“Ugh, my head…”
I was alive.
When I came to, I found myself lying in the middle of a forest.
The vivid scent of grass, the chirping of insects, the fresh air.
Every sensation I felt throughout my body proved that I was alive.
And both my arms, both my legs, and everything else were perfectly intact.
Whew…
I let out a sigh of relief.
But I couldn’t exactly celebrate.
At the very last moment—
I had fallen into the white portal.
Into the return portal that had been humanity’s final hope.
I don’t know whether to call this insanely lucky or unbelievably shitty luck.
Surviving was an incredible stroke of fortune, but the situation was too complicated for me to simply be happy about it.
Cheon Seongho, an SSS-rank hunter, was supposed to have entered that portal.
Instead, I—the eternal F-rank hunter—had gone through.
Humanity’s fate had more or less been decided.
And in a very hopeless direction.
I knew exactly how talentless a hunter I was.
It would almost have been better for an ordinary civilian who had never even awakened to come instead of me.
This is driving me insane. It was completely beyond my control.
I rubbed my face with both hands.
It wasn’t as if I had wanted to enter.
I was the victim here.
A magical projectile had come flying out of nowhere, hit me, and then shoved me into the portal on top of that.
If that didn’t make me the victim, what did?
Tch.
Of course, there was no one here to listen to my excuses.
At this point in time, there probably wasn’t even anyone around to blame me.
Because I had returned to the past.
Still, at least I managed to save Younghoon.
I had seen him calling out to me at the very end.
At least that much was a relief.
Ding! Ding!
A System alert suddenly rang in my ears.
Ugh, what is it now?
It was loud enough to make my ears hurt.
I had never heard an alert this intense before.
『 The System has detected a distortion in causality. 』
『 The System has identified a critical defect in the affected individual. 』
What?
A red message window I had never seen before filled my vision.
A distortion in causality?
A critical defect?
Nothing but ominous words.
Before I even had time to think properly, another message appeared.
『 Causality Adjustment Protocol: ‘Deus Ex Machina’ will now be executed. 』
『 Time until ‘Deus Ex Machina’ execution is complete: 30 minutes. 』
The System messages that followed were just as incomprehensible.
What the hell is a Causality Adjustment Protocol, and what’s Deus Ex Machina supposed to be?
Was I being subjected to some kind of restriction because I had crossed through time?
That was about as much as I could make sense of.
Has the System ever done anything like this before?
I had never even heard of causality adjustment.
And what was with this countdown?
Wasn’t the System supposed to assist hunters with their abilities?
This was beyond confusing.
『 Time Remaining: 29 minutes 58 seconds. 』
“Ugh…”
Clutching my throbbing head, I got to my feet.
I didn’t have time to sit around analyzing everything.
With some unknown countdown already ticking away, I couldn’t keep lying there forever.
Do something. Anything.
For all I knew, my existence might be erased thirty minutes from now.
Whatever happened, I didn’t want to just sit still and let it happen to me.
First… Status window.
There was nothing better for checking my current condition.
『 Status 』
Name: Lee Jihan
Age: 24
Level: 2
Rank: F
Trait: None
Skills
Looks like my abilities returned to their past state along with me.
Not that there was much difference.
I had possessed Strength Lv.1, but aside from that, this was the same as before I returned.
I gave a bitter smile.
Cheon Seongho would’ve had it rough if he’d come instead.
The more someone had, the more they had to lose.
Compared to him, I had started with practically nothing, so the damage was minimal.
Then again, with his ridiculous talent, maybe he wouldn’t have worried about something like this at all.
I had a rough grasp of my abilities now.
After closing the Status window, I looked around.
“Where the hell am I…?”
The area was filled with trees and green vegetation.
The plants growing nearby had some rather unusual shapes.
They didn’t look like anything that belonged in South Korea.
In that case, there was only one answer.
Looks like I’m inside a gate… I just don’t know which one.
A gate.
A habitat for monsters and the only opening connecting reality to other dimensions.
The environments inside them varied wildly.
Forest-type gates were especially common.
Still, if this is a gate I entered back then, the danger level should be low.
As an F-rank hunter, I had never entered a powerful gate in my life.
The highest I had ever gone was a D-rank gate.
The problem is, even an F-rank gate is difficult for me to escape alone.
If I at least had a weapon, I might have tried fighting, but I had absolutely nothing in my hands.
Just when exactly had I returned to?
Even if the me from this period was an idiot, there’s no way I would’ve entered a gate without a weapon.
I carefully searched my surroundings, but there was nothing that could serve as a proper weapon.
The fact that I was alone in the first place meant this wasn’t a normal situation.
What the hell had happened?
For now, at least this.
Rustle.
I picked up a branch lying nearby.
It was reasonably thick.
For a weak hunter like me, a weapon was practically a lifeline.
Better than nothing.
My immediate objective was to leave the gate alive.
I didn’t need to think about anything else.
And to do that, I needed to avoid combat entirely—or at least keep it to the absolute minimum.
Please let this be a gate I still remember…
Keeping as quiet as possible, I pushed through the undergrowth and moved forward.
Maybe because forests all looked alike, I couldn’t get any real sense of which gate this was.
About five minutes later, an ominous sound came from ahead.
Kirik…!
The uniquely unpleasant cry of a goblin.
Damn.
I naturally slipped behind a tree.
Cold tension crawled down my spine.
If it found me, I was 100% dead.
It would rip my limbs apart and kill me.
I couldn’t even make the sound of breathing.
Then I realized something.
Goblin senses rival those of B-rank hunters… but that was common knowledge in the future.
It wasn’t common knowledge now.
About ten years from this point, once demonic energy had saturated the world, monsters became even more vicious.
They grew so powerful that hunters like me couldn’t do anything against them.
But that was a story from the future.
If this really is the past, I don’t need to go this far.
Still, there was no harm in being cautious.
After spending my entire life as one of the weak, it was only natural for instincts like that to be carved into my body.
I slowly observed the goblin.
No signs of mutation. Its eyes aren’t red, and the weapon it’s carrying is crude. This really is the past.
The only thing the goblin was carrying was a flimsy branch even worse than the one I had picked up.
At that level, I could probably subdue it even without a proper weapon.
Kirik. Kirik.
An inexperienced rookie hunter might have rushed in.
But I was different.
There’s no reason to take the risk just to kill it.
I knew my own level very well.
Without a proper weapon, even killing a single goblin had a high chance of turning into a miserable brawl.
And what if its companions came after hearing the commotion?
Things would become even more complicated.
If the boss monster discovered me, my odds of getting out alive would drop even further.
Better to wait here for a while.
Holding my breath, I waited to see what the goblin would do.
『 Time Remaining: 24 minutes 33 seconds. 』
The time displayed by the System was still ticking down, so sitting still felt like a waste.
But it was better than moving carelessly and bringing disaster down on myself.
Suppressing my impatience, I stayed hidden behind the tree and waited for the goblin to move elsewhere.
Kirik!
Fortunately, the goblin moved soon enough.
Perhaps it had heard something, because it turned its attention in the opposite direction and disappeared into the forest.
Damn it. I came back to the past and I’m still scared shitless of a single goblin.
I let out a long sigh.
I didn’t like it, but this was reality.
For an unarmed F-rank hunter, this was about the best I could do.
Can I even make it out like this?
I continued through the forest while constantly watching my surroundings.
At first, I had expected memories related to the gate to surface quickly, but all I saw were places I had never seen before.
Maybe I’d be better off finding other hunters.
Hunters normally joined forces when clearing gates.
Parties of around three to five hunters were standard.
And I, in particular, had never played solo.
I was certain of one thing.
I never abandoned my party inside an F-rank gate.
Funny how useless things like that were so easy to remember.
Abandoning or betraying party members was illegal.
And because a hunter’s reputation from low-rank gates followed them into higher-rank ones, no respectable hunter would ever do something like that.
I should be seeing some kind of trace by now.
If I had unlimited time, it wouldn’t matter.
But the System’s countdown was still running.
『 Time Remaining: 14 minutes 45 seconds. 』
Since I had no idea what would happen once the timer reached zero, I couldn’t relax.
I was moving quickly but quietly when I heard something nearby.
Slash!
The sound of something being cut down.
Kieeeek! Kiek! Kieeek!
Then came the shrieks of goblins.
Hunters?
It sounded like someone was hunting goblins.
As long as they had proper equipment, hunting goblins in an F-rank gate was easy.
I could hear several goblins at once, so there was a good chance there were multiple hunters.
I needed to get closer before they left.
I quickly moved forward.
But then—
Shing.
The sound of a sword sliding into its sheath brushed past my ears.
It was a simple sound.
Yet there was nothing ordinary about it.
A chill seemed to burrow all the way into my bones.
!
At that ominous sensation, I shut my mouth and lowered my body.
Slowly approaching, I looked through the undergrowth.
“…Kirik.”
To my surprise, the one who had sheathed the sword was a goblin.
I could tell at a glance that it was different from the others.
The goblin’s eyes glowed blue, and two scabbards, each larger than its own body, hung from its waist.
Thump. Thump.
It was doing nothing but standing there, yet my heart was pounding violently.
Around it lay chunks of dismembered goblins in pools of blood.
Even at a glance, there were more than three.
That thing had killed them.
A named monster…
The moment I saw it, I knew exactly what it was.
Unlike countless ordinary goblins, this one had a name.
Twin-Blade Kuhullen.
An anomalous monster whose skill was on an entirely different level, earning it the classification of a named monster among hunters.
That irregular existence had taken the lives of countless hunters.
Why the hell is that thing here?
I covered my mouth completely.
The survival rules of the ruined future applied to this thing.
I had to make absolutely no sound.
I had to hide as silently as a dead mouse.
That was what I needed to do.
Rustle.
“?!”
A sound came from less than three meters away.
It wasn’t me.
Some idiot had made it.
“I-I’m saved! Take me with you! Take me too!”
Some lunatic came running over while shouting toward the named monster.
“Huh? W-what…? Why is that thing here…?”
The hunter’s eyes widened when he finally saw Kuhullen standing in front of him.
Then he began backing away in panic.
So that’s what it was.
Kuhullen hadn’t been killing its own kind for amusement.
It had been pretending to be a hunter, killing other goblins to lure hidden hunters out.
It was beyond impressive.
It sent chills down my spine.
I turned my gaze toward the hunter who had just appeared.
If that bastard had at least come out on the other side, I could’ve run immediately.
At that moment, I wanted to crack that idiot’s skull open even more than I wanted to escape Kuhullen.
Slowly.
Kuhullen placed its skeletal left hand over its scabbard.
I knew very well what that stance meant.
“Ah, shit!”
At this point, there was no way I wouldn’t be discovered too.
I immediately kicked off the ground and burst from cover.
I threw myself at the idiot hunter standing there frozen.
“W-wha?!”
The hunter lost his balance and fell with me.
Shing.
And a fraction of a second later, Kuhullen drew its sword.
Sssht!
A faint line appeared across the trunks of the nearby trees, including the tree I had been hiding behind.
RUMBLE!
“…”
The trees toppled along those lines, kicking up thick clouds of dust.
The hunter stared blankly back and forth between me and the severed trees.
If I had been even a little slower, both that idiot and I would have ended up like those trees.
“Who are you…?”
The hunter stared at me, having no idea what was going on.
A guild emblem was engraved on his armor.
When I saw the name written beneath it as well, a chill ran down my spine.
Goddamn it…
There was no time to think.
I grabbed the hunter by the collar and slapped him across the face.
“Ugh! What the hell are you—”
Did he seriously think we had time to argue?
I had already confirmed everything I needed to.
No more kindness.
I shouted at him one last time.
“If you don’t want to die, run!”
From here on out, surviving was up to him.
I started running with everything I had.
I ran until it felt as though my lungs would tear apart.
That was what it took to escape from a monstrous goblin like that.
Now I knew for certain.
I had genuinely never seen this clueless hunter before.
I had never faced that insane named monster head-on before either.
And I had definitely never been to this place.
That was the problem.
Why the hell am I here?
I had no idea why this was the place I had returned to.