Debut
"Kraaaaaagh!"
Inside the gate — a dark, ashen forest stretching in every direction.
Hyunmu Guild's main raid team was, at this very moment, trapped in a living hell.
That was not to say the place had been hell from the beginning. It was an A-rank gate, sure, but they had made every preparation and held genuine confidence in their strategy before challenging it.
The problem was that the moment they entered the gate, a Tutorial Termination message had suddenly appeared before their eyes.
And with that message, Hyunmu Guild's hell began.
After the message, the very monsters they had been hunting became something entirely different from what they had been before.
"Hold formation! Ranged dealers, fall back — all of you, damn it!"
"Boss, Ju-yeon's down. The Bloodskin Lycans are flanking us from the side."
"I have eyes too, dammit!"
The Bloodskin Lycans they had originally hunted were nothing of the sort. The werewolves clad in crimson hide had certainly been tricky quarry, but followed the established strategy, there was no reason they couldn't be brought down.
Beasts that moved on instinct alone were never a match for human beings in the first place.
But ever since that message, the creatures' movements had changed. As though possessed of reason, they divided up roles among themselves and begun hunting Hyunmu's raid team in turn.
The sturdier, larger specimens stepped forward to soak up the Awakened's attacks, while the nimble ones bored into the rear and flanks, targeting the comparatively fragile dealers and healers. It wasn't the airtight division of labor a raid team would manage — just coordination on the most basic level — but even that alone made fighting monsters far, far harder.
"Seo Jinwoo! Use your skill, now!"
It was at that instant that golden light burst from the massive shield Seo Jinwoo carried.
Only three Bloodskin Lycans had been caught in the taunt — a skill that should have drawn the monsters' attacks. The beasts were spread wide across the field to begin with, so no real concentration of aggression had been aimed his way, and by the time he raised his shield, they had already begun keeping their distance.
Did they actually gain intelligence?
That was Seo Jintae's assessment as he glared at the Bloodskin Lycans — but the words that came out of his mouth were of an entirely different breed.
"You stupid bastard! Taunt them properly!"
From the very back of the formation, the safest spot in the field, Seo Jintae was bellowing at the top of his lungs at his own younger brother.
By any honest accounting, none of this was Jinwoo's fault — but Seo Jintae's arrows of blame always flew his brother's way.
Seo Jintae spammed his attack skills while glaring daggers at Seo Jinwoo. And of course, every skill he unleashed failed to leave so much as a scratch on the Bloodskin Lycans.
"Plant that shield! Because of you, the line's breaking through!"
"Hyung, the — the monsters' movements have changed. We can't hold like this."
"Shut up! Judgment calls are mine to make. You just plant yourself there and hold on however you can!"
At his brother's words, Seo Jinwoo gripped his shield again with trembling hands.
He had plenty he wanted to say — but he bit his tongue and kept it all inside.
It wasn't as though Seo Jinwoo was unaware that his own brother was using him and tossing him about. It was only natural that the rest of the guild trusted Seo Jinwoo more than the willful Seo Jintae.
Countless people had counseled him, time and again, to snap out of it. But Seo Jinwoo had his reasons for being unable to simply walk away from his brother.
Because he believed it was entirely his fault that his brother had become the man he was.
While Seo Jinwoo had vanished into that other world, a great many things had happened at his home. His parents had scraped together every won they had — and then some — searching for their youngest son, and in the end, they had lost their health on top of everything else. That was also why his older brother, once a promising university student, had abandoned his studies before finishing them and thrown himself into hunter work. The only one Awakened enough to shoulder the family was him.
By the time Seo Jinwoo returned, his parents had already passed, and his brother was drowning in debt.
And so, every time Seo Jinwoo looked at his brother, guilt gnawed at him. Even if everyone else called him selfish and venal, he believed that what had warped him was entirely his own doing.
"Hyung. I'll manage things here somehow. So just run. Please."
"Don't talk nonsense. How did I raise you — to die here? Seo Jinwoo, you little shit, you hold the line if it kills you!"
Seo Jintae snarled and cursed, straining every nerve. Whatever worry he felt for his brother was outweighed, far more strongly, by how precious Seo Jinwoo's abilities and standing were to him.
But as time bled away, the situation only slid further downhill. The raid team's formation was collapsing in earnest, and the Bloodskin Lycans grew that much more adept at the hunt.
"Guildmaster! We can't hold any longer!"
"Damn it. Fine, fine. Just — a moment. Just a little longer—"
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It was at that moment that footfalls came crushing through the earth from deep within the ashen forest, each one grinding the ground beneath it.
Those who froze at the sound weren't only Seo Jintae and the Hyunmu Guild members. The Bloodskin Lycans, drunk on the pleasure of hunting humans, also went stiff with terror, tucked their tails, and scattered.
"Grrrrrrr…"
Emerging from the darkness, its jet-black mane streaming behind it, was a single werewolf. The problem was its height — it stood well over three meters tall.
The Lycan Lord. With the abrupt Tutorial Termination, the true master of this gate had made its appearance.
"Th-the boss? No — why is the boss mob out on the field instead of the boss room?"
One of Hyunmu Guild's squad leaders muttered it with a hollow, vacant expression.
Ordinarily, a gate's boss was supposed to wait for the hunters in the deepest chamber, the boss room. But that was common sense from an era when the tutorial still applied. When even common monsters had gained intelligence, there was no law saying the boss above them had to stay pent up in its own little corner.
"Seo Jinwoo! Block it! Block it no matter what!"
At the sight of the Lycan Lord, Seo Jintae screamed, his face drained white.
Flash.
Golden light poured from Seo Jinwoo's shield once more, and the Lycan Lord's glowing red eyes fixed on him.
BOOM—.
"Ughaaagh!"
Leaping at a speed too fast for the eye to follow, the Lycan Lord's forepaw slammed down on Seo Jinwoo's shield. With a thunderclap like lightning striking, the golden wall Seo Jinwoo had deployed began to spiderweb with massive cracks.
"Guildmaster, what do we do now?"
"D-dammit. Withdraw. Withdraw! Seo Jinwoo, you hold to the last! Guard our retreat with your life!"
The first to turn and run was Seo Jintae. And once the guildmaster moved, the remaining guild members slowly began backing away from the line as well. It wasn't as though any of them felt good about abandoning a boy so young — but between guilt and death, discomfort was the easier choice.
"Hh… hhh."
Seo Jinwoo could feel his comrades fleeing behind his back. His arm was already broken, and his remaining divine power was scraping the bottom of the barrel. The boss before him, and even the Bloodskin Lycans circling for an opening around him — he no longer had the strength left to fight any of them.
So this is where it ends.
Reaching his limit, Seo Jinwoo thought it with a bitter, self-mocking smile. He figured he had finally repaid the debt of gratitude he owed his brother, and a strange lightness washed over him.
There was only one regret: that he would never get to say goodbye to Choi Seoyeon, the only person who had ever comforted him.
"You give up faster than I expected."
It was at that instant that an unfamiliar voice spoke, and someone stepped between Seo Jinwoo and his death.
"Right flank! The right flank is collapsing!"
While Hyunmu Guild in Gangnam was trapped in its own hell, Yeongdeungpo was greeted by no small chaos of its own. With the Tutorial Termination message, one of the C-rank gates that had opened in the heart of Yeongdeungpo mutated into a B-rank and began spewing out orcs.
Even so, Yeongdeungpo had it better. At Kang Iseol's direction, Baekya and Cheongseol, bound together under the name of Hyeolcheon along with the newly formed guilds, were responding with swift precision.
"Pull them as far as possible toward ground that favors us. Awakened with ranged damage, conserve your skills. Tanks, fall back slowly, a little at a time."
Baekya's Guild Master, Kang Iseol, was issuing orders in the thick of it, straining herself at the front line. And she wasn't all talk, either — she waded into combat regularly, which was why her clothes were already a total mess of the monsters' green blood.
The Hyeolcheon Alliance had suffered no casualties yet, but the problem was that the tide of orcs pouring from the gate simply would not end. South Korea had weathered several monster break phenomena by now, but never before had orcs surged out in such a relentless, unbroken stream.
Worse still, the creatures were scheming with the same cunning as their kin in Gangnam. Kang Iseol was doing her best to lure them where she wanted, but it was no easy feat — because interspersed among the orc warriors, the orc shamans seemed to be directing the others.
The shamans were cunning, and suspicious to boot.
It's like fighting an actual army. At this rate, our formation breaks before long.
Kang Iseol scanned the battlefield with anxious eyes.
It was at that moment that a single car pulled to a stop behind the defensive line. When she saw the face of the man stepping out of it, Kang Iseol's expression visibly brightened.
"Hunter Choi Taemin! Is Jaeseong-nim with you?"
She asked it of Choi Taemin, but the person climbing out of the passenger seat was not Lee Jaeseong. A man in a skin-tight T-shirt, utterly out of place with the situation, was glancing around as he stepped out of the car.
"Don't tell me Jaeseong-nim isn't coming?"
"Well, you see, my brother-in-law has business over in Gangnam, so he's headed that way—"
"I'm sorry? Ah, th-then here—"
Kang Iseol's words trailed off in flustered confusion. It was Jaeseong's decision, so there had to be a reason — but the fact remained that the battle was not going well.
"Th-that said, my brother-in-law did send us this friend here instead—"
Choi Taemin gestured at the man who had come along with them. And that was the moment Kang Iseol's gaze landed on Kang Samsik.
"…I'm sorry?"
Truthfully, Kang Iseol could not process what she was seeing. That Choi Taemin's arrival would help was beyond obvious — but the man beside him was a face even she had never seen before.
"Hey, miss. Those walking pig bastards over there — I just kill 'em, right?"
"Mi… miss? Are you — are you talking to me?"
Kang Iseol asked, thrown completely off balance by an address she had never once anticipated. But the man didn't seem to need her answer at all; he just smirked and picked at his ear.
"Well, judging by the situation, seems like killing them's fine."
It was at that moment that the man in the skin-tight T-shirt vanished.
He simply hurled himself forward, charging straight into the orc warriors.
"Uh… huh?"
Several Awakened who spotted Kang Samsik vaulting ahead of their lines let the words slip with dumbstruck faces. But it took only the barest sliver of time for those dumbstruck faces to twist into open horror.
"Drop dead, every last one of you pig bastards. Hahahahaha!"
KWA-BOOM—.
The man in the tight shirt threw himself at the orc horde — and in that instant, astonishingly, the orcs' bodies began to transform into ground meat.
No skills. No magic. No flashy effects of any kind. With nothing but overwhelming, brutal force, the man was quite literally tearing the orc legion apart.
"Who — who is that man?"
Kang Iseol, watching the man's rampage with wide eyes, asked Choi Taemin.
"Well, how should I put it… I believe he's my brother-in-law's subordinate. Ah — his name is Kang Samsik, apparently."
And so this was the stage upon which the Mad Dog of the Demonic Cult, Kang Samsik, made his glorious debut.