Chapter 24
Low-Rank God Lee Shin (1)
With [World Interference] strengthened by the blessing, Lee Shin cast [Divine Punishment] and felt his presence swell.
It was as though he had entered his own small world rather than remaining in reality.
『Ghk, kgh...!』
Lee Shin reached out and clenched his hand.
The body of the demon Legion, who had been sitting arrogantly in the distance, suddenly floated into the air.
Suspended in midair, Legion flailed his arms and legs, but astonishingly, no matter what he tried, he could not escape Lee Shin’s influence.
『H-How can a god... who was once human... possess such...』
This was different from what Legion had heard in the World of Stars.
This was not power a god who had only recently awakened to his mission should possess.
As an immeasurable sense of greatness bore down upon him, Legion experienced an emotion utterly unfitting for a demon.
Fear.
『This... can’t be....』
Legion had seen many gods in the World of Stars.
But the god standing before him now felt somehow alien.
There was an indescribable presence about him, unlike anything Legion knew.
He was different from the gods who had degenerated into greedy beings obsessed solely with faith and authority.
This was closer to what was said to have existed during the age of creation—
a ‘true god.’
As Legion’s vision began to blur, a transparent window appeared before his eyes with a chime.
It was the world’s messenger, something that normally never appeared before demons.
And written upon it were the words:
「Fucking idiot, lol.」
「凸(`0^)凸」
For some reason, it was an extraordinarily irritating message.
Crrrrush—
Lee Shin tightened his grip.
Legion’s body began shrinking in on itself.
Then Lee Shin struck his opposite fist with a sharp smack.
A deafening roar erupted from the heavens.
CRAAACK—!
A bolt of lightning crashed down.
When the lightning disappeared, every trace of the demon was gone.
「A demon’s avatar has been annihilated!」
「Despair has been purified.」
「Divine Power increases by 500.」
「Interference permanently increases by 300.」
At the same time, Lee Shin felt a sense of fulfillment seep into him.
「The power of the demon Legion has been greatly weakened.」
「You are the first among [Lowest-Rank Gods] to annihilate a [Demon’s Avatar]!」
「You have accomplished a great feat.」
「A Legendary-grade reward will be granted.」
「Your existence becomes more distinct.」
「Your Trait level has increased.」
「You now recover Interference more quickly.」
「Time required for full Interference recovery: 4 hours」
「Your Divine Rank has increased.」
「[Lowest-Rank] → [Low-Rank]」
「The [Community] function has been unlocked.」
Status-window messages poured out until they nearly obscured his entire field of vision, accompanied by rewards just like those he had received after saving Santiago.
But Lee Shin paid them no attention.
“Are you okay?”
The monsters were gone.
The demon was gone.
All the desperate fighting had finally ended.
Lee Shin approached his friend, who was still bracing herself with her face buried against the shield.
Only then did Choi Bom realize that it was truly over.
Clang.
She let the shield drop.
She stood there sobbing bitterly for a moment before suddenly running toward Lee Shin and throwing herself into his arms.
“Sniff... I-I really....”
This time, Choi Bom couldn’t even pretend to be strong.
Nor could she chatter away at machine-gun speed like she normally did.
She simply sobbed and mumbled so incoherently that it was difficult to understand what she was trying to say.
Holding Choi Bom in his arms, Lee Shin was simply grateful.
Grateful that his friend was still warm.
That she could still shed hot tears.
That she could still breathe warm breaths and make her voice heard.
“Hmmmm?”
Completely unaware that Eve was standing off to one side with her lips stuck out in a pout.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?”
Pouting or not, Eve still fulfilled her duties as a saintess.
While Lee Shin comforted the terrified Choi Bom, who could not stop crying, Eve began by treating the wounded.
“Haaaaaaah!”
“Miss Eve, do you really have to make that sound?”
“Yeeeees!”
“....”
She made an enormous fuss and ridiculous noises, but the results were undeniable.
Not only were Choi Mi-hee’s injuries—which had been so severe that no one would have been surprised if she died on the spot—completely healed, but the trainees and instructors whose minds had been corrupted by the demon also returned to normal.
“...Manager Kim, is something like that even possible?”
“No.”
“Even the greatest healers aren’t omnipotent, are they? As far as I know, proper healing requires extensive medical knowledge, not to mention potions and auxiliary tools to amplify the effects. Does it really make sense to just patch people up on the spot like that...?”
At the Hunters’ questions, Kim Dong-seok merely smiled.
“I don’t know either.”
“....”
By now, Kim Dong-seok had given up trying to understand Lee Shin’s abilities.
Instead, he had decided simply to be grateful that Lee Shin was on their side.
Why bother doubting him or trying to understand?
All he had to do was believe.
Before he knew it, Kim Dong-seok was gradually becoming more and more like Seong Chan-yang.
“You’d better prepare yourselves for what’s coming once we get out.”
Instructor Oh Seong-cheol and the other instructors who had failed to fulfill their duties received a chilling warning from Choi Mi-hee.
With even the trainees having completely turned against them, it seemed unlikely they would have much of a future as educators.
And there was no way to bury the truth.
“Absolute pieces of trash.”
After all, Seong Chan-yang, one of the Republic of Korea’s representative Hunters, was there too.
“Be grateful God was here. You know that no one outside a Rift can know what happens inside, right? If I’d acted according to my usual personality, none of you would ever have set foot on Earth again. Ever.”
Intimidated by the pressure radiating from an S-rank Hunter, the instructors could do nothing but beg for forgiveness and bow their heads in apology.
Watching the scene, Kim Dong-seok thought.
‘A lot of things are going to change from now on.’
Many instructors would be replaced, and after this incident and Instructor Choi Mi-hee’s heroic actions, a new wind would sweep through the academy.
If the Hunters who entered the field from now on could follow even half of Choi Mi-hee’s example, Korea’s future would be bright.
And then there was—
‘The person who ended this entire disaster in one fell swoop.’
Lee Shin had single-handedly stopped a catastrophe that had nearly become a second Paju Incident.
There was no doubt that this would cause an uproar not only throughout the Republic of Korea, but across the entire world.
With the fifth cycle approaching,
the world was hungry for heroes.
‘Someone who possesses items of unimaginable value and power incomparable to any Hunter.... Has anyone like him appeared since the Rifts first opened?’
Kim Dong-seok felt his heart pounding without realizing it.
And then, the moment they stepped out of the Rift—
“They’re out!”
“Medical team, hurry...!”
“What happened inside?!”
An enormous crowd was waiting for them.
Some of the parents of the trainees participating in the field exercise had mobilized the media.
As a result, not only Association personnel but reporters had gathered en masse.
Kim Dong-seok was about to start by getting the crowd under control.
「This Rift is now free from the demon’s influence.」
「You may expend 100 Interference to destroy the Rift.」
「Would you like to destroy the Rift?」
Yes.
「The Rift of the demon Legion is being destroyed.」
「You have purified despair.」
「You have acquired 430 Divine Power.」
That was before Lee Shin, who was walking behind Kim Dong-seok alongside Choi Bom, casually did something that would go down in human history since the first appearance of the Rifts.
“...Huh?”
“What? Am I having side effects from LASIK?”
“Am I the only one seeing that thing...?”
The Cheorwon Rift touched by Lee Shin’s hand began to shrink.
The ominously shimmering dimensional gateway grew smaller and smaller.
Then, the instant everyone had emerged—
Pop.
It disappeared completely from the world.
“......”
“......”
“M-Manager Kim?”
“Everyone smile. Smile.”
“What? Huh? Why?”
Because this was going into the history books.
The field personnel, the assembled reporters, even the trainees and instructors who had just emerged from the Rift in a state of confusion—
all of them stared blankly in shock.
A disaster humanity had been unable to solve for twenty-four years.
A hateful, persistent Rift that no renowned Hunter had ever been able to close, and which dimensional studies experts had claimed humanity might never be capable of closing.
For the first time in the world,
a Rift had been closed.
“T-Take pictures!!”
Kim Dong-seok had imagined a new wind blowing through the country.
But something far greater than anything he had imagined was now being set in motion by Lee Shin.
Camera flashes exploded from every direction.
Having truly given up on trying to understand any of this, Kim Dong-seok simply raised two fingers in a V-sign and smiled.
***
The Republic of Korea was thrown into an uproar over the major accident that had occurred during field training at the Cheorwon Rift, especially because academy trainees—the Hunters of the future—had been caught up in it.
Fortunately, everyone was relieved to learn that all of them had survived thanks to Instructor Choi Mi-hee’s heroic sacrifice.
Netizens showered Instructor Choi Mi-hee with praise.
At the same time, condemnation poured down upon Instructor Oh Seong-cheol and the other instructors who had failed in their duties.
Their personal histories were dug up, revelations surfaced that some of them had displayed poor work ethics even during their days as active Hunters, and the public humiliation began.
But that heated controversy did not remain the biggest story for long.
Because news far more explosive than an ‘Academy Field Training Accident’ had broken.
<CHEORWON RIFT VANISHES!>
<The Man Who Achieved a Feat That Will Go Down in History—“Just Who Is Lee Shin?”>
<Dawn: “We Cannot Reveal the Details Yet.”>
<Hunter Academy Trainees: “Mr. Lee Shin Saved Our Lives. He Is Our Light and Our Savior.”>
<National Hero Hunter Seong Chan-yang: “she Is Greater Than Any Hunter.”>
<Hunters at the Scene: “The Scale of the Cheorwon Rift Incident Was Reminiscent of the Paju Rift Incident. Instructor Choi Mi-hee’s Initial Response Was Outstanding, but without Mr. Lee Shin, the damage would have extended beyond Cheorwon and devastated the entirety of Gangwon Province.”>
<LEE SHIN—JUST WHO IS HE?!>
A Rift had vanished.
Something none of the world’s most renowned Hunters had ever accomplished.
The fact that the source of a disaster itself had been eliminated sent not only the Republic of Korea, but the entire world into a frenzy.
At first, foreign media outlets assumed that South Korea, forever hungry for something to stoke national pride, was once again making a fuss over fake news.
Then they confirmed that the Cheorwon Rift had truly disappeared.
They went wild.
It was the scoop of a lifetime.
And it was difficult to dismiss the event as some coincidence or unexplained natural phenomenon.
By sheer chance, a reporter had been present at the scene and captured both photographs and video.
The footage clearly showed Lee Shin placing his hand against the Rift—
and the shimmering gateway shrinking before closing completely.
My brother works with the Association’s emergency medical team, and apparently Hunter Choi Mi-hee and the other trainees were in ridiculously good condition. They examined everyone just in case, and it wasn’t that they hadn’t been injured. Apparently, some insanely powerful healer had completely fixed them up?
└ Then is Lee Shin a healer?
└ They said this was practically a second Paju Incident. How would a healer solve something like that?
My younger sibling is a trainee from the class that got caught up in the field exercise. Apparently, Lee Shin was a necromancer. He slaughtered all the monsters, raised a skeleton army from them, and wiped out everything else.
└ What are you talking about? My older sister is one of the trainees. She said he was a top-level paladin. Apparently, he summoned a pure-white sun into the sky and melted all the monsters.
└ The rumor going around says he’s a summoner.
Everyone in the world was talking about Lee Shin.
In an age of media where even major controversies usually cooled off after only a few days, the phrase the first person to close a Rift continued burning across the internet without end.
Some cults even hung up photos of Lee Shin they had found online and uploaded videos of themselves worshiping him as—
‘The savior of a new age who has come to deliver us.’
Hunter Associations, the Republic of Korea’s Big Three management agencies, the world’s most prestigious management companies...
Even governments across the globe began searching for him.
But Dawn Management had Lee Shin locked down so tightly that everyone else was practically tearing their hair out in frustration.
And then—
「You have exerted an enormous influence.」
「Interference increases by 1,000.」
「Your name is spreading far and wide.」
「Your fame is spreading far and wide.」
「Signs of worship are emerging, but you must monitor them carefully to prevent them from developing into fanaticism.」
「This is ‘one-sided faith’ without a mutual connection.」
「You have not yet become the new master of Earth No. 1, nor do you possess the ability to connect with believers whom you have not personally encountered.」
「Believers without a mutual connection are classified as ‘Unofficial Believers’ rather than ‘Official Believers.’ Only a small amount of Divine Power can be gathered from Unofficial Believers.」
「Current Unofficial Believers: 1,217,333」
Before he knew it,
people had begun to worship him.
「TIP: Hmph! They’re finally recognizing you!」
「TIP: Heave-ho! Heave-ho!」
「TIP: 1(007)1~9(007)3」