Departure
Three years of hunter service had thoroughly destroyed Seo Yeongcheol's life.
"Donghyeon!! Fuck!!! Hey!!! You bastard!! Breathe, breathe!!"
It was because, in the middle of a boss raid meant to seal a rift before it could open, he had watched a fellow conscript get cut clean in half and die right in front of him. From that day on, everything changed.
He could no longer sleep properly at night. Even with his eyes closed, the pale face of his dead comrade rose up and drove him half mad. Seo Yeongcheol went to the military doctor attached to the unit outside the gate and told him everything.
Please discharge me.
I can't do hunter work anymore.
I keep seeing my dead friend's face, and the thought of going on another raid terrifies me.
Through tears he poured it out. The doctor answered with an irritated look.
"Playing sick, you little shit."
"Sir?"
"You think you're the first brat I've seen pull this stunt? You think I don't know a young punk like you is just trying to get a medical discharge? Back in my day I saw worse than you and still finished my service just fine. Stop whining and get back to it, you bastard."
"........"
"Come to me with this excuse one more time and I'll extend your service. Got it?"
Service extension.
To hunters, those were the two most terrifying words in existence.
Seo Yeongcheol had no choice. He gritted his teeth, forced the fear down, and served out the rest of his term. His comrades—especially Lee Yeonghak—helped him more than he could ever repay. Without them he never would have made it. But even after he barely scraped through discharge, the nightmares followed him.
"D-Donghyeon! Donghyeon!!!"
Waking up screaming his dead friend's name became routine. He went to a psychiatrist and took the prescribed meds, but his condition barely improved. The savings and pay he had earned from three years of service were steadily drained by psychiatric treatment.
He needed another job fast, yet the sleepless nights and constant anxiety wrecked his concentration. He failed every part-time shift and every job interview.
Making a living grew harder by the day. Reality was merciless.
Still, Seo Yeongcheol tried to live with hope.
Anything was better than the gate, where death could come at any second.
And then—
"Seo Yeongcheol? You are subject to re-conscription. Due to the national emergency you have been drafted under the Gate Act. You are to report to the main gate in Daejeon by tomorrow."
"W-what? I already discharged."
"We know. You've been re-conscripted. Fail to appear by tomorrow and your service period will be extended. You understand what that means, right?"
The state shoved him back into the one place he would rather die than enter again.
Day one.
When an officer ordered him to pick up a weapon and join a raid, Seo Yeongcheol collapsed onto the floor and wept.
He did not want to go.
He was terrified.
He had wanted to become one of those overpowered hunters from novels—someone who casually crushed every hardship and delivered pure catharsis. But he was just an ordinary person. An ordinary person crushed by PTSD and the raw fear of death.
The horrific image of his comrade dying still refused to leave his mind. He hated how broken he had become. But what could he do? His body simply would not obey.
"Seo Yeongcheol, what the hell are you doing! Move!! If that rift opens, Jeonju gets wrecked!!"
After Kim Seongho and Lee Yeonghak had deserted en masse, the Ministry of National Defense decided it needed tighter control over the hunters inside the gates. A certain number of officers were now permanently stationed at every outpost.
Hunters wanted those officers dead a dozen times a day, yet the Defense Ministry's threat was absolute: if any officer was killed or even injured, food distribution would stop immediately and the killer would face life imprisonment. Untouchable.
The officers barked at the sobbing Seo Yeongcheol who refused to fight.
"What are you doing! Get out there and fight!!"
"I-I can't!! I can't!!!"
Seo Yeongcheol dropped his weapon and crumpled to the floor like a child, weeping. The officers kept hammering him.
"You want to watch your comrades die because of you?!"
"Every second you sit here like this, your service gets extended by a year, you bastard!!!"
"Want to starve?"
They tried every threat to force him onto the raid, but Seo Yeongcheol's mind had already been unstable for a long time. In the end he simply would not move from the outpost.
"Cut it out!! You fucking bastards! Yeongcheol's got a mental illness! How the hell did a guy like him even get re-certified active and assigned here in the first place?"
"We can run the raid without him! Just leave him alone!"
Fellow hunters tried to shield him, but the officers had other ideas. They decided an example needed to be made.
"Come with us!"
Seo Yeongcheol was transferred outside the gate.
His face lit up for a moment, thinking they might finally discharge him. What waited for him instead was punishment drill. Shipped to a disciplinary training unit, he was forced into full combat gear and made to run endless laps around the parade ground.
"Ten laps, then push-ups!"
The sun was blistering. The nearly forty-kilogram pack dug into his shoulders like it wanted to break them. Already half-starved and sleepless from the terror of being forcibly re-conscripted and shoved back into the gate, Seo Yeongcheol found the punishment almost impossible to endure.
"I-I can't do it. Please. P-please let me stop now."
"Every time you stop, another year of service!! With that attitude how are you supposed to protect the country and its people! Run!!!"
Service extension.
Was there any word more hateful or more terrifying?
Weeping, Seo Yeongcheol ran, did push-ups, and ran again.
Because he was scared.
Because he was terrified.
He did exactly as he was told.
And then, at some point, he simply collapsed and never got up again.
It happened the day before Lee Yeonghak arrived at the Korean outpost with three wyverns.
"You're going to use the Ancient Dragon to tame wyverns and bring them back?"
"Yes. Exactly. Mass transport of supplies, troop movement, aerial fire support—all of it becomes possible. Raids, outpost defense, and the range we can hunt will expand dramatically. Wider range means more Magic Stones secured."
Association President Volkov clapped his hands and burst into booming laughter.
"Brilliant!! Absolutely magnificent! Do it at once! We'll supply every single thing you need!"
"You've already given us more than enough. Except for one thing, we don't need anything else."
Yeonghak hyung picked up where I left off.
"We need potions. The kind where you grind Magic Stones into an electrolyte drink for stamina and mana recovery. If we're heading into unexplored high-risk zones, we're going to need a lot of them."
"Ah. Potions, is it?"
"Yes. So we were thinking of using a few Magic Stones to brew some....."
President Volkov waved both hands as if that were completely unnecessary.
"We have something far better than potions."
"Something better?"
"One moment. I'll have them bring the prototypes."
He made a quick call. A short while later a woman in a lab coat entered the room. Looking utterly exhausted, she opened her bag and politely offered us two beverage cans.
"Please try them."
"What...... is this?"
"Mana potion and stamina potion, both based on Elixir. Far more effective than grinding Magic Stones into an electrolyte drink."
Potions made from Elixir?
Hyung and I carefully cracked the cans and each took one.
Hyung got the mana potion.
I got the stamina potion.
The instant we drank—
Stamina recovery rate increased by 1200%!
Effect:Mana restored by 13,000
".......Huh?"
"What the fuck is this?"
Hyung and I both shouted in shock.
The status window.
The status window that was absolutely impossible to use outside a gate—where there was no mana—had just appeared right in front of our eyes. President Volkov laughed.
"Apparently if you feed Elixir to an Awakened, they can use their abilities even outside the gates. A fascinating recent research finding. Inside a gate, where mana density is enormous, the effect should be even greater. If we can gather real combat test data from this, all the better."
"This is actually real?"
Hyung playfully picked up a box cutter lying in the room and poured mana into it. A vivid blue aura blade erupted from the cutter with startling clarity.
"So that's the Aura Blade I've only heard about. I was told only Awakened over level 1000 can produce it."
"Incredible, isn't it? It can cut through every existing material."
Hyung experimented, slicing various objects around the room with the box cutter. From a metal hanger to a wooden table, the blade parted them as easily as tofu. After swinging the Aura Blade for about a minute, he set the cutter down.
"Elixir really is something else. But the mana drain is ridiculous."
"That can't be helped. Outside the gate there's zero ambient mana, so consumption is far faster than inside. High-cost skills burn through it even quicker."
At the president's words, hyung laughed.
"Well...... when would we ever need to use this outside a gate anyway? We'll mostly use it for recovery inside. Looks extremely useful. How many do you have?"
At my question the female researcher did a quick mental count and answered.
"Aside from those two cans, we have about sixty prototype cans finished, and I've brought all sixty. We're prepared to give you every one of them. In return, we'd like a detailed report after combat. We need as much data as possible."
"Of course."
And so we took thirty mana potions and thirty stamina potions and headed into the gate.
"I hope you bring back good news! Contact us the moment the taming succeeds."
"We'll show up riding a hundred wyverns. Haha!"
Yeonghak hyung and I rode the gate to Sector 32. Parties 41, 42, and 43 were already waiting there, fully geared and briefed.
"Seongho hyung. Yeonghak hyung. You've arrived."
"Yeah. We're here. You've heard it enough times over the past week, but...... our destination is over there. The Wyvern Den."
I pointed toward the unexplored zone. A massive volcano towered into the sky, so high it seemed to ignore the very idea of limits. The Wyvern Den. A land crawling with fire-breathing Red Wyverns—if anywhere could supply us with a hundred or more wyverns to tame, it was there.
"The three parties will ride the Ancient Dragon with me to the Wyvern Den. The moment we arrive we avoid unnecessary combat and use the Ancient Dragon to tame the wyverns. Every time we tame one, one of you mounts it."
Smiles spread across the party members' faces.
Wyvern riders.
A phrase that hit every man's romance dead center.
"Then we ride those wyverns and hunt the monsters swarming on the ground. Secure as many Magic Stones as possible and bring the tamed wyverns home. That's the objective of this expedition. Clear?"
"Yes, hyung."
"Alright. That's our side. Yeonghak hyung—"
I summoned my three wyverns. The first three I had ever tamed.
Yongil, Yongdul, Yongsam.
"Take these and go scrape up all our kids."
The hunters in the party started laughing.
"Kangjin that bastard got dragged back too, right? He loves cars so much, show him the Las Vegas Motor Show and he'll piss himself."
"If Jaewan's there, we'll finally let him eat meat until he can't move. That bastard talked about meat every single day until discharge."
"Seo Yeongcheol that guy........ he didn't come, right? Any country with half a brain wouldn't re-conscript someone who was clearly mentally broken."
While the hunters snickered, Yeonghak hyung climbed onto Yongil.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll go fetch them, you bastards!! Don't worry too much!"
"Give them our regards when you see them, hyung!"
"Yeah, yeah. Will do. You guys take care!!"
Just as hyung was about to take off, I tossed him something. True to his physical-type Awakened nature, he casually snagged it out of the air.
"What's this?...... Mana potion and stamina potion?"
"You know our jinx. No matter how easy the mission looks, if you don't bring potions, everything goes to shit."
Yeonghak hyung snorted a laugh, shoved the two cans into a pouch at his waist, and took off toward the Korean sector on the three wyverns.
Once he was gone I took a deep breath and looked at the three parties.
"Let's go, you bastards. Let's go become legends and come back!!!!"
With a roar of cheers I summoned the Ancient Dragon.
We climbed into the basket the dragon carried.
And we shot toward the Wyvern Den at high speed.