"Oppa, lift your head. Ah, seriously, look at the lens, will you?"
The smartphone camera lens flashed right in front of my eyes.
The sound of continuous shots echoed through the living room.
I frowned.
But I didn't bother turning my head away.
I didn't even have the energy to resist.
I was exhausted.
I stared blankly into space, chin resting on the plush sofa cushions that came up to my solar plexus.
My younger sister Kang Ha-eun fussed over me, brushing back my silver hair.
"Ah, this is insane. Our unnie looks absolutely killer. I got the perfect thumbnail shot for this video."
My sister is twenty-eight this year.
A perfectly normal corporate employee, and at home, my greatest natural enemy gnawing away at my mental state.
"Ha-eun. Oppa is thirty-two this year."
"So what? Where in the world is there a thirty-two-year-old the size of an elementary schooler? Just stay still."
She wasn't wrong.
When I sat deep into the sofa, my toes didn't reach the floor.
Short legs dangling in the air.
Three years since the Gate Shock.
Other Awakened lived just fine in their original bodies, but only I ended up like this.
That damn System used mana efficiency as an excuse to completely remodel me into a perfect female body.
The optimal form for the most perfect mana control.
This is the result.
An eternally youthful, supremely beautiful girl.
The sleeves of my frilly pink pajamas covered well past my knees.
I had neither the strength nor the will to throw them off.
These were the aftereffects of two years spent rolling around with monsters on the bloodiest frontlines, catching two hours of sleep a day.
All I had left was chronic fatigue and a dry mental state that had accepted everything.
Right now, I was just a semi-unemployed person recuperating at home, watching cartoons in the living room.
"Do a V-sign for me so I can upload it to Neotube. Please?"
"No. Too much trouble."
"Ah, just once! If you do this, I'll camp out on the secondhand market for that limited edition merch you failed to get last time and even handle the offline direct trade for you."
I quietly raised two fingers.
It wasn't that I'd given in to my sister's childish blackmail.
I simply couldn't refuse the offer to handle that annoying and humiliating offline direct trade for me.
—Click.
"Nice! I'll upload it with the title 'The Nation's Little Sister's Peaceful Weekend.'"
The front door lock opened cheerfully.
"My youngest daughter! Mom's home!"
It was my mother, Lee Yeon-suk.
Both her hands were full of shopping bags emblazoned with department store logos.
An ominous feeling swept over me.
"Mom. I'm your son."
"Oh my, our puppy is still in pajamas? Mom bought you a really pretty new dress. I matched it with a hair pin set too."
Mom pulled out a sky-blue lace dress from the shopping bag and waved it around.
Frilly decorations so dazzling they hurt the eyes.
A second deep sigh escaped me.
"Ah, Mom, seriously. I'm not stepping one foot outside the house today."
"No excuses, just try it on. You haven't even washed up, all grimy like that. Ha-eun, help your oppa change."
"Okay, got it. Hands up, Oppa."
There was no point resisting—I'd just get a back-smacking.
I obediently stretched both arms upward.
Ha-eun stripped off my pajamas and pulled the dress over me.
The size fit perfectly, as if it were custom-made.
A wave of existential dread washed over me at how perfectly it draped.
Right at the moment a large ribbon pin was stuck in my hair—
The air in the living room suddenly grew heavy.
Goosebumps rose across my skin.
Every mana circuit in my body screamed warnings like crazy.
My languid expression hardened coldly.
"Oppa? What's wrong? Why did your expression suddenly change like that?"
Ha-eun flinched in surprise and stepped back, still holding the brush.
Instead of answering, I glared out the window.
This was the heart of Gangnam.
A massive mana wave was distorting the air like a heat haze.
An ominous mutation phenomenon that completely ignored safety grace periods and spewed out monsters.
It was the distinctive wave pattern of a Wave-Type Gate.
"Shit."
I spat out a dry curse.
There was no time to leisurely wait for those Association or guild bastards to mobilize.
Before those incompetent fools arrived, innocent civilians walking the streets would be torn apart first.
I refused to witness that hellish carnage again in the middle of Gangnam.
I roughly threw open the balcony window.
Cold wind rushed into the living room.
"Oh my, Tae-ho! Where are you going all of a sudden!"
"Got some work to do."
Leaving behind Mom's flustered voice, I drew mana up through my toes.
There wasn't even time to grab and put on shoes.
I lightly kicked off the living room floor and shot up into the air.
Powerful repulsion propelled my body out the window.
---
A fierce metallic wind blew between the forest of buildings.
The sky-blue lace dress fluttered wildly.
The worst possible work outfit for combat.
In front of Gangnam Station Intersection.
A perfect hellscape.
A rift torn red in the air gaped open grotesquely.
People screamed and ran in all directions.
Cars trying to escape tangled together, honking irritably, and asphalt shattered and flew up.
I landed lightly atop a horribly mangled traffic light in front of the red rift.
My silver hair whipped wildly behind me.
I looked down with crimson eyes.
A man in a suit who'd dropped his briefcase to flee looked up.
His hurried steps came to an abrupt halt.
"Huh?"
He shouted in a voice that seemed ready to tear.
"It's Tae-ho Hyung!!"
At that single shout, the street froze as if by magic.
The people's screams stopped.
Citizens who'd been fleeing in panic turned their heads in unison to look up at the traffic light.
"Holy shit, it really is Big Bro!"
"Big Bro! Your dress form is killer today!"
"The Nation's Little Sister has descended! We're all saved! Turn on your cameras, quick!"
The terror crushing the street instantly transformed into fervor and relief.
People stopped fleeing and pulled smartphones from their pockets.
Camera flashes went off everywhere.
The middle of a disaster movie instantly turned into an idol fan meeting.
The entire nation knew.
That small girl floating in the air wearing that sky-blue dress was the thirty-two-year-old hero who'd protected this country for two years while shitting blood.
Of course, I was in no mood to throw up a V-sign toward the barrage of flashes.
The Gate churned ominously.
A massive front paw emerged from inside.
It was two stories tall.
A ferocious beast-type monster well over five meters tall appeared, crushing the asphalt.
Thick hide that looked like it could deflect bullets and blood-red eyes.
Its roar shook the street and shattered the windows of nearby buildings into pieces.
Wind blew and the dress hem fluttered once more.
Annoying.
Truly, maddeningly annoying.
I lightly raised my right hand.
I imagined it in my head.
An anime I'd recently binged at home.
The scene where a character called the King of Curses sliced through the world with invisible slashes.
Mana immediately took form, overlaying my imagination.
For me, borrowing techniques from cartoons was the most familiar and efficient method.
Of course, I didn't vocalize the technique name.
If I carelessly used proper nouns, I'd get slapped with a copyright lawsuit.
I touched my thumb and middle finger together.
With an expressionless face, I lightly snapped.
—Snap.
A crisp friction sound rang through the air.
That was the moment.
The body of the five-meter giant monster froze mid-air.
An invisible grid-pattern net of slashes swept through the 1km radius in an instant.
Ssssh.
The massive monster's body disassembled into perfect cube shapes.
Before blood could even splatter on the ground, it collapsed helplessly into hundreds of chunks of meat.
Overwhelming, clean slaughter.
Cheers erupted from the citizens on the street.
But I didn't lower my hand.
This was a Wave-Type Gate.
There was no way it would end with just one beast like that.
Slicing them one by one as they crawled out was too inefficient.
I stepped on the air.
I walked into the red Gate rift without hesitation.
My vision darkened.
A terrible stench of blood and disgusting humidity hit me.
Inside the Gate.
Hundreds of monsters were charging madly toward the exit with bloodshot eyes.
The corners of my mouth sank coldly.
The anime imitation ended here.
From now on, it was real combat—butchering beasts.
My original killing technique, forged by grinding my bones on hellish frontlines for two years.
I compressed pure mana to the extreme and wrapped it like blades around both hands and my toes.
No fancy magic circles or incantations.
Only brutal, overwhelming strikes that severed enemies' windpipes in an instant.
I kicked off the ground and plunged into the middle of the monster horde.
Before the beast's claws could reach me, my hand blade pierced through the thick neck of a massive monster first.
Before blood could even burst out, I twisted my body.
With a spinning kick, the second monster's skull caved in like a watermelon.
From outside the Gate, only grotesque bone-cracking sounds and the monsters' terrible death throes echoed endlessly.
Exactly five minutes later.
I walked out of the red rift.
Not a single breath disturbed.
Not a drop of blood stained the sky-blue dress.
Situation terminated.
Loud sirens sounded.
Several large black vans screeched to a halt on the asphalt.
Heavily armed Hunters descended urgently with shields.
The shields and weapons bore the marks of major guilds clearly stamped on them.
A burly man who appeared to be an A-Rank Hunter team leader ran toward me, sweating profusely.
"K-Kang Tae-ho Hunter! Thank you for your hard work!"
He stopped in front of me and bowed deeply at a 90-degree angle.
I looked down at him with dry eyes.
"It was a Wave-Type."
"Yes, yessir! We confirmed the precursor symptoms!"
"I roughly sliced everything up inside."
I casually pointed at the collapsing Gate fragments with my finger.
"Collect the debris and Mana Stones and report to the old man."
The team leader answered in a voice snapped to attention.
"I'll keep that in mind!"
After finishing his response, his gaze lingered briefly on the large ribbon pin in my hair and the fluttering sky-blue dress.
I could see his firm facial muscles trembling slightly.
Whether he was holding back laughter or flustered by the incongruous appearance—
Who cares.
"I'm leaving."
I drew up mana again.
I'd dealt with the annoying interruption, so it was time to return to the penthouse.
I still hadn't finished episode 3 of the anime I'd been watching in the living room.
I shot up into the air.
Below my feet, the burly guild Hunters all saluted in unison—a strange sight that gradually shrank away.
