Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: True Evil of Humanity (2)
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“Has the random teleportation to gates finally come to an end?”
Jong-sik, loyal enough to die if ordered, grumbled every complaint under the sun by himself before ultimately driving over. When it came to bitching with his mouth, he was the best in the world.
Sa-yoon climbed into the car Jong-sik was driving and reflected on the past month.
Because of the quest to kill beginners, he'd been shoved into gates without fail every single day. It was a quest he had no interest in, but refusal wasn't an option. Whenever that damn True Evil of Humanity kicked in, the quest window popped up without any accept or decline choices.
That much wasn't new—he'd been through it a couple times before, so it was fine.
He'd grown so used to it that he figured there was no point wasting energy getting pissed and just went along with the quest. The problem lay in how the Beginner Kills were counted.
Killing newbie Awakeners from hostile guilds didn't count, nor did entering regular gates.
The only way to register a kill toward the quest was to take out people he met inside the Beginner Gates that the System forcibly teleported him into without warning. That was the headache.
Beginner Gates were exactly what they sounded like—gates only new Awakeners could enter. Once you cleared the initial three, you couldn't go back in. So no matter how much he ran around trying to progress the quest on his own, if the damn System didn't yank him in, there was no way to clear it.
What could he do when things turned out like that? He had no choice but to resign himself and go along for the ride.
It wasn't like he had the power to resist anyway.
Because of it, he'd been teleported mid-meal, mid-shower, you name it.
“...What a pain in the ass.”
As he recalled the past, even the memory of being warped into a gate buck naked made Sa-yoon furrow his brow. He stared at the back of Jong-sik's prickly-looking head. Among those who'd suffered from Sa-yoon's sudden disappearances into gates, Jong-sik had taken the biggest hit by far.
The only one who knew Sa-yoon was at the mercy of the System, he had to drop everything and play chauffeur whenever Sa-yoon returned from a gate, regardless of time or place.
Sa-yoon had even told him midway through that he could have someone else do it, but Jong-sik insisted on no loose ends that could raise suspicions and gripped the wheel even with dying eyes. Classic case of unnecessary hardship.
Today was no different. Sa-yoon clicked his tongue at the sight of him clutching the steering wheel, dark circles under his eyes.
And it wasn't just the driving that had worn Jong-sik out.
If Sa-yoon vanished while handling guild business, he'd pull an all-nighter sorting out the rest, gritting his teeth. If he disappeared mid-meeting, he'd smoothly talk his way around the guild leader's absence and steer the discussion. With that routine dragging on for nearly a month, Sa-yoon could understand why Jong-sik had thrown a fit about not coming today.
Should've just let someone else drive, like I said.
Sa-yoon crossed his legs, leaned back against the seat, and muttered to himself.
It's not like he was doing weird shit just once or twice.
As long as he didn't dump it on the guy consecutively, there'd be no suspicions, so asking someone else to pick him up once in a while would've been fine. But Jong-sik kept yapping about secrecy and took the wheel anyway. It wasn't even his secret, yet Jong-sik was more gung-ho about keeping it than Sa-yoon himself.
His excessive loyalty was exhausting, but that was separate from appreciating Jong-sik's competence. When Sa-yoon let him know the past month's hell was finally over, Kim Jong-sik—thirty-two years old and far too naive for the Night Rats—blushed around the eyes and beamed with joy.
“It's really over?”
“Yeah.”
“The System didn't say anything? If another quest comes down, tell me. I'll prep the others in advance if there's anything we need to get ready for.”
Guess his System paranoia had rubbed off on Jong-sik too. Like the saying about a temple dog reciting poetry after three years, having served him for over three years by his side, he'd come to know just how卑劣 and vicious his System was.
Sa-yoon, pleased to have someone who finally understood his hard-to-relate tale, nodded in response.
System.
The divine blessing that appeared in these chaotic times, guiding Awakeners with benevolence and righteousness.
That was the universal definition from the World Awakener Association. But Sa-yoon's System was different.
Benevolence, his ass. It pulled every dirty, underhanded trick to push him toward becoming evil. Hell, you could call it outright manipulation.
And over a long time, Sa-yoon had twisted up just as it wanted, from the inside out. Proof was that killing people no longer gave him nightmares or trauma.
He'd gone full psycho.
There was a time he'd lie awake with guilt, but now he just wished his opponents were a bit stronger. Life felt boring and fleeting, so he sought out thrills. Ten years into being Awakened, he finally got what it felt like to be one of those insane villains from the movies who hunted down only the toughest bastards.
“That's the only thing that interests me anymore.”
“Pardon?”
Jong-sik reacted to his musing. As the guy blinked, Sa-yoon kicked the front seat to tell him to focus on driving. The thud made Jong-sik freak out and grip the wheel tighter.
“H-Hyungnim!”
“H-Hyungnim?”
“...Th-the seat's gonna break.”
“Want me to break your back instead?”
Jong-sik grumbled about his savagery at the gentle suggestion. Sa-yoon ignored the familiar whining and brooded over his inner turmoil again.
Even he hadn't started out as a complete lunatic. Kicking seats out of anger? Honestly, he'd done that ten years ago too, but back then he didn't go around killing people or pulling off terrorist acts left and right.
And his sense of guilt had been perfectly intact.
Now those days felt like distant memories. Sa-yoon turned his head and stared at the scenery whipping past outside the window.
His eyes, lost in the past, sank deep. It had all started ten years ago, back in January.
When Sa-yoon was a fresh-faced third-year middle schooler.
Ten years ago.
The first gate to open the year Sa-yoon turned sixteen plunged the world into panic.
Appearing without warning, it shimmered with eerie light, stoking that curiosity which might be humanity's original sin. People who blundered in cluelessly left behind final words like It's fine, won't die and never came back.
Missing persons reports skyrocketed day by day. Once the numbers hit triple digits and the media amplified public anxiety, the government finally sent in soldiers to investigate.
Everyone hoped for good news when the special forces went in, but reality was cruel. Even those soldiers who were supposed to be different vanished into the weird space.
All of them missing.
Not a single one spared.
Some scholars claimed it might be a portal to another world; others said a teleportation device; still others likened it to a black hole sucking things in.
Baseless, far-fetched debates dragged on, and the soldiers' absence fueled political infighting. Amid the chaos as the anomaly was dubbed a gate, word came that the first soldier to enter one had returned.
Doompa, team leader of the special unit sent into a gate in India.
He came back drenched in blood, one leg severed, eyes wide as he gasped out a single phrase to the world even on the brink of death.
It was hell.
He spat up blood, finished his curt, intense report, then rolled back his eyes and died, as if he'd finally fulfilled his duty.
The media and public reeled in confusion, fear, and excitement. Calls erupted to investigate the gates immediately, and some even went in to explore themselves. People, consumed by curiosity and terror, learned what Doompa meant by hell right after gates worldwide exploded simultaneously.
With deafening booms, monsters straight out of fantasy novels poured forth. Some vaguely resembled demons, others had shapes too grotesque to describe, evoking devils. No way creatures so varied would be friendly to humans.
The brutal, savage beasts rampaged in a frenzy, dyeing the world blood-red like a war zone.
No, strictly speaking, it was war.
A war for humanity's survival and preservation against these sudden alien lifeforms.
From that day, screams never ceased, and hundreds of orphans lost parents daily. The military hardware deployed by governments barely scratched the monsters, and even America's eagerly launched nukes couldn't wipe them out.
Humanity stood no chance against survivors of nuclear blasts.
Population plummeted, and just a week after the gate explosions, ten percent of humanity was dead.
Experts who lost hope predicted total extinction within a month. As unavoidable doom loomed...
They say heroes arise in troubled times.
No matter how overwhelming the war, the counterattack moment always comes. For humanity, it was the blue windows that appeared one day.
Manifesting before a select few and calling themselves the System, these blue windows granted power to oppose the monsters. Awakened humans wielded strengths and special abilities so extraordinary they hardly seemed the same species.
Humanity put them at the vanguard and struck back, driving monsters that had overrun nations to the fringes and eventually exterminating them through cooperation.
A hard-won victory at the cost of twenty percent of humanity.
As everyone celebrated reclaiming their homes with cheers and fireworks, one person lost hope even as the rest found it.
That was Sa-yoon.
System window.
The entity that appeared before a select few at the Great Panic's start, bringing hope to humanity.
When gates burst open worldwide and chaos began, Sa-yoon received his too.
Just in a slightly peculiar form.