The System
It was the key to everything. That was the sole reason Sung Jin-Woo, the notoriously weakest Hunter in existence, would eventually stand toe-to-toe with cosmic entities and ascend to heights no mortal could ever dream of.
Then again, that miraculous growth was only possible because the Shadow Monarch—a terrifyingly high-level being—had decided to surrender everything to Jin-Woo.
Kim Min-Jun found the Shadow Monarch's reasoning strange, but he decided not to overthink it. Sometimes, the strings of fate were just pulled for the sake of the plot.
Monarchs and Rulers...
Just thinking about the two absolute apex factions of this world made his chest feel heavy. Min-Jun was strong. Among humans, he was an S-Rank powerhouse who could look down upon almost anyone on the planet. Even those special few chosen by the Rulers as their vessels were manageable.
But his focus couldn't afford to rest on humanity. His eyes had to remain fixed on the Monarchs and the Rulers—because to them, he was an anomaly. A potential threat.
And that was exactly why he desperately needed more power. If he remained at his current level, he would be completely at the mercy of higher beings, existing merely as a pawn on their board. Jin-Woo was safe; he was the protagonist. But what about the collateral damage? What about everyone else?
Min-Jun fundamentally despised the inevitable "epilogue" of this world's timeline. The idea that reality would simply be reversed by a time-manipulation artifact if things went wrong disgusted him. It treated reality like a video game. If the ending wasn't perfect, Jin-Woo would just hit reset, trapping everyone in an endless time-loop until a bloodless, tearless conclusion was reached.
Is a perfect ending even possible?
There was no such thing as a flawless resolution. Min-Jun knew his own methods might be messier than Jin-Woo's, but he was certain of one thing: he had to take the System for himself.
It was the ultimate prize. It was the very reason the Architect—the genius creator of this unique ability—was hunted relentlessly until it fled to the outer realms to strike a desperate bargain with the Outer Gods.
The political conflicts on Earth, the clashing guilds, the encroaching gates—they were child's play. The war between Monarchs and Rulers was a cosmic nightmare. But throwing the Outer Gods into the mix? That realization alone sent a violent shudder down his spine.
Fortunately, he wasn't navigating this nightmare entirely alone. As those around him grew stronger, he would too. But could he truly break past his limits like the others? He didn't possess the gluttonous, adaptive abilities of someone like Suzuki in the Tensura world; he couldn't just assimilate foreign powers on a whim.
Let's stop worrying about that right now.
Overthinking the grand, multiversal chess game was threatening to split his skull open. Instead, he forced his mind back to the Architect.
In the original story, the Architect was painted as a megalomaniacal villain. But Min-Jun couldn't help but admire it. While the rest of the universe bowed in absolute terror before the Rulers and Monarchs, the Architect dared to rebel. It built the System. It tried to rewrite the rules.
Unfortunately, the Architect's grand plan failed the moment the Shadow Monarch noticed the scheme, hijacking the System for his own vessel.
But the Shadow Monarch never utilized the System to its full potential, Min-Jun realized.
The Monarch was already a god-like entity. To him, the System was nothing more than a convenient leveling tool to reinforce a mortal body so it wouldn't tear apart upon receiving his immense power. That was why only an S-Rank Hunter could normally survive as a vessel. Jin-Woo was the weakest, so the System had to painstakingly rebuild him from the ground up.
But even if Jin-Woo became the perfect vessel, his ceiling was still capped. At his absolute peak, he would merely equal the Shadow Monarch's strength, nothing more.
Min-Jun wanted to shatter that ceiling.
Yet, standing in the oppressive, suffocating darkness of the Double Dungeon, Min-Jun was brutally reminded of his current reality. Compared to the Shadow Monarch, he wasn't even a pawn. He was an ant.
"Damn it...!"
His legs trembled violently. His entire body shook under the crushing, suffocating aura radiating through the cavern. A few yards away, Sung Jin-Woo was screaming in agony, his body being pushed to the absolute brink of destruction.
Min-Jun didn't dare move a muscle. He held his breath, flattening himself against the stone, desperately trying to blend into the architecture so the cosmic gaze wouldn't fall on him.
[Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger!]
[The host is in the direct presence of a Higher Being!]
[Do not move! Do not act! Cease respiration! Blend into the environment or the host will be targeted and immediately erased from existence!]
Fuck!
Min-Jun cursed his own greed. He should have waited. He should have stayed outside the gate and waited for Jin-Woo to emerge before using the Manager to replicate the System. But it was too late. He was trapped in the epicenter of the universe's most dangerous power transfer, and all he could do was try to survive the shockwave.
I'm so weak...
All his pride, all his confidence in being an S-Rank Hunter, an elite Archer, was shattered in an instant. He was nothing but a flea standing in the shadow of a god.
But even so... even so!
He refused to surrender. He refused to let himself be swallowed by this cosmic terror!
Replicate it! Copy it! Strip it away from them!
He hadn't fought this hard just to be erased. If the Monarchs and Rulers wanted to wipe his existence from the universe, he would make them bleed for it.
His eyes burned with a desperate, defiant madness. If he were going to die today, he would make sure to leave an unforgettable, infected wound on the cosmos. After all, even a single flea could carry a plague that wipes out an empire.