Chapter 2 – The System’s First Command
1213 Words
The faint hum of machines was the first sound that reached him.
Steady. Relentless. Beep… beep… beep…
Ryu Minho’s eyelids twitched. The sterile smell of alcohol and steel burned his nostrils. His throat was dry like sandpaper. He tried to move, but every muscle screamed in protest.
A ceiling light glared down at him, cold and white.
“…He’s awake.”
A man’s voice, clipped and professional, cut through the haze.
Minho turned his head slightly. Two figures stood beside his bed — both wearing the matte-gray uniforms of the Korean Governmental Sect’s Rift Division. Hunters didn’t trust these men. They were inspectors, regulators, auditors — the people who cleaned up what was left after a raid went wrong.
The older man had hair the color of ash and a gaze that could slice through armor. The younger carried a portable scanner, its blue crystal core humming faintly.
“Ryu Minho,” the elder said. “E-Rank Ether user. Registered under the Falcon Subdivision, Seoul branch?”
Minho’s throat rasped. “…Yeah. That’s me.”
“You were found unconscious near the remnants of Rift #344-A, beneath Line 11 station. The rest of your party… didn’t make it.”
A pause. “Can you explain how you survived?”
Minho’s lips parted. No words came out. Images flashed behind his eyelids — stone statues turning their heads, comrades screaming, a spear of light through flesh.
He swallowed hard. “I… I don’t know. I think… I died.”
The younger inspector frowned. “You think you died?”
“I shouldn’t be alive.” His voice cracked. “The statues killed everyone. The door was sealed. I was—” He stopped, shaking his head. The words felt insane even to him.
The older man didn’t blink. He simply raised a scanner and tapped Minho’s wrist. A pulse of light passed through his veins; numbers floated on the small device.
“Still E-Rank,” the man muttered. “No trace of advancement, mutation, or Ether contamination.”
“So he’s just lucky,” the younger said. “Lucky bastard.”
The elder wrote something on his tablet. “You’ll stay under observation for seventy-two hours. Don’t leave the facility, don’t communicate with outside Sects. Understood?”
Minho nodded numbly.
“Good.” The men turned and left, the automatic door hissing shut behind them.
Silence flooded the room.
Only the beeping remained — mocking, mechanical.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Minho stared at the ceiling. His chest felt hollow.
He was alive.
Everyone else wasn’t.
A soft wind stirred the curtains. Beyond the window, the world looked the same — clean skyline, hovering drones, the faint shimmer of the Seoul Barrier keeping the monsters at bay. People would keep going to work, eating, laughing, pretending the world wasn’t ending one Rift at a time.
He slowly pushed himself upright. Tubes tugged at his skin; pain flared across his ribs. The digital monitor beside him blinked Normal.
Normal. Right.
His gaze shifted to the cheap photo frame on the bedside table — a smiling woman in a hospital gown, thin and pale, flashing a peace sign.
“Mom…” he whispered. “I made it back.”
He laughed softly. It sounded wrong — too dry, too tired.
She was still in the government hospice, body failing from Rift-borne contamination.
And he still didn’t have enough credits for next month’s treatment.
All that suffering… and for what?
He looked down at his calloused hands. They were trembling again. “Damn it…”
Then — a flicker of blue at the edge of his vision.
Tiny at first, like static.
He blinked. It didn’t disappear.
Letters began to form in the air, translucent, sharp, glowing faintly like the energy crystals pulled from dungeon cores.
> [System Initialization Complete]
[User Identified: Ryu Minho]
[Binding Status: Active]
[Welcome to the Abyss Core System]
His breath caught. “What… the hell is this?”
He reached out instinctively — and his fingers passed through the hologram like smoke. No projection source. No lens.
The text hovered, waiting.
> [Tutorial Quest #1 Generated]
[Objective: Complete 100 Push-ups and 100 Sit-ups]
[Reward: Basic Attribute Boost (+1 to All Stats)]
[Penalty for Failure: Immediate Transfer to Penalty Zone]
[Quest Begins in 10 Seconds]
“What?” Minho sat bolt upright. The IV ripped from his wrist, blood beading at the puncture.
“Who’s pulling this prank?”
The digital countdown appeared right before his eyes.
> [00:09]
He stared, disbelieving. “No way…”
> [00:07]
His pulse spiked.
“Okay, calm down. This isn’t real. Just trauma hallucinations. Stress, concussion, maybe—”
> [00:05]
“Fine! Fine! I’ll do it!”
He swung his legs over the bed, feet slapping the cold tile. Every movement sent knives of pain through his body. He hit the floor, palms shaking, elbows locking.
> [00:03]
“Push-ups? Sit-ups? Who even—”
> [00:01]
“Wait! Let me—”
> [00:00]
[Quest Failed.]
The timer vanished.
For one terrible heartbeat, everything was still.
Then the lights flickered.
The monitor beside him screamed with static.
The air pressure dropped, making his ears pop painfully.
A low hum crawled through the room.
> [Penalty Protocol Activated]
[Transferring User to Penalty Zone]
[Objective: Survive for 10 Minutes]
[Penalty Zone: Desert Serpent Nest]
“What—what do you mean ‘penalty’? Wait—!”
His words strangled in his throat as the hospital walls began to bend, rippling like heat haze. The floor turned translucent; the air shimmered with blue light. His heart pounded, every instinct screaming run, but there was nowhere to go.
“Stop! Somebody help—!”
The last thing he saw was his own terrified reflection fracturing in the metal bed frame.
And then — the world shattered.
Light swallowed everything. His body felt weightless and heavy all at once, like falling and being crushed simultaneously. A thousand whispers clawed at his ears — voices speaking in no human tongue.
Cold. Heat. Pressure.
And then… sand.
He hit the ground hard, coughing violently. The taste of dust filled his mouth. Heat slammed into his skin like a furnace.
When he forced his eyes open, he wasn’t in a hospital anymore.
He was kneeling on golden sand under a blood-red sky. The sun hung low, twice its normal size, burning cruelly. Winds howled across endless dunes that shimmered like molten glass.
A familiar blue notification blinked in front of him.
> [Penalty Quest Activated]
[Objective: Survive for 10 Minutes]
[Warning: Monsters Approaching]
[Failure Condition: Death]
A shadow rippled beneath the sand nearby. Then another. And another.
The ground trembled.
Something massive was moving just beneath the surface — a sinuous shape longer than a bus, scales scraping against sand.
Minho froze, breath caught in his throat.
A head burst from the ground — a serpent of glistening obsidian, eyes glowing like molten gold. Its mouth opened, revealing rows of blades instead of teeth.
It shrieked, and the desert came alive.
Dozens of shapes surged under the dunes, circling him.
The blue window pulsed again.
> [Timer Start — 10:00]
Ryu Minho could only whisper one word as the nearest serpent lunged, jaws wide enough to swallow him whole.
“Shit.”
- Writer
