Cold morning wind passed through the empty streets of Seoul.
Suho stood frozen beneath the pale sunrise while the dark-purple system screen floated before his eyes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Emergency Quest Incoming]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Survive to Continue Evolution━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A strange pressure filled the air around him.
Different from before.
Heavier.
More dangerous.
Suho frowned.
“…Survive what exactly?”
No answer came.
The screen slowly disappeared.
But the feeling remained.
Like something unseen had started watching him.
Far away— a crow landed silently on a streetlight.
Its glowing purple eyes stared directly at Suho.
Then it flew away.
Suho narrowed his eyes slightly.
“…Weird.”
After returning home, he collapsed onto his bed instantly.
His tiny apartment felt colder than usual.
Medicine bottles covered the desk nearby.
Hospital payment notices remained stacked in one corner.
Reality returned quickly.
No matter what powers he gained… his life was still a mess.
Suho rubbed his tired eyes.
Then suddenly—
DING.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[New Skill Available]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Observe Lv.1━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“…Observe?”
Before he could react, the apartment door burst open.
“SUHO!”
A familiar voice echoed loudly.
Yoo Jinho entered carrying bags of food.
“You disappeared right after the association interview!”
Suho blinked.
“How did you find my address?”
Jinho grinned proudly.
“I’m rich.”
“…Fair enough.”
Jinho suddenly became serious.
“You feeling okay?”
Suho hesitated slightly.
How was he supposed to explain any of this?
Shadow soldiers?
Systems?
Statues?
Even he barely understood it himself.
“…I survived somehow.”
Jinho sat down quietly.
“The association is going crazy right now.”
Suho looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because nobody understands how an E-rank survived a double dungeon.”
Jinho lowered his voice.
“And…”
“…your mana readings changed again.”
“So they noticed.”
Jinho nodded.
“Some people think you had a delayed awakening.”
Delayed awakening.
That explanation sounded safer than the truth.
Then suddenly—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Observe Activated━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
A blue screen appeared above Jinho automatically.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Name: Yoo JinhoRank: D-Rank HunterCondition: ExhaustedThreat Level: Low━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho froze.
“…I can see information now?”
Jinho blinked.
“What?”
“…Nothing.”
The system was evolving again.
Skill after skill.
Ability after ability.
It felt endless.
Then—
BEEP.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Emergency Quest Activated━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Objective: Survive the Penalty Zone━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Time Remaining: 00:00:10━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho’s eyes widened instantly.
“…Penalty Zone?!”
9…
8…
7…
“What’s wrong?” Jinho asked nervously.
Suho immediately stood up.
“I need to leave. NOW.”
“What?!”
3…
2…
1…
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Penalty Activated━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The world suddenly distorted.
Darkness swallowed everything instantly.
Jinho disappeared.
The apartment disappeared.
The city disappeared.
And then—
BOOM.
Suho crashed onto rough sand.
Hot air hit his face violently.
He looked up immediately.
An endless desert stretched across the horizon.
No buildings.
No people.
No escape.
Only burning heat and silence.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Penalty Zone Entered━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Survival Time: 4 Hours━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho’s heartbeat accelerated.
“…This is insane.”
A growl echoed nearby.
Low.
Animalistic.
Suho slowly turned around.
Several giant wolf-like monsters stood atop the dunes watching him.
Their glowing red eyes locked directly onto him.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Sand Fang Wolves DetectedThreat Level: Moderate━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The monsters began approaching slowly. New chapters come out on g.com first.
One step at a time.
Predators enjoying fear.
Suho clenched his fists.
“No weapons…”
“No supplies…”
“…Great.”
The wolves suddenly charged.
FAST.
Way too fast.
Suho barely dodged the first attack.
WHOOSH!!
Sharp claws sliced past his face.
Another wolf attacked immediately.
Suho rolled across the sand desperately.
His breathing became unstable.
“This is punishment?!”
The system answered instantly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Penalty Zone Purpose: Survival Adaptation━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho gritted his teeth.
“So this system really wants to kill me…”
The wolves circled around him.
Waiting.
Hunting.
Suho slowly steadied his breathing.
Then— purple light flickered faintly in his eyes.
“No…”
“…it wants me stronger.”
The wolves attacked together.
Suho moved instantly.
Faster than before.
His training from the daily quest had already changed his body.
Dodge.
Counter.
Move.
Survive.
One wolf lunged again.
Suho grabbed its jaw mid-air and slammed it into the sand.
BOOM!!
Even he looked shocked.
“…I’m stronger.”
Another wolf charged.
This time—
Suho attacked first.
His fist crashed into the creature’s neck.
CRACK!!
The wolf collapsed instantly.
Silence.
The remaining wolves backed away slightly.
Fear.
For the first time— they feared him.
Suho breathed heavily while staring at his own hands.
The system screen slowly appeared again.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Level Up Available━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
And deep within the endless desert… something far larger had started moving beneath the sand.
TO BE CONTINUED….!!
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