Smack!

What brought me back was the splitting sound of air and the stinging pain that followed.

The moment I opened my eyes, I saw the hand coming at me, caught it mid-swing by the wrist, and twisted it.

“Ah! Ah!”

As my vision slowly returned, I recognized the voice’s owner.

Cheon Young-jae.

I looked around.

There were people.

“······.”

Quick situational awareness is one of the most important skills required of a Hunter.

I assessed the situation.

We were still in the underground bunker facility. None of our team members had been lost, and we were under attack from a powerful force—likely a bombing strike.

BOOM!!!

A deafening roar split the sky above us, shaking the very ground beneath our feet.

“It’s collapsing!”

“No, wait!”

The lights flickered as the hallway shuddered, dimming one by one, heralding our end.

But my mind was fixated on one thing alone.

Lee Haeng-taek. Jeong Dae-kyung.

Call him what you like.

The man who once held my hand and spoke with me—where is he?

At the very least, he’s not among the people gathered in this cramped room.

Since the bunker was on the verge of collapse, our priority was to get out through the corridor.

After the chaotic escape, we emerged to an unnamed mountain ridge, where the blue sky felt like a blessing.

Cheon Young-jae kept giving me a strange look, which bothered me—but in truth, medically speaking, fainting is a very dangerous sign.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The bombing continued.

Missiles occasionally struck the mountain peak like ice picks.

To avoid the risk of friendly fire, we had to move far away.

We re-evaluated the situation only after we’d retreated about three kilometers from the bunker entrance, into the wooded hills beyond.

My gaze naturally turned to Woo Min-hee.

Before I lost consciousness, she was the only one in that ashen-gray room.

The moment our eyes met, she responded immediately, as if she’d been waiting.

“That person disappeared all of a sudden, and at the same time, you lost consciousness.”

After catching her breath for a moment, she continued.

“I don’t know what happened after that. I called for help and dragged you out of that bombed-out room. That’s all.”

I checked my watch.

Aside from the time it took us to move, barely any time had passed.

Which meant that from the moment I confronted Jeong Dae-kyung to the moment I lost consciousness—it had taken less than three minutes.

“······.”

It’s strange.

Vaguely, I feel like I spent an eternity in there.

“What now?”

“Do we go back? Realistically, the only way to get past the erosion zone and into Seoul is that train.”

“Who knows. It’ll depend on what Pyo Won-sang decides.”

While my companions talked about our next steps, I tried to recall what had happened.

But nothing surfaced.

“······.”

I couldn’t just leave my anxious teammates hanging, so I had to say something—anything.

I’d already made my decision.

Just as I stood up to speak about our future—

“Huh?”

Like a lie, a piece of that erased memory began to return.

Under the watchful eyes of my companions, I alone sank back into the past.

*

What are monsters and Rifts?

Why did they suddenly appear before us? Why are they driving us to destruction?

There’s no explaining it.

At least, that’s the conclusion when you reach beyond the limits of what I can perceive.

Earth’s offspring—humans and the like—tend to act with intent. But the children of the universe are born, burn, and vanish according to a given order, without reason.

Suppose the Earth has a sense of self.

If you asked Earth, “Why do you rotate? Why do you revolve around the sun?”—what answer would it give?

That’s the kind of question this is.

There’s no intent. Therefore, analysis is impossible.

It’s merely a phenomenon that occurred.

The provisional classification that scholars assigned to Rifts after giving up on explanation—that classification is the essence of the Rift.

And yet, we’ve never gone beyond that point.

“Connection. That’s what we are.”

A man’s voice echoed from the darkness.

He is Lee Haeng-taek. He is Jeong Dae-kyung.

Maybe he’s a third entity I don’t fully know.

What matters is that this personality—whoever he was—spoke to me with good intent, conveying what he understood to be the truth.

Connection.

It’s true—something beyond, some unknowable method, has connected us to it. That’s been indirectly proven by the countless things we’ve seen with our own eyes.

The monsters born within Rifts, the particles they turn into when their function ends, and the Necropolis transmission we accessed through Valentine’s sacrifice.

Necropolis—it still exists, still broadcasting like the radio waves humans used before the war. It’s repurposed now for a dying humanity.

Indeed, Rifts have the property of connection.

The man before me takes that idea one step further.

“Awakened aren’t mutations or monsters. They’re just more deeply connected than others.”

Lee Haeng-taek was vividly reconstructed before me.

His face, etched in my memory, held just the right balance of youth and age from our time in Paju.

“Because they’re more deeply connected to that, they can fully wield the power that comes from it.”

One truth, revealed by Lee Haeng-taek:

Being Awakened has nothing to do with human strength.

Rather, it seems more tied to a person’s nature—their capacity to receive, their receptivity.

Of course, from a personal perspective, that receptivity could very well be seen as talent.

One in hundreds of thousands—or millions—these extraordinary individuals have always been called geniuses, regardless of time or place.

So depending on how you view it, strength through receptivity to Rifts could also be seen as human strength.

Now the story resumes where that outstretched hand met mine.

I definitely took that hand.

And with it, a fragmentary yet comprehensive understanding of the Rifts poured into my head.

Maybe that knowledge had already existed in my subconscious, and that hand simply untied the tightly bound ribbon around it.

“······The world is especially cruel to men.”

It was clear even without taking his hand that Lee Haeng-taek was a man made of complexes and inferiority.

Even in this incomprehensible, inescapable space, he eagerly unloaded his misfortunes without any prompting.

“I’ve got nowhere to go, no one to grab a drink with. No matter where I am, I feel it—those condescending stares. You know? When I wait in line forever just to try some trendy restaurant I saw on social media, I see guys around my age with their wives and kids—laughing just enough, sighing just enough—enjoying their little moment together.”

For just a moment, Lee Haeng-taek turned into something close to Jeong Dae-kyung.

More precisely, Jeong Dae-kyung and the family he loved appeared before me like a set—then vanished.

“······.”

“Even that’s a memory, I guess. For me, it was just another meaningless day. And once that thought hit, I couldn’t even enjoy the food. I had to wolf it down and get out.”

Some traits in people never change.

Even within this strange connection—where the concept of time, space, even self was faint—I, Park Gyu, remained cynical and cold.

“Why even go to those places? Wouldn’t you be better off eating at a neighborhood gukbap joint?”

Maybe this thought didn’t come from Professor, or Skelton, or Umchang—but was 100% pure human Park Gyu.

“!”

Lee Haeng-taek was clearly shocked.

Even in that meaningless space, where his face blurred, some emotion managed to cut through the fog.

“Yeah.”

It seemed he’d realized something.

He shook his head with a bitter smile and went on.

“I can’t help it. Once you connect to this, everything becomes eternal. How should I put it? I could disappear—like the others who don’t respond anymore. Like that sweet Shanghai girl who used to follow Kang Han-min around. But the parts that make up me—those won’t vanish. Like nails hammered into a wall, they’ll drift through this world forever.”

I had countless questions, but somehow this ambiguous world seemed to restrict my ability to speak.

From the start, it felt as if my very existence was fated to be an uninvited guest in this realm.

So I mostly had to listen.

Fortunately, aside from his initial rant, Lee Haeng-taek stayed within the range of what I’d wanted to ask.

“You remember—I said I could make you Awakened. It’s possible. I know how.”

Lee Haeng-taek grinned—or at least, that’s how it looked to me.

“Even Kang Han-min’s little brother doesn’t know. People like us—who are perfectly connected—we each have a specialty. Like how a pool player plays pool, or how an AV actor does, well, you know. Oh, and Kang Han-min’s little brother has his own thing too.”

Hearing that confirmed it for me—the man before me was mostly Lee Haeng-taek.

“I know the code. The frequency, or whatever, to connect with that. You saw it earlier, right? What I did? I used to only hear it, but now I can speak it.”

Lee Haeng-taek stepped closer.

I felt a strange throbbing.

And within me, a fire that had been smoldering suddenly blazed high, as if drenched in fuel, burning hot enough to consume even me.

“······.”

I stood at the crossroads.

Before me lay the entrance to the new horizon I’d longed for—Awakening.

Lee Haeng-taek opened his mouth.

SCREEEEEEEEEECH—

A strange sound rang out. Not one a human voice could produce. Yet it echoed vividly through this ambiguous space.

In that moment, the scenery changed.

The shadowy veil of ambiguity peeled away, and beyond it, countless things—perhaps the pasts of Lee Haeng-taek, Jeong Dae-kyung, and countless others I didn’t know—floated up like objects, then disappeared again and again.

Within that swirling chaos, I heard Lee Haeng-taek’s voice.

“I don’t know why Kang Han-min told you to become Awakened. But now, I think I get it.”

“······.”

The storm of recollections around me came to a stop.

Only one image surfaced.

A narrow, worn house. In its small living room, an old woman sat alone, staring out the window.

Lee Haeng-taek didn’t explain it—but it needed no explanation.

It was his aging mother.

He had never once spoken of her to me—not even hinted.

And so, more than all the talk of loneliness and failure he’d spilled before, I could feel a deeper sadness and longing.

“······He’s trapped in the past, just like me.”

Tears fell as Lee Haeng-taek looked up at me.

“Just remembering tears at your soul. That’s what he feels. Same as me.”

His finger pointed to a direction—east, by the reckoning of almost all human civilization.

“If you take that path, you can be connected like us.”

His voice sounded distant, like it came from far away.

But that wasn’t all.

At some point, he began to fade—his body scattered as if in pieces.

“······Hunter Lee Haeng-taek.”

He was already reaching his end.

Knowing his doom approached, he had left Jeju and come here.

Mimicking Jeong Dae-kyung—maybe that was his desperate way of clinging on.

Like how Na Hye-in locked herself in that room, or Woo Min-hee dismissed everything with a cynical laugh.

Now so utterly scattered, strewn in every direction around me, Lee Haeng-taek pleaded.

“Let’s go, Hunter Park Gyu. No—Professor. My idol. Let me be of help to you. Let me believe I was even a little help to a hero like you.”

I looked right.

It was a world of light.

Everything I’d ever longed for was there.

Waves, shockwaves, powers, counterfields, solo monster sweeps, Rift closures across the peninsula, other heroes, new saviors.

It was only natural to walk that way.

All the means to quench my eternal flames of hatred lay there. To hesitate was to deny myself—Park Gyu.

“······.”

But why?

Why do I hesitate?

I’ve always longed to be chosen by the gods. I still believe that hasn’t changed.

Then why, with the chance right in front of me, do I waver?

Because I now know what Awakening truly is? Because I’m afraid I won’t become like Kang Han-min? Or perhaps it’s a lingering fear of battle I haven’t overcome? Or maybe—I just don’t want to feel that ever-present sleepiness creeping back.

But none of those are real reasons.

I thought quietly.

I closed my eyes—even though this was a world where one cannot close them.

“······.”

I nodded.

It might sound absurd, but there is no reason.

It’s not a passing impulse either.

It’s a conclusion as self-evident as the sun rising in the east.

I looked left.

Darkness.

Nothing there. Everything uncertain.

But no one knows what lies that way. Which means—my curiosity, another facet of the fire inside me—still has room to act.

I stepped toward the fading Lee Haeng-taek’s left.

“Professor?”

Even as he vanished, his voice came—startled.

I kept walking and calmly replied.

“I think this suits me better.”

That darkness holds weakness, wretchedness, limitations, and death.

But it also resembles the familiar darkness of my bunker—my wife, in a way, whom I’ve been keeping at a distance lately.

Most importantly, my conclusion is clear.

“I don’t want to be connected to them.”

Lee Haeng-taek stared at me blankly.

I kept walking into the dark and continued.

“And even if I do connect—then I’ll do it my way, not theirs.”

That’s the conclusion of Dr. Emiris, of Umchang, of Skelton, of Professor—and of me, Park Gyu.

The darkness enveloped me, and the little world surrounding me began to crumble with Lee Haeng-taek.

Within that collapsing world, his voice—tinged with both self-mockery and a cynicism much like mine—echoed.

“If you hadn’t killed the General-type... maybe Kang Han-min wouldn’t have asked me that favor.”

The darkness shattered like fragments.

Reality called again.

A bowl-shaped depression, empty and waiting, appeared before me like destiny.

Little droplets began to fall, filling that hollow space.

And with that, one world vanished—like someone had turned off the power.

Reality returned before me.

I saw my companions mid-argument.

I put my finger to my lips and gave a light whistle.

Everyone turned their eyes to me.

Looking at them, I spoke.

“We’re heading back to the train.”