Chapter 1 : Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My name is Cain Lake.

Damn it. This cursed name clings to my tongue like bitter ash, and no matter how many times I hear it, it still disgusts me.

In any case, I am the eldest son of the dust-covered Count’s House of Lake, a family shoved into the far northern edge where only the cold winds linger.

They call me the eldest young lord, but in truth, I am nothing more and nothing less than the rotten signboard of a ruined noble house, eaten away and collapsing from within.

The place where I set my feet is the Jeyram Kingdom.

It is a kingdom barely breathing, hanging precariously from the southern edge of the vast Graheim Continent.

One strong, two middling, two weak.

They dress it up with grand words like balance of power, but in truth, it is a weak nation that can do little but watch the great powers’ moods.

And among them, our kingdom belongs to the two weakest.

The Count’s House of Lake is a ruined house even within that weak nation, abandoned in the northern borderlands, splendid in name alone while its insides are hollow, rotten, and falling apart.

“Ugh… my head.”

A splitting headache throbbed through my skull, as if I had been struck with a hammer.

When I looked around, an unfamiliar darkness was wrapped around me.

The sensation of a hard, cold floor pressed vividly against my back.

A faintly visible cave ceiling.

Damp, sinister air seeped deep into my lungs.

The stench of mold mixed with the fishy smell of blood, making me sick.

“Where… in the world am I?”

My voice came out cracked like grains of sand.

The last thing I remembered was Owen Hennes’s bastard face, and then the knife-hand of a knight flying in from behind and striking the nape of my neck, knocking me unconscious.

Who was Owen Hennes?

He was the heir of the Viscount’s House of Hennes, the most influential family near our count’s estate.

Since our territories were close, we had known each other since childhood, and he was a worthless lout who had always nursed an inferiority complex toward me.

‘I never thought that bastard would ambush and abduct me.’

To think he used an escort knight to abduct me because he could not beat me with skill.

Once I get out, I will not let him get away with it.

But right now, there was a bigger problem than that.

There were strange memories filling my head.

They were mingling with the memories of someone who was not me, colliding violently and throwing me into confusion.

Why on earth…?

“A past life…?”

That unfamiliar word slipped out of my mouth before I realized it.

When I opened my eyes, the life of a man named Kim Su-ho, who had lived in another dimension with the strange name of Earth, was playing vividly through my mind like a panorama.

It was unbelievable, but I had recalled the memories of a past life.

Cain Lake and Kim Su-ho.

Two lives, two selves, clashed violently and tangled into one.

Why had such an absurd phenomenon happened?

Was it the shock from being struck on the nape?

Or because I had passed out?

But no matter how I looked at it, that did not seem to be the case.

I had once clung to the sword like a madman.

Did I really think I had never been struck on the nape and knocked unconscious during training?

So it was not convincing enough to call that the cause of this strange phenomenon.

If there was anything else different, it had to be this accursed environment.

The damp cave walls and the fishy stench of monsters that pierced my nose.

All of it proved the dreadful fact that I had been thrown into the entrance of a dungeon.

‘Could it be that the shock of entering a dungeon awakened the memories of my sealed past life?’

That seemed the most likely possibility.

After all, a dungeon was an unknown space where the laws of this world were twisted.

It would not be strange for all kinds of bizarre phenomena to occur there.

Pressing hard against my throbbing temple, I desperately began sorting through the chaos in my head.

Kim Su-ho’s memories were unfamiliar, yet so clear it was chilling.

‘The Tower, the Awakened, Hunters, mana… and Summoners.’

Kim Su-ho’s world, Earth, was similar to this place and yet fundamentally different.

Swords and magic existed there as they did here, but from the number of moons floating in the sky to the strange system called the ‘Hunter System’ that ruled society, it was decisively different.

Hunters.

The Awakened, who gained transcendent abilities through a phenomenon called ‘awakening’.

And Kim Su-ho, in other words, the me of my past life, had also been a Hunter awakened as a ‘Summoner’.

Of course, the strength of a Summoner depended entirely on what kind of summoned creature he could call forth….

‘Damn it! I was a talentless low-grade Summoner.’

The more I searched through the memories, the more bitter they became.

Among all the Summoner-type jobs, mine had been at the very bottom, the lowest grade.

At best, I could summon low-level monsters crawling around the dungeon floor, things like goblins or slimes.

‘Whether in this world or in my past life, am I doomed to remain trash in the end? I am sick of this.’

A self-mocking laugh slipped out.

What a filthy, stubborn fate.

‘But what does any of that matter now?’

This world had no such thing as a Hunter System.

So the memories of my past life should have been nothing more than useless fragments of the past.

That was how it should have been.

【Status Window】

: Cain Lake

: Summoner EX (LV.1)

: Random Summon (LV.MAX) / Unsummon (LV.MAX) / Subspace (LV.1) / Knight Order (LV.1) / Charisma (LV.1)

: None.

If only that Status Window had not been hovering before my eyes, sitting there like a ghost in one corner of my vision.

‘Why? Why in the hell is this damned Status Window showing up before my eyes?’

This was not the Earth I knew.

It was another world, and a corner of a dungeon at that.

Yet as if a second life had been forcibly started, a completely reset level 1 Status Window was floating before my eyes.

And what was that EX attached to the end of the job name?

It was a grade I had never seen before.

‘Damn it… I am fairly sure I was at least over level 30 in my past life.’

Seeing the blank level 1 Status Window made my stomach twist.

It felt as though everything I had barely managed to achieve through struggle had all come to nothing.

And there was one more thing that differed from the memories of my past life.

Knight Order?

What in the world was this skill I had never even heard of?

It was a skill I had never once seen in my past life.

When I focused my awareness on the Knight Order skill, I could faintly understand its effect.

It had the function of storing beings called forth through Random Summon and summoning them again.

‘This is an incredible windfall, is it not? I can store summoned creatures?’

If this skill had existed from the beginning, the Summoner job that had been treated with contempt would have soared in value overnight.

Random Summon, where I never knew what would come out each time, was no different from pouring water into a bottomless jar.

A powerful being might appear, but most of the time, the result was either garbage or a low-level monster.

‘That is why Summoners were treated like trash. A damned game of chance.’

It seemed that the Knight Order skill was a special privilege that came with the EX-grade job.

Of course, where there was gain, there was also loss.

The problem was that a damned cooldown had been attached to Random Summon.

‘Only once a week? Are they joking? What is this, some event participation reward?’

Were they trying to stop me from drawing summoned creatures without limit?

Petty bastards.

Even so, the gains far outweighed the losses.

The ability to store summoned creatures was an enormous advantage.

In conclusion, compared to my past life as a Hunter, my current situation was very slightly more hopeful.

One might call it a single ray of light.

Moreover, if I wanted to survive here, everything I was seeing before my eyes had to be real, not some damned hallucination.

Because Owen, that bastard, had undoubtedly thrown me into this wretched dungeon.

‘If this is a dream or a hallucination, I am as good as dead here.’

My attacks, unable to carry mana, would not work on dungeon monsters.

In other words, my bare fists or kicks could not so much as scratch those things.

That meant I could never escape this hellish place through my strength alone.

“Whether it works or not, I have to try something. First, I should summon.”

My job had changed from the low-grade Summoner of the past into an EX-grade Summoner.

Would that not mean the odds of drawing an excellent summoned creature had increased?

Could I not allow myself to hope at least once?

With desperate expectation in my heart, I activated the skill.

“Random Summon!”

When I activated the skill, countless clusters of light embroidered the air, swirling violently before condensing into a single point. Then they began to take on the shimmering shape of a person.

At last, a radiance bright enough to blind me burst forth like an explosion. When the streams of light slowly faded, a stranger stood quietly in their place, emanating a sacred aura.

‘Oh! At least it is humanoid. Good, very good. This is not a bad start.’

A slender figure and a tall, striking frame.

Her flawless, pure beauty captured my gaze at once, the kind that would have made talent scouts stop her in the street immediately if this had been Earth in my past life.

As my gaze moved past the finely shaped bridge of her nose, unusually long and pointed ears caught my eye.

Long ears?

It seemed I had drawn a being that was not an ordinary human.

“I pledge all my loyalty to you, great Summoner! Seirei, a faithful apostle who carries the word of God, greets my lord.”

No sooner had Seirei’s ringing greeting ended than unfamiliar scenes seeped forcefully into my mind.

They were her final moments.

* * *

Seirei stood alone, a pitch-black hood pulled low over her face, gripping a sword imbued with holy light.

The shadow cast behind her was endlessly heavy and mournful, as if she were shouldering all the sorrow in the world.

Rain poured down in thick torrents as though a hole had opened in the sky, making her appearance seem even more pitiful.

“O God! Why do You lay such a harsh trial upon me!”

“I… I merely believed in Your word and spread Your will to those lowly people!”

“And yet, why is this nameless punishment what has returned to me! What cruel betrayal is this!”

Seirei’s desperate cries were swallowed by the pouring rain and scattered into the air, while the indifferent God answered only with silence to the end.

“You have even taken my name from me. You have mercilessly stolen every memory I built up!”

“Now… before long, even my once-unshakable faith in You will fade like mist.”

“At the end of it lies the complete extinction of my faith. In the end, are You not driving me toward such a miserable death!”

As if she could never accept it, Seirei violently shook her head.

Her wet hair scattered fiercely.

“I have always obeyed Your will… but in this moment alone, I cannot do so. No, I will not do so!”

“And so I shall… this time alone, defy Your will by my own choice! This final choice alone!”

With that resolute cry, Seirei adjusted her grip on the holy, shining sword into a reverse hold and looked up at the empty ash-gray sky.

At that moment, lightning burst forth and cruelly split the night sky, and beneath that flash, Seirei’s face was revealed.

Tears streamed endlessly.

Thick trails of water drew miserable lines down her cheeks.

Only the cold rain barely concealed the sorrowful tears of one abandoned by God.

“O God… my one and only God, whose name has now been taken from me and whom I no longer dare call….”

“I… want to believe in You until my final moment. Please… please remember me….”

Seirei spat out her final words with an anguish that seemed to tear blood from her heart, then, without hesitation, drove the blade deep into her own heart.