Kim Sungmin, Rank 4 on the Republic of Korea's Hunter Leaderboard and bearer of the title "Iron Wall," did not understand his own death.

  He was a veteran. Twelve years ago, he'd walked out of the Daejeon First Rift Incident alive, and in the years since, he'd cleared seventy dungeons of varying lethality. His party members were no different. Average age: 31.5. Every last one of them, S-Class. The most seasoned, most reliable combat force the nation had ever produced.

  The media called them the Golden Generation.

  Inside the Rift, that name meant nothing.

  "Three o'clock! Pattern A-4, respond!"

  His call was precise. No—it should have been precise. According to every dataset compiled over the last decade, when a large-type monster bent its right hind leg, a tail sweep followed within 0.5 seconds. Horizontal arc. You guard the lower zone, the damage dealers hit from above. Textbook.

  His brain processed the situation in 0.1 seconds, issued the command in 0.2, and raised his shield in 0.3. A flawless decision.

  Crack.

  At 0.5 seconds, Kim Sungmin's upper body was spinning through the air.

  "...Huh?"

  The pain hadn't even arrived yet. Through his tumbling vision, he saw it.

  The monster that had bent its right leg never swung its tail. Instead, its joints buckled at impossible angles—its entire mass lurching forward as though it had skipped through space. No windup. No momentum. Just tonnage devouring distance like physics had stopped applying.

  Twelve years of data lodged in Sungmin's skull. Thousands of battles. A textbook response for every scenario.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  All that experience killed him.

  If he hadn't predicted the tail sweep—if he'd just panicked and stumbled backward like a coward—he might have lived.

  But he was an adult. A professional. A rational man down to the marrow. And the Rift despises rationality. He never accepted that, not even as the light left his eyes.

  "Captain! The formation is—AAARGH!"

  The collapse was instant. The veteran healer was mid-cast on a Heal Wind when her neck snapped—the spell's margin of error was simply too wide. The S-Class swordsman began his signature slash—the windup was too long, leaving a gap—and something crushed his spine flat.

  They knew too much. They'd trained too hard. Survival instinct had been buried under layers of learned judgment, and their hardened neural pathways couldn't keep pace with a Rift that rewrote its own rules every half-second.

  [WARNING: Biosignals lost] [WARNING: Party 'Golden Generation' — Total annihilation]

  Red system messages floated over the pool of blood, cold and mechanical. The strongest adults in the nation had been reduced to pulp in three minutes.

  At that same moment. National Hunter Administration, Central Control Room.

  Six monitors flashed red with DISCONNECT signals simultaneously. The silence that settled over the room was heavy, but it wasn't grief. To the officials present, this wasn't a tragedy. It was a data anomaly. A resource loss.

  "...Kim Sungmin's team. Total wipe confirmed."

  The operator's voice was dry. Bureau Director Choi Jinhyuk adjusted his glasses and swiped through his tablet without looking up. On the screen, past the red-lined casualty report, a new list had already loaded.

  Baby-fat faces. Some in school uniforms, others in hospital gowns. Birthdates no earlier than the late 2000s.

  "As expected. Anyone over twenty-five is useless."

  Jinhyuk muttered it like he was reading a weather forecast.

  "Once the brain hardens, calculation overrides fear. And in this world, that's a death sentence."

  He tapped his pen against the desk.

  "Dispose of the remains. Prep the next generation."

  "Next generation, sir...?"

  "The ones in Adaptation. The 'Problematic Six' candidate pool."

  The operator hesitated.

  "But Director—they're minors. And none of them passed the psychological evaluation—"

  "Did I say find me heroes?"

  Jinhyuk's voice cut like a scalpel.

  "We're not looking for someone to save the world. We need parts. Replaceable parts that'll grind through the system so the rest of it doesn't collapse."

  On the screen, the blank face of nineteen-year-old Han Seorin stared out from a passport photo. A red stamp pressed itself across her file.

  APPROVED.

  "Send them in. Younger. More broken."

  That day, Korea's heroes died.

  And the age of expendables began.