"Thank God. I’m so relieved you’re okay, Yuki-chan." Her voice trembled slightly. "The doctors said nothing was wrong with you. You just… slept. For three days. Sometimes you woke up for a moment, and I gave you water and food, but you never really seemed conscious. I was so worried. God, what happened to you?"
"I… was…"
The sword of the Renegade Paladin had pierced my heart. And yet… here I was. Alive.
"Maybe it was some kind of magic spell," Yumi mused. "Like Open Sesame."
She adjusted the breakfast tray on my blanket, looking thoughtful. "This morning, I just did what I always do," she continued. "I prayed. I made breakfast. And then I told you, Wake up, another day of school is about to begin." She paused, watching my face closely. "And that was it. That was the moment you finally woke up. After three whole days. Just like that."
I pushed myself up on my elbows, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. My head felt foggy, like I’d downed five melatonin teas in a row. I blinked at the tray. Green tea and… sliced beets.
Not the usual breakfast Yumi prepared.
How did she know about my obsession?
Yumi placed her warm, age-spotted hand on my leg and pulled a jar of pickled beets from under my bed, holding it up like she had just uncovered some grand secret.
"When ROKA found you outside Everland, they brought you straight to the hospital," she said softly. "I was so worried, I cleaned the entire apartment. Just to keep myself busy. That’s when I found your lifetime stash of beets under your bed."
I turned bright red.
So red I felt dizzy.
This must’ve seemed… incredibly weird.
I mean, for anyone who couldn’t peek inside my head. Yumi probably thought I was completely nuts. Who hoards pickled beets, of all things?! Not even hardcore preppers would do that. But I’d always been terrified that one day, my favorite food would disappear from stores forever. So every morning, before school, I stopped by the supermarket and stuffed my backpack with...
Oh God.
That didn’t just sound crazy.
That was crazy.
"I…"
"It’s okay, Yuki-chan." Yumi smiled. "You’ve always been a little odd. That’s how you got your nickname in the first place."
The redness in my face refused to fade. If anything, my cheeks had probably turned the exact shade of my favorite food.
"Other teenagers chug energy drinks to stay awake," Yumi said, shaking her head. "To get the best grades, they sacrifice sleep. But you actually learn in your sleep. A tired mind doesn’t retain knowledge. You’re doing it right, Yuki-chan... you just sleep for three days straight."
She gently patted my messy, greasy hair and rose gracefully from the bed. An old woman, yes, but every movement dignified and elegant.
As she stepped toward the door of my small room, I realized something. Unlike the other kids, I never had to deal with that insane pressure. I got the worst grades, always just barely passing. While other parents beat their kids or excluded them from family activities for bringing home anything less than a B, Yumi had never pressured me. At least I’d been spared that much.
I groggily reached for my glasses on the nightstand, blinking as I sat up. "What about Sin-Joo?" My voice was raspy, my tongue still numb from all that sleep.
Yumi stopped in her tracks, hands wringing nervously. "We haven’t heard from him. Not a single word. I’m sorry."
I slid my glasses on.
Damn it. What had Ryn Valen done to him?
The door clicked shut, leaving me alone in my tiny room.
Sin-Joo.
The ritual.
The Everland Dungeon.
That… terrible emptiness.
The Chimeric Man.
My heart went from fast to out of control in a blink. But unlike a high-powered engine, sudden acceleration like this wasn’t cool—it was... terrifying. It pounded so hard against my ribs that I jumped out of bed. Of course, I managed to knock over the breakfast tray in the process. Beets scattered everywhere, staining the carpet.
But then…
Was it the red color that calmed me?
The color of blood.
It felt… comforting.
Deep breath, Takuya.
What the hell had actually happened?
Memories clashed in my mind: getting kicked unconscious in the school bathroom on my seventeenth birthday, waking up in Everland, falling into the Abyss. But now... Had any of it been real?
Maybe I’d never been to Everland at all. Maybe I’d been in the hospital this whole time, just like Yumi said. If that were true, then why hadn’t she asked me the obvious questions? Like how the hell I got out of the Abyss?
Something wasn’t adding up.
A sigh escaped my lips, a joyless laugh. What a shitty fever dream. The Chimeric Man. The contract that bound my soul to the Syndicate. It was all so insane.
Way too insane to be real.
And there was an easy way to prove it: the Nexus link. The soul interface.
If all of this had actually happened, I should be able to use it now.
All I had to do was think about... my Character Sheet, for example, and a window would pop o—
What the…
"It’s real," I whispered. A tidal wave of joy, fear, and skepticism crashed over me. And when it receded, only one feeling remained, manifesting in a single sound:
"HUUUH?!"
Charisma: Zero?
Was this some kind of joke?
My eyes darted over the Character Sheet. Where Paladin should be, a mess of tiny, flickering symbols glitched in and out.
A bug?
Suddenly, my bedroom door swung open. Yumi peeked her head through the gap. She had meant to ask me something, but the look on my face must have confused her so much that she just froze.
"Can you see this?" I asked.
"What?"
"This." I gestured toward the blue window hovering in front of me.
"What?"
"DO YOU SEE THIS?!"
"The stained carpet?" Her eyes flicked from the beet-stained rug back to me. Then she glanced around the room. "See what, Yuki-chan?"
I sighed. "Never mind, Grandma!"
"You don’t have to yell, Yuki-chan, I hear just fine."
…Said the woman who had just what-ed me three times in a row.
"You’re staying home for the rest of the week," she said firmly. "I’ll get you some fever medicine. And carpet cleaner."
Door closed. Silence. No time for fancy descriptions. I looked back at the Character Sheet. What the hell was this?
The interface linked to the Nexus was malfunctioning. A system glitch. A bunch of things weren’t displaying correctly. And my stats…
They were nothing like a Level 1 Paladin’s.
Or were they?
I took a big step over a pile of scattered Blu-rays—Ninja Scroll, Paprika, Sword of the Stranger, Akira, Perfect Blue (God, I love that movie!)—accidentally stepping on a pack of Orion Turtle Chips. I kicked it aside, yanked open the top drawer of my cheap wooden cabinet, and rummaged through the last few months’ worth of Warden’s Codex magazines.
Issue No. 213 or No. 211?
Screw it, I grabbed both, turned around… and froze.
My eyes locked onto the wall clock.
Just past seven.
School.
A whole week off!
But…
Sin-Joo.
My heart pounded.
A wave of nausea hit me so hard I thought I’d puke.
Every fiber of my being rejected the thought forming in my mind.
Making it to class on time.
I flashed through the memories of Everland. The goblins. The abused park worker. Sheriff Malgrave. The ritual. Ryn Valen, that bastard.
Was high school really worse than all that?
YES!
YES, IT FREAKING IS!
My body screamed in protest.
But I didn’t care.
I was done being a coward.
I grabbed my school bag, stuffed the magazines inside, and pressed a hand over my mouth, fighting back the urge to gag.
Yumi met me outside my room, holding a bucket of soapy water and my fever medicine.
I didn’t say a word.
I just bolted past her.
Back to high school.
Yeah, here we go again... It felt like an eternity since I’d last stepped into this hellhole. Either time really slows down when you’re in pain, or this school exists in its own personal time-dilated nightmare. Uniformed students streamed past me toward their classes. I took a quick sidestep as Do-Hyun and his pack of hyenas came barreling my way, ducking into a small nook between two vending machines. With shaky fingers, I tapped my phone against the scanner and bought a banana milk with some K-Coins.
The boys wore gray suit pants, blazers with the Cheonghwa High School emblem stitched onto their breast pockets. The girls had the usual pleated skirts in dark colors, paired with sheer tights or knee-high socks, tucked-in blouses, and fitted blazers. Most of them had trendy, carefully styled hair. Except for Ji-Eun from Year 1, who passed by me just then. She must have been sick or something. Her brittle black hair was so thin her scalp showed through in patches. I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of hell she must have gone through because of it.
A metallic clunk snapped me out of my thoughts.
My banana milk had dropped into the vending machine slot.
I reached into the opening, grabbed it, turned my face toward the wall, and tore off the plastic lid. One deep, ice-cold sip.
Do-Hyun had passed me by.
Wait.
Wait.
Then I slipped out of my hiding spot.
My heart pounded.
Partly because I was about to walk straight into my tormentors…
(My footsteps echoed down the hallway. I was the last one. The classroom loomed ahead, waiting.)
…But mostly because I couldn’t shake the fear of seeing Sin-Joo’s desk empty.
I had to find out what happened to him.
And this was the place to start.
That was the quest I had given myself.
And it was more important than anything else.
I swallowed the dry lump in my throat.
The door labeled 2-D stood open.
I turned the corner.
Stepped into the classroom.
Quest complete.
What the…
Sin-Joo sat at his desk, reading his textbook.
As if he had never been gone.
The guys burst into laughter the moment they saw me. No clue if they had a reason or if they’d just agreed beforehand that mocking me was the right move the second I showed up again.
Hadn’t Yumi said that no one knew what had happened to Sin-Joo?
My jaw clenched. My brows knitted together.
On my way to him, I got pelted with a barrage of spit-soaked paper balls. One smacked wetly against my temple.
"Headshot!" Do-Hyun crowed, grinning wide as he held up his straw like a sniper showing off his rifle.
The class exploded into laughter.
I wiped my face with my sleeve, leaned down to Sin-Joo, and whispered, "We need to talk. At break."
He didn’t even look at me. Just flipped a page in his English workbook.
"There’s nothing to talk about, Takuya."
I reeled back like I had just caught a whiff of something rancid.
"You’re kidding me, right? Did you even know I was still alive?"
No answer.
"Hey, Takuya!" a bully called out.
Oh no. Now what?
"Did you meet your mom down in the Abyss? Hope the ogres fucked her raw."
Roaring laughter.
"Meet Takuya: The only person in the world who enters an Abyss and still comes back a loser."
The laughter swelled, pressing into my skull like a drill.
"Heard he ran away before the raid even started... and shit himself outside the dungeon."
My body trembled with rage. Tears welled in my eyes.
Through my blurry vision, I caught a glimpse of Soo-Min’s pretty face. She cared too much about her popularity. When Min-Kyu nudged her, she smiled awkwardly. He nudged her again. She grinned wider. Then that bastard said, "I bet his mom jumped into the Abyss on purpose. Gave birth to the world’s biggest loser, and now she’s roasting in hell, ashamed of herself."
My eyes locked onto Min-Kyu. My heart pounded so hard it felt like my ribs might crack. Blood surged through my body, every cell saturated with extra oxygen and pure, undiluted hate. In that one searing moment of rage, I could have sworn my scrawny muscles swelled to something monstrous.
The fury inside me wasn’t just an emotion anymore. It was a living entity, consuming me, making me stronger, powerful.
Every rational thought vanished.
I lunged at that piece of shit.
That worthless, sniveling lapdog.
I was going to kill him.
In his eyes: sheer terror.
At least for a fraction of a second.
Then he laughed along with the rest of them.
A sharp strike to the back of my neck.
I flinched.
Was that… a hit?
I spun around.
Miss Park stood in front of me, her teacher’s bag slung over one shoulder, the other hand lowering from the strike. The sting on my neck lingered.
Had she really just hit me?
"Sit down. Right now." Her voice was ice. "You’re back for five minutes and already picking fights again. You’re unbearable. You cause nothing but trouble. You get terrible grades. You are ruining the entire class dynamic."
The anger… it was still there, bubbling under the surface as Miss Park insulted me.
But it was contained.
Surrounded by fear.
Choked by nausea.
I pictured myself unleashing some insane superpower. Blasting my teacher and those bastards into oblivion. Making them suffer. Showing them exactly what was coming for them.
But reality?
Nothing had changed.
Despite the life-threatening horrors I had faced, I was back in my bubble.
Back in my role.
The stigma that clung to me like an unbreakable prison.
Half an hour into english class. We were analyzing another Shakespeare play. Probably Macbeth. Which just gave me flashbacks of the final boss, Nihilith.
My palms started sweating.
The military had found me outside Everland.
And Ryn Valen?
I needed to piece everything together. Like a detective.
And I only had break time to do it.
Maybe Sin-Joo knew more than I did.
I hunched lower behind my classmates, trying to avoid getting called on (obviously, I hadn’t read the damn play), ignoring the throat-slitting gestures from Do-Hyun as he dragged his thumb across his neck. Instead, I buried myself in Warden’s Codex No. 211, flipping through the pages like a madman. There!
A classic Level 1 Paladin had 58 HP, 48 MP, and their five main stats looked like this:
- STR: 22
- AGI: 20
- STA: 22
- INT: 20
- CHA: 20
For a moment, I hesitated. My eyes darted around nervously. Then I remembered—Yumi hadn’t been able to see the window either.
So, with a single thought, I opened my Character Sheet.
And yeah… something was seriously screwed up.
Not only was my class name and some of my attributes glitched out like they’d been censored, but my Mana bar was completely missing, and my stats were…
Shit.
Charisma: A perfect zero?!
Strength: A pathetic four?!
Meanwhile, Intelligence was sitting at ten—way below the starting value for a Paladin.
It was as if the Character Sheet was holding up a mirror to my life.
No crazy abilities. No exceptional power.
Just cold, hard numbers telling me exactly what kind of pathetic loser I was.
And what the hell was this points counter?
Zero points.
That wasn’t something Paladins had either.
Right then, the whole class burst out laughing.
My heart pounded as I snapped back to reality.
The blue window vanished, revealing Miss Park, standing in front of the class, arms crossed. Her strict gaze had parted the sea of students, locking onto me with an expression of pure frustration. She shook her head.
That’s when I realized: She had called on me.
And she was waiting for an answer.
I had no idea what for.
Insults flew my way.
Moron. Coward. Dumbass.
Soo-Min let out a deep sigh, rubbing her temples in slow circles, her eyes closed, her whole posture screaming how fed up she was with the nerd sitting next to her.
"I… I'm sorry, my thoughts, I was just… uh..." I stammered.
My heart pounded so hard, I could barely breathe.
And that’s when it happened.
A new window popped up right in front of me. Out of nowhere.
I hadn’t called for it.
I hadn’t even been thinking about it.
It forced itself into my vision against my will.
To the class, I must have looked like I was staring into empty space, seeing ghosts.
But I wasn’t.
I was staring at the words before me...
Words that sent a chill down my spine.
>> URGENT QUEST INCOMING <<
>> Sender: [UNKNOWN] <<