Human Ranch-4614.
I stared at that name for a long while.
It felt filthy. And yet my eyes kept going back to it.
It sounded like the title of some urban legend board, or like a prank name someone had deliberately made cheap. Tilt it just a little in another direction, and it could even look like the title of a low-quality adult game ad.
Just from the name alone, all kinds of imaginings were possible.
Women in cow-print bikinis wandering around slyly with bells around their necks, striking poses that deliberately emphasized their breasts and asses—an imagination smeared all over with vulgar, childish desire.
“Wow, fuck... What the hell am I thinking right now...”
The mutter slipped out on its own.
After imagining it, I was dumbfounded. Even with a list of dimensions floating in midair, my brain was working hard in that direction.
‘Humans really are something else!’
But the laughter didn’t last long. Even twisting it in a lewd direction felt unpleasant, and taking it like some horror story felt unpleasant too.
A name that was so repulsive it made me want to press it even more.
That was about it.
I swallowed dryly.
[Transfer will be executed after intent is confirmed]
The Archive was not kind. There was no indication of safety, no explanation, no warning. It simply threw out a world and asked if I was going. Its attitude was so calm it pissed me off.
“Just one step...?”
The words leaked out.
Really, just one step. If it was weird, I’d come right back.
With that much resolve, I fixed my gaze on the name.
The moment I thought that I would enter, the space in front of me quietly split open vertically.
“Huh?”
It was a rift.
A long vertical tear slowly began to open to either side. Then the gap gradually widened, finally taking the shape of a neat rectangular dimensional gate.
The inside was barely visible. I couldn’t tell whether to call it dark or faintly glowing. There was only an incomprehensible surface.
I instinctively breathed in through my nose.
There was no smell. No wind. No change in temperature. No additional message from the Archive, no environmental information appeared.
As if it really wouldn’t tell me anything until I went in.
I took a brief deep breath and pushed my body into the rectangular rift.
The next moment.
The ground beneath my feet changed.
“......”
I couldn’t speak.
The floor was white. A very smooth, glossy white, like a hospital floor. But it didn’t have the cleanliness of a hospital. It was so clean it felt artificial instead.
Only then did the smell rush in.
Something similar to the smell of disinfectant. Beneath that, a clinging fishy stench. A strange smell, as if body odor and damp moisture had soaked in for a long time.
I held my breath and looked around.
I was enclosed on all sides.
To be precise, there were things that looked like walls.
Tall, smooth white walls. The ceiling was high as well. So high that at first, I couldn’t even get a sense of its size. There were no windows, no doors. It was too wide to call a room, and too stifling to call a hall.
It did seem like an indoor space of some kind, but it didn’t feel like a place where people lived or worked.
“What is this place?”
My voice echoed faintly.
Only then did I realize my heart was pounding like crazy. My fingertips grew cold.
I unconsciously turned around. I thought I might see the door to my studio apartment or something, but there was nothing like that. Only a white wall.
“Fuck.”
I tried to take a step back, then stopped.
‘It’s fine... For now, it’s just a weird space, right? If I get scared too quickly, that’s actually a loss.’
I steadied my breathing once, then walked slowly. The sound of my bare feet stepping on the smooth surface spread unusually clearly through the silence.
Then a blue window flashed briefly at the edge of my vision.
[Scan initiated]
It was a short message.
It hadn’t reacted right after I entered; it only started working now, as if reluctantly, which felt unpleasant.
“Oh, now you’re doing it?”
Naturally, there was no answer. And before I even had time to confirm that, light shone from the far right.
I instinctively looked that way.
Glass.
A massive transparent wall. Extremely thick, extremely wide glass.
At first, I thought it might be a window. But the closer I went, the stranger it became. It was too large to be a window.
It felt as if an entire side of the wall was sealed with glass. And rather than a window meant to show the outside, it looked more like a display surface meant to show what was inside.
I slowed my steps.
I could see beyond the glass.
At first, I couldn’t see well. It was so vast that I couldn’t grasp the sense of distance.
White floor.
White walls.
Structures placed here and there.
Round tanks easily taller than a person, things like metal pillars, low partitions.
Everything was orderly. But it didn’t look like a living space made by people.
It felt like a livestock pen that had been kept excessively clean.
Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.
And then... I saw them.
People.
Beyond the glass, far in the distance, there were people.
I unconsciously pressed closer to the glass.
They were people.
There were men and women. Everyone was dressed differently.
Some were dressed like modern people, some wore something like work clothes, and some looked like they had only scraps of cloth wrapped around them. Their nationalities seemed all different too. Their skin colors, builds, and hairstyles were all different.
The problem was that all of those people looked far too small.
At first, I thought it was because they were far away.
But that wasn’t it.
The scale of the space I was in itself was strange.
Only then did I look again at the size of the structures beyond the glass.
The round tank I had thought was a little taller than a person was actually the size of an apartment building. The things I had thought were low partitions were as tall as stadium walls.
“What the...”
My voice leaked out quietly.
Then I saw a shadow pass beyond the glass.
I stopped breathing.
A gigantic hand.
It looked like a human hand, but it was not a human hand. The fingers were too long, and the joints were unnatural.
The skin was close to grayish white, and very fine wrinkles overlapped like scales. Its nails were neither black nor transparent. They were a cloudy color, like plastic made from ground bone.
That hand slowly passed through the middle of the space beyond the glass.
The people scattered.
I froze in place.
My head slowly turned, following that hand against my will.
I saw the owner of the hand.
A gigantic figure walking from afar.
It walked on two legs like a person. But to call it human, it was far too huge and far too alien.
Its head was elongated, and its neck was unnaturally long. In the place where its eyes should have been, several things like black holes were embedded. Its arms were long, and its torso was thin, yet strangely solid-looking.
It was as if someone had roughly mixed an insect, a mammal, and a human, then enlarged only its size without any sense of aesthetics.
That gigantic thing looked down beyond the glass.
No.
It wasn’t looking down.
It was observing.
That was exactly what it felt like.
A scrutinizing gaze. Without admiration, fear, or hostility. Merely eyes checking the condition of its own property.
A chill ran down my spine.
“......”
My mouth went completely dry.
Only then did I see it.
At the front of the glass, very low down.
Around the height of my knees, there was something like a metal sign attached.
I hadn’t seen it at first. It was made of a translucent material and embedded very flatly.
There were letters written on it that I didn’t know.
The moment my gaze touched them, the Archive reacted briefly at the edge of my vision.
[Translation initiated]
[Recording language patterns]
Soon after, crude Korean was overlaid on top of the incomprehensible letters. It wasn’t a naturally readable sentence, but more like a translation that had forcibly dragged out only the meaning and attached it there.
[Human breeding zone 4614-A]
[Population normal]
[Stress index normal]
A curse really burst from my mouth.
“Crazy, fuck...”
At that moment, my mind flashed.
Human Ranch.
‘Ranch.’
I hadn’t entered this place to explore. I wasn’t a spectator either.
Right now, I had entered under the same classification as the humans over there.
Breeding zone.
Population.
Stress index.
Specimen.
Livestock.
“Ah, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
My voice grew faster and faster. My breathing became rough too. My heart was pounding like mad.
I reflexively turned around.
Only walls.
There were no doors, and no exit in sight.
Cold sweat welled up in my palms.
Then a red window violently popped up in the center of my vision.
[Warning!]
[Critical higher life-form detected]
[User survival rate low]
[Immediate return recommended]
The texture of the letters was different from usual.
Short.
Rigid.
And urgent.
It truly seemed like a message that had sprung out because it didn’t want to die together with me.
I swallowed my curse.
The gigantic alien in the distance turned its head ever so slightly.
In this direction.
Whether it was because of the glass, the smell, the temperature, or simply because it had detected that one more thing had appeared.
The eyes like black holes slowly, very slowly turned this way.
At that moment, strangely enough, my mind became clear.
When fear becomes too great, there are times when your thoughts become sharp instead.
This was exactly that.
‘Return.’
I clung to that one word.
I was going back now. If not now, it would be too late.
A new sentence appeared in the center of my vision.
[Return will be executed after intent is confirmed]
“Return.”
I spat it out.
Nothing happened.
“Return!”
My voice cracked.
One of the gigantic alien’s hands lifted very slowly. It was slow, but because it was so enormous, it actually looked fast.
I could tell at a glance that if that thing really started moving this way, running would be meaningless.
It felt like watching a mountain move in front of my eyes. The difference in scale was that absurd.
‘I’m going back... now... right now!’
The moment I stamped that intent down, I saw a vertically torn rift in front of my eyes.
I threw myself madly toward that rift.
The white floor collapsed, the glass tore like a sheet of paper, and the gigantic alien’s form stretched out.
My vision flipped as if it were being sucked in.
I felt as if I had lost the ground beneath my feet and was falling downward.
The next moment.
Thud.
I slammed knees-first into the floor of my studio apartment.
“Kugh.”
My breath caught.
It was the floor. My room floor.
Linoleum.
Bed.
Clothes I had thrown off.
Mirror.
A familiar smell.
With my hands braced on the floor, I panted harshly for a while. My hands were trembling badly, and my heart was still rampaging like crazy. The inside of my throat stung, and my stomach kept churning.
I really felt like I was going to throw up.
“Haa... haa...”
Only the sound of my breathing filled the room.
‘I survived.’
That was the first thought that came to me.
And immediately after that—
“Crazy bastards...”
A curse burst out first, though I didn’t even know who it was aimed at.
I wiped my face with one hand. It was soaked with cold sweat. There was no strength in my legs.
Just a moment ago, my body in the mirror, my handsomer face, my broader shoulders—things like that had been the problem. Now, all of it felt trivial.
What I had entered was a world.
Not fake, but a real world.
And in that world, there was something that did not see humans as people.
An Archive window appeared again at the edge of my vision.
[Record updated]
Reality time: 2026-03-26 18:33:25
Dimensional entry
Human Ranch-4614
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Location: Human breeding zone 4614-A
Scan initiated
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Recording language patterns
Translation initiated
[Record updated]
Local status: Unknown
Critical higher life-form detected
Immediate return recommended
[Record updated]
Reality time: 2026-03-26 18:33:25
Returned to reality
Earth-0300
[Record updated]
Coordinates saved
Human Ranch-4614
‘Coordinates saved.’
When I saw that sentence, a hollow laugh slipped out because it was so absurd.
“Does that mean I can go back?”
It was an insane function.
But the laughter quickly disappeared.
Because the faces of the people beyond the glass came to mind.
Their scattering movements.
Their gestures that even made fleeing look familiar.
The way they crouched when the gigantic hand passed by.
Those people were still there.
I sat leaning against the edge of the bed. My legs were still shaking. I ran a hand over my neck, then stopped.
My fingertips were trembling.
Dimensional Archive.
This was not some romantic otherworldly journey. It wasn’t the kind of gift where a door opens to reveal a fantasy world and I become the protagonist.
If I entered the wrong place, it was closer to a hole where I would immediately become a specimen, become livestock, or just die without even leaving behind a name.
Realizing that actually cooled my head.
I slowly steadied my breathing and opened the dimensional list again.
[Dimensions]
[List] [Saved Dimensions]
[Saved Dimensions]
Human Ranch-4614
- Last exit point: Human breeding zone 4614-A
- Local status: Unknown
- Brief observation: Human breeding structure confirmed, critical higher life-form present
- Reentry possible
I licked my lips once, then backed away again and pressed [List].
The list was the same.
[Dimension List]
Human Ranch-4614 [Saved]
Glass Beach-3227
Six-Land Corridor-3721
Atlantis-1334
Black Universe Breeding Ground-9648
Astrania-1337
Nameless-8224
Earth-0382
Paradise Exile Zone-6915
It felt completely different from before.
Before, it had just been a list of strange names.
Not anymore.
Each and every name was real. And that reality was fully capable of killing me.
I took my eyes off Human Ranch and slowly lowered my gaze to the next line.
Glass Beach-3227.