Chapter 2

“Are you done with moving from gate to gate?”

Jongsik was loyal enough to die if asked to and he said all kinds of hateful things, but he still eventually drove away. He was the best in the world when it came to complaining.

After getting in the car with Jongsik, Sayun recalled his life over the past month. 

Due to the quest to kill the beginners, he was forced to go inside gates every single day. Sayun did so unwillingly since the option to reject the quest didn’t exist. Because he couldn’t choose whether to accept or reject in the system quest window, he ended up accepting “True Evil of Mankind”.

It happened more than once, so it was okay. He got used to it and completed the quest before he got angry and lost his energy, but the problem was in the ‘beginners killed’ counting method.

The number of kills did not go up even if he killed a new awakener belonging to a hostile guild, and the same happened when he entered a normal gate. It only counted for the quest when he met people inside a beginner’s gate, which the system unconditionally moved without notice, and that was a problem.

A beginner gate was, by definition, a gate that only new awakeners could enter, designed so that it could no longer be accessed again when three beginner gates were cleared after awakening. Even if Sayun ran around for 100 days trying to complete the quest, it wasn’t possible unless the damned system forcibly moved him into a gate.

‘If that’s the case, is there anything special? I just have to give up and keep going.’

Sayun didn’t have the strength to resist in the first place.

Because of that, was he ever teleported suddenly while he was eating or taking a shower?

“…This is crazy.”

Sayun frowned while recalling the past, and he suddenly remembered the time he was teleported naked at a gate, then stared at the back of Jongsik’s head. Amongst the people who suffered from Sayun suddenly being teleported inside a gate, Jongsik was by far the most affected.

Jongsik was the only one who knew that Sayun was being manipulated by the system, so when it was time for Sayun to return after being dragged inside a gate, he had to be able to become a driver at any time.

Even if Sayun told Jongsik that he could let someone else do it instead, Jongsik left no room for arguing and grabbed the steering wheel with dead eyes. 

Today as well, Sayun clicked his tongue as he saw Jongsik holding the steering wheel with a dark expression. Driving was not the only thing Jongsik suffered from.

He worked overtime to handle the rest of the guild’s work while crying everytime Sayun was teleported inside a gate. Even if Sayun disappeared during a meeting, Jongsik had to skillfully explain why the guild leader vanished and then lead the meeting himself. They’d been living such a life for nearly a month, so he understood when Jongsik complained.

That was why Sayun told him to let others drive.

Sayun leaned back, crossed his legs and mumbled.

“I’ve been doing strange things for a couple of days.”

If Jongsik were to leave too many times in a row just to pick Sayun up, it would be suspicious, so leaving the job to someone else every now and then was fine. Nevertheless, he took the steering wheel knowing that he should keep it a secret, for it was not his secret to tell.

Sayun was tired of Jongsik’s excessive loyalty, but it was something that was commendable for him. When Sayun informed him that the life he’d been living for the past month came to an end, the 32-year-old Jongsik who was too naive to be part of the Night Rats was happy enough that he started tearing up.

“Is it really over?”

“Mhm.”

“What did the system guy say? If there’s any other quests, please tell me. If there’s anything to prepare, I will tell the others in advance.”

I guess the distrust that I had in the system passed over to Jongsik.

After taking care of Sayun for over three years, Jongsik also learned how mean and vicious the system could be.

Sayun was pleased to know that someone understood and sympathized with him so he answered by nodding his head.

The system.

God’s blessing which appeared during turbulent times and led the awakened with goodness and uprightness.

That was the universal definition given by the World Awakening Association, but Sayun’s system was different.

Goodness? It encouraged Sayun to become a villain by using all sorts of cheap and vicious methods. No, this could be called manipulation. 

After such a long period of time, Sayun became a human being twisted from the inside out according to the system’s wishes. Proof of that was how he no longer had terrible nightmares after killing people.

I’ve gone crazy.

There were times when he couldn’t sleep at night because of the guilt, but now he just wished that the other person would be a little stronger. Life was boring and fleeting so he needed to find something to stimulate him. For the first time in the 10 years after he was awakened, he finally understood the mind of those crazy villains from movies who only looked for strong people.

“That’s all I’m interested in.”

“What?”

Jongsik responded to Sayun, although he was talking to himself. He blinked, and Sayun kicked the seat in front of him, telling him to focus on the road. At the bang, Jongsik panicked and grabbed the steering wheel.

“Ah, brother!”

“Ah, brother?”

tl/n: jongsik is saying 형님 (hyungnim) here. it’s a honorific term used by a male to address an older male (not necessarily blood related), but in this case they’re both part of the same gang and Sayun has a higher rank than Jongsik and usually they use 형님 to address their boss in this scenario. i hope that makes sense.

“…T-The chair will break.”

Jongsik grumbled, asking himself why Sayun was so violent. Now that he was used to such complaints, Sayun, who constantly ignored them, started pondering his own troubles again.

Even though he was crazy, he wasn’t crazy from the beginning. Due to his temper, he used to kick chair like that 10 years ago, but back then, he didn’t kill or commit any acts of terrorism on a regular basis.

The guild that he thought had evaporated was still there. 

Now that the events of past times were just distant memories, Sayun turned his head to stare at the passing scenery through the car window.

The eyes that recalled the past sunk deeply. It all started back in January, 10 years ago.

At that time, Sayun was still young and in 9th grade. 

tl/n: korean school system works differently. 6 grades of elementary, 3 grades of middle school, 3 of highschool, 4 of university. in the raws it says 3rd grade of middle school which should be 9th grade in the US school system.

10 years ago.

The first gate opened when Sayun was 16 years old, and it plunged the world into panic.

Appearing unexpectedly, it flashed with a suspicious light, stimulating curiosity that might’ve been the original sin of humans. Those who entered the ‘space’, without knowing whether or not they would return, did so after leaving a few words behind. ‘It’s okay, I won’t die.’ they said.

The number of people who went missing increased everyday. As their number exceeded three digits and the people’s anxiety was at its peak due to various media, the government eventually sent soldiers to confirm the truth.

After sending the special forces, everyone expected the news they would bring, but the reality was brutal. Even the soldiers, who everyone expected would be different, didn’t return.

Everyone went missing.

Every single one of them.

Some scholars argued that the shaking ‘space’ might’ve been a door connected to another world, some argued that it might’ve been a device, and others claimed that it was something similar to a black hole and that people were sucked into.

The groundless and futile arguments continued, and the absence of the soldiers led to political strife. While the world was in chaos, the strange ‘space’ was named a ‘gate’, and there was news that one of the soldiers who entered the gate had returned.

A special forces team leader, Doompa, who was sent to a gate that occurred in India.

When he returned covered in blood and with one of his legs cut off, his eyes widened as he spoke a single word as he was dying.

Hell.

After a brief and intense report while he was bleeding out, Doompa’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and he died, completing his duty.

Naturally, both the media and the citizens were bewildered, terrified and excited. There were those who cried that the gate should be investigated in a hurry, and there were people who went to explore it themselves. It was shortly after the simultaneous explosions of gates around the world had emerged that people, eroded by curiosity and fear, realised what Doompa meant by ‘hell’.

From a gate that exploded with a ‘roar’, monsters that could only be seen in a fantasy novel started pouring out. They looked like monsters at first glance, and their ugly appearances which were hard to describe with words resembled demons. Those things couldn’t be friendly towards humans.

The cruel and violent ones went on a rampage, and the world was stained with blood as if there had been a war.

No, technically, calling it a war would be right.

It was a war of survival and preservation of humankind after the monsters appeared so suddenly. 

From that day on, there was not a single day where screams couldn’t be heard, and hundreds of children were left orphans every day. The military weapons deployed were not very effective against the monsters, and it was difficult to annihilate them even with the ambitious nuclear weapons launched by the United States.

Humanity didn’t have the ingenuity to face those who survived the nuclear explosion.

The number of people dwindled quickly, and in just one week after the gates opened, 10% of the human population had died.

Hope was lost. Experts concluded that within a month, all of humanity would be eradicated. It was a time when inevitable destruction was foretold.

But don’t you know that in times of crisis, there’s always a hero?

Even in an overwhelming war, there was always a moment when you could counterattack, and for humankind, that moment was the blue window that appeared one day.

The blue window, which appeared for a small number of people and introduced itself as the system, gave humankind the power to fight the monsters, and the humans who awakened through it used strong and special abilities that were hard to consider normal.

Humanity put those people in the vanguard and started their counterattack. They drove the monsters that had almost taken over the world to the outskirts, and succeeded in annihilating them after cooperating with each other.

It was a valuable victory obtained at the cost of 20% of the entire human race.

Everyone rejoiced as they regained their home, but as humankind found hope, there was also a lost hope.

That was Sayun.

The system window.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, it appeared in front of a small number of people and brought hope to humankind.

At the same time, when the gates burst open and chaos began, Sayun also received a system window.

However, it was in a rather unusual form.