The obsidian door groaned open, stone grinding against stone like an ancient thing reluctant to move.
Rin sighed.
"How long till we get out of this place..."
Her tone wasn't angry—just spent. The weight of five hours in the Rift, near-constant vigilance, and the crawling dread of moving deeper into uncharted territory had started to show in the cracks between everyone's words.
Their boots echoed softly as they moved down a narrow corridor lit only by the glow of Hana's tethering crystal. Jaemin trailed at the rear, clutching the spare energy beacon strapped to his pack. It vibrated every few seconds, as if uncertain about its own readings.
The corridor ended at another doorway—simple, dull gray stone veined with a material Jaemin couldn't place. JInhwan stepped forward, hand flat against the seal.
"Ready weapons. No telling what throws itself at us."
The door slid open.
Beyond it stretched a massive, cratered field. Not dirt, not stone—something in between. The terrain was jagged, filled with debris and slanted wreckage, like a battlefield frozen mid-collapse. Pillars of ruined Core-tech jutted from the ground at impossible angles, and something in the sky above bent wrong—like clouds rippling beneath glass.
Rin exhaled sharply.
"Looks like a graveyard."
Jaemin stepped out slowly, eyes adjusting. There were no bodies, but the silence was loud. Something was off. The space itself seemed too...fluid. Like it could shift at any moment—become something else entirely
He said nothing. It could've been fatigue, stress, or Rift exposure. He couldn't afford to be the kid crying monster when the real threats hadn't even arrived yet.
Ahead, Jinhwan raised a fist.
"Something's coming."
The air thickened. Cracks split through the field.
Dark clouds began to churn above— like a storm rolling in, unnaturally fast, spiraling with sickly hues of violet and black. A deep, rumbling pressure rolled through the air, slamming into their bodies like a wave.
The entire team staggered.
Jaemin collapsed to one knee, gasping. It wasn't just the weight—it was inside them, clawing at their lungs, seeping through their veins. The Abyssal energy here was oppressive, raw and unfiltered, thicker than anything they'd faced in Tier 4 or 5.
Jinhwan hit the ground with a grunt, bracing himself with both hands, Bastion's aura flickering and unstable.
"Shit—what is this?"
Rin hissed through clenched teeth, her knees buckling.
Jaemin's vision blurred.
Through the haze, a single figure stood upright.
Hana.
Her breathing was shallow, her lips pale, but her hand rose slowly—steady, unwavering.
"Auxiliary Core," she whispered. "Blessings of Amazon."
A surge of emerald light erupted from her palm.
A wave of verdant aura rippled outward in a wide radius, covering the battlefield in a glowing mesh of soft green, like a sacred net woven through the very ground.
The pressure eased instantly.
Jaemin coughed, drawing in a clean breath. The air was still heavy—but no longer choking.
That one ability—a passive—had nullified the biome-wide Abyssal aura. Hana didn't look triumphant. She looked focused.
So this was the real strength of an experienced Auxiliary Coreborn.
Jinhwan stood up first, slamming his fist against the ground as he got up.
"Everyone—form up. This is no normal Tier 3."
All around them, Corewheels lit up in turn
Above, the storm clouds twisted tighter.
A sound pierced through the air—not a scream, not thunder.
Something in between.
"Kyaaaakcc!!!"
A howl—long, distorted, and spine-curling—ripped through the air like a blade on raw nerves.
Jaemin dropped instantly, both hands clamped over his ears as the world blurred. It wasn't just loud— Like something ancient and wrong had clawed its way inside his skull. His knees hit the ground. His vision pulsed white.
The storm above burst—not in lightning, but in vapor. Dark clouds evaporated into violet mist, scattering across the biome like spilled ink.
And through that fog… it appeared.
Eyes.
From the sky descended a monstrosity that should not have fit through any Rift.
It mimicked the silhouette of a giant bat—but bloated, elongated, and dripping with strings of black-violet bioluminescence. Each slow flap of its wings sent a pulse of energy through the air, warping sound and scent around them.
A RiftHowler.
It didn't look venomous. It didn't have to be.
Everyone felt it: something worse.
"Deadzone protocol."
Jinhwan growled, his voice like gravel.
"We misstep here, someone dies."
They all knew the term. In Rifts like this, where exits were unstable and the field warped reality, there were no second chances.
"Jisoo, airborne. Naeun, threads on her. Precisions—spread out. Focused fire."
The team moved.
Jinhwan's Corewheel Flared to life, deep crimson flaring around him as his boots cracked the terrain.
Beside him, Jisoo launched upward, her Corewheel burning with radiant wind—a Flux core passive that let her defy gravity in bursts, her slim frame streaking toward the beast.
Naeun knelt, her hands weaving. Thin, barely visible threads of Core energy lanced out from her fingers and linked to Jisoo's waist and ankles, anchoring her with String of Life—fine as silk, stronger than steel.
"Hold position."
Naeun muttered, sweat already forming at her brow.
"She's airborne."
The Precision Coreborns fanned out across the jagged field. Their Corewheels spun with sharp arcs of silver and blue, aiming at pressure points. Light-bolts, tracer knives, and high-velocity darts snapped upward with coordinated discipline.
In the sky, the creature screamed again. The bioluminescent patterns across its wings flashed, distorting the incoming attacks mid-air, forcing Jisoo to twist violently in midflight. She flung her Chakram-turned blades into a thread of energy into the creature's wing joint and snapped a chunk of glowing flesh off, but the RiftHowler didn't fall—it shrieked louder, and the air shuddered.
"Get it on the ground!" Jinhwan barked.
That was the plan: ground the RiftHowler. Only then could Jinhwan land a clean, decisive blow. His strength was immense—but useless if the creature stayed aloft.
Jisoo soared higher, dodging through mist and lightning-fast pulses of glowing projectiles. She danced through the RiftHowler's attacks, each pass buying precious seconds for the Precision Coreborn to adjust their aim, for Jinhwan to find an opening.
Then the creature twitched.
Like a corrupted marionette.
Its massive wing curved unnaturally, and in a sudden blur, it whipped sideways with a boom that cracked the sound barrier.
"BOOM!!!"
Before anyone could react, the wing slammed into Jisoo's side mid-air.
She didn't scream.
Then—
"THWAMPPP!!!"
The ground erupted. Stone and dust exploded outward as a crater formed at the epicenter.
Jaemin gasped, eyes wide.
Everyone froze.
Then Hana whispered, "No…"
They turned.
Jisoo's body was broken.
Crushed into the crater's center, her limbs twisted at impossible angles. One arm was gone entirely. Blood pooled, seeping deep into the stone. Her chest was caved in. Her skull… or what remained of it, hung limply from half a neck, the lower jaw shredded, the rest of her head a ruined, wobbling left and right.
Jinhwan didn't move. His aura flared, then flickered as it vaporized.
Rin stepped back, mouth agape.
Naeun collapsed to her knees, the threads she had been channeling snapping all at once like lifelines cut mid-flight.
This was a massacre waiting to happen.
It wasn't just the gore or the death.
It was the suddenness—the speed—of it all.
Jisoo had been a top-tier Coreborn.
She was gone in a blink.
For a moment, no one moved.
The Rifthowler moved quickly and spun, kill all the remaining Dps except Rin...in just a blink of an eye.
Jinhwan opened his mouth to bark a command— anything to regain control.
But Rin moved first.
Her Corewheel flared with a blinding orange pulse, the Precision Core inside surging to its limits. She took a single step forward, her daggers humming in her hands.
"Stay focused!!!," she hissed through gritted teeth.
"We're not done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!."
The RiftHowler shrieked, its wing slicing forward. From its hide, it unleashed a storm of dark, razor-thin shadow leaves, spiraling like shurikens across the battlefield.
Rin leapt.
Each leaf cut the air with a sound like tearing silk. She twisted, ducked, spun between them. Some she dodged.
Others, she intercepted, twin daggers dancing through the air like extensions of her nerves.
"Precision Core: Bolestring Snipeshots!"
Lines of silver light burst from her daggers, as she sliced and sent cross cuts, intercepting dozens of shadow leaves midair with pinpoint explosions. For a moment, she was the air.
The RiftHowler lunged its massive head forward, jaws wide open.
Rin didn't flinch.
"Precision Core: Nervepoint Stab."
Her daggers glowed with a harsh electric gleam—status effect-imbued, designed to paralyze. She launched herself forward, arms crossed, daggers aimed at its temples.
The two forces met mid-air—woman and beast—colliding with a deafening shockwave that kicked up a storm of dust and black mist, the sound of metal hitting flesh echoing like a bell struck too hard.
KABOOM!
After a few seconds of just smoke...
Something fell.
A wet, dull sound hit the ground near Jinhwan's feet.
He turned.
Rin's half-decapitated head rolled to a stop.
Not even her full face—just the top portion, from the nose up. The lower half had been bitten off cleanly, still lodged between the RiftHowler's teeth, which now grinned through the smoke.
Jinhwan didn't speak.
No one did.
Only Hana, barely upright, whispered, "...She was right there."
Jaemin stood frozen again—his entire body numb. Two people. Two top-tier Coreborns. Dead in less than five minutes.
And the RiftHowler hadn't even begun hunting in earnest.
The half-head still rolled slowly at Jinhwan's feet
.
His hands trembled—not with fear, but with something deeper.
Rage.
His grip on the hilt of his sword tightened until the leather creaked.
Then he moved.
He lifted his massive blade and slammed it into the ground, the impact cracking the stone beneath.
His aura—once a steady crimson Bastion flame—ignited.
But this wasn't just aura anymore.
This was fire.
His body was suddenly engulfed in roaring heat, red and gold and white-hot furious flame, swirling around him like a wildfire given breath. His Corewheel flared like a wheel of molten metal, flaring bright as his elemental imprint activated for the first time.
"...He's overriding, he has an elemental imprint!!"
Hana gasped, shielding her eyes from the glare.
Jinhwan raised his head.
His eyes—once brown—now burned molten red, no pupil, no iris. Just fire in the shape of fury.
He took one step forward, extended his arm toward the RiftHowler, and his voice erupted—not as a man's, but a lion's who was the sole kind of the jungle.
"DYNAMIC... FULLFLAMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"
From the center of his palm, a ball of fire coalesced—not normal flame, but something alive, something furious.
Four times his own size, it spun and pulsed, a sun forged from grief and wrath.
The RiftHowler sensed danger. It shrieked and unleashed abyssal winds, slicing through the air, curved like scythes, sharp enough to rend stone.
But the fire didn't stop.
Jinhwan hurled it forward.
The ball of fire screamed as it flew, a meteor of seething destruction. When it hit—
"BOOOOOMMMM!!!"
The world was set ablazed in white.
A blast wave surged outward, rippling across the field. Black mist incinerated instantly. The shockwave knocked everyone back, even Hana, even Jaemin, who had to shield his face from the heat that felt like standing beside the sun.
The RiftHowler's body was consumed in the explosion—a roaring inferno of primal, divine flame. It shrieked, its cries garbled in fire and ash, as its entire form was engulfed.
"KYAAAACCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The sky itself bent from the heat.
The ground was melted to raw lava.
And where once stood the creature....only a crater of fire remained, burning with the fury of a seasoned hunter who was englufed in the divine fire that was a blessing of their hardwork by the Giant Rock.
Jinhwan fell to one knee, smoke rising from his body, his breath ragged.
The fire was still dying out when Hana stumbled forward, ash clinging to her skin, her breaths uneven.
"Jinhwan!"
He swayed where he knelt, his armor scorched, aura flickering like a dying ember. Blood dripped from his mouth, but he gave her a faint smile.
"Still breathing," he muttered.
"Not bad for an old-timer."
Hana dropped beside him, unable to stop the tears streaming down her soot-streaked face. She gritted her teeth, placing both hands on his shoulder, a surge of green-emerald light flowing from her palms.
Minjae came next, falling to one knee beside them.
"I've got his lower vitals."
Naeun followed, her fingers weaving glowing white threads around Jinhwan's limbs—Auxiliary Core: Lifeweave Conduit—restoring circulation and Core stabilization.
They worked in silent unison.
Then Jinhwan opened his eyes and looked past them.
"...Jaemin?"
Jaemin flinched. He hadn't moved from where he knelt, hands still pressed to the dirt, face pale.
Jinhwan coughed.
"If anything happens to all of us...Be our witness."
Jaemin's head slowly rose.
Jinhwan stared at him, unblinking, even as his blood-soaked hands gripped the earth.
"We fight... because humanity is our only hope.Against the very humanity that let this corruption fester."
He leaned forward, his voice hoarse now, but fierce.
"No matter what happens...You. Live."
Then—one by one—the others looked toward him.
Hana, tears in her eyes but smiling.
Minjae, raising a trembling thumb.
Naeun, exhausted but still weaving her thread, nodded solemnly.
For the first time in twelve years… someone looked at Han Jaemin like he mattered.
Not as a weakling. Not as the background. Not as the coffee-fetcher. But as one of them.
As family.
His vision blurred.
They didn't know that he became the sole breadwinner when he was just ten years old.
They didn't know he used to skip meals so his sister could eat, so his mother could be treated.
They didn't know he had cried himself to sleep more nights than he could count, wondering why the world hated people who were just trying to survive.
And yet, in this hell, in this Rift, surrounded by death and shadows—
They smiled at him like he was the only thing that needed to survive.
Jaemin wiped his face on his sleeve, his lips trembling as he whispered...
"I'll live... I promise."