Prologue
That day began no differently from any other.
Ordinary citizens went about their ordinary, tedious lives. The powerful and well-connected went about their own brand of busyness. No one seriously doubted that the day would simply pass, just as every day before it had.
And then they appeared.
For the first time, they revealed themselves to the world.
On countless phone screens, a grotesque image flickered into existence, and for most people, that was the first glimpse they ever had of what was coming. Others saw it on television. Others on their computers. Still others on the conference screens still glowing in the middle of meetings.
It was something that resembled a vast, unblinking eye.
And in that same instant, at that same moment, it addressed the entire planet.
They had issued a brazen declaration of war against the entire world.
Most people who saw it tried to dismiss the whole thing as some idle prank by a bored hacker with too much free time. Then the voice continued, and the feeling in the room changed entirely.
Demanding China's surrender… while ordering a white flag raised on the summit of Tokyo Tower in Japan's capital. Even if the threat had been real, the bitter history between the two nations made the demand so absurdly grandiose and so thoroughly unhinged that it could never possibly be fulfilled.
In an instant, the Abyss's declaration of war became a punchline. China itself began hunting for the hacker presumed responsible for the stunt, and paid almost no attention to the actual content of the message.
But truly… very… admirably…
No. Tragically.
The Abyss's declaration of war was no joke at all.
Exactly twenty-four hours later, the Abyss's assault on humanity began in the heart of Beijing.
Bursting up through the earth beneath Tiananmen Square came a sudden onslaught of monsters — millions of them, bodies sheathed in black matter. Under that assault, the Chinese leadership, including the paramount leader himself, was wiped out in under an hour.
In a single day, Beijing became a city of the dead. Within less than a week, seventy percent of the population of the People's Republic of China had been annihilated.
For the leaders of the United States, Russia, and every other nation on Earth, it was a catastrophe beyond anything they had imagined. Governments across the world, under the banner of defending humanity, rapidly pooled their strength and dispatched their armies — and so began a war between humanity and the Abyss that seemed to have no end in sight.
From mechanized infantry and unmanned bombers fitted with the latest technology, all the way to nuclear missiles that had long been forbidden for use — humanity poured every weapon and every scrap of firepower it possessed into the fight. At last, they managed to halt the Abyss's endless advance and establish a containment line.
Even so, the Abyss's power remained absolute. They held complete dominion over the center of the Asian continent where the People's Republic of China had once stood, and they never stopped trying to push their influence outward in every direction.
In the process, the Abyss's average combat strength grew steadily stronger, as if adapting to humanity's weapons. Before long, humanity found itself in need of armaments that surpassed ordinary human capability — and of superhumans capable of wielding them.
Thus began the Superhuman Mass-Production Project.
The original plan had naturally targeted men, who made up the vast majority of military personnel. Technical limitations, however, ultimately restricted the subjects to women. In the end, the project and its results came to be known by a single name:
Hunters.
Women who had transcended humanity — warrior goddesses who brought the iron hammer of death down upon the Abyss at the heart of the battlefield.
With the founding and deployment of the organizations built around them — the so-called Hunter Guilds — humanity finally began to seize the initiative in the war against the Abyss.
Abyss attacks were beaten back on every front. A species that had once been locked in desperate defense could now even contemplate counteroffensives. And along the way, Hunters naturally rose as heroes of humanity and of their nations — celebrities who commanded the public's full attention.
Goddesses of the battlefield. Idols adored by countless admirers.
Their exploits and staggering popularity naturally drove more and more women to aspire to become Hunters, and as a result the number and scale of Hunter Guilds began to swell at a rapid pace.
And in the middle of all that…
I — once an ordinary graduate of a South Korean military academy, whose miserable unit assignment had landed me the post of Adjutant to a Hunter Guild — found myself living through hell, day after day.