What Happened That Day
The hall went dead silent in an instant.
Everyone stared at me, their faces frozen stiff.
I'd stirred up enough of a commotion by now.
About time to start reeling them in.
It was time to get to the heart of the matter. I drew the device I'd prepared from inside my jacket, adjusting its angle deliberately so the Cheonseong logo caught the light.
Confusion rippled through the room. Since no one seemed likely to speak first, I opened my mouth myself.
"Well, then. You're all dying to know what this is, aren't you?"
I felt like some pitchman hawking miracle tonics, but I kept my easy showman's face and pressed on.
"As for what it is... seeing it will be faster than me explaining."
With that, I connected the device to the screen I'd prepared.
And then—
Fzzt!
An image slowly flickered to life on the display. A mire of tangled grass and dense, suffocating forest. Plants unlike anything on Earth crowded in from every direction.
"What is that...?"
"A movie?"
"Why are we suddenly watching some video—"
A buzz of bewildered murmuring spread through the reporters. And how quickly that murmur curdled into shock was a matter of seconds.
"GRRAAAAGH!!"
On screen, a red giant came barreling toward the camera, shaking the ground with every thunderous stride. Tattoos carved across its body, crude jutting tusks.
"Wait, isn't that—!"
"That's a High Orc!"
High Orcs. Monsters that appeared in gates of B-rank and above. And they weren't charging one at a time—an entire horde was swarming forward together.
"Hhk...!"
A terrified shriek cracked through the footage. The voice sounded remarkably like Lee Tae-hyun's.
"D-Do something! Anything!"
The voice on screen screamed at someone to act.
"Yes sir, heading out~!"
At that, someone vaulted high over the advancing High Orcs.
WHAM! THUD! CRUNCH!
A massive hammer turned them into lumps of meat. When the man who'd slaughtered every last High Orc finally turned his head, a familiar face filled the frame—one everyone in this room would recognize.
"Wait?! That man—!"
"That's him! That's the guy!"
"The victim of the B-rank gate incident... A-rank hunter Jung Min-chul!"
He wiped the blood from his body with a warm, friendly smile. Then others filed into the frame behind him.
"Hyung, honestly. What am I going to do with you, charging in ahead like that?"
"Haha! Sorry about that! They came lunging at the young master, and I just couldn't help myself!"
"Our boss is just too good-hearted for his own sake."
There was no mistaking the other faces either.
A-rank hunter Park Hoon.
A-rank hunter Kim Jung-su.
B-rank hunter Choi Mi-jung.
The very people who had entered the B-rank gate alongside me.
And then—
"Now then, young master, please stay back. We'll escort you safely through to the clear!"
The ones I could never, ever forget.
"Don't tell me this is...?"
"That's right."
There was no longer any need to hide it.
"A recording device that functions inside a gate. This is its prototype."
"That's impossible!"
"Cheonseong developed something like that?!"
Inside a gate, every electronic device went dead. That was why records of the interior had always existed only as documents and testimony—until this device came along.
What I carried into the B-rank gate was an unfinished model, capable of recording and nothing more.
It used the eye as a camera, capturing and storing everything in the field of view. The crux was extracting that stored data and transmitting it outside. Without that step, the whole thing was meaningless.
That's where Cheonseong collapsed in my previous life.
Capturing the information intact had succeeded—but at the final stage, transmission, they had failed spectacularly. Years later, the man who bought that research data for pocket change and completed the technology in a mere three days was the Magic King, Gong Gi-hyun. The unique skill he possessed became the cornerstone of the entire breakthrough.
In the end, the recording device went down in history not as Cheonseong's innovation, but as another company's. That the technology's true origin lay with Cheonseong was a bitter truth only a handful of people ever knew.
Not this time.
This device would launch proudly under Cheonseong's own name.
"Let's push deeper into the gate, shall we?"
The crowd's shock had yet to fade, but the footage waited for no one—it simply kept playing.
The footage played on without a hitch. Jung Min-chul's party cutting down the High Orcs pouring out of the forest. And Lee Tae-hyun watching it all from one step behind.
But the crowd's attention had drifted away from what was happening on screen and fixed itself on the device doing the broadcasting.
The Cheonseong logo engraved on the device seemed to gleam brighter than anything else in the room. Countless attempts had been made to film the inside of a gate, and not a single one had succeeded. But a South Korean company had just pulled it off. Purchase requests were about to explode from overseas as well as domestic.
An unprecedented windfall had just detonated. But one question remained.
Why had Lee Tae-hyun chosen this exact moment to reveal the technology?
The answer came soon enough.
"And THAT... wraps it up!"
On screen, Jung Min-chul shattered the skull of the boss monster—the High Orc Champion—with his massive hammer.
With that, the raid was over. Gather the valuable loot, exit the gate, done.
Something was deeply wrong here.
According to the official reports, the B-rank gate incident ended in tragedy because Lee Tae-hyun, paralyzed by fear, fled—and the hunters who remained were attacked and killed by monsters. Jung Min-chul above all was mourned as a hero who fought bravely to the very end, presumed to have perished alongside the boss monster. It was such a noble death that the Hunter Bureau even paid compensation to the families.
"Great work, everyone! Hoon, your skills haven't rusted a bit. And Jung-su, that dagger work is as fierce as ever."
Long after the clear was done, those men were standing there, alive and shameless.
"Heh heh! And you're as strong as ever, boss. One swing of the hammer and down goes a whole orc."
"Oh? And me, oppa? How was my healing?"
"Hmm, now that you mention it..."
Jung Min-chul walked toward Lee Tae-hyun.
"Time to find out right now, isn't it?"
"Wh-What? Why all of a sudden—"
That was when the camera lurched sideways.
CRACK!
A sickeningly heavy impact, and Lee Tae-hyun's scream tore through the footage.
"GUHHHHAAAARGH!"
Shluk!
It happened in the space of a breath. The dagger drawn from Jung Min-chul's belt buried itself in Lee Tae-hyun's thigh.
"Gghk...! GYAAAAAAAAGH!"
"Ah, for fuck's sake... will you shut up already."
Stab. Stab. Stab.
Lee Tae-hyun was carved to ribbons by the blade. By the time the blood had soaked him through and left him in tatters, Jung Min-chul glanced back and signaled to the woman.
"Still got those old habits, huh, oppa?"
"Told you. This little shit was giving us the death glare from the word go. I could tell he thought he was so much better than us, and it just got my blood boiling. Heh heh."
Warm light wrapped around the broken body, and every wound on it vanished without a trace. Sensing that healing had been cast on him, Lee Tae-hyun's eyes went wide.
"Why... why...?"
The answer was a fist.
WHAM!
"Ghk!"
Crack! Thud! Thud!
"S-Stop... please...!"
They beat him within an inch of his life, then healed him. The moment a blade found a vital point, they healed him again. Broken bones knit back together. A face caved in bloomed back to whole.
"Uuuhh..."
After he'd been worked over like that for a long while, a voice drifted into the recording.
"If you're done, let's strip his gear and finish him off."
"I haven't hit him enough yet... tsk."
"Let it go, boss. We're just wasting time."
He had collapsed face-down, and all the camera could see was dirt. Every so often, ragged, pain-wracked breathing rasped through the audio.
"But hey, are we really okay with killing him? This bastard's the son of the Cheonseong Group chairman."
"Ahh, doesn't matter. The client's kind of a big fish. Covering up the death of a nobody like this is well within their reach."
Chaos flooded the chat, but the video flowed on, merciless.
"Heh heh! We scored ourselves a fat haul."
"We get to keep his equipment too, right? I took this job, so the bigger share of the gear goes to me. No complaints?"
"Tch... whatever you say, boss."
Jung Min-chul raised his hammer, wearing the same warm smile he'd worn at the start.
"I'll do you the favor of ending it in one blow. Die nicely, now."
If that thing came down, death was certain. Brains spilling out, bones pulverized—
Just like that High Orc lying there before him. Just like a tomato dropped on the ground, nothing left above the shoulders but a red smear.
The man in the footage was, evidently, terrified of exactly that kind of death.
"AAAAAAAARGH! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!! SAVE ME!!! I DON'T WANT TO DIEEE!!!"
A wretched, agonized howl. A scream so saturated with despair it made the skin of everyone listening crawl.
"Ugh, my ears... oppa, just kill him already."
"Why not just snap his neck? Nobody's going to check the body once the gate closes anyway."
And yet they didn't waver in the slightest. That was the composure of professionals—the practiced movements of men who had committed this kind of murder more times than they could count.
"Hold still. Move, and I won't get it in one—and that'll hurt a lot more."
The hammer began its descent—
"Huh...? Wh-What is that... KYAAAAAAAH!"
The woman on screen broke out in a cold sweat as she stared at something. It was a High Orc. No—it was something that barely deserved the name anymore.
"The High Orcs...! They weren't dead yet?!"
High Orc corpses—headless, or missing their skulls entirely—rose as one and hurled themselves at the party.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me!"
Unable to finish off Lee Tae-hyun, Jung Min-chul collided head-on with the corpses swarming toward him. Drained stamina, overwhelming numbers, and a legion of bodies that knew no fear.
"Hhk... hah...!"
Jung Min-chul's party was being pushed back, inch by inch.
"Block it! Mi-jung! Heal!"
"Ghhhh...!!"
A crack opened in what should have been an unbreakable front line. And soon, the first casualty fell.
CRUNCH!
"Jung-su, hyung! You sons of bitches—!"
The dagger-wielding man was smashed into paste by a club.
A single blow.
Somehow, the orcs' attack power had risen. Even in perfect condition, clearing the gate now was a coin toss.
"......"
And so Jung Min-chul made his choice.
"...I'm sorry."
"B-Boss?! Where are you going!"
"Oppa! Come back! You fucking coward, GET BACK HEREEEE!!!"
He would abandon them and run.
The hulking body shoved its way between the orcs and bolted for the edge of the forest. The two who lost their vanguard were subdued in moments. From the interior, buried under a mountain of orc flesh, horrific sounds spilled out without pause—the screams of a man and a woman, flesh being crushed, bones splintering, something being torn free.
"Wh... What is this..."
Lee Tae-hyun, who had been mumbling in a daze, seemed to come back to himself and slowly rose to his feet. His wandering gaze settled on a single point.
The direction Jung Min-chul had just fled through. The direction that, somehow, felt like it held the gate's exit.
Ta-da-dak!
He tore toward it like a man possessed.
"Hhhh! UAAAAAAAH!!"
For a long stretch, the footage showed nothing but the forest scenery flashing past. Only Lee Tae-hyun's ragged, heaving breaths spilled intermittently from the speakers.
And then, long after—
"S-Somebody, anybody, save me!"
Lee Tae-hyun burst out of the gate.
And the video ended.
That was what happened that day, in the B-rank gate.