The Emergence of an Unprecedented Special Gate
It was the Great Cataclysm—the event in which Gates erupted across the planet and threw the entire world into pandemonium. The appearance of monsters and the awakening of a handful of humans occurred almost simultaneously. Those Awakened began raiding the dungeons connected to the Gates and soon became known as Hunters, seizing both wealth and power for themselves. And so twenty years passed.
Then one day, a special Gate was detected in Seoul. The term “special” meant the gate’s magic power signature refused to remain constant. Experts described it as low magic stability. The lower the number, the more erratic the dungeon’s internal laws became and the higher the chance of bizarre phenomena. It was a danger factor entirely separate from the dungeon’s rank, which was determined by measured energy output.
For example, a Gate in China that measured A-rank but only 30 percent stability had such a vicious internal structure that even after feeding it Hunters, the raid team failed to clear it in time. The result was a Dungeon Break. An entire major city was reduced to ruins. It remained the lowest stability dungeon ever recorded in human history.
The World Hunter Association officially classified any Gate below 70 percent stability as a special Gate. Many claimed even that threshold was unreasonably strict, since most Gates measured above 90 percent.
And yet.
“Below five percent?!”
“To be exact, it’s averaging around three percent, sir! The readings keep fluctuating!”
“What kind of Gate even is this…”
An unprecedented special Gate—the first of its kind in world history—had appeared.
The Deputy Director of the Hunter Administration Bureau, who had sprinted all the way to the situation room, clutched his forehead and let out a groan.
“The rank. What about the rank?”
“Well… that is…”
The employee’s eyes darted around as though searching for an escape route. The deputy director clenched his fist until the knuckles turned white.
“The rank is also undetermined. The energy output is randomly flipping between S-class and F-class with no pattern whatsoever. At this point the rank itself is meaningless.”
“…Ha.”
Goddamn it. The curse slipped out before he could stop it.
Maybe the equipment was malfunctioning. He contacted the on-site personnel, but the reply only confirmed the nightmare.
The Gate’s visible color keeps changing too!
Only despairing reports came back. Though no one said it aloud, every person in the situation room was thinking the exact same thing.
Ah. Korea’s fucked.
This wasn’t some provincial backwater—it had appeared in the heart of Seoul. If the raid failed and they missed the clearing window, a Dungeon Break would occur. The scale of the resulting disaster was painfully easy to imagine.
They could not simply sit and watch.
Employees burning with patriotism immediately began searching for solutions under the deputy director’s orders. Just then, one of them who had been on the phone shouted.
“The Kato Satsuki team that was already in the country has accepted the additional commission!”
“Oh! That’s excellent news!”
“We can finally breathe!”
Who was Kato Satsuki? A Japanese A-rank mage hunter and one of the top three dungeon explorers on the planet. One of her signature abilities was taming magic. She could send creatures into a Gate without ever entering herself and still gather critical information. She was the perfect vanguard specialist for special dungeons.
Sighs of relief rippled across the room. The more dangerous the dungeon, the more precious every scrap of vanguard intel became. It was directly tied to the raid team’s survival rate.
“She’d better earn every penny we’re paying her.”
“No kidding. Honestly, I just hope the boss is weak even if the irregularity is off the charts.”
“It’s not impossible.”
During the brief lull, a few administration staff sipped coffee and spoke in low voices. They prayed the dungeon would be clearable. They prayed the monsters inside would never spill into Seoul. Everyone waited with bated breath for the information Kato Satsuki would deliver.
Besides, who knew? The dungeon might be packed with mana stones and priceless treasures. After all, a dungeon was a place that offered both mortal danger and dazzling opportunity. It was precisely why Hunters risked their lives stepping through Gates.
After what felt like an eternity of waiting, a voice rang out.
“Incoming report!”
The data Satsuki had sent finally reached the situation room. Once translated, it read as follows.
NO WAY, NO WAY, NO WAY!
This dungeon is completely insane!
My most precious creatures got their connection severed in a single instant!
I’ve confirmed it’s not a one-way Gate, so the rest is up to you people in Korea to figure out directly!
“……”
“……”
A heavy silence blanketed the situation room. The hunter they had paid a fortune to hire had sent back exactly one useful piece of information: at least entry and exit were possible. Of course that was important. But still.
“That’s it…?”
“Just how vicious is this dungeon…?”
The fact that it was a special Gate with magic stability below five percent and an undetermined rank made everything worse. Any variable could appear and no one would be surprised.
The deputy director pressed hard between his eyebrows, then gave the order.
“Tell Kato Satsuki the commission isn’t over yet. We’re sending our own vanguard exploration team in immediately.”
A beautiful fairy stood before the cave, cheeks puffed out in fury as she glared at the scene ahead. The desolate plain stretching from the entrance was littered with four-legged creatures lying limp and lifeless. Beneath the corpses, flowers that had only just bloomed were cruelly crushed and soaked in blood. The sweet floral scent that brushed her nose was tainted with the metallic stench of gore.
I barely managed to succeed!
She had been caught in a bizarre spatial phenomenon inside a storm of grotesque magic power, as if the very fabric of space had been gouged out. After spending so long in that place, she had finally performed a proper fairy’s act—even if the scale was modest. She had coaxed beautiful flowers into bloom.
Yet before she could even savor the joy, strange creatures had burst out and trampled everything. The violation of both her flowers and her precious memories made rage explode inside her. The result was the carnage now spread before her eyes.
“Sheesh…”
Her anger still refused to settle. How could she calm down? The answer came quickly.
Thud! Thud!
She kicked the corpses aside and swept the plain clean once more. To be precise, she had used overwhelming force to essentially erase the ground itself. The power known as magic—or Miracle—manifested the user’s concrete will through magic power. The problem was that for a long time she had pursued only destruction, obsessed with the single goal of killing a god.
As a result—
Imagining it… is really hard.
Her unconscious mind kept slamming on the brakes. The act of trampling felt far more natural to her current self than the act of blooming flowers. That was no good. A will without firm conviction could never become a true Miracle. Still, simply knowing the problem didn’t mean she could fix it overnight.
“Huuu—”
She could only let out a long, heavy sigh.
Still, I succeeded once. That’s something.
Ari clasped her hands behind her back and pondered. If she kept trying, perhaps she could handle Miracles the way she once had. Even if this was a barren place with no sisters to laugh and play with, no humans offering tributes in worship.
“……”
Just thinking about it made her depressed again. She fiddled absently with the ends of her hair and lowered her gaze. Perhaps because she was a fairy rather than human, her long silver hair—tipped with the faintest blue—always shimmered with a healthy luster and gently caught the sunlight without any special care.
Maybe she should head to the spring nearby and try to lift her mood. As the thought crossed her mind—
Crunch. Crunch.
Sudden footsteps. She sensed them immediately.
Are these the same things from before? Why do these pests keep showing up?
The image of her crushed flowers flashed through her mind. The anger she had barely suppressed began to boil once more. She was used to enduring fury, but did she really need to hold back here? These intruders had dared to trespass on her domain. She would teach them a painful lesson.
She raised her head and stared in the direction the newcomers were approaching. Her body began to ripple and distort into a strange, amorphous shape.
What she saw was—
“Huk… It’s a monster!”
“Shit! Everyone run!”
A group of humans who turned tail and fled the instant they laid eyes on her. There was zero hesitation in their flight. Ari, who had been gathering power to unleash it, faltered and stopped.
Humans?
They weren’t the strange four-legged beasts. Their clothing also looked oddly familiar. Memories from her previous life surged up, and her heart fluttered for no reason. She hurriedly suppressed her power and returned her body to its usual form.
Whether she did or not, the humans never looked back. They were too busy running for their lives.
“Wait!”
She shouted at the top of her voice, but—
“Hey! Move it! That thing’s clearly the boss!”
“Y-yes!”
Only one man glanced back for the briefest moment. His comrades snatched him up and the entire group vanished in the blink of an eye. They were true professionals of escape.
“……”
Ari touched her fingertips to her lips, sinking deep into thought.
Korean Hunter Administration Bureau headquarters. The hunter team dispatched as vanguard into the rank-undetermined special Gate had returned. The fact that they had come back without a single casualty created a buoyant atmosphere.
The leader of the exploration-specialist team gave his report.
“The field appears to be mountainous terrain interspersed with hills and plains.”
“Manageable! And?”
“We encountered only one monster during the search.”
“Wait… you can’t mean…”
The administration team leader’s voice trailed off. The raid leader nodded.
“It seems all the Gate’s magic power is originating from that single entity. Even from a distance it looked far from ordinary.”
“……”
“……”
The mood in the room plummeted instantly. Just how monstrous and grotesque must a creature be for a single individual to generate an entire Gate of this magnitude? Anxiety spiked.
It was exactly then that the employee maintaining the field link cried out in a flustered voice.
“The Gate’s energy output has stabilized at F-rank and stopped fluctuating!”
“…And the stability reading?”
“S-still below five percent.”
“Goddamn it!”
It wasn’t even trying to lure them in. The curse had burst out in front of high-ranking officials, yet no one rebuked him. Every single person in the conference room was busy swallowing their own curses.