The first time the sky cracked open, it wasn't with thunder or lightning.
It was with silence.
Not a whisper of wind. Not a cry from the birds. Not even the hum of traffic from the busy streets of Seoul. Just… silence. Then, a long, jagged fissure formed across the clouds like someone had taken a knife to the heavens. They called them "Gates" later on—portals to other worlds. But in that moment, they were nothing more than terrifying anomalies that bled colors the human eye wasn't meant to perceive.
Kim Raon was seventeen when the first Gate appeared.
Just a regular high school senior. Quiet. Average. Orphaned at age ten. Spent his afternoons at a part-time convenience store job, saved his money for gaming, and avoided fights like they were the plague. He had no relatives, no friends to speak of, and no goals—just the simple desire to survive day by day.
But the world didn't care about his simplicity.
When the Gates opened, they didn't just stay in the sky.
They spilled.
Monsters poured through. Creatures of nightmare and myth—dragons made of bone, trolls that tore through buildings like cardboard, beasts with eyes that hypnotized and claws that shredded tanks. Cities fell in a matter of days. Governments collapsed. Chaos ruled.
And with the chaos came something else—Hunters.
Ordinary people began awakening to supernatural powers. Some gained the strength of titans, others could summon fire with a whisper, bend gravity, speak to spirits. These awakened humans—Hunters—were humanity's only hope against the invasion.
But Kim Raon wasn't one of them.
No matter how much he wished. No matter how many times he prayed. He never awakened. He remained the same powerless boy, running through crumbling streets, ducking under rubble, trying to survive the apocalypse with nothing more than quick feet and sheer dumb luck.
Until the day he fell into the Gate.
It was purely by accident. He had been running from a wyvern attack, the sky filled with screaming flames, the ground trembling from explosions. And then—bam. A collapsed building gave way under his feet. Raon plummeted into darkness, swallowed by a rift in space.
That was the last time he saw Earth for the next ten years.
He woke up in Murim.
A world of martial arts, ancient clans, sword saints, demonic cults, qi warriors, and sacred beasts. The world was brutal, beautiful, and unlike anything Raon could have imagined. He should have died on the first day. But fate—or something stranger—intervened.
He awakened there.
Not as a mage. Not as a swordsman.
But as something entirely different.
The energy in Murim, called qi, responded to him like a forgotten heir returning to his rightful throne. Techniques that took decades to master, he learned in days. When he meditated, qi didn't just flow—it flooded. When he trained, his body adapted at monstrous speeds.
At first, they called him lucky.
Then, they called him dangerous.
By the end of his fifth year, they called him a demon.
And by the tenth, he had become legend.
The undefeated master of the Thousand Mountain Sect. The Slayer of the Nine Demonic Elders. The only man to unite five great sects under one name. They called him the "Heaven-Breaking Sovereign," and his reputation echoed through all of Murim.
He had everything—power, respect, students who called him "master," and enemies who trembled at his shadow.
But then… it happened.
The sky cracked again.
Just like that day on Earth.
He had climbed to the peak of Mount Yeonhwa, meditating under the full moon, when the world shifted. A ripple in reality tore open above him. Not blue like the Gates he had seen before—but red. Burning. Writhing. Calling.
Before he could react, the Gate swallowed him whole.
He landed on concrete.
The sharp stench of exhaust. Blinking neon lights. Sirens in the distance. Familiar sounds.
Earth.
The Gate dumped him in the middle of a Seoul highway at midnight, wearing the battle-torn robes of a Murim master and holding a black-forged blade twice his height. Cars swerved. Screams echoed. Police showed up with rifles. He didn't speak for a while. Just stared at the skyline.
Nothing had changed. Not really.
But he had.
Ten years had passed in Murim. On Earth, it had only been one.
He was still seventeen here.
He looked like a teenager again—scrawny arms, short height, baby face. The Qi was gone. His cultivation was sealed, but not erased. It slumbered inside him like a storm waiting to awaken. But to everyone else, he was just some crazy cosplayer standing in the middle of a highway, talking about sword arts and demonic cults.
The government detained him. Interrogated him. Laughed at him.
"Kim Raon. Age seventeen. Reported missing during the First Gate Incident."
The man in the suit slid the folder across the table. His voice was calm, almost bored, but Raon could see the tension in the way his knuckles gripped the pen.
"You showed up last week wearing strange robes, carrying a sword classified as an S-rank artifact. No pulse in any known Hunter database. No awakening signature. No traces of mana. Yet you survived a wyvern-class Gate emergence in Gangnam with no injuries, and all three monsters were found sliced into—get this—clean halves. With no footage of the act itself."
The man's gaze met Raon's.
"Explain."
Raon didn't answer.
What was he supposed to say?That he had lived ten years in another world where the sky bled gold, where sword qi could cleave mountains, and where men flew on blades and beasts spoke in riddles?That he trained under the Sword Saint of the West, defeated the Demon King of Fire, and united a continent under his martial path?
They'd put him in an asylum.
So Raon just stared at the one-way mirror behind the man. He could feel them watching from the other side. Military. Hunter Bureau. Maybe even the big guilds.
He tapped his fingers on the metal table, silently channeling his qi—not to attack, just to remind himself it was still there. Buried. Locked by whatever rules this world imposed. But not gone.
It stirred like a dragon under ice.
"I'm just a student," Raon finally said.
The man scoffed. "Sure. And I'm a fairy princess."
Two Weeks Later
They released him.
No charges. No record. No official explanation.
And just like that, Kim Raon was enrolled again at Yeongnam High School for Future Awakeners—a specialized academy set up after the Gates started appearing, where teens with potential were trained, tested, and scouted by major Hunter guilds.
Raon's return caused ripples.Not because anyone remembered him.But because the boy who had "vanished" for a year came back with a dead stare, a worn-out uniform, and eyes like he'd seen a thousand battlefields.
And because on his first day, he was seated next to her.
Seo Yerin.
Top of her class. Fire Affinity Awakener. Daughter of Seo Myung-jin, head of the Flame Dragon Guild. Already recruited as a provisional A-rank Hunter.
She looked at him and frowned.
"Who the hell are you?"
Raon blinked slowly. "Just a guy."
"Then quit staring."
She turned back to the window. He almost smiled. She reminds me of the Third Blade Mistress of Mount Jinghua. That woman had tried to stab him on their first meeting too.
Class began. Raon listened.
The teacher droned on about mana flow and elemental attunement. About Hunter ranks and Gate classifications. It was like listening to toddlers talk about swordplay.
'Mana is just unrefined qi,' Raon thought. 'No forms. No balance. Just raw power forced through weak channels.'
He could fix it. He could teach them. But who would believe him?
So he stayed quiet.
Until lunch break.
That's when it happened.
The sky cracked.
Again.
Gate Breach: Unclassified
It didn't open in the sky this time.It tore open inside the school courtyard.
A rift in space like a jagged wound, vomiting smoke and shadows. The alarm blared across the school. Red lights. Screaming students. Teachers shouting evacuation orders. A security barrier flickered into place—but it was weak. Too slow.
Something emerged.
A beast. Eight feet tall. Horned. Skin like obsidian stone. A lesser ogre—but twisted, mutated by some unknown force. Behind it, smaller creatures poured through—shadowlings, barghests, winged goblins with poison-coated claws.
The courtyard became a battlefield.
Raon stood from his seat, eyes narrowing. His classmates panicked.
Seo Yerin leapt to the front, flames bursting around her hands.
"Everyone back!" she shouted. "I've got this!"
She charged the ogre, launching a volley of flame spears. The courtyard lit up. Explosions shook the air. Smoke and screams filled the void.
Raon walked outside. Slowly.
When the dust cleared, Yerin was on the ground, coughing blood. Her barrier shattered. The ogre loomed over her, a spiked club rising high.
Everyone else ran.
Raon didn't.
The ogre roared, bringing the club down.
CRACK.
The sound echoed—but not from the ogre's weapon.
It was the air that cracked.
Raon caught the club with one hand.
Everyone froze.
The ogre blinked.
Seo Yerin stared. "W-What…?"
Raon looked up, eyes glowing faintly with dormant power.
"You're loud," he said to the ogre. "Be quiet."
Then he moved.
No flash. No scream. Just a blur of motion.
A single palm strike.
The ogre exploded—bloodless, clean, reduced to mist from the sheer force of impact. The courtyard went dead silent. The other monsters froze—then scattered in fear. But Raon didn't chase.
He just stood there, calm.
The teachers finally arrived. So did the Hunter Bureau.
But by then, it was over.
That night, the footage went viral.
The mysterious boy with the blank expression and palm strike that erased a Gate Beast.
No magic. No elements. No mana signature.
Just pure technique.
The world began to ask:Who is Kim Raon?