KEG 2

“….!”

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the blanket inside the debtor’s wrecked room.

The window and wall were still shattered, and the giant mantis monster’s corpse hung from the broken frame. It wasn’t a dream.

“…What…?”

I touched my neck to check the wound, but there wasn’t even a scratch.

However, the white dress shirt under my suit jacket was soaked stiff with dark reddish wine-colored blood. It was proof that having my throat slit wasn’t just a dream…

“Are you awake?”

“…Yes.”

I answered the debtor’s wife as calmly as possible when she suddenly spoke to me.

She was carrying a large backpack and holding her child’s hand, looking exactly like a family fleeing in the middle of the night.

“Thank you.”

Without any further explanation, she bowed and left the house with her child.

That day was the first day of the Dungeon Break that turned the world upside down.

***

One day a rift opened in the sky and monsters swarmed out, throwing the world into chaos.

“…Yeah, that sounds exactly like the opening of a hero’s epic.”

I muttered to myself as I walked through the training camp entrance. It was the most fitting summary of the Dungeon Break and the current state of the world.

“Soldiers who have finished saying goodbye to their families, please assemble on the training ground.”

A businesslike announcement flowed from the camp’s loudspeakers.

“Guide conscripts, please head to the left tent from the main platform. Esper conscripts, please proceed toward the right parking lot.”

Some portion of humanity had awakened unknown powers and were divided into Espers and Guides. Espers were the only ones capable of fighting the monsters that human military power and technology could not handle.

And Guides were the only beings who could calm the special energy called “waves” that Espers emitted.

The government quickly declared a national emergency, engraved bio-marks on the Awakeners, developed magic-detection satellites, and established control over them.

They created the Special Forces Command under the Ministry of National Defense and enacted laws on the management and support of special ability users, which eventually led to the forced conscription of Espers and Guides.

“They told me not to come because I was an orphan, but now that they need me, they drag me in.”

Even though I was only E-class, I was still a Guide, so I became subject to mandatory conscription and was dragged into the military.

“Should I just desert?”

Desertion.

That was what I thought when I first received the draft notice.

But I wasn’t living with any grand purpose in society. This felt like a chance to wash my hands of the tiring loan shark life, so I didn’t feel too wronged. That’s why I obediently followed the enlistment order and came here.

“You are the nation’s last shield.”

On the first day of enlistment, after shaving all our heads, the Minister of National Defense gave a speech to the confused Espers and Guides to instill some pride.

“Ugh… hic…”

“Sniff… Mom…”

The speech roughly promised sufficient honor and compensation. Some people with tragic-looking faces were actually crying while listening.

“Haaam…”

I yawned and half-heartedly listened. There was no need to memorize it, and concentrating felt useless.

“Each and every one of you is a hero of this era.”

With that final grandiose line from the Minister, the long speech ended and my real military life began.

Normally, Guides were treated as precious tactical assets and protected in the rear.

However, Guides with weak abilities or low class had no such privileges. They were assigned to special units called “Guide Infantry.” Even low-class Espers could handle weak monsters, but low-class Guides had less combat power than ordinary people.

In the end, “Guide Infantry” was just the government’s cheap trick to fill manpower shortages with useless forces and save money.

“Recyclable Waste Disposal Unit passing through.”

High-class Espers and high-class Guides mockingly called us things like “Recyclable Waste Disposal Unit,” “Meat Shield Squad,” or “Broken Blades.”

Even though we were all forcibly conscripted, there were still ranks and contempt. Maybe the monsters didn’t come out of the Gates, they had already been living on the surface all along.

“Move faster! Hey, be careful not to break the mana stones!”

Instead of actual guiding, we Guide Infantry soldiers were mainly assigned dirty and dangerous tasks at the front lines: recovering soldiers’ corpses, dissecting monster bodies, and extracting mana stones.

“Ugh, aaack…!”

Non-Espers who stayed near monsters or Gates for too long would suffer mental contamination. Their contamination levels would rise, causing them to vomit dark red blood from every orifice and go insane. Our unit was no exception.

Slap!

“Fuck, rookie, get a grip. You want me to dismantle this whole thing by myself?”

I grabbed the collar of the soldier who had screamed and collapsed while handling the corpse of a giant deer-shaped monster and slapped him.

“Ugh… Private First Class¹ Ha Seongho… Just how strong is your mental fortitude…!”

I had barely kept the dying guy’s sanity together, yet he had the nerve to complain.

I was about to say something in response, but since I had tried speaking up many times before and was only treated like a lunatic, I decided to just keep my mouth shut.

Because:

[Donation has been completed.]

[You have received that person’s protection.]

[Mental contamination immunity has increased.]

For some unknown reason, paying money reduced my mental contamination level.

The system automatically deducted money from my account, anywhere from a few hundred thousand to several million won at a time, it stole my wealth in all sorts of creative ways. The “hazard pay” and “special duty allowance” I received for risking my life on the battlefield vanished without a trace the moment they came in, bringing tears of blood to my eyes.

But thanks to that, I had already survived past the average infantry lifespan of six months and reached the one-year mark without going crazy or dying.

I felt the irony of having to go to my death in order to not die.

Spit!

“If you can’t handle it, go hold hands with that C-class Esper over there. It’s better than nothing.”

I spat out a clump of bloody phlegm, supported the rookie, and dragged him back to the barracks.

I was still human, so I wasn’t completely immune. Occasionally blood would rise in my throat, my ears would ring like they were being torn, and my whole body would tremble with seizures. But compared to Espers on the verge of going berserk without proper guiding or Guides losing their minds and harming themselves from contamination, I was a saint.

“You’re a Guide? Try guiding me.”

“Oppa, come sit on my lap~ Hehe.”

Even I, as a Guide, sometimes received sexual harassment from the Espers in the unit. It was almost amusing how people who wouldn’t even make eye contact with me in society now looked down on me and acted superior just because their position and abilities had changed.

“Those tattoos look flashy. Did you sell your body outside?”

They must have seen me in the shower. They pointed at the Yaksha tattoo that had been forcibly inked on my back during my debt collector days and mocked me with vulgar remarks.

“Yes, I sold my body.”

I responded indifferently to the Espers’ crude jeers.

As someone who had been in the organization since I was a kid, I was sickeningly familiar with this kind of oppressive behavior.

“Espers don’t drink or smoke and exercise regularly, so even your kidneys should fetch at least thirty million won.”

At my reply, the harassing Espers all gaped at once.

That was how I earned a reputation as the lunatic of the Recyclable Waste Disposal Unit.

Later, when they learned that Esper organs–especially kidneys–were extremely valuable and sold for hundreds of millions, they started drooling while looking at me. My title evolved from just a lunatic to a crazy psycho lunatic.

‎

‎

And so, in my second year of military service.

“Ha, those fucking bastards…”

Thanks to my reputation and messy unit life, I eventually fell for the scheme of some malicious Espers.

“Everyone really retreated?”

I had been abandoned alone in the valleys of Goseong’s Geombong Mountain in Gangwon Province.

Everyone except me had withdrawn.

What a disaster.

This place was also one of the fiercest battlegrounds during the Korean War, heavily mined. Even without monsters, one wrong step could cost me my life.

“Black Panther One, this is Black Panther Three. Current location unknown. Visibility blocked by fog. Requesting return point confirmation. Over.”

I calmly radioed in, but even I could feel my heart pounding like it was about to leap out of my throat.

The rifle I carried had been broken since departure. I had requested a replacement from the logistics unit, but it was rejected on the grounds that I was just there to clean up corpses.

Right now the rifle wasn’t a weapon, it was just dead weight. In other words, I was unarmed.

Thump thump thump.

The fear that no one would find me and I would simply die here took hold of me. I had always thought the world was something you lived through alone, but actually being left behind filled my entire body with a terrible sense of helplessness.

1. Military rank, below Private and above Corporal ↩︎