between two abandoned storage lots. Association teams had done the basics—mark perimeter, check readings, clear the civilians—but this one wasn’t high-risk. Just a D-rank job. Standard clean-and-clear.
Jinwoo stood with his hands in his pockets, hoodie up, face unreadable.
The other hunters arrived in a staggered line—nine of them, loud, confident, too clean. He clocked the armor polish, the modded blades, the bright guild logos on the sleeves.
Private freelancers. Mid-rankers with more pride than caution.
The moment they saw him, the air shifted.
One guy—tall, sharp-jawed, with designer gloves and a smirk that looked surgically attached—didn’t even try to hide his reaction.
“Are you serious?” he said to the woman beside him. “That’s our tenth?”
She glanced at Jinwoo, looked at the clipboard, and laughed. “That’s him. E-rank. Real tragic backstory, I think.”
The first one shook his head, mock-somber. “Well, at least we’ve got a mascot.”
Someone snorted.
Jinwoo didn’t respond.
He didn’t even look at them.
He just took his spot at the rear of the formation and adjusted the strap on his gear harness. The familiar pull of the shadows stirred at the edge of his awareness—silent, resting, watchful. They didn’t rise, didn’t speak. But they were close.
The leader—stocky guy with a cropped haircut and a big voice—stepped up and gave the usual pre-brief:
“Keep it tight, right-side sweep, healers central. Clear the mid-hall and boss chamber. Pull loot tags, ignore the bugs unless they jump.”
He glanced at Jinwoo once. Didn’t bother learning his name.
“Try not to trip,” he added casually.
Jinwoo gave the faintest smile.
The kind you give to a joke that isn’t funny, but is predictable.
They lined up.
The gate flared blue.
One by one, they stepped through.
Jinwoo went last, as always.
*****
The dungeon was wrong.
Jinwoo felt it the moment he stepped through the gate.
Not saw. Not heard. Felt.
The air inside was too still. Not calm—held. Like a breath waiting to exhale. Stone walls lined both sides of the corridor in seamless, machine-cut slabs. No erosion. No cracks. Too symmetrical. The floor was dry. Not one bloodstain, not one gouge.
That wasn’t normal.
Dungeons weren’t pristine. Especially not old ones.
The group moved ahead quickly, falling into practiced positions. Jinwoo kept to the back. No one told him to—he just did. No one wanted him at their side anyway.
“Check that alcove,” the leader barked.
Two scouts peeled off. They moved with purpose but not urgency—like they’d done this hundreds of times, like they knew this would be another payday, not a risk.
Jinwoo let his senses stretch.
The ambient mana wasn’t rising—it was curling. Gathering in pockets near the ceiling. Like it was trying to hide from detection.
Ahead, the corridor widened.
Jinwoo narrowed his eyes. That wasn’t in the dungeon type’s standard map profile. This variation wasn’t random—it was engineered. That meant a trap. A behavioral anomaly. Maybe a—
Movement.
He slowed slightly, dropped one hand to his belt, brushing the hilt of a knife he hadn’t used in two days.
The forward tank grunted, adjusting his shield. “Too damn quiet in here.”
“No one asked you, Ryu,” the healer said lightly.
They laughed. Moved on.
Jinwoo stopped.
The feeling hadn’t passed.
He looked at the walls again. The seams were thinner here—flush. That meant hidden panels. Spawn pods.
He inhaled slowly through his nose.
This was a double pull zone.
Two overlapping spawn points. One visible, one latent. It would trigger when the team reached center.
He stepped forward, fast enough to catch up with the backline, and said—quiet, firm, toneless:
“Back off center. Don’t group.”
They turned.
“What?”
The leader sneered. “You speak now?”
Jinwoo met his eyes. “This is a double pull.”
Silence.
Then laughter.
“Okay, fortune teller,” the tall one said. “Should we draw a circle and chant, too?”
“Go ahead,” Jinwoo said, already stepping to the side.
They didn’t listen.
Of course they didn’t.
And then—
The wall screamed.
It didn’t groan, or creak, or even shake.
It screamed—a high-pitched metal-on-bone sound as the stone folded in on itself, and two spined beasts the size of vans burst from concealed hatches, eyes glowing with raw, unstable mana.
“Contact—!” someone shouted.
Too late.
The trap had triggered.
*****
The world broke open.
Two beasts, all bone plates and spined jaws, tore through the corridor in tandem. One flanked left. The other barreled straight into the center—right where Jinwoo told them not to be.
The screams started immediately.
“Shit—shit—position—!”
The lead tank was too slow. His shield caught the brunt of the charge but folded inward with a sickening crunch. He flew backward, slammed into the far wall, and didn’t get up.
The others scattered.
A spear user thrust too wide, clipped a limb but didn’t penetrate. A scout’s arrow hit one of the beasts in the side—glancing, useless.
And then the tall, smirking one—Mr. “Mascot” comment—did the stupid thing.
He charged.
Not at the creature’s blind spot. Not as backup. Just straight in, screaming like he thought he was something more than he was.
“Pull it down—NOW!”
He leapt, brought his sword down in a clean arc—
—and the beast caught him midair.
One claw, curved and gleaming like obsidian, hooked straight through his side.
He didn’t scream at first.
He just gasped.
Then blood.
So much blood.
He dropped his weapon. Hands clutched at his ribs as the beast flung him like garbage against the far wall. His body slid down and stayed there—curling in on itself. Still conscious. Barely.
The others hesitated.
The healer started forward—too far back.
The leader barked something. Useless. No plan. No angle.
Jinwoo was already moving.
He sprinted—not fast, not smooth. His body still hurt. Still resisted. But he moved like he had to. Like nothing else in the world mattered.
He dropped beside the fallen man, one knee skidding on stone. Blood poured freely. The claw had pierced clean through, likely ruptured something internal. Seconds mattered.
The man’s eyes fluttered open. Shock. Recognition.
“You—?”
Jinwoo didn’t answer.
He reached into his inventory, fingers brushing glass.
[1x Greater Healing Potion: Medium-Grade (Soul-Bound)]
He pulled it, unstoppered it with his thumb, and tilted the man’s head back with one hand. The other poured carefully, efficiently, into slack lips.
Some spilled. Most didn’t.
The effect was near-instant.
The man jerked—body seizing once as magic hit. The bleeding slowed. Muscle knitted. Skin pulled taut over bone.
He coughed. Shuddered.
But didn’t die.
Jinwoo stood, turned, and walked back toward the fight without a word.
Behind him, someone whispered, “Did he just—was that a potion?”
“Where did he—?”
“How did he even—”
“He moved before it happened,” another voice said.
Jinwoo didn’t listen.
Didn’t care.
The beasts were still up.
And the others were still floundering.
He rolled his shoulder once, bones cracking.
And rejoined the fray.
*****
The dungeon didn't collapse—it faded.
The hour had run out. Mana saturation dropped to nil. The gate began its shutdown sequence in a slow pulse of fading blue light. The team gathered at the edge, bruised, battered, but intact.
Barely.
The two spined beasts lay crumpled behind them, black blood staining the floor in spiraling patterns. The tank had regained consciousness thanks to the healer’s last-minute spellwork. The cocky one Jinwoo saved—still pale, still wheezing—was resting against a wall, hand clutching a clean white bandage across his ribs.
No one was laughing now.
They stood in loose silence, not speaking to Jinwoo, not looking at him directly. But their eyes flicked toward him every few seconds. Like they were trying to see something that didn’t quite make sense.
The leader muttered something to the healer.
She shook her head.
“He moved before it happened. Like, he was already going when Ahn got hit. That’s not normal.”
“Instinct?”
“No,” she said flatly. “Prediction.”
The scout near the back crossed his arms. “He was ready. For the pull, the trap, the strike. All of it.”
“Thought he was E-rank.”
They all did.
Jinwoo stood a few meters away, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. He wasn’t pretending not to hear.
He just didn’t care.
The gate pulsed one last time.
He turned and walked through.
No goodbyes. No cut share. No name given.
Across the city, deep inside the Hunter Association’s internal report servers, a junior analyst named Min Ji-ah sat at her desk with a half-empty energy drink and a stack of incident logs from the last four raids.
She flagged another.
Timestamp. Team composition. Outcome.
Again, the anomaly: Sung Jinwoo.
Low-rank hunter, E-rated, unremarkable physicals, no guild affiliation. And yet—
Three consecutive raids with near-fatal injuries reversed.
All logged as “timely potion administration or tactical prediction.”
Each time: reaction speed exceeded median human range.
She opened his file again.
No changes since last quarter. No skill reports. No combat bonuses registered.
But the pattern was clear.
She leaned back in her chair, frowned slightly, and clicked “Flag for Review.”
Something wasn’t adding up.
*****
The apartment was quiet when he returned.
He dropped his coat onto the back of a chair, tugged the zipper down one-handed. His shoulder ached—not badly, just a lingering throb from the block he’d absorbed near the end. The room smelled faintly of detergent and instant rice.
Jinah was still out—club meeting or cram school. Her absence left the place feeling half-lit, like it was holding its breath.
Jinwoo sat on the floor, legs crossed, back to the wall. He pulled up his System window with a thought—expecting the usual.
He didn’t get it.
The text that appeared was familiar.
The formatting. The blocky gray-blue overlay. The sterile font.
But the phrasing—
[Daily Quest Complete. Good job, I guess.]
He froze.
The next lines followed:
+0.5% Mana Core Restored
Stacked Recovery: 2.5%
[Reward Acquired: Random Loot Box (Unopened)]
Then:
[You’re making progress. Don’t let it go to your pretty little head.]
No voice.
Just words.
But those weren’t System words.
The real System had been cold. Clinical. Machine logic.
This?
This was something else.
A tone. A cadence.
Dry. Wry.
Amused.
Mocking.
He watched the screen carefully as the final prompt appeared:
[New Quest: Instance Dungeon Access Key – Countdown: 6 Days]
[Bonus Objective: Impress Me.]
No parameters. No reward list. No deadline.
Just that line, hanging in the air like a smirk.
Jinwoo didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
He closed the window slowly.
Sat in silence.
And smiled.
Just a little.
Notes:
Gimme your opinions?
Chapter Text
[Start recording: 5:41 AM, Thursday]
“Okay,” Jinah whispered dramatically from behind the camera. “Look at this cryptid in his natural habitat…”
The lens focused shakily through the cracked opening of her bedroom door. Out in the living room—bathed in the gray half-light of pre-dawn—Sung Jinwoo was doing pushups in absolute silence.
Not fast. Not sloppy. Just clean, mechanical motion.
His hair was a mess. His shirt clung damp to his back. A half-empty bottle of water stood upright next to him like it had been placed there as part of a ritual.
“Note the haunted expression,” Jinah whispered. “So tragic. So sweaty. So serious.”
He shifted into squats without pause. No music. No timer. Just motion, breath, and a tension in the air like he was preparing for war instead of school pickup.
Jinah zoomed in with a conspiratorial cackle.
[Clip Title: “Oppa vs. Sentient Protein Powder”]
The scene jump-cut to later that morning. Jinwoo stood in the kitchen, staring down a silver packet of high-calorie protein mix like it had insulted his family. He was barefoot. The rice cooker was steaming quietly behind him.
“You have to shake it,” Jinah said from off-screen.
“I did.”
“Oppa, you just glared at it for twenty seconds.”
He said nothing.
Just twisted the lid off, took a sip, and made a face so dry and judgmental that her viewers would later pause the video just to screenshot it.
“You drink black coffee but that’s the line?” she snorted.
“It’s lying about the chocolate.”
[Clip Title: “Oppa Has Conversations With the Void”]
Later that night, she caught him on the balcony.
He was talking to no one.
Not on the phone. Not whispering. Just… murmuring. Low and firm, like issuing instructions.
His posture was relaxed, but his hands were gesturing—small movements, subtle shifts in the air like he was pointing to positions no one could see.
She zoomed in through the sliding glass door.
“Either he’s lost it,” she muttered into her mic, “or my brother is a general in the army of ghost cats.”
[Cut to: Bedroom. Vlogger Facecam Mode.]
Jinah grinned at the camera, hair in a bun, oversized hoodie sagging off one shoulder. “Okay, no lie, I thought he was gonna yell at me when I asked if he wanted fried egg or rolled omelet.”
She held up her fingers dramatically. “Guess what he said? He said—and I quote—‘Whatever uses fewer pans.’”
She paused.
Deadpan.
“Fewer pans.”
Her smile exploded again. “He didn’t even blink! Like it was a hostage negotiation!”
[Comments under the video (53 likes total):]
@shortcircuitbrain: your brother scares me but in like… the hot way
@riceismagic: he’s so done with existence i love him
@lofi_gal_07: I would absolutely die for ‘fewer pans’ man
@eggwhitesrevenge: did he make the rice cooker apologize yet?
@JinahFan_13: girl pls mic him up during sleep next time i bet he’s plotting
[Back in real time]
Jinah clicked the upload button.
Another episode live.
Not viral. Not yet. But there was traction—tiny flickers of it. Comments, likes, the occasional DM asking if her brother was single and also mentally stable.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the last still of Jinwoo from that morning.
Hoodie off. Sleeves rolled. Barely healed bruises across his shoulders. Silent eyes staring out the window.
He wasn’t the same anymore.
He never talked about it. Not the hospital bills. Not their mom. Not the days she found him standing on the balcony at 3 a.m. like the sky was about to speak to him.
She sighed softly, then smirked.
“Tomorrow’s title,” she muttered. “Cryptid tries tea. Epic fail.”
*****
The first raid of the week was a C-rank.
Barely.
A mining-focused job with moderate threat levels and a terrain profile that forced close-quarter combat through tight corridors. The team was competent—six veterans, three mid-rankers, one silent E-rank wildcard.
Jinwoo.
He hung back as usual. They let him, assuming it was fear. Cowardice. Dead weight.
Until the corridor narrowed near the second sub-nest, and a twin-fanged serpentine ambusher dropped from the ceiling.
Jinwoo didn’t scream.
He didn’t flinch.
He moved.
His knife—short, basic, almost dull—pierced upward through the creature’s mouth, severed the nerve cluster with surgical indifference. The body collapsed around him in a heap of hissing gore.
Someone yelled. The formation shifted.
By the time they turned, Jinwoo had already stepped over the corpse and was pressing forward like it never happened.
He didn’t say a word.
At the end of the raid, as they cataloged loot, the team leader approached him—awkward, fidgety.
“Hey,” he said, scratching his neck. “You’re good. You trained under someone?”
Jinwoo didn’t look up. “No.”
“You ever think about joining a private guild?”
He paused.
Then: “No.”
The man opened his mouth again—some half-formed pitch.
Jinwoo was already walking away.
The next day’s job was smaller. D-rank. Rural location. Mostly first-timers and a few freelancers looking to pad their quotas.
Jinwoo ended up in the rear again.
That suited him.
The team leader was a woman in her thirties—well-spoken, polite, clearly ex-military. She didn’t make fun of him. She just nodded once, gave him a role, and didn’t micromanage.
Midway through the raid, one of the healers panicked and botched a defensive chant. A bonebeast lunged.
Jinwoo stepped in, intercepted it at the base of the neck, and used a single controlled strike to collapse the spinal column before it hit the ground.
The healer stared at him.
He just nodded once.
After they cleared the core, she approached him.
“Thank you.”
He nodded again.
“You moved like… like you saw it before it moved.”
He tilted his head. “Lucky angle.”
She smiled faintly. “Lucky doesn’t move that fast.”
He said nothing.
On the way out, another hunter—a skinny archer with purple dye in her bangs—jogged after him.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re that guy from the serpent job yesterday, right?”
He didn’t stop walking.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
Still no response.
She frowned.
“You’re kinda weird, y’know that?”
Jinwoo turned just enough to glance over his shoulder.
“Good.”
And kept walking.
*****
The prep zone was a parking garage.
Not uncommon.
The gate shimmered quietly at the far end, walled in with emergency barriers and Association tape. Low-tier job—D-rank on paper, C at worst. The kind of job bored freelancers took to stay active. Easy money. Minimal blood.
Jinwoo arrived before the others. Hoodie zipped to the throat, gear bag slung one-handed.
The moment he stepped into the concrete shadows of the garage, his eyes narrowed.
Not because of what he saw.
But what he felt.
It was too quiet.
Even for a gate zone.
The air pressed in slightly. Just a little too thick. A little too close. Mana readings weren’t visible—but they didn’t have to be. Jinwoo had learned to feel the world again. Relearned it. The stone beneath his feet wasn’t humming. It was trembling—subtly. Like a breath drawn in and held.
He stepped closer to the gate. The flickering blue surface hissed faintly, a sound just below hearing.
He reached out and let his palm rest lightly on the edge of the barrier.
It thumped once.
Not loudly. Not hard.
But distinctly.
Like something on the other side had just noticed him back.
His hand dropped to his side.
He turned as the others began to arrive.
Eight men. One woman. Mid-rankers, mostly. Loud. Confident. One of them was still chewing a protein bar. Another was scrolling a map on his phone and laughing at something in group chat.
Jinwoo didn’t say anything.
He just stood to the side, watched, and waited.
The leader—a tall guy in green tactical gear and mirrored sunglasses indoors—clapped his hands.
“All right, folks, ten-man fill, standard formation, we’ve got one shield, two frontliners, three midcasters, ranged support, healer, and the ghost in the hoodie.” He nodded toward Jinwoo without making eye contact. “You can float.”
Someone chuckled.
“I heard about him,” one of the mages muttered. “Mr. No-Name. Leaves before the cut’s divided.”
“Maybe he’s shy,” another said with a smirk.
“Maybe he’s cursed,” someone else whispered, half-joking.
Jinwoo didn’t react.
The gate pulsed again.
He felt it in his teeth this time.
Not hard. Just a low-frequency hum. Something living. Thinking.
This wasn’t a D-rank.
This wasn’t what it said on the assignment sheet.
He tilted his head slowly, as if trying to hear something no one else could.
The wind in the parking structure shifted.
And the gate flared.
*****
The countdown began.
A slow churn of time in the air as the gate stabilized—twenty seconds until the veil thinned, until they could pass through. The others stretched casually, unsheathed blades, charged spell runes into focus points on their wrists and palms.
Jinwoo stood still.
His eyes tracked the air around the gate—not the portal itself, but the shimmer it left behind in the atmosphere. The flickering particles weren’t moving right. Not in the slow, lazy spirals of a weak gate. They were pulsing.
Short bursts.
Like a heartbeat.
He counted in silence.
Seven seconds between surges.
A C-rank? Maybe. But the mana density didn’t match. The heat didn’t match. It was like watching a fire burn with no smoke.
He turned to the surrounding concrete.
The parking structure was old—70s poured slab, moisture-stained in some corners. But where the gate stood, the wall was clean. Too clean. Mana had burned it sterile. The stone glinted faintly in unnatural grooves, like the dungeon was already leaking.
And then he noticed the smell.
A faint tang of copper and ozone, like blood burned too long in the air.
No one else seemed to notice.
The leader—still in mirrored sunglasses—clapped once.
“Alright, kiddies. Let’s stretch our legs and hit quota. You—” he pointed a thumb at Jinwoo without looking “—don’t die. Or do. Honestly, I don’t care.”
Jinwoo didn’t respond.
Didn’t even blink.
He was too busy watching the shimmer at the edge of the gate shift. Just slightly. Like something moved.
He exhaled quietly through his nose.
This wasn’t a D-rank.
He didn’t need a scanner. Didn’t need a report. His bones told him. His instincts, trained and re-hardened through blood and cycles of death, screamed it.
This was a mistake.
The Association had gotten this one wrong.
He stepped toward the gate, hands loose at his sides.
The others lined up.
And as the countdown hit zero—
The gate thumped one last time.
Harder now.
Not subtle.
Like something had just woken up.
Notes:
Jinah's vlog is inspired by ' Shadownanigans by
dnofsunshine' . I don't know how to put inspired by link, but go check that out, it's fun!!!
Chapter 6: Not a D-Rank
Chapter Text
The dungeon opened with silence.
Not the usual hush of stone and air, but something deeper—denser. A silence that pressed into the eardrums and settled there, low and weighty.
Jinwoo stepped in second to last, just ahead of the rear guard. The gate closed behind them with a soft hum, sealing in the cold.
Immediately, the temperature dropped.
Not by much. But enough for Jinwoo to feel the difference between a fabricated environment and a predatory one.
The space was wide. Wider than any D-rank should allow. The walls were smooth, marked with faint indents—vertical, rhythmic, almost like slats for something to emerge from. But nothing moved.
The others didn’t notice.
“Clear corridor,” one of the casters said too loudly. “No contact yet.”
The team advanced.
Jinwoo held back, scanning—not for enemies, but for placement.
He counted ten indentations evenly spaced along the wall.
He matched that to the ceiling ridges. Every sixth block had a faded rune etched above it.
He stopped walking.
This wasn’t random.
This was positioning.
Five meters ahead, a sword user stepped into the next threshold.
The wall behind him twitched.
Just once.
So small it looked like settling stone.
Jinwoo’s eyes narrowed. He shifted his stance, tilted his chin slightly.
The air carried scent again.
Salt. Decay. Cold.
A click behind the wall.
Not a sound most would hear. Just enough to register if you were listening.
And then—
Movement.
The wall plates folded back with a smooth hiss, and two creatures slithered from their holds—thin-limbed, long-jawed, almost serpentine bipeds. Fast. Quiet. Not D-rank.
“Contact left!”
The mage screamed.
Too late.
The creatures dropped into the corridor at opposite ends of the formation.
Jinwoo didn’t move.
He’d already watched it happen once in his mind.
He stepped forward and turned, knife out—not swinging, not slashing, just placing it, edge-first, into the throat of the closest one mid-lunge.
It fell instantly.
No blood. Just a wet collapse.
The second creature was intercepted by the tank, who grunted as it slammed into his shield.
“They’re fast,” the healer gasped, already prepping.
“Form up!” the leader barked. “That wasn’t in the—! Stay alert!”
Jinwoo knelt beside the body.
It was still twitching.
Up close, the skin had no pores. No muscle threading. No biology.
It wasn’t grown.
It was printed. Built.
Like the dungeon knew what it wanted.
He stood.
This wasn’t right.
Not the shape of the corridor.
Not the timing of the spawn.
Not the clean, effortless way it tried to catch them watching the wrong way.
He didn’t say anything.
Didn’t warn them.
Because he already knew this wasn’t a test for them.
It was for him.
*****
The party moved again.
This time tighter. Shields raised. Weapons drawn. The casual bravado had peeled away in a single cut. Now they walked like hunters—not tourists.
Except they weren’t hunting.
They were being observed.
Jinwoo could feel it. A pull at the edge of his mana sense—not hostile. Just present. Like the space around them was paying attention.
The corridor narrowed ahead. Arched into a dome structure, support beams carved with false-script symbols that didn’t match any dungeon architecture he knew.
No one hesitated.
The leader gestured, casual despite the tension. “Ryo, scout the curve.”
Ryo—mid-twenties, black buzzcut, double-dagger grip—grinned like he was still in control and strode ahead.
Jinwoo inhaled through his nose once.
Too loud.
The footsteps echoed wrong. Not a D-rank’s narrow acoustics. This was a larger room. A chamber.
A choke point.
Ryo stepped over the threshold.
Click.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
Jinwoo didn’t wait.
He moved.
Not because he saw something—but because his body remembered the sound of dungeons betraying their shape.
Three panels in the ceiling snapped open.
Three monsters dropped.
Not the slither-beasts from earlier.
These were heavier.
Faster.
Heavier-limbed with jagged heads and plated necks, snarling silently with too many teeth and no eyes.
The first one landed on Ryo.
The others landed behind them.
Screams.
Jinwoo was already at Ryo’s side.
Blood was pooling. The claws had punctured too close to the lung.
He pulled a potion from inventory, glass cool in his hand, and smashed it against Ryo’s side, liquid soaking the gash. It hissed.
“Wha—?” Ryo gasped.
“Breathe.”
The claws withdrew.
The creature reared back to strike again.
Jinwoo didn’t dodge.
He stepped into the swing and shoved his knife up under the jaw—twisted, cracked, and let the corpse drop.
The team was scrambling.
Magic flared. Steel rang out.
Jinwoo turned—
And the world blinked.
Not around him. In him.
A message appeared across his vision, sharp and sudden:
[NEW QUEST UNLOCKED]
[Impress Me.]
That was it.
No other text.
No goal. No timer.
Just the dare.
And in the back of his head, just for a split second—
Not a voice.
But a feeling.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, sweetheart.”
*****
The next stretch of the dungeon unfolded like a challenge.
Not the kind built for level scaling.
The kind designed for an audience.
Jinwoo felt it in the stone beneath his feet—each step forward sharpened the air around him. Every decision he made echoed, not in sound, but in response. The dungeon was adapting. Shaping itself around his movement. Around his choice to act.
He didn’t hold back anymore.
He ducked low under the swipe of a skitter-clawed hound that dropped from a corner ledge and slit its throat before it landed.
He yanked a stunned swordsman back from a trigger tile as the walls pulsed with near-invisible glyphs.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t explain.
He just moved—and the others began to move with him.
They didn’t even realize it.
The leader kept barking orders, but the formation was already shifting, unconsciously reshaping itself around Jinwoo’s silent lead. When he paused, they paused. When he drifted left, others followed his flank. He wasn’t part of the unit. He was the pattern.
Another chamber.
Three tunnels. All looked viable.
The air in the leftmost one was wrong—just a little too warm. Heat signature trap.
Jinwoo walked down the right tunnel without hesitation.
No one argued.
The mage beside him whispered to the archer, “How the hell does he know?”
“I don’t know,” the archer murmured back. “But I’m not splitting off.”
They reached a large antechamber.
Too big.
Jinwoo stepped to the center, eyes scanning the walls.
And then it happened again.
The corridor behind them shifted.
Not collapsed.
Shifted.
The stones rippled inward, like water running in reverse, and the way they came—vanished.
A narrow passage opened on the other side.
Someone screamed.
“Where’s the way back?! What the fuck?!”
“No dungeon does that—!”
Jinwoo’s eyes narrowed.
Yes.
They did.
But only when they were watching him.
This wasn’t a layout mistake.
It wasn’t some glitch.
The dungeon was learning.
And it was learning him.
*****
They entered the new tunnel in tense silence.
It was narrower—barely wide enough for two to walk side by side. The walls were wet with condensation, but it wasn’t water. Jinwoo could smell the mana clinging to it, steeping the stone like brewed iron.
The others were rattled. No one said it, but their steps faltered. Breaths were louder. Weapons were gripped too tightly.
Jinwoo walked like he was home.
Because he understood now.
This wasn’t about damage output.
Not kill count. Not teamwork. Not reward.
This was a gauge.
It wanted to know how far he would go while pretending to be nothing. How deep he’d bury his edge before the moment came.
How far he’d let them fall before acting like a king.
And it wanted to see if he’d cheat.
Would he call the shadows?
Would he let the grin slip?
He wouldn’t.
Not yet.
The System wanted a performance?
He’d give it one.
Five steps into the new corridor, he felt it—the pulse.
Not physical. Not pain.
Just a shift inside him.
His mana.
It cracked.
Not violently. Not loudly.
Just enough for the pressure in his chest to shift—like a muscle unclenched.
[Mana Core Reconstitution: 5.0%]
He didn’t flinch.
Didn’t blink.
But somewhere beneath his consciousness, something stirred.
A twitch of pressure in his shadow.
A breath that didn’t belong to him.
Not a voice.
But presence.
Igris.
Then—
Tusk.
Nothing fully formed. No summon. No call.
But their awareness brushed against his own like fingertips tapping glass.
Just once.
And gone.
He didn’t react.
Not because he didn’t want to.
But because this was still a test.
He flexed one hand slowly.
And walked forward into the next chamber.
*****
The door to the boss chamber wasn’t carved.
It was grown.
Twisted roots and spine-bone lattice shaped the frame—each tendril laced with glowing sigils Jinwoo didn’t recognize, but felt down to the marrow. The party stood frozen before it, breath heavy in the charged air.
The leader approached cautiously, then placed his hand flat against the gate.
It melted open.
Not slid.
Melted.
The pressure that bled out wasn’t heat.
It was weight. Will.
And Jinwoo felt it smile.
They stepped inside.
The room was cathedral-sized.
Vaulted stone above, slick red moss below, and a raised altar of black granite at the far end. Standing atop it—
Something not quite a beast.
Not quite a man.
Broad shoulders, elongated limbs, obsidian-plated skin, and a face half-buried beneath a segmented mask. Its chest moved slow and deliberate with every breath.
It did not roar.
It spoke.
Low. Clear. With words no one else in the room could hear.
“Ah,” it said, cocking its head with a slow smile, sharp teeth just barely visible.
“Found you again.”
Jinwoo stopped walking.
He felt it in his bones.
This wasn’t a monster.
This was an actor.
A construct with memory.
A trial dressed like a threat.
The others readied their weapons.
“Boss class! Group in tight!” the leader called. “Sapphire Blade pattern—mages, lock—”
The creature raised one hand.
And the magic in the room froze.
The spell fizzled in the caster’s palm.
“W-what the hell?”
“I can’t channel—”
“Something’s blocking it!”
Jinwoo didn’t wait.
He stepped forward.
And the creature turned only to him.
It tilted its head again, mask cracking wider into something resembling a grin.
“So quiet this time. Are you still pretending not to be you?”
Jinwoo said nothing.
Just slid one foot back.
And drew his knife.
Chapter 7: Things with Names
Chapter Text
The silence in the boss chamber pressed like a second skin.
Nine hunters shifted into formation, weapons drawn. The tank stepped forward with his shield raised high, muscles tense. A mage behind him muttered a half-chant under his breath, already preparing for the first volley.
And above them—towering on that black altar, haloed by writhing runes—
The boss smiled.
Not with lips. Not with kindness.
With knowledge.
Jinwoo felt the air ripple—not magic, not pressure. Attention. A needle-thread line drawn from that thing’s eyes directly to him.
And then it spoke.
“You wore a different shape before.”
The words slid through the chamber, low and smooth.
No one flinched.
No one turned.
No one heard it.
Except Jinwoo.
The voice wasn’t made of sound. It resonated beneath language. A dialect formed of depth—the language of dungeons, of dominion. The tongue of Monarchs.
A language he remembered.
“How long will you play this part?” it asked, tilting its head. The neck cracked softly as it turned.
“Still pretending to be small?”
Jinwoo didn’t answer.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t so much as twitch.
His expression remained fixed—blank, calm, unimpressed. Not indifferent. Just... empty. Perfect.
The creature chuckled.
The others didn’t notice. The leader was barking something to the flanks.
“Keep the caster line loose—don’t bunch. Use mid-sweep arcs. Go now!”
Footsteps shuffled. Metal rang against stone.
But the creature on the altar never looked away from Jinwoo.
“No summons. No commands. No crown. Clever.”
Its fingers flexed once, claws glinting.
“But you’re still wrong. You leak.”
Jinwoo’s right hand tensed near his hip.
Not for a blade.
Just in restraint.
The pressure was rising in his core again, slow and steady. His mana—still recovering—responded to the voice, flaring faintly along his nerves.
He said nothing.
Gave nothing.
The creature smiled wider.
“Fine.”
It stepped off the altar.
“Let’s see how long you can pretend.”
*****
“Engage!”
The team surged forward as one.
A cascade of elemental light broke over the chamber floor—ice laced with fire, lightning pulsed through stone. The mage unit unleashed their first volley, timing sync tight for amateurs.
The boss didn’t move.
Not until the tank’s shield came within range.
Then it turned.
Not away from Jinwoo—from the others.
Its claw batted the shield aside like paper. Steel cracked. The tank hit the ground with a shout, rolled, barely alive.
Two blades closed in from either side. A classic pincer.
The creature ducked low, too low—shoulders twisting with inhuman articulation. One hand reached back, caught a blade mid-swing and snapped the weapon in half. The other pushed the second attacker by the face into the wall.
Jinwoo still hadn’t moved.
Not fast. Not yet.
He paced three steps along the right edge of the formation—eyes scanning.
The creature’s eyes followed him.
A spear flew past his head. He didn’t duck.
Another scream—one of the backliners had wandered too far left. The boss turned on them, faster than it should have moved. A claw lifted, arced—
Jinwoo stepped in.
Not heroic. Not flashy. Just placed himself where the claw was going to land.
His hand caught the edge of the blow. Redirected. Used the monster’s momentum against it. The attack veered, slammed into the stone instead of the healer’s neck.
The others stared.
But he didn’t explain.
Didn’t bark commands.
Just nodded once at the healer and resumed his position like nothing happened.
The monster stood still again.
Watching.
Reading.
Its next movement was hesitation.
A pause.
Then it mirrored Jinwoo’s angle. Turned its foot the same way. Matched the curve of his stance.
Like it was trying him on.
Testing the shape of him.
Jinwoo narrowed his eyes. His hand drifted lower to his waist—just over the edge of his hoodie, where a hidden loop held the smallest of blades. Nothing enchanted. Nothing expensive.
But familiar.
The boss crouched low, mimicking him again.
The others spread out.
They thought they had an opening.
They didn’t.
This wasn’t a fight.
This was a script.
A ritual.
And Jinwoo was the only one who hadn’t said his lines yet.
*****
The formation frayed.
Not because of failure—because of speed.
The boss moved differently now. Not just quickly, but with intention—like it had watched their opening attack, learned it, and started strategizing three moves ahead.
It didn’t rush the center.
It spread.
Slid around the flank, drawing three members out of line, sweeping them toward a curve in the chamber wall like a net gathering loose threads. A claw danced within centimeters of a healer’s face without touching, sending her reeling off-balance into the waiting arms of another monster-spawn emerging from the wall—silent, fast, coordinated.
This wasn’t rage.
It was choreography.
And Jinwoo was the only one who saw it.
He stepped into the path of the second flank sweep before it happened.
One foot down, pivoting hard—his heel slid against the moss-slick stone. He used the momentum to hook a mid-tier swordsman by the back of the collar and pull him out of range as the boss’s limb came screaming down.
The claw missed both of them by inches.
The others didn’t even register how he moved so quickly.
One mage cursed and shouted his name—only to realize he didn’t know it.
Jinwoo ignored him.
The creature blinked.
And smiled again.
It liked this.
“You still haven’t summoned them,” it said in that same inhuman language, its voice crawling beneath the ambient noise like oil under water. “Is it pride? Or control?”
He didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
The second he spoke in that tongue, the lie would crack. The performance would fracture.
And the System was watching.
He could feel it now—like a warm weight pressing down on his upper spine. Not pain. Not comfort. Just presence. A hand placed between his shoulders that hadn’t touched him since before he reversed time.
Then—
A quiet click in the corner of his mind.
Not audible.
A mental notification.
[System Monitoring: Precision Combat Pattern - Active]
[Tracking Movement Efficiency…]
[Tracking Reaction Window Compression…]
[Tracking Lethal Intent Avoidance Ratio…]
No quest text.
No voice.
But it was watching now. Really watching.
This was no longer a test of survival.
It was a test of decision.
How long could he fight like a man, when every motion his body wanted to make was still that of a king?
He exhaled once, slow and even.
And didn’t summon them.
Not yet.
*****
It wasn’t planned.
It never was.
The moment came not because he reached for it—but because instinct took over.
The archer screamed—her leg caught in the jaw of a spawn that materialized too close. No one saw it coming. No one was close enough to intercept.
Except him.
Jinwoo moved without thinking.
He crossed the distance between two breaths.
His knife slashed in a clean arc—not a flourish. Not a display. Just utility. A single, perfect cut across the back of the spawn’s neck.
The blood sprayed sideways.
Hot. Purple. Alive.
The creature convulsed and dropped.
The archer gasped as the pressure on her leg vanished.
Jinwoo stood between her and the altar now.
His blade dripped once.
Then stilled.
And the boss—still smiling, still unscathed—laughed.
Not maniacally.
Not loud.
Just... satisfied.
“There you are.”
It said it like a lover greeting an old flame.
Then—
Everything changed.
The chamber groaned.
Not from damage.
From choice.
The floor rippled like water.
The walls folded inward, room shrinking in strange, slow bends that broke perspective. Distance compressed. Corners vanished. The ceiling pulsed with runes that hadn’t existed before.
Someone behind him screamed.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?!”
“We— the gate! It’s— it’s gone—!”
“No—nonononono—”
Jinwoo didn’t look back.
Because the boss wasn’t watching them anymore.
It was walking forward—slow, graceful, delighted.
And then—
The voice in his head returned.
But not the monster’s.
[BONUS QUEST ACTIVATED]
[Survive. Solo.]
[Duration: Until the Dungeon Resets.]
[Assistance: Locked.]
[External Communication: Disabled.]
[Your allies will not remember what happens beyond this point.]
Jinwoo blinked.
Once.
Then exhaled.
“…So that’s what we’re doing now.”
He rolled his neck once, adjusted his grip on the knife.
Behind him, the others started shouting—panicked, scattered, unintelligible.
The boss tilted its head.
And charged.
Chapter 8: The Locked Room
Chapter Text
It launched at him in absolute silence.
A black arc of motion across red stone. The boss’s arms spread like razors—one for the chest, one angled low, meant to take the knee first and the throat second.
Jinwoo stepped back—
And the world stopped.
Not like a pause.
Like a decision.
The creature froze mid-air. Its limbs caught in perfect tension, not slowing, not fading—just held. Behind him, the scattered members of the party stood with their mouths open, mid-yell, eyes wide.
Suspended.
Jinwoo didn’t turn to look.
He didn’t need to.
He knew.
The System had taken the stage.
He stood still, exhaling once through his nose. “Of course you would.”
And as if the sound cued it—
[Lock Complete.]
The boss moved again.
No build-up.
No transition.
Just momentum unleashed.
Jinwoo dropped low and pivoted on one heel, the claws slicing where his torso had been a blink ago. The air cracked. The stone where he’d stood exploded into dust and splinters.
He didn’t hesitate.
He ran.
Not away.
Just... repositioning.
His breath was clean, steady, sharp in the suspended quiet. No screams. No orders. Just the slap of footfalls, the hiss of pressure, the whisper of the System watching.
The boss came again.
Faster.
He sidestepped.
Barely.
A claw kissed his ribs.
He grunted, body spinning, trying to ride the motion into a counter—but the boss predicted it. Anticipated.
The second claw landed.
Hard.
Right across his back.
Jinwoo flew.
He hit the far wall in a crunch of stone and pain. Something cracked in his shoulder. Vision fuzzed at the edges.
He slid down the wall and hit the ground on one knee, blood already wetting his hoodie.
He didn’t scream.
Didn’t speak.
Just pulled up his menu, breath ragged.
[Use Skill: Instant Recovery?]
[Stacks Available: 9]
[Cooldown: 12 hours]
His finger hovered.
Then tapped.
The moment it triggered, he felt it—the snap of reality resetting in his bones. His ribs sealed. His spine realigned. His blood burned as it flowed back with chemical precision. Sweat evaporated.
His head cleared.
He stood.
The boss had paused.
Not in hesitation.
In curiosity.
“You still bleed,” it said, voice rich and close.
Jinwoo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Then dropped into stance again.
No words.
No summons.
Just him.
The System purred quietly in the background.
[Stack Decreased: 8]
[Monitoring... Resuming.]
*****
It didn’t pause again.
The moment Jinwoo re-centered his stance, the boss launched forward—low and fast, like a thought made of teeth.
No roar. No build-up.
Just speed.
Jinwoo didn’t think.
His body moved.
He dropped flat, rolled beneath the arc, sprang up into a sideways pivot, and lashed out with his knife—not to kill, but to angle the boss’s arm away from his ribs.
The contact rang like hitting stone with bone.
He ducked the follow-up strike by half an inch.
His feet never stopped.
The room became a storm of breath and movement, of broken patterns and instinct fights. The kind of combat not measured in power but reaction windows.
Jinwoo’s heart pounded—not from fear, but from demand. His E-rank body was running at full throttle, blood screaming in his ears, nerves frayed to perfection.
Every time he dodged, the System noted it.
He could feel it—like pressure behind his eyes.
[Dodge Timing: 0.23s]
[Counter-Angle Efficiency: 92%]
[Threat Prioritization: Elevated]
The boss grinned through every move.
Not pleased.
Not enraged.
Interested.
It came again—this time high, then twisted down mid-arc, switching its dominant arm and feinting a sweep.
Jinwoo ducked, read it, flipped under its reach and stabbed upward into the soft seam behind its elbow.
No kill.
But blood.
Black. Viscous. Hissing.
The boss hissed in return, not in pain—but in recognition.
Like Jinwoo had just passed the next test.
It spun away and circled, claws dragging against the floor with an awful screech.
Jinwoo kept his knife ready.
He didn’t breathe hard.
Didn’t give the System the satisfaction.
But he felt it.
He was riding the line now—his body straining against limits he no longer belonged to. Each step burned. Each blink was a choice.
But he wasn’t breaking.
Not yet.
The System pinged again.
[Combat Pattern: Unstable Efficiency Sustained for 87s]
[Evaluation: Acceptable. Increase Pressure.]
He heard a hum.
And the walls rippled again.
Not visibly.
But spatially.
The air thickened.
Gravity changed.
The boss charged once more.
*****
It caught him on the third rotation.
Not because he slowed.
Because it baited him.
The boss feinted high—same pattern as before—but its leg came sweeping beneath the angle of the last feint. Jinwoo was already in motion, mid-step, no time to pivot.
The clawed heel caught his side like a hammerhead.
His ribs screamed.
He felt them give.
He hit the wall and slid to the floor, breath leaving in a low, raw grunt.
No time.
The boss advanced.
Slow this time.
Like it knew.
Jinwoo tried to stand—his vision lurching sideways.
Everything bent.
His perception, his balance, the air around him. His mana sparked in strange pulses, unreliable, like an old lamp flickering.
He saw his own fingers twitch and for a fraction of a second—
—he called them.
He didn’t mean to.
But his core reached outward, not for mana—but for them.
For Igris. For Beru.
For Belion.
And they answered.
A whisper. A hand. A shade at the edge of presence.
Waiting.
Wanting.
His.
He stopped.
Froze mid-reach.
Not now.
Not here.
He dropped the instinct.
Bit down on his tongue until the pain cleared his vision.
No second Instant Recovery—not yet.
He reached for his inventory instead.
[Item: Intermediate Healing Potion - Bound (x6)]
He yanked one free, bit the cork, spat it, and slammed the vial into his thigh.
It hissed.
The pain sharpened, bloomed, and faded. Not all at once. But enough. Enough to move. To breathe. To rise.
The boss paused, head tilted.
Watching him recover without magic. Without aid.
It looked amused.
Jinwoo stood.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t reach again.
He clenched the hilt of his knife, eyes sharp.
And waited.
Because this time, he was watching back.
And when the boss lunged—
He was ready.
*****
The next few minutes were all muscle and memory.
Jinwoo didn't think anymore. Thinking got in the way. He moved like water over blade—silent, reactive, adjusting not to the creature's power, but to its habits.
Left step. Right lean. Shoulder shift.
Every combo it launched had a rhythm now.
And he counted.
Every third feint, a twitch in the right wrist. Every wide arc, a fraction of a second before it overextended its lead leg.
The boss was elegant.
Brutal.
But it had a tell.
And when it came—he didn’t hesitate.
It opened its chest to follow a clawed leap.
Jinwoo slipped under the arm and drove his knife—not wildly, not heroically, but precisely—between the upper ribs and rotated the blade.
The sound it made wasn’t a roar.
It was a hiss.
Startled.
Almost... impressed.
It stumbled back, black blood already welling in thick pulses.
He followed.
Stepped in.
Kicked its knee out from under it and drove the same blade straight down into the throat—not aiming to sever, just to silence.
But it still tried.
Its voice rasped up from cracked bone and torn air—
“You’ll have to do better than—”
He twisted.
The head snapped back. The words cut short.
Silence fell.
Total.
No music. No pulse. No System.
Just stone.
Just his own heartbeat hammering in his chest.
Then—
[Boss Defeated.]
[Lock Releasing…]
The air inverted once, like a breath exhaled backwards.
The walls unfolded.
The room reassembled.
The sounds of the party returned—staggered, delayed.
Voices mid-sentence. Someone vomiting. A cry of “Where—what just—?”
They didn’t know.
Didn’t see.
Behind them, the boss’s body lay collapsed—but different now. Smaller. More feral. Less intelligent. A shell filled in to match what they expected.
"Must've been a late mutation," the leader muttered, wiping sweat from his temple, voice shaking. "Or a triggered evolution. Guess it didn't finish."
No one argued.
No one could.
Jinwoo stood apart, eyes still locked on the spot where the boss had tried to remember him.
He didn’t relax.
Didn’t breathe deep.
Just exhaled.
Slow.
And somewhere behind his left eye, the System whispered again:
[Performance Evaluation: 82%]
[Comment: Promising. Let’s keep going, sweetheart.]
Chapter 9: Ripples in Silence
Chapter Text
The apartment was silent.
Not the strained kind of silence, like when someone’s listening behind a door. Not the heavy hush that comes before an argument or the sterile void of hospitals. This was the deep silence of fatigue.
Not exhaustion.
Fatigue.
The kind that came after survival.
Jinwoo sat on the floor, back against the wall, legs folded, head tilted slightly to one side as he stared at the empty corner across from him. His breathing was slow. Rhythmic. Not meditating—just trying to feel his body again.
The ribs had healed.
The bruises faded fast with the potion.
But the System’s whisper hadn't left.
“Promising,” it had said.
And he hated that.
He flexed his hand once. Then again. Fingers stiff from overexertion.
The knife was on the floor next to him, cleaned, but still bearing the faint trace of monster blood under the hilt’s seam.
His phone buzzed near his foot.
He didn’t pick it up.
It buzzed again.
Finally, he leaned forward and tapped the screen with the back of a knuckle. A headline blinked to life:
“Whispers of a Ghost: Mysterious E-Rank Allegedly Saves Dungeon Party from B-Rank Threat – No One Got a Name.”
He exhaled through his nose.
The article was anonymous, half-rumor, and mostly garbage.
He read it anyway.
‘…no confirmation, but several hunters have corroborated a “quiet guy in a hoodie” outmaneuvering a boss no D-rank could’ve touched…’
He let the screen dim on its own.
Then lay down flat on the floor and stared at the ceiling.
His mana was almost at 7% now.
But the System wasn’t asleep anymore.
Neither were the people.
*****
he kitchen lights flicked on with a soft buzz.
Jinwoo stood barefoot on the tile, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a cutting board already wet beneath his hand. Onion skins curled beside a simmering pan. Garlic hissed in oil.
It was late.
Not late enough for sleep, but past dinner. Past normal.
He hadn’t moved much all day.
Not out of pain. The healing potion had taken care of that. But the weight of the bonus quest clung to his spine like residue—something unfinished, even though the fight was over.
He cracked an egg with one hand.
It sizzled, then bloomed yellow-white against the pan.
From down the hallway, Jinah’s voice filtered faintly through the door: bright, amused, talking to a screen.
Probably streaming again. Editing. Doing the thing she’d gotten good at without ever asking his help.
“…Okay, so he didn’t say anything, but like, look at his face. This is Oppa at peak grump.”
Jinwoo twitched slightly.
He didn’t know she’d kept that clip.
Didn’t even remember when it was.
But the sound of her laughter made the edge of his exhaustion dull just enough.
He flipped the egg.
Checked the rice.
Scooped kimchi into a small side bowl with practiced hands, the kind of motions that came from muscle memory—not attention.
He plated everything with neat, absent care.
Then walked to her door, knocked once with the back of his fingers, and set the tray down without waiting.
“Eat before it gets cold,” he said.
“Thanks, Oppa~,” came her reply—half a joke, half genuine.
He didn’t answer.
Just returned to the kitchen and started washing the pan.
The moment the water hit the metal, something in him exhaled.
He wasn’t okay.
But he was home.
*****
Jinah leaned closer to the screen, tongue poking slightly out of the corner of her mouth as she scrubbed through the footage frame by frame.
Click.
Her brother sat on the living room floor, hair damp from a recent shower, glowering at a sudoku puzzle like it had insulted their mother.
She grinned.
Zoomed in.
Added a sparkly crown filter just to mess with the mood.
“King of Grumps,” she said aloud, amused. “Ruler of domestic mood swings.”
She adjusted the overlay, set the cut timing, and queued her voiceover:
“This is what happens when Oppa runs out of kimchi and refuses to admit he’s hungry.”
Comments flicked by from her last post, a mix of familiar handles and a few new ones.
“More Oppa pls 🥺”
“Your edits are fire!”
“He looks like he could kill a dungeon boss just by glaring.”
She snorted at that one.
“If only,” she muttered.
Then paused.
Scrolled a little further.
One user, anonymous, dropped a link to a board thread—title: ‘Ghost in the Gate?’
No name.
No details.
Just vague chatter about some E-rank behaving oddly. Hooded. Quiet. Strange.
She clicked it out of habit, but didn’t react.
Too generic.
Could be anyone.
Everyone knew E-ranks got picked on constantly. Urban legends like that popped up once a month.
She shrugged.
Went back to the edit.
Paused over one frame—her brother in profile, hoodie pulled tight, staring out the window like he could see something no one else could.
She blinked.
Then shook it off.
“Okay,” she whispered, “just need to finish the credits and maybe blur out the ramen spill...”
And she got back to work.
*****
[Group Chat: “Dungeon Snacks & Dumb Luck”]
🟢 Simon (B-rank Bruiser)
🔵 Injo (C-rank Mage)
🟠 “Dong” (Veteran D-rank, guildless)
🟢 Simon:
dude
you ever seen a guy just ghost a B-rank boss?
🔵 Injo:
what does that even mean
“ghost” how
🟢 Simon:
like
quiet
no one saw him come in, no one saw him leave
but the boss got taken out mid-fight
like it lost interest in us and just folded
🟠 Dong:
so you got carried and need to justify it
lmao
🟢 Simon:
not even kidding
this guy—hoodie, knife, didn’t even talk
but he moved like he knew what it was gonna do before it did
🔵 Injo:
sounds like the caffeine wore off and ur brain filled in gaps
hallucinating E-ranks now?
🟢 Simon:
shut up
it wasn’t hallucination
i tried to ask who he was
he was already gone
🟠 Dong:
so a strong silent type came in, saved ur ass, vanished
congrats on discovering 80% of hunter romance tropes
🔵 Injo:
“the hoodie ghost of jeongno district”
kinda catchy ngl
🟢 Simon:
i’m filing a low-grade anomaly notice
dude felt off
like too quiet
🔵 Injo:
do whatever
just don’t make me write the report again
last time i said “the ice golem exploded too early” and got flagged for joke phrasing
🟠 Dong:
yo if the ghost shows up again, tell him to join my squad
we need someone with a dramatic exit
—
Two districts over, in a Hunter Association inbox, a half-completed report blinked unread.
No name. No time signature.
But the note read:
“Unconfirmed anomaly: unknown male, hoodie, combat patterns atypical for rank. Present in D-grade gate (classified D, functioned as B). Result: boss defeat with no casualties. Subject refused ID.”
s.
It stayed unread for two days.
Then was quietly archived.
Because sometimes gates get measured wrong.
Because sometimes hunters exaggerate.
Because sometimes…
It’s easier not to look too closely.
*****
[Forum: “Gatecrasher General Chat”]
[Thread Title: “Anyone else heard about that ghost?”]
🧠 Jester7:
real talk. D-gate in Gangbuk last week went sideways. one survivor says a guy in a hoodie stepped out of nowhere and dropped the boss solo
🤔 reaverbite:
that same guy show up in Bucheon? 'cause my cousin said her squad got weird backup in a c-rank—quiet dude, knife, no one got his name
🧠 Jester7:
does he talk in any of these stories
🐍 mana-rat:
nah just broods and vanishes lmao
🍜 yolomancer:
im saying its a stealth build
🎮 fishbangggg:
stealth don’t make you S-class
🧠 Jester7:
he ain’t S-class
he’s just mad
🤔 reaverbite:
mad enough to tank a gate alone?
🎮 fishbangggg:
bet it’s fake
or an unsanctioned raid
🧠 Jester7:
maybe
but my squad’s healer said his eyes looked dead
like he already knew what would happen
—
Elsewhere, in a private chatroom:
“ghost hoodie guy”
“crazy reflexes”
“refused his cut of the haul”
“maybe not human”
“no guild, no ID, no presence”
“just moves like he’s done it all before”
—
The rumors weren’t precise.
They didn’t match dates or locations.
But the shape of the story stayed the same.
And sometimes that’s all a myth needs.
Nokimi_liko on Chapter 1 Wed 18 Jun 2025 03:52PM UTC
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Spade_Z on Chapter 1 Wed 18 Jun 2025 10:03PM UTC
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Nokimi_liko on Chapter 2 Wed 18 Jun 2025 03:58PM UTC
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Oosbeck on Chapter 3 Thu 19 Jun 2025 08:15PM UTC
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business_inator on Chapter 4 Fri 20 Jun 2025 02:20PM UTC
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Puduki on Chapter 5 Sun 22 Jun 2025 12:49AM UTC
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business_inator on Chapter 6 Wed 25 Jun 2025 01:39PM UTC
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kentheslytherin on Chapter 6 Wed 23 Jul 2025 11:35PM UTC
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business_inator on Chapter 9 Tue 05 Aug 2025 08:11PM UTC
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