The massive countdown gradually faded from the Seoul sky. With it, all traffic halted completely—not just in South Korea, but across the entire globe.
It was as if an invisible hand had hit the pause button on time itself.
Pedestrians froze in place like concrete statues. Eyes locked onto empty space, faces illuminated by a cold, blue glow. This phenomenon wasn't limited to the obsessed "AlphaGaming" players waiting for the update.
Translucent blue screens materialized before the eyes of 90% of the planet's population. They floated in the air with terrifying technological apathy, ignoring walls and distances.
Everyone waited in a silence tinged with confusion and awe.
But the young man, hidden deep within the dark alley away from the neon lights, watched the blue screen reflecting in his dead eyes with absolute stillness. Was he hallucinating from extreme hunger? Or had his miserable death, which he had awaited for so long in this rotting street, finally arrived?
[00:00:03] [00:00:02] [00:00:01] [00:00:00]
Ding!
It wasn't a sound heard through the ears. It was a sharp, metallic ring that pierced skulls and echoed in the minds of all humanity simultaneously.
The blue screens violently vibrated, shifting into a new message written in a crimson red, like fresh blood:
[Integration Complete. Initiating Primary Cull.] [Objective: Survive for 99 hours to earn the right to enter the Third Cosmic Realm.]
Then, with digital cruelty, a new timer appeared in the upper corner of every human's peripheral vision:
[Time Remaining: 98:59:59]
Reactions varied in the packed main street. Hesitant, nervous laughter broke the silence. Some clapped enthusiastically, while others whistled in amazement.
In their extreme naivety, they believed this was merely an ultra-advanced 3D hologram marketing stunt launched by the mysterious company to promote their new update in the streets. Humanity had grown so accustomed to luxury and the illusion of safety that their brains simply refused to process a real threat.
But mere seconds later, those illusions evaporated forever.
The sky tore open.
These weren't parting clouds. The very fabric of reality ripped apart like wet, ancient paper. Deafening, spatial tearing sounds paralyzed the ears. The earth shook so violently that dozens were thrown to their knees.
From those dark fissures, gaping like rotting wounds in the heavens, descended entities that belonged neither to this world nor to any human nightmare.
Monsters rained down like black precipitation.
Abominations that defied the laws of biology and physics. Some crawled on slimy bellies, others flew on shredded leathery wings, and some plummeted like living boulders.
One of these nightmares crashed directly into the middle of the main street, obliterating the roof of a taxi and fusing steel with asphalt. It was a colossal beast, covered in bone armor as thick as a tank. Its lower jaw was split in two, dripping a green, acidic drool that instantly melted the car's paint.
"Wow, what insane visual effects!" shouted a local gang member, a young man wearing an expensive leather jacket.
Armed with arrogance and sheer stupidity, he approached the massive beast as it shook the dust from its armor. The tattooed man reached out a hand with a foolish grin, trying to touch what he thought was a mere "hologram" to prove to his friends it was fake... .
BOOM! CRUNCH!
In a blur, faster than the human eye could track, the monster lunged. Its split jaw snapped shut. In a single, devastating bite, it completely severed the man's head and right shoulder from his torso.
A fountain of hot, viscous blood sprayed like crimson rain, washing over the smiling faces of the crowd standing behind him.
The sickening crunch of bones and a shattered skull grinding between steel-like fangs echoed down the wide avenue as the sound of death, instantly dispelling every doubt or illusion.
Time froze for a split second. A single drop of blood fell from the man's remaining jacket onto the asphalt.
Then... the street erupted in blind, hysterical screaming. Men, women, and children stampeded in pure, primal terror, trampling each other in a desperate bid to escape.
But it was too late. The massacre had begun.
The descending monsters showed no mercy. They began tearing through bodies like wet paper bags, devouring everything in their path. Luxury cars, once symbols of social status, were crushed and flipped like cheap plastic toys. The wet asphalt transformed into rivers of blood and entrails.
In the filthy alley, far from the epicenter of the slaughter, the young man watched hell materialize step by step. He didn't blink. He didn't take a single step back.
At first, he genuinely believed he had died and been transported to hell—a punishment for his cowardice. For failing to avenge his father who was crushed like garbage under the rubble, and his mother whose heart stopped from the sheer oppression and shock of the horrific cover-up of her husband's murder.
But the pungent stench of blood and the very real screams of dying humans made him slowly open his eyes to the truth. Yes, this was a real massacre. Not a hallucination.
Suddenly, he spotted her amidst the chaos.
A girl in her twenties dashed out of an apartment building adjacent to the alley. She was screaming in frantic panic, barefoot, wearing nothing but a wet white towel barely clinging to her trembling body. She had been taking a shower when it all started, driven outside by pure herd instinct.
He remembered her... She wasn't just a passing face.
She was the same girl who used to throw him leftover warm food from her balcony when he was twelve, shivering from cold and starvation in this very alley. Back then, in the early days of his miserable life, he held an innocent, childish crush on her. A warm sense of gratitude because she was the only creature who had treated him like a human being.
But now?
He watched her with a chilling, empty gaze, completely devoid of emotion. He didn't care. His heart, long dead from hunger, freezing nights, and ultimate betrayal, had no room left for a single pulse of pity.
As the girl ran and cried, stumbling as she tried to read the floating blue screen in front of her, a massive arachnid monster dropped from the building's roof directly behind her. It possessed eight legs ending in razor-sharp spears and multiple pitch-black eyes fixated on her bare back.
No one turned to save her. Everyone was too busy surviving, shoving each other aside like panicked insects.
The young man read the system message before him again, his eyes reflecting the glow of the cars catching fire:
[Survive for 99 hours.]
A tiny smirk crept onto the corner of his mouth. It morphed into a low, muffled chuckle... and rapidly escalated into a maniacal, dark, and booming laughter that echoed through the dark alley, blending seamlessly with the screams of the dead.
"Hahahaha... Is this a joke?" he whispered to himself, his voice raspy, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, abyssal light.
'I've lived twenty years fighting the hunger gnawing at my guts, the cold shattering my bones, and the human scum who trampled on my dignity every single day... Do you really think I'm going to die now just because some stupid space bugs decided to drop from the sky?'
In that exact moment, something inside him snapped forever. The final chain tethering him to "humanity" shattered. And something else—something dark and predatory—was born from the womb of that fracture.
The fire of vengeance that had burned in his chest for years was no longer directed solely at the corrupt construction company or the bribed police. It expanded, engulfing the entire world.
This sick cosmic system, these hideous monsters, and these weak, hypocritical humans currently being slaughtered like sheep... they were all the same to him now.
His soul as a human had died a long time ago. What remained standing in this alley was a pure human monster. An apex predator who wouldn't hesitate for a single second to crush the neck of anything—man or beast—that stood in the way of his ascent from this abyss.
He wiped a drop of rain mixed with blood from his cheek and stared coldly at the countdown timer:
[98:55:12] .