The Eternal Guardian - One Thousand Years Ago
The Void Serpent was dying.
Its body stretched across three dimensions, each segment the size of a city block. Crystalline scales that could deflect nuclear warheads were cracking, leaking ichor that burned holes through reality itself. But even dying, it was magnificent—a creature born from the nightmares of dead civilizations, powerful enough to devour solar systems.
Kamzer Hukuda floated before it, his blade humming with power that made stars tremble.
"You fought well," he said quietly, his voice carrying across the dimensional void. "But this is where it ends."
The Serpent's massive eye—larger than Earth's moon—focused on him with the weight of eons. When it spoke, its voice was the sound of galaxies colliding.
"Guardian... why do you... protect them? These mortals... they are just insects..."
Kamzer considered the question seriously. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked. It wouldn't be the last.
"Insects can become butterflies," he replied. "meaningless things sometimes find meaning."
"And if they... betray you? When they... forget your sacrifices?"
A shadow crossed Kamzer's face—just for a moment. "Then I protect them anyway. That's what guardians do."
His blade moved in a perfect arc, cutting through scales, flesh, bone, and something deeper than matter. The Serpent's death scream echoed across seventeen dimensions before fading into cosmic silence.
Another threat ended. Another day Earth continued to exist.
Kamzer sheathed his blade and prepared to return home. He didn't know that Monar Kamhu had been watching and planning.
"The problem with being undefeatable," Monar Kamhu mused from his throne of crystallized screams, "is that it makes one predictable."
For centuries, he had studied the Guardian. Watched his battles, analyzed his patterns, catalogued his weaknesses. Not physical weaknesses—Kamzer had none of those. But psychological ones? Emotional vulnerabilities?
Those were plentiful.
The God of the Abyss smiled, his expression beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Kamzer's greatest strength was also his fatal flaw: he cared too much.
Time to use that against him.
The Final Battle - Five Hundred Years Ago
The dimensional battlefield stretched across multiple planes of existence. Here, physics were suggestions rather than laws. Here, reality bent to the will of beings powerful enough to rewrite the fundamental forces of the universe.
Kamzer and Monar Kamhu had been fighting for three days straight. Not human days—cosmic days, each one equivalent to centuries of mortal time.
The aftermath of their battle had already claimed seventeen star systems and created three new black holes.
"You're getting slow, Guardian," Monar Kamhu laughed, his form shifting between states of matter like living chaos. "Age catching up with you?"
Kamzer's response was a sword strike that split dimensions. Monar Kamhu barely dodged, his beautiful face twisting with genuine surprise.
"Ha. I'm still faster than you dumbass"
They were equally matched. This was the problem with eternal beings—their conflicts tended toward the eternal as well. But Monar Kamhu had prepared for this. Had planned for this exact moment.
"Tell me, Guardian," he said, parrying another reality-cleaving attack. "How are your precious mortals doing? Still building their little civilizations?"
Kamzer's attack pattern didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes. "They're always fine with my protection"
"Are they?" Monar Kamhu's smile widened. "I wonder... what would happen if something were to threaten them right now? While you're here, fighting me?"
The Guardian's next strike came a fraction of a second slower.
There.
"You didn't think I came alone, did you?" Monar Kamhu gestured broadly, his arm sweeping across the cosmic battlefield. "Even as we speak, my children are breaching Earth's atmosphere. Your precious barrier is... how do they say... Swiss cheese."
Kamzer's face went white. Not pale—literally white, as if color had been drained from reality around him.
"You're lying."
"Am I?" The God of the Abyss reached into his cloak and produced something that made Kamzer's breath catch—a child's drawing, crude crayon marks on construction paper. A stick figure labeled "DADDY" next to another labeled "ME."
"I found this in Tokyo. Little Yuki Tanaka, age seven. Loves butterflies and ice cream. Her father's a construction worker. Her mother teaches piano. They live at 47 Sakura Street, apartment 3-B."
Kamzer's blade trembled in his grip.
"Right now, my Herald of Despair is paying them a visit. Would you like to know what happens when an S-Class abyssal entity meets a human insect, Guardian? It's not... pleasant."
"No..."
"But you could stop it. If you abandoned this fight. If you let me pass. If you chose to save three lives over three billion."
The Guardian's greatest strength and greatest weakness, laid bare. His compassion—infinite, unconditional, and absolutely exploitable.
For the first time in a thousand years, Kamzer Hukuda hesitated.
And in that moment of hesitation, the chains struck.
They came from everywhere and nowhere—metaphysical bonds forged from Kamzer's own protective instincts, turned against him. Each link was inscribed with the name of someone he had saved, someone he had failed to save, someone he might fail to save in the future.
Thousands of names. Millions. Every life he'd ever touched, every soul he'd ever shielded from the darkness.
The weight of infinite responsibility made manifest as unbreakable chains.
"The binding will hold for exactly as long as you care about them," Monar Kamhu explained conversationally as the Guardian struggled against his bonds. "Which is to say... forever."
Kamzer's eyes blazed with fury that could have ignited stars. "The family—"
"Oh, they're fine. I lied about the Herald." Monar Kamhu's laughter echoed across dimensions. "But the fact that you believed me, that you were willing to abandon your duty for a mere human... that's what made the binding possible."
The chains tightened, each one drawing power from Kamzer's protective instincts.
"You want to know the beautiful part, Guardian? You could break these chains easily. All you'd have to do is stop caring. Stop feeling responsible for every meaningless mortal life. Stop being... you."
Kamzer tested the bonds, felt them respond to his emotional state. The more he cared, the stronger they became. The more he tried to protect, the more imprisoned he became.
"Never," Kamzaer said.
"I know," Monar Kamhu replied gently. "That's why this will work."
The God of the Abyss began the sealing ritual, his voice weaving patterns of binding that would last until the heat death of the universe. As reality closed around the Guardian like a cosmic coffin, Kamzer managed one final act of defiance.
He scattered fragments of his power across dimensions, hiding them in places where they might one day find worthy vessels. It wasn't much—barely enough to maintain Earth's barriers for a few more centuries. But it was hope.
"The sealing is complete," Monar Kamhu announced to the empty battlefield. "The Guardian of the Abyss is no more."
He turned to leave, then paused, as if remembering something important.
"Oh, and Guardian? That human you were worried about?"
Kamzer couldn't respond—the binding prevented speech—but his eyes burned with desperate inquiry.
"I really did send my Herald. After the sealing was complete, of course."
The last thing Kamzer saw before darkness claimed him was Monar Kamhu's beautiful, terrible smile.
"Sweet dreams, Guardian. See you in a thousand years."
Present Day - Seoul, South Korea
Ryu Family Apartment - 11:47 AM
Natsumi's eyes snapped open.
He was in his room. His ordinary, cramped, familiar room. Sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, and somewhere in the apartment, he could hear his grandmother humming an old song.
The hospital discharge had been routine—three days of observation, standard medical clearance for dungeon survivors, paperwork processed without complications. He'd been released yesterday afternoon, taken a taxi home, and apparently slept for nearly eighteen hours straight.
But those mundane details felt unimportant compared to the weight pressing against his consciousness. Kamzer's memories sat in his mind like a second personality—a thousand years of experience, knowledge, and pain that threatened to overwhelm his merely human psyche.
The Void Serpent. The binding.
Each memory was perfectly clear, as if he'd experienced it himself. He could feel the cosmic battlefield beneath his feet, smell the ichor of dying gods, taste the bitter ashes of civilizations that had fallen while he fought to save them.
And the power...
Natsumi raised his hand, watching shadows gather around his fingers like living smoke. This wasn't the desperate, instinctive burst of strength that had killed the chieftain. This was controlled. Deliberate. A tiny fraction of what the Guardian had possessed, but still more power than most hunters would ever dream of.
He could feel his rank shifting, reality adjusting to accommodate his new capabilities. C-Rank, maybe B-Rank. Strong enough to be noticed. Strong enough to be dangerous.
But also strong enough to be responsible.
The monsters I've seen in Kamzer's memories, he thought, closing his eyes to process the cascade of inherited knowledge. The things that exist beyond the dimensional barriers... they make the chieftain look like a house cat.
Earth's current hunters had no idea what was coming. A-Rank monsters were considered apex threats, city-killers that required coordinated military response. But in Kamzer's memories, A-Rank entities were foot soldiers. Cannon fodder for creatures that could devour solar systems.
The dimensional barriers were weakening. Soon, things would start coming through that humanity wasn't prepared to face. And when that happened—
"Natsumi-kun?" His grandmother's voice drifted through the door. "Are you awake? I made lunch."
The mundane concern cut through his cosmic anxieties like a knife through silk. Whatever else had changed, whatever power now flowed through his veins, he was still her grandson.
Still the boy who needed to eat regularly.
"Coming, Grandma," he called back, his voice steady despite the universe-shaking revelations cycling through his head.
But first, he needed to understand what had happened to his team. The official story, whatever it was, would be sanitized for public consumption.
The truth would be buried in Hunter Association files, classified at levels most people couldn't access.
He needed to know exactly how much the Association know about the incident on the dungeon.
Hunter Association Building - 2:15 PM
The lobby felt different now.
Before, it had been a monument to everything Natsumi wasn't—powerful, successful, important. Now, with Kamzer's memories informing his perception, it looked like what it actually was: a bureaucratic processing center for enhanced humans who didn't understand the true scope of their responsibilities.
Like children playing with nuclear weapons, he thought, watching B-Rank hunters swagger through the corridors with casual arrogance. They have no idea what's actually out there.
The information desk was staffed by a bored-looking woman whose enhanced reflexes suggested D-Rank capabilities. She looked up as he approached, her expression shifting from professional courtesy to barely concealed pity as she recognized his Hunter registration badge.
"Ryu Natsumi, F-Rank Porter," she read from her screen. "Are you here for the incident investigation?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Conference room 7-B. Take the elevator to the seventh floor, turn left, third door on your right." She paused, her expression softening slightly. "I'm... sorry for your loss. Losing an entire squad is not easy."
The elevator ride gave him time to prepare. To decide how much confusion to feign, how much knowledge to reveal. The investigation team would be looking for inconsistencies, trying to understand how an F-Rank porter had survived an encounter that killed four enhanced hunters.
The truth—that he'd inherited cosmic power from an interdimensional guardian—would not be well received.
Conference room 7-B was exactly what he'd expected: sterile, institutional, designed to make people uncomfortable. Three investigators sat behind a metal table, their faces professional masks hiding whatever emotions they might have felt about questioning the sole survivor of a catastrophic dungeon collapse.
"Mr. Ryu," the lead investigator said, consulting a thick file. "I'm Detective Park, Hunter Association Investigation Division. These are my colleagues, Investigators Kim and Lee."
Each of them radiated the casual competence of experienced hunters. C-Rank, probably, with years of field experience and the kind of enhanced senses that would make lying difficult.
But not impossible for someone with Kamzer's memories to draw on.
"Please, sit down," Detective Park continued. "We understand this is difficult, but we need to understand exactly what happened in Dungeon Gate Alpha-7."
Natsumi took the offered chair, letting his shoulders slump slightly. Grief, he'd learned from Kamzer's memories, was an excellent camouflage for deception.
"I've already given my statement to the medical team," he said quietly.
"We know. But there are... inconsistencies that need clarification." Park opened the file, revealing photographs that made Natsumi's breath catch.
The dungeon aftermath. What was left of the Iron Wolves team. The impossible levels of destruction that had collapsed the entire dimensional space.
"According to your initial statement, the team encountered an A-Rank monster that was incorrectly classified as D-Rank. This monster killed your entire party before the dungeon suffered catastrophic dimensional collapse. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"The problem, Mr. Ryu, is that A-Rank monsters don't just disappear. When they die, they leave bodies. When they cause dimensional collapses, there are specific energy signatures. When they kill hunters, the wounds follow predictable patterns."
Investigator Kim leaned forward, her enhanced senses focused on him with uncomfortable intensity. "What we found in that dungeon doesn't match any known monster classification. The destruction patterns suggest something far beyond A-Rank capabilities. And the energy readings..."
She paused, consulting her own notes.
"The energy readings show traces of power we've never encountered before."
Shit.
Natsumi let his confusion show—which wasn't difficult, since he was genuinely confused about how much they'd been able to determine. Kamzer's memories included vast knowledge about interdimensional entities, but forensic investigation techniques from the 21st century weren't exactly covered.
"I don't understand," he said. "I'm F-Rank. I carry bags and collect power stones. I don't know anything about energy signatures or dimensional collapse."
"We know," Detective Park said gently.
"That's what makes this so puzzling. By all accounts, you should have died with the rest of your team. F-Rank hunters don't survive encounters with A-Rank monsters. They certainly don't survive whatever caused that level of destruction."
The three investigators exchanged glances—quick, professional communications that suggested they'd already discussed their theories extensively.
"Mr. Ryu," Park continued, "we've reviewed your entire Hunter record. Three years of dungeon raids, perfect safety record, no incidents of unusual power manifestation. Nothing to suggest hidden capabilities or misclassified rank."
"Because there's really no such thing, I'm just a f-rank porter following the orders of our leader." Natsumi replied honestly.
"Exactly. Which brings us to our problem." Park leaned back in his chair, studying Natsumi with the intensity of someone trying to solve an impossible puzzle. "How does an ordinary F-Rank porter survive an extraordinary incident that kills four enhanced hunters?"
The question hung in the air like a sword waiting to fall.
Time for the performance of my life, Natsumi thought, drawing on Kamzer's centuries of experience with deception and misdirection.
"I hid," he said simply. "When the monster appeared, when everyone started dying, I ran. I found a crevice in the wall and crawled into it. I stayed there until everything stopped."
"For how long?"
"I don't know. Hours? It felt like forever." He let his voice crack slightly. "I could hear them screaming. I could hear them dying. And I just... hid."
It was a story that played to every prejudice they had about F-Rank hunters. Cowardly, useless, concerned only with survival. It was exactly what they expected to hear.
But Investigator Lee wasn't satisfied.
"The dimensional collapse happened instantaneously," she said, her voice carrying the weight of technical expertise. "There wouldn't have been time to hide. When that much energy gets released in a confined space, everything gets obliterated at the speed of light."
Damn.
Natsumi met her gaze directly, letting desperation show in his eyes. "Then I don't know what happened. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe the crevice protected me somehow. Maybe..." He paused, as if struck by sudden realization. "Maybe I blacked out and don't remember everything clearly."
It was a weak explanation, but it had the virtue of being unprovable. Memory was unreliable under traumatic circumstances. Even enhanced humans could suffer psychological breaks that affected recall.
Detective Park made another note. "Mr. Ryu, we're going to recommend psychological evaluation and extended monitoring. What you experienced was clearly traumatic, and there may be details you're not consciously remembering."
"We're also recommending rank re-evaluation," Investigator Kim added. "Your survival suggests capabilities beyond F-Rank classification, even if they only manifested under extreme circumstances."
They know something's wrong, Natsumi realized. They just can't prove what.
"Is that all?" he asked, standing slowly as if the weight of grief made movement difficult.
"For now," Park replied. "But Mr. Ryu? If you remember anything else—anything at all—please contact us immediately. Understanding what happened in that dungeon could save lives in the future."
As Natsumi left the conference room, he could feel their eyes on his back. Suspicious, calculating, trying to fit him into a puzzle that didn't have enough pieces.
They'll be watching me now, he thought, stepping into the elevator.
Which meant he needed to be very, very careful about how he used his new abilities.
The elevator doors closed, and for a moment, Natsumi saw his reflection in the polished metal. He looked the same—ordinary face, unremarkable features, the kind of person who blended into crowds.
But his eyes...
His eyes held depths that hadn't been there before. Shadows that seemed to move independently of the light. The accumulated weight of a thousand years of cosmic responsibility, compressed into a twenty-three-year-old human who still needed to pay rent and buy groceries.
Guard them well, Kamzer's voice whispered in his memory. Guard them better than I did.
The elevator reached the ground floor, and Natsumi stepped out into a world that had no idea how much danger it was actually in.
Time to start learning how to be a Guardian.
First, though, he needed to get home and help his grandmother with dinner. Even cosmic responsibility couldn't override basic family duties.