My name is Lee Min-Jun, and today, I am ending it.
The rain paints Seoul in tears of chrome and neon. It slides down the endless windows of Gangnam's towers, each droplet reflecting a world that has left me behind. I stand on the Mapo Bridge, not for the cliché of it, but for the view. The Han River churns below, a slick, black serpent swallowing the city's broken lights. It feels appropriate. It feels final.
Eighteen years. Today was the National Awakening Ceremony.
I can still hear the hum of the Awakening Hall, a sound like a thousand beehives trapped in glass. I can still see the faces of my classmates, lit up with impossible colors as the world gifted them their futures.
Choi Yuna, my neighbor since we were kids who built pillow forts together, floated off the ground, her hair a corona of shimmering starlight. S-Rank: Arcane Mage. The air itself sang for her.
Kim Tae-Seok, the bully who made my school days a quiet hell, erupted in plates of granite skin. A-Rank: Titan's Bulwark. His laughter was an earthquake.
One by one, they awakened. Healers, Summoners, Elementalists, Speedsters. The fabric of reality bent to grant them a piece of its magic. A new hierarchy was born in an instant, written in glowing runes above their heads.
Then came my turn.
The crystal under my palm remained cold, inert. The machine's hum died into a pathetic whirr. The official tapped his screen, frowning. "Lee Min-Jun. Awakened Skill: Null."
Silence.
Then, not silence. A snicker. A whisper that wasn't a whisper. "Null." "Useless." "A ghost."
Null. Not even an F-Rank. A zero. A void. In a world that now runs on magic, I am the only piece that doesn't fit. I am the static in the glorious song.
So I came here. The wind whips my cheap jacket, a souvenir from the old world. It smells of rain, fried street food from a distant cart, and the faint, oily scent of the river. Human smells. I grip the railing, the metal biting into my palms. This is the last human touch I will know.
I think of my mother's face, years ago, smiling as she tied my school tie. A lifetime ago. She's gone now. Maybe this is how I see her again.
I take a shuddering breath. The city sprawls before me, a kingdom of light I am forever exiled from. I clench my jaw, my heart a drum of pure, shameful pain.
Goodbye.
I push myself up, the soles of my shoes scraping on the wet metal. The wind roars in my ears. I lean forward.
[System Error Detected.]
The voice is not a sound. It is data etched directly onto my consciousness. It is cold, absolute, and sterile.
I freeze, my chest pressed against the cold railing. What?
[Scanning host soul. Quantum signature unique. Divinity-resistant locus confirmed.]
The words hang in my mind, devoid of emotion, yet heavy with impossible meaning.
[Initializing… Welcome to the God-Slaying System.]
The world does not change. The rain still falls. The river still churns. But everything changes. A transparent, blue-tinted interface overlays my vision. It's sleek, minimal, utterly alien.
Host: Lee Min-Jun
Designation: God-Slayer (Provisional)
Current Divine Authorities Claimed: 0
System Objective: Hunt. Claim. Ascend.
I stumble back from the edge, my legs giving way. I collapse onto the wet walkway, my back against the railing. I'm not hallucinating. The interface stays. A small, pulsing marker appears in the corner of my sight, like a quest notification in a game. But this is no game. The words chill my blood.
Initial Quest: Baptism by Divinity.
Target: The Drowned Apostle (Lesser Corrupted Divine Entity).
Location: 50 meters downstream, your left. Nesting in the river's spiritual lee.
Objective: Slay the target. Claim your first Authority.
Reward: System Foundation Unlocked.
Warning: Target is a nascent god-fragment. Mortality rate for unaugmented human: 100%.
A god? Here? In the Han River?
A hysterical laugh bubbles in my throat, choked by the rain. This is madness. A cruel, last-second joke from a universe that loves to kick the broken. But the interface is real. The data is real. And beneath the terror, something else sparks. Something I thought the Awakening Ceremony had killed forever.
Hope. A terrible, burning, vengeful hope.
While others were given skills to build, to heal, to fight monsters… I was given a system to kill gods.
I push myself up. My body is trembling, but not from cold. From a current of raw, electric possibility. I look downstream, to where the marker pulses. I see only dark water and the reflected glare of the city.
"How?" I whisper, my voice raw.
The system responds, text scrolling calmly.
[Analysis: Host physical parameters inadequate. Granting preliminary combat protocol: 'Divine Sense.']
A wave of pressure erupts in my skull. I gasp, clutching my head. It's not pain, but an overwhelming expansion. My sight… changes. The world gains a new layer. The neon lights are still there, but so are faint, colorful auras around late-night joggers—their awakened energies, weak and dormant. The river… the river is wrong.
Where the marker points, the water isn't just dark. It is void-dark. A patch of absolute spiritual stagnation, sucking in the ambient light and life. And within it, I sense a form. A slumbering, hungry mass of pride and resentment. It feels ancient, and new, and terribly, terribly wrong. The Drowned Apostle.
It's real.
[Divine Sense (Passive - Level 1) active.] the system notes. [Perception of divine and spiritual energy signatures enabled.]
This is my power. Not to create fire, or summon beasts. To see the monsters no one else can. To find them.
"How do I fight it?" I ask, my mind racing.
[Host must engage. System will provide tactical data-stream. Adapt. Survive. Claim.]
No magic sword. No sudden surge of strength. Just me, my new sense, and a system that wants me to walk into the jaws of a god.
The old Min-Jun, the Null, would have run. He would have curled up and accepted his fate.
But the Null is dead. He jumped off this bridge a minute ago.
I walk. My steps are unsteady at first, then deliberate. I follow the railing, the pulse of the marker guiding me like a macabre lighthouse. Fifty meters. Forty. The normal sounds of the city—the distant hum of traffic, a siren's wail—fade into a muffled blanket. Here, the air is colder. The rain feels heavier, greasier.
I reach a spot where a service ladder leads down to a narrow maintenance ledge just above the waterline. The marker points straight down.
This is it.
My heart is a frantic bird in a cage of ribs. I climb over the railing, my fingers slipping on the wet rungs. I descend into the smell of damp concrete and rotting fish. The ledge is slim, barely the width of my foot. The black water laps hungrily inches below.
I activate Divine Sense fully.
The void-patch is directly beneath me. It stirs.
The water bulges. Not with a physical shape, but with a presence. A thing of waterlogged prayers, drowned ambitions, and the river's own slow, polluted anger rises. I don't see it with my eyes, but with my soul. A humanoid shape of swirling refuse and dark water, with eyes that are pinpricks of sickly green light. It wears a tattered, spectral robe of algae and plastic bags. It is small, maybe the size of a man, but its density of being is immense. It is a thing that believes it should be worshipped.
Target Locked: The Drowned Apostle.
Status: Corrupted (Lesser). Feeding on despair and pollution.
Weakness: Its nascent Divine Spark is unstable. Concentrated force upon its core (visible via Divine Sense) may destabilize it.
Threat Level: Mortal Peril.
It sees me. The green pinpricks focus. A voice, like bubbles rising through mud, fills my head.
"A… sacrifice? So… thoughtful. The river is… hungry. Your despair is… sweet, little Null."
It knows what I am. It was probably feeding on my intention to jump. The realization sends a bolt of pure rage through me. Even this filthy thing saw me as nothing but food.
It moves. A tentacle of oily water whips from the surface, faster than I can blink. It wraps around my ankle. The touch is not wet. It is a soul-deep cold that leeches all warmth, all will.
[Alert: Spiritual corrosion detected. Host vitality draining.]
Panic screams, but the system's cold data is an anchor. I don't fight the pull. I let it yank me off the ledge.
I plunge into the Han River.
The cold is a physical shock. The darkness is absolute. But my Divine Sense burns brighter underwater. I see the Apostle now, a glowing core of malevolent green energy in the center of the swirling form. The tentacle is connected to that core.
I have one chance. One.
I don't know how to fight. I have no strength. But I have rage. I have a lifetime of being nothing. And I have a system that demands god-slaying.
I kick, not against the water, but along the tentacle, letting its pull guide me. I am a spear of my own desperation. The Apostle reels me in, its green eyes widening in confusion. It expected fear, paralysis.
It didn't expect a willing victim with nothing left to lose.
My hands, numb with cold, reach out. Not for its body, but for the glowing green core I see with my other sight. The system's data-stream highlights it, a pulsing crosshair in my mind.
[Strike the Spark!] the system commands, its neutrality gone, replaced by urgent, glacial clarity.
The Apostle understands my intent. It shrieks, a soundless bubble of spiritual fury that shakes the water around us. More tentacles form, lashing at me.
One wraps around my throat. The cold stops my breath. Black spots dance at the edge of my vision. The core is right before me, pulsating like a diseased heart.
I have no skill. No magic.
I have only a choice.
I choose to be a weapon.
With the last of my air, the last of my warmth, I don't punch. I claw. My fingers, mere flesh and bone, plunge into the spiritual form, into the heart of its green light.
There is no physical contact. It is a clash of wills. My utter, human desperation against its arrogant, nascent divinity.
"YOU ARE NOTHING!" the voice booms in my skull.
"I AM THE NULL!"I scream back, soundlessly, with every fiber of my being. "AND I REJECT YOU!"
My hand closes around the Spark.
It burns. It is not heat. It is the agony of a thousand drowning souls, the weight of polluted centuries. It tries to overwhelm me, to erase my insignificant self.
But I am already erased. I am the Null. And in that void, there is nothing for its power to grip.
I squeeze.
The green light fractures.
The Apostle's form implodes. The tentacles dissolve into murky water. A silent shockwave of released energy pushes me upwards, a surge of bubbles and darkness.
I break the surface, gasping, vomiting river water. I flail, grabbing onto a slimy pylon of the bridge. I cling to it, shuddering, sobbing, alive.
[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST.]
The system's text is gold, monumental.
[The Drowned Apostle (Lesser) has been slain.]
[Claiming Divine Spark…]
A tiny, fractured ember of that sickly green light rises from the water and sinks into my chest. It doesn't burn this time. It settles, cold and heavy, in the center of my being.
[Divine Authority Acquired: 'Authority of Stagnant Waters' (Fragment – Tier 0).]
Effect: Minor manipulation of impure, still water. Slight resistance to water-based spiritual corrosion.
[System Foundation Unlocked.]
[Level 1 God-Slayer Parameters Activated.]
- Vitality: Enhanced (Low)
- Perception: Enhanced (Divine Sense)
- Strength: Baseline Human+
[New Quest Available: Consolidate Authority. System Tutorial Initiated.]
I haul myself onto the maintenance ledge, collapsing onto the cold concrete. I stare at the rain, at the city lights smeared by water on my face. I am soaked, freezing, and trembling violently.
But inside… inside, there is a new sun. It is cold. It is fierce. It is mine.
I look at my hands. They look the same. But I am not. I am not an S-Rank. I am not an A-Rank.
I am Lee Min-Jun.
I am the God-Slayer.
And as the first dawn of my new life bleeds grey at the edge of the sky, I smile. It is a thin, dangerous thing.
Let them have their skills. Let them build their towers of light.
I will be in the depths, hunting the things they worship.
The game has changed. And I finally have the rules.
To be continued...