VHN 3

‘Did I go crazy and buy a VR machine?’

I briefly doubted if it was a dream, but it couldn’t be. If there was one thing I was good at, it was distinguishing between reality and dreams.

If not, then I must have finally developed a delusion. Half of modern people have mental illnesses, so it wasn’t surprising that I was among that half.

At that moment, the text on the semi-transparent window floating above my head changed.

Prepare for the coming destruction!

Prepare for destruction? I might as well treat it as a dream.

But I couldn’t lie down again. Because at that moment, half of the house was blown away with a huge roar.

Bang!

“…”

Damn it. The first sight I saw in my pajamas was a strange game window, and then half of my house was gone.

Fortunately, the design was well done, so the house, cut in half like a cake, didn’t collapse. At least not yet. No, should I call this fortunate? You don’t tell someone who survived a lightning strike that they’re lucky.

Meanwhile, the large window telling me to prepare for destruction was still floating above my head, not disappearing.

Since all my belongings were on the opposite side of the cut, I grabbed my phone and approached the cut. With the sound of dust falling, the area near the cut gradually collapsed. Looking down, the height that triggered my fear of heights was secondary; the situation was a mess.

“…”

As if there was a transparent barrier at the boundary of my officetel, water was rapidly rising from below. The scenes I was seeing were so unrealistic that I felt calm instead.

Then, a loud voice was heard from the sky.

“Step back!”

Is it the rescue team? When I looked up, there was a person ‘flying’ alone.

The woman flying in the sky pushed people away and quickly entered the rapidly rising water.

‘…Right, half of my house is cut off, so what’s the big deal about a flying person? They can fly.’

I didn’t even feel any special emotions about this absurd situation anymore. As I blinked and watched the situation, after a while, the water seemed to recede slightly, and the rescue team began to rescue people one by one through the windows from below.

I also came down to the ground through the rescue team. There, a large crowd, including paramedics, had already gathered.

“Are you okay?”

Then someone grabbed my shoulder and asked. He was a well-built and handsome man, and judging by the clothes he was wearing, he seemed to be a member of the rescue team.

Would I be okay? I woke up to find my house gone? Besides, that semi-transparent window was still floating there. Not only that, but it was now flashing randomly.

“Can you see that?”

The window had been following my gaze since earlier, so the probability was low, but I needed to confirm whether everyone was witnessing this phenomenon or if I was the only one who was crazy.

“It’s a shame that your house collapsed because of the gate; you must have been very surprised.”

“…”

Ah, damn it…. The man’s answer poured out a lot of information I didn’t want to know.

Judging from the fact that he was talking about the house collapsing when I asked if he could see ‘that,’ he couldn’t see that flashing status window, and since he didn’t give me a separate explanation about the gate, it was natural for me to know what a gate was.

The status window in front of me, the gate, the collapsed house, the dealing with the esper….

It was a similar development to what was in the web novel Im Seong-yeon wrote. Of course, the difference was that the web novel didn’t throw me into this world overnight but had Kwon Tae-han go through all the processes with me from beginning to end.

And this flashing window should be visible to the protagonist, Kwon Tae-han, not to me. The phrase should have been ‘Save the world from destruction!’ instead of ‘Prepare for the coming destruction!’

If I pressed for an explanation, pretending I didn’t know anything, it was obvious that I would attract attention. I swallowed my curse and asked what I wanted to ask.

“…The house, that, compensation. Can I receive it from the state?”

“Yes. You can receive it….”

Judging from the fact that the man’s words were fading, compensation would be given, but it would be useless for rebuilding the house. Ha, I wanted to applaud Im Seong-yeon’s brain for not writing about this kind of thing and only writing 574 episodes about things I didn’t care about, like what a Hunter was.

“Yes. I understand.”

I craved a cigarette, even though I didn’t smoke. The moment I was about to take out my phone for cross-verification, I heard a sound tearing through the air.

Squeak!

Before I could grasp the situation, the man in front of me hurriedly hid me behind him. The transparent barrier extending from the man’s hand collided with some kind of tentacle, making a loud noise.

Bang!

“Aaaah!””

Screams erupted from everywhere. The man hurriedly ran towards the tentacle and began to wrap it with a transparent barrier. At that moment, the letters on the status window changed rapidly.

C-class Gate.

Progressing…

…

C-class Gate (Into the Sea)

Dungeon mimicking the form of the deep sea

Dungeon Boss – Kraken

Other creature information within the dungeon… See more

Would you like to view information about ‘Kraken’?

‘Ah… damn it.’

I had been exceptionally good at distinguishing between dreams and reality since I was young, and in my judgment, this was clearly reality.

Im Seong-yeon certainly had a talent for timing. How could he show me this kind of thing as soon as I finished reading that trash?

“Is this bastard repaying my kindness like shit?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

‘What did that son of a bitch say? Revelation? That a day like this would come? That pseudo bastard, really.’

But I couldn’t just blame Im Seong-yeon; the situation wasn’t allowing it. No matter how shitty it was, I couldn’t become a moron who couldn’t judge the situation.

I quickly erased the possibilities in my head.

It was too certain. I was now inside the novel Im Seong-yeon wrote. Whether the contents of the novel were unfolding in reality or whether I had entered the novel needed to be confirmed, but the latter was much more likely. The shock of the people around me didn’t seem like the shock of this being the ‘first’ time.

What I knew was the development of the novel Im Seong-yeon wrote, and perhaps another piece of information, that status window. It was quite meaningful information, but it was a bit difficult to compare all the information one by one at this timing.

One good thing was that I didn’t have to go through the trial and error that ‘Kwon Tae-han’ had experienced at the beginning.

There was no need to view the Kraken’s information. It was already visible in 4D in front of me, so what was the point of viewing it? A creature who swings his tentacles and attacks people. I wondered why the water was rising; the gate that opened at the bottom must have been where that Kraken lived.

And if this status window was the same system that Kwon Tae-han had, then this would also work.

“Status window.”

It’s so noisy that no one thinks it’s strange even if I mutter to myself.

“View character information.”

As I muttered, looking at the man who had spoken to me earlier, the letters changed again rapidly.

Name: Ryu Tae-young

Age: 27 years old

Rank: B

Title: –

Main Skills: Air Compression (B), Wind Creation (B)

Limit Growth Rank: A

It was a name I knew. Not a main character, but a supporting character who often appeared as a government Hunter. He later left behind a sad story before dying.

After seeing the status window, it became even more certain. The name, age, and rank were one thing, but the empty ‘title,’ main skills, and limit growth rank. This was Im Seong-yeon’s shitty novel.

Name: Bae Seon-hwa

Age: 32 years old

Rank: B

Title: –

Main Skills: Plant Growth (B), Plant Sensing (B), Flight (C)

Limit Growth Rank: A

Name: Kim Jeong-woo

Age: 26 years old

Rank: C

Title: –

Main Skills: Flight (B), Restraint (C)

Limit Growth Rank: C

After reading the information of the others who came with him, I closed the status window. It seemed that I was free to turn the status window on and off by focusing my mind, even without speaking.

Judging from the fact that all three were wearing the same combat uniform, they were all government officials. The three of them seemed to have quite a bit of experience working together, as they quickly dealt with the Kraken.

The Kraken couldn’t withstand the three’s teamwork and met its death, twisting its body with strange sounds.

It was then.

Rustle. With a chilling sound, the strongly binding knot cut off the Kraken’s tentacle. It seemed that they couldn’t control the strength of the restraint because the Kraken was struggling so much.

Although its life was cut off, the Kraken’s huge tentacle, still struggling with its nerves alive, bounced back this way due to the recoil.

“No!”

Ryu Tae-young shouted urgently and reached out towards me.

‘Will it reach?’

I reflexively covered my face with my arms.

Then, following my movement, I felt the air compressing… and a transparent shield was created in an instant, just like Ryu Tae-young had done a moment ago, deflecting the tentacle.

Clang. The tentacle that fell with a huge sound wriggled on the asphalt.

Ah.

As I stared with cold eyes at the tentacle still wriggling on the ground, I recalled one of the most important pieces of information in my head. If this was really inside Im Seong-yeon’s novel, then ‘I’ existed in that novel as well.

And Seo Je-hyun there….

“Are you an Awakened?”

At the voice interrupting my thoughts, I raised my head and saw Ryu Tae-young looking at me with a stiff expression.

Awakened. As explained in the early part of Im Seong-yeon’s novel, as gates suddenly appeared and monsters came out, some humans underwent a process called Awakening to acquire superpowers in order to balance the power. The quantification and categorization of the vastly different Awakening values were what that Awakening rank was.

Instead of answering Ryu Tae-young’s words, I opened my character information again. Not someone else’s, but my own.

Name: Seo Je-hyun

Age: 24 years old

Rank: (-) → F

Title: Transcender of Space-Time

Seed of the Great Demise

One who ■■ ■■^[1]

Main Skills: ■■ ■■(EX), Mentality (S), Mimicry (S), Agitation (A)

Limit Growth Rank: EX

‘The information is trash.’

Leaving aside the letters that were blacked out and not visible, my status window was clearly different compared to the others. It was a bizarre status window with strangely high skills and limit growth rank compared to the rank.

Moreover, there were several titles that weren’t visible to the other guys. And the fact that I was the villain in this novel was blatantly obvious in those titles.