Clocking Out on Time Blew Up Live (1)

Today’s mission had, in truth, been a rigged game from the start.

An S-rank solo clear claimed by the Baekho Guild.

A broadcasting company attached. Sponsors attached. Twelve cameras attached.

Trailers had been circulating for months.

Pale Winter, descending alone.

That was the kind of provocative title they slapped on it.

Merch sold out in advance. Ad rates skyrocketed.

They said a single day’s revenue would outstrip an entire year for most mid-sized guilds.

On the surface it looked like a death-defying challenge—Pale Winter, Yu Seoha, walking into a gate alone to take down the boss.

In reality it was a thoroughly scouted gate, surveyed three times over, where the only danger was the one they staged for the cameras.

In the industry they called this a show.

The system graded the gate and spit out the boss patterns as data. We mapped the routes from that data, lined up the camera angles, and pre-selected the moments that would look razor-thin. Sometimes we even took a deliberate hit in the high-ratings stretches.

It wasn’t risking your life. It was performing the act of risking your life.

I didn’t mind.

The fans loved it. The guild loved it. And above all, it was safe.

Of course I knew the system wasn’t omnipotent. I had learned, ad nauseam, that things were starting to appear one by one for which the old formula no longer worked.

But this gate was different. Three prior surveys. Every corner swept by system and human eyes alike. There was no room left for a variable.

At least, that was what I believed.

The moment I stepped through the gate, the director’s voice came through my headset.

“Seoha, first engagement in three minutes. Five trash mobs. Take two exchanges like you’re being pushed back, then freeze them on the third. We’ll frame it beautifully.”

“Understood.”

I walked the familiar first stretch. Five trash mobs popped onto the system window.

Patterns so obvious I could have killed them with my eyes closed. The answer key was floating right in front of me.

I let two exchanges slide exactly as scripted, then scattered ice on the third. All five froze like a painting.

Through the headset I heard the staff gasp in admiration. Perfect frame.

That was how it went. Looking dangerous. Looking strong. Looking like it was hanging by a thread. All inside a fixed script.

Sometimes I wondered whether I was a hunter or an actress. But everyone did it this way. In an age where the system had stripped away the real danger, all that remained for a hunter was how beautiful a picture they could make.

The path to the boss room was smooth. I performed heavy breathing for the cameras at intervals and wore the expression of someone cornered. In truth I was bored enough to yawn.

At the boss-room door I paused and staged a deep breath.

“Alright, highlight starts here. Seoha, take one big hit early and let the boss send you into the wall. We need that shot. Then we go into the reversal.”

“Got it.”

I opened the door and stepped inside. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠boss was waiting. The system window helpfully floated the strategy: bind its feet with cold, then strike the exposed weak point. Done. An opponent tailored for me.

Same as always. I took the first strike deliberately hard and sold the flight into the wall. Even as my back hit stone I had already killed the impact with an ice barrier. It didn’t hurt.

The boss itself was a tame opponent the system had domesticated—repeating only fixed patterns, closer to stage machinery than a real threat.

Outside, fans gathered before the giant screens screamed. Their roar reached me faintly through the headset. Perfect. Exactly as scripted.

And then.

Something that wasn’t on the system window stirred in a corner of the room.

At first I thought I had mis-seen it. Nothing floated on the window—no threat rating, no marker, nothing. Yet my senses reacted before the window did.

The sense I had learned in the Association basement. The one that read with the whole body instead of the eyes. That sense was screaming that something in the corner was wrong.

Irregular. Damp. A slow breath. A presence that matched no data I knew.

The scripted boss suddenly became secondary. Something far more dangerous than that staged opponent was sharing this room with me.

“Director. Is there one more thing that isn’t in the script?”

Silence stretched for a beat on the other end of the headset.

“What? No. Seoha, why all of a sudden—”

Before the sentence finished, the darkness in the corner burst.

Something black poured out. A thing whose form kept collapsing, that had no fixed shape. Something the system had finally failed to turn into data.

A Mutant.

Only then did the system window flush red.

Those two words alone. No other information.

The director’s voice cracked urgently through the headset.

“Wh-what is that?! It’s not in the script! Seoha, get out now! Staff, secure the gate entrance!”

His voice was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shaking. A man who had directed these shows for more than a decade. That was the sound of someone whose entire script had just come apart for the first time.

I couldn’t leave. It already stood between ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me and the exit.

I opened my mana on reflex. I felt my hair bleach silver-white. Frost rose on my skin; the temperature in the room plummeted.

“Freeze.”

A massive freeze poured toward it. The entire chamber iced over in an instant—the black thing included.

That should have been the end. Instead, inside the ice, it writhed.

A sharp crack, and the freeze split. It shattered its own frozen body and stepped free as if nothing had happened.

I doubted my eyes. Even frozen, it broke free. Even when I read its weak point and drove needle-sharp cold exactly there, it simply tore the damaged part off itself and kept coming.

The “one precise point” that had worked on a B-rank Mutant was meaningless against this thing’s regeneration speed. The formulas the system taught and the variables I learned from my teacher were both powerless before that overwhelming catastrophe.

Outside, the fans’ cheers had at some point turned into screams. At first they must have thought it was all part of the show—Pale Winter cornered by the script, then the dramatic turnaround. The picture they always saw.

Not now. The ice wasn’t ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠working. An S-rank was actually bleeding. The system window showed only the word Unmeasured. The real thing that wasn’t in the script had just jumped in front of the cameras.

I kept scattering cold while I retreated. I couldn’t win head-on. I focused on evasion, reading its next move with pure sense. That, too, was something I had learned in the Association basement.

Against an opponent you can’t beat, don’t try to win. Concentrate on surviving.

That teaching was keeping me alive right now. The old me who trusted only the system would have dropped her guard the moment the window said safe, and frozen solid the moment the freeze failed. I did not freeze. I shut the window and danced with the thing using nothing but sense.

A thought flickered through me. The day I first killed a B-rank Mutant, I had mistaken understanding my teacher’s lessons for mastering them. I thought reading a weak point with sense and stabbing it was the whole of it. But against an overwhelming weight class, reading a weak point was useless.

The true purpose of that training had never been “killing” the enemy. It was how to “survive” and buy time in front of a catastrophe like this. I was relearning that reason now, down to the bone, while bleeding.

Even that had a limit. The Mutant never tired. My mana, on the other hand, was scraping bottom. The cold thinned. My dodges grew razor-thin.

One tentacle grazed my shoulder. Flesh tore; blood sprayed. I clenched my teeth. There was no room left to scream—the next strike would already be going for my throat in that half-beat.

Twelve cameras were live-streaming every second of it. The exact moment a scripted show became a real catastrophe. The exact moment the system that guaranteed safety failed to protect even one person. The entire world was watching in real time.

This scene would be remembered longer than any flashy clip from any star hunter. Because the belief that the system was absolutely safe was collapsing right in front of the cameras.

One step. Half a step. The time my senses bought me kept shrinking. At this rate I was going to die. That fact settled cold and solid.

Saying I wasn’t afraid would have been a lie. Fresh past twenty, death was still far too unfamiliar.

The Mutant straightened its body for the finishing blow. My mana was gone. My legs had given out. I no longer had the strength to dodge.

I closed my eyes.

In that instant what rose in my mind was not a scream for help, nor a call for my team. It was one person’s face. The man who sat in a wheelchair in the Association basement, stirring mix coffee.

The only person who could get past this situation. If he had been here—if it were him—he would have done something about that thing.

Without meaning to, I called his name inside my head.

Teacher.

And then.

Squeak.

In that room where the cameras, the staff, and the fans’ screams had all receded, the sound of an old manual wheelchair’s wheels rolling rang out with perfect clarity. Unlubricated old wheels turning slowly across the gate floor.

I opened my eyes.

The Mutant’s movement had stopped dead. That massive thing had frozen with its head turned toward the gate entrance, like a beast that had just sensed something more dangerous than itself.

The wheel sound drew closer. And in front of the twelve cameras, a silhouette no one had expected appeared.

A rumpled jumper. A box of mix coffee resting on his knees. And white hair.

The old man from the complaints office was rolling straight into the middle of the scripted show.

The headset dissolved into chaos.

“Who the hell is that guy?! How did he get in?! Wasn’t the gate locked down?!”

“I-I don’t know! Looks like Association, but he’s not on the staff list!”

I knew. Why he had come here. And what was about to happen next. What the original of everything I had learned in the Association basement these past few months actually was.

I was about to see it, right in front of these cameras.

The twelve cameras were still rolling. The Mutant that ice couldn’t even touch had frozen like an animal at the sight of that old man. And that image was being live-streamed to the entire world in this very moment.

The face of a legend who had been living in hiding, captured cleanly by all twelve cameras.