The world had changed a lot in Kim Dae-Hyun's lifetime. 

When he had left the military due to an injury in his thirties, just the idea of starting a brand-new career had been daunting. But he prided himself on being adaptable: he worked his way into a respectable office position and stayed there for two decades. 

He was starting to be eyed as the old man ripe to be cut when the world nearly ended. 

Walking home from the train station, his briefcase dropped to the ground when a crack split the sky in two. Dae-Hyun watched in horror as creatures straight out of a movie began to rain down onto the streets of Seoul. 

Winged beasts attacked airplanes full of traveling passengers, humanoid monsters crashed through the windows of skyscrapers, and oversized animals hunted down civilians in the streets as they ran for their lives. 

Such things didn't happen exclusively in Seoul. 

Late into the night, nursing a gash on his chest as his wife cleaned an even worse one on his back, Dae-Hyun's phone showed the same horrors happening across the world. Some countries were practically annihilated due to bad luck with even more dangerous monsters or underequipped governments. 

Thirty percent of the global population was wiped out in a single week. 

He had no company to return to, but that didn't matter: Kim Dae-Hyun awakened just six days after the catastrophe.

As part of the first generation of hunters, he'd faced death more times than he could count: learning about gates and monsters and his newfound limits in life-or-death situations rather than the training gyms and patrolled dungeons that were normal resources for novice hunters today.

It had been seven years since he retired to lead Korea's Hunter Association.

These days, they had protocols in place for nearly any emergency, and even civilians could easily learn about the best combat tactics to use against specific monsters. The world had stabilized, and Dae-Hyun had begun to think about retiring for the final time and enjoying the rest of his life with his family while the next generation took over to protect the world. 

Listening to Lee Haneul’s report the day after the Sahmyook Break brought such an idea into question. 

When she finished speaking, Dae-Hyun rubbed his forehead, trying to stave off an impending headache, "Is two breaks in such close proximity in such short succession unprecedented?"

"Engineer Gyu couldn't find any documentation of this sort of thing happening before," Haneul’s response was immediate. "Or any other account of the ogre boss in the Guryong gate."

Dae-Hyun sighed slightly: whatever was coming did not seem like it was going to be quickly handled. "Based on your interactions, how likely do you find it that Ahn Sua has some involvement in these new problems?"

This time, Haneul paused, the question clearly unanticipated as she considered it for the first time. "She certainly has secrets: the timing of her appearance is suspicious, and it seems like modern society is all foreign to her. The story she gives has some glaring holes. With all that said... I haven't sensed any malice, and she comes across as genuine."

"You have a rather positive view considering that you asked Chu Jii to look into her."

"Just because she intends no harm, it doesn't mean that she won't cause harm by hiding things. I'm being thorough, but I firmly believe the circumstances around her discovery are coincidental."

Coincidences did happen at oddly specific times with the awakened... and there certainly wasn't much that could be done without more information. Leaving the matter to the intelligence branch was the most they could do for now.

"Do you think she'll sign with a guild?"

"I don't think so."

He quirked a brow at the confident response, "Please elaborate."

"She really hates all the attention," Haneul laughed slightly. "All the guilds will want her to flaunt her around, but she seems to be focused on fighting for the thrill of it and to protect the people who can't fight themselves."

Dae-Hyun glanced out his window to where the crowd of reporters that had started camping out at the complex were swarming around Ahn Sua as she headed out for her guild visits, "Hopefully your gut is right on this one. These breaks would be less concerning with someone of her power working with us."

"I'm rarely wrong on recruits."

He nodded, leaning back in his seat as he looked back at her, "Pull together a dossier on options for a party to support her. Both hunters in the Association and ones that are currently unsigned. It doesn't hurt to be prepared."

"Yes, sir."

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

It wasn't easy to access media from outside the country these days—not that it had ever been simple. The start of the gate phenomenon had led the DPRK to crack down on its citizens even harder, all in the name of "protecting" them from the monstrous invaders.

Hunters working for the Republic had senses and skills that made sniffing out dissent even simpler than before. The average citizen was no match against their patrols and capture nets, age-old methods of smuggling and hiding made irrelevant by the awakening of supernatural abilities.

But, if you knew the right person and paid the right price, you could find a small collection of unregistered awakened smuggling contraband into quiet towns in the dead of night.

Moon Ae-ran had saved up for seven months to get her hands on a small WiFi hotspot that could connect to the internet. Access to the network was time-limited to prevent detection, but the ten minutes curled up under her sheets on an old smartphone was more valuable to her than anything else in her shitty excuse for a daily life.

The small sliver of rebellion after spending her days toiling for the Hunter Corps made her hope that maybe, just maybe, her life wouldn't end under the thumb of a dictator.

Whispers had been circling inside the lower barracks of the corps of a new, monstrously talented hunter in the south. News of outside hunters was usually a ghost of a story too minute to spread through the ranks with any speed, but the announcement of a new S-rank hunter had spread like wildfire in the course of a single day.

What started as a few rumors and speculation less than a week ago had solidified into scraps of confirmed information through contraband and boastful higher-ranked soldiers.

While Ae-ran wasn't usually that concerned with hunter gossip, she wasn't immune to the intense curiosity that had gripped the base.

As she logged onto the network in the dead of the night, she hoped she could quickly find some sort of confirmation about the existence of Hunter Ahn Sua.

Instead of a rumor or a piece of gossip, Ae-ran stumbled on gold.

It was a drone video, showing a slender young woman as she ripped through goblins escaping a gate break.

Less than a minute long in length, the clip ended before she could even study it properly, Ae-ran immediately restarting the video to digest what she was seeing.

Unlike the way hunters worked in the south, it was rare for someone of Ae-ran's rank to catch a glimpse of a gate in-person, let alone go inside of one. Without being born into, or sponsored by, a family with strong political or military influence, the odds of actually fighting a gate monster were practically nonexistent.

By extension, it also meant that she didn't often get the chance to see other types of hunters in action. As someone specialized in tracking and archery, she was almost always sent on missions alone and she had no reason to train in the same spaces as those specializing in close combat.

However, Ae-ran hardly needed a point of comparison in order to tell how incredibly skilled Hunter Ahn Sua had to be.

In comparison to the hunter's speed, it looked as if the goblins were moving in slow-motion. On her third watch of the video, Ae-ran realized that there were weapons rising up out of the ground and into the hunter's hands, the unnatural darkness of the area Ahn Sua covered seeming to spawn daggers at will.

Scrolling through the comments, Ae-ran's gaze lingered on messages left from civilians who claimed to have been at the hospital during the break. The gratitude being poured out from those who could have died stirred an ache that Ae-ran thought she had buried far from the surface years ago.

Raiding a gate had always been a interest of Ae-ran's—she hated using her abilities against civilians with no way to fight back—but she had never really entertained the idea of trying to leave the DPRK.

Shutting off her phone as her time online ran out, Ae-ran rolled onto her back, staring absently at the dark cover of her sheet.

People defected.

Even with the hunters keeping guard, people were able to get out of the republic. It wasn't impossible by any means, but it had gotten incredibly more difficult ever since the gates appeared.

The Hunter Corps watched every inch of the DPRK's border.

As someone whose job it was to track down dissenters and deserters, she knew better than most how comprehensive the security truly was. Even with a spotless service record, Ae-ran never had longer than seven hours to herself between needing to report to a superior.

Getting away from those watchful eyes would be no small task. And even if she did manage to get past the border, there would be danger on the other side.

If she crossed the demilitarization zone too quickly, it was possible the south would take it as an act of aggression. Simply by being a hunter, it would be far too easy to mistake Ae-ran for an advance soldier of some kind. And if she hurt any southerners trying to make her way to Seoul, she couldn't imagine she would be allowed to work as a professional hunter.

But... in the darkness of her bedroom, it was all too easy for Ae-ran to picture the small funeral plot that held her entire family. Like many other "recovery" hunters, her family had died suddenly not too long after Ae-ran entered training.

If she had a shot of making a difference for the people that couldn't protect themselves or their loved ones... perhaps dying in pursuit of that goal would be better than waiting to get killed in the corps.