Raid Breaker - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Opening Pandora’s Box.

Do you know what is really absurd?

The starting point of all events was called ‘Zero (0) Impact’….the ringleader was a cursed creature that humans unleashed.

The year 2016. The dimensional door opened for the first time.

Just like I said, the key difference was that humans opened the door. The dimension gate project that the United States was secretly researching was an unexpected success and the door of the dimension suddenly blew open.

Humans clearly opened the dimensional door. But the results turned out too badly for us. When the door first opened, a huge monstrous beast emerged in the most powerful country in the world and decimated half of the United States’ territory.

This incident was called ‘Zero Impact.’

These days, the monster could be accurately measured and sorted into a category but there was no such thing at that time.

Anyway, if I used the basic rating system that since appeared then the monster would be classified as ‘Ultra (U) Class’ with ‘A+ grade emission system,’ ‘S+ class strengthening ability (Defense) and a total rating of 7 with the ability of ‘horned giant turtle.’ It was a creature that could singlehandedly smash a colony. It was unclear why such a large one emerged from the beginning but a disaster started from that moment.

The gritty conclusion that the United States came to was to drop a nuclear bomb at 7 feet on it. If I thought about it now, that act was really crazy.

At the time, people around the world were eagerly wishing the disaster would end. I vaguely remember this as I was still young back then. But…God didn’t answer our prayers.

In fact, more doors kept opening and we couldn’t block the opposite side no matter how many doors we closed.

Once the first open door, known as ‘Zero Gate’ occurred, doors started opening in various parts of the world.

Of course, they weren’t as big as the first Zero Gate. According to the rating scale now, most of them back then were Class 1 or 2.

It was obvious but only monsters up to the 3rd grade could emerge from the Class 1~2 doors. This meant they could be overpowered with guns and bombs.

The problem was that there were millions of people around the world. Naturally the world was a mess. Monsters were popping out of thin air and attacking people so a state of emergency was declared around the world.

As the damage became larger, this state of emergency lasted for approximately 2 years. The period was 2 years but the world’s population had been halved so the damage was really huge.

It was a truly horrible time…. My father, mother and older brother all died. At the time, I was only 7 years old and couldn’t understand why my father, mother and brother had disappeared.

Ah, fuck…just thinking about it makes me want to curse.

However, the situation started to change little by little over time. The most crucial thing that changed the situation was the bodies of the creatures that became extremely valuable.

The blood, bone, teeth, horns, leather and other parts of the beast all contained powers that couldn’t be explained by modern science or technology. And the more crucial thing about the beasts was their core.

The core later became known as ‘magic stone’ or ‘mana stone’ as it contained an energy that couldn’t be imagined.

The situation changed after finding these things. Rather, the humans were now waiting for the creatures. No, later they tracked where the beasts were going to emerge and entered that place to kill the beast.

And since then….Knights started appearing.

The people with supernatural powers that we used to watch in the movies…for some unknown reason, their special powers manifested and the Knights were thought of as superheroes.

Of course, later I learned that they also move for profit like other humans but I had been envious of the Knights at the time.

At first, they were simply humans with powers manifested but they started to be called ‘Knights’ once human technology combined the by-products of the beasts into all types of things.

Anyway, this started the ‘Monster Hunting’ era where the resilient humans received jobs to hunt the creatures.

When is it now?

It is exactly 20 years after Zero Impact took place. The 20 years had been tough but the important thing was that humans started developing in an amazing new direction. Beast Engineering combined the by-products of the beasts to create science and technology, with the most significant discoveries coming from the combining of mana stones.

Unfortunately, humans weren’t the only ones that developed. As time passed, stronger creatures started emerging from the dimensional doors.

Right now there were even Class 5 doors.

The good news was that ‘Titans’ were developed for the Knights due to Beast Engineering. If I had to give a brief description of the Titan then it would be a bipedal robot that the Knights could board.

The Titans were developed 10 years ago and now there was a huge variety of sizes and types. But the basic form of a Titan looked like the robots that often appeared in past Japanese anime. Of course, I didn’t grow up watching the anime so I don’t know how close the resemblance was.

The combination of Titan and Knight gave humans an advantage over the beasts.

Small or large teams were created in order to move to a dimensional door and grab the monsters. When that happened not as many beasts would emerge from the dimensional door.

Teams of knights were called an ‘Knights Division’ and most knights with real skills belonged to a Knights Division.

Of course, knights existed that also belonged to a country or colony. Those knights were called Guard Knights and their teams called Guard Knights Division.

The ‘World Knight Group: WKG’ was formed as the Knight’s authority continued to rise in strength but the World Colony Alliance (WCA) still had a considerable amount of power that gave them support.

But no matter how many Knights existed in this world, they couldn’t close all the dimensional doors. There were even those who entered the dimensional dungeon and failed to clear it.

There would be an uproar whenever that happened.

Fortunately, the World Knight Group had established a law where ‘the Knight must defend opened dimensional doors’ so when that happened, a code red was placed on the situation and all knights nearby would move to close that door.

But this didn’t completely prevent the damage. In particular, there was bound to be larger damage in remote areas.

As a result, the areas humans lived in gradually shrank and now they primarily lived in cities. Monsters emerged, humans constantly fought the monstrous beast, they died and the cycle was repeated. Thus after the population of the world decreased rapidly with the first assaults, there was no signs of it increasing.

Rather, it was actually decreasing little by little. Beasts were constantly emerging from the dimensional doors. And the Knights hunted them.

This is the era I’m living in.

Who am I?

My name is Kang Su-hyuk. I work as a freelance ‘dungeon cleaner’ in Suwon Colony.