The news spread across Korea within hours.
“Fastest Hunter Rank Promotion in History.”
“Former E-Rank Hunter Reaches C-Rank.”
“Shadow User Under Association Observation.”
Hunter forums exploded with discussions.
Some called Suho a genius.
Others called him dangerous.
And some— believed he was hiding something terrifying.
Inside Hunter Association headquarters—
Suho sat quietly in a waiting room while staring at his new hunter ID card.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━C-Rank HunterSung Suho━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It still felt unreal.
Only weeks ago— he had been called the weakest hunter alive.
Now even association officials looked nervous around him.
The door suddenly opened.
An association employee stepped inside.
“Hunter Sung Suho.”
“The raid team meeting is beginning.”
Suho stood up silently.
“…Raid team?”
The employee nodded.
“A new high-risk dungeon appeared this morning.”
“Because of your recent performance…”
“…the association selected you personally.”
Minutes later—
Suho entered a large briefing room.
Several hunters were already gathered around a digital map display.
Most immediately looked toward him.
Whispers spread instantly.
“That’s him?”
“The shadow hunter?”
“He doesn’t even look C-rank…”
Suho ignored them calmly.
Then— his eyes stopped on one familiar person.
Cha Hae-In stood near the front with crossed arms.
She glanced at him briefly.
“You’re late.”
“…Meeting just started.”
“Still late.”
Before Suho answered— the raid commander activated the screen.
A massive dungeon gate appeared on display. this one glowed dark violet.
The same corrupted color.
Suho’s eyes narrowed immediately.
“…Another corrupted gate.”
The commander nodded grimly.
“Three reconnaissance teams disappeared inside already.”
“No survivors.”
The room became tense.
One hunter swallowed nervously.
“Do we know what’s inside?”
The commander hesitated slightly.
“…No.”
“But mana readings continue increasing every hour.”
Cha Hae-In looked serious.
“If the growth continues…”
“…it could become another disaster-level break.”
The commander pointed toward the team list.
“This will be a special mixed raid squad.”
Several names appeared on the screen.
C-rank hunters.
B-rank hunters.
And one S-rank.
Then—
Suho’s name appeared near the center.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Special Raid Team━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Leader: Cha Hae-InMember: Sung Suho━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The room immediately reacted.
“Him?!”
“He just became C-rank!”
A B-rank hunter frowned openly.
“Why are we trusting a newly ranked hunter on a dangerous raid?”
Before anyone else spoke—
Cha Hae-In answered coldly.
“Because he survived things stronger hunters couldn’t.”
Silence followed instantly.
The B-rank hunter looked irritated but stayed quiet.
Suho simply sighed internally.
Great.
Now everyone hated him already.
Then— the system suddenly appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Raid Quest Generated━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Objective:
Clear Corrupted Gate━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Bonus Objective:
Protect the Raid Team━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho frowned slightly.
“Protect the raid team?”
That usually meant something terrible was about to happen.
Hours later—
Military barricades surrounded the entire district.
Helicopters circled overhead.
Even association elites looked tense.
The corrupted gate towered above the ruined street like a giant crack in reality itself.
Dark purple lightning flickered around its surface.
The pressure leaking from it felt suffocating.
Several lower-ranked hunters couldn’t even approach closely.
One whispered nervously—
“…This doesn’t feel like a normal dungeon.”
Suho silently agreed.
Because the fragment inside him had started reacting violently again.
Like something inside the gate was calling to him.
The system flickered.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Warning━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Unknown Entity Detected Inside Gate━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His shadow beneath him slowly moved again.
Excited.
Hungry.
Cha Hae-In stepped beside him quietly.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
Suho looked toward her.
“…What exactly?”
She stared directly at the corrupted gate.
“That thing inside.”
“…It’s watching us.”
Silence.
Then suddenly—
BOOOOOOM!!
The gate pulsed violently.
Purple energy exploded outward across the battlefield.
Several hunters stumbled backward.
And from deep within the darkness inside the gate— a giant distorted roar echoed outward.
Not animal.
Not human.
Something worse.
The raid commander immediately shouted—
“All hunters prepare for entry!”
Weapons activated.
Mana flared.
Shadows twisted.
And Suho slowly looked toward the darkness waiting inside the corrupted gate.
For some reason— it almost felt familiar.
TO BE CONTINUED….!!
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