The night in Seoul… well, cold, as usual. Lit by neon screens alongside data transmitters.
Dae-hyun walked quickly through the city; his hood was up. He was immersed in the logs on his phone.
He had discovered something disturbing: the System planned to schedule "purge scans" in the early hours of the morning, in the southern surrounding districts.
The objective was to find corrupted signatures. At first glance it looked like a digital hunt. The bad part was that his profile was on the list.
He needed to disappear for a while. His goshiwon no longer seemed as safe as before.
At that moment he was weighing options—an anonymous PC café? the outskirts of the city?—when, just as he turned a corner near the Mapo transmission center, he crashed straight into someone.
The impact: a steel wall wrapped in silk.
Dae-hyun staggered back, his phone flying from his hands.
—Ah, I'm sor…
He started to say, lifting his gaze.
The words died in his throat.
The person he had collided with was tall.
Her athletic figure overflowed from her casual clothes.
She wore her long black hair tied in a careless ponytail, and headphones stood out around her neck.
However, what petrified Dae-hyun was not her beauty—which was undeniable in itself. It was a barely perceptible golden glow, forming a floating insignia near her shoulder.
An icon every Korean recognized: the emblem of the "Horizon" guild, another of the Big Three. Above it, crisp letters that made Dae-hyun's stomach turn into a frozen pit:
[CHAE HARIN – RANK: S-03]
[TITLE: "THE SILENT TEMPEST"]
[GUILD: HORIZON]
She held the third spot in the national ranking. One of Korea's living goddesses. A hunter whose mere name made live chats explode with heart and flame emoticons every time she appeared on a stream.
It was said her main ability, "Eye of the Cyclone," allowed her to control atmospheric pressure at will, creating compressed air explosions or impenetrable shields.
"Dae-hyun. Rank 0. Trash. He had collided with her."
—Sorry.
Chae Harin stopped in front of him.
Her dark eyes rested on Dae-hyun, then lowered to the phone on the ground.
—Are you okay?
Dae-hyun froze. His mind, normally agile in finding escape routes in corrupted systems, went completely blank. His entire being was hyperaware of the infinite abyss between them.
He was a speck of dust at the base of a skyscraper. She was the skyscraper.
—I… yes. Sorry. I… wasn't looking.
He mumbled, barely understandable. He crouched quickly and picked up his phone.
He prayed the screen wouldn't turn on. Luckily, it stayed dark.
As he straightened up, he noticed Chae Harin was still looking at him. But it was clear that look had nothing to do with recognition—why would it?—but with… mild curiosity. Something tiny and unexpected had crossed her path.
—Are you a hunter? —she asked.
Neutral and direct voice.
The question sounded more like mockery.
A hunter? Him? With his generic clothes, his hunched posture, his aura of… nothing, really. It was the most absurd and painful question they could ask him.
—N-no.
He barely managed to speak properly; heat climbed up his neck.
—I'm not… the System didn't… I don't have a rank.
When he said "the System didn't…," Chae Harin tilted her head slightly. An almost imperceptible movement.
—I see.
Her gaze remained unreadable.
—You should be careful. This area has high residual data activity from the Mapo Error Zone. It sometimes causes… interference.
Interference.
Dae-hyun began drawing conclusions.
Did she know? Could she feel the corruption of data around her the way he felt humidity in the air?
Rumors said high-rank hunters developed strange sensitivities.
While he considered that possibility, Chae Harin's smartwatch emitted a delicate ping, projecting a blue hologram showing the image of someone who looked like an officer.
—Harin-ssi, transport is ready. The meeting with the Guild Master is in fifteen minutes.
—On my way —she replied.
With a slight movement of her fingers she cut the communication.
Before leaving, she looked at him again. The gaze passed through the frightened Dae-hyun, who was not used to that kind of evaluation.
—Take care.
Formally, she bid farewell and, within seconds, turned around, moving off with a long stride. She disappeared into the night crowd.
Her silhouette could still be distinguished in the distance, like a dark specter.
Dae-hyun remained standing there, feeling pressure in his lungs.
The golden insignia [S-03] was still projected in his vision. The difference in power was so abysmal it made him vomit.
Harin, with just a thought, could turn the air around Dae-hyun into a hammer that would crush him into a stain on the asphalt.
Dae-hyun barely understood a few commands.
Powerlessness had its own taste. Wanting to be powerful meant getting past that bitterness in his mouth.
As he wiped the vomit away, something inside Dae-hyun began to rise. A fierce and burning desire to obtain that power. More than wanting it for fame or money, he needed it to walk the world without fear. He longed to feel like the illegitimate owner of the System, even if he didn't want to admit it.
The phone vibrated in his hand. He turned it on, fearing the worst.
Luckily, there was no tracking alert. Apparently the corrupted interface had simply activated, displaying a message.
The text seemed to have been generated by an isolated subroutine, triggered by… the proximity of a superior power signature? By stress? It was hard to tell.
The message read:
[CRITICAL CONTRADICTION REANALYZED.]
[SUBJECT: KIM DAE-HYUN. PUBLIC STATUS: TRASH (RANK 0). HIDDEN PARAMETER: ENTITY SIGNATURE – DIVINE-TIER (DORMANT/CORRUPTED).]
[SYSTEM ASSUMPTION: SIGNATURE IS DATA GHOST FROM PAST ANOMALY. NEW HYPOTHESIS: SIGNATURE MAY BE NATIVE. INCONSISTENCY: 99.97%.]
[PROPOSAL: FORCE A HARD SYSTEM RE-EVALUATION. REQUIREMENTS:]
1. PROXIMITY TO A CATALYST OF EXTREME SYSTEM STRESS (E.G., ANOMALY RANK A OR ABOVE).
2. DIRECT DATA INJECTION DURING CATALYTIC EVENT.
[WARNING: HARD RE-EVALUATION HAS 73% CHANCE OF PERMANENT USER DELETION (ERASURE). 26% CHANCE OF SYSTEM RECLASSIFICATION (UNKNOWN RANK). 1% CHANCE OF…]
The message cut off there. The last line was corrupted.
Dae-hyun read the text over and over, trying to understand it. His heart sped up.
Entity Signature – Divine-Tier (Dormant/Corrupted).
Forced System re-evaluation.
—This is complete madness. A 73% suicide…
He brought a hand to his chin (which, by the way, smelled awful).
—Though if I think about it… for the first time it shows a specific path.
He watched people walking by, talking about Lisa, hunter and idol from the Zephyra guild.
—Maybe the System needs to evolve…
If he really wanted that, he needed two things: a catalyst (an Anomaly of Rank A or higher) and an opportunity to inject corrupted data into the System during an event —he thought—.
Later, as he walked through the city, he looked in the direction Chae Harin had gone.
She was probably heading to face threats of that same level. Even if he wanted to follow her, it would end up ridiculous. It would be like a flea following a tiger.
For now, at least he knew what he had to look for.
First, access to the logs. Then, find a high-risk zone. When he had those two things, he would have to find a way to be present when some group confronted it.
Armed with a new feverish determination, Dae-hyun slipped his hands into his pockets and blended into the crowd, moving away from the glow of the skyscrapers.
Unexpectedly, the encounter with that goddess had become the greatest fuel for his new aspirations.
Trash had just glimpsed the summit of the mountain. And he resolved that, even if he had to break every rule of the game to achieve it, he was going to climb it.