The brick walls of the alleyway seemed to press inward as the green rift widened. The sickly light cast long, distorted shadows against the grime-covered pavement.
From the tear emerged two more creatures. These weren’t the scrawny, trembling scouts Min-jae had just obliterated. These were Goblin Warriors. They stood nearly four feet tall, their chests thicker, their mossy skin crisscrossed with jagged, self-inflicted ritual scars. One carried a heavy wooden club studded with rusted iron nails; the other wielded a crude, notched scimitar that smelled faintly of old blood.
They did not cackle. They smelled the fresh, purple blood of their fallen scout on the asphalt, and their yellow eyes narrowed into slits of pure malice.
"Gurr..." the club-wielding goblin grunted, stepping forward. Its massive, muscular thighs flexed as it raised its weapon.
Min-jae didn't give them the luxury of coordinating their assault.
In his previous life, he had learned the hard way that against multiple opponents, hesitation was a death sentence. He executed a sudden breath, drawing the air deep into his lungs, and activated his movement skill.
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step (Incomplete)'.]
To an outside observer, Min-jae didn't seem to sprint. Instead, his body simply blurred forward, crossing the seven-foot gap between him and the first goblin in a single, terrifyingly efficient stride. This was the essence of the
Formless Step
—it eliminated the preparatory movements that standard athletes used. There was no winding up, no dipping of the hips to signal a charge. It was pure, unadulterated execution of space.
The club goblin’s eyes widened in sheer shock. It tried to bring its heavy weapon down, but it was already too late. Min-jae had entered its blind spot, stepping inside the arc of the swing.
He circulated a fraction of his single unit of
True Ki
into his left palm.
Slap!
Instead of a closed fist, Min-jae delivered a lightning-fast open-palm strike directly to the side of the goblin's jaw. The kinetic impact, reinforced by his newly raised Strength stat, rattled the creature’s brain violently within its skull. The goblin's eyes went instantly vacant, its nervous system short-circuiting before it could even register the pain.
As the first warrior began to collapse like a felled tree, the second goblin reacted with predatory instinct. It let out a guttural screech and drove its notched scimitar forward in a vicious, horizontal slash aimed squarely at Min-jae’s exposed midsection.
Min-jae’s perception, sitting at an advanced 8 points, tracked the rusty blade with perfect clarity. He didn't retreat. Retracting meant losing the momentum he had strictly calculated.
He bent his knees, his torso dropping beneath the trajectory of the blade. The cold metal swept through the air, cutting a few strands of his black hair. From this low, crouched position, Min-jae planted his palms onto the asphalt and threw his weight forward, launching his legs backward in a powerful, dual-kick—a classic martial arts technique known as the
Iron Swallow Tail
.
Both of his heels slammed violently into the second goblin’s chest.
Thud-crunch.
The sheer structural force of the kick broke the creature's sternum, driving the bone fragments deep into its lungs. The goblin was propelled backward into the air, flying five feet before crashing heavily against the metallic side of the industrial dumpster. It slumlped to the ground, coughing up thick, dark blood, its chest collapsing inward like a crushed accordion.
[You have defeated two Level 2 Goblin Warriors.]
[The Overmaster System converting vital essence...]
[You have gained 2 points of 'True Ki'.]
[Current True Ki: 3 / 10]
Min-jae stood up, smoothing down his sweatpants. His breathing was slightly elevated, but the
Breathing of the Primordial Core
immediately kicked in, stabilizing his heart rate within three cycles. The two new units of
True Ki
pooled into his lower abdomen, sending a wave of electric warmth through his core.
My physical attributes are low, but the efficiency is unmatched,
Min-jae analyzed, staring at his uninjured hands.
In my past life, a level-12 Hunter would struggle with two warriors simultaneously without magic barriers. But because my body is perfectly aligned, I don't lose energy to friction or bad posture. Every single ounce of force I generate is delivered perfectly into the target.
Suddenly, a massive tremor shook the entire alleyway.
The green rift did not spit out another monster. Instead, the edges of the tear began to turn black, the iridescent green energy violently swirling inward like a whirlpool. The spatial fabric was breaking down.
Min-jae’s eyes widened.
A Core Collapse? Already?
In the early days of the Convergence, some rifts were so unstable that if the initial vanguard was eliminated too quickly, the gate’s anchor would destabilize, causing the dimensional pocket to implode and drag everything within a ten-meter radius into the void.
The air began to hiss, a powerful vacuum suction pulling at Min-jae’s clothes. The loose trash, the gravel, and the blood of the dead goblins began to float, drifting toward the collapsing black vortex.
Min-jae turned to run, but his feet slipped on a patch of fresh goblin blood. His balance fractured for a microsecond.
[Warning: Spatial Distortion detected. High-density Mana implosion imminent.]
The gravity of the rift multiplied exponentially. Min-jae felt an invisible, crushing weight slam into his back, pinning him to the ground. The asphalt beneath him began to crack, peeling upward toward the black void.
Damn it!
Min-jae gritted his teeth, his fingers clawing into the breaking pavement.
My attributes are too low to break this structural pull!
This was the mishap of a low-level body. Even with ten years of combat experience and a perfect martial mind, a nineteen-year-old body with a Strength stat of 6 simply could not fight the physical laws of a collapsing dimension.
If he was sucked into that rift, he wouldn't transport to another world—he would be torn into atomic dust by the raw, conflicting data of two overlapping universes.
"Like hell I'm dying in an alleyway twice," Min-jae snarled, his voice drowned out by the roaring hum of the vortex.
He reached deep into his solar plexus, targeting the 3 units of
True Ki
he had accumulated. He didn't just circulate it this time; he ignited it. He forced the energy to flow backward through his meridians, overloading his muscles in a desperate bid for explosive power.
[Warning: Overloading physical pathways with 'True Ki' will cause severe muscular micro-trauma!]
[User ignores system warning. Activating forced extraction...]
"Move!" Min-jae roared.
The golden energy within him flared. The veins along his neck and arms bulged, turning a dark, vibrant crimson as his blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels. The agonizing pain of his muscle fibers tearing apart shot through his brain, but he welcomed it.
With a brutal, explosive heave, Min-jae drove his hands into the breaking asphalt, using the
Formless Step
's kinetic logic to redirect the crushing gravitational force into a forward-launching momentum.
BOOM.
The ground beneath him shattered completely as Min-jae launched himself forward like a human cannonball, clearing the alleyway just as the black vortex collapsed into a single, microscopic point and vanished with a deafening
pop
.
Min-jae rolled heavily onto the concrete of the sidewalk, skidding several feet before coming to a halt against the tire of a parked sedan.
He lay there for a long moment, staring up at the curdled red sky of Seoul. His entire body was trembling violently. Every single muscle in his arms and legs felt as though it had been flayed with a dull knife. His black t-shirt was soaked in a mixture of sweat and fine lines of blood where his capillaries had burst from the pressure.
"Haha..." he let out a weak, raspy chuckle, coughing up a small fleck of dark blood. "That... was way too close."
He had survived. The rift was gone, the immediate danger had passed, but his body was in absolute ruins. He couldn't even lift his pinky finger.
[Mishap Concluded: You have successfully escaped a Spatial Implosion.]
[Current Status: Severe Muscular Rupture, Internal Bruising, Cellular Fatigue.]
Min-jae closed his eyes, waiting for the long, agonizing process of natural healing. In this world, without a high-tier Priest or a mana-infused potion, a normal human would take six months to recover from this kind of internal damage.
But as he braced for the despair of being bedridden while the world evolved without him, the golden screen flashed with an unprecedented intensity.
[The Overmaster System recognizes the successful survival of a mortal limit-break.]
[The logic of the 'Pure Martial' path dictates: What does not destroy the vessel makes it absolute.]
[Initiating 'Rebirth through Rupture' protocol...]