─A gate has manifested directly beneath the Gyeongsang College building at Korea University.
─The entire building was sucked into the gate. Estimated over fifty civilians inside the building.
─Probability that the awakened individual was also drawn into the gate: one hundred percent. Rank: unknown.
A gate had appeared on campus.
While it wasn’t unheard of for gates to manifest in crowded places, it was rare for one to open directly beneath a building, throwing everyone into chaos.
It became an even bigger issue because the entire building had been swallowed into the gate. The realization that many students who had been inside hadn’t managed to escape only deepened the panic.
Espers were the first to arrive at the scene, followed by Guides, and then the authorities who quickly erected barricades and pushed the crowd away from the gate. Their response was fast enough, but it wasn’t enough to calm people’s fears.
Civilians had been dragged into the gate. Inside, there were monsters far beyond what ordinary people could hope to withstand. No matter how swiftly the authorities moved, the chances of saving those civilians were slim to none.
Family members and friends of the trapped students, having heard the rumors, soon gathered around the gate, wailing in grief. Their cries for help were soaked in sobs.
Cha Jae-woo didn’t spare them a single glance. In truth, he had been the very first to arrive at the gate. He simply stood there, eyes locked onto it.
“It’s highly likely we’re already too late.”
In place of Jang Gijun, the Guide Association President who never showed his face during incidents like this, one of his direct subordinates addressed Cha Jae-woo.
When Cha Jae-woo’s cold, sunken gaze shifted toward him, the subordinate flinched but didn’t retract his words.
“As you know, if the gate is large enough to swallow an entire building, then the awakened individual has almost certainly gone into a rampage. Therefore…”
“You’re telling me to just stand by and wait for that awakened individual to slaughter all the civilians and monsters inside before he decides to come out?”
“……”
Though his mouth stayed shut, his expression made it clear he thought the question was unnecessary.
The Esper Association and the Guide Association. Relations between the two were far from friendly. Even though there was an overarching Ability Association above them, real power resided in the two presidents, rendering the higher body virtually useless. As a result, the two Associations’ power struggles trickled down into conflicting orders for Espers and Guides.
This situation was no exception. Orders would be handed down soon enough. And absurdly, in emergencies like this, the two Associations’ opinions always happened to align.
Stand by. Do not enter the gate.
The orders were always the same.
“This time, we absolutely cannot interfere. The scale is simply too large. It swallowed an entire building—”
“Which means we all the more should go in, shouldn’t we?”
“……You know the reason.”
Gates whose occurrences couldn’t be predicted. Ordinary people didn’t understand why they formed or why they couldn’t be forecasted.
But the Associations knew the exact reason. High-ranking Espers and Guides like Cha Jae-woo also knew.
These gates appeared when an individual awakened. In other words, when an ordinary human awakened into an Esper, a gate would form at their location.
Usually, the size of the gate depended on the rank of the newly awakened Esper. If it was big enough to engulf an entire building, the individual’s rank could hardly be considered low.
That was exactly why the Associations ordered people not to enter. An Esper’s rampage meant releasing all of their abilities at once. Even if the energy wasn’t refined, dealing with a rampaging Esper was a daunting task. Besides, unlike monsters, they couldn’t simply be killed.
Since powerful Espers were directly tied to national power, the Associations hoped to nurture every new Esper they could get. Thus, their goal was always the same: wait until the initial rampage ended inside the gate, and only then retrieve the individual once the gate began to close. The point was to avoid sending in other Espers to get injured or having anyone kill the newly awakened Esper mid-rampage.
Which meant they had no concern whatsoever for the civilians inside. Even if the newly awakened Esper slaughtered every single civilian trapped within.
“……”
Cha Jae-woo looked around. Quite a few Espers had gathered around the gate, but there were hardly any who wielded physical abilities. Most of them were psychic-types—those capable of hypnosis.
After this gate was handled, they would hypnotize all the witnesses, making them believe an earthquake had struck and that everyone inside had died as a result, completely unrelated to the gate.
In the past, deaths caused by gate incidents were reported as they were. But now, it was different. The Associations lied to protect their image. Civilians believed those lies, convinced the Associations would protect them.
Cha Jae-woo let out a hollow laugh. Then, as if for everyone to see, he stepped boldly toward the gate.
“You can’t go in.”
Several Espers blocked his path. There were, surprisingly, a few physical-type Espers among them—apparently for this exact purpose. Cha Jae-woo’s lips twisted into a sneer.
“Inside there…”
As his voice dropped low, the air grew suffocatingly heavy. The pressure crashed down on the Espers standing before him. One by one, they collapsed to their knees under the horrifying weight. Even the nearby staff could have been affected by the violent wave of power.
“My Guide is in there.”
“Hrk, khh…!”
“How could I not go in?”
Cha Jae-woo knew Lim Haeyul’s schedule, where he took his classes, everything. Even if he hadn’t known, he could have found out immediately through the guard assigned to guard Haeyul, who constantly reported his situation.
Right now, Lim Haeyul was inside that gate. Therefore, there was absolutely no reason for Cha Jae-woo not to go in. Of course, he would have gone in even without such a reason—but there could hardly be a better justification.
“Don’t waste your strength. Move. Unless you’re planning to come with me.”
Though Cha Jae-woo spoke as if giving them a choice, he never once lifted the crushing weight he exerted on the Espers. He strolled leisurely past them as they remained pinned by his power, unable to move an inch.
As Cha Jae-woo entered the gate, not a single person could stop him. His strides grew faster and faster.
***
‘I’m gonna lose my mind.’
There was no other word for it: absolute panic. In all my life, I never thought I would find myself inside a gate. It was something I couldn’t have even imagined.
“What do we do…?”
“Fuck, this is scary as hell.”
“Can you see any monsters? What if we all die here?”
“Don’t say that out loud!”
It wasn’t just me. Everyone was completely losing it. Of all the luck, our lecture hall had been on the seventh floor, leaving us no way to get out of the building. And sure, part of the delay was my fault too, because I’d stupidly tried to help others.
“So creepy…”
Kim Geon-ung, who had been sitting next to me, muttered under his breath. He was right—the inside of the gate was creepy. The air was thick with moisture, and there was a musty, foul smell.
They said every gate had different characteristics. I remembered reading that once, after Kim Sol offhandedly mentioned that drinking a monster’s blood could increase your mana. Since then, I’d occasionally flipped through books about gates.
This atmosphere reminded me of a few particularly murky, ominous dungeons I’d read about.
‘Which one could it be?’
I figured it was better to know something, even a little, rather than go in completely blind. I struggled to recall whatever I could. But with just these few clues, there wasn’t much to go on.
I bit my lip hard as I stared out the window.
If there was one small mercy, it was that the building hadn’t collapsed—it had been sucked into the gate intact. If it had crumbled first, we probably would’ve been crushed to death on the spot.
Not that the word “mercy” held much meaning at this point, now that we were trapped inside a gate. Still, if I had to find some tiny silver lining, that was it.
“……”
I kept peering outside, trying to figure out what kind of gate this was. The gate resembled a cave, but there was no dripping water. Then where was all this humidity coming from? My gaze naturally dropped downward.
That’s when I noticed the ground inside the gate was peculiarly pitch-black. Not just black—it looked like something was spread out across it.
I focused carefully. Was it just mud? Was the moisture coming from the ground itself? What dungeons had sticky, muddy terrain again?
I racked my brain, but the sound of people sobbing from all around made it hard to concentrate. Honestly, I wanted to cry too. Even though I was trying to keep a straight face, I really did.
No matter how I thought about it, it felt like we were going to die here.
I glanced sideways at Kim Geon-ung.
“You should go first.”
Even though we were on the seventh floor, Kim Geon-ung probably could’ve escaped if it weren’t for me dragging him into this mess. What was I thinking, trying to play the hero just because I became a Guide? Seriously, there was no bigger nuisance than me right now.
“Sor—”
“Yeah. You can apologize by buying me drinks later.”
I was about to apologize properly, but Kim Geon-ung cut me off without even letting me finish. He cocked an eyebrow at me, as if to say cut the crap and do something useful.
“Yeah, yeah.”
I gave up trying to apologize. Instead, I started racking my brain again, desperately searching for a way to survive.
There had to be a way. I’d read so many books—something had to come back to me. At least, no monsters had appeared yet. That was pure luck.
I forcibly suppressed the terror bubbling up and kept scanning outside.
‘Wait.’
Finally, I noticed something. The black, muddy-looking ground wasn’t just sitting there—it was moving, inching closer toward us.
“I don’t want to die like this! Where the hell are the Espers? Shouldn’t they have arrived by now?!”
One of the students, trembling all over, suddenly exploded in anger. And at that very moment, the movement of the ground quickened.
I leaned my head further out the window to check right beneath the building. As expected, the ground nearby was a different color. The black sludge hadn’t yet reached directly below us.
Biting my lip hard, I yanked myself back from the window. I immediately slammed it shut and turned to Kim Geon-ung.
“Close the window.”
“Huh?”
“Close all the windows. We need to make sure no sound gets out. And everyone, stay completely quiet.”
“…What are you talking about?”
Unfortunately, Lee Eun-ah, who had been unable to escape and had returned to our side, asked in a half-sobbing voice. Given the situation, all the students, consumed by fear, instinctively turned their eyes to me.
“Look over there. Do you see it? The black stuff. I think those are the monsters. Every time we make noise, they get closer.”
Kim Geon-ung shot to his feet. After peering out the window, his face hardened. Without hesitation, everyone else also rushed toward the windows.
Kim Geon-ung raised a hand to halt them on my behalf.
“Only a few of you get up and shut the windows. The rest of you, not a single sound.”
We couldn’t fight the monsters. All we could do was survive without being attacked—at least until the Espers came to rescue us.
The monsters were right beneath us. We absolutely could not let them hear us.
Even without spelling it all out, everyone seemed to understand. Astonishingly, they fell into a heavy, fearful silence. Just as Kim Geon-ung instructed, only a few students moved to quickly and quietly close all the windows.
“Hyun-soo, what’s wrong all of a sudden? Huh?”
“You weren’t moving at all before—why now, Hyun-soo!”
But, as always, there were variables you couldn’t plan for.
I turned to look at the girl who had been bothering me since earlier—Jung Hyun-soo, a fellow student in my year. She was staggering to her feet with glassy, vacant eyes.
‘…A pulse.’
Of course. This was exactly the kind of cursed situation that would happen. I could feel it clearly: the pulse of power that only an Esper could emit.
It was raw, uncontrolled—glaringly obvious that she had no idea how to manage it—and it was steadily beginning to radiate from her body.
