"How did it come to this?"
Kim Garam.
Age 27.
Race, human... formerly.
He had been a porter with the sort of slightly unfortunate past you could find anywhere, and he could not make sense of his current situation at all.
"I'm going to scout you. Come with me and let's sweep away the evil that has burrowed into society, the Vampirs."
A beautiful woman stood before him.
An S-Grade hunter whom the world called the Admiral of Ruin was holding out her hand to him.
And with a scouting offer, no less.
Normally it was the kind of offer he would have prostrated himself and begged for.
Right now, he couldn't.
Kim Garam
Age 27
Current race... Vampir.
A single line displayed on his status window.
My race.
The race that had definitely been human until moments ago.
It had become Vampir.
One wrong step and instead of sweeping them away together, I'd be the one swept away.
'All I did was walk into a gate, so how did it come to this?'
Whatever else he wasn't sure of, it was clear that this whole shitshow had come from that damned gate.
Chewing on his lip, Garam recalled what had happened earlier.
***
Abduction
Definition: to take a person away by force against their will.
Something unimaginable in the modern day, and in a developed country like South Korea at that, and Garam was experiencing it firsthand.
"Yaaawn. So what have you dragged me out here for this time?"
A run-down back alley in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
That was where Garam stood.
Dark circles under both eyes like blackout curtains, and a body that swayed at random, apparently from exhaustion.
At a glance you'd think someone had hauled a patient out here.
"You bastard, are you actually yawning right now? Got a little too comfortable, have you?"
Behind Garam stood a thuggish-looking man with a shaved head.
Kim Deok-su.
An illegal gate broker.
And also the very man who had abducted him while he'd been sleeping perfectly soundly.
"And if you'd texted back the second you were called, would I have had to do this?"
The man was a lunatic, plain and simple.
How does kidnapping a person at one in the morning over an unanswered KakaoTalk message even make sense?
'What pisses me off more is that this isn't the first time.'
He'd been abducted over a gate more times than he could count on one hand.
"What kind of gate is it this time? It isn't dangerous, is it?"
"What's with the sudden questions? If I told you it was dangerous, would you actually not go?"
"Fair enough."
I have to make money. A lot of it.
Especially since I'm not the only person I have to support.
Ever since the age of hunters and gates opened twenty years ago, the work available to someone like him had become extremely limited.
'A middle school graduate, never Awakened, an orphan with no qualifications worth mentioning.'
A man like that, who needed money so damn badly.
For that kind of man, Garam didn't have many options.
A porter.
Usually it was low-Grade Awakened who took porter work, choking it down like mustard through tears.
But for an ordinary person like Garam, who had never Awakened, portering was dangerous enough to cost him his life.
'Doesn't matter. If it's physical work, I'm confident anyway.'
Fortunately, Garam had a certain talent for this work.
More than most hunters, even.
No mana, no skills, but physical ability that didn't fall behind D-Grade hunters.
Strictly speaking, thanks to a body worth calling an F-Grade hunter's, Garam could keep working as a porter despite being an ordinary person.
The pay was decent enough, too.
'Though compared to my goal, it's nowhere near enough.'
It paid far more than just working a shift at a convenience store.
"Here, take this."
Kim Deok-su threw the huge bag beside him at Garam.
Big enough that it could crush a man to death.
THUMP.
But Garam snatched it out of the air as if it were nothing.
"It's heavy."
The bag Kim Deok-su had thrown was heavy.
Very.
"Right. It's got the backup weapons and all the other odds and ends we're using inside the gate this time."
No wonder it was heavy.
Backup weapons or not, they were long-hafted weapons that weighed several kilograms each.
There was no way they wouldn't be heavy.
A hunter would toss it back and forth without a thought, but if an ordinary person caught a bag like this, he'd be saying goodbye to his shoulder forever.
"This is why I use you. You've got the strength of an ox. Are you sure you really haven't Awakened?"
He hadn't.
He was just brutishly strong.
"Never mind that. Is that thing worth money?"
Garam asked, pointing at the gate.
He had no intention of chatting warmly with the man who had abducted him at one in the morning.
What mattered was money.
Was that gate worth money?
"Heh heh, you bastard. Today you'll actually get to handle a bit of real money. That thing's an unregistered gate. The meter put it at D-Grade. Not even dangerous."
"An unregistered gate? Are you serious?"
"Yeah. I checked it for days, and it's definitely a D-Grade unregistered gate. You know how it is. Unregistered gates pay well."
He knew.
An unregistered gate was one the Hunter Association hadn't discovered yet.
Which meant they could pocket the sizable commission that would otherwise go to the Association.
"Get in and out quick. Grab everything you can carry."
"Hold on, you want me to go in alone? Don't give me that bullshit. That's just telling me to walk in and croak."
D-Grade dungeon or not, he was unmistakably an ordinary person, and a porter at that.
Not even hiring hunters meant the man wanted it all for free.
"I did hire hunters. You just go in, collect the mana stones, and pick off the small fry."
Kim Deok-su, who had been grumbling as he checked his wristwatch,
THWACK.
kicked Garam without warning.
"Gurgh!"
"So get lost already, you bastard."
Garam was sucked straight into the gate.
The last thing at the edge of his vision was Kim Deok-su's contemptible grin.
"Oh, and once you're inside, tell those bastards who went in ahead to quit slacking off and get out fast. Tell them they're not getting overtime pay."
'This son of a bitch.'
Garam forced the curse back down.
Ahead of him was a gate.
If he didn't keep his wits about him, ten lives wouldn't be enough.
Now was the time to focus.
***
Garam opened his eyes to the sensation of his body falling.
The scenery around him was nothing like the run-down back alley he'd been standing in moments before.
[Gate: You have entered the Full Moon Temple.]
[Bloodred Night is in progress.]
[You cannot leave the gate until Bloodred Night ends.]
A night sky with a full moon risen and stained red.
He saw dense forest packed all around and bloodstains smeared here and there.
The bloodstains led toward the temple ahead, as though inviting him to come.
"Damn it, he said it wasn't dangerous. This is a gate you can't get out of until it's cleared."
He didn't know what Bloodred Night was, but it probably referred to clearing the gate.
"That fucking bastard. I really ought to report him to the police."
Abducting a man in a van at one in the morning and hurling him into a gate?
Illegal broker or not, this was blatant labor exploitation.
"Ah, but if I report him, I guess I won't get the bonus pay."
Come to think of it, this was an unregistered gate.
If he reported it, forget the bonus pay, he'd be sitting in a holding cell himself, no question about it.
"......."
He'd report it later.
"So I just head that way for now?"
Among the bloodstains he saw the corpses of fallen magic beasts.
Garam brushed himself off, got to his feet, and picked up the hand axe lying on the ground.
The familiar hand axe he always used.
Kim Deok-su must have thrown it into the gate along with him when he kicked him in.
"I'd better pray no monsters show up on the way."
"GRRAWR!"
"Ah, bullshit."
The moment he said it, a wolf-shaped monster burst out of the undergrowth as if it had been waiting for the cue.
"A Black Wolf?"
The Black Wolf, one of the most common monsters to be seen in D-Grade dungeons.
"GRRAWR!"
The Black Wolf, the lowest tier of monster even among D-Grade, lunged at Garam.
Garam dodged the savagely charging Black Wolf.
He had eight full years of seasoning as a porter.
The attack patterns of low-tier monsters like this were simple enough.
GRAB.
Flowing like water, Garam seized the Black Wolf by the neck and slammed it into the ground.
"GRRAAAWR!"
The Black Wolf thrashed violently, but,
"Urgh, hold still. Make too much noise and your friend will come."
Pinning the Black Wolf's body down with all his strength, Garam brought the axe down on it.
It was a dangerous position where one counterattack could kill him.
But there was no hesitation in Garam's hands.
'I'm used to betting my life for pocket change.'
That was how he had lived until now, staking his life for money like this.
CRUNCH—!
The axe buried itself in the Black Wolf's neck.
"GRRAAKH!"
A single blow, and the Black Wolf's body went limp.
"Hoo. That's rough."
Garam drew a dagger from inside his jacket.
SQUELCH—!
Magic beast hide was hard even to scratch without mana, but Garam forced the dagger in by strength alone.
RIIIP—!
He tore the hide open and pulled out the mana stone.
He was cheap compared to Awakened porters because he was an ordinary person, but his physical ability pulled a full share of the work.
That was how Garam, no sturdier than an ocean sunfish inside a gate, could work as a porter.
"D-Grade mana stones really are too small."
A palm-sized purple stone sat in Garam's hand.
A mana stone, the main source of income for hunters, harvested from monster corpses.
"Something about immense energy, blah, blah, blah."
Honestly, he didn't really know.
They had taught bits and pieces of it at school, but he'd dropped out partway, so he never finished learning.
He just looked at the size of a mana stone and figured out roughly what Grade it was.
"Is this one the only one still alive?"
When Garam looked around, he saw Black Wolves lying dead in a heap.
This one had probably strayed from the pack on its own.
"I've got to search all the corpses around here too, so I'd better move fast."
How long did he walk, collecting mana stones from every corpse he came across?
No monsters appeared other than the first Black Wolf, so things went smoothly, and by the time Garam had almost reached the temple,
"This is a total sweet deal. Maybe I should suggest sending the hunters in first from now on."
the bag hanging on Garam's back had swollen full.
And his own pockets along with it.
When he moved with hunters, skimming mana stones was out of the question.
Traveling alone, pocketing a few was nothing at all.
The moment he arrived, beaming, at the Full Moon Temple where the hunters should have been,
[DING!]
[You have approached the Full Moon Temple.]
[A Bloodred Night exclusive quest has arrived.]
[Fill the Blood Chalice with blood. 0/100]
[Reward: Escape gate, Hunter Awakening.]
[On failure: Death.]
[You cannot return until the quest is cleared.]
What is this now?
"A Bloodred Night exclusive quest?"
It was insane.
Garam rubbed his eyes and stared at the words written in the quest window.
"Clear the quest and it clears the gate and Awakens me on top of that?"
In eight long years he had seen gates that threw quests at you, but a gate offering to Awaken someone was a first.
"Fill the Blood Chalice with blood, it says."
When Garam looked behind him, a massive temple stood there.
The gate itself was named Full Moon Temple.
That place was probably the gate's main field.
"Then naturally this Blood Chalice thing would be in that temple."
It might be a reward for killing a boss monster.
Since it granted an Awakening as well, there would at least be something guarding this Blood Chalice.
And a monster like that would be strong to a dizzying degree for an ordinary person like him.
"Even so, I can't not go."
The reward was an Awakening, no less.
A chance to change eight years of a wretched porter's life in one stroke.
He couldn't throw a chance like that away over nothing more than the feeling of being afraid.
"Hoo. If I can do it, I'll do it."
Breathing out slowly, Garam started toward the Full Moon Temple.
***
Arriving at the temple, Garam felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
The temple was eerily quiet.
Not a single sound came from the temple, where the hunters should certainly have arrived first.
"Hoo, this is making me tense for no reason."
Steadying his breath, Garam stepped inside the Full Moon Temple.
The temple's layout was simpler than he'd expected.
A structure much like the Greek temples you commonly see in photographs.
The only difference was that it was so vast you couldn't see the far end.
It must even have been treated somehow, because the moonlight that had been shining brightly moments ago was barely visible.
"There are torches around, so it isn't much of a problem, but..."
Literally only the space just ahead was visible, and if he turned his eyes even slightly, darkness filled every direction.
An atmosphere that brought a cave to mind.
At this rate, forget joining up with the other hunters, he wouldn't even be able to find the Blood Chalice properly.
The lucky part was that the torches were arranged in a straight line.
They seemed to be guiding him along a path, as though saying come this way.
"Guess I'll take a look."
How long did he walk, following the torches?
VWOOOOM
In the very center of the temple stood a large altar.
And atop it, a golden chalice placed there with care.
Anyone could tell it was the Blood Chalice.
Set out as though it were being advertised, it would have been harder to believe it wasn't.
"That was easier to find than I thought. So now I just put blood in this and the quest is a success, right?"
He called it easy out loud, but Garam didn't let his guard down.
He stayed ready so that whatever happened, he could at least run.
WHIP.
Garam snatched the Blood Chalice up in an instant.
Perhaps because nothing happened even after he took the chalice,
Garam felt his tension slipping away in spite of himself.
And then, just as he moved to cut a small wound into his finger to finish the quest,
SLASH—!
"Huh?"
It happened in an instant.
Something flew in at a speed beyond sight and cleaved through Garam's arm.