Somehow, I'll Help
"What do you mean?"
Seoya woke from her dream, her face stiff and rigid as she sat up in bed.
Something's gone wrong...
Blinding sunlight streamed through the curtains, suggesting she'd woken right on time for morning—exactly at seven.
Slipping on her slippers, she stepped out of her room and spotted her sisters gathered around the dining table, their expressions grave.
"Why are you all up so early?"
She directed the question at Ji Sein, who often slept in late enough to skip breakfast entirely, but Ji Sein just gnawed anxiously at her fingernail, offering no reply.
That was when Seoya realized something was seriously off. Something had happened.
"What's going on?"
"We only heard about it ourselves when we got up this morning. Apparently, the System window appeared across the entire Earth again last night."
Lee Gayeon explained, pointing to the news playing on the living room TV.
Seoya hurried to the sofa and focused on the broadcast.
A footage clip appeared on the news, seemingly captured by someone's camera around 4 AM. A Korean man in the video stared at the System window before him, exclaiming "Wh-what?!"
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Dungeon Lv.2 → Lv.3
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Monster Lv.2 → Lv.3
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Hunter Lv.1 → Lv.3
"Another update?!"
Seoya gasped in shock, turning to her sisters. The monsters from the Cheongju Dungeon were already too much for hunters, leading to gate lockdowns under the label of "anomalous phenomenon." If those got even stronger now, Earth was truly doomed!
"But that's not the end of it."
"What?"
"Keep watching the news."
At Lee Gayeon's calm urging, Seoya turned back to the screen.
The next clip featured So Eunsu, standing alone on what looked like a school field amid a monster wave. Crocodile-like monsters charged at him, and as he raised his long staff high, shouting his skill name—
Rumble... Boom!
The ground shook violently with deafening roars.
"Oh my god...!"
Meteors began plummeting from the sky. Kaboom! Explosions erupted on impact, flames flashing amid the chaos. When the smoke cleared, only So Eunsu remained. The field was cratered beyond imagination, surrounded by belly-up crocodile corpses.
Even So Eunsu himself looked stunned by the cinematic, unreal power. He glanced between his hands and the sky, then met the camera's lens with bewildered eyes.
"...They've gotten stronger?"
Seoya looked to her sisters, who nodded in unison.
"...I'll head to the guild early. Need to gauge everyone else's levels now."
"I'm coming too—gotta adapt to my new powers."
Lee Gayeon and Baek Yena prepared to leave, and amid it all, Seoya recalled the man's words from last night's dream.
"Somehow... I'll help... something like that?"
A lofty realm. A world inhabited by forms no Earth human could dare behold.
A world where voices beyond the grasp of Earthlings or even Toda's people echoed.
The man stood there.
Or did he? From an Earth-centric view—which he'd call a "primitive perspective"—he was standing.
Experiment in progress.
Target: Interference from Toda with other worlds detected.
He eyed the windows with pitying disdain. Every time certain beings on Toda tinkered, another window would pop up on Earth.
Searching worlds...
Adding System settings...
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Dungeon Lv.1 → Lv.2
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Monster Lv.1 → Lv.2
System update complete.
We will never tolerate rebellion against the current regime.
Such base antics made the man—who took no pleasure in them—grimace. He clicked his tongue, about to turn away, when he realized he hadn't checked Earth's "perspective" where these applied.
...Wait, still...
Arriving at his target, he realized the entity there was still so young. Incredibly so, compared to the future he knew.
Why is she so young?
He recalled her familiar form.
"Hello, ■■■."
"What's that in your hand?"
"A plant from Earth. It looked like it was about to wither and die."
"But now it's fine."
"Yeah, I saved it."
He couldn't comprehend her actions, but they struck him as noble.
"Now you're saving plants too?"
"Haha, hardly. I just needed something to look after."
"Needed something to look after? Didn't those baby animals you brought home recently lose their mother?"
"...Sad."
Yet she showed indifference to the orphaned young.
"You don't feel sad anymore."
"It wasn't something I could control. I used to agonize over things beyond my reach, but not anymore."
"If you want, I can bring the babies."
"No. Animals can't even withstand my aura anyway."
"I just want to give you something better to care for."
He wanted to do something for her, but she shook her head.
"I wanted something to care for, not emotional support."
No, the her he knew was neither young nor weak.
His memory rewound to their first meeting. Navy hair fluttered in the wind as she stood coldly amid it.
"I told you, I'll repay it."
Her voice was icy as frost, yet to Earthlings, it might sound almost kind.
"I haven't forgotten the names of all those who lost their lives."
She wasn't naive. She knew the consequences of her actions, anticipated retaliation, understood power had no end no matter how hard one tried.
Yet she stood at the forefront to protect, walking that endless path silently to safeguard everything.
"I need to make you realize the meaning of what you've done."
Her eyes met his, filled with...
The man halted upon reaching his goal. In his own world, an unintended oppressive tone slipped out before her.
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Dungeon Lv.2 → Lv.3
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Monster Lv.2 → Lv.3
The new windows clearly signaled Earth's greater peril.
How much time has passed?
He checked Earth's perspective again. The young entity was still there.
But he was certain that frail world couldn't handle another level-up. They'd barely survived the second; the third was impossible...
Suddenly, he missed her. In his fixation on Earth, he'd been away from her side for a while.
Yes, once this is done, I'll go to her.
But to reach her, he had to help that young, weak entity first...
That entity—so young, naive, tiny, fragile.
I have to help her...
He vaguely recalled promising in a dream, at some past point, to aid her as much as possible.
He couldn't interfere with the System already touched by others—beings his equal, whose whims he couldn't disrupt.
Target: Earth Difficulty Adjustment
Hunter Lv.1 → Lv.3
This was the extent of his aid.
This was his world. The heights. A chaotic realm without past, future, or present. No time, space, good, evil, or order.
The man gazed at the young her and murmured.