chapter 02
The world I used to live in was pure chaos.
Gates.
Huge, circular dimensional doors.
One day, without warning, they appeared all over the world. They came with thick, dark black fog and caused every kind of disaster imaginable.
Earthquakes. Sinkholes. Tidal waves. Landslides. Natural disasters became normal.
People exposed to the black fog suffered from unknown pain and went mad.
In the end, their whole bodies rotted away and they died.
And that wasn’t all. After some time passed, horrible monsters poured out from inside the Gates.
Humanity was helpless in front of these unknown Gates. People died without being able to fight back.
Every day, the media loudly announced that the end of the world had arrived.
But even when the sky falls, there’s always a way out.
Some people survived exposure to the black fog.
After suffering through a long fever and waking up, they gained special supernatural abilities.
They could control water and fire, run as fast as missiles, crush things with superhuman strength, and more.
They were strong enough to fight the grotesque monsters coming out of the Gates.
The ordinary people who survived called them “Awakened” and treated them like heroes.
Human society quickly split into two classes.
Naturally, the Awakened became the privileged and ruling class.
Ordinary citizens, who became the ruled class, lived their lives grateful to the Awakened for protecting them.
Sadly, I belonged to neither side.
I was the only daughter of the Supreme Leader, abandoned early because I never awakened.
Instead, my father adopted young Awakened children who had lost their parents and gained public trust through that.
In a world where large disasters happened every day, no one really cared how the neglected daughter managed to survive.
Me? I lived just fine.
I blamed my dead mother for why I was the only one who didn’t awaken.
I begged my father to at least pay some attention to me.
There were times I wanted to die when those so-called siblings—who weren’t even related to me by blood—beat me up.
Still, I suppose I lived better than the orphans who lost their parents to the Gates.
I studied hard, escaped that broken household, and successfully cut ties with them.
I earned a degree anyone would envy. I got a proper job.
And I even gained a card to use against my damn biological father.
It wasn’t perfect, but my life was fairly satisfying.
If only it weren’t for that novel.
<How to Save a World That Was Abandoned>
I came across that book by chance.
“‘How to Save a World That Was Abandoned’? What kind of title is that…?”
After finishing the purification process and cleaning the cover, I clicked my tongue.
It was said to be the first written item ever recovered from inside a Gate.
But the title sounded like a light novel.
Normally, items found inside Gates are classified military secrets and can’t be taken out easily.
The reason this book ended up in my hands was because it had been contaminated by black fog, and no one could read it.
So a special task force of Awakened asked our research lab to purify it.
It was obvious they wanted to test the black fog purification substance I was developing—“cure-1.”
“I wish it actually contained a real way to save the world, like the title says…”
I flexed my sore hands and opened the book.
I didn’t need to read it myself, but I did—just in case.
Cure-1 was still in clinical testing. It wasn’t perfect yet.
If the book contained anything useful, it would be like hitting the jackpot.
But—
“Are you kidding me?!”
Before even reaching the halfway point, I realized it was a complete waste of time.
With a title like that, and discovered inside a Gate, I expected some grand solution.
Instead, it was just a romance fantasy novel.
“Seriously… what kind of lunatic brings a novel into a Gate mission?”
Someone must have dropped it and been too embarrassed to admit it.
Otherwise, there was no way such a book could have been found inside a Gate.
<How to Save a World That Was Abandoned> was the success story of the heroine, Ruelin, who was separated from her family in an accident as a child. She overcomes hardships, awakens her power, and saves the world.
Maybe because people admired strong and attractive Awakened so much, novels like fanfiction about them had flooded the market and eventually became a popular culture genre.
“Now even medieval settings are trending?”
Aside from the Western background, this novel wasn’t much different.
Gates appear. The world is on the brink of destruction. Cool protagonists show up to save it.
There were even multiple male leads.
Each one had different powers and impressive abilities.
In modern terms, it would be called a reverse harem.
The only somewhat unique part was the heroine’s ability.
“A purifier…”
The reason I kept reading halfway, instead of throwing it away once I realized there were four male lead candidates, was because of that ability.
In the book, the heroine purified the black fog—called “demonic energy.”
Among all the known Awakened abilities, none involved purification.
Even Awakened who were said to be less affected by the black fog eventually went mad and died after long exposure.
This was called “Awakened Rampage,” and the damage it caused was comparable to a Gate outbreak.
That’s why countries all over the world were desperate to find a way to remove the black fog.
And I was one of the few people making meaningful progress in that fierce competition.
Yet among countless possible abilities, the heroine’s power was purification?
“This smells fishy.”
Right now, many groups were trying to block and threaten me.
Some tried to steal samples. Others followed me to dig into my background.
I even received threats from strange cult groups telling me to stop my research immediately.
When an article claimed cure-1 was fake and that I was a fraud who stole investment money, I suffered a lot because of it.
“Well… if this is some kind of provocation saying my claims are no different from fiction… that’s probably just paranoia, right?”
Come on. It was sent by the military. No way.
Feeling uneasy, I continued reading.
In the story, the heroine awakens as a purifier, cleanses areas where Gates appear, and saves the world.
She also removes the demonic energy invading the male leads’ bodies. Love blossoms.
She even becomes the adopted daughter of the Emperor and rises in status.
“…How predictable.”
As a reader, I should have been happy about the heroine’s success.
But instead of joy, I felt discomfort.
Because beneath her success and love was the death of the villain.
The villainess was Duke’s daughter, Edith Blake.
She was born the only daughter of a ducal family that had produced Awakened for generations.
Yet she alone did not awaken and was neglected.
Growing up starved of affection, she couldn’t stand that attention shifted to Ruelin, who appeared like a comet.
She bullied the heroine in various ways, committed evil deeds, and in the end, was abandoned by everyone and died miserably.
The male leads, who had known her since childhood, felt shock and guilt over her death.
The heroine comforted their tired hearts, and that deepened their relationships.
Yes, the villainess’s death was karma.
And yet…
“This is definitely some dirty trick. Where did it come from? Myungha Pharmaceuticals? Donggang Research Lab? You bastards, digging into my past?”
No matter how I thought about it, it wasn’t paranoia.
The villain’s background was way too similar to mine.
I was sure someone had dug up the fact that I was the Supreme Leader’s daughter who never awakened.
If they were trying to plant distrust about me within the government and military, this was a creative—and vicious—method.
“This is ridiculous. Is it a crime not to have powers? Why kill her off like that?”
Just because a child starved for attention caused some trouble, she gets labeled a villain and killed?
And because she had no ability, the Duke removes her from the line of succession and adopts the son of a dead retainer.
That guy was also one of the male lead candidates.
“Even that part is similar. Who’s the author? They didn’t even bother writing their name.”
Before I knew it, I had completely put myself in Edith’s shoes and felt wronged.
Why only show the villain from the heroine’s point of view? Show the villain from the villain’s point of view too.
If Edith was the villain in the heroine’s life, then to Edith, weren’t the Duke and the male leads the villains?
Likewise, in my life, the villains were my biological father and the bastards he registered as his children.
They ruined my life, and the moment I achieved something in my research, he shamelessly contacted me and talked about “family.”
If Edith—or Egypt, whatever—had cut ties early like I did and built her own reputation, she probably would have been flooded with attention from those same people.
In that sense, dying while still begging for love made her look foolish and pathetic.
What’s so great about having powers?
Who cares about family members who don’t love you?
With the status of a duke’s daughter, she could have lived just fine on her own.
If it were me, I would have spat on the backs of those men who abandoned civilians in a crisis.
Then I suddenly came to my senses.
“Am I crazy? It’s already 4 a.m.!”
Even if people call me a ghost who lives in the lab, I still know how to sleep in a proper bed when I’m not busy.
I closed the book and hurriedly packed up.
As soon as I got to my residence, I washed up quickly and lay down.
“I’m exhausted…”
Maybe the absurd novel stirred up old trauma.
Or maybe I failed to notice the similarities before because I had been pretending to be an ordinary person to avoid my father’s attention.
As I fell into a deep sleep, I overlooked the most important unsettling detail in the book.
The purifier.
The trump card I had been hiding from my father all this time.
The supernatural ability I awakened right after leaving that house.
The fact that my power was exactly the same as the heroine’s.
And I had no idea what kind of damn trouble that would bring me.
