By the time Taeyang stumbled down the mountain, the sky behind the city's jagged towers had begun to bleed from black to gray. He hadn't slept. Didn't need to — his bones felt too raw for sleep to catch him anyway.
He took the back alleys, keeping his hoodie hood pulled low. Old drunks and stray cats watched him pass — eyes glinting in the half-dark like hunters.
On the rooftop of a half-rotten goshiwon, he shoved open the squeaking door to his matchbox room. The door didn't close right. The heater didn't work. The light bulb above the sink flickered every few seconds like it couldn't decide if he deserved light or not.
Taeyang dropped his torn hoodie onto the floor. Beneath it, bandages and dried blood traced new lines across old bruises. He poked one — flinched when fresh pain bloomed under his ribs. Then he smiled, teeth flecked red where he'd bitten his own tongue in that last fight.
He dragged his battered body into the tiny bathroom. The cracked mirror over the yellowed sink showed him someone halfway familiar — the same sharp cheekbones, the same tired eyes — but deeper in those eyes, something else watched back now.
He turned on the tap. Rusted pipes groaned. The water ran cold as mountain stone. He cupped it in trembling hands, splashed his face again and again until the last of the dried blood broke away in red rivers down the cracked basin.
He braced himself on the sink's edge. Breathed.
In the flickering bulb's light, he let the thoughts come — the ones he'd shoved down during the hunt, during Gramps' last words, during that moment when a living thing's soul had broken like wet glass in his hands.
Hunters…
In this country, they walked like gods — shiny suits, TV interviews, luxury cars waiting outside guild towers. A single S-Class could close a city-level gate alone — kill a gate tyrant before it ate a million people.
Above everyone. Unreachable.
Then came the A-Class, B-Class — lesser gods. They didn't walk alone, but even the lowest B-Class could buy an apartment bigger than this whole building.
C-Class? Gate hounds, cleanup teams, small-time stars if they had the right face for it. D-Class, E-Class — the bottom feeders. Grunts, porters, the ones who cleaned up stray spawns when the real hunters moved on.
Most E-Class hunters died before thirty — underpaid, under-ranked, under the system's boot.
And then there's me.
Rankless.
Didn't even deserve a letter. No system window ever bothered to pop up when he touched the gate relic in the testing hall. Zero skill. Zero worth. A stray dog too worthless to collar.
He ran a thumb across his knuckles — the skin felt wrong. Beneath it, something cold and hungry pulsed when he thought about that goblin's life flickering through him.
Monsters…
He'd seen them on TV — the big ones. Gates that cracked open mid-city, raining down with shrieks, claws and steel-hard hide.
They had their own tiers too, same pecking order.
F-Class: Trash like that first goblin — pests that die easy.
E-Class: Feral hounds, scaly pests — enough to tear people apart if no hunter showed up fast.
D-Class: Goblin warriors, brute ogres, weak tunnel trolls. Small teams handled them if they weren't idiots. Often used for the training of new hunters by big guilds .
C-Class: Bigger nightmares — armored lizards, river trolls, pack chimeras. Feral things that left only bones if you weren't ready.
B-Class: Gate bosses — monsters too big for a single rookie squad to touch. But good source of loot and equipment .
A-Class: Gate tyrants — horrors capable of wiping out a whole city and surviving even missiles without a single scratch. Often referred to as - Living catastrophes.
S-Class: Also known as - Endbringers. The kind you prayed never slipped through. The kind that could even survive nuclear missiles .
The world thought monsters dropped cores — lumps of mana to harvest, refine, sell. Cores were often used to produce electricity and make equipment. Nobody cared about the rest — the soul inside the monsters flickered out when the body fell. Nobody cared. Except maybe the first awakeners that taught Gramps whatever forbidden thing he'd passed down.
Taeyang's reflection stared back. He touched his chest — right where Gramps' knuckles had slammed the art into him. The spot felt warm now, like a coal under the skin.
Soul Devouring Art.
A forbidden martial art, not a skill. No system window. No neat skill tree. No pop-ups. Just him and the thing growing inside.
Level 1. That's what Gramps had called it. The Initiate Gate. The weakest point.
It took only a absorbs around — 10%. That goblin's warrior essence — 90% gone to dust, only scraps left for him. Still, scraps were enough to make his arm feel heavier when he swung it just now in the mirror — to make his bruises fade just a little faster.
Ten levels.
Each one a step deeper into that black corridor. Each one letting him tear out more from what he killed.
Level 2? 20%.
Level 3? 30%.
All the way to Level 10 — perfect devour. Nothing wasted. Nothing left for the wind.
But Gramps hadn't lied — the higher you climbed, the heavier the meal. If your bones weren't ready, your mind burned out first. You could end up becoming a mindless monster in worsts case .
He flexed his fingers. Even the cracked mirror looked different now. It would take more prey to climb. He'd need to feed — not just trash pests, but real monsters with muscle, with power to steal.
His phone buzzed on the moldy futon. He grabbed it, swiped through the battered guild app. Cheap job listings. Bounties. Porter calls.
There. An abandoned factory down in the old dockyards — a weak gate flickering open at the edge of the industrial zone. Low D-Class threat. Small, easy payout. The big guilds didn't bother — it wasn't worth their fuel.
But for him? A meal. One step closer to Level 2. One step closer to chewing through the ranks that had laughed him off the registry floor two years ago.
He laughed then — soft, dry. His ribs hurt. His shoulder burned where claws had dug too deep. His reflection smiled back at him like it knew the joke.
Rankless. No window. No skills. A mutt.
But there it was — something alive humming in his marrow. Hunger. The taste of a beast's fear melting through his veins.
He tied new bandages around his ribs. Dug a fresh black hoodie out of the crate by his futon. Brushed hair back from his eyes. He looked the same — another part-timer waiting to clock in for minimum wage.
On the way out, he checked the battered uniform folded on his chair — the convenience store logo still half-ripped where he'd leaned too close to a shelf hook. The shirt still stank of stale ramen and sweat. He'd need it in a few hours when the next shift started.
Until then — he was just a dog in the grass. Invisible. Small enough to slip under the system's fence.
For now.
He flicked off the light. The flickering bulb sputtered once — then died for good.
In the cracked mirror, only the dark outline of his eyes glinted back — black pools rimmed in something new. Something that wanted.
He pulled his hood up. Slipped out the door. Let the city swallow him again — quiet, small, Rankless.
Somewhere down by the docks, a gate flickered open like a wound. Something inside would snarl, spit, bare its teeth.
And tonight, he would bare his own back.