(If your gonna read this… please read it while listening to "THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY." THANK YOU)
"A tent...? What the FUCK..."
I lowered my head and looked at the beast lunging.
Then— Reality snapped back Into place and my foot moved without my permission.
Something inside me clicked. Not strength, not speed.
It was timing.
The world slowed again.
Not completely.
But just enough.
Enough for me to run.
My feet slammed into cracked asphalt as I ran down the parking lot, and my lungs burned instantly. Every breath feels too small for my chest. Behind me, the beast's footsteps were LOUD. So loud. Each step shattered pavement likea glass.
I didn't look back.
The system burned into my vision.
────────────────────────
[System Notice]
[SUB-OBJECTIVE]
Survive for 10 seconds.
────────────────────────
"What the fuck… You've got to be kidding me…"
One second.
The air shook behind me.
Two.
A chunk of concrete exploded past me.
Three.
My legs screamed for me to stop but I didn't.
Four.
The ground suddenly went down. I stumbled and barely caught myself.
Five.
I could feel The beast Hot breath into my back.
Six.
Its shadow swallowed me.
Seven.
I felt the pressure in the air shift. The warning before my death.
Eight.
I twisted sideways.
Too slow.
Something massive slammed into my ribs. It was not a claw.
It was a paw.
The impact erased. made me feel that the world slowed..
My body flew sideways like I just got hit by a truck. I bounced across the pavement, rolled hard, and slammed into a broken light pole.
Pain immediately went through my entire right side.
I couldn't breathe.
Nine.
I tried to stand.
Failed. I tried again. Failed. I tried again. But I failed.
Then a shadow fell over me.
Ten.
The beast's paw came down again, but this time it didn't smash.
It closed its paw unto me.
The metal bent. Concrete shattered.
And I was lifted into the air like I weighed nothing.
My ribs crushed inward as its massive paw wrapped around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides. I kicked my feet but it was uselessly swaying in the air.
And for a split second, the world tilted just enough for me to see the CU store.
Through shattered glass and concrete.
Ivy.
She was screaming.
Not words at first. Just sound. Raw and broken sound that kept coming out of her chest.
"dad! Dad! DAD!!!"
Over and over again like she said it enough times, that the reality would listen.
Ivy had both arms locked around her from behind, feet braced against the floor as Lila struggled like someone feral is in her hands. Ivy's hands scratch at the air toward me, fingers stretching, shaking, reaching for someone that was already too far.
"Let me go!!! My Ahju- M-MY Dad! Needs me! Please!!!" she sobbed.
Lila was crying too. I could see it even from here. Her teeth were clenched so hard her jaw was shaking as she dragged Ivy backward inch by inch, away from the entrance, away from me, away from the monster.
"im sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm SORRY!!!" Lila shouted, not even sure who she was apologizing to anymore.
Our eyes met.
Ivy's eyes.
For half a second, everything else disappeared.
The monster. The portal. The pain.
Just her looking at me like she was watching her entire world get pulled apart in front of her.
My chest tightened so hard it felt worse than the broken ribs, like it feels so bad and suddenly it feels nothing.
"Ivy," I tried to say.
No sound came out.
Then the beast's grip tightened.
And I locked eyes with it.
Its many eyes stared back.
Not angry.
Curious.
Like I was a broken toy it was deciding whether to tear apart.
Then—
The portal above the CU jerked. Hard. SO HARD.
That the glowing ring in the sky twisted violently like something grabbed it from the inside. The falling light debris reversed direction, getting sucked upward instead.
The air pressure changed instantly.
The beast snarled in confusion.
And then everything got pulled.
Not toward the ground.
Toward the sky.
The sucky tucky was violent.
Cars lifted.
Debris ripped free.
The beast dug its claws into the pavement. It was a failure..
Its grip on me tightened reflexively as the portal dragged both of us upward.
For half a second, I saw the parking lot from above.
Vesper screaming my name.
Ivy reaching for me.
Lila frozen in horror.
Then the world folded.
There was nothing
No light.
Just pressure.
Then— me and the beast got sucked into the portal.
***
Cold.
My body slammed into something soft and crushing at the same time.
Snow…
I skidaddled across the frozen ground, rolling several times before stopping face-down. My lungs burned. Ice stabbed into my skin through my expensive torn clothes.
"Haha… I forgot this clothes was worth Million."
The silence was wrong.
No monster.
No alarms.
No screams.
Just wind.
I lifted my head slowly.
White everywhere.
Snowy mountains stretched endlessly under a gray sky.
I was alive.
Barely.
And the beast—
It was gone. When I was getting flung. Since I saw it get flung away from me too.
────────────────────────
System notice.
Sub-Objective: complete.
Reward: ???
[Goodluck Si Hon.]
────────────────────────
I stared at it.
"Haha. What the fuck why is it always a question mark."
I let my head fall back into the snow.
Cold soaked into the back of my skull instantly, sharp and biting, but I didn't react. I didn't flinch. I didn't even try to move. My body felt heavy. Not weak, just heavy. Like every muscle had already given everything it had.
"Or maybe I'm just lazy ASF."
I chuckled
"Kidding everything actually hurts."
Snowflakes drifted down into my face.
They fell against my cheeks, slid into my eyes, my lips, the wound of my skin. I blinked once. Then I stopped bothering. Let them fall. Let them bury me. I honestly didn't care anymore.
The sky above was endless and dull, a vast gray color stretched across the world like someone forgot to finish painting it. No sun. No light source. Just cold brightness bleeding through thick clouds.
My breath came out in tight, white fog.
In.
Out.
Each breath hurt less than it should.
That scared me more than the pain did.
I stayed like that for several seconds. Maybe longer. Time felt… warped. Like it didn't move properly here.
Then something felt wrong.
Not danger.
Not sound.
Scale.
I slowly lifted my head and followed the slope of the ground downward.
And that's when I saw it.
A tower.
Not a building. Not a ruin.
A TOWER.
It rose from the frozen land directly beneath where I had landed so massive that at first my brain refused to understand what it was seeing. The base alone was wider than several city blocks. Its surface wasn't stone, and it wasn't metal either. It looked like layered black steel fused with something organic, ridged with enormous vertical grooves that spiraled upward endlessly into the clouds.
I couldn't see the top.
No matter how far back I leaned my head, the tower vanished straight into the gray sky like it stabbed through the world itself.
At its base, the snow didn't gather.
It melted.
Not from heat, there was no steam. No warmth. The ground around it just… refused to freeze, revealing cracked black earth covered in faint glowing lines that pulsed slowly like a heartbeat.
The world finally felt real again.
And wrong.
This isn't from Korea.
This isn't… "haha. Yea I forgot I got sucked into the portal."
I just know is… this place was made.
Built.
Designed.
For something.
A low vibration hummed through the air not loud enough to hear with my ears, but strong enough that I felt it deep in my body. The tower wasn't dormant.
It was active.
Waiting.
I swallowed.
Every instinct in my body screamed one clear message
This tower was not optional.
Whatever world I had been dragged into…
This was the center of it.
And I was lying at its feet like an offering.
I approached it and to my surprise I was merely meters away from it when my feet gave up.
I was facing the sky once again. Once again lying down in the cold snow, and all those Snowflakes are…
"You know… I'm so tired…"
***