The Changed World
Around the same time, though a fraction of a second late, a faint whoosh cut through the air. By then Kang Tae-sung already held an arrow in his hand—one slightly smaller than a standard bolt.
He had snatched it out of the air as it flew toward him. Whether the shot had been meant to hit and simply missed, or had been deliberately aimed to miss, he couldn’t say. What he could tell was that if left alone it would have gone wide.
Still, the fact that they had fired an arrow at all meant they knew someone was out here. And the lack of any attempt at conversation before attacking suggested they operated under rules that allowed indiscriminate fire on anything approaching at night.
Rather than feel anger at the unprovoked shot, Kang Tae-sung simply studied the arrow in his grip for a moment. Then, still holding it, he took one more deliberate step forward.
If they had meant the first shot as an attack, this second step should have triggered another. None came.
Wondering if they had simply missed him, he took two more steps. Still nothing. He deliberately scuffed his boots louder and shifted sideways. This time the response was not a volley of arrows but a voice.
“Stop screwing around and come if you’re coming!”
It was neither a shout nor a whisper, but something in between—tight, forced, like a strained hiss. The voice probably belonged to a woman.
It sounded as if noise itself was dangerous, so Kang Tae-sung stopped making any. He moved lightly again, slipping past the thorns and zigzagging through the piled obstacles until he soon reached the far side of the bridge.
A semicircular barricade waited there, reminiscent of a machine-gun nest. Instead of a gun, however, it held a fixed crossbow that looked ancient—either scavenged or handmade, it was impossible to tell.
Larger than a common crossbow yet far smaller than a ballista, it appeared to be the type used for group hunts against medium-to-large monsters.
The weapon felt out of place. He paused, staring at it, until a figure rose from behind the sandbags and revealed herself.
A woman, as expected.
She wore a rough jacket that looked borrowed from an older brother, paired with jeans and what appeared to be military combat boots. The dirt clinging to her was visible even in the dark. She clearly hadn’t washed in a long time; layers of grime, sweat, and worse coated her skin.
Her moderately long hair had been tied back in a careless knot, though it was so thoroughly matted it probably wouldn’t have fallen anyway. The overall impression she gave was not of a fragile woman but of a female soldier—one accustomed to combat.
“Don’t you know nighttime movement is banned? You even made noise on purpose. What the hell are you trying to pull?”
“Sorry…”
The next voice was also female, timid and shrinking. A younger girl emerged from the side where she had been hiding.
Her clothes were similar to the older woman’s, but the pair gave off the distinct impression of shooter and spotter. And judging by the small bow in the girl’s hands, she had been the one who fired at him.
“Don’t apologize. There’s no reason to.”
The older woman spoke firmly. Since she was right, Kang Tae-sung felt no displeasure. If anything, he was mildly glad to have finally met people. He held out the arrow he was still carrying toward the younger girl.
“Looks valuable.”
The arrow was metal. In a world where metal was scarce, a single bolt would be no small loss. As if confirming his guess, the girl hesitated, glanced at the older woman, then quickly snatched it back.
The older woman watched in silence, then touched her ear where a crackling sound had begun. She whispered to someone.
“It’s a person. Seems to be alone. Yeah. No need, tell them to send more your way. See you at shift change.”
There was no proper military comms jargon, but the tone was unmistakable. Yet the jacket she wore was clearly civilian-made, not a military-issue field coat with a name tape.
“Kang Tae-sung? That your name on the clothes?”
In contrast, the combat uniform he wore had been found at home—an old one with his name still stitched on it. She had seen it and spoken accordingly.
Sharp eyes in the dark, or has she simply adapted? Kang Tae-sung thought as he gave a small nod.
“You actually made it back in one piece. You alone? How many went out and only you returned?”
She scratched at her matted hair while muttering that he clearly hadn’t left during her watch, so he must have moved out during the day.
“You don’t look like a regular civilian. A daytime patrol that size should’ve been a whole unit… Don’t tell me you ran?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
Kang Tae-sung cut her off, speaking in a low voice. The woman stopped scratching, glanced around once, then turned back to him with a changed expression.
“What are you talking about? Why look for people here?”
“How many people are in the city proper? Are there a lot of ordinary civilians?”
Only then did she seem to grasp his meaning. Her brows drew together and she took half a step back. Her hand moved instinctively toward the knife at her waist, fingers closing around the grip. But after studying him a moment longer she let go and spoke again.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“I’ve returned to my hometown.”
“Alone? All the way here? Where did you come from?”
“Far away.”
“…Impressive. Must have more lives than a cockroach.”
She shook her head, then—once she heard it had taken him five years—nodded slightly, as if that explained everything.
“If it took five whole years to get home, I guess that makes sense. Move carefully enough and it’s not impossible… Family here?”
Having roughly guessed his situation, she shook her head again.
“Proper headcounts are almost impossible in this world… Maybe Seoul’s different. Out here we’re just scraping by day to day. Still, people gather in one place. Ask around and someone might know them. Or the headquarters might have records.”
“What happened during those five years?”
At his question she glanced automatically at the younger girl, who was still keeping proper watch, then turned back and made a face.
“What kind of stupid question is that? You really don’t know?”
“I was in a place where I couldn’t gather any information.”
“…Five years should’ve been plenty to see it all. You really need me to spell everything out?”
She scratched her tangled hair again, spat on the ground, then let out a long sigh.
“Fine. Let’s sit.”
She stepped inside the crude barricade that barely qualified as a bunker, dropped down heavily, and continued.
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“From the beginning.”
“That’s the problem—I don’t know what counts as the beginning. …Feels like I’m being played somehow.”
But it was a story everyone in the world knew, and there was no reason for a spy to come all the way out here asking about it. Her suspicion quickly faded.
“I first saw it on internet news. Hmm. Older folks who don’t use the net probably caught it on news tickers.”
The first changes were noticed in the United States and Russia. Reports from the space station, confirmed through various countries’ satellites, all pointed to anomalies on Earth.
“You learned plate tectonics, right?”
When he nodded, she held both hands up and slowly spread them apart.
“Plates normally grind against each other, break, or one slides under the other. That causes earthquakes… But it all just stopped.”
The constant shoving match between tectonic plates had suddenly ceased. Japan felt the change most clearly. As nations began serious investigations, the transformations accelerated.
“The plates started spreading farther apart. I remember hearing new land was rising from below.”
The plates moved away from one another and fresh earth surged up between them. The earthquakes that had paused began again.
That was not the end of it.
“Science couldn’t explain it. Total mental breakdown. No one could describe what was happening inside the planet. Anyone who claimed they could was either a con artist or a novelist.”
In a single month the Earth’s diameter grew by ten percent. The strange part was that, aside from the quakes, there were almost no other catastrophic weather events.
That was when every theory under the sun poured out.
Stories of the planet exploding, all kinds of doomsday prophecies, and half-baked attempts to fuse science with mysticism flooded the airwaves.
But it wasn’t only nonsense that emerged.
“Where it actually started is still debated, but the timing was close enough that it seems to have been worldwide. I’m talking about the monsters.”
Creatures suddenly appeared and invaded cities and towns. Police responded first, then the military. They were killed without much trouble.
Yet that was only the beginning. Monsters were not the only things that appeared.
“Sometimes when the ground split open, what rose up wasn’t empty land.”
Medieval fortresses burst from the middle of modern cities. Ancient forests thick with trees hundreds of years old surged upward in the middle of deserts.
From that point on, scientists fell silent as if by agreement. Instead the non-scientists—especially religious leaders and novelists—raised their voices.
Their followers spread every possible theory. Otherworld invasion. Dimensional convergence. God is toying with us.
“They talked about the Rapture… Mass suicides became common. Still are, honestly.”
In just one year the Earth had transformed.
The strangest part was that although the land area had nearly tripled, the enlarged planet caused almost no disruption in space.
“The moon is still there. A little closer, they say, but its orbit is stable. That’s when the number of religious people exploded.”
“God exists.”
Kang Tae-sung, who had been sitting quietly beside her with a hardened expression, spoke those words in a low voice. He had met gods in another world. They had told him that this homeland of his surely had gods of its own.
The gods people knew and the gods that truly existed might simply be different. Or perhaps, if they descended in incarnate form, the difference wasn’t so great after all.
“You talk like you’ve met one yourself. Anyway, the Earth grew enormously in a single year. The new lands included deserts, forests, cities… The problem is those cities feel like something straight out of a game.”