Humanity had ventured into space to free itself from the limitations of Earth’s land and resources, and now explored the seemingly infinite resources and mysteries awaiting it throughout the cosmos.
“Humanity will win the war against the Mog!”
The future of humanity in the year 2126 was not very different from what people a hundred years earlier, in 2026, had imagined.
And, just as humanity had imagined a hundred years earlier, it was now waging war against alien lifeforms that roamed through space and threatened humankind.
Human life expectancy had surpassed three hundred years. Most existing diseases, including cancer, could be cured.
Technology had advanced to such an extent that people could not only travel through space as tourists, but even own private homes on Mars or the Moon, complete with swimming pools and vegetable gardens.
That was all.
The reason was simple.
However, the way most of humanity lived was not very different from a hundred years earlier.
“As long as you have money!”
“Humanity’s technological advancement is dazzling! We can now enjoy countless things that would have been unimaginable a hundred years ago!”
Everything mentioned above cost money.
In fact, in some ways, making a living was even harder than it had been a hundred years earlier.
A tremendous amount of money.
“We’re recruiting soldiers to fight in the war against the Mog!”
In a world like that, there was practically only one way for an ordinary person to make a large amount of money.
After all, a hundred years ago, humans at least did not have to compete for jobs against robots capable of working twenty-four hours a day without complaining or even taking a smoke break, autonomous vehicles capable of traveling at three hundred kilometers per hour without causing a single accident, or artificial intelligences capable of producing a thousand illustrations per second.
Hunting the Mog, a race of space monsters that threatened humanity from the depths of the cosmos.
“Yeongcheol.”
Kim Seojun had also chosen that path.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Why does Korea still have mandatory military service?”
“Does it really make any sense to talk about a divided country in the space age? In a world as vast as space, do you think that dividing line still has any meaning?”
“Because we’re still a divided country, aren’t we? You’ve got North Korea right there.”
“Bastard, you got your draft notice, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I got it. Damn it. I don’t understand why they’re still sending out draft notices in the middle of the twenty-second century.”
When he turned nineteen, he received his draft notice.
“I’m going to enlist in the Space Marines.”
And when he received that draft notice, Kim Seojun said those words.
“Why do you think? From the country’s point of view, it’d be absurd to waste an opportunity to get cheap labor. Besides, these days it’s not like they force you to do anything dangerous. You get a little basic training, they send you to work at a military factory, and that’s it. Right? Isn’t that how it works? Hey, wait. Seojun, you’re not thinking about… Hey, no. Don’t fuck with me. You’re not thinking about that, are you?”
“Are you fucking crazy, idiot?!”
Naturally, it was madness.
He would become a Space Marine, cross through space, and fight alien monsters face-to-face.
“Why do you think anyone enlists in the Space Marines these days?”
“For money?”
“Why the hell do you want to do something that suicidal?”
But Kim Seojun had no choice.
“Yeah.”
“Jinsu hyung?”
“My brother collapsed.”
“My sister-in-law doesn’t want to tell me anything, but it seems pretty bad. Especially his liver and pancreas. He needs new organ transplants, but you know what the prices are like, don’t you?”
“It’s not a matter of whether it’s too much or not. Yeongcheol, you know too. You know everything my brother went through for me and Hyeeun.”
“Well, that’s……”
“Hey, even so, that’s too……”
His brother was sick.
And to Kim Seojun, his older brother, Kim Jinsu, was not simply a brother.
A tragedy had befallen their parents.
“I still can’t imagine what it must be like to become the head of the family at fifteen and have to take care of two siblings aged five and three.”
“I also can’t imagine what it must be like to go into space as a mercenary at seventeen, before you even get your draft notice, to shoot at the Mog.”
He would save his younger siblings.
But in the midst of that tragedy, Kim Seojun’s older brother had not broken down. Instead, he had sacrificed everything for his younger siblings.
So, when he had the opportunity to help that brother, Kim Seojun did not hesitate.
With that single purpose in mind, his brother had shown courage and a capacity for sacrifice that few others would ever have dared to display.
“He did it for me. Now it’s my turn to do it.”
And now that brother was sick.
His life from then on was even more miserable than anyone could have imagined.
Facing those monsters while wearing a battle suit and wielding a weapon was absolute madness.
He enlisted in the Space Marines.
Countless times, he watched comrades who had been laughing and joking with him barely ten minutes earlier get eaten alive by the Mog.
“Yes.”
He wrote his will before every mission.
“Sergeant Kim, you’re being discharged in a week?”
“I haven’t gone crazy yet, sir.”
“Hey, what if you stay in the military? I’m serious. I’ve seen a lot of soldiers by now, but you’ve got extraordinary talent. If you want, I can even write you a letter of recommendation for the special forces.”
“……What a relief. If you’d accepted, I was planning to send you straight to a psychiatric hospital.”
“Sergeant Kim Seojun, you did a great job. And I’m not just saying that. Thanks to the courage you showed on the battlefield, hundreds of people were saved.”
“It was an honor to serve in your company, sir.”
After giving that final military salute, Kim Seojun finally boarded a ship bound for Earth and returned home after three years.
However, Kim Seojun survived, and eventually the time came for him to bid farewell to the battlefield against the Mog.
The money he had earned serving as a Space Marine was no small amount, and thanks to it, his brother recovered his health. In addition, his recovered brother and sister-in-law had a son whom they adored more than anything in the world.
Watching his brother and sister-in-law, Kim Seojun also began to dream of getting a good job, finding a partner with whom he could share mutual trust, having children, and living happily.
He dreamed of a rosy future.
The next six years were the very picture of happiness.
On the day his nephew turned five, an incident occurred.
However, that future soon came crashing down.
A terrorist attack.
He suffered burns all over his body and was mangled from head to toe.
And his brother was caught in it.
In the twenty-first century, those injuries would have meant instant death, but twenty-second-century medical technology was capable of saving him.
Money.
Of course, there was one condition.
It required a tremendous amount of money.
Hearing his nephew’s question as the boy looked at his father, who still had not awakened, Kim Seojun answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Uncle, when is Dad going to wake up?”
“Soon.”
The very moment he uttered that word, Kim Seojun applied to join as a non-commissioned officer.
And at the same time, he volunteered.
“I want to go wherever pays the most.”
“Sergeant Kim Seojun, is there anywhere in particular you’d like to serve?”
“Yes, sir. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have enlisted for a second time.”
“……Are you serious?”
“So you are serious.”
He went to the most fucked-up place of all.
“Sergeant Kim, is this your first mission since receiving your appointment?”
A planet where resource extraction had barely begun and where no one even knew what might be found.
He was not afraid.
“Corporal Lee Jihoon.”
“Yes. Why?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No reason, sir. I was just curious. By the way, did you bring diapers? I’m not trying to make fun of you. When someone sees a Mog for the first time, ten times out of ten, whether they’re soldiers or NCOs, they shit or piss themselves. Even I still wear one from time to time, sir.”
“I reenlisted.”
“This is my second time in the military.”
“Sir?”
Because he had already been through all of it before.
[Mog detected ahead!]
And that was precisely what made the difference.
[We will soon enter the planet Amotia.]
When they arrived on that developing planet, where resource extraction had barely begun—
The Mogdogs were two meters long and possessed an insect-like exoskeleton. They ran on four legs like dogs and, above those, had a pair of scythe-shaped limbs resembling the forelegs of a praying mantis.
A hundred of those creatures charged directly toward them.
[A pack of Mogdogs is approaching!]
“Then inject it.”
“Sir?”
“G-God! T-There are too many!”
Kim Seojun did not lose his composure.
With absolute calm, he injected himself with a Stimpak, the stimulant supplied to the Space Marines.
“Do you think you can look at those things while sober? Everyone, inject your Stimpaks!”
It was an extremely fierce battle.
To the point where it would not have been strange if all of them had died.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
And within that transformed world, with all his senses altered, Sergeant Kim Seojun fought alongside his subordinates in a battle where everyone put their lives on the line.
“Eight, sir.”
Fortunately, luck was on their side, and Kim Seojun and his subordinates managed to win the battle.
“Survivors?”
They had witnessed a miracle.
Because he had already lived through all of it before.
There was sorrow as well.
However, even then, Kim Seojun was neither shaken nor surprised nor crushed by grief.
“Two dead.”
Although, of course, there was another reason as well.
And because he knew he would live through it countless times again in the future.
“Wooooo! Fireworks! They’re fireworks!”
Kim Seojun was no exception.
The side effects of the Stimpak stimulant were distorting their five senses, and under those conditions, it was impossible to properly express emotions or make rational judgments.
“Hehehehe, hihihihi.”
The world began to look different from usual, and his ears picked up auditory hallucinations—sounds that could not possibly exist in reality.
That was why.
Whenever he injected a Stimpak, he naturally suffered its side effects as well.
When he suddenly heard that voice in his ears, Kim Seojun thought it was simply another side effect of the Stimpak.
And it was not a particularly strange side effect either.
[The status window has been activated.]
‘Hm?’
I leveled up!
He had already seen some of his comrades, completely drugged by the visual and auditory hallucinations caused by the Stimpaks, shout things like:
The Constellation sponsored me!
“A status window, huh?”
I got an instant-death skill!
That was why Kim Seojun did not think too much of it either.
— Strength: 11
— Endurance: 14
— Mana: 1
— Skills: None
— Talents: Dynamic Vision (E)
— Points: 0 pt
— Tickets: 1 Gold Ticket
Even when he saw a holographic window appear in front of him as soon as he uttered the words ‘status window,’ he thought the same thing.
‘……This hallucination is pretty intense.’
[Kim Seojun]
“A Gold Ticket?”
Ssssss.
He simply believed that the side effects had hit him harder than usual.
‘……Is this a hallucination?’
However, things changed when, as soon as he uttered those words, he saw a golden ticket appear on the glove of his battle suit.
“Huh?”
[Gold Ticket]
Then another window appeared.
As he thought that, he stared at the Gold Ticket that had appeared in his hand.
He still believed it could be a hallucination.
Of course, even after reading that, Kim Seojun was still not completely convinced.
— By tearing the ticket, you can obtain an attribute, a skill, or a talent.
[Congratulations! You have obtained a Platinum-grade reward.]
[You have torn a Gold Ticket.]
Riiip!
But then he tore the Gold Ticket.
[You can now see the trajectory of all projectiles.]
It was at that very instant.
[Mog detected ahead!]
[You have obtained Apollo’s Blessing (55 days)!]
Suddenly, a combat alert rang out.
“Everyone, prepare for combat! Aim your weapons!”
[333 Mogdogs have currently been confirmed!]
Kim Seojun regained his focus and shouted at his subordinates, who were still under the effects of the drugs.
“Huh? R-Right now, sir? I… I’m seeing strange things, sir!”
And then Kim Seojun could see it.
“Same here.”
And from the end of the barrel, he saw a line of red light extending outward, as if it were a laser.
He aimed his weapon at the Mogdogs charging toward them.
“……I’m seeing something strange too.”
Click!
He obtained a status window.
Kim Seojun’s first day as a non-commissioned officer.