The boss of the 50th floor collapsed with a thunderous crash, its massive crystalline body shattering into fragments of light. The Tower's final guardian was dead.
For a moment, there was only silence. Then the system notification appeared before all eight of them, glowing letters suspended in the air:
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[THE TOWER HAS BEEN CONQUERED]
[EARTH HAS MET THE CRITERIA TO JOIN THE MULTIVERSE]
[PORTAL TO EARTH WILL OPEN IN 60 SECONDS]
Kang Jihoon stared at the message, his mechanical bow still thrumming with residual heat from his final shot. Steam hissed softly from the compartment near the grip. His hands were shaking—not from fear, but from exhaustion and relief so profound it made his knees weak.
They'd done it. Six months of hell, fifty floors of nightmares, and they'd actually done it.
Earth was saved.
"We did it," Minseo said, his voice cracking. The tank dropped his massive shield and fell to his knees, laughing and sobbing at the same time. "Holy shit, we actually did it."
Jihoon felt his own eyes burning. He adjusted his glasses with trembling fingers, trying to see clearly through the sudden blur. His vision had gotten worse during their time in the Tower—something about the mana density, maybe, or just the constant strain. Without his glasses, everything beyond a few meters became an indistinct smudge.
"Jihoon-ah."
He turned at the sound of her voice. Lee Seyeon stood a few steps away, her long dark hair framing her face, still in her combat gear. Even now, after the hardest fight of their lives, she looked beautiful. The Tower's ambient light seemed to gather around her, highlighting the curves that had haunted his dreams for months.
His heart stuttered in his chest.
"Seyeon-noona," he managed, trying not to sound like the lovesick freshman he was. At sixteen, he was the youngest of their group. She was nineteen, in her second year of high school before the Tower summoned them. The age gap had seemed insurmountable at first, until she'd confessed her feelings three weeks ago.
"I know it's weird," she'd said, looking at him with those dark eyes. "But in here, age doesn't matter, does it? We've been through too much together. I... I care about you, Jihoon-ah."
He'd been too stunned to do anything but nod dumbly. A virgin with no experience, suddenly the object of affection from the most beautiful girl he'd ever known. The other guys had been jealous, even Hyunwoo—the bastard bully who'd gotten teleported alongside him when he'd been beating Jihoon up behind the school.
"Come here," Seyeon said softly, holding out her hand. "I want to tell you something."
Jihoon's pulse quickened. Around them, the others were celebrating—Minseo still on his knees, Jaehyun checking his daggers with his usual quiet efficiency, Somin treating a cut on Donghyuk's arm. Hyunwoo stood apart from the group, arms crossed, watching everything with an unreadable expression.
The system notification shifted:
[PORTAL OPENING IN 30 SECONDS][PREPARING REWARDS]
Jihoon walked toward Seyeon, his bow slung across his back. The mechanical contraption was heavy—all those gears and cogs, the steam compartment that converted his mana into kinetic force—but he'd grown used to the weight. It was the only thing that had kept him alive when the Tower's system hadn't recognized him as a hero.
No heroic class. No heroic weapon.
Just his [Unique] skill: [No Scope], and the strange bow that had appeared in his hands on the first floor. While the others received legendary swords, staves, and shields, he'd gotten a steampunk oddity that required him to manually feed mana into its heating mechanism.
And his other skill. The one he didn't talk about much.
[Voice of All Things].
The ability to understand any language, any creature. It had saved them more times than he could count, translating ancient texts and negotiating with dungeon merchants. But lately, some of the others had looked at him strangely when he'd used it. Especially after Floor 37.
He pushed the memory away. They'd made it. That was what mattered.
"What did you want to tell me?" he asked, stopping in front of Seyeon.
She smiled, and his stomach did that stupid flip it always did. "Just that I'm proud of you. We couldn't have done this without you."
"I didn't do that much," Jihoon said, feeling his face heat. "You guys did most of the heavy lifting. I just—"
"You kept us alive," Seyeon interrupted. Her hand came up to cup his cheek, and Jihoon's breath caught. "You're special, Jihoon-ah. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Behind them, light began to coalesce. Eight pedestals rose from the floor, each bearing a gleaming item—weapons and armor radiating heroic-tier power. The final rewards.
[PORTAL OPENING IN 10 SECONDS]
"Noona, I—"
"Shh." Seyeon stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the faint scent of her—sweat and leather and something floral she somehow still carried from their old life. "Before we go back, there's something I need to do."
She leaned in, and Jihoon's mind went blank.
She was going to kiss him.
Lee Seyeon, the girl who'd occupied every spare thought for the last three months, was going to kiss him.
Her lips met his, soft and warm, and for one perfect moment Jihoon forgot about the Tower, forgot about the six months of hell, forgot about everything except the feeling of her mouth on his and the way his heart threatened to burst from his chest.
Then something went wrong.
His body locked up. Not from nervousness or inexperience—something else. Something chemical and cold spreading through his bloodstream from the point of contact. His muscles seized, refusing to obey him. The bow slipped from his numb fingers and clattered on the floor.
Seyeon pulled back, and her expression was... empty.
Not sad. Not apologetic. Just empty.
"Wh—" Jihoon tried to speak, but his tongue wouldn't move. His legs buckled and he collapsed, only his eyes able to track movement as Seyeon stepped back.
The others were gathering at the portal. The swirling gateway home pulsed with inviting light. One by one, they picked up their rewards from the pedestals—legendary items glowing with power.
None of them looked at him.
"Time to go," Jaehyun said, his voice carrying across the chamber.
Hyunwoo glanced back once. For a moment, something flickered across the bully's face—was it guilt? Regret? But then his expression hardened and he turned away.
"Wait." Minseo hesitated, looking at Jihoon's paralyzed form. "Shouldn't we—"
"He knew the risks," Seyeon said calmly, examining the elegant rapier she'd claimed. "We all did."
"But—"
"Minseo." Seyeon's voice was sharp. "We don't have time. The portal won't stay open forever."
Somin wouldn't meet Jihoon's eyes. Donghyuk's jaw was clenched. Jaehyun's expression was unreadable as always.
They walked toward the portal.
All seven of them.
Leaving him on the cold stone floor, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to do anything but watch as they stepped through the gateway one by one.
Seyeon was last. She paused at the threshold, looking back at him. For a moment, Jihoon thought she might say something. Explain. Apologize.
Instead, she just smiled—that same beautiful smile that had made him fall for her—and disappeared into the light.
The portal snapped shut.
The chamber was silent except for Jihoon's ragged breathing through his nose. His body still wouldn't respond to his desperate commands. The paralysis held him locked in place like a insect in amber.
Then the Tower shuddered.
[ERROR][CRITERIA MET BUT ANOMALY DETECTED][CORRECTING...]
The floor beneath him cracked. The massive chamber began to collapse, stone and crystal crumbling as the Tower—its purpose fulfilled—started to unmake itself.
Jihoon's eyes widened in horror as reality fractured around him. The paralysis broke just as the floor gave way beneath him, and he was falling, falling into darkness deeper than any shadow he'd known.
The last thing he saw before the void swallowed him whole was the system message burning in his vision:
[INDIVIDUAL: KANG JIHOON - UNRECOGNIZED HERO]
[REALLOCATING TO DESIGNATED ZONE]
[THE VOID ]
Then there was nothing.
Nothing but the hungry dark and the distant screaming of things that should not exist.
[SEVEN YEARS LATER]
The apartment was small but comfortable—exactly what Park Seoyeon had wanted when she'd moved out of the dorms. Third year of high school, top of her class, and finally independent. No more curfews, no more roommates, no more pretending to care about teenage drama.
She dropped her bag on the floor and stretched, feeling her joints pop. Today's dungeon run had been exhausting. Her party had cleared a B-rank gate, which was decent experience for someone her age, but she was already thinking about the studying she needed to catch up on. Hunter exams were in three months, and despite her practical skills, the written portion was no joke.
Seoyeon pulled off her leather jacket and tossed it onto the couch, then headed for the shower. Tomorrow she had school, then another gate run in the evening, then—
A sound stopped her mid-step.
It came from her bedroom. A wet, gasping noise, like someone drowning.
Her hand went to the knife she kept strapped to her thigh. B-rank hunter or not, she'd been trained to be paranoid. Dungeon breaks were rare in residential areas, but "rare" wasn't "never."
The sound came again. Definitely from her room.
Seoyeon's heart hammered as she crept toward the door. It was slightly ajar—she always kept it closed. Through the gap, she could see... something. A distortion in the air, like heat shimmer, but wrong. The light around it bent incorrectly, and looking at it made her eyes water.
Then it opened.
Not like a door. Like reality was being torn, the fabric of space splitting apart with a sound like tearing silk amplified a thousand times. Seoyeon stumbled back, knife raised, as the rift expanded.
Something fell through.
A person—no, a body. Thin to the point of emaciation, dressed in rotted rags that might have once been clothes. They collapsed onto her bedroom floor with a wet thud, and the rift snapped shut behind them as abruptly as it had appeared.
For several seconds, Seoyeon just stood there, knife raised, breathing hard.
The figure on her floor wasn't moving.
Slowly, carefully, she edged closer. Male, she thought. Young—teenager, maybe? It was hard to tell with how gaunt he was. His dark hair was long and tangled, his exposed skin marked with scars that looked like they'd been made by claws. Or teeth.
He wore glasses—cracked and bent, barely holding together—and clutched something to his chest with white-knuckled desperation.
A bow. Mechanical, covered in gears and strange tubing, with what looked like a small steam chamber built into the grip.
The boy's chest hitched. Once. Twice.
He was trying to breathe.
Seoyeon's hunter training kicked in. She dropped to her knees beside him, fingers going to his neck to check for a pulse. It was there, thready and weak, but present. His skin was cold as ice despite the warm evening.
"Hey," she said, shaking his shoulder. "Can you hear me? What happened? Where did you—"
His eyes opened.
Seoyeon jerked back instinctively.
They were the eyes of someone who'd seen the end of everything. Dark and empty and so, so old—far too old for the young face they belonged to. For a moment they seemed to look through her, past her, at something terrible and vast.
Then they focused.
The boy stared at her. His cracked lips moved, forming words with no sound. His grip on the bow tightened until his knuckles went white.
Then his eyes rolled back and he went limp.
Seoyeon sat back on her heels, heart pounding, mind racing.
A portal had opened in her bedroom. A portal that had dropped a half-dead teenager with a weapon onto her floor. A portal that had appeared and vanished without any system notification, any dungeon break alarm, any warning at all.
She should call the Hunter Association. This was way above her pay grade.
But something stopped her. Maybe it was the way he'd clutched that bow like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. Maybe it was those eyes—haunted and broken and far too knowing.
Or maybe it was just that Park Seoyeon had always been too curious for her own good.
She pulled out her phone, fingers hovering over the emergency number.
The boy's chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Up close, she could see his face more clearly. Beneath the grime and scars, he was probably her age. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Something about his features seemed almost... familiar? But that was impossible.
Seoyeon looked at her phone. Looked at the unconscious stranger.
Made a decision she'd probably regret.
She put the phone away and went to get her first aid kit.
Whatever had just fallen through a portal into her life, she'd figure it out. That was what she did—solve problems, clear dungeons, handle the impossible.
How hard could one mysterious boy be?
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION - INDIVIDUAL: KANG JIHOON][STATUS: RETURNED][VOID EXPOSURE TIME: 7 YEARS, 3 MONTHS, 17 DAYS][DEBUFF APPLIED: VOID TOUCH (SEVERE)][ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL TOTAL DISSOLUTION: 47 DAYS]