1
Prologue
“Those bastards! No matter what, this is too much!”
Kim Suhyun let out a shout filled with rage. He wanted nothing more than to smash the desk with his fist, but he couldn’t. He didn’t even have hands to do so.
No, it wasn’t just his hands. Both his arms and legs were gone. Scars and life-support devices protruded from various parts of his body, making it clear that he’d suffered a catastrophic accident.
Fitting him with mechanical prosthetic arms and legs wasn’t all that difficult these days, unlike in the past. But Suhyun’s problem wasn’t just the loss of his limbs. On the outside, he might have looked alive, but inside, his body was completely broken down from the accident. To keep living, he would need extensive surgeries and continuous treatment.
Yet the military had done the bare minimum to keep him alive—then abandoned him. They’d given him the budget for prosthetic limbs, but the funds only covered cheap, mass-produced models. For someone like Suhyun, who had once moved so vigorously, it was impossible not to feel discomfort with such inferior replacements.
Now, all that was left to Suhyun was a meager pension and an honor that no longer even left a trace behind. All that remained was the betrayal and fury of being discarded. He had once thought he would dedicate his life to this cause, only to find out how coldly that organization could turn its back on him the moment he was deemed useless.
He knew he wouldn’t live for more than a few more years like this anyway. Suhyun could sense the state of his own body. Those few years would only be a miserable life full of pain and discomfort.
Originally, he had planned to hunt down those who had done this to him and get revenge. But the world was not so easy. Before he could even regain the strength to take his revenge, he found himself crushed by the harsh reality.
“No matter what… to be betrayed like this by the people I thought were on my side…”
As the painkillers blurred his consciousness, Suhyun closed his eyes.
The last day of 1999. Humanity would never forget this day. Many prophets had made predictions about what would happen on that final day of 1999, but most people believed nothing would happen. They were all wrong.
What appeared on the last day of 1999 was a dimensional gate connected to another planet.
The fact that it was a gate to another planet was shocking enough, but at first, humanity focused more on what was happening around the gate than on the gate itself. The location where it appeared was… delicate, to say the least.
A country so obscure that now only those who remember can even find traces of it: North Korea. The dimensional gate appeared in the center of Pyongyang—and quite literally swallowed up everything around it.
Later research led to speculation that whatever was swallowed might have been transported to another world. But more than a hundred years after the gate’s appearance, no trace of them has ever been found. The academic consensus now is that the North Koreans who were caught up when the gate first appeared became lost in space and were scattered to dust.
The North Korean regime, which had held on tenaciously despite appearing unstable, collapsed completely in this sudden disaster. With the entire backbone of the state gone, there was no way North Korea could endure.
It was only then that the neighboring countries made their move. Their militaries entered North Korea and scrambled to get the situation under control. Naturally, South Korea did the same and advanced northward. When the troops of various countries reached the former site of Pyongyang, they were greeted by a massive, blue-glowing oval object and an alien landscape surrounding it.
The dimensional gate in Pyongyang had wiped out everything that had been there and replaced it with an entirely new scene.
At that time, humanity didn’t yet grasp the value of the dimensional gate. Instead of investigating it, they focused on practical concerns first—dividing up the territory of a now-governmentless North Korea. China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States clashed fiercely before finally reaching a compromise.
Only then did the real investigation of the gate—something everyone had long been curious about but hadn’t approached due to practical constraints—finally begin.
“What’s the atmosphere like?”
“Starting analysis now. Oxygen levels look good! It’s… almost identical to Earth’s atmosphere!”
“What?!”
The gate connected to the continent of a vast planet. The first humans to set foot there named the planet Cameron, in honor of the courage of the first person to venture through.
At the arrival site, there was another gate, and they quickly discovered they could travel back and forth between Earth and this new continent. From then on, the exploration truly took off.
They started with basic information: local geography, climate—humanity’s knowledge expanded at an explosive pace. The more they learned, the more they trembled at the value of this new world.
The planet Cameron was a blessed land.
It had an environment similar to Earth’s, so survival wasn’t an issue. But its resources were practically limitless. It overflowed with rare minerals and energy sources that Earth didn’t possess.
Even better, the continent was ownerless. Expeditions sent everywhere found that its civilizations were only at the level of ancient city-states. Compared to humanity’s military might, it was like David versus Goliath.
Of course, that didn’t mean humanity acted barbarically. They still remembered the lessons of the 20th century. The age of invading weaker peoples and turning them into colonies was over.
Instead, humanity approached the various city-states—populated by non-human races—with as much caution as possible. After much effort, they finally succeeded in establishing communication.
Regardless of what the deeper relations were like, humanity outwardly maintained peaceful exchanges with the known city-states.
The existence of non-humans living in ancient city-states fascinated many storytellers. But the more ambitious and shrewd among them saw something else: vast, unexplored lands.
Unlike Earth, where almost every corner had been mapped, most of Cameron remained a wilderness. And the native races were too small in number and power to be considered true owners of the planet.
Humanity realized there was little benefit in conquering or absorbing them. The real profit lay in the unexplored frontier. Once they understood this, they began their operations in earnest.
They would venture into the unclaimed wilderness and gather rare resources. It was an idea that made anyone salivate. But humanity, lulled into complacency by the seemingly weak natives, learned a harsh lesson.
The true masters of Cameron were not the other races—it was the monsters.
The continent’s environment was wildly diverse. Some areas were dense jungles nearly impossible to cross; others were so cold that nothing could survive. And in those harsh places lived the true landlords. Some looked like dinosaurs long extinct on Earth, while others had bizarre forms humanity had never seen. But they had one thing in common:
The monsters were not friendly to intruders.
They fought each other to the death, so there was no chance they’d tolerate humanity trespassing into their domain. Humans had felt safe because the gate had appeared in a monster-free zone, but they only realized the planet’s danger after their first expedition team was wiped out.
From then on, the military began deploying in earnest.
Now, more than a century had passed since the gate’s first appearance.
At first, humanity had gazed upon Cameron’s frontier with curiosity and longing. Now, they accepted the planet as part of daily life. Anyone with the proper authorization could go through the gate at the site of the former Pyongyang and step onto Cameron.
What had started as a small base for expeditions had grown into a massive city. There were soldiers stationed to maintain order, businessmen seeking profit, immigrants dreaming of a new life—and the families of all these people. On the surface, it didn’t look much different from a major Earth city.
But just a few dozen kilometers outside the city lay the vast frontier, full of unknown dangers waiting to strike.
Suhyun was a resident of this continent.
His father had been a career soldier stationed here; so had his mother. He had been born on this planet. Cameron was his homeland.
Naturally, he dreamed of becoming a soldier too. For a physically capable man with few other skills, becoming a career soldier on Cameron was the obvious choice. And among them, Suhyun was exceptional. He had started as an ordinary soldier, then transferred to special forces. Through constant achievement, he rose to captain and became the commander of a company. Those were the brightest days of his life.
“It’s an ambush! Captain!”
“What?! There aren’t any monsters around here! We already checked!”
“Captain! Get back! Run forward!”
“Those bastards… They’re not monsters! Gaaah!”
One day, an operation went awry.
They’d moved out to investigate reports of discovered resources and assess potential threats, but were suddenly ambushed. The military never admitted it, but Suhyun knew. That ambush hadn’t come from monsters—it had come from other humans. Soldiers.
He and his team were experts at dealing with monsters. They would have scoffed at anyone saying monsters were the true masters of the land. If it had been monsters, they would have sensed the danger in advance.
His subordinates were wiped out. Suhyun barely survived by throwing himself clear, but his body was destroyed in the process, leaving him in a state worse than death.
Suhyun made a strong appeal to the military. He knew the struggle for resources on this continent involved not only private companies but entire nations. He was sure that soldiers from another force had attacked him and his men, and that someone inside had leaked their information.
But the military refused to listen. They ruled that the incident had been the result of Suhyun’s own carelessness. Then they pushed him out of the way like an annoying fly.
With his ruined body, Suhyun couldn’t even begin his revenge. He lost all hope. His hatred boiled inside him, but there was nothing he could do. All that remained was an immobile body and pain.
