The dust in the Hanok courtyard slowly settled, drifting through the empty space left by the broken stone wall. Down below, the lights of Seoul flickered unevenly through the smoke of a hundred localized disasters, but up on the ridge of Mount Naksan, the silence was absolute.
Choi Sung-min stood with his empty hands slightly raised. The heavy, chanical gauntlets of his power-armor felt like useless lead weights now that the white mana current had been forcefully snuffed out by the sanctuary’s domain. He looked at the gaping hole in the brick wall where his four-hundred-pound tower shield had been casually tossed, then back at the unarmored teenager who hadn't even broken a sweat.
"Cancel the artillery," Choi Sung-min repeated, his voice hollow, stripped of the authoritative edge he usually maintained before his corporate subordinates. "You think the State Ergency Council will simply pull back because one man threw a shield?"
"They will if they value their investnt," Min-jae replied smoothly.
He walked back toward the wooden veranda, his bare feet moving with a rhythmic, cat-like precision over the grit and broken tiles. "The corporate leaders who awakened high-tier classes didn't do it to save humanity, Director. They did it to corner the market on the new reality. They want to control the dungeons, monopolize the mana crystals, and dictate who gets to survive. If they turn this hill into a crater, they lose the only variable they can't predict. And a corporate man hates a blind spot more than he hates a loss."
Choi Sung-min lowered his hands, his broad shoulders dropping by a fraction of an inch. The internal diagnostic display inside his helt was a ss of red error codes, but his conventional military mind was already recalculating the tactical map.
The boy was right. The Miracle Guild’s stock values and political leverage were tied entirely to their ability to maintain public order and project absolute dominance over the anomalies. If a recording of this encounter—of the country's premier 'Iron Wall' being disard like a child by an unranked civilian—ever leaked to the public or the rival Helios Guild, the fragile illusion of their authority would shatter before the first week of the Convergence concluded.
"You're a monster, Kang Min-jae," Choi Sung-min said, using the na his analyst had pulled from the corrupted data logs. "But you're a monster who understands leverage."
"I'm a man who survived the future you're currently trying to monetize," Min-jae said, sitting back down cross-legged on the wooden floorboards. He closed his eyes, instantly slipping back into the Breathing of the Primordial Core rhythm.
Inhale for four. Hold for two. Exhale for eight.
Inside his torso, his [Jade Bone] matrix vibrated softly, a deep, crystalline hum that began to violently pull the surrounding atmospheric pressure inward. The four units of True Ki he had harvested from the Berserker down the hill began to spin around his Core Seed, stabilizing his internal temperature and rapidly sealing the minor abrasions on his knuckles.
"I will hold the regint back for twenty-four hours," Choi Sung-min said, turning toward the broken gate. He didn't try to retrieve his shield from the bedrock; doing so would only prolong his humiliation under the boy's cold gaze. "I'll tell the Council that the spatial anomaly on Mount Naksan is too volatile for conventional bombardnt—that an artillery strike would trigger a secondary Core Collapse that could take out half the northern district."
"Make it forty-eight hours," Min-jae murmured without opening his eyes. "I have a lot of grinding to do, and I don't like being interrupted by sirens."
Choi Sung-min paused at the threshold of the courtyard, his iron boots crunching on the loose gravel. "And after forty-eight hours? What happens when the first wave of true Calamity Gates open simultaneously across the peninsula? You can't sit on this hill forever, hiding behind your severance domain."
"I'm not hiding," Min-jae said, his voice carrying a sudden, heavy resonance that caused the remaining ivy on the Hanok pillars to tremble. "I'm calibrating. When the gates open... I won't be the one looking for a shelter."
Choi Sung-min didn't reply. He stepped through the broken gate, his heavy, armor-clad silhouette disappearing down the dark, winding stairs of the terraced alleyway.
[The High-Density Mana Vessel has exited the 'Martial Sanctuary' domain.]
[The local area has returned to absolute environntal purity.]
[Current True Ki: 8 / 50]
[Your internal ridians are expanding to accommodate the 'Jade Bone' leverage.]
As the last echo of Choi Sung-min's heavy boots faded into the distance, Min-jae opened his eyes. The gold within his gaze was sharper now, a tallic brilliance that cut through the darkness of the courtyard.
He stood up and walked over to the edge of the broken stone wall, looking down at the sprawling landscape of Seoul.
The city was a grid of fire and neon. To his advanced Perception of 28, the air over the Han River was thick with a dense, purple fog—the structural signature of a massive, synchronized horde of D-Rank and C-Rank gates preparing to initialize their breakthrough sequences. In his first life, this event was known as the First Convergence Wave. It was the night eighty thousand civilians died in their sleep because the governnt’s primitive mana-barriers collapsed under the sheer physical weight of the monster stampede.
The corporate guilds would deploy their Level 10 and Level 15 vanguards, trying to contain the breaches using flashy magic formulas and rigid RPG formations. They would treat the tragedy like a high-stakes raid, maximizing their dia coverage while letting the lower-tier at-shields absorb the losses.
"They think they have a handle on the paraters," Min-jae muttered, his hand resting on the cold granite of the broken wall.
He reached deep into his solar plexus, drawing upon the 8 units of True Ki he had accumulated. He didn't force a limit-break this ti. He simply let the energy circulate naturally, guiding the gold through his [Iron Thread ridians] until it settled into his bare feet, connecting his entire physical existence directly to the bedrock of the mountain.
[System Prompt: You have unlocked the regional map for the 'First Convergence Wave'.]
[Target Sector: Mapo District Sector 4 (High-Density Spatial Tear imminent).]
[Anomaly Classification: Toxic Swamp Hydras (C-Rank Elite).]
Min-jae’s lips curved into a dangerous, razor-sharp smile.
A standard Hunter would look at a Toxic Swamp Hydra—a multi-headed beast that spat acidic liquid capable of dissolving steel shields—and demand a minimum of three high-tier Fire Mages and a full squad of heavy Paladins to clear the path. The asset cost alone would be millions of won.
But to a man whose skin was forged from white-hot blacksmith iron and whose bones were made of unyielding jade, acid was nothing more than dirty water.
"Forty-eight hours," Min-jae whispered, his body suddenly blurring into a gray mist as he executed a compact, high-velocity sequence of the Formless Step right across the courtyard. "Let's see how much essence those multi-headed lizards can provide before the corporate vanguards even manage to log into their interfaces."
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