The air in the Seoul Subway Line 4 was thick with the smell of damp coats and cheap coffee. Kim Heuk-jae, twenty-six and exhausted, leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the train window. He was a "Remnant Collector"—the lowest tier of the Hunter industry. While the flashy S-Ranks were being interviewed on TV, Heuk-jae spent his nights picking up shattered mana-stone fragments from the corners of cleared dungeons for a few thousand won a gram.
His life was a series of loading screens that never finished.
"Last stop, Namyangju Station," the intercom crackled.
Heuk-jae stepped out into the freezing night. He wasn't heading home. He had a private tip about an "Expired Gate"—a dungeon that had been cleared three days ago but hadn't fully collapsed yet. There was always a little "dust" left in the corners of those.
He found the Gate in a narrow alleyway behind a derelict convenience store. It was a shimmering, vertical tear in the air, pulsing with a sickly violet light.
"Just ten minutes," Heuk-jae whispered to himself, adjusting his cracked goggles. "In and out."
He stepped through the veil.
Inside, the dungeon was a graveyard of stone pillars. But something was wrong. The walls weren't just crumbling; they were flickering. One moment the pillar was there, the next, it was a translucent wireframe.
"The stability is at zero," Heuk-jae realized, his heart hammering. "I need to leave. Now."
He turned to run, but the exit was gone. In its place was a jagged hole of pure, absolute blackness. It wasn't smoke or shadow. It was the absence of anything at all.
The ground groaned—not like stone, but like a digital scream. A massive crack opened directly beneath Heuk-jae's boots. He didn't fall into a pit. He fell into the Void.
As he plummeted, the sensation of wind disappeared. Then the sensation of his clothes. Then the sensation of his skin.
[WARNING: Unknown Entity detected in the Source Layer.]
[Status: Deleting...]
"No..." Heuk-jae gasped, but no sound came out. His hands were turning into white static.
[CRITICAL ERROR: Entity 'Kim Heuk-jae' contains a unique Soul-Signature.]
[The 'End-Time Protocol' has been triggered.]
[Analyzing Probability of World Survival: 0.000000001%]
A massive, golden screen—unlike any Hunter status window he had ever seen—expanded until it filled his entire vision.
[Emergency Measure: The Universe requires a 'User' to bypass the Final Collapse.]
[Installing 'Debug_System.exe' into Soul-Kernel...]
[Initializing Hotfix...]
Heuk-jae felt a surge of lightning bolt through his spine. It felt like his soul was being rewritten, line by line.
[1%... 45%... 99%...]
[Installation Complete.]
[Welcome, Player Kim Heuk-jae.]
[You are currently the only 'Active' element in a 'Static' world.]
Suddenly, the blackness shattered like glass.
Heuk-jae slammed onto the cold pavement of the alleyway back in Seoul. He gasped for air, clutching the asphalt. To his shock, his hand passed through the ground for a split second before solidifying.
He looked up. The world looked the same, yet entirely different. Floating above a stray cat in the alley was a floating string of text:
[NPC_Cat: ID_0042]. Looking at the convenience store sign, he saw:
[Object_Durability: 12/100].
And in the center of his vision, a blinking red icon pulsated.
[New Quest: Debug the First Error.]
[Reward: Stability of the Physical Form.]
[Failure: Permanent Deletion.]
Heuk-jae stood up, his legs shaking. He didn't know why this was happening, but for the first time in twenty-six years, the loading screen had finally ended.
The game had begun.