Didn't someone once say the world is a house of cards, incomparably unstable?
"Kuaaaack, it's the end of the world! Nostradamus, are you watching!"
As if the gaps between the cards called nations had grown too wide, the disaster began with doors to other worlds opening.
It happened more suddenly than imagined, abruptly, without even a moment to prepare.
The only difference was that the hour of the apocalypse wasn't 1999, nor the Y2K crisis, but something called Gate Year One.
"Fuck, the doomsday theories were real?! 1999 wasn't the pre-sale date, it must've been the groundbreaking ceremony!"
"Agh, yeah. This Earth is pretty damn thick! They sure dug for a long time, those crazy alien bastards!"
Construction always hits snags after breaking ground; delays are par for the course, so what can you do but accept it?
"Huh? Wait, ah! There's barely any time left before work! I'm going crazy!"
"You there! Is getting to work what's important right now?! Step back immediately!"
The dimensional gates that opened in major cities were relatively easier to contain, since there were more troops available for crowd control where the population was dense, but.
"...What is this?"
Dimensional gates opened without rhyme or reason, sometimes appearing even in sparsely populated rural backwaters and farm fields.
Whether it was alcohol-like psychoactive substances, simply maintaining macho club membership after getting scratched by the word 'chicken?', or pure curiosity.
As if to prove that Homo sapiens is a species that has always lived staking their very lives on curiosity.
Those entering out of mere curiosity were countless, and to top it off, there were those who took it one step further, convinced this was a chance to turn their lives around!
\- Aliens appeared in a Nebraska¹ backwater with fewer people than cattle! [5134]
"Oh, sweet mother of God! What in tarnation! Something weird's on our ranch! Did it escape from Area 51?!"
Wasn't this already an era where online clout translated directly into wealth and fame?
There was no stopping the "blue-glowing gate" from suddenly going viral on the internet.
Even for a superpower whose satellites could livestream the planet's surface in 4K, there was no answer for something so unprecedented.
"God damn it, how far are we supposed to cover with this population?!"
"...The nearest area is at least 100 miles by car... what should we do, Sheriff?"
"...Damn it, abandon them for now and defend only the core population centers! We just have to hope they're well-armed!"
Most superpowers possessed national strength proportional to their landmass, making it all the harder to stop such petty individual deviations.
Moreover, the larger the country, the broader the legal discretion regarding illegal trespass on private property!
"Get the hell off my property—!! This is our family ranch, lived on by my grandfather's grandfather—!!"
Bang! Bang!
"Uwaaah, Grandpa Sam! Please! I'm Hammington! A blue gate has opened near your barn, sir!"
"I don't believe those stupid government conspiracies or any sugar-coated nonsense! Get out, Hemi!"
There were surely those who wished to cooperate with the government, or who needed government help to protect their homes.
Conversely, America was also a place where people existed who believed individual or state rights should not be violated.
"First, throw up emergency barricades! What? The landowner's complaining? It's a national state of emergency, tell him to shut up!"
"Y-you... I'll make sure your military service becomes a living hell! Don't you know how scary complaints can be, you bastard?!"
Well, one country that ranked in the world's top ten benefited from being small relative to its national power.
"Why is this your land? Don't you know the fear of wartime nationalization? Get lost, you confiscator!"
"Urggh...!! These guys who normally shrink at a single word and can't talk back...!!"
Even the ordinary military units of the peninsula, who normally groveled belly-up, trembling at a single noise complaint like 'the gunshots are too loud!'
It was an emergency serious enough to declare, "Evacuate immediately, before we flatten your houses with howitzers."
"Ah, fuck. Why does this shit have to happen during my service..."
A young man stared up at the sky with a hollow expression, craving a cigarette he had never once imagined smoking in his life.
"Where do you think you're touching?! I said, where are you touching?! How dare a soldier touch a civilian?! You want to be stripped of your uniform?!"
Twenty-one-year-old Gim Chomok, foaming at the mouth, tried to block the landowner who kept jabbing a finger in his face.
"...I'm a conscript, okay?! I'd be thrilled if you stripped me! Please, just let me wear civilian clothes—!!"
"...What kind of lunatic is this?! Let go right now—!!"
He desperately endured the spit flying into his face, remaining faithful to his duty, his human barricade.
It was summer.
***
Before long, the landowner collapsed—whether from exhaustion in the sweltering heat, or from wearing himself out arguing with the lunatic who wouldn't back down an inch.
In front of the real barricades wrapped in yellow and black reflective tape, barbed wire and spike strips were deployed.
"Everyone! Just do as you trained! This is the time to realize what the hell all that rolling around was for..."
While he himself merely had to wave his fingers to wield the authority of making them dig emergency trenches and pile sandbags.
They let the useless, energy-sapping babble of their superior go in one ear and out the other.
"Fuck, you always said machines break down for no reason and made us dig manually—what was all that damn freezing training for...?"
A time when listless, pitiful young men smashed pickaxes against ground with the hardness of the Korean Peninsula's granite, beating it with their bodies!
But the military was an organization where any earnest effort ultimately became futile.
"...What the hell, nothing's happening."
Their hearts, which had been trembling in fear, soon transformed into boredom, tedium, and emptiness.
Enough time had passed since the situation erupted; if nothing happened, it was only natural.
"...Agh, fuck. I knew it. Those bastards don't know shit; no way they had any reason to make us roll."
From the perspective of Gim Chomok, a young man barely tamping the ground with shovels and pickaxes, he wanted to drive his pickaxe into those bastards' skulls instead.
What can you do—when was the military ever a rational organization? You just have to accept it.
Sorry as it was for the soldiers sprawled out in dirt-caked, sweat-soaked uniforms after digging to their hearts' content.
Their physically grueling ordeal had only just barely reached the starting line.
While researchers wrapped in all manner of equipment set up camp before the gate and collected samples.
"The scientists over there are wearing all that gear because they don't know what'll happen; aren't we going to do anything?"
"We have to at least put on a show, right? The broadcast cameras are rolling over there."
Hell visited the soldiers resting inside the containers they'd brought for temporary shelter and, if need be, blocking the path.
"Now! Carry bulletproof gear and gas masks in full gear, and put them on at the slightest sign of trouble!"
They were already exhausted from being worked like dogs in physical labor, and now they wanted them to work wearing extra DLC gear?
"That bastard doesn't dig any dirt himself...!! Agh, I hope he dies a miserable and painful death!"
This was a battalion commander whom the soldiers cursed with enough venom to bury his entire bloodline—after all, if something were going to go wrong, it should have happened by now.
What drove the soldiers even more insane, mentally and physically exhausted as they were.
"Atmospheric composition, soil quality...!! Anyway, you can take off your gas masks right now. It's not radiation or pathogens."
"Ah, really? That's good?"
Along with experimental results showing it was merely some unknown form of energy, harmless to the human body.
Even the relieved researchers threw off their hazard suits with hollow expressions, yet the existing orders were not rescinded.
Anyone looking at the circular gate wavering with blue light would naturally assume some kind of radiation problem.
The locations the gates opened varied, but if it was an environment where humanity could survive, shouldn't the alert be called off?
"Huh? Look at this guy, does he think the army's a joke?! He needs to try wearing full combat gear to come to his senses?! You'll die like that!"
'Fuck, he's sitting there wearing sunglasses and looking at his phone, talking about dying or not dying.'
They'd opened every window in their living containers because of the heat, yet they were required to carry gas masks for any trek over three steps and wear them in front of the Gate?
Summer on the peninsula already sent stress and discomfort indexes through the roof.
Did those bastards really have such confidence that nothing would stab them in the back after pulling this?
Thud!
"Phew, I almost suffocated... but Corporal Gim? Even if there really were toxic substances, could this even block them?"
"Hey, you think those upstairs guys thought that far ahead when ordering us? They're just flipping out because if they tell us not to wear them, it becomes their responsibility. Ptooey."
After suffering all day, they flung the shackles they'd finally removed onto the floor.
Thanks to the dog-brained fuckery of some two-chevron meatheads who couldn't give independent on-site orders because top-level directives hadn't changed.
In the eyes of the soldiers who'd spent all day repeatedly putting on and taking off gas masks to avoid officers' notice, murderous intent gradually began to fill.
"Agh, look at this half-cooked rice. Why the hell do we still have 1980s field kitchen trailers in the post-millennium era?"
"Anyone got leftovers? Ah, Corporal Gim Chomok? If you have any left... agh!"
While the soldiers lamented their half-cooked rice and half-heated side dishes, kneading their meals in plastic bags in the sweltering heat.
"...Well, was there nothing special? Even the most trivial detail would be good."
"The gate connected to our side seems to emit some fine dust... hmm, no. Actually, it's cleaner than the air in the next neighborhood over..."
"Okay, stop right there! And please don't leak that to the press—I'm telling you not to cause an international incident."
The generals, enjoying a long-unaccustomed rise in authority, dined on proper meals while receiving orders from higher up.
"Let us also... occupy, that land."
"""Yes! Understood!"""
Non-Earth safe land was baring its naked flesh before them, seducing them.
To endure this and choose not to plant one's flag? Wow, what a comedian.
"...Fuck, so it's true what they say about conscripts not being human..."
Naturally, they wouldn't have considered the perspective of the personnel being deployed, but what can you do.
When civilians demand it, soldiers obeying is simply the way of the times.
Before long, every country that had explored inside the Gates began pulling their troops inward one by one.
And so, not long after the initial shock, the people of each nation who had thought Earth was finished.
Cheered at the fact that the doomsday clock was, in truth, merely an alarm clock for land distribution.
Literally the discovery of new land, something every nation could celebrate, continued one after another.
Moreover, since gates had opened all over Earth, who knew about the future, but for now, how attractive was the fact that there was no need to fight over land?
"Drone reconnaissance shows the connected region is bigger than our country?! There's a river?! It's farmable?! Oh, by Allah!"
Even desert nations, which had gained all the world's wealth while being useless for human survival.
"Plants, mines... and allegedly a shit-ton of underground resources?! Now this country's manufacturing industry is saved!"
Even a certain peninsula nation that had gone mad, frantically obsessed with education because people were its greatest export.
"We have land in abundance; do we really need to be greedy for more here?"
"Unlike our snowy neighborhood, reports say it's good farming land there... Your Excellency?"
Even the ice-covered country overflowing with land—a New World conquest era satisfying to all!
Of course, planting a flag in the ground wasn't the end, right? Come on, modern capitalist society couldn't possibly work that way.
"Building infrastructure! Factory sites! Even new city construction? Wow, this is the opportunity!"
Corporations eager to feast on these massive projects were thick on the ground.
Desperately competing with countless rivals in existing territories, engaging in turf wars, versus eyeing a chance at monopoly.
If one possesses an organ called a brain, isn't it only normal to go all-in on the latter?
After rushing in desperately to secure a single contract, there was no way they’d just shut up and sit still.
They had to run their mouths for the stock to skyrocket—did they really not know the shares they held would rise?
“Great news! We’ve secured development rights for new land! We’re alive! Please believe in us!”
“Wow, so this time you won’t stab us in the back with a stock split, and you’ll keep investing for shareholders until the end, right? Right?”
“......”
“Why are you silent, you bastard! Say something!”
Well, the economy was far from mature, but the scalpers probably made a killing. Good for them.
The story of the “New Territory”—a massive opportunity the nation needed to develop as a top priority—spread in an instant.
“We’ve gotta eat until our stomachs burst and die! Anyway, with today’s technology, developing a new city won’t take long, right?”
“The era of suffering under the evil housing prices of those capital-region bastards is over! From now on, it’s the era of one person, one household...”
Imagining a joyful future for everyone regardless of age or gender, thanks to those economic effects, was only natural, but...
That life doesn’t go as planned is something even a kid holding his father’s hand to watch an animated movie in theaters learns.
Destiny Season 2? A new opportunity gained in place of the blocked-off Goto?
Haha, as if the world would ever roll along that easily.
For such a rosy future to unfold, soldiers first had to enter and stabilize the occupied territory.
“Plant the flag as quickly as possible! This is our nation’s new opportunity! And my approval ratings too!”
Nobody cared about the sweat, blood, and suffering of the poor young men dragged into the military at this time.
“Our unit needs to show even slightly better results—that’s what helps my promotion!”
To build their own merits, when the top brass received orders and designed a splendid blitzkrieg operation...
“We could skip lunch if a carriage comes from across the way, but looks like we’ll be eating yogurt pouches over there for dinner again...”
“Ah, what kind of unwanted field deployment is this... Every time the bastards up top stir up trouble, it’s always the lower ranks who clean it up...”
The grumbling subordinates, now told they’d have to camp out as well, shed blood and tears at the dog-like path of suffering laid out before them.
Perhaps because of that? Before they could even feel the satisfaction of forcibly pushing even the will-less army through the Gate simply because there was more work to do, the “New Territory” began rebelling not long after, shouting “Get the hell out--!”
“...What the hell is all that...!!”
“Emergency! Emergency! No matter how you look at it, that’s a potential enemy raid heading straight for us!”
In this world, a free lunch without a price is never given.
It’s just that the price must be paid first in blood by those below, rather than the big shots above.
Bam! Ratatat!
“Aaack, why the hell does our company have to be the vanguard--!!”
It was the tragic reality that befalls Gim Chomok, a young man and the pitiful sacrifice of this era.
It was the beginning of autumn.
***
Having deployed troops forward believing it was safe, the cost of encountering a sudden hostile force was steep.
“Corporal Gim, I think we’re fucked! Those damn green monster bastards are everywhere!”
“If you have time to flap your lips like that, spray everywhere, you bastard!!”
“Ack, another jam...!! Aaack!!”
In a massive wave of monster troops that would literally devour them if their firearms’ reliability faltered even slightly.
Still, it was the soldiers’ ugly lover, nicknamed the “Panacea,” its performance rising as their numbers dwindled. The assault rifles still gifted the lesser creatures with scorching bullets and began racking up numerous achievements, but...
“...How long do we have to hold out like this?”
At a spectacle that had turned from what they thought was WWE into WW2, the stress of the soldiers who had enlisted at exactly this time pierced the heavens.
“Ah... hey, what’s wrong with you! If you go down too, we’re ruined! Four of ours are already down!”
“I took the civil service exam to get a stable job, not to do administrative work in front of monsters, damn it?! Screw off!”
Past the early days of the Gate incident, when a sudden career change caused a drought of civil servants and military officials.
“Ah, shit... I want to be discharged---!!”
Having grown somewhat accustomed to the battlefield after daily encounters with vicious monsters, the veterans wore dead eyes.
While repeating a life of waking in tents, standing guard, then crawling back into tents.
“Kraaack...!! Kyaaaa--!!”
“That’s the scream I want to let out, you damn beast bastard!! Why won’t the assault rifle penetrate just because you got a bit bigger?!”
As if to say life is suffering, and once suffering becomes familiar, life covers you with an even greater suffering.
Once the small but fast-moving creatures had mostly been killed off, other creatures appeared to fill their place.
As they say, “anti-personnel stopping power is measured against human-sized targets”—and for good reason.
Monsters appeared that wouldn’t even be scratched if grazed by an entire magazine, with rounds bouncing clean off their core defensive areas.
Thud, thud...
“Damn. Now not only won’t they penetrate, but the bullets are spinning uselessly in midair.”
And bullets showed futile revolutions against the invisible energy barriers deployed by the monsters commanding those creatures.
Grrrrr...
The soldiers’ rage pierced the heavens as they watched those ugly bastards seem to mock them.
“Goddammit, get the artillery on the line! Tell them to carpet the area with high-explosive shells!!”
“Damn, so you didn’t go to the Military Academy for nothing! Company commander, I love you!”
Kwaaaang---!!
Even the high-ranking monsters with sneering faces couldn’t possibly laugh in the face of the sudden self-propelled artillery barrage.
Kiiieek--!!
“Let’s see how long you can last! What can that damn force field do if we keep firing?!”
“Mm, I love the smell of those bastards burning! Blow up nice, you bastards!!”
The squads that had lucked out with functional guns from among the many defective light machine guns didn’t cease fire until the enemy’s energy ran out.
In this hellish peninsula’s religion of firepower, today another victim etched his name and flickered out.
The victory of military technology built by gambling their survival and grinding through countless troops.
And a Pyrrhic victory earned by soldiers who had desperately held their ground.
“...Shit, thank god.”
Even though the battle had lasted only an hour, the battlefield had suffered quite a few casualties, and a war correspondent repeatedly pressed the camera shutter.
“Squad! Report the damage! If there are injuries, begin evacuation immediately!”
“Bring a stretcher over here! Hurry! The bleeding’s stopped, but the kid won’t wake up!”
In this new war where they had to turn the gun barrels that had once been pointed at each other and spray them in the opposite direction, to capture the ironic photograph of weapons born from mutual hatred proving immensely useful.
Click!
A young man, who had even forgotten the day when three stripes became four, stood blankly, staring at the camera flash with hollow eyes.
***
Not long after the initial shock, after countless Gates were classified as potential or immediate threats.
After troops had held their ground at dimensional gates and blocked periodically appearing monsters for some time.
“Sergeant Gim! Damn, do you remember telling us to spray everywhere?! Please do something about this--!!”
“Yeah, back then... Uwaaack--!! Damn, what are you shooting this way, you crazy bastard--!!”
Not long after another world had gifted humanity the taffy of monsters, humanity held in its hands the prize of a monster-specific miracle cure.
A private debuted by manifesting at a moment of crisis, spraying uncontrollable energy bullets in every direction.
Showing both light and darkness—one allied casualty and the annihilation of an enemy monster group—the curtain rose on the era of ability users.
As a single droplet causes a cup barely held together by surface tension to overflow.
After the “Energy Bullet Spray” incident, the ability users who gradually increased, with that unit at the center, were merely an added bonus.
“...Hiss, I think this is going to become instinct... Could you loosen this tourniquet? Let me give it a try.”
“...Is it because you’re a doctor who only ever applied that all-purpose red ointment whenever it hurt? Why do I feel uneasy? Agh, to think I’m a lab rat...!!”
The second was a quack military doctor who made new flesh sprout abundantly on the thigh of a poor sergeant first class hit by an energy bullet.
And Gim Chomok, the sergeant first class whose flesh had newly grown back, was recorded as the third ability manifestation case.
Truly, that damned dimensional gate was the very definition of “giving the disease and giving the cure.”
...Well, judging by the state of the first manifestation, the cure was truly poisonous.
The emergence of powerful ability users who could send anyone to hell with a single blow gave humanity time to catch its breath.
“...Except for the guy who manifested while guarding the munitions depot and got beaten to a pulp.”
“Logically, if a bastard who smokes three packs a day blows up a munitions depot, anyone would say it was coming, right?”
Though the price was that accidents kept happening without fail.
As if burying such things as monster raids and packaging successes as the excellence of command wasn’t an everyday occurrence?
Thus, one by one, two by two. The gradually increasing ability users were gathered separately to form units.
Sway, sway...
“Snort?! What!”
“Sergeant First Class Gim Chomok. It’s time for your guard duty. If you’re late again, you’ll be told to prepare for punishment this time.”
Monster gate overflow, transfer to the ability user unit, and dragooning into eternal two-shift reconnaissance and core area defense operations.
“...Two more months. Two more months. Two more months...”
The pitiful young man’s twenty-second birthday² was passing by like that as he endured a hellish military life.
It was a certain day in the dead of winter.