"An explosive Gate!!! Run, now!"
In the shouts that erupted right after, a word Sihyun himself recognized reached his ears.
Without even realizing it, he got caught between people and moved his feet as if being swept along, but he bit his lip at the fact that Hajung still wasn’t in sight. He had a bad feeling.
The moment he got outside the cafe, people poured out of every building and started running to get farther away from the Gate.
"Ah, move!"
"Don’t push!"
The distinction between road and sidewalk vanished, and even drivers abandoned their cars and joined the massive current, sprinting in urgency.
Sarak.
At that moment, a single small snowflake fell onto the top of Sihyun’s head as he stood at the edge of the street.
"What the.... Snow?"
You couldn’t say it was warm right now, but it was already April, and that meant it wasn’t weather where snow should be falling.
It melted right away from his body heat, leaving nothing but a few damp strands of hair, but Sihyun rubbed the moisture left on his fingertips for a moment, then turned his gaze to the opposite direction of where people were fleeing.
Even though he couldn’t see it, when he spread his qi-sense, he could feel an extremely ominous current whipping and raging ahead like a storm.
Sihyun let out a small sigh. Then he checked that his cap and hood were properly pulled on, and in an instant, he vanished from the middle of the pandemonium.
The direction he moved was where the snowflake had come from.
***
"Insane...."
It was Sihyun’s first time seeing a Gate directly too, so the overwhelming sight made his body stiffen a little.
A colossal yellow energy coiled between tall gray buildings, forming a round shape, and the inside rippled shallowly like an opaque lake.
It looked like a mirror made by tearing open the air.
On top of a building at the boundary of the erosion zone.
Sihyun, standing precariously on the rooftop railing, stared blankly at the scene for a long while, then frowned at the snow that kept blowing in.
Centered on that mirror-like Gate, the space within a 500-meter radius had thick snowfall flying without rest, and the rapidly dropping temperature was starting to affect even outside the boundary, little by little.
This seemed to be the eroded terrain he’d read about, but it was a phenomenon he couldn’t understand at all—what kind of principle could even make something like this happen?
"If they can’t resolve this and it Breaks, that means mana explodes in every direction and whatever’s in there comes out...."
Even aside from that, when he’d first looked at this space, parts of it had appeared whitish here and there, like CG, but in that short time it was becoming clearer and clearer, making him feel all over again just how dangerous that area was.
Ddingdong-
Right then, as if on cue, Sihyun’s phone ended its silence and finally notified him of Hajung’s message.
-Hey, I’m gonna be late.
Huh.
"Is that it, seriously?"
With an empty look, Sihyun shook his head. Hajung always complained that he never told her things properly, but she seemed to not realize she was exactly the same.
"Well. Birds of a feather."
Sihyun, who’d been leaning on the railing, scratched his head awkwardly, then fussed with his clothes and plopped down on the spot.
Right then, he could see a bright-red silhouette that looked like Hajung and several other people rushing into the Gate.
Sihyun, despite the fact that he’d come running here in a hurry, rested his chin on the railing and watched the scene like he was sightseeing. He wasn’t worried. With the status he’d just checked, Hajung’s side winning was practically certain—over eighty percent.
[C-Rank Gate - 85%]
"Does it mean it Breaks when it hits 100%...?"
Since it was still a low-rank skill, it didn’t give a proper explanation, but once he roughly matched it to the situation, the answer came easily.
The anxious feeling he’d had settled a little once he saw the value with his own eyes. Sihyun watched the Gate closely for a short while, then, feeling like he could finally breathe, pushed himself up to head back toward the cafe.
That was when, down below the building.
The people who had escaped the erosion zone and those who had just arrived on site were grabbing onto the Hunter Association personnel who were controlling the area, shouting loudly.
"My mom is in there!! Hunters, please, please save my mom! Ugh...."
"Me too! My daughter is in there!!! Please...."
Once one person started, the survivors surged in, crying and begging.
But the Association staff were firmly cutting off their wails with a blunt refusal.
He understood.
No matter that they were Hunters, the ones assigned to guard the Gate perimeter would be bottom-rung people, and without specific orders, it would be scary to just barge into the mana storm that was steadily building.
"Haa.... I shouldn’t have looked."
Sihyun pressed his forehead for a moment and let out a deep sigh. Then he gathered his focus into his eyes and quickly swept the erosion zone, where the snowfall and mana made everything blurry.
And then he saw it—people who hadn’t escaped in time because of the sudden change were forcing their frozen bodies to move, crawling out to try to get away.
But that was only true for those near the boundary, and the small presences deeper in remained right where they were.
And some had already shrunk quite a lot, and especially the two whose very innate qi was about to dwindle were in real danger.
"Tsk...."
In the end, Sihyun clicked his tongue lightly, kicked off the railing, and shot down into the eroded terrain as if gliding.
When he checked the amount of Inner Power as he went in, it wasn’t much since he hadn’t trained long, but it was enough to use in this situation.
A little farther inside from the erosion zone’s boundary, Sihyun stepped onto the shallowly piled snow, spread a narrow barrier of qi around himself, then loosened up his body—now somewhat freed from the snowstorm—and briefly checked the surroundings.
For now, the only external factor was the cold; besides that, there didn’t seem to be any particularly dangerous obstacles.
Sihyun took a short breath, then checked again the condition of the person whose presence had been the most depleted, the one he’d felt was dangerous from outside.
"Did they pass out."
Sihyun clicked his tongue lightly, bent his knees, and leaned his upper body forward.
Shuuk!
In that instant, Sihyun’s figure seemed to stretch, then vanished in a blink. It was fast enough that, to ordinary people, it would look like he’d teleported.
And a moment later, arriving in front of a middle-aged woman whose body had snow piled on it and was frozen over, Sihyun swept off the snow with a single gesture, then placed his hand over her dantian.
'I shouldn’t just inject Inner Power.... But this one should be fine.'
Either way, if he left her like this, she was going to die. And the Inner Power he’d built this time was pure and upright unlike before, and with the feeling that he had to do something, Sihyun moved without hesitation.
Focusing so fast it was almost frightening, Sihyun avoided the sensitive meridians and pushed his Inner Power in with fine control. At once, the bluish-frozen face began to regain its color and return.
"Hoo.... Good."
Sihyun let out a brief, crooked smile, then slung the now-somewhat-warmed middle-aged woman over one shoulder and moved to where the next presence was.
About ten minutes passed like that, and Sihyun laid around thirty people who’d passed out from the cold side by side in an empty alley, then panted softly. It was unfortunate, but there was no one alive in there anymore.
'Just give a rough heads-up and go back toward the cafe.'
After quickly checking the condition of the people lying in a row, Sihyun rubbed the back of his neck as if embarrassed, then turned away without regret and took a step.
"J-Just a moment, Hun...ter."
At that moment, Sihyun’s body jerked. If this were murim, this could’ve been a situation where his neck got cut in one stroke.
Fuck, why didn’t I sense the presence?
With a distrustful expression, Sihyun turned his gaze and looked toward where the voice had burst out. And then the woman, her eyes half-open and fluttering, cried as she struggled to continue speaking.
"My.... older brother. Hngh, into the Gate.... got swept.... Please save...."
"Haa...."
He didn’t have the slightest desire to stick his nose into things excessively.
That situation just happened to enter his sight, and it was ridiculously easy for him to handle, and if he heard it and pretended he hadn’t, it would leave a bad taste in his mouth—so he moved. That was all.
But the mind that had felt so clear just a moment ago started to feel nasty again. Harsh words kept rolling around inside his mouth.
"Fine, so stop crying already."
"Hngh, th-thank.... you...."
In the end, Sihyun checked again that his hood was properly pulled down, and then he stepped back into the place that was now completely covered in snow, so that everything looked only white.
***
"Wow.... Seeing it up close, it’s even more insane."
Sihyun stood blankly in front of the Gate, carefully picking apart the very energy that was forming its shape.
It was something he could’ve just roughly brushed off, but the reason Sihyun had stopped was that, from this unfamiliar Gate, he felt a familiar sensation.
'Why am I feeling that here?'
This qi felt subtly different from what he’d felt after coming back to the modern world, and the amount was so small it was hard to tell, but it seemed like it really was the natural qi he’d felt inside the game.
It was nestled extremely secretly at the core of the power that maintained the Gate’s form.
"Tsk... whatever."
But even with that question in his mind, Sihyun soon shook it off and stepped forward.
It wasn’t like he wanted to dig deep into it, and before it got any more annoying, he wanted to rescue the man and leave this place fast.
Soon, as Sihyun’s left foot passed through the glossy, mirror-like surface of the Gate, the Gate rippled faintly and, surprisingly, came apart easily.
It wasn’t that he was really tense, but when his foot actually disappeared into the Gate and couldn’t be seen, Sihyun glanced down at his remaining foot with complicated eyes and sighed again.
And a moment later, without hesitation, he threw his body inside.