Chapter Seven – The Gate Appears
In Seoul, South Korea, [Uchiha Sasuke] observed the staggering number of people moving without cease.
Most spoke in a strange,guttural, and fast-paced language that was utterly foreign.
The Korean language was,without a doubt, extremely difficult and largely incomprehensible, different from his own on a level that surpassed his ability to quickly determine meanings.
Yet,after a long period of exposure, he had begun to grasp fragments, catching the occasional familiar concept or repeated word amidst the sonic chaos.
Furthermore, he had explored this city and, through observation and deduction, had arrived at its name: Seoul.
This must be one of the major cities of this world,or so he concluded after seeing the sheer density of people—perhaps hundreds of thousands—moving through its arteries without pause.
He stood atop one of the taller, less conspicuous buildings, a silent silhouette against the twilight sky.
His Sharingan was active,its crimson glow hidden by a subtle genjutsu, but its sharpness was undimmed as it analytically scanned the cityscape, cataloging patterns of movement, energy flows, and structural weaknesses in the steel and glass forest.
Then, he heard it.
A sound that cut through the urban drone—not with volume at first,but with a specific, piercing quality.
A collective scream of terror,rising from a large group of people a few blocks away.
He wouldn't normally have paid it any mind.
Chaos in this strange world was not his concern.
But a flicker of curiosity,sharp and sudden, moved him.
Perhaps it was a clue.A disturbance. Something relevant.
He didn't run or leap in the conventional sense.
One moment he was on the rooftop,the next he was a streak of dark motion, flying through the air at immense speed with a soft whoosh of displaced air, drawn towards the epicenter of the panic.
---
At a large commercial district in central Seoul, a gate had opened.
Its appearance had been announced by panicked news bulletins flashing across every screen moments before,but for those on the ground, the announcement was the event itself.
It happened without the sound of an explosion, but with the visceral pressure of one.
A silent,spatial detonation.
A massive, swirling rift of distorted space and violent purple energy tore itself into reality in the middle of a crowded plaza.
VWOOOORRRMMMM—
The sound was a deep,bone-shaking hum that vibrated in the teeth and made the air feel thick and heavy.
It was an S-Rank Gate.
One of the dangerous portals leading to a dungeon filled with some of the most lethal monsters hunters would ever face.
The spatial distortion from the gate's emergence acted like a physical shockwave.
The area of effect encircled the plaza,trapping dozens, then hundreds of people within the collapsing periphery.
Buildings nearest the rift didn't just crack;their facades sheared off with a grinding CRRRUNCH-SHATTER, raining glass and concrete dust in a deadly hail.
The magical pressure emitted by the gate was more than ordinary people could withstand.
Most individuals who had been directly beside the point of manifestation lost consciousness immediately,crumpling to the ground like puppets with cut strings.
Those further away were pinned by an invisible,crushing weight, unable to breathe, to move, their vision swimming.
[Sasuke] arrived in the heart of this devastation.
He landed with a softthud that cratered the cracked asphalt, his descent having been a controlled fall from his flight.
Purple lightning still crackled faintly around his form from the velocity.
He took in the scene with a single,sweeping glance—the groaning rift in space, the collapsed buildings, the bodies littering the ground.
Without hesitation, he acted.
His Rinnegan glowed with a serene,ominous light.
He raised a hand,fingers splayed.
An invisible field of manipulated gravity—aShinra Tensei in its most delicate, controlled form—expanded from him like a bubble.
It wasn't a push,but a shield.
A spherical barrier that intercepted and neutralized the suffocating mana pressure emanating from the gate.
FWOMP.
The sound was a soft, deep expulsion of air as the crushing weight lifted from the trapped civilians.
People who had been a little further from the gate,who had witnessed the dark streak fall from the sky and transform into a crater from which a black-haired youth with strange eyes emerged, gasped.
"The Strange-Eyed Hunter!" The thought, if not the words, flashed through their stunned minds immediately.
This was the figure from the news,the savior of Jeju Island, now here.
These people—women, children, men lying on the ground—watched as the young man made a simple gesture.
With that motion,the invisible force that had been pressing down on their bodies vanished.
The youth raised his hand higher,his eyes glowing brighter, and he stared at the pulsating gate, a deep frown etching itself onto his pale face.
He spoke, his words clear and in Japanese, cutting through the residual hum of the gate.
"What in all the hells is this thing?I feel the same pressure, the same energy that was emitted by that creature called the Ant King."
The similarity piqued [Sasuke]'s intense curiosity.
This gate was a giant doorway,and as it stabilized, it was unleashing that same foul, potent energy that had saturated the ant nest.
It had already destroyed many nearby buildings.
Yet,the number of human casualties seemed… lower than he expected.
Given the explosive release of energy and the population density of what his reconnaissance had told him was a major marketplace,he anticipated thousands dead.
Of course, [Sasuke] didn't realize the Hunter Association had issued an emergency evacuation order just a quarter of an hour before the gate appeared.
Their sensors had detected a massive energy spike building at that location.
Most people who hadn't responded in time were still caught in the collapse and pressure wave,and would have died, had he not used his Rinnegan to create that gravity-wall barrier to shield them.
His reason for acting wasn't kindness of heart.
He didn't particularly care for these strangers.
But he didn't want to see them die needlessly,especially not civilians.
In the end,he was applying [Itachi]'s concept of peace in his own twisted way.
He simply wouldn't allow the pointless death of civilians if he could prevent it with a gesture.
It was a principle,cold and logical, not an emotion.
The scene was one of utter chaos, with the gate's immense energy lashing out into the sky like a furious beacon.
Every S-Rank and A-Rank hunter in Seoul felt this tremendous pressure spike.They all began to mobilize instantly.
The gate's pressure was so immense that the entire city had felt the ominous build-up seconds before it manifested.
---
"What in the hell is going on?!" roared [Baek Yoon], the leader of the White Tiger Guild.
He had been personally overseeing the frustrating search for the Strange-Eyed Hunter,and now he felt a pressure that was on par with the Ant King's, blooming in the heart of the city.
It triggered all his predatory instincts.
"How can a gate appear in a place like this?Someone had better tell me something NOW!"
His angry shout echoed in his guild's monitoring center.
Not a single one of his analysts stopped working;their fingers flew across keyboards with frantic clack-clack-clacks, pulling up data.
The analysis came back swiftly:an S-Rank gate had opened directly in the Seoul commercial district plaza.
Fortunately,the Hunter Association's warning had allowed some evacuation. Emergency alerts were being sent to all other guilds to prepare for a dungeon raid as fast as possible to prevent catastrophic damage.
[Baek Yoon] began barking orders, his voice tight with urgency.
"Mobilize all our guild hunters!We're heading to that dungeon immediately! We have to clear it before it causes a disaster in Korea!"
The data on his main screen showed the energy levels within the gate reaching the same catastrophic threshold as the Ant King's,and it had appeared in the middle of Seoul, the capital.
One of the White Tiger monitors suddenly spoke up, his voice sharp with surprise as he sent data to the main screen.
"Sir!It's the Strange-Eyed Hunter! He's appearing on all the news feeds!"
The surprise on [Baek Yoon]'s face was instant.
He whipped his head around,his train of thought derailed as he stared at the screen.
There he was.
The same young man he'd seen a hundred times in footage.
The Strange-Eyed Hunter was standing directly in front of the newly manifested gate.
News drones,reacting with voyeuristic speed, had zoomed in and were broadcasting the image to every platform in Korea.
---
In the main conference room of the Hunter Association headquarters, Chairman [Go Gun-Hee] watched the same catastrophic feed alongside all the S-Rank hunters who had been in the meeting.
They saw the buildings collapse in an instant.
The power of this gate was something unseen since the aftermath of[Kamish], the S-Ranked dragon, and finally, the Ant King—a calamity of the same level.
"Look there! It's the Strange-Eyed Hunter!" The Flame Master S-Rank hunter with red hair and glasses pointed rapidly at the screen.
The black-haired youth with mismatched eyes—one red, one purple—stood protectively before a group of dazed civilians.
He performed a series of hand seals,swift and precise, before a visible dome of force shimmered into existence around them.
Suddenly,the people who had been frozen or collapsed on the ground began to stir, to rise.
They looked at the Strange-Eyed Hunter,some bowing in thanks and terror before scrambling away to safety.
[Choi Jong-In] raised his eyes and looked at Chairman [Go Gun-Hee].
The Chairman spoke in that moment,his voice filled with grim resolve.
"Be ready.You will go and clear this dungeon immediately. Announce it as an S-Rank dungeon."
The declaration was clear.
A new war was beginning in Korea with the appearance of a new gate,one that no one understood, in the worst possible place.
And standing at its threshold,having inadvertently placed himself at the center of the storm once again, was the universe's most disgruntled tourist: [Uchiha Sasuke], who just wanted to find a way home and was getting very tired of this world's dramatic way of saying hello.
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End of Chapter.
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A gate opens in the city, and a reluctant protector stands before it. The plot thickens like the mana in the air! Thank you for reading as Sasuke's bad luck (or is it fate?) continues to intersect with this world's crises. Your theories on what's inside are the real treasure.
❤️🙂
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AUTHOR'S NOTE:
First, hello friends! I'm delighted to see your interactions in the comments section.
I have an important point I'd like to share with you. If anyone is wondering why [Sasuke] can't just return to Konoha even though he possesses dimensional travel abilities (like he used against Kaguya), the reason is very simple.
The difference is in the type of barrier.
The travel against Kaguya was spatial movement within the same dimension.
The travel[Sasuke] needs now is interdimensional, and he is trapped inside a barrier that prevents outward travel.
Think of it like expanding a'Domain' in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
When a sorcerer expands their Domain,even if the opponent has teleportation or instantaneous movement techniques, they cannot escape because that Domain warps space-time and prevents them from connecting to an exit point outside of it.
And you know who it is that warps space and creates gates in the world of Solo Leveling, don't you?