“Call someone to fix the window. I’m freezing to death.”
Kang Yujun nodded. He continued to silently watch Lee Kanghyun eat. Under that gaze, Lee Kanghyun felt like the food was getting stuck in his throat. Why the hell was he staring at a person like that?
“Why do you keep staring? Aren’t you eating?”
“Just watching you eat makes me feel full.”
“Bullshit.”
When Lee Kanghyun cursed, Kang Yujun laughed out loud. At the sound of his laughter, the air inside the apartment seemed to loosen a little. Lee Kanghyun discreetly relaxed and put the remaining sushi into his mouth. He had felt like he was going to get indigestion from the atmosphere, but at least it was better now.
Just then, Kang Yujun’s phone rang. His expression hardened when he checked the message.
“Hold on. I need to take this call.”
Kang Yujun stepped out onto the balcony. Lee Kanghyun glanced at him. The sight of Kang Yujun’s back as he spoke on the phone with a grave expression felt strangely unfamiliar.
What happened? Is it related to that intruder from earlier?
Lee Kanghyun consciously tried not to listen in. It wasn’t polite. His S-rank enhanced hearing still picked up the conversation, but he deliberately ignored it.
A short while later, Kang Yujun ended the call and came back inside. His expression was even darker than before.
“Who was it?”
“The Association President. Because of what happened. Looks like I need to go to the Association for a bit.”
Kang Yujun spoke as he hurriedly put on his coat. Lee Kanghyun stared at him in surprise. Now? In the middle of the night?
“It’s my problem. Why are you being summoned to the Association?”
“You’re a member of our guild now. And I’m the Guild Master. At this point, they’re dealing with it on the guild level. I’ll be back soon. Lock the door properly, and don’t just open it for anyone.”
“Am I a kid?”
“You are. You can’t even eat by yourself. You sleep twelve hours at a time.”
Lee Kanghyun’s brow furrowed sharply. He had finally done something nice for once, and Kang Yujun was already getting cocky again. Apparently, he had some kind of fatal disease that would kill him if he stopped being annoying.
“Just hurry up and get lost.”
Kang Yujun headed toward the entrance, but he hesitated as though he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He looked back at Lee Kanghyun with worried eyes.
“Want to stay at my place instead?”
Kang Yujun’s home would undoubtedly be safe. But Lee Kanghyun wasn’t about to flee to his house trembling in fear.
“No.”
Lee Kanghyun waved him off. Kang Yujun hesitated, then finally opened the front door.
“If you need anything, call me right away.”
“Yeah. Got it.”
Kang Yujun let out a small sigh at the halfhearted reply.
As the door shut, a heavy silence settled over the apartment. Lee Kanghyun roughly finished his meal and immediately sprawled across the sofa. Cold air blew in through the shattered window.
He stared blankly up at the ceiling.
The Association President’s suspiciously fast summons. The existence of an assassin.
He needed to think. To do that, he needed to get his brain working, but exhaustion made his thoughts drag sluggishly.
Whatever. I’ll think about it later. I’ll sleep for a bit first….
Just as Lee Kanghyun’s eyes began to drift shut—
Vrrrrrrr—!
An unpleasant vibration shook the building.
What the hell? An earthquake?
No. It felt different.
This was mana.
And it was extremely ominous, foul mana of overwhelming density.
Lee Kanghyun opened his eyes. The source of the vibration was nearby.
He sprang up and walked over to the broken window. Then he looked down.
Ah, fuck. Seriously. One damn thing after another.
The empty air between the playground and the parking lot had split open. Inside the tear in space, a dark crimson vortex spun wildly.
Red sparks crackled at the gate’s entrance.
It was a Red Gate.
Red Gates appeared without warning and triggered a break phenomenon in which monsters poured out of the gate and into reality within five minutes at minimum and thirty minutes at maximum. The only way to prevent a break was for a Hunter to go inside.
If he left it alone, it could erupt in as little as five minutes. And the monsters pouring out would turn this apartment complex—and his home—into a ruin.
Are you fucking kidding me? Why here of all places!
Lee Kanghyun grabbed his head. Was this apartment built on cursed ground or something? At this point, it felt like he needed an exorcism.
At least thirty minutes had already passed since Kang Yujun left. Even if Lee Kanghyun reported it to the Association, it would take at least ten minutes for a response team to arrive.
And if that thing erupted before then?
This expensive apartment building would collapse, people would die left and right, and blood would cover everything.
The smell of blood. Corpses. Screams.
He hated all of it.
And if Kang Yujun’s place collapsed too, Lee Kanghyun would immediately lose both somewhere to sleep and somewhere to hide.
He hated that more than death.
There was only one option.
Go in before it erupted. Clear it and close it.
Lee Kanghyun checked the medicine container in his pocket, then irritably went to the entrance, grabbed his slippers, and climbed onto the broken window frame.
Standing on the sill, he put the slippers on.
The wind blew hard. The loose T-shirt he wore as pajamas fluttered around him.
“I’m definitely getting overtime pay for this.”
The moment he muttered the words, Lee Kanghyun threw himself into the open air.
Whoooooosh!
He began plummeting at terrifying speed.
The people standing below saw a black object falling from the sky and screamed in horror.
“W-Wait! Something’s falling! Get out of the way!”
Lee Kanghyun’s body drew closer and closer to the ground. Just before impact, he flipped once in midair and landed.
BOOOOM!
With a sound like an exploding bomb, the asphalt caved in and shattered.
The alarms of the parked cars all began blaring at once, and a thick cloud of dust billowed into the air.
“Cough, ugh….”
“W-What happened?”
Startled residents and a security guard cautiously approached the dust cloud. Soon, the haze cleared, and a person walked out from inside it.
A handsome man dressed completely wrong for the weather, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and striped slippers, was shaking the dust out of his hair with an annoyed expression.
“…Lee Kanghyun?”
Someone muttered blankly.
“That’s Lee Kanghyun! The S-rank Hunter!”
“He lived in this neighborhood?”
Lee Kanghyun didn’t even look their way. His eyes remained fixed on the gate.
I’ll get in, finish it fast, and come back out.
Without giving anyone a chance to speak to him, Lee Kanghyun threw himself into the gate.
A burst of brilliant light flared as the gate swallowed him.
The gate, which had been swelling dangerously as though it might burst at any moment, instantly became calm as if nothing had happened.
He had made it just before the break.
Barely.
***
The moment Lee Kanghyun entered the gate, a disbelieving laugh escaped him.
The instant he stepped inside, dozens—hundreds—of monsters greeted him.
Grrrrrrr—
Enormous wolf-shaped monsters covered in black fur filled his vision. They were high-tier monsters capable of wiping out an ordinary Hunter party if even a handful appeared.
And right now, they were swarming before him like ants.
He didn’t even have time to complain like usual.
The instant the creatures noticed Lee Kanghyun’s presence, they charged at him in a frenzy. The ground trembled, and red dust rose into the air.
Lee Kanghyun casually swung his fist.
The head of the monster at the front exploded.
Blood sprayed everywhere.
Disgusting.
Lee Kanghyun frowned and shook the blood off his hand. But there was no time to dwell on it. Two more creatures lunged in from either side, trying to tear into his arm and leg with their jaws.
Thud.
Lee Kanghyun kicked one monster under the jaw with his slipper-clad foot while simultaneously driving his fist into the crown of the other one’s head.
The horrific sound of skulls crushing echoed throughout the gate.
But there was no end to them.
No matter how many he killed, they kept pouring forward like an endless black tide.
This is a little strange.
Even for a Red Gate, it was rare for A-rank monsters to appear in numbers like this right from the entrance.
It was almost as though someone had deliberately bred the monsters and released them here.
Every time Lee Kanghyun’s fist cut through the air, another monster’s head burst apart.
But handling an endless flood of monsters alone was too much even for him.
Taking advantage of a momentary opening, a monster’s sharp claws tore a long gash across Lee Kanghyun’s side.
“Ugh!”
Flesh ripped away.
Red blood seeped out and soaked his T-shirt.
But white steam immediately poured from the wound as the torn flesh began knitting itself back together.
Soon, the wound vanished completely.
A vein bulged on Lee Kanghyun’s forehead.
Torn flesh forced itself back into place. Severed nerves reconnected.
Agonizing pain slammed into his brain.
“Haa….”
His legs buckled from the pain.
The monsters didn’t miss the opening. They rushed him again.
Lee Kanghyun gritted his teeth and swung his fist. His forearm was bitten open, regenerated, and then torn apart again.
Lee Kanghyun’s gaze wavered.
His hand instinctively moved toward the medicine in his pocket.
He needed the drug to erase this goddamn pain.
Altrafin.
If he chewed it, he could forget all of it—the horrific agony, the sickening smell of blood.
His hand rummaged through his pocket.
He had used the last patch before. There should only be capsules left.
Lee Kanghyun pulled out the medicine container and opened the lid.
It was empty.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
He had even run out of capsules without noticing.
Should’ve checked ahead of time.
His own laziness was infuriating.
“Haa… fuck.”
No medicine meant he had to endure this pain completely sober.
The monsters, driven even further into a frenzy by the heavy scent of blood, charged at him.
Dozens of sets of teeth and claws were aimed straight at him.
Lee Kanghyun clenched his molars hard enough to crack them.
He hurled the empty medicine container onto the ground and threw himself into the middle of the blood-soaked battlefield.
Fine. Let’s see what happens first—whether this pain kills me, or whether I kill every last one of you before it does.