His vision distorted.
Colors bled at the edges of the subway car—like watercolor left in the rain. Shapes shifted. People stood and panicked, their mouths moving, but their voices reached Hyun-woo as if underwater. The system screen still hovered before him, unaffected by the chaos.
[Reader's Insight – Passive Ability Activated.]
You see beyond the veil. You perceive the true nature of all things.
Information will now auto-sync with known lore.
And then, like a curtain drawn aside, the world changed.
He blinked—and above the heads of every passenger, glowing lines of text appeared.
[Name: N/A | Designation: Civilian | Threat Level: F-]
[Condition: Unaware | Mental Stability: Moderate | Tier Access: None]
His heart pounded.
He turned to the sleeping office worker slouched two seats down.
[Mental Stability: Low]
[Potential to Awaken: 0.2%]
"Will be the first to panic when the Spawn appears."
Spawn?
The lights flickered again. Then the emergency lights died completely, plunging the subway car into blackness.
Somewhere in the dark, someone screamed.
A second scream followed—raw and wet.
Then came a sound Hyun-woo knew too well. A gurgling growl, like a corrupted modem laced with hunger and static. He'd read that sound described three times in the novel. He even commented on it once, asking the author if it was inspired by some kind of audio horror filter.
Now he heard it in real life.
["Spawn of the Hollow Hunger has entered the scenario area."]
[Caution: All unranked survivors are advised to evade. Estimated Death Radius: 20 meters.]
The subway shook. Metal scraped. Something had landed on the roof of the train car.
"No..." Hyun-woo muttered.
In The Final Apocalypse Chronicles, the first Spawn to appear in Korea was a Tier-3 Aberrant—an experimental predator used to test how humans responded to terror. It had no eyes. It hunted by heat, sound, and fear. And in the novel, its first victims had been the passengers of a stalled subway train.
This moment—this exact scene—was described in Chapter 314.
"It began in the dark. In silence broken only by a scream and the sound of something skittering across the ceiling."
A chill ran down his spine.
People were shouting now. Phones lit up faces. Panic spread like gasoline. Some rushed for the emergency exit at the rear. Others froze in their seats, whispering prayers.
Hyun-woo remained still. His hands trembled, but his mind was racing.
What did the protagonist do in this moment? No... there was no protagonist yet. This scene was from the perspective of a side character who died. Except now... that side character is me.
A thump landed above the nearest emergency hatch. A claw punched through the ceiling. Something long and thin slithered in from the darkness, twitching like a broken marionette.
[Spawn of the Hollow Hunger – Tier 3 Aberrant]
HP: ??? | Threat Level: B+ | Active Status: Hunting
Weakness: Unknown (Requires Higher Insight)
[New Objective: Escape the train before the first culling begins.]
Time Remaining: 9 minutes, 42 seconds.
Hyun-woo clenched his jaw.
He had nine minutes. No weapons. No powers. Just the system, his encyclopedic memory of the novel, and...
"Wait," he muttered aloud. "The fire axe."
In the novel, one survivor escaped this exact train scenario by smashing the emergency glass two cars down. There was a service compartment with a fire extinguisher, a crowbar, and—
A fire axe. A weapon that later became the symbol of the 'Urban Ranger' class.
He pushed to his feet.
And just as he did, the creature's head dropped down from the ceiling—slender, pulsing, teeth like sharpened ivory. It turned toward him.