2025-12-12 23:19:51When Min-joon opened his eyes, he was standing in the middle of a street.
But it was not the street outside the convenience store. It was not any street he recognized.
Everything looked wrong. The buildings were the same shape as the ones in his neighborhood, but they were crumbling and covered in strange black vines. The sky was dark red, like the color of dried blood. There were no cars, no people, no sounds except for a low humming noise that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Min-joon turned in a slow circle, trying to understand what was happening.
"Hello?" he called out. His voice echoed strangely.
No answer.
He looked down at his phone. The screen was still glowing red.
TASK: SURVIVE FOR 30 MINUTES.
REWARD: 5,000,000 WON WILL BE REMOVED FROM YOUR DEBT.
PENALTY FOR FAILURE: DEATH.
TIME REMAINING: 29:54.
"Death?" Min-joon said out loud. "This is insane."
He started walking. His legs felt heavy, like he was moving through water. The street was covered in a thin layer of black dust that rose up with each step.
A sound made him freeze.
It was a clicking noise. Like claws on pavement.
Min-joon turned around slowly.
Something was moving in the shadows between two buildings. It was too dark to see clearly, but he could make out a shape. It was big. Much bigger than a person. And it was getting closer.
Min-joon ran.
He did not think about where he was going. He just ran as fast as he could, his shoes pounding against the dusty ground. The clicking sound followed him, getting louder and faster.
He turned a corner and saw a building with an open door. Without hesitating, he dove inside and slammed the door shut behind him. His hands fumbled for a lock, but there was not one. He pressed his back against the door and held it closed with all his weight.
The clicking stopped.
Min-joon held his breath and listened.
Nothing.
Slowly, carefully, he turned around to look at the room he had trapped himself in.
It was a small office. There was a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet. Everything was covered in the same black dust as outside. On the wall, there was a calendar. Min-joon walked closer to read it.
The date said June 15th, 2024. That was today's date. But the year was wrong. The calendar said 2024, but it was actually 2024 in the real world too.
Min-joon shook his head. Nothing was making sense.
He checked his phone again.
TIME REMAINING: 27:31.
Still twenty-seven minutes left. He had to survive for twenty-seven more minutes in this nightmare place.
A loud crash made him jump.
The window on the other side of the room exploded inward. Glass flew everywhere. Min-joon threw his arms up to protect his face.
When he lowered them, he saw what had broken through.
It was a creature that looked like a dog, but wrong. Its body was too long, its legs bent at angles that should not be possible, and its head had too many eyes. All of them were looking at Min-joon.
The creature opened its mouth. There were no teeth, just a black void that seemed to pull at the light around it.
"No, no, no," Min-joon whispered, backing away.
The creature jumped through the window and landed in the middle of the room. It moved in a strange, jerky way, like a puppet with tangled strings.
Min-joon grabbed the chair and threw it at the creature. The chair hit it in the side and bounced off, doing no damage. The creature did not even seem to notice.
There was nowhere to run. The creature was between Min-joon and the door. The broken window was too high to reach.
The creature started moving toward him.
Min-joon's hand closed around something on the desk. He looked down and saw it was a letter opener. A small, dull blade. Not much of a weapon, but it was all he had.
The creature lunged.
Min-joon swung the letter opener with all his strength. The blade connected with one of the creature's many eyes. Black liquid sprayed out. The creature made a horrible sound, like metal scraping on metal, and jerked backward.
Min-joon did not wait. He ran past the creature, yanked open the door, and sprinted back out into the red-lit street.
Behind him, he heard the creature crash through the doorway, chasing him again.
His lungs burned. His legs ached. But he kept running.
Ahead, he saw something that made him almost cry with relief. There was a ladder attached to the side of a building, leading up to the roof.
Min-joon jumped and caught the lowest rung. He pulled himself up and started climbing as fast as he could. His arms screamed in protest. He did not look down.
The creature reached the bottom of the ladder and started climbing after him.
Min-joon climbed faster. His hands were slipping on the rusty metal. Just a few more rungs. Just a few more.
He reached the top and hauled himself onto the roof. Then he turned and looked down.
The creature was halfway up the ladder, moving impossibly fast.
Min-joon looked around desperately. There was nothing on the roof except an old water tank and some broken pipes.
He grabbed one of the pipes and yanked it free. It was heavy and solid. He stood at the edge of the roof and waited.
The creature's head appeared over the edge.
Min-joon swung the pipe as hard as he could.
It connected with a wet crunch. The creature lost its grip and fell backward off the ladder. Min-joon heard it hit the ground below with a sickening thud.
He collapsed onto his knees, gasping for air. His whole body was shaking.
His phone buzzed.
TIME REMAINING: 00:47.
Less than a minute left. He had made it.
Min-joon laughed. It was a half-crazed sound, but he could not help it. He was going to survive.
Then he heard the clicking again.
He looked over the edge of the roof.
The creature was standing up. And it was not alone anymore. Three more just like it were emerging from the shadows.
"You have got to be kidding me," Min-joon said.
TIME REMAINING: 00:33.
The creatures started climbing the building. Not using the ladder this time. They were climbing straight up the wall, their too-long legs finding holds in the crumbling brick.
Min-joon backed away from the edge. There was nowhere left to run. He was trapped on the roof.
TIME REMAINING: 00:18.
The first creature appeared over the edge. Then the second. Then the third. The fourth.
They spread out, surrounding him.
Min-joon held up the pipe, even though he knew it was useless. Four against one. He could not win.
TIME REMAINING: 00:09.
The creatures moved closer.
TIME REMAINING: 00:05.
Min-joon closed his eyes and thought of Tae-hyun. He had failed. His brother would be alone now.
TIME REMAINING: 00:01.
White light exploded around him.
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Latest Chapter
Chapter 100
Three weeks after connecting Dr. Webb with Ara, Min-joon received an update that made his relatively peaceful existence feel fragile again. Ara called him during his shift at the bookstore, her voice tight with controlled anger."We found five underground upload facilities operating in Seoul alone," Ara said without preamble. "Dr. Webb was right, this is much bigger than we thought. These operations are targeting the poorest and most desperate people, offering uploads for as little as five million won, which sounds cheap until you realize the Collective charges fifty million for a reason.""What reason?" Min-joon asked, stepping outside the bookstore for privacy."Quality control, medical oversight, proper consciousness mapping before the procedure," Ara explained. "These underground operations skip all of that, they just scan your brain, upload the data to cheap servers, and hope for the best. The failure rate is about forty percent, meaning four out of ten people who upload either d
Chapter 99
Ara stopped by the bookstore one afternoon, finding Min-joon in the poetry section."You look better," she observed. "Less haunted.""I feel better," Min-joon admitted. "Turns out not fighting existential threats every day is good for mental health.""The resistance is running smoothly without you, in case you were worried," Ara reported. "We have monitoring systems in forty-seven countries now, early warning for any new System activity or Collective violations. Han is coordinating everything beautifully.""That is good, I am glad it is working.""But we miss you, the movement feels different without its founder actively involved.""I think that is a good thing actually," Min-joon said thoughtfully. "Movements should not depend on single leaders, they should be resilient enough to survive when those leaders burn out or die or just need to rest."Ara nodded, understanding. "You are right of course, but still, we miss you."She left him a copy of the resistance newsletter before leaving
Chapter 98
The collective consciousness shattered like glass, thousands of minds pulling away from the Core's merger simultaneously, each one fighting for individual existence. Min-joon watched in the strange white void as consciousness fragments broke off from the main collective, reforming into separate entities, people reclaiming themselves.But not everyone succeeded, some had been merged too deeply, some had accepted the Core's philosophy too completely, and they remained bound to him even as others fled. Min-joon estimated maybe three thousand people had freed themselves in that first wave, leaving five thousand still trapped.The Core's amalgamated form was shrinking as people escaped, his power diminishing with each lost consciousness, and for the first time since reconstituting himself he seemed genuinely afraid."You are killing me again," the Core said, his voice fractured and desperate. "After everything I have survived, after all the times I have rebuilt myself, you are going to end
Chapter 97
Min-joon looked at the three thousand connected people standing motionless in the plaza, at their synchronized eye movements, at the eerie uniformity of their breathing. They were gone already in a sense, individual consciousness subsumed into the Core's collective, but their bodies were still alive and their minds might still be recoverable if he could find a way to separate them without catastrophic damage."I need to go inside," Min-joon said suddenly. "I need to enter the collective consciousness, see how the Core structured it, find a weakness.""That is suicidal," Min-seo objected. "The moment you connect, he will try to absorb you too, he will have home field advantage.""I know, but I do not see another option," Min-joon replied. "If I can understand the structure from inside, maybe I can find a way to collapse it that does not kill everyone.""Then I am coming with you," Tae-hyun said immediately."No, absolutely not, you do not have any protection against absorption.""Neith
Chapter 96
Min-joon was on a plane to Seoul within three hours, leaving Geneva behind and racing toward whatever crisis was unfolding in Korea. Tae-hyun came with him, along with Min-seo and Choi Jin-woo, all of them grim-faced and silent during the long flight. "Tell me again what Song Mi-rae said," Min-seo requested, pulling out her laptop to analyze data even at thirty thousand feet. "She said the hive mind connection is activating spontaneously, thousands of people feeling pulled toward joining some kind of collective consciousness, but it is not the Collective's technology and it is not the old System network," Min-joon repeated. "She described it as being everywhere, embedded in the air itself." "That does not make scientific sense," Choi Jin-woo objected. "Consciousness requires substrate, you cannot just have free-floating mental connections without some kind of technological or biological foundation." "Unless the Core found a way to exist in the quantum field or something equally im
Chapter 95
His phone rang immediately after the video call ended, Tae-hyun calling from the hotel room down the hall."Did you really just negotiate with her again after she lied to us?" Tae-hyun asked, sounding frustrated."I negotiated because the alternative was going to war over something that is not technically illegal," Min-joon replied. "Tae-hyun, I am trying to protect people but I cannot do that by becoming a dictator who decides what technology is allowed to exist.""So you are just going to let the Collective do whatever they want as long as they put a notification on it?""No, I am going to verify they actually implement the notification system properly and then I am going to keep monitoring them for the next violation," Min-joon said tiredly. "This is how it works now, we are not at war anymore, we are in a long-term competition over public trust and regulatory frameworks.""I hate this, I hate that they keep winning by finding loopholes.""Me too, but fighting smarter enemies means
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