Chapter 4: The Day of the Rift
The world was turned upside down on an otherwise ordinary day 11 years ago, when thunder struck so loudly it felt like the sky was falling.
Awoken by the unusually loud thunder, people looked up to see a massive black hole in the sky. As if waiting for everyone to wake up and see, the thunder suddenly stopped when people gazed at the sky.
From the black hole, monsters no one had ever seen before began to pour out.
The rift instantly sucked in everything around it, and monsters swarmed out of the newly opened dungeon entrance without a moment's rest. These invaders from another world destroyed buildings and ravaged the land. Many people were injured, went missing, or died. The weapons of humanity, products of scientific civilization, were useless against the monsters.
People despaired in the face of these insurmountable supernatural phenomena. They had thought the world would end in a nuclear war, not due to monsters straight out of a fantasy novel! Humanity was powerless before this sudden disaster.
But then, an entity appeared that stopped the impending doom, as if defying the law that said they had to do nothing and perish.
It was a mysterious white screen resembling a status window in a game, commonly referred to as "the System."
The System appeared before certain individuals and awakened mysterious powers within them. Those who came into contact with the System began to awaken new powers and fight back against the monsters. This marked the advent of the first-generation Awakened, who would later be known as hunters.
True to the saying that humanity is an adaptable species, people began to quickly adjust to the new era and rebuild their fallen civilization. Leading this charge was the United States, and surprisingly, South Korea was right behind them. South Korea was one of the few countries whose government and law enforcement did not collapse on the Day of the Rift, largely thanks to the sudden appearance of an S-grade Awakened known as J.
The only publicly known information about J was the hunter name and gender. J was a mysterious hunter who concealed their name, face, and age. J first appeared dramatically, slicing a second-grade monster, Sasquatch, in half while covering their face with a white scarf. From then on, J plunged into rifts and dungeons without hesitation, saving countless lives. Truly, a hero in troubled times, the very embodiment of Captain Korea.
[J tears apart Sasquatch (physically)]
After communication networks were restored, a video someone uploaded to YouTube amassed billions of views, turning J into a global celebrity. Even though J was just a tiny dot in the video, the sight of a single black dot tearing apart a monster the size of a building was captivating to anyone who watched it.