Threat Assessment (2)
One day until the terminal device arrived.
I decided to use that short window to investigate the site Uncle Haseong had told me about.
"...Didn't think I'd be doing this again."
I pressed hard against my temple and slowly closed my eyes.
A sensation like something was draining out of my body. My senses blurred, my body felt like it was floating, and just as I felt myself being pulled somewhere—
I opened my eyes.
"Let's just think of this as a quick taste for today."
A world painted black. Ordinary wooden doors standing in dense rows throughout it. This was the world inside the internet, and those wooden doors were passages connecting to websites.
[XXX.XX]
"This is the address..."
A site that looked loaded with security measures—passwords and the like. But to me, firewalls were nothing more than wooden doors. Just turn the handle and walk right in.
Creeeak—
It's a site used by criminals, so it definitely won't be ordinary.
And these weren't even ordinary criminals. They were the weirdos who digitized the information inside people's brains and transplanted it into artificial bodies. Whatever they talked about was going to be predictable.
Plenty of people like this had shown up back when the gates first opened. The ones who got a scrap of power and decided they were gods. The ones who celebrated the gates as trials sent down by the divine. From the internet all the way into the real world, the place had been packed solid with cultists—gods, demons, messiahs, you name it.
"How many gods even showed up back then..."
People half-jokingly called it the War of the Gods. Every kind of god appeared, every kind of god vanished, and every kind of god also slipped away into the shadows.
"For the God of Machines."
"...I've seen that phrase somewhere before."
I frowned at the words written on the sign. There might have been some Machine God type during the War of the Gods. I let out a long sigh and decided to take a slow look around the site.
A place for humans who feared death. They called it a den of criminals, but were the people here really only criminals?
Well, being here at all makes them criminals, but...
They wouldn't have started out that way. Ordinary people. Politicians. Awakened. Hunters.
"It might be more widespread than I thought."
Looking at the posts, they weren't all written in Korean either. Chinese, Japanese, English, and languages from other countries besides. For a group this large to only now start getting its tail stepped on... what exactly were they?
"I don't even know who the head is..."
If I traced back the "directives" mentioned on the site, maybe I could find the head. I'd gotten a rough sense of what kind of place this was, so I decided to head back.
Or rather—I was about to head back when—
Research Results Regarding Arbitrary Gate Generation
"...What?"
My eyes went wide at the letters on the sign. Opening a gate? By human hands?
I frowned and laid my hand on the sign, and the contents floated up before my eyes.
Succeeded in arbitrarily generating a Gate by utilizing resonance between specific magic stones and catalyst overload.
"..."
What followed was experimental data on artificially generating gates. Not materials made of text or photos—actual experiment videos. And not AI-generated footage either. Real success recordings.
Even checking with my ability, it comes back as genuine.
So they'd actually succeeded? At opening gates at will?
"Ugh..."
Nausea surged up. The screams from back then still seemed to ring in my ears. I couldn't even begin to imagine what the criminals here would do with this kind of technology.
"They were more dangerous than I thought... ugh."
Even inside the internet world, goosebumps prickled up my arms. It felt like this wasn't going to end with just gathering information.
"...I should tell Uncle first."
With a mutter that was half a sigh, I returned to the real world. A thoroughly ominous premonition. Outside the window, the sky had gone heavy and dark, as if rain were coming.
"Hoo... is this for real?"
"Yes. It's real."
Looking over the information Eunha had obtained, Yu Haseong let out a long breath. He'd had a vague suspicion they weren't an ordinary criminal group. But artificially opening gates?
"If this gets out, all hell is going to break loose."
"That's why I came running straight over."
Eunha shrugged. Haseong grinned at her.
"Thanks, Eunha. Let me buy you a meal."
"I don't take free meals unless it's omakase."
"For you, I'd buy omakase a hundred times over."
This kid had always been like that. She'd grumble and refuse, then go ahead and grant just about any favor. Even when he tried to keep her out of dangerous work, she'd throw herself into the danger on her own.
There are too many heroes the world never hears about, Uncle.
The words Eunha had spoken, looking at a colleague who'd died caught in a gate, were still vivid. But did Eunha know? That she herself was one of those unknown heroes.
"You just need to cut back on the internet, kid."
"That's absolutely impossible. Take the internet away from me and I'm a corpse. A corpse."
"Looking at you like this, you seem even younger than Eunseo."
"...Hmph."
She was being childish right now, but when things got serious, she'd get more serious than anyone.
For whatever reason, this kid carries a serious sense of debt toward the world.
After the government-related business was over and he'd caught Eunha—and after Eunha had immediately gotten herself caught—he'd asked her once. Even if she'd rejected the offer, she could have just kept quiet. So why get caught?
The answer she'd given him was this:
Because this is the only thing I can do for the world.
It barely showed now, but back then she'd carried herself like some kind of sinner. He still didn't know the reason why.
"Uncle, you're having weird thoughts while staring at me again, aren't you."
"Hey now, don't put it like that. Not weird thoughts—I was reminiscing. Reminiscing."
"That is a weird thought. And how can you smile while thinking about the old days?"
Eunha shuddered. The reaction of someone who didn't even want to remember that time.
"More precisely, I was thinking about when I caught you, Eunha."
"Eugh."
Eunha made a strange noise and slurped at her strawberry yogurt smoothie. So she still liked those. He was glad he'd ordered one ahead of time when he got the message she was coming.
"So. What do you think?"
"What do I think about what?"
"About opening gates at will."
He knew well enough how dangerous it was for humans to be able to open and close gates by force. You couldn't know what would come pouring out from inside, and if one opened somewhere like a city center, the damage would be enormous.
"It's horrifying. Something that should never be done. I don't know what they were thinking doing that kind of research, but... ugh."
"Same here. Even for bastards who don't qualify as human, there are lines you don't cross. Tch."
People who hadn't lived through it didn't know. How terrible the gates truly were. These days, with the Hunter Association established and high-rank Awakened growing in number, things were manageable—but right when the gates first opened, it had been a living hell.
Being a first-generation ability user didn't mean you were complete from the start.
Yu Haseong himself was night and day compared to when he'd first Awakened. With a little exaggeration, the difference between an ant and an elephant. But the monsters coming out of the gates hadn't changed much between then and now. With no real information available, the gates of the old days had to be considered far more horrific.
"The problem is this isn't limited to Korea. These guys' range of activity is no joke."
"Meaning they're operating in the shadows worldwide."
"Yes. We might even need to request help from other countries. Japan, for instance."
Eunha said it seriously. And yet she was making a face like she hated the idea—which was something else entirely.
"You really can't stand that guy, huh."
"Koreans should just stick to being friends with other Koreans."
"What era do you think this is? You need to get along with people all around. I get that you're still holding onto what happened, but the guy says he wants to apologize. Just accept it a little."
"Don't know, don't care."
Her small lips jutted out a full five paces. A silent protest that he wasn't taking her side.
"Even before I got back in contact with you, he kept asking about you."
"You should've just ignored him. Must've been a real pain."
"He wants to properly apologize to you. How am I supposed to ignore that? It's not some random person—it's about you."
"Ignore him anyway."
Yu Haseong clicked his tongue. That guy was really getting hated, huh. He should've chosen his words more carefully. All of it was his own doing.