Chapter 11 — The One It Seeks
The dream came again, the sky breaking open, lightning tearing through black clouds, the airplane shaking violently while people screamed. Aken could hear the sound of metal twisting, the smell of smoke. His mother's voice, soft and yet calm. Trying to comfort him even while everything around them was collapsing. His father gripping the seat, trying to stay brave, trying to protect them. Then the monster came, it smashed through the cockpit glass, blood covered the controls, the captain never finished his scream.
The plane began to fall, faster and faster, as the ground began rising like death itself had already spoken. Aken woke up, his eyes opened slowly. The ceiling stared back at him, for seconds he didn't move. The alarm clock beside his bed started beeping.
BEEP.
BEEP.
BEEP.
6:20 AM.
Aken reached over and shut it off, silence returned. He stared at the ceiling again. The memories lingered, the screams, the impact, the fire. His voice came out quietly, almost hollow. "…I'm tired of this crap."
He sat up slowly, his feet touched the cold floor, before he could stand—
A familiar voice spoke in his mind, warm, calm, almost cheerful. "Good morning Master." Miokuo's voice carried a gentle tone. "I hope you slept excellently."
Aken rubbed his face tiredly. "Yeah…sure."
His voice lacked energy, Miokuo paused for a moment. "…That does not sound rather convincing."
Before Aken could respond—His phone began vibrating on the table.
RING.
RING.
RING.
He grabbed it.
[Jae-Min.]
Aken answered. "What."
Jae-Min's voice exploded through the speaker. "BRO WHERE HELL ARE YOU!?"
Aken winced slightly. "Home, where else."
"Didn't you see my message?!"
"No."
"I'M ALREADY AT THE UNION!"
Aken frowned slightly. "So?"
"There's a big problem."
Aken sat up straighter. "What kind of problem."
Jae-Min lowered his voice. "…The kind where the Union is freaking out."
Silence, lingered in the air like a measuring rod. Aken exhaled slowly. "I'll be there in an hour."
"Fine then, and also bring your blade."
The call ended almost immediately. Aken lowered the phone, miokuo then spoke. "That sounded urgent."
Aken stood up. "Apparently it is."
He walked toward the bathroom. "I'll be out soon."
"Understood master. Take your time."
Aken began his morning routine, wash, clean, breakfast. After finishing, he sat cross-legged on the floor, meditation. He slowed his breathing, cleared his mind and then the cursed energy inside him began circulating. Minutes passed, then the system appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Meditation Complete
Cursed Energy +1
Current Total: 69]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aken opened his eyes, he stood up. "Status."
The familiar blue window appeared.
[STATUS WINDOW]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Player Name: Aken Ezomo
Level: 1
Unique Trait: Level 1 Curse
HP: 320 / 320
Cursed Energy: 69
STR: 21
INT: 13
STA: 18
PER: 15
AGL: 13
LCK: 10
SKL: 11
Stat Points Available: 5
Possibility Points: 101
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aken studied the window then began allocating points.
SKL: +2
INT: +1
STR: +1
LCK: +1
The system updated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SKL: 13
INT: 14
STR: 22
LCK: 11
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aken closed the window, his mind drifted briefly. Possibility Points, he still didn't know what they were for and HP, hadn't found any way to increase it yet. But he decided not to worry about it now, there were more immediate problems. He walked to the wardrobe. After a moment he picked his clothes. White shirt, black trousers, green jacket clean and simple. He reached for a chain hanging inside the closet.
A small silver pendant rested at the end, a sword and crescent moon. His mother's necklace. The only jewelry he owned, he placed it around his neck. Then reached for Miokuo. The katana vibrated faintly as he picked it up. "Ready master."
Aken left the apartment, the city morning was already alive. Within minutes Aken arrived at the massive glass building. The Korean Player Union, inside was chaos. Players crowded around screens, union staff rushed through the hall. Something serious had happened. Jae-Min spotted him immediately. "DUDE!"
He ran over. "Finally you're here!"
"What happened." Aken said sharply.
Jae-Min shoved his phone forward. "You need to see this."
Aken watched the video, the footage showed Players fighting desperately near the outskirts of the city. A huge amount of buildings were damaged, cars overturned and smoke rising into the sky. Jae-Min spoke quickly. "A dungeon rupture."
Aken narrowed his eyes. A rupture, when mana flow inside a dungeon became unstable…
The gate exploded open, monsters pour directly into the real world. It was rare but extremely dangerous. The video continued, several Players attacked a massive creature. Spells, swords and arrows. None of it seemed to stop the monster. The creature looked… wrong, almost human but twisted. It's limbs bent at unnatural angles, it's skin cracked like broken stone.
Then the monster did something impossible, it spoke. The audio from the video crackled, a deep distorted voice echoed. "WHERE… IS… THE CHOSEN ONE…"
The video ended abruptly, Jae-Min looked disturbed. "Monsters can't talk. Right?"
Aken didn't answer immediately. He replayed the clip, frame by frame. Something about the creature felt strange, not just powerful but incomplete. Like it didn't belong in this world. Aken's instincts screamed, something was definitely up. He looked at Jae-Min. "We need to leave."
Jae-Min blinked. "…What?"
"Right now."
But it was already too late, the Union doors exploded open. The massive entrance shattered. Players turned in shock as dust filled the hall. A shadow slowly stepped through the broken doorway, the same creature from the video. The twisted humanoid monster but worse, much worse. Its body was covered in blood, the blood of Players. Its cracked eyes scanned the room slowly, searching, hunting. Its voice echoed through the Union hall.
"WHERE…"
"…IS…"
"…THE CHOSEN ONE…"
Silence fell across the building, players froze, union staff backed away. Jae-Min whispered. "…Did that thing follow the mana trail"
Aken felt it immediately, the monster's presence. It wasn't looking for just anyone, it was looking for something specific. Or someone specific. Miokuo spoke quietly inside his mind. "Master…It is searching for you."
The creature's head suddenly snapped toward Aken, its broken smile widened and in that moment…
Aken understood something terrifying, the monster hadn't come to the Union randomly. It had come…
For him.
"…FOUND YOU…."
END OF CHAPTER 11