red. | LCF

CHAPTER ONE: Prologue

Kim Rok Soo was only spending his wonderful day off after years of working his ass off as a Team Leader Of Team 1. He paid his respects to his hyungs, then went back to his own empty apartment. Pulling one out of three chairs, he sat on the table and took out a bunch of books he borrowed from a librarian who looked at him as if he finally found his benefactor.

It was a weird stare, as if he's been waiting for him for a long time. But librarians are like that.

Thirty Six years old Kim Rok Soo grew in strength and durability but when he was on the fifth volume, his phone started going off as an unranked monster invaded the world again.

It was the first emergency of an unranked monster in his day off. Granted, this was his first day off.

However, after feeling nothing despite expecting a searing pain from the monsters attacked, hearing nothing despite knowing just how frantic his teammates are by seeing him- their team leader- dying, he felt the world turned dark and everything became new to him.

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.

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Cale Henituse, if he could, he'd make a deal with god and get him to swap places with someone who lived a better life than him right now.

Because twenty years seemed nothing compared to what he's currently experiencing right now.

Everything is dark, the surrounding is too... small. It's as if he was inside something so large yet too small to accomodate him.

He's hearing other people talking. It was as if he didn't exist at all.

'Claw the red dragon's heart and eat it.'

'Yes, father.'

'I'll be back and once I did, we'll start your first mission.'

'...Yes, father.'

Hold on.

Claw and eat a red dragon's heart!?

He could feel his heart beating rapidly, a sense of urgency yet also something suppressing surrounding his whole body. He registered the voices talking and his body reacted to it, as if it knew that he's going to die even before he was born or he's going to face immediate death once he opened his eyes. He couldn't bare such thoughts as he didn't even have the time to adjust to the new environment and he's going to die just like that.

Images flew into his mind. A cold voice. A deal. Family. White Star. Choi Han. Those are the only things that he could recognize and his brain capacity is not on the level where it could organize them so he decided to ignore them.

Once a door slammed shut, he waited patiently. He hears a couple of mumblings, and registered it in his mind, too.

'Who am I... Who am I... what am I going to do...'

Lost.

Betrayal.

Despair.

He knew those emotions.

So, he calm himself down, and settled for staying still.

It's not like this will last long, anyway.