The Mechanism of the Other World
Since Lim Dojun had been honorably discharged from the military after sustaining injuries in the line of duty, the government covered every single one of his treatment expenses.
The same applied to his rehabilitation.
“It’s an honor to meet a hero like you. I’m Kim Eunju, director of the rehabilitation center. I’ll do everything in my power to help your body recover.”
That was how Lim Dojun first met Kim Eunju.
In the early days, he hadn’t trusted her much.
She was a talented woman in her late twenties who had earned multiple degrees in the United States before establishing a rehabilitation center back in Korea.
He had assumed she was simply there to collect the subsidies from the Ministry of Defense and would handle him in a purely bureaucratic manner.
But she proved him wrong.
“The injury stems from the Crystal Dragon’s attack… Hmm… On the surface there doesn’t appear to be any physical damage. I genuinely don’t understand why your body refuses to move.”
Lim Dojun’s condition wasn’t a simple wound. It was closer to a curse inflicted during his battle with the Crystal Dragon.
Of course an ordinary physician would struggle to find a cure, yet she refused to give up easily.
“I’ll look into similar cases.”
She spent her own time on it, stayed up all night combing through research papers, and if she found a patient with comparable symptoms, she would fly overseas just to observe them in person.
Lim Dojun, the patient himself, had half given up and planned to live comfortably off his pension, but Kim Eunju only burned with greater determination.
And not just for a day or two—five full years.
“You’re a hero who saved the country. The soldiers told me that if it hadn’t been for you back then, Seoul would have been destroyed. I bought my house in Seoul with a full mortgage. You basically saved my home from being wiped off the map.”
She had said it half-jokingly.
Moreover, she didn’t limit their interactions to the rehabilitation center.
“Soldiers living alone after rehabilitation are prone to depression. I know I can’t come often, but I’ll drop by whenever I can.”
Center visits were limited to once a month.
Having once possessed a perfectly healthy body only to suddenly find oneself in a wheelchair made going outside feel alien.
Staying indoors all the time led to gloom, and once-a-month visits simply weren’t enough.
That was why Kim Eunju made house calls to her patients whenever her schedule allowed.
She’s a benefactor I’ll have to repay for the rest of my life.
After all, this capsule itself had been obtained through her help.
Though it had required a lightning strike and an unbelievable stroke of luck, none of this would have been possible without Kim Eunju.
“W-what on earth… happened here? No—first of all, congratulations! Oh my god! I’m so shocked right now I can barely get my words out…”
Kim Eunju’s tongue kept tripping over itself.
Yet her flushed face made it obvious just how stunned she was.
“Calm down and drink some water.”
“I don’t have the composure to drink water!”
“Once you do, I’ll tell you everything that happened.”
“!”
Kim Eunju snatched the cup and gulped the water down.
She nearly choked and started coughing, but that was beside the point.
Seeing the fire in her eyes, Lim Dojun calmly recounted every detail of what had happened to him.
“The reason I can stand again is…”
He had agonized over it at first.
Should he stay in the wheelchair and keep pretending to be crippled?
Since he still didn’t fully understand the cause, it might have been the safer choice.
But if he was going to deceive anyone, it wouldn’t be Kim Eunju—the woman who had treated his recovery like her own personal mission for five long years.
She had given him her sincerity. He wanted to return it in kind.
So he told her everything: how lightning had struck the house and damaged the capsule, how he had crossed into another world and regained the use of his body.
“Oh my god…”
Kim Eunju shot to her feet in shock and immediately checked the circuit breaker.
It was charred pitch black.
“Are you insane?”
“Sorry?”
Lim Dojun tilted his head, confused.
Instead of saying it was a good thing, she asked if he was crazy?
“You’re lucky to be alive. If things had gone even slightly wrong you would have died instantly! And the breaker is still completely burnt…”
“It’s a little black, but it’s working fine.”
Electricity was flowing without any issues.
“Ah…”
Kim Eunju pressed a hand to her forehead.
Then her eyes widened as if she could no longer tolerate the situation.
“We’re moving out immediately.”
“This house is perfectly fine, though?”
“What if lightning strikes again?”
“My body is much stronger now. I’ll be all right.”
He was rapidly regaining his peak physical condition and had even obtained dragon-style magic.
He felt confident he could survive a lightning strike somehow.
Yet at those words, Kim Eunju’s expression crumpled in a way he had never seen once in the past five years.
“…Understood. I’ll move.”
Lim Dojun quickly changed his answer.
In the end, telling Kim Eunju the full truth had been the correct decision.
Until now he had been making guesses alone, but she insisted they investigate the actual mechanism.
“Let’s figure out together exactly how this is possible.”
Whether the lightning-struck capsule was the only way to access the other world.
Or whether the capsules at the center could do the same.
There were countless other details that needed verification.
“Come in.”
Lim Dojun arrived at the rehabilitation center together with Kim Eunju.
They moved to the room where the capsules were installed, and Kim Eunju began operating the various machines herself.
Normally staff would be present, but he hadn’t seen a single person on the way over.
She had contacted them beforehand and cleared the entire facility.
“The fewer people who know about this, the better. So please don’t mention it to anyone else either, Dojun. Actually, maybe you should stay in the wheelchair a while longer? We’ll pick a separate time to announce your recovery publicly.”
Lim Dojun had once been the hero who saved Korea. His story had made the news, he had received military commendations, and in the beginning many famous YouTubers had come looking for interviews.
Five years later, the public had largely forgotten him.
“Understood.”
“I’ll delete all the CCTV footage from your arrival as well. My lips are sealed, so don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I trust you, Director.”
“Thank you. So trust me and move out, all right? At the very least, replace that circuit breaker first.”
“…Yes.”
Even though it was still functioning, he had already planned to replace the breaker anyway.
He had simply been so absorbed in magic these past few days that he hadn’t gotten around to it.
After that, Lim Dojun lay inside the capsule with sensors attached all over his body.
“While you’re connected, I’ll monitor your vitals to see what changes occur in your body. I’ve also installed a camera inside the capsule for visual observation.”
An outsider would be checking his condition.
“Sounds good. Let’s begin right away.”
Lim Dojun lay down and connected without hesitation.
He had wondered whether the connection process might differ from the one at home, but everything felt identical.
When he opened his eyes he was inside the training room of the Blue Magic Tower. He could still open his status window and cast every spell he had learned.
He immediately disconnected.
Hiss.
As he rose from the capsule he asked, “How did it look?”
“Ha… I don’t even know what to say.”
Kim Eunju muttered, looking utterly bewildered.
Lim Dojun had worried that something might have gone wrong with his real body while he was connected, but…
“When you connect to the capsule… your body disappears completely.”
“!”
She showed him the footage recorded by the camera inside the capsule.
Just as she said, at a certain moment Lim Dojun had simply vanished.
When the connection ended he reappeared, and the capsule lid opened once more.
“It’s exactly like the phenomenon returnees experience when they travel to another world and come back.”
Unlike natural awakeners, there existed beings known as returnees.
They had appeared alongside the gates. One day they were suddenly summoned to another world and lived entirely different lives there.
Each of those worlds possessed special powers unlike anything on Earth. If a returnee died in that other world, they would return to Earth—bringing with them every ounce of strength they had gained.
Of course, not every returnee succeeded. Only the lucky ones obtained real power.
“As you know, returnees miss Earth terribly while they’re in the other world. That’s why some of them die before they can accumulate any strength and simply return home.”
Homesickness was that powerful.
In that regard, Lim Dojun’s conditions were incomparably better than those of other returnees.
“Unlike them, it seems you can return to Earth whenever you wish, Dojun.”
Returnees hated the other world compared to Earth, yet they craved the knowledge and power it offered.
Since growing stronger on Earth was nearly impossible, some of them even wanted to go back.
But Lim Dojun could travel freely between both worlds. He suffered no homesickness, and the game-like system allowed him to learn abilities far more easily.
From what he had heard, Earthlings who crossed over usually had to struggle just to learn the local language first.
“Then if I die in the other world… does that mean I won’t be able to return there anymore?”
“You’re different from regular returnees. You travel back and forth through a device called a capsule, so… Hmm. I’m not sure.”
Kim Eunju shrugged. Even she had no way of knowing.
“If we don’t know, we have to assume the worst-case scenario. I absolutely cannot die.”
“Right. At least not until your body is completely restored.”
Accumulating achievement points was currently the only known method to fully heal his body.
Or he would need to obtain far superior mana control techniques.
When the mood grew heavy, Kim Eunju changed the subject.
“It’s still dangerous, but now that your body has healed, what do you want to do first? Are you thinking of re-enlisting and returning to the military or…”
“…Even coming from you, Director, that’s not something you should suggest.”
He had nearly cursed out loud.
Just dreaming about the military made his skin crawl—what kind of nightmare was she proposing?
“I only asked in case. I’m glad. It really does seem best… that you don’t go back to the military.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“It’s not for that reason. Actually, I didn’t mention it before because I was worried about you, but there’s something strange going on.”
“?”
The military had always operated on bizarre and abnormal logic, but that wasn’t what Kim Eunju was referring to.
Five years earlier, as leader of the Special Counter-Abnormal Team, Lim Dojun had stopped the Crystal Dragon.
The real problems had begun right after that.
“No one knows why the Crystal Dragon suddenly appeared in Seoul. A disaster-grade monster like that couldn’t possibly have emerged without any prior warning signs. Yet the post-incident investigation was conducted with unnatural silence, as if they were trying to bury the whole thing.”
Because of his injury, rehabilitation, and mental treatment, Lim Dojun had never learned any of this.
Kim Eunju had heard stories from other soldiers who visited the center and had observed certain things herself. The more she looked, the more suspicious details appeared.
Unfortunately, that was as far as her information went.
When she made inquiries, she was told it was classified. Neither the news nor YouTube contained any related coverage.
“I thought about leaking it somewhere, but in the end I stayed quiet.”
“You did the right thing. I’ll look into it personally.”
That was why Lim Dojun had finally stepped outside for the first time in years.
He had gone hiking in the other world, but venturing far from home on Earth felt completely new.
It had been more than five years since he had gone anywhere without a wheelchair.
The bus and subway rides, the sight of people walking around—everything felt fresh and exciting.
He even caught himself humming.
With light steps he arrived in Jongno, Seoul.
Just a little deeper in, the district became a labyrinth of dilapidated shopping arcades. This was a lawless zone where hidden returnees, unregistered illegal awakeners, and gangsters had joined forces to carve out their own territory.
The area near the station saw regular foot traffic from civilians, but a few blocks further and the danger escalated to the point where even police avoided it.
Yet Lim Dojun strolled through the streets without concern.
As the roads narrowed and he passed the crumbling shops into deeper alleys, more and more eyes began watching him.
Homeless men, gangsters, brothel workers…
Lim Dojun ignored them all and kept walking until he reached his destination: an old five-story building on the verge of collapse.
“Who sets up an office in a dump like this?”
Lim Dojun grumbled while double-checking the address on the business card.
Someone had once told him to come if he ever needed help and handed him the card. He never imagined he would actually use it.
It was a relief he hadn’t lost the one he had tossed into some corner of his house.
“Hey. Mister.”
A large, tattooed man suddenly stepped out and grabbed Lim Dojun’s shoulder.
“What’s your business here? You don’t look like a local.”
It wasn’t a casual question. The hand on his shoulder gripped with enough force to crush bone.
Any normal person would have grimaced in pain.
Lim Dojun glanced at the hand, and in that instant—
The man’s hand and entire forearm froze solid in an instant.