A horn blared.
The sound was so mundane, so normal, it was the most terrifying thing Kang Seo-jun had ever heard.
He gasped, a deep, shuddering inhalation that worked. His lungs, which moments ago had been full of blood and failure, now filled with stale, dusty air. He sat bolt upright, his entire body flinching, his hands flying to the wound in his back.
There was no wound.
There was only a cheap, sweat-dampened t-shirt and smooth, unscarred skin.
He wasn't in a cavern. He wasn't lying in a pool of his own blood.
He was sitting on a thin, lumpy mattress. Sunlight, so bright it made his eyes water, streamed through a single, grimy window, illuminating a constellation of dust motes.
He knew this room.
"What?" he whispered, his voice hoarse and unused.
He looked down at his hands. They were pale. Thin. The skin was soft, the knuckles unblemished. There were no calluses from a decade of hauling gear. No web of white scars from fumbled knife-work and monster-claws.
These were the hands of a 20-year-old student.
He scrambled off the mattress, his legs tangling in a thin blanket, and stumbled. He fell against a particle-board desk, his new hand knocking over a tower of empty instant ramen cups. The clatter was deafeningly real.
He lurched to the cracked, full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door and stared.
A stranger looked back.
No. Not a stranger. A ghost.
It was him. Kang Seo-jun. But it was him from... before. Before the muscles he'd desperately tried to build. Before the hunger had hollowed out his cheeks. Before the 'System' had beaten all the light from his eyes.
"I... I'm alive?"
He touched the mirror. The glass was cool. He touched his face. His skin was warm. He slapped himself, hard.
The sting was sharp, electric, and real.
"This is an illusion," he muttered, backing away, his eyes darting around the tiny, 2-pyeong gosiwon room. "The Wyvern's poison. It's a dying hallucination." He'd heard stories. S-Rank monsters could trap you in a "mind-prison" as your brain died.
But this was his own, personal hell. The smell of faint mold from the bathroom. The sour tang of old trash. The distant, muted roar of Seoul's morning traffic.
It was all exactly as he remembered it.
His heart hammered, a frantic drum against his ribs. His eyes landed on his desk. Next to the fallen ramen cups was a phone. An ancient, brick-like "Dae-woo" smartphone, the cheapest model from over ten years ago.
He snatched it. His thumb, moving with an unfamiliar lack of grace, fumbled with the power button. The screen glowed to life.
And his blood, so recently spilled on a dungeon floor, turned to ice.
The date was displayed in stark, digital numbers.
November 18, 2025.8:50 AM.
"No."
Seo-jun's knees buckled. He slid down the wall, his eyes glued to the screen. "No. No, no, no..."
He knew that date.
Every human on Earth who had survived knew that date.
It was the date of the "Great Integration." The day the global broadcast had hit. The day the 'Towers' had fallen from the sky, appearing in the center of every major city. The day the blue screens and the 'System' had appeared, turning the world into a living, nightmarish game.
It was the day the Apocalypse began.
And...
He looked at the time. 8:50 AM.
"...it hasn't happened yet," he whispered.
He remembered it vividly. He'd been in a convenience store down the street, working his part-time job, stocking shelves. At 9:00 AM exactly, the global broadcast had hit. The world-shaking tremor. The blue light. The panic. The first Goblin.
He had... ten minutes.
He dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor.
"I'm back."
He stood up, his mind racing, moving faster than it ever had. He wasn't dead. He wasn't hallucinating.
He was a Regressor.
A concept from webnovels, a fantasy. And yet... the pain of the poison, the icy-cold finality of his death... it was too real. The boot on his hand... Hye-jin's empty eyes...
It was a memory. A memory of a future that had already happened. A future he had lived and died in.
Ten years. He had survived that hell for ten straight years. Only to be murdered by the very people he'd tried to protect.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest. It was a terrible, broken, gasping sound. He laughed until tears streamed down his face. It was the laugh of a man who had lost everything and just been handed a loaded gun.
He was back.
He had ten years of knowledge. Ten years of knowing where the hidden dungeons were. Ten years of knowing which "trash" items were actually 'Growth-Type' treasures.
He knew every weakness of every monster in the early zones.
He knew every single person who would betray him.
"Jin-ho..." he whispered, his laughter dying, his voice turning as cold as the grave he'd just climbed out of. "Hye-jin..."
His eyes, reflected in the cracked mirror, were no longer the eyes of a naive student. They were cold. They were empty. They were the eyes of a man who had died.
His phone, forgotten on the floor, suddenly vibrated. The time had changed.
8:59 AM.
One minute.
His body moved on pure, unadulterated instinct. He didn't grab a weapon. He didn't barricade the door. Those were the actions of a survivor, a sheep.
He, Kang Seo-jun, was done being a sheep.
He was a man with a ten-year-old memory. And he knew that in the first few minutes, the only thing that mattered was the 'Initial Class'.
His phone screen hit 9:00 AM.
The world shook.
A sound, a deafening, reality-tearing trumpet blast, echoed not from the sky, but from inside his own head. It was a sound that vibrated in his bones.
A brilliant, terrifying blue light flooded his room, pouring through the window, through the walls. It was a light that had no source and yet was everywhere.
Outside, the mundane sounds of traffic died, replaced by a symphony of car alarms, shattering glass, and the first, thin screams of human terror.
And in front of his eyes, a familiar blue window materialized in the air.
[The System has been integrated with Planet Earth (Sector-839G).] [All sentient beings will be processed as 'Players'.] [The 'Tutorial' will now commence. Please select your 'Initial Class'.]
Kang Seo-jun stared at the screen. He didn't feel fear. He didn't feel panic.
He felt... a cold, thrilling calm.
"This time," he said, his voice a quiet, deadly promise to an empty room. "It's going to be different."