A World Where You All Are The Villains - Chapter 38.1
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READ ONLY AT VANISHINTOFICTION.COM
Gooooooong—
With a deafening roar, the ground shook violently.
I staggered, barely managing to keep my balance, and snapped back to my senses.
“Where is this place…?”
A landscape both unfamiliar and strangely familiar greeted me.
A massive crater-like depression, shaped in a perfect circle, and a city surrounding it, scorched and reduced to ruins.
The gas mask on my face felt oddly familiar.
“…A Gate site? Why am I here…?”
“Dr. Yoo!”
Just then, someone called out to me urgently from afar.
“…Yoo Jihan?”
Looking in that direction, I frowned at the face of someone I really didn’t want to see.
‘Right. The military sent an emergency summons.’
Seeing him, I remembered why I was here.
Not long ago, some sort of abnormal phenomenon occurred near the Gate where the ‘novel’ had been found.
Normally, once a special unit of Awakeners wiped out all the monsters, the Gate would close and the black mist would disappear.
But now, black mist had reappeared at a Gate site that had already closed and vanished.
At the request to come and investigate, I’d hurriedly grabbed ‘cure-1’ and left the lab.
Of all people, the so-called ‘bodyguard’ for the day turned out to be this guy.
― Hey, Dr. Yoo!
Yoo Jihan.
The first adopted child my biological father brought in fifteen years ago, not a drop of blood shared between us.
― What the heck? Why are you here?
― Why do you think? I was given strict orders to escort Dr. Yoo safely to her destination.
― Are you crazy? Don’t act like you know me.
― Ouch. I put aside my busy work just to look after my one and only little sister, and this is how I get treated?
― And you’re supposed to be my one and only older brother?
― Because, out of all the siblings our father collected over the years, I’m the only one who came. That makes me your only older brother, little sis.
Fragmented memories started coming back, one by one.
The only reason I didn’t send him away, even as he approached with that shameless grin, was because of Assistant Kim’s curious gaze.
― Oh my…! Are you by any chance Captain Yoo Jihan?!
Regardless of his broken personality, as an A-Class Awakened with a flashy face and decent abilities, he’d long since become a celebrity.
Not just Yoo Jihan, but all my other adopted-siblings were the same.
In this world, there was no such thing as karma. Unfortunately for me.
That was when it happened.
Gooooong— Kwaang――!
A tremor, even stronger than before, shook the earth.
“Ugh…!”
“Hey, Yoo Sol! Why are you just standing there spaced out! Get over here, now!”
Yoo Jihan kept yelling at me.
But after that quake, having fallen to the ground, I couldn’t do as he said so easily.
Fweeeet―!
As if that weren’t enough, a fierce gust of wind from behind began to whip my vision into a blur.
“……!”
Yoo Jihan, who had been running toward me, suddenly stopped in his tracks.
His face went pale, his eyes wide open.
For some reason, his gaze wasn’t fixed on me, but on something behind me.
I ripped off the suffocating gas mask and turned around with effort.
Like right before a storm hits, the sky had darkened, heavy clouds swirling ominously overhead.
Flash!
A bolt of lightning split the sky, a flash blinding my vision.
And then.
Crack―
With the sound of something splitting, a thin rift spread across the sky.
From that crack, black smoke began to billow out in thick clouds.
“T-That’s… a Gate?!”
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
A Gate was opening.
I was witnessing, with my own eyes, what I’d only ever seen in training videos!
Crack, crackle—
The rift widened rapidly.
Black mist poured out in an endless stream.
Once that crack opened completely, all sorts of terrifying monsters would come pouring out.
And yet, it all felt strangely unreal.
“H-How…?”
Was this what they called an occupational hazard?
It just didn’t make sense to me.
‘How can a Gate open twice in the exact same spot?’
But there was no time to stand around pondering the anomaly as I watched the Gate open before me.
Fwoooooosh――!
Right then, the wind blowing from the rift suddenly reversed direction.
“Wh, What…!”
For a moment, I teetered on the edge of falling, but soon my feet were floating off the ground.
Just before opening, a Gate releases a surge of powerful energy that sucks everything nearby into it like a black hole.
That’s why the ground nearby always ends up cratered.
If I got sucked into the Gate like this, I would die.
“Yoo… Yoo Jihan!”
Desperately, I turned around.
Flailing, I reached out my hand toward Yoo Jihan.
It wasn’t because I trusted him. It was because he was an Awakener belonging to the Special Task Force, and today he was supposed to be my bodyguard.
But then.
He shook his head and started hesitantly backing away.
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