Anomaly
The moment I opened the front door and stepped inside, I could see Seojun and Seoyeon, who had been watching TV in the living room, both look up at me at once.
“Uncle, you're home—”
Seoyeon's cheerful greeting cut off mid-word.
Her gaze had shifted to Samsik, who was pressed close behind me as he followed me in.
“Wh-who is...?”
“Ah, say hello. Someone I knew... back when I was in another world.”
No sooner had my brief introduction ended than Samsik abruptly stepped forward.
Then he dropped to his knees on the living room floor with a bang loud enough to ring through the house.
“Uh...”
It was only natural that Seoyeon and Seojun were flustered.
But Samsik simply pressed his forehead flat against the entryway floor.
“I greet you! I, Kang Samsik, bow before the honored and august family of the Cult Leader!”
“...Excuse me?”
“Having owed the Cult Leader a debt of gratitude since my days in Murim, I, Kang Samsik, swear here and now that from this day forward, I shall treasure the Cult Leader's family more than my own life!”
At Samsik's thunderous voice, my brother-in-law naturally emerged from his room as well.
“...Brother-in-law, who might that be?”
“Don't worry about him. He's, well... the type whose loyalty is a bit excessive.”
I sighed and said that much to my brother-in-law.
“Enough with the theatrics, get up. You're scaring the kids. And for now, go wash up first.”
“As you command!”
Samsik sprang to his feet at my words and walked straight into the living room.
Then, moments later, he turned back to me and asked,
“Cult Leader, where might one find water nearby...?”
I let out another sigh at the question and pointed him roughly toward the bathroom.
And then, a short while later—
Samsik's shrieks of astonishment came bursting out of the bathroom one after another.
“Ohhhh! Water comes out of the wall?! Impossible! Hot water, no less!”
At Samsik's voice, marveling over the smallest of things, I could only laugh.
Come to think of it, the technological gap between that world and this one was bound to be enormous. From Samsik's perspective, this place might as well have been the land where immortals dwelled.
“Jaeseong. That, um... is he one of the Blood Cult people you mentioned before?”
“Yes. That's him.”
At my answer, my brother-in-law looked at me with an expression that was a little complicated.
He already knew I was a Cult Leader, but he'd never imagined someone from the Blood Cult would actually come knocking.
“So people from that side can cross over here?”
“Ah, it's a bit of a long story, but I think it has something to do with that Gate I told you about.”
“I see. Still, he looks older than you, doesn't he?”
“...He's younger. Than me.”
I replied with an awkward expression.
Now that I thought about it, I had never actually explained that I'd spent thirty years in that other world, or that I currently looked this young because I'd undergone Reversal of Age.
“Well, time flows a little differently over there than it does here. Anyway, he really is younger than me.”
When I glossed over it like that, my brother-in-law didn't press any further.
He simply gave a hollow laugh at the sound of Samsik repeatedly exclaiming from the bathroom—“Ooooh! It makes bubbles!”—while Seojun and Seoyeon, tension long since forgotten, were peeking at the bathroom door and snickering to themselves.
It was an utterly peaceful day. A perfectly ordinary one, in fact.
And that fragile calm shattered—precisely in that moment.
Global mana saturation has reached 30%.
Planetary protective barrier functions will be deactivated.
Terminating the Tutorial.
I narrowed my eyes at the message floating before me.
It was the first one I'd seen since slaying that vampire after saving my brother-in-law.
“Brother-in-law!”
“U-Uncle? Did you just see that? The message?”
The problem was that the message had apparently appeared not just for me, but for my brother-in-law and Seoyeon as well.
Only Seojun kept glancing around in confusion, entirely clueless.
“WOOOOOH! Paradise! So paradise is right here!”
Needless to say, Samsik in the bathroom had no idea what was happening either.
The hunter-related communities were in a complete uproar.
The sudden message announcing the end of the Tutorial was problem enough, but all over the world, anomalous phenomena were being observed simultaneously.
The mana wavelengths of Gates that had been stable until now were running rampant of their own accord, and in some cases Gates were shifting rank, or unexpected gate breaks were breaking out.
“Gate wavelengths across all of Seoul are rising simultaneously.”
“This is a nightmare. What about the teams mid-raid right now? Tell them to evacuate everyone immediately!”
The Hunter Management Department had fallen into just as much chaos.
Park Jaehyun, summoned in for the emergency, was pulling his hair out amid the blare of alarms ringing from every direction.
Even as he stood there, the identification markers for the dozens of Gates displayed on the situation board were changing one after another.
The problem was that even watching it all unfold, there was precious little Park Jaehyun could actually do.
The guilds weren't particularly cooperative with the government, and even the ones that were had no presence of mind right now to be taking calls from the Management Department.
If anything, it was the guilds that had somehow landed in crisis who were hounding the department, demanding it produce a solution.
“We've already relayed the order everywhere we could reach. The problem is there's no way to contact the raid teams that are already in progress.”
“Haah. And the request for support from the major guilds?”
“They say they're stretched to the limit just defending their own districts. Even the ones relatively unaffected are keeping their distance, saying they need to monitor the situation.”
At those words, Park Jaehyun couldn't help but wear a frustrated expression.
This incident had turned the whole world upside down, but nowhere had the fallout hit harder than Korea.
The system of having the leading guilds separately manage each district had tripped them up at the worst possible moment.
“Team Leader. The wavelength of the A-Rank Gate in Gangnam is rising right now.”
“What did you say?”
“By the numbers, it exceeds the Yeouido Gate. It's being classified as S-Rank.”
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
At the sudden mention of an S-Rank wavelength, Park Jaehyun's jaw dropped.
Korea had already been through hell failing to deal with a single Gate in Yeouido—and now a Gate even worse than that had appeared in Gangnam.
“Is it empty right now?”
“No. We've confirmed that Hyunmu Guild has already entered.”
“Hyunmu?”
At the monitor operator's report, Park Jaehyun felt the world tilt before his eyes.
Hyunmu might be the guild representing Gangnam, but it was hard to believe they could clear an S-Rank Gate unscathed.
If anything, the only scenario surfacing in Park Jaehyun's mind was the worst one—total annihilation.
No. We're in a situation where every single Awakened counts.
The Gate rampage that had erupted alongside the sudden Tutorial termination message.
Thinking about what was to come, Awakened individuals were only going to become more and more vital.
On top of that, Hyunmu Guild's roster included the returnee Seo Jinwoo—and he, too, had headed into that problem Gate for the raid.
Looking ahead, they clearly needed to be rescued. The problem was that no guild existed capable of deploying into an S-Rank Gate on the spot.
And if that had been possible, they would never have left the Yeouido Gate sitting there in the first place.
I'll pay this debt back someday, you said.
Suddenly, the image of Lee Jaeseong saying exactly that to him flashed through Park Jaehyun's mind.
The man who had cleared that very Yeouido Gate single-handedly.
If it was that man, surely he could resolve this situation somehow.
The problem was that this so-called debt amounted to little more than granting him a minor favor when he first arrived in Korea, and showing the way for the monster that had crossed the border.
He'd thought it would be shameless to ask for help over something so trivial—but there was no time now to worry about shame.
“I need to step out and make a call.”
Park Jaehyun said that much to the monitor operators and hurried out into the corridor.
It was only after the ringtone had sounded several times that the voice on the other end finally came through.
—Hunter Lee Jaeseong. I'm sorry to call you so suddenly.
Park Jaehyun's voice through the receiver was shaking terribly.
Even so, he urgently launched into an explanation of why he was calling.
A nationwide rampage of Gates.
And the fact that the main raid team of the Gangnam guild Hyunmu was trapped inside a Gate that had turned S-Rank.
—I know this is an unreasonable request, but could you help us? If Hyunmu Guild is wiped out, there'll be a power vacuum in Gangnam immediately.
Park Jaehyun's voice through the phone sounded utterly desperate.
Of course, there was no reason I had to grant Park Jaehyun's request.
Even if I owed him something, I'd judged that its weight didn't come close to obligating me to grant whatever he asked.
The Tutorial is ending.
But the message still hung there before me.
I knew perfectly well what a tutorial was.
The system that preceded the main game, helping players acclimate before the real thing began.
The problem was that this wasn't a game—and that I had never voluntarily signed up for it.
One day, Gates had suddenly appeared on Earth, and without understanding anything, I'd been forced to spend thirty years in the most unlikely of places, a world called Murim.
And now I'd somehow made it back to Earth, yet I still hadn't found any trace of my sister.
So it was no wonder that a message declaring all of that a mere tutorial seemed to mock me.
Well then. Let me go see for myself just how impressive the main stage really is.
Besides, if only to protect my family going forward, I needed to understand how this situation worked.
“Where did you say it was again?”
—N-near Gangnam Station.
I ended the call, leaving Park Jaehyun's voice behind on the receiver.
When I turned around, I saw my brother-in-law standing there with a rigid expression, and Seoyeon clutching a frightened Seojun tightly in her arms.
“Jaeseong. I think the situation is serious. Yeonhee just called—she says a Gate has broken out over in Yeongdeungpo.”
“Yeongdeungpo?”
“Yeah. Apparently they're responding somehow for now, but she's hoping you'll come.”
The instant my brother-in-law finished speaking, the bathroom door burst open with perfect timing.
“Honestly, Cult Leader! How can the water here be so smooth and fragrant? As expected, the land where you were born must truly be paradise.”
I gave a hollow laugh at the sight of Samsik, dressed in the clothes my brother-in-law had tossed him.
While the rest of the world spoke of the apocalypse, the sight of this man rhapsodizing about paradise was absurdly funny.
“Samsik.”
“Yes, Cult Leader.”
“You just bathed, but you're going to need to work up another sweat.”
At my words, Samsik's eyes widened like lanterns—then broke into a grin stretching from ear to ear.
“As you command.”
“Brother-in-law, head to Yeongdeungpo with Samsik. Seoyeon, you stay here with Seojun.”
“O-oh, okay.”
Fortunately, she seemed to have grasped the gravity of the situation, because Seoyeon didn't put up any fuss.
“And you, brother-in-law?”
“I have some business of my own to attend to.”
Having said that to my brother-in-law, I strode straight out the door.
It was time to make certain whoever—or whatever—had dared prattle on about a Tutorial termination to my face learned exactly who I was.