Minho's right foot went numb by the second lap. The torn shoe let wind cut straight to skin. But he kept running.
Back in his room, concrete blocks and rusted pipes waited—equipment he'd welded together from scrap.
Three hours of lifting. By the final set, his grip kept slipping, and he finished anyway.
The shower had no heater. Water hit cold enough to catch his breath. He forced himself to count to sixty before stepping out, his jaw still tight the whole time.
When he sat down with the torn shoe, his hands were still clumsy. Third repair this month. The needle slipped twice through numb fingers before the thread finally caught. He could see light through the worn fabric now. One more week, maybe less.
He checked his equipment. Dagger sharp, bandana washed yesterday. The sword edge was clean—he tested it against his thumbnail. Good enough.
Hyunwoo's letter sat on the drawer. He broke the seal.
Invitation to D-Rank Gate Raid — District 38
Participants: 200 hunters (F to C rank)
Leadership: 5 A-rank hunters
Survival Rate: Variable
Variable. The polite word for a meat grinder.
Two hundred low-rank hunters. Five supervisors. The math was obvious—throw bodies at a D-rank gate and see who survives. The ones who made it out would jump ranks from sheer volume,but the dead wouldn't complain.
Minho smiled thin. "Damn you, Hyunwoo."
He remembered kicking Hyunwoo across a dungeon once. The kid stepped out of formation, and Minho's boot caught him in the ribs hard enough to send him flying into a wall. Hyunwoo had stared at him with shocked eyes. Minho kicked him again before he could speak. "Step out one more time and I'll break both your legs."
Hyunwoo never stepped out of formation after that.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen.
Hyerin: Ready for today? Don't be late, old man.
Minho: I'm 29.
Hyerin: Exactly. Old.
He couldn't help the smile tugging at his mouth. The girl had a mouth on her.
"Alright." He grabbed his bag and locked the door. "Let's go."
The gate was thirty minutes away. Minho ran instead of taking a taxi, his breathing even and stride smooth. To anyone watching, he'd look A-rank minimum.
When he arrived, Old Man Kim stood beside a black luxury car, his frame blocking the morning sun.
"Minho-ssi. I've been waiting."
Minho stopped a few meters away. His arrangement had been with Hyerin, not her grandfather.
"What are you doing here, Mr. Kim?"
Kim laughed—deep and loud—and stepped aside from the car. Behind him, Hyerin sat in the back seat with her arms crossed, scowling.
"I know my granddaughter made plans with you." Kim glanced back at her. The scowl deepened. "I wanted to see things myself."
He leaned in close, and hissed on Minho's ear. "I want to see you beat up that naughty child."
Minho rubbed his temples. One eccentric client was exhausting. Two felt like punishment.
"Fine. Let's do it." He made a subtle gesture with his hand—thumb rubbing against fingers. "You know what that means."
Kim threw his head back and burst out laughing until tears gathered in his eyes. He slapped his thigh. "People are right—nothing in this world is perfect! Hahaha!"
Minho turned and walked toward the gate without waiting. Behind him, he heard Hyerin's groan and Kim's continuing laughter.
First raid went fast. Goblin nest, F-rank. Minho moved through the narrow tunnels the way he'd done a thousand times before, sword cutting clean lines.
Damage: 18,392
Damage: 0
Damage: 24,771
The numbers jumped wild. High, nothing, high again. He struck twice when it zeroed, three times if needed. Eventually something stuck.
Hyerin stayed behind him, staff glowing softly whenever she cast heals. She was learning to stay out of his attack range, to read his movements before he made them. Smart girl.
Kim watched from the rear with his arms crossed. He didn't say anything. Somehow that made Minho more nervous than if he'd been talking.
Second raid. Wolf den, F-rank. More blood painting the stone walls. Hyerin flinched less this time when the spray hit near her feet.
Between the second and third raids, they sat on a bench outside the gate. Kim pulled out a cigarette case and flipped it open, offering one to Minho.
Minho shook his head. "No thanks."
"Watching your health?" Kim selected one and brought out a lighter.
"Ruins stamina." Minho kept his eyes on the gate portal ahead, watching it shimmer and pulse.
Kim lit the cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling smoke that drifted between them. "Hyunwoo told me stories about you." He tapped ash onto the ground. "How you used to kick him during raids."
Minho's jaw tightened slightly. "He was sloppy."
"He was young."
Minho didn't look at Kim. He kept staring at the portal. "So was I."
Kim studied him through the smoke for a long moment. The silence stretched. Finally he crushed the cigarette under his boot and stood, brushing off his pants. "Fifth raid?"
Minho rose from the bench, rolling his shoulders. "Fifth raid."
By evening they'd cleared all five. Minho's body ached in familiar ways—left knee clicking when he walked, shoulders tight from repetitive motion. He ignored both and kept moving.
Kim clapped him on the shoulder at the monitoring station, his hand heavy. "I didn't expect my granddaughter to improve this much in one day."
Minho glanced at Hyerin, who was reviewing her stats on a tablet. "She learns fast."
Before Kim could reply, Minho stopped. His hand went to his bag, patting the side. Empty.
"Mr. Kim, I need to grab something from the last gate." He gestured back toward the portal. "You two go ahead."
Kim's laugh boomed. "I didn't expect someone so careful to forget things!"
The gate timer on the nearby display showed four minutes until automatic closure. Plenty of time.
Kim turned to Hyerin with exaggerated concern, placing a hand over his heart. "Wait here, my dear granddaughter. Grandpa will buy snacks for you."
Hyerin's face flushed. "Im not a child!!!"
Kim walked toward the vending machine with his shoulders shaking from suppressed laughter. Hyerin slumped onto the bench and started muttering what sounded like elaborate curses, counting them off on her fingers.
Minho raised a hand in farewell before turning back toward the gate. The portal's surface rippled as he approached. He stepped through, and the familiar pull of dimensional displacement washed over him—that brief moment of vertigo where up and down lost meaning—then his feet found solid ground again.
Kim hummed an old tune while feeding coins into the vending machine. Chocolate bars—Hyerin liked chocolate even when she pretended not to care. The machine whirred and dropped them into the collection slot with hollow thuds.
"Grandpaaaa!!!"
The scream cut through everything else like a blade. Kim's body moved before his mind caught up, twenty years of combat instinct overriding thought. The chocolate bars scattered as he sprinted toward Hyerin, boots pounding concrete.
She stood frozen with one arm stretched out, pointing at empty air. Her hand was shaking.
Where the gate portal had been—where it should still be for another two minutes according to the timer, but there was nothing. No swirling energy, no dimensional shimmer, no distortion. Just empty space where reality should have been folding in on itself.
Kim reached toward it with one hand, fingers spreading wide. They met only cold air.
In ten years as a ranker, across hundreds of gates in dozens of countries, he had never seen a portal vanish after clearing. They stayed open until timeout or manual closure. They didn't just disappear.
"Where..." Hyerin's voice cracked. "Where did it go?"
Kim's hand was shaking now too. He stared at the empty space, mind racing through every possibility he knew and finding none that made sense.
His throat went dry. "Minho..."
Inside the gate, Minho saw grassland.
It stretched endlessly in every direction he turned. White flowers carpeted the ground like fallen snow, covering everything as far as he could see. Above, the sky was blue—perfectly. No clouds anywhere, no visible sun. Light seemed to come from everywhere at once, shadowless and flat.
Nothing moved. They stood frozen like they'd been painted into existence rather than grown.
Minho's hand tightened on his sword hilt until his knuckles went white. He turned in a slow circle, scanning for the exit portal.
..... Nothing. Just grass and flowers stretching to a horizon that might not exist.
His voice came out flat in the still air, swallowed by silence. "Where the hell am I?"
He started walking forward, picking a direction at random because all directions looked the same. His footsteps made no sound on the grass. Behind him, the flowers he'd walked through stood upright again, erasing any trace of his passage.