Free Web NovelOpen eyes, sudden enlightenment, self-awareness, observation, awakening.
The process of a human becoming a Mutation—an Awakened—was known by many names. But just like everything else about the Rifts, how a person actually becomes Awakened remains unknown.
At most, several studies—responsible for a staggering number of casualties—claimed that Awakened individuals possess unique brainwave frequencies, and that if one could artificially manipulate a normal person’s brainwaves to match those frequencies, they could be turned into an Awakened.
Let’s just skip over the fact that I almost died because of that bullshit.
To put it plainly, no one knows who becomes an Awakened, why, or how.
It’s not without reason I’ve always said it’s like being chosen by God.
It’s something that’s given, not something you seek out.
A gift, quite literally.
And even now—when that gift is widely known as a curse—that fundamental truth hasn’t changed: it still happens by chance.
I brought this up during my conversation with Jeong Dae-kyung because I suddenly got that feeling.
Jeong Dae-kyung talks like he chose to become Awakened.
“The abuse? I got used to it pretty quickly. You get used to the verbal shit too, honestly. The missions inside the Rifts weren’t even all that dangerous. The real risk was always dumped on the younger Awakened kids. We just strolled through the highways they paved with their blood.”
Jeong Dae-kyung laughed out loud and added,
“And knowing the folks left behind on the mainland were dropping like flies? Yeah, that was kinda comforting. You know that saying, right? That watching others get fucked is even better than doing well yourself?”
His smile faded naturally as his sharp eyes locked onto me.
“But in the end, he found it. The spot that hurt. These days, the kids call that ‘getting scratched,’ right?”
Jeong Dae-kyung sighed.
“That’s when I first found out you were the Professor. Yeah. That once-in-a-generation genius Hunter Korea birthed—the Professor.”
I had nothing to say.
There was no need to even say “it couldn’t be helped.”
It was protocol.
To protect both myself and national interests.
I had neither the obligation nor the justification to tell him the truth.
In the heavy silence, Jeong Dae-kyung continued.
“Think about it. Some middle-aged guy who used to work the same post as me... turns out he had achievements that made mine look like a joke. He was famous in the field, and he was making dozens of times the measly pay I was getting.”
“······.”
“When I let it slip that I was shocked by that, he seemed to take note. From that point on, he brought you up at every opportunity.”
The harassment from the fallen general was vicious and relentless.
“Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it. You’re forever stuck at the bottom. Some folks become legends just past twenty, while others are still carrying kids’ gear in their forties.”
“You’re laughing at me now, but at least I made it to the top—high enough to see beyond. Even that Park Gyu you hung around with got called a Hunter legend and had the whole world courting him.”
“Park Gyu went to China, I hear. Got paid billions or something. Probably screwing some tall, model-tier chick every night, yeah? Something you couldn’t even dream of. What’s with that look? A washed-up loser like you can’t even get married, let alone have kids. Though hey, maybe that’s doing the world a favor.”
Thankfully, Jeong Dae-kyung hadn’t been issued a firearm at the time.
“If I’d had a gun, I would’ve shot that bastard dead. Easy, right? All you need is a gun and a good aim, and anyone can kill. I did get one chance.”
That general had been deployed inside a Rift.
Just as Jeong Dae-kyung was being tormented by someone like himself, the first Jeong Dae-kyung had been tormented and humiliated by someone in power who despised him.
The two Jeong Dae-kyungs were made to carry loads together into the Rift.
“I was ready. I’d steeled myself to kill the bastard.”
Jeong Dae-kyung’s eyes gleamed with the lingering fury of that moment as he spoke.
In the eternal stillness of that infinite world, two men carrying tactical packs walked the ash-colored ridgeline toward an outpost.
One of them threw off his tactical pack first.
He shouted provocations at the man ahead and picked a fight.
The other man also removed his pack.
The one shouting was confused.
He’d thought just by raising his voice, the other would shrink and cower.
Reality ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) played out differently than expected.
The man ahead swung his fist.
The shouting man fought back.
But in that brief clash, the shouting man felt it in his bones.
That the brute strength of the man he looked down on—a graduate of the military academy—might actually surpass his own.
“······Honestly, I thought I could fight. Us old-school Hunters used to hit the gym and juice up hard. I did too. But I forgot that bastard had lived his whole life by-the-book, military style.”
He shook his head and corrected himself.
“No, to be real, he was objectively stronger than me. Not just a matter of strength—his whole density as a human being was different. I knew the moment his fist landed on my temple. This guy’s the real deal.”
He got the crap beaten out of him.
Swung his fists a few times, but they were nothing. He was repaid with far heavier blows.
And as he lay sprawled on the pale ground—
“That’s when it happened. The first time I felt it.”
Jeong Dae-kyung heard a sound he had never heard before.
A strange resonance.
It was like music... but also like noise.
It didn’t cut like a siren. It warped and rose and fell in eerie patterns.
And it wasn’t just sound.
Jeong Dae-kyung saw something.
Something lying beyond the bizarre connection he perceived in the form of that sound.
But before he could fully grasp it, a cold voice echoed in reality.
“Mr. Lee Haeng-taek.”
The general was putting his tactical pack back on.
“······Let’s talk when we’re back.”
Jeong Dae-kyung, collapsed on the ground, knew what that meant.
At the very least: expulsion.
At worst: execution.
The terror of death wiped the strange sound completely from his mind.
“I stood up and ran for it.”
He had no destination in mind.
He just fled from his doomed fate.
He had enough food and water for a while in his pack.
Some medicine for the wounds from the beating.
But Jeong Dae-kyung knew.
That nowhere in this infinite, dead world would accept him.
Still, he clung to hope.
“Think about it. Rifts opened all over the world, right? If the Rift is a passage linking this world to others... then shouldn’t there be another Rift inside the Rift, leading to another world?”
On that simple assumption, Jeong Dae-kyung began his journey.
Two months’ worth of rations and water.
No weapons, no map, no compass.
Only vague hope.
He walked and walked.
In that world without day or night, he saw them—monsters forming in layers as invisible eyes accumulated past the horizon.
He saw the monsters marching in lines, heading somewhere specific.
It was wise of Jeong Dae-kyung to follow them from a distance.
After about 50 days inside the Rift, he found it.
Another Rift.
A doorway that could take him back to his home, Earth.
The dried corpses around the entrance—so dried they hadn’t even rotted—confirmed his hope.
Unfamiliar corpses. Unfamiliar uniforms.
He waited for the horde of monsters passing through the Rift to disappear.
And he imagined.
His ideal Rift was the one in Paju.
It had been his post, and it was near his hometown of Seoul.
“If I was gonna die anyway, I wanted to die at home. Maybe stop by my parents’ grave and pour a drink.”
At the very least, he figured he’d exit through the Yangsan Rift or something similarly within Korea.
It made sense, given how far he’d walked for two months, dodging monsters and otherworldly creatures.
When the monsters finally vanished, he stepped through the shimmering Rift.
And what awaited him—
“······was another Rift. No, a world that had turned entirely gray. I figured I was somewhere in South America, based on the unfamiliar language and the sun-bleached ruins.”
He didn’t know what to do, but people emerged from the ruins.
Definitely humans.
Two legs, two arms, a head. Clothes. Guns.
But humans—especially in a destroyed, starving world like this—are more often a curse than a blessing.
Especially now.
BANG! RATATATATA!
Gunshots rang out. Jeong Dae-kyung was their target.
Voices shouted in a language he couldn’t understand. Bullets sprayed nearby, shrapnel flew, death grazed his skin.
He ran back the way he had come.
“Live long enough, and you learn a few things.”
Jeong Dae-kyung began unbuttoning his uniform.
I watched him calmly unfasten his shirt.
As he undid the final button, he smiled bitterly and murmured,
“Every intention has a direction. Good ones, bad ones... Usually good intentions lead to good outcomes, but not always. Sometimes, pure malice pushes fate in the right direction.”
He threw open his jacket.
His torso was bronze-toned, densely muscled—and marred by a scar that would never fade.
“I realized I’d been shot just after I entered the Rift. Luckily, they didn’t chase me in. Probably didn’t need to. I’d been shot in the gut.”
He gazed at the scar with a weary expression.
“But that wound made me hear it again. That sound I had once heard—and forgotten.”
The light in Jeong Dae-kyung’s eyes grew more intense.
And at the same time, I hallucinated something—something monster-like overlapping with his face.
“You ever hear of PC communication?”
I shook my head.
“······Only the basics.”
“When you connected to PC comms through a telephone modem, it made this distinctive sound. Fax machines make something similar. Anyway, the sound I heard was like that connection tone.”
Jeong Dae-kyung stepped closer.
I instinctively shrank back.
I couldn’t help it.
What I saw in front of me now was a monster.
“You heard it too, didn’t you?”
In that moment, I recalled—
The location of my pistol. And more than that, the axe.
“What are you talking about?”
But the answer—
Was postponed.
SSSHHHHHH—
That unforgettable sound, buried in memory, rang out above us.
A shell. No—a missile.
KWAANG!
The explosion struck, and the sirens wailed.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEENG——
“Oh dear.”
Jeong Dae-kyung clicked his tongue and glared at me.
He stared at me with those glowing eyes for a moment.
Then he turned away.
“So that’s how it is, huh.”
He turned and yanked open a cabinet.
What he handed me was a CBR kit.
“Take it.”
A wave of confusion hit me, but only briefly.
I immediately accepted the kit.
I put on the hazmat suit and civilian gas mask, then looked at him.
He was still dressed.
Struggling to fasten the straps on his back, so I helped him.
“Thank you.”
His breath fogged up the window of his face shield as he smiled.
“You’re better at this stuff than I am. As expected of the Professor!”
The door opened and people in similar suits and masks entered.
“General!”
Jeong Dae-kyung nodded.
“Let’s go.”
We stepped out into the hallway as sirens screamed, loud enough to split eardrums.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Distant gunfire greeted us—but then—
SSSHHHHH—
That spine-chilling sound of another missile falling froze us again.
“Everyone, stand back.”
Jeong Dae-kyung spoke gently as he waved his arm. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
We followed his lead with the soldiers.
The next moment—
THUMP!
A shockwave powerful enough to rattle the whole building burst from Jeong Dae-kyung’s body.
The sound of the falling missile—the voice of a judge declaring a death sentence—vanished like a lie.
But only briefly.
Another set of missiles, each with its own sense of distance, began to shriek overhead.
I rushed down the stairs and asked Jeong Dae-kyung,
“What the hell is happening?”
Jeong Dae-kyung replied,
“Was his name Pyo Won-sang?”
“······!!”
“You should probably ask him.”
As explosions, gunfire, and machine gun fire echoed everywhere, we reached the underground bunker.
There, civilians—including Jeong Dae-kyung’s family—sat calmly in full CBR gear.
“I figured something was coming, but I didn’t think they’d actually use someone like you as bait.”
“······.”
“Guess I was naive. Those Jeju bastards really are capable of anything.”
I wouldn’t judge anything based on one side alone—but one thing was clear:
This wasn’t a normal attack.
How many factions could fire multiple bio-chemical warheads on a single area?
The missile barrage soon transitioned into artillery shelling.
I tried the radio.
No signal.
The walkie-talkie? Just interference.
THUMP. THUMP.
All I could hear was the nauseating noise of bombardment.
Jeong Dae-kyung stepped closer again.
“Let’s continue the story from earlier.”
I stared at him in silence.
THUMP. THUMP.
After two more tremors shook the underground slightly, Jeong Dae-kyung said again:
“I know how to become Awakened.”
And for a brief moment, I saw it—my eternal nemesis, the Nemesis-type—overlapping with Jeong Dae-kyung’s face.
