A scream was heard from within the blazing fire.

……Where is this? No, when is this memory from?

The desperate, anguished voices turned to ash and scattered to the sky before they could reach me.

Ah, this is…

[This is the timeline separator]

“Oh dear, I was just going to watch.”

At the moment when only death became clear, a certain voice was heard.

It was pitch black in color. It was kind yet eerie and dark, like a bottomless abyss.

When I gathered my scattered mind and raised my gaze, someone was standing before me.

A man humming a tune while holding a flaming spear in his hand.

“As much as I wanted to awaken you, isn’t this method too harsh?”

He said. His raven-black hair fluttered in the wind.

A worn leather cloak. Peculiar attire. A voice as gloomy as his jet-black hair.

As he lightly pushed away the spear, Kali stepped back with wide eyes.

“Who……”

A whisper like the wind escaped my lips. The question remained unfinished. He, with eyes as black as his hair, gently supported my body and made an indiscernible humming sound.

“You, how… how are you here…!”

Kali, propping herself up with the spear tip on the ground, called out to the man while gritting her teeth. He glanced at Kali.

His face, a mix between a boy and a young man, could still be called youthful, yet emanated an inexplicable maturity.

He fixed his gaze on me. The eyes looking at me were simultaneously seeing something that wasn’t me.

With pitch-black eyes devoid of any light.

As my mind started to scatter in those abyssal eyes, something came flying.

“Oh my.”

He lightly avoided the flaming blade while embracing me, and spoke as if troubled.

“Hey, Park Ha Young! Come over here right now!”

Kali, kneeling on one knee, shouted in frustration without even managing to draw attention. It was quite strange to see her shouting that it was dangerous.

Just what is this man, what is this being that makes her react like that?

The man, wearing an expression of boredom, lifted me up and covered several steps’ distance in a single stride.

“Until just now, I thought I might play along with your amusing game for a bit. Ranker Alliance, the final resistance to prevent destruction… I don’t care what you do. But this isn’t right.”

His index finger wagged. Black smoke, like dust, emanated from his body and enveloped the surroundings.

“And right now, it seems the danger to Shina isn’t me, but you all.”

The smoke disappeared. The man who had been beside me was now stepping on Kali’s head.

Anger, resignation, trampled pride, resentment, fear. The expression mixing a myriad of emotions was rather comical. She’s afraid. The great Kali Brian. The fearless military god is afraid of this man.

“Why you made such a stupid choice.”

Thwack. A crisp impact sound that I thought I’d never hear in reality rang out. In that moment, Kali, who had escaped, wiped away the nosebleed that had burst forth.

“Why did you try to make yourselves the worst enemy?”

But he still spoke in a leisurely voice, merely wiggling his finger once more.

Simultaneously, Kali’s body flew and crashed into the wall. A loud noise resounded. Amidst the smoke and sand dust, Kali, who had finally wiped the expression from her face, stood up on both feet.

“Shina.”

However, as if even this wasn’t worth paying attention to, he only called out to me in an terribly gentle tone.

“Do you want to awaken?”

Until the moment he slowly approached me, while I was staring directly into those black eyes, there was nothing I could do.

It was hard to breathe.

With every word he uttered, chills ran down my spine.

This man is a vast abyss. He either embraces all the sins of this world, or he symbolizes the end of the world.

It was the resonance of instinct. Run away, otherwise, I will…

“Huk, hu. Huik, heok.”

“Ah.”

As I lowered my head, gasping for breath, unable to meet his eyes any longer, a short sigh was heard. The presence that had been pressing down on me diminished.

“Sorry, I couldn’t control it.”

“…Looks like you’ve forgotten about me!”

The man avoided the blade by merely tilting his neck to the side, then grabbed the middle of the spear and threw the military god away again, the scene flashing before my eyes.

“How annoying. Just be quiet for a bit.”

One who can cover the world in darkness and erase a person’s presence with just a flick of a finger.

He once again showed a gentle demeanor. I managed to utter a voice.

“…Who are you?”

It felt like I was suffocating from that terrible emotion.

Run away, if you don’t run away, you’ll become irreversible. Despite the constant alarm of instinct ringing out, there was one emotion that couldn’t be hidden.

Longing? No, it’s not such a simple emotion. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way towards that man, why he’s making that expression while looking at me.

“For you to ask me who I am. What should I do, I’ve imagined countless times what to say in this situation, but now that I have to answer, I don’t know what to say.”

“Stop joking around and answer properly! You… Who are you?”

“What should I do. If you hadn’t been curious till the end, I would have pretended not to know. No, maybe I’m a bit angry.”

“……”

“So, Shina, do you want to awaken?”

My name isn’t Shina. I wanted to answer, but my mouth wouldn’t open.

I just want to let go of my consciousness. I don’t want to think about anything anymore. Too many things happened today. Meeting Ihyun, almost dying at the hands of the military god, and now this unknown being…

“Alright, let’s do this.”

Finally, as if he had just remembered something, he lightly tapped his fist on his palm and smiled with crescent eyes.

[System:: An abnormal access has been attempted.] [Error!] [S§ste∞:: Entering the ∃;∞ forest’s falle¿ leaves.] [Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error!] [S§ste∞:: Terminating the abnormal acce∃∃……]

Things I had seen before. Holograms that seemed to have malfunctioned were chaotically spinning before my eyes, and all surrounding sounds turned into a ringing in my ears.

Even as everything was distorting.

“Send my regards to elder brother Shinwoo.”

The clear voice gently settled.

That was the end.

[This is the timeline separator]

The young me asked. Who are you? To those words, he answered like this.

‘You already know who I am.’

That voice with a low resonance contained an indescribably deep longing.

[This is the timeline separator]

Chirp chirp, chirp chirp chirp chirp.

Coo coo. Coo coo coo coo.

Beep. Beep beep beep beep.

White noise that one would expect to hear in a forest bounced around here and there. And grass and trees that one would expect to see in a forest appeared, and sunlight filtering through leaves one would expect to see in a forest settled on my head.

Trees, grass, stones, earth, the scent of grass. Again trees, trees, trees, trees. Looking around, that’s all there was to be seen.

Indeed, this is a forest.

I calmly sat on a flat stone and assessed my current situation.

I was just living my life diligently when suddenly a rumor about my romance with Cheon Shinwoo broke out. My mental state was shattered. So I met a friend after a long time. The friend I met wore down my mind just by existing.

I went to wash my face for a moment, and when I returned, I was kidnapped, and the person who kidnapped me was the Military God Kali, ranked 7th in the world. The world’s 7th-ranked Kali threatened me. After threatening me, she tried to kill me to awaken me.

And then an unidentified being shoved me into a gate.

Alright, summary complete.

“Summary complete my foot−! How can this situation make any sense!”

If there is a god, they really shouldn’t do this to me. I lived diligently. But for the result of living diligently to be just a series of disasters like this, it shouldn’t be this way.

How can not just one, but three incidents happen in succession!

“Ugh, I’m really going crazy. Where on earth is this……”

My head rang faintly. But my mind was clear. Perhaps thanks to fainting as if falling asleep.

Trees and grass in shapes I’ve never seen before. Breathing in the thick scent of grass, I thought.

This is a gate. A gate in the form of a forest.

……The phenomenon of gates opening is literally a disaster. Sync, Erosion, Break, all of them are called disasters without exception. Natural calamities, natural disasters. Disasters that human reason can neither understand nor prevent.

But that man caused a Sync. It’s just a guess, but he certainly did.

−An intruder has come in. The forest is in disarray, what should we do?

−Let’s tattle, let’s tattle! We should tell Thorn Tree!

−Let’s chase them away, chase them away! We should chase them away before the intruder scatters the forest!

−No, no. It’s a human we’ve seen after a long time. Can’t we play together? Let’s turn them into a pretty, pretty flower. Surely the human will be happy too!

Moreover, there’s been a ringing in my ears for a while now. It’s not like mosquitoes buzzing around, but the ringing speaks in human language.

−What about that human?

−They have a nostalgic scent.

−Let’s not chase that person away. Let’s not tease them either!

−Yes, yes!

The giggling sound was as innocent as a child’s.

−Hey, what have you been doing all this time?

−Can you hear our words?

−No way! There’s no way a human could hear our words!

Yes, yes. I can hear you. I can hear you well. I even considered pretending not to hear the voices.

If these aren’t auditory hallucinations or tinnitus, then they are monsters. Monsters that might suddenly turn violent and try to kill me.

What I needed to do was clear.

‘I must survive.’

Until someone comes to rescue me, I must endure and survive somehow.

“But really…!”

Amidst all this, useless thoughts filled my mind. More precisely, anger.

If only the Military God Kali hadn’t kidnapped me in the first place, I would have finished my beer by now and gone home merrily to sleep sprawled out! She tried to cut my neck and didn’t even properly apologize!

Damn it, Baek Ihyeon must be worried about me right now, right? Of all things, to get tangled up with a Ranker, what a mess this is!