Hell Gate
“Very well. Where should we start cleaning house?”
“At present, the Seoul branch still has two humanoid entities, one location-type, and one object-type remaining.”
“A location-type? Now I’m curious. Let’s go.”
“You must be especially careful with the location-type. The branch was built here precisely because of it.”
Because of a location-type entity, the Seoul branch had been established this deep underground?
Why?
If it was this far below the surface, what happened above shouldn’t matter at all.
The place Lee Hanshin led him to required descending even farther by stairs from the chamber where they had captured the Hellhound.
“This is it. The location-type is sealed behind one kilometer of special BMS-treated metal.”
“One question.”
“Anything.”
“Is this something I can actually handle?”
“We don’t know. Every attempt we’ve made so far has failed. The records say even the Hero failed.”
Failed even with a god’s power.
What an incompetent god.
He had a rough idea which god it had been. Manannán mac Lir, or something like that. A Celtic deity said to govern the sea and magic.
Still, a god’s seat wasn’t something you won in a game of rock-paper-scissors.
Which meant the spatial entity waiting ahead had partially nullified that god’s authority.
Even so—
“Doesn’t matter.”
It didn’t matter.
That was his stance.
He would see it with his own eyes and decide. If it didn’t work, he would simply grow stronger until it did.
“This should be fun.”
Sunghyun licked his dry lips.
Layer upon layer of doors opened a fraction with every step he took. One step forward, the door ahead opened; the door behind sealed shut.
“Security’s solid, I’ll give them that.”
How long had he walked? It felt like ten minutes at least.
Clunk—
A door of a different color from the rest swung open.
Beyond it waited a mine that looked surprisingly vast.
—This place was once used as a gold mine during the Joseon era.
Right where North and South Korea met.
“Was Joseon-era technology capable of digging this deep?”
—They knew about BMS to some degree. In fact, they may have understood it better than we do. They lived with BMS as part of daily life.
—This mine was created through BMS back then. Special treatment allows even ordinary people to walk through it. The entrance is on the North Korean side.
The entrance was in North Korea?
“Shouldn’t North Korea be managing this, then?”
—You didn’t know? There is no Control Bureau in North Korea right now. And frankly, they have no capacity to care about this place. Things are far too chaotic inside their borders.
A statement that invited all sorts of speculation, but that wasn’t important right now.
“So what exactly does the thing in here do?”
—A space where time flows differently from the outside. A space that, at some point, severs all connection to the outside world. It has many names. The most common is ‘Hell Gate.’
“Hell Gate, huh… Hellhound, Hell Gate—does our country just have a thing for hell?”
—Haha… who knows. In any case, where you are standing now is the last stretch still touched by human hands.
“And past this point is hell itself?”
—If you want to put it that way, yes.
A feeling that was half-understood, half not—like sand slipping through his fingers.
“I don’t fully get it, but walking in should give me some answers.”
—The speakers only exist up to this point. The watch I gave you has been specially BMS-treated; it shows real-world time. Under no circumstances stay inside for more than one real-world hour.
One hour—the limit the Control Bureau had managed to determine.
—We once threw the Hellhound in there. It came back out exactly one hour later.
They put a Hellhound into hell and it ran away.
It sounded like a bad joke.
“Got it, more or less. All right then.”
Sunghyun stepped forward.
Lee Hanshin clenched his fists as he watched Sunghyun’s figure shrink on the camera feed.
“Please… show us something.”
A possibility no one else could see—he desperately hoped this man would reveal it.
Lee Hanshin did not believe in gods, yet in this moment he needed something like faith.
Please let that human succeed.
Only by resolving an incomprehensible phenomenon like this would they finally be able to stand against Grade 6 entities.
Those things manipulated reality freely, after all.
People usually ranked BMS danger levels by combat power, threat, and containment feasibility.
But the most critical factor was reality-manipulation index—how thoroughly an entity could rewrite the world.
That was what mattered most.
The Hell Gate before them ranked highest in reality manipulation even among Grade 5 threats.
Time distortion, disconnection from reality, illusions, delirium—it drove anyone who entered mad.
Lee Hanshin knew because he had once spent roughly two minutes inside, measured in real time.
One real-world minute equaled one full day inside.
He had believed his mental fortitude was strong, yet he had crumbled almost instantly.
Kim Sunghyun had entered at 03:20 a.m.
Even now, Sunghyun’s time was accelerating.
Inside, Lee Hanshin had seen the Jangsan Tiger that once tormented him, and the phantoms of his parents.
Voices had whispered in his ears, tormenting him.
Later even full illusions appeared. Whether they were truly illusions, he still did not know.
Agents had dragged him out…
If he had been alone, the place would have swallowed him whole. A solution?
“If I knew something like that, I would have fixed it already.”
The most troublesome ability of that space:
It randomly abducted people from the surface and dropped them underground.
The conditions were unknown.
Suddenly, a person would simply appear deep below.
Fortunately, the first appearance point was always the entrance to the Hell Gate.
Normally agents were dispatched immediately for rescue.
A BMS with such deranged reality-manipulation power was a serious threat to Korea.
“I’d love to erase the Hell Gate while we have the chance… but can he actually do it?”
He could not be certain.
No matter how overwhelming Sunghyun’s combat power had been against the Hellhound, this space was not something that could be solved by force alone.
“All I can do is pray.”
That was what Lee Hanshin believed.
A space that force alone could not resolve.
At that same moment, Sunghyun was simply walking through an endless tunnel with no end in sight.
He checked the watch. Outside, only about two seconds had passed.
“Tsk. Feels like a whole hour already.”
The instant Sunghyun opened his sensory field, a familiar voice brushed his ear.
‘Sunghyun, it’s Mom.’
What…?
Impossible.
He seized the mind that had begun to blur and locked it down again.
His mother’s voice whispered to him.
‘Come this way. Mom’s over here.’
Veins stood out on Sunghyun’s face.
“You fucking bastard…”
Anyone who heard that voice normally fell into hallucination and chased it mindlessly.
But Sunghyun’s mental strength was already far beyond human.
He felt none of the emotions an ordinary person would have felt—grief, sorrow, any of that.
He did feel something, though.
Rage.
A thick, primordial fury poured through his mana into the air itself.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—
The mine trembled.
Lightning answered his emotion, turning crimson.
Crackle—ssssss—
Wherever the lightning touched, the mine walls melted red-hot.
Only then did the Hell Gate realize something had gone terribly wrong.
“You dare… imitate my mother…?”
Through the milk of Audhumla he had met his mother again and steadied his heart.
Because of that he had been able to push farther forward.
Because of that he had met Armin.
And now this BMS was mocking him by wearing her face and voice.
“I see how you work.”
Sunghyun drove his sword into the floor.
Kraaaack—
The blade sank halfway into the stone.
Lightning crashed down into a mine that should have had no atmosphere at all.
BOOM— CRACK-BOOM—
“Lightning is originally just a discharge of flame. But lightning born from mana and mental imagery isn’t bound by physical laws like that.”
Which was why lightning could strike even in a place like this.
Sunghyun closed his eyes.
Every bolt became an eye for him.
He no longer needed his own two eyes; they were only a hindrance.
He simply saw. He simply felt that he was seeing.
He hunted for the core of the damned BMS that had dared to copy his mother’s voice.
Current raced through the earth, sweeping every path of the mine.
The endlessly spreading current suddenly changed direction in one particular spot.
The BMS had manipulated it.
Even if the creature had twisted the flow to hide itself, there was no way Sunghyun would miss something so unnatural and awkward.
A cold smile curved his lips.
“Found you.”
All that remained was to carve a path.
This place sat roughly nine kilometers underground.
The sheer weight and density of the earth itself were immense.
Even the rage-laced lightning from moments ago had only managed to scratch the surface.
He could go no farther.
Adding one more mental image would probably yield the same result.
Given the depth, collapse was not a concern.
He only needed to destroy.
So then—
How?
One Point.
Gather everything into a single point from the outside. Then fuse.
“I’ve never tried this before.”
Normally Sunghyun mixed the lightning flowing from his heart with the mana of his lower dantian so that it carried a single mental image.
The completed lightning then erupted according to his will.
But the moment the mental image of One Point manifested externally rather than internally, two images could still be mixed inside as usual.
And the final image of One Point would bind with them from the outside.
Sunghyun focused.
This was his first attempt.
Power would increase; the burden would increase as well.
The Vajra would share that burden with him.
His arms and legs began to tremble.
He dragged every shred of consciousness he possessed, mixing two mental images into the lightning while simultaneously adding one more from the outside.
Destruction and Ruin.
Destruction & Ruin.
Lightning bearing two mental images gathered at the tip of his sword.
“Now fuse them into one…!”
Destruction & Ruin
Three mental images fused through the heretical path
Crackle-ssssssss—!
When three mental images merged through the heretical path rather than the orthodox one, rejection flared.
Here Sunghyun’s mana played the decisive role.
Taiji.
The primordial state of all things before heaven and earth were divided.
The sum of everything.
The moment Taiji harmonized the mental images, the thrashing power that had been about to explode fell silent.
“Perfect…”
Lightning like a miniature universe settled upon the blade.
Aimed at one target alone.
Sunghyun thrust the sword forward.
“Go.”
An overwhelming torrent of mana and lightning poured from his blade.
Divine punishment from the myths.
Heavenly Thunder
Divine punishment that annihilates the target’s soul
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAK!!!
Lightning poured forth to erase the single sinner before him.
It punched through the walls with absurd ease.
How far had it gone?
The moment the lightning pierced every wall, its speed suddenly plummeted.
No—more precisely, time itself slowed.
The farther it advanced, the slower the lightning progressed.
Yet Sunghyun did not panic.
He simply, calmly, forced more mana into it.
“Destruction & Ruin makes no exception even for laws.”
There was only one way those things rewrote reality:
They overlaid their own laws upon this world.
That was why he had mixed the mental images of Destruction and Ruin.
So that lightning which transcended law would shatter the new law and keep advancing.
The lightning’s speed gradually increased again.
The Hell Gate’s law had begun to crack.
Rumble-rumble-rumble—
The entire mine started to shake.
This would be the creature’s final thrashing.
Sunghyun felt it.
But before the destruction heaven itself had sent down, the struggles of a mere insect meant nothing.
The lightning smashed the Hell Gate’s law to pieces.
Lightning rained upon the Hell Gate, and the structure that looked almost like a Japanese torii gradually lost its original form.
It began to melt under overwhelming firepower.
The more it melted, the greater the pressure crushing down on Sunghyun.
The original BMS treatment of the mine was unraveling.
He checked the watch. Time was accelerating.
Real-world time was catching up.
“Grrraaagh!”
He poured every last drop of mana into the lightning and drove it through to the end.
At last the Hell Gate burned to ash.
Account balance has been updated.
With that notification, Sunghyun flopped onto his back.
“Yeah… I’m done for today.”
At that same moment, Lee Hanshin felt the shift in the air currents inside the mine and knew, with absolute certainty, that Sunghyun had succeeded.