## Chapter 36 – 36. Gate
(This chapter contains illustrations, so if you do not want to see them, please hide the illustrations through the settings in the upper right corner.)
#36. Gate
Humanity is dying every day, without rest.
The financial damage is incalculable.
It was a disaster caused by the existence of monsters.
So, where did the monsters come from?
“Haa…”
I pushed my dizzy head back and looked around.
Cold breath flowed out.
The sky was full of gray clouds, and the surroundings were endlessly 이어져 fields of pure white snow.
It was the first time in my life that I had seen a snowy landscape.
“Ugh…”
Just then, Choi Hye-na complained of a headache and regained her senses.
She’s waking up late, too.
She was even later than me for the appointment earlier.
Of course, she wasn’t late for the appointment, but once you’ve got a bee in your bonnet, you want to nitpick at everything.
“W-Where is this…?”
Choi Hye-na seemed stunned by the grandeur of the snowy field, where cold breath came out and snowstorms raged, after being in a concrete jungle.
“Where else would it be?”
At this point, I couldn’t deny or pretend not to know what had happened.
“It’s inside a gate.”
***
Gates, along with monsters, are one of the disasters that have threatened humanity since ancient times.
Before detectors were invented, it was impossible to predict when and where gates would appear.
And to top it off, after a certain amount of time, they even spew out monsters.
What a pain in the ass.
Moreover, if you ask if there were no casualties due to gates even after detectors were invented, that’s not the case.
Even in modern times, the casualties caused by monsters were so enormous that they could not be ignored.
Even with detectors, they couldn’t cover the entire Earth, and it was quite common for monsters from countries that had already been ruined by gates to attack residents of nearby villages.
Special cases like undiscovered gates were also one of the main factors threatening the lives of ordinary people.
And like undiscovered gates, there was another special type of gate.
“…An isolated gate.”
Isolated gates, known as the worst disaster for ordinary people, suck in the surrounding life forms as soon as they appear.
What’s even more vicious is that immediately after sucking in life forms, the gate itself locks itself, making it impossible to send rescue from the outside or escape from the inside.
Isolated gates open about a week later.
During that time, the probability of an ordinary person surviving the harsh environment and ferocious monsters inside the gate was close to zero.
Of course, you could escape if you destroyed the core inside the gate, but you’d have a better chance of surviving by digging a hole and hiding underneath it. Because the boss guards the gate’s core.
“A gate… That’s ridiculous…”
“Stop denying reality and get up already?”
Leaving Choi Hye-na, who I didn’t know if she was denying reality or just frustrated, I looked around again.
‘Hoo…’
It’s cold.
It’s so cold I can’t even speak.
It must be well below -30 degrees Celsius.
Moreover, the snowstorm hitting like a knife was lowering the perceived temperature even further.
It was even colder because I was wearing relatively thin clothes like a short-sleeved shirt and jeans.
‘Putting the cold aside, what’s the gate’s rank?’
Unfortunately, in such a terrible environment, it couldn’t be a low rank. But if it was C-rank, there would be some hope of escape.
But if it was higher than that…
“…Shit.”
First, to avoid encountering monsters as much as possible, I had to find a place to use as a hideout.
The direction didn’t matter.
I had seen in a textbook that the inside of a gate is not like a very large planet like Earth, but a place where only a part of another dimension is cut off and placed.
Since the starting point is a snowy field, no matter where I go, I’ll only find a snowy field with snowstorms. But if I’m lucky, I might find a forest or cave to avoid the snowstorm.
A place that fits the theme of a snowy field will appear.
‘…First, it’s better to turn my back to the snowstorm.’
If I went in the direction the snowstorm was blowing, the cold wind would tear the skin off my face.
Of course, turning my back to the snowstorm didn’t mean it wasn’t cold. It was just as cold.
The only good thing was that I had a fur coat in my inventory, and if I circulated the fire element through my magic circuit, it wouldn’t be cold enough to die.
“W-Wait a minute!”
“?”
I turned my head and saw Choi Hye-na standing there, shivering.
She looks like a rabbit.
“W-Where are you going? If this is a gate, we should wait for rescue!”
“…Did you sleep during gate class at school?”
“I, I… Achoo! I, I didn’t go to school…?”
Ah.
I thought she was rude because she didn’t receive a proper family education, but she didn’t receive a school education either.
I suddenly feel sorry for Choi Hye-na.
“W-What! Why are you looking at me like that… Achoo!!”
“Never mind.”
In fact, Choi Hye-na didn’t go to school because of magic education, but she was already a prodigy who had finished higher education at the age of 14.
“This is an isolated gate. We can’t escape or wait for rescue right now.”
I don’t have good feelings for Choi Hye-na, but I couldn’t leave a poor kid who didn’t go to school behind.
“What…?”
“There are only two ways to escape from here. Either endure until the gate opens, or destroy the gate’s core ourselves.”
As I said before, if the gate’s rank exceeds C, it would be impossible for just the two of us to destroy the core.
“…A week.”
“I’m telling you in advance, you know we can’t catch the gate boss by ourselves, right?”
“I know that too!”
The existence that guards the core, the source of the gate, is the boss.
The boss, who has a different level of strength than the elite individuals I caught before, was an opponent that two mages, who are back-line classes, could never catch.
‘…I need to move before the sun sets.’
To spend tonight safely, I didn’t have time to be doing this.
I had to keep moving in the direction I was originally going.
“W-Where are you going?”
Choi Hye-na grabbed me.
“What, are you going to stay here then?”
“…”
After that, there was no conversation between us.
We just kept walking forward aimlessly, leaving footprints on the snowy field where we sank up to our ankles.
How long had it been?
Thud, I heard something fall behind me.
“…Choi Hye-na?”
Choi Hye-na’s lips, which had fallen on the snowfield, were blue, and her body was as cold as ice.
Wasn’t she a fire mage? The Seongbuk Choi family is famous for handling powerful flames even among the elemental types, right?
If that’s the case, she should be more resistant to the cold than me.
“Damn it.”
Even though she’s a rude bitch with nothing but her face and body to offer, I couldn’t just leave her like this.
Even if she’s rude, she didn’t do anything wrong enough to be left to freeze to death.
I hurriedly took out a fur coat from my inventory and put it on her, then carried her on my back.
“I need to find a place to rest.”
I can’t even light a fire in this snowstorm.
But if I look for a shelter at the same pace as before, Choi Hye-na will die before that.
Whoosh-
In the end, I had no choice but to run.
The reason I hadn’t been running until now was to conserve magic power and stamina, and to avoid being detected by monsters.
But now I didn’t have time to worry about that.
Running on the snowy field wasn’t easy, but now I had no choice but to keep running.
At the same time, I kept looking around.
But here’s snow, there’s snow. In this all-white world, I couldn’t see a forest of trees.
“Ugh, ugh…”
“Choi Hye-na! Wake up!”
I had no choice but to increase my speed even more.
I don’t know what kind of luck I had, but I hadn’t seen a single monster even though I had been running for quite a while.
It was a miracle.
And as if the miracle was continuing, I soon found a small cave under a rather steep cliff.
“There.”
I immediately changed direction and ran towards the cave.
Thanks to the fact that it was closer than I thought, I arrived at the cave quickly.
But the inside of the cave was shallower than I thought. Even if I went all the way to the back, the cold air from outside was still blowing in.
Instead, thanks to that, the misfortune of another monster occupying the place didn’t happen.
“It seems difficult to find another place now…”
I had no choice but to cut the tent in my inventory and block the entrance. But I still had to make a small gap for air to pass through, so it was still cold.
But instead of just complaining, I had to be grateful that the snowstorm wasn’t coming in.
Finally, I spread out the remaining spare tent and lit a fire.
“Choi Hye-na! Hey, wake up!”
I gently patted Choi Hye-na’s cheek, who I had carefully laid down, and called out to her, but she didn’t answer.
I was worried that something big had happened, but fortunately, she was still breathing. But her body was too cold.
“It doesn’t seem like the temperature control system inside the tent will work either.”
Certainly, the latest tents have a function that automatically adjusts the internal temperature.
But that only maintains a moderately comfortable temperature as the upper limit, and it can’t raise the temperature enough to make you sweat because it’s hot.
“…I have no choice.”
Choi Hye-na will throw a fit when she wakes up later, but there’s an item called emergency evacuation in the criminal law.
I’m doing this to save her life, so if she has any shame, she shouldn’t say anything to me.
I carefully took off the fur coat that Choi Hye-na was wearing.
And I even took off her unnecessarily wide-brimmed hat and the cape that covered her shoulders to prevent her body temperature from being taken away by her wet clothes.
“…”
Unlike her pale face, Choi Hye-na’s upper chest looked warm and soft.
“Let’s get a grip.”
I lightly patted my cheek and focused again.
In fact, the only clothes Choi Hye-na was wearing now were a thin dress and underwear that would be covering her precious parts.
It was my first time taking off a dress, so I had some trouble, but I revived my experience from Iris and managed to take it off somehow.
“Wow…”
Choi Hye-na’s underwear, which was color-coordinated in red, was unbelievably sexy.
Come to think of it, neither Iris nor Cheon Yeo-hwa were wearing modern underwear, so this was my first time seeing women’s underwear.
And it was also my first time taking it off.
As I carefully released the hook on the back, Choi Hye-na’s large breasts popped out as if something that had been sealed was being released.
Her cute nipples were, as expected, light pink.
Her breasts themselves were also very pretty. Even if a craftsman sculpted them delicately, they wouldn’t be able to create such a beautiful teardrop shape.
Without realizing it, I massaged Choi Hye-na’s breasts.
The soft and bouncy texture was excellent.
But unlike what I saw on the outside, it was slightly cold.
Only then did I realize the seriousness of the situation again and quickly took off her panties as well.
I almost wavered slightly at the appearance of her tightly closed 1-shaped pussy, but I quickly took off my clothes and hugged Choi Hye-na, naked.
As expected, Choi Hye-na’s body was cold.
I slowly raised my magic power and warmed my body.
And so, I, who had become a human hot pack, spent the night with Choi Hye-na.
Squeeze, squeeze.
Of course, until right before I fell asleep, I filled my selfish desires by massaging Choi Hye-na’s large breasts and her buttocks, which seemed capable of handling five twins.
It was the price for talking rudely to someone you just met.
