Chapter 36: The Gate
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 36: The Gate
Humanity dies, day in and day out, without rest.
The property damage is beyond calculation.
It was a disaster caused by the existence of monsters.
So, where do these monsters come from?
“Haaah...”
Shaking off my dizziness, I looked around.
A cold breath escaped my lips.
The sky was filled with ashen clouds, and all around me, a field of pure white snow stretched on endlessly.
It was the first time in my life I'd ever seen a snowfield.
“Ugh...”
Just then, Choi Hyena came to her senses, complaining of a headache.
She’s a slow riser, isn't she? She showed up to our meeting later than me, too.
Of course, she wasn't actually late, but once you start disliking someone, you want to nitpick everything they do.
“Wh-where is this...?”
One moment she was in a concrete jungle, the next she was faced with the grandeur of a snowfield where her breath turned to mist and a blizzard raged. Choi Hyena looked completely stunned.
“Where do you think?”
At this point, I couldn't deny or pretend not to know what had happened.
“We’re inside a Gate.”
*
Gates. Along with monsters, they are one of the disasters that have threatened humanity since time immemorial.
Before detectors were invented, it was impossible to even predict when or where a Gate would appear.
On top of that, after a certain amount of time, they spit out monsters.
What a fucking mess.
And if you were to ask whether the invention of detectors eliminated casualties from Gates, the answer would be no.
Even in the modern era, the loss of life caused by monsters was too immense to ignore.
Detectors couldn't cover the entire planet, and it was quite common for monsters to spill out from countries already ruined by Gates and attack residents of nearby towns.
Special cases like undiscovered Gates were also one of the main factors threatening the lives of ordinary people.
And there was another special type of Gate, similar to an undiscovered one.
“...An Isolated Gate, huh?”
Known to the public as the worst kind of disaster, an Isolated Gate sucks in all surrounding life forms the moment it appears.
What's more vicious is that immediately after sucking in living creatures, the Gate seals itself, making it impossible for rescue to come from the outside or for anyone to escape from the inside.
An Isolated Gate opens after about a week.
During that time, the probability of an ordinary person surviving the harsh environment and ferocious monsters inside a Gate was practically zero.
Of course, you could escape by destroying the Gate's core, but you'd have a better chance of survival digging a hole and hiding in it. The Gate's core is guarded by a boss, after all.
“A Gate... That’s impossible...”
“Why don't you stop denying reality and get up?”
Leaving Choi Hyena to her denial or despair, I scanned our surroundings once more.
Hoo...
It's cold.
So cold I can barely speak.
It must be well below minus 30 degrees Celsius.
On top of that, the blizzard, which felt like blades of wind, was making the wind chill even lower.
The fact that I was in relatively thin clothing—a short-sleeved shirt and jeans—made it even colder.
The cold is one thing, but what's the rank of this Gate?
Unfortunately, in such a horrific environment, it couldn't possibly be a low-rank Gate. Still, if it was C-rank, there was at least some hope of escape.
But if it was higher than that...
“...Fuck.”
First, to avoid monsters as much as possible, I had to find a place to use as a shelter.
The direction didn't matter.
I remembered from a textbook that the inside of a Gate wasn't a vast planet like Earth, but rather a small, isolated piece of another dimension.
Since we started in a snowfield, we would only find more snowfields no matter which way we went. Still, if I was lucky, I might find a forest or a cave to shelter from the blizzard.
A place fitting the theme of a snowfield was bound to appear.
...I should probably keep the blizzard at my back.
If I walked into the blizzard, the biting wind would tear the skin right off my face.
Of course, turning my back to it didn't mean it wasn't cold. It was just as freezing.
The only saving graces were the fur coat in my inventory and the fact that circulating the fire element through my magic circuit kept me from freezing to death.
“W-wait!”
“?”
I turned my head to see Choi Hyena standing there, shivering.
She looked like a rabbit.
“Wh-where are you going? If this is a Gate, we should wait for rescue!”
“...Did you sleep through the lesson on Gates in school?”
“I, I... A-achoo! I, I didn't go to school...?”
Ah.
She's so rude, I thought she just had a bad upbringing, but it turns out she didn't even go to school.
Suddenly, I feel a bit sorry for Choi Hyena.
“Wh-what! Why are you looking at me like that... A-achoo!!”
“It’s nothing.”
In truth, Choi Hyena hadn't attended school because of her magic education; she was a prodigy who had completed her high school curriculum by the age of 14.
“This is an Isolated Gate. Right now, we can't escape or wait for a rescue team.”
I didn't have a good impression of Choi Hyena, but I couldn't just abandon a poor girl who didn't even go to school.
“What...?”
“There are only two ways to escape from here. Either we survive until the Gate opens, or we destroy the Gate's core ourselves.”
As I said before, if this Gate was higher than C-rank, it would be impossible for the two of us to destroy the core.
“...A week.”
“I'll tell you this now, you know we can't beat the Gate boss by ourselves, right?”
“I know that!”
The boss is the being that guards the core, the source of the Gate.
A boss possesses a level of strength completely different from the elite monster I fought before. For two mages in back-line roles, it was an opponent we could never defeat.
...I need to get moving before the sun sets.
If we wanted to survive the night, we didn't have time to stand around here.
I had to move in my intended direction without rest.
“Wh-where are you going?”
Choi Hyena grabbed me.
“What, you want to stay here?”
“...”
After that, no more words were exchanged between us.
We simply trudged forward aimlessly, leaving footprints in the snow that came up to our ankles.
How much time passed like that?
Thump. I heard something collapse behind me.
“...Choi Hyena?”
Lying on the snow, Choi Hyena's lips were blue, and her body was as cold as ice.
Isn't she a pyromancer? The Choi family of Seongbuk is famous for wielding powerful flames, even among elementalists.
Considering that, she should have been more resistant to the cold than me.
“Dammit.”
Even if she was a rude brat with no redeeming qualities besides her face and body, I couldn't just leave her here.
She might be rude, but did she do anything wrong enough to deserve freezing to death? No.
I quickly took the fur coat out of my inventory, put it on her, and hoisted her onto my back.
“I need to find a place to rest.”
I couldn't even start a fire in this blizzard.
And if I kept searching for shelter at our previous pace, Choi Hyena would die before we found anything.
Whoosh-
In the end, I had no choice but to run.
I hadn't run until now to conserve my mana and stamina, and to avoid being detected by monsters.
But now, I was running out of time to worry about such things.
Running through a snowfield was no easy task, but I had to keep going.
I scanned my surroundings as I ran.
But there was only snow here, snow there. In this world of pure white, there was no sign of a forest or anything like it.
“Ugh, ughh...”
“Choi Hyena! Stay with me!”
I had no choice but to pick up the pace.
I don't know what kind of luck I had, but despite running for quite a while, I hadn't seen a single monster.
It was a miracle.
And as if that miracle continued, it wasn't long before I spotted what looked like a small cave at the base of a rather steep cliff.
“There.”
I immediately changed direction and ran toward the cave.
It was closer than I thought, so I reached it quickly.
However, the cave was shallower than I expected. Even at its deepest point, the cold air from outside still blew in fiercely.
Thanks to that, at least, there was no unfortunate surprise of another monster having already claimed it.
“It'll be hard to find another place now...”
I had no choice but to cut up the tent from my inventory and block the entrance. I still had to leave a small gap for air to circulate, so it was still cold.
But I couldn't just complain; for now, I had to be grateful that the blizzard wasn't getting in.
Finally, I spread out the remaining piece of the tent and started a fire.
“Choi Hyena! Hey, snap out of it!”
I gently laid her down and lightly tapped her cheek, calling her name, but there was no response.
For a moment, I thought the worst had happened, but thankfully, she was still breathing. Her body was just too cold.
“The tent's temperature control system won't be enough.”
It was true that the latest tents had a function to automatically adjust the internal temperature.
But that only maintained a reasonably comfortable temperature at best; it couldn't raise it to the point where you'd break a sweat.
“...I have no choice.”
Choi Hyena will probably throw a fit when she wakes up, but the law has a clause for emergency refuge.
I'm doing this to save her life. If she has any shame, she won't say a word to me about it.
I carefully took off the fur coat she was wearing.
Then I removed her ridiculously wide-brimmed hat and the cape covering her shoulders to prevent her wet clothes from sapping her body heat.
“...”
In contrast to her pale face, the swell of her chest looked warm and soft.
“Get a grip.”
I lightly slapped my own cheeks and refocused.
The only clothes Choi Hyena had on now were a thin dress and the underwear that covered her precious parts beneath it.
It was my first time taking off a dress, so I struggled a bit, but I drew on my experience with Iris and managed to get it off somehow.
“Whoa...”
Choi Hyena's matching red underwear set was so sexy it left me speechless.
Come to think of it, neither Iris nor Cheon Yeo-hwa wore modern underwear, so this was my first time seeing a woman's lingerie.
And my first time taking it off.
I carefully undid the hook at the back, and as if something sealed had been unleashed, Choi Hyena's large breasts sprang free with a boing.
Her cute nipples were, as expected, a light pink.
Her breasts themselves were gorgeous. Even a master craftsman couldn't sculpt such a perfect teardrop shape.
Without thinking, I fondled Choi Hyena's breasts.
The soft, firm texture was exquisite.
But contrary to how they looked, they were slightly cold.
Only then did I realize the gravity of the situation again and proceeded to take off her panties as well.
The sight of her tightly-shut pussy almost made me waver, but I quickly stripped off my own clothes and pulled her naked body into my arms.
As I'd thought, Choi Hyena's body was cold.
I slowly drew up my mana and warmed my body.
And so, having become a human hot pack, I spent the night with Choi Hyena.
Squeeze, squeeze.
Of course, right up until I fell asleep, I satisfied my selfish desires by groping Choi Hyena's large breasts and her ass, which looked like it could easily birth quintuplets.
It was payback for calling me a beggar the first time we met.