Six in the morning was an ungodly hour.
Veltharion stood outside the Association building, watching the sky shift from black to grey, and contemplated the irony of that thought. He was, quite literally, a god. And yet here he stood, awake before sunrise, waiting for humans who apparently believed productivity required suffering.
Seo-yeon arrived at 5:58, because of course she did.
"You're early," she said, failing to hide her surprise.
"I don't sleep much."
A lie. He loved sleep.
Sleep was the foundation of his existence, the philosophy upon which his entire divine identity rested. But his vessel had refused to cooperate last night—too much residual energy from suppressing his powers during the assessment. The human body, he was learning, did not appreciate being used as a cage.
"The others should be here soon." Seo-yeon checked her phone.
"I managed to recruit two more E-Ranks for today's run. Nothing fancy, just a standard goblin Gate. Good for warming up."
Others. Right. A party required multiple people. Veltharion had almost forgotten that detail.
The first arrival was a young man named Joon-ho—tall, skinny, nervous in a way that suggested this might be his first raid. He carried a sword too large for his frame and kept adjusting his grip as if unsure which end was the handle.
"H-hello," he stammered.
"I'm Kim Joon-ho. Warrior type. Awakened three months ago."
Three months. Practically a newborn by Hunter standards.
The second was a woman named Mi-young. Older, perhaps early thirties, with a calm demeanor that contrasted sharply with Joon-ho's anxiety. She introduced herself as a healer—rare and valuable, even at E-Rank.
"I don't do combat," she said flatly.
"I keep people alive. That's it."
A reasonable boundary. Veltharion approved.
"That's everyone." Seo-yeon addressed the group with the confidence of someone who had done this before.
"The Gate opened yesterday in an industrial district. E-Rank classification, estimated twenty to thirty goblins inside. Standard extermination mission. We go in, clear it out, collect the core, and leave. Questions?"
Joon-ho raised his hand.
"What if there are more than thirty?"
"Then we retreat and report. No heroics."
"What if the Gate mutates?"
"We retreat and report. No heroics."
"What if—"
"Joon-ho." Seo-yeon's voice carried an edge of impatience.
"The answer to every 'what if' is retreat and report. We're E-Ranks. Our job is to handle easy Gates and not die. Understood?"
The young man nodded, chastened.
Veltharion observed the exchange with detached interest. Seo-yeon led with practicality—no illusions about their limitations, no false bravado. She understood her place in the hierarchy and worked within it.
'But she hates it.'
He could see it in the tension of her shoulders, the flicker of frustration when she said "E-Rank." She was meant for more. Her blessing agreed, pulsing faintly beneath her skin like a heartbeat waiting to accelerate.
The Gate was exactly where she said it would be—a shimmering tear in reality, hovering between two abandoned warehouses. Purple light leaked from its edges. The air around it smelled wrong, like copper and decay.
Two Association officers stood guard nearby, their bored expressions suggesting Gate duty was not a prestigious assignment.
"Party of four," Seo-yeon announced, presenting her Hunter card.
"E-Rank raid, registered mission."
One officer scanned her card while the other noted their information on a tablet. Bureaucracy, even at the gates of monster-infested dimensions.
"You have three hours," the first officer said.
"If you're not out by then, we send a retrieval team. Retrieval costs are deducted from your reward."
"Understood."
The officer stepped aside. The Gate pulsed, waiting.
Seo-yeon turned to her party.
"Standard formation. Joon-ho takes point—you've got the armor and the sword, so you're our frontline. Mi-young stays in the back. Vel, you're with me in the middle. We support where needed."
Joon-ho's face went pale. "P-point? Me?"
"You're a warrior. That's how it works."
"But I've never—"
"First time for everything." Seo-yeon's expression softened slightly.
"Stay calm. Watch your angles. If anything gets past you, we'll handle it."
She stepped toward the Gate. The others followed.
Veltharion went last, watching the purple light swallow his companions one by one.
Then he stepped through, and the world changed.
***
The interior of a Gate was not another location.
It was another reality—a pocket dimension created by forces that even gods didn't fully understand.
This one manifested as a forest, though the trees were wrong. Too tall. Too dark. Leaves that rustled without wind, whispering in languages that predated human speech.
Veltharion's Divine Sense expanded automatically, mapping the space around them. Twenty-six hostile signatures, scattered throughout the forest. Goblins, as promised—weak creatures, barely worth the effort of acknowledgment.
But to humans, even weak could be deadly.
"Movement ahead," Seo-yeon whispered.
"Joon-ho, ready your sword."
The warrior's hands trembled as he raised his weapon. Fear radiated from him in waves, almost palpable.
The first goblin emerged from behind a tree.
Small. Green. Ugly in a way that seemed intentional, as if evolution had designed it specifically to inspire disgust. It carried a crude knife and moved with the twitchy energy of a creature that had never learned to sit still.
Joon-ho screamed and swung his sword.
He missed by approximately two meters.
The goblin chittered—laughing, maybe—and lunged for his legs. Seo-yeon intercepted it with her baton, electricity crackling as she struck. The creature spasmed and collapsed.
Veltharion's eyes lingered on the electrical discharge. Weak. Flickering. Like a storm trying to be born but strangled in the womb.
'Interesting.'
"Focus!" she snapped at Joon-ho.
"It's dead. More are coming."
More indeed. Five goblins burst from the underbrush, drawn by the noise.
Mi-young retreated further back, hands glowing faintly with soft green light—healing energy, gentle and slow. The signature of a minor blessing. Veltharion filed that observation away for later.
Joon-ho flailed his sword in wide arcs, more dangerous to his allies than his enemies. But when a goblin's claw raked across his forearm, something flickered—a faint golden shimmer across his skin, absorbing part of the impact.
Seo-yeon fought efficiently, her movements trained but limited by her incomplete awakening. She struck hard, aimed true, compensated for her lack of supernatural power with sheer technical skill.
It wasn't enough.
A goblin slipped past her guard, claws raking toward her face. She twisted, avoiding a lethal blow, but the creature's nails caught her arm. Blood sprayed.
'Annoying.'
Veltharion moved.
He didn't use Micro Stasis—too distinctive. Instead, he simply stepped forward with speed that his E-Rank assessment should not have allowed, caught the goblin by its throat, and squeezed.
The creature's neck snapped. Its body went limp.
He dropped it and turned to find the remaining goblins already dead—two by Seo-yeon's baton, one by a lucky swing from Joon-ho.
Silence returned to the forest.
"Your arm," Mi-young said, rushing to Seo-yeon. Healing light flowed from her palms, knitting flesh back together.
"Not deep, but it'll scar if I don't treat it now."
Seo-yeon winced but held still. Her eyes, however, were fixed on Veltharion.
"That was fast."
"Adrenaline."
"That wasn't adrenaline."
"Then call it instinct."
She didn't believe him. He could see it in her expression—the same suspicious calculation from yesterday, now sharpened by direct observation.
But she didn't press. Not yet.
"We need to move. That was just the first group."
***
The next two hours were tedious.
They cleared the Gate section by section, fighting clusters of goblins that grew progressively larger but never truly threatening. Joon-ho improved slightly—his swings became less wild, his screams less frequent. Mi-young proved her worth, healing scrapes and bites before they could become problems. Seo-yeon led with quiet competence, adapting to each encounter.
Veltharion did as little as possible.
He intervened only when necessary—a goblin about to blindside Mi-young, an attack Joon-ho couldn't possibly block. Each time, he moved just fast enough to solve the problem, just slow enough to seem plausibly human.
It was exhausting in a way that actual combat never was. Pretending to be weak required constant attention, endless calibration. Every action had to be measured against what an E-Rank should be capable of.
'This is why I slept for fifty thousand years.'
The Gate boss waited in a clearing at the forest's heart.
A goblin chieftain—larger than its subordinates, armed with a crude axe, wearing scraps of armor stolen from previous victims. It stood nearly as tall as Joon-ho, muscles rippling beneath green skin.
"That's... bigger than expected," Joon-ho whispered.
"E-Rank Gates occasionally spawn enhanced bosses," Seo-yeon replied, her voice tight.
"Doesn't change the plan. Joon-ho, engage and hold. Mi-young, stay back. Vel, support where needed."
Support. Such a generous interpretation of his role.
Joon-ho charged with a battle cry that cracked halfway through. The chieftain met his sword with its axe, the impact ringing through the clearing. The young warrior stumbled. The monster pressed its advantage.
Seo-yeon flanked, striking at the creature's legs. Her baton crackled, but the chieftain's enhanced body absorbed the electricity with minimal effect.
This was going poorly.
Veltharion sighed.
He stepped forward, placed his palm against the chieftain's back, and applied the faintest touch of Decay.
Not enough to kill. Not enough to even visibly wound. Just enough to weaken—muscles softening, joints loosening, the structural integrity of its body compromising at a level too subtle for human observation.
The chieftain faltered.
Joon-ho's next swing connected, biting deep into green flesh. Seo-yeon followed with a strike to its knee. The creature toppled. Together, they finished it.
The Gate shuddered. Reality reasserted itself. The forest faded, replaced by the familiar grey of Seoul's industrial district.
They were back.
Veltharion's hand trembled.
He noticed it as he lowered his arm—a faint shake, barely visible, but undeniably present. His vessel was protesting. Two uses of divine power in one day, even restrained, had cost more than expected. A dull ache spread behind his eyes, and somewhere in his stomach, an unfamiliar sensation clawed for attention.
'Hunger.'
Gods didn't get hungry. Gods didn't get tired. Gods didn't stand in abandoned industrial zones with shaking hands, craving something as mundane as food.
This body was becoming a problem.
Seo-yeon crouched near the chieftain's dissolving corpse, pulling something from its remains. A crystal—small, roughly the size of a marble, glowing with faint purple light.
"The core," she announced, holding it up.
"Not bad for an enhanced boss."
Veltharion stared at the tiny object. Humans entered dimensions filled with monsters, risked death and dismemberment, bled and screamed and struggled—for that. A pebble that glowed.
"How much is it worth?"
Seo-yeon weighed it in her palm.
"This size? Maybe 200,000 won. Split four ways, that's 50,000 each." She paused, reading his expression.
"Not impressed?"
Fifty thousand won. He had seen the prices in this city. That amount would buy perhaps two decent meals. Maybe three, if he ate like a peasant.
'A pittance. I've seen beggars receive more generous alms than this. Apparently, the going rate for saving the world hasn't adjusted for inflation in fifty thousand years.'
"Welcome to E-Rank." Seo-yeon pocketed the core with a bitter smile.
"The real money is in B-Rank and above. Down here, we're just scraping by."
Scraping by. A god among mortals, and he would be scraping by.
The hunger in his stomach twisted into something sharper.
***
"Good work, everyone."
Seo-yeon's voice carried genuine warmth as they exited the Gate's zone. Association officers processed their return—checking injuries, recording the cleared status, calculating rewards.
Joon-ho looked shell-shocked but alive. Mi-young was already calculating her share of the payment. Normal human concerns, normal human priorities.
"Same time next week?" Seo-yeon asked the group.
Mi-young nodded. Joon-ho hesitated, then agreed with visible reluctance.
"Vel?"
Veltharion considered the question. The raid had been boring, the combat trivial, the company unremarkable except for Seo-yeon herself.
But boring meant safe. Trivial meant low effort. And Seo-yeon's incomplete blessing remained an unsolved puzzle.
"Perhaps."
She rolled her eyes. "You really need to work on your enthusiasm."
"Enthusiasm requires energy."
"And you're perpetually exhausted?"
"Something like that."
She studied him for a moment—that searching look again, the one that saw more than he wanted to show.
"You helped back there. With the chieftain. I don't know what you did, but it changed the fight."
"I pushed it. Off balance."
"Uh-huh." Pure skepticism. "You 'pushed' a monster twice your size and somehow that made Joon-ho's sword cut deeper."
"Physics."
"Bullshit."
She didn't say it with anger. Almost with amusement, as if his lies were a game she was learning to play.
"Next week," she said, turning to leave.
"Don't be late."
Veltharion watched her walk away.