The Signal Beacon
In the heart of the gate, the raid team led by Han Sia and Lee Cheol-uk advanced with the precision of a well-oiled machine. They had followed the operation plan to the letter, diving straight into the initial mission the moment they crossed the threshold.
Today’s squad wasn’t a standard regular raid like Haboob—the elite team under Han Sia herself. This was an irregular, ad-hoc force.
Yet even among irregular squads, the Korean hunters stood apart. Where other nations built squads around chemistry and flair, Korea ran on pure efficiency. The unbreakable creed was simple: operate with maximum speed, maximum output, and maximum magestone yield. Hunters at every level knew the drill—train harder, fight smarter, harvest faster—and the results showed.
From the individual to the full squad, quality control in Korea’s hunting scene was already the envy of the world. But there was a catch. One slip, one teammate who slowed the pack, and the entire group answered to the parents. So the hunters kept their eyes on the prize and their feet moving in lockstep.
Still, outside the raids themselves, the broader public fascination mattered more than anyone cared to admit. Body-cam footage and drone shots released by the association had spawned legions of fans. Among them were columnists who dissected every replay, turning every gate into a masterclass in tactics and improvement.
From those discussions had come a flood of standard manuals:
…and hundreds more. These refined guides circulated through every internet community, then got tested on the ground. And among them all, one rule had been accepted without argument for decades:
[RULE #1: Plant the signal beacon around the gate before anything else.]
Gates were not just dungeons. They were phase spaces—non-Euclidean geometries where two-dimensional and three-dimensional structures tangled into impossible staircases and wrapping corridors. Get lost inside and you stayed until the gate was cleared or it broke. No second chances.
“That should be enough. Phew.”
Han Jihun jammed the signal beacon into the deepest crevice of a rock he’d found. The thing was supposed to stick. He kept prying at it until it finally snapped in.
“Let’s see if this works.”
Beep. Beep.
Jihun tapped the red button on his wristwatch. The red needle swung straight toward the beacon. He spun in a slow circle; the needle followed, locking onto the device like a homing missile.
“Good. Beacon planted.”
One by one the rest of the squad checked their own watches. Everyone was silent for a moment, then Cheol-uk broke the quiet.
“Man, things have sure changed, comrade. Back then we had no mana measurers—had to guess gate rank from the sound of it.”
He adjusted the body-cam harness across his chest and grinned.
“Back then, if you got lost you were toast. We all thought so. Of course I made it out alive.”
Lee Cheol-uk burst into loud laughter.
“Hahaha! I thought you were actually dead, comrade! Two whole weeks! You had one hell of a grip on life!”
Jihun had spent exactly fourteen days sealed inside a B-rank gate. Two weeks of real time, seven days of inside time—thanks to the 7:1 compression ratio. He still carried the faint scars of that ordeal.
“Yeah. It was thick with forest. Felt… wrong. Creepy as hell.”
“PTSD already, huh?”
“Not anymore. We’re not the same people we were then.”
“Yeah, look at you now, A-rank Cheol-uk. You’re taller, but not by much.”
Jihun glanced down at his partner. Cheol-uk laughed again and flexed an arm thicker than any normal man’s.
“At least my arms got bigger, right?”
“Us two gym bros didn’t end up like this. Must be the X-Factor. Natural roids, man.”
His laughter faded as he and the two veteran B-rank hunters—Mister Kim and Mister Lee—gathered at the edge of the cliff and stared downward.
The gate entrance clung to the very edge of a sheer cliff, almost suspended. Straight ahead lay a dense forest path that seemed to beckon them forward.
Behind them, the opposite side of the canyon mirrored the same rocky, tree-lined structure.
“Whoa! Look at this view! Mister Kim! Come here! If we slip off we’re not even going to be able to find our bones!”
“Shut up, you unlucky bastard! Stop talking crap and get over here! Look at that drop and my legs already feel like jelly.”
Mister Kim and Mister Lee tossed loose rocks off the cliff like it was their favorite hobby. The stones tumbled down the sheer face and finally smashed to pieces at the bottom.
Below, in the shadowed canyon, a mountain of white bones—clearly the remains of previous monsters—lay piled high.
…………………………………
“Hmm… I was told earlier that this side leads here and that side there…”
“Damn it, Cheol-uk, you didn’t even listen to Yoonju when she explained it?”
“Look! Stop fidgeting and watch! Even if you had listened you’d still be confused. This thing is a nightmare!”
The two men were wrestling with the ultra-high-grade magestone radio they had just received from Ham Yunju—a device designed for automatic frequency tuning based on dimensional fluctuations inside gates. They had decided to call it a gate transceiver.
Static. Crackle. Static.
“Team Leader! It’s me! Can you hear me?”
“Oh! It worked! Whoa! That thing actually picks up voices!”
Cheol-uk’s face lit up when he heard Yunju’s voice.
“Professor! It’s Team Leader. Can you hear us clearly?”
“Yes, Team Leader. Loud and clear. And you?”
Yunju’s voice came through clean and sharp—exactly what they needed for a prototype. But the slight drawl, as if she were speaking at half speed, suggested the time-compression effect was still being smoothed out.
Then the voice shifted.
“Jihun-oppa… are you doing okay?”
The radio suddenly reset to normal speed, voice crisp and clear again.
“Yunju! How the hell did you manage that? The compression ratio here is five-to-one!”
“Right! It should have been all that weird humming, but who am I? Hahaha!”
“Thank you, Yunju. Thanks to you our work is getting so much easier.”
“It’s nothing~ If you’re thankful, treat me to dinner later~ Take care of your body today, oppa! See you soon!”
Jihun finished the call and began checking his personal gear. While he did, Han Sia had already taken the scouting party ahead, moving through the forest path at the head of the group.
Her earpiece suddenly picked up a voice she did not want to hear.
She glanced between the radio and Jihun, her eyebrows tightening in annoyance—
“Everyone, settle in! You’ve been waiting long enough!”
It was Cheol-uk, still testing the prototype. He opened the channel again.
2.
Following the forest path through the thick trees, the squad moved in single file. Sunlight barely reached the ground; the canopy blocked almost everything.
Some carried flashlights, others used mana skills to light the way. Every hunter’s instincts screamed the same thing: stay on this path. It was the only route that would let them clear the gate.
After roughly thirty minutes of hiking, the trees finally thinned. A flat, rock-paved clearing opened up in front of them.
In the center of the unnatural field stood a perfectly smooth pyramid, roughly the size of a baseball diamond—five stories tall, if it had been a building. Jihun tilted his head.
“That’s an Aztec altar.”
Flashes of memory hit him: Mel Gibson in Apocalypto, the ritual, the sacrifice, the blood.
“So the stone at the very top is…”
“Hey, tell me too, comrade.”
“It’s the sacrifice altar. At the peak they cut the victim open, squeeze out the blood, then roll the head and body down the stairs.”
Every hunter who had already heard the explanation looked grim. The others paled as Jihun finished describing it.
“Sometimes these weird dungeons pop up.”
Mister Kim and Mister Lee stepped closer to Jihun.
“You think we have to interact with the altar to start something?”
“Like if we push a stone the whole pyramid moves and a hidden door opens?”
The two veterans had fallen into their familiar rhythm—ten years of raiding together had turned them into one personality split in two. They kept trading lines, finishing each other’s sentences, debating interactive dungeon mechanics as if they were old drinking buddies.
Yet Jihun felt nothing. No mana flow, no energy signature from the pyramid at all. And something else was even stranger.
“Weird. I haven’t seen a single goblin, forest spider, or black wolf in this entire forest gate. B-rank gates usually have at least a dozen monsters.”
“Iron-uk, something’s off,” Jihun said, voice low and serious.
“Yeah… maybe we should fall back and rethink the plan instead of pushing straight through.”
That was when Han Sia’s voice cracked over every earpiece.
“Everyone, be careful!”
A high-pitched whoosh cut through the air—wings slicing wind at terrifying speed.
From above, a massive shadow fell across the clearing. Every hunter dropped to the ground or crouched low. They weren’t doing it because the manuals said to— they were simply overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the gaze staring down at them.
Then the wings folded. With a graceful, almost lazy descent, the creature landed lightly on the very peak of the pyramid.
Jihun’s breath caught. It was not a bird. It was something far more unsettling—half-human, half-bird. Two point three meters tall, iron-hard feathers, eagle talons, and a turquoise snake-headed spear.
“That’s not a bird. It’s… closer to a winged human.”
Only Sia, Cheol-uk, Mister Kim, Mister Lee, and Jihun were still standing. The rest remained flat on the ground, bodies rigid with fear.
The monster’s hand held something still twitching. An orc.
With a wet crunch—exactly like cracking a pet-bottle cap—it twisted the orc’s neck.
Crunch. Crunch. Squish.
One more spin and the head was ripped free. The creature tossed the body down the stairs like trash, then leaned in and began drinking the still-warm blood with obvious enjoyment.
The C-rank hunters on the ground could only stare in frozen horror, spines locked in place.
After draining the corpse dry, the monster tossed the empty shell onto the stairs, then sat on the very edge of the altar with a satisfied smile.
One by one it looked down at the trembling hunters and chuckled.
“Thud. Thud.”
“M-mad… Jihun, what is that thing doing to us…?”
“I saw it too. It’s pointing at us. What does the info window say?”
“Huitzilopochtli… the sun god of the Aztec Empire… but its level…”
“What do you mean, what level?!”
Cheol-uk’s voice cracked with disbelief.
“Why is a Semi-S-rank gate boss standing here… oh my god…”
All he could do was let out a low, resigned sigh and mutter his resentment toward whatever deity had allowed this.
“Hey… hey… what did you say? Semi-S-rank?”
Jihun tried again, voice tight with panic.
Cheol-uk could only stare blankly at the creature.
“This… this can’t be happening. Why?”
“What do we do, Team Leader? We’re stuck here… ugh… ugh…”
Despairing moans rose from every hunter who had finally opened their own info windows.
“Crazy bastard… tell me the level! Please!”
Jihun’s own system window refused to open. The only voice that came was the same soft, slightly sultry woman’s tone he had grown used to.
“System access requires an awakened unique skill.”
“Come on… come on…!”
“Damn it… give me the system already!”
The soft female voice simply responded again.
Monster information window can only be accessed after unlocking a unique skill. Please awaken your inherent skill first.
“This is insane…!”