Debt-Collector of the Apocalypse

CHAPTER 1: Liquidation Sale of a Frozen Account

Bim!..Bimp!!

Bimp!!!

The annoying sound of the alert mechanism was the first thing that registered. Then came the rhythmic, annoying scratch of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead.

Kang Min-jae didn’t scream neither did he gasp for air like the protagonists in the trashy web novels he used to read during his night shifts. Ten years in the gray zones taught you that loud noises got your throat slit. Instead, his fingers twitched, instantly seeking the familiar, cold grip of the obsidian dagger he usually kept strapped to his right thigh.

His hand met soft fabric.

Cheap denim.

Min-jae opened his eyes.

There was no fractured canopy of bleeding violet mana above him, no roars of high-tier drakes echoing through the ruins of shattered skyscrapers. He was sitting at a scratched laminate desk in the windowless breakroom of Hanil Logistics Warehouse, a massive shipping facility on the industrial outskirts of Incheon.

On the wall hanging was a faded plastic clock.

August 14. 5:22 PM.

"Six hours," Min-jae muttered.

His voice came out raspy, his throat dry enough to make the words sound like a rattle. He cleared it, wincing at how loud the sound seemed in the quiet room.

"Six hours until the sky drops."

He shot to his feet, sending his plastic chair scraping across the room. He didn't bother looking at his hands. He already knew they would be smooth, without the jagged chemical burns he'd suffered during the Siege of Neo-Seoul.

Instead, he focused on the empty space before his eyes and willed a thought into existence.

Open Vault.

A soft, glitching chime sounded inside his skull.

It wasn't the clean, golden interface of an Awakened Hero. It was a dull, oil-slick black window, cracked down the center.

[Warning: User Context Synchronizing...]

[The Collector's Personal Vault (Damaged / Sealed)]

Current Energy Output: 0.0003%

Available Manifestation Slots: 0/50

Total Stored Items: 1,402

[Locked Item Preview]:

Rank-S: [Heart-Eater's Obsidian Fang] — Requires 50,000 Cosmic Units to unlock.

Rank-A: [Elixir of the Frozen Dragon] — Requires 12,000 Cosmic Units to unlock.

Rank-E: [Standard Issue Scavenger’s Sightglass] — Requires 15 Cosmic Units to unlock.

Min-jae stared at the numbers.

Fifteen units. It sounded insignificant, but Earth had exactly zero ambient cosmic energy before the World Integration. Without a source of energy, the Vault was nothing more than a collection of locked treasures he couldn't touch.

He was only a billionaire with a frozen bank account, standing on the tracks of an oncoming train.

The breakroom door swung open with a heavy thud, cutting off his thoughts.

"Kang! What the hell are you doing idling in here?"

The man who entered had a thick neck, a beer gut straining against his security uniform, and dried mustard on his collar.

Team Leader Park.

Three years from now, Park would become the Butcher of District 4, an E-rank tyrant who hung refugees from streetlights for failing to pay his food tax. For now, he was just another middle-aged manager with a clipboard and too much authority over people who earned less than him.

"The inventory count for Section C is late," Park barked, tapping his clipboard. "If those crates aren't logged by six, I'm docking your overtime."

Min-jae studied him.

He didn't see a boss.

He saw an investment.

In his previous timeline, Park's Awakening hadn't been triggered by bravery or some desperate act of heroism. It had been born from pure, unadulterated cowardice.

When the first spatial rift tore through Section C that evening, Park had shoved an eighteen-year-old female intern into the jaws of a Hound of the Abyss to buy himself enough time to crawl beneath a forklift.

That single act of survival-at-all-costs desperation had triggered his unique Class: The Cowardly Executioner.

Min-jae had no intention of letting history repeat itself.

"Section C," Min-jae said smoothly, his mind calculating variables at a terrifying speed. "Right. The shipments from the antique importer."

"Yeah, the weird brass junk from the European auction," Park grumbled, turning around. "Just get it done. I don't want to hear excuses."

Min-jae followed him out into the cavernous, echoing warehouse. The sheer scale of the building was oppressive. Row after row of towering metal shelves stretched twenty feet into the air, packed to the brim with cardboard boxes, heavy machinery parts, and shrink-wrapped pallets. The air tasted of forklift exhaust, stale dust, and the sharp tang of industrial oil.

But beneath the surface, Min-jae could feel a subtle, microscopic vibration in his teeth—the tectonic friction of two entirely different dimensions grinding against one another before the collision.

He didn't need to murder Park to stop him from becoming a tyrant. He just needed to take away his catalyst. If Min-jae took the specific artifact hidden in Section C before the rift opened, the intern would live, the warehouse would collapse cleanly, and Park would remain exactly what he deserved to be: an ordinary, terrified man with a clipboard.

Min-jae walked down the dim aisle of Section C, his sneakers squeaking on the polished concrete. He stopped in front of a heavy wooden crate labeled 

Lot 404: Unsorted Estate Liquidation.

Using a rusty crowbar leaning against the shelf, he pried the lid open. The wood groaned, nails popping out with sharp metallic clicks. Inside, nestled in a bed of shredded straw, lay a collection of tarnished silver plates, old books, and a heavy, hexagonal brass mirror.

The mirror looked completely ordinary to the untrained eye. But Min-jae knew better. This was a Focus Node—an object from a fallen world that had drifted through the dimensional cracks ahead of schedule. It was acting like a lightning rod, drawing the spatial rift directly to this warehouse.

When Min-jae brushed his fingers against the cool, dark glass of the mirror, a violent jolt shot up his arm.

[Alert: Ambient Cosmic Energy Detected!]

[Object: Unawakened Focus Node discovered. Siphon energy?]

"Siphon," Min-jae whispered.

The air around the crate turned ice-cold. Fine lines of pale blue light bled out of the mirror, wrapping around Min-jae's hand like tiny, glowing roots. The brass frame began to pit and corrode, turning to gray dust within seconds.

[Siphon Complete. You have gained 20 Cosmic Units.]

[Total Energy: 20.0003 Units.]

[System Notice: The minimum energy threshold for Vault Activation has been reached.]

Min-jae exhaled. His breath emerged as a faint white mist.

Twenty units.

Not much, but enough to get started.

He didn't waste time celebrating.

"Manifest: Standard Issue Scavenger's Sightglass."

The air in front of his chest rippled like disturbed water. A small object emerged from the distortion and dropped neatly into his palm.

A monocle of matte-black metal, fitted with a faintly rotating violet lens.

Its familiar weight settled against his fingers.

For the first time since his return, Min-jae felt a flicker of reassurance.

He slipped the Sightglass over his left eye.

The warehouse changed.

The shelves, crates, and steel pillars remained where they were, but the empty spaces between them came alive with glowing red fractures. They spider-webbed across the concrete floor, crawled up the pillars, and stretched through the air like cracks in invisible glass.

The largest fracture pulsed beneath a stack of crates twenty feet away.

And sitting beside it, sorting through paperwork with a glowing highlighter, was a young woman wearing an oversized Hanil Logistics vest.

Yoo Seo-ah. The intern.

According to Min-jae's memories, she had exactly five hours and forty minutes left to live.

He adjusted the Sightglass, focusing on the fracture to calculate when it would open. Its edges flickered as he studied the patterns, searching for the familiar sequence he'd witnessed in his previous life.

Then the red lines twitched.

Min-jae went still.

The fractures weren't simply vibrating anymore. They were stretching across the floor, their jagged edges creeping toward Seo-ah's shadow. Their color deepened from crimson to something darker, almost blood-red.

For a moment, he wondered if the Sightglass was malfunctioning.

Then the pressure in the air increased.

No.

This wasn't a malfunction.

The integration timeline was shifting.

It was now happening faster than it did in his past.

Min-jae's eyes narrowed behind the violet lens as he watched the fracture spread.

The apocalypse wasn't waiting until midnight anymore.

It was coming now.. 

“Looks like I need to collect the first debt faster than I anticipated” 

He spoke quietly, his gaze shifting from the approaching fracture to where Team Leader Park left through in distance.