The silence that followed the death of a D-Rank monster in the middle of a civilian sector was heavy, suffocating, and absolute.
For a few monts, even the distant, frantic sirens of ergency vehicles seed to fade into the background. The young woman pinned beneath the delivery truck could only make a faint, hitching sound in the back of her throat, her eyes darting between the massive, bleeding corpse of the Mutated Shadow Wolf and the unbothered silhouette of the teenager standing over it.
Min-jae didn't offer her a reassuring smile. He didn't check to see if she was alright. In the early days of the Convergence, pity was a luxury that got people killed. He knew that the mont he showed weakness or lingering hesitation, the system would find a way to exploit it.
Instead, his focus was entirely turned inward, tracking the violent, magnificent transformation occurring within his own flesh.
[Evolutionary Recalibration in progress...]
[Purging remaining traces of environntal mana from the cellular matrix.]
[Density of muscle fiber structures increasing by 140%.]
[Bone density adjusting to support high-velocity kinetic impacts.]
The ten units of True Ki he had harvested from the wolf didn't just sit in his lower abdon; they began to spin, creating a localized vortex that dragged the raw, natural vitality of his own body into a fine, concentrated point. It felt as if his veins were being lined with cold porcelain. The natural friction of his blood flow decreased, allowing his heart to pump with massive efficiency while keeping his pulse low and steady.
When the golden notifications finally dimd, a new set of data manifested before his eyes.
[Recalibration Complete.]
[You have achieved 'Mortal Flesh (Stage 1): Perfection'.]
[Attributes Updated:]
Strength: 11 - 22 (Surpassed low-tier superhuman threshold)
Agility: 12 - 25
Constitution: 10 - 20
Perception: 8 - 15
True Ki: 10 / 10 (Stabilized)
Min-jae closed his eyes, taking a single, asured breath.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
With a strength stat of 22 and an agility of 25 on day one, he had effectively bypassed the entire early-ga grinding phase of a standard Hunter. In his previous life, it had taken him four years of brutal, death-defying dungeon raids as a at-shield just to get his strength to 18. Now, within less than an hour of the world ending, his baseline physical capacity was already higher than a Level 20 Combat-class Awakened.
"Hey... you..."
A trembling, cracked voice broke through his ditation.
Min-jae opened his eyes and looked down. The young woman beneath the delivery truck was staring up at him, tears cutting clean lines through the soot and dust on her face. "Please... my leg. It's stuck. I can't feel my foot."
Min-jae walked over to the overturned truck. He didn't look at her face; his eyes strictly calibrated the structural weight of the vehicle. It was a standard two-ton comrcial delivery vehicle, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, its rear axle pinning her right thigh against the concrete.
To a normal human, lifting this would require a hydraulic jack or five grown n throwing their backs out.
Min-jae stepped up to the chassis. He didn't use True Ki. He simply slipped his bare hands beneath the crumpled steel fra of the truck’s undercarriage, set his feet shoulder-width apart in a classic lifting stance, and straightened his spine.
Perfect Alignnt.
With a dull, grinding groan of tal, the entire rear half of the two-ton truck was smoothly, effortlessly lifted three feet into the air. Min-jae didn't grunt. His face didn't turn red. His muscles simply locked into place, delivering the raw 22 points of physical strength directly into the iron fra.
"Crawl out," Min-jae said, his voice entirely flat.
The woman didn't need to be told twice. Terrified but driven by pure survival instinct, she dragged her injured leg out from beneath the tire, scrambling backward on her hands and knees until she was clear of the shadow of the vehicle.
Thud.
Min-jae dropped the truck back down, the heavy impact rattling the asphalt once more. He turned to leave, his eyes already tracking back toward the main avenue where the violet glow of the Gwanghwamun Gate was growing increasingly volatile.
"Wait!" she shouted, reaching out a hand. "What... what are you? Are you a Hunter? The governnt said on the radio before the signals went out that people would get blue screens... but yours... I didn't see a weapon..."
"If you want to live, get inside a building with a solid concrete basent," Min-jae interrupted, not even turning his head to look at her. "The wolves are pack animals. If there's one, there are more coming through that gate. And don't trust the blue screens too much. They don't tell you how to survive; they just tell you how to die in an orderly fashion."
Before she could utter another word, Min-jae executed a sudden step.
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step'.]
With his agility now sitting at 25, the skill was no longer just a fluid shift in posture—it was a terrifying burst of speed. To the woman, it looked as if the teenager had simply dissolved into a faint gray blur, disappearing into the thick smoke of the burning avenue within a heartbeat.
As Min-jae navigated the chaotic streets toward Gwanghwamun Square, the sheer scale of the Convergence’s first day beca apparent.
Everywhere he looked, civilians were locked in a state of cognitive dissonance. So were sitting on the curbs, hysterically poking at the empty air trying to interact with their newly manifested World Tree interfaces. Others were trying to form primitive militias, wielding tire irons and golf clubs against the low-level goblins that were beginning to leak from the smaller rifts.
"Fireball! Why isn't the fireball working?!" a middle-aged man in a torn business suit scread from the top of an SUV. He was pointing his trembling index finger at a lone goblin scout below him. A tiny, pathetic spark of orange mana flickered at the tip of his finger before fizzling out into a puff of black smoke.
The man had the Mage class, but he didn't understand the logic of internal circulation. He was trying to cast a spell using his modern human concept of magic—like a video ga character pressing a button—rather than treating the ambient mana like a volatile chemical that needed to be channeled through his nervous system.
The goblin cackled, jumping onto the hood of the SUV with its rusted dagger raised.
Min-jae passed by them without stopping. He could have killed the goblin with a flick of his wrist, but he didn't. Let them learn, he thought coldly. The world isn't a ga anymore. If you don't learn the logic of your own power within the first twenty-four hours, you're just statistics.
He reached the edge of Gwanghwamun Square five minutes later.
The area was a warzone. The massive plaza, usually filled with tourists and fountains, was now dominated by the towering, swirling violet vortex of the Mutated Gate. The spatial energy was so dense that the surrounding air tasted bitter, tallic, and heavily ionized.
But what caught Min-jae’s attention wasn't the gate itself. It was the group of people standing a hundred yards away from it.
There were seven of them, all wearing the distinct, high-end tactical gear of ergency responders and private security contractors. They were the first batch of "Awakened" who had chanced upon combat classes imdiately during the initialization. And leading them was a young man with pristine, slicked-back hair, holding a glowing steel broadsword that pulsed with a faint, blue mana aura.
Park Jin-woo. The future guild leader of Helios. The man whose squad Min-jae would eventually die for ten years from now.
Right now, Jin-woo was only twenty-three years old. His face lacked the cold, calculating cruelty of the veteran guild master he would beco; instead, it was filled with the arrogant, intoxicating thrill of a young man who had just been handed a mythical "A-Rank Blessed Knight" class on a silver platter.
"Keep your formations tight!" Jin-woo shouted to his makeshift squad, his voice amplified by a basic Command skill. "The system says this is a D-Rank gate, but the rewards will be massive if we secure the first clear before the military locks down the sector. Mages, prepare your barriers!"
Min-jae stood in the shadow of a shattered bus stop, his crossed arms concealing his golden knuckles. A dry, humorless smile touched his lips.
Park Jin-woo, Min-jae thought, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed his future killer. You think you're a genius because the World Tree gave you a head start. You think that glowing blue sword makes you a god.
But Min-jae knew what was inside that mutated gate. It wasn't a standard D-Rank boss. Because of the spatial fracture he had caused by destroying the splinter rift, the entity waiting at the core of that violet do wasn't a simple monster.
It was a C-Rank Vanguard Commander. An armored, three-headed Orc Chieftain that utilized heavy physical martial arts combined with corrupted mana.
Jin-woo and his squad of level-1 and level-2 Awakened were about to walk into a at grinder of their own making. They were relying entirely on the nurical paraters of their blue screens, completely ignorant of the fact that against a mutated anomaly, numbers didn't an a damn thing if your execution was garbage.
Roar—!
The violet gate flared violently, the swirling vortex expanding by another ten feet. The asphalt beneath Jin-woo’s feet cracked as a massive, heavy silhouette began to solidify within the light.
Min-jae didn't step forward to warn them. He simply uncrossed his arms, dropping his hands to his sides as his body automatically adjusted to the Breathing of the Primordial Core.
Let them break their teeth first, Min-jae decided, his gaze locking onto the erging monster. When they realize their magic is nothing more than flashy trash... I'll show them the true standard of this new era.
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