Chapter 7 : A class Gate – Unwritten Characters (1)

The decision I made was simple.

If the problem was the world getting polluted every time I met Caspar, then I just needed to clean up an equivalent amount.

Not the trivial B-rank or lower Gates that had degenerated into money-making ventures for Hunters…

Yes.
Something considered a disaster, like A-rank or S-rank, should be fine.

Having tested the weaker ranks for a month and finding them trivially easy, I felt it was okay to take more risks.

Then Saradoryeong would understand too.
That I am qualified to go to Hell.

I couldn’t find any information about the S-rank Gate ‘Hell’, no matter how hard I tried, I wonder what trick they used.

I even secretly visited Texas, where Hell supposedly opened, but couldn’t even find the entrance to Hell.

Therefore, for now, I plan to cooperate.
While slowly adapting to this world.

-Click.

I picked up my phone and called Bari.

Normally, I would have called Sol, but Han Sol would be busy working at the Meteorological Administration right now, so she was the only one I could call.

“Ah. Bari. Do you have time now?”

The answer came immediately.

• What is it about? If it’s sufficiently important, I can make time.

“Important… It probably is. I’d like you to issue permission to raid an A-rank Gate.”

• A-rank… you say. It’s obvious it wouldn’t be approved if you inquired formally through the Association, so you contacted me directly.

Unlike B-rank and lower Gates, which only required a Hunter license, A-rank and above required official permission from the Association.
This was because a failed raid could become a national crisis.

That’s why Han Sol, a government-affiliated Hunter, showed up when the Gate I came from first appeared.
She had a somewhat official status.

“That’s right. You know, don’t you? That I’m quite strong.”

• Yes. That’s correct. Although you are designated A-rank, your actual combat power exceeds most S-ranks. Which Gate are you planning to raid?

Actually.
There weren’t many places I could choose.
Mainly because few A-rank Gates remained.

A-rank Gates were usually subjugated as soon as they opened.
There were no exceptions, even if they opened in the deep sea, high in the sky, or even in the territory of other nations unable to handle the Gate on their own.

Because from A-rank onwards, it was no longer just one country’s problem.
It was also the limit of what could be conquered by simply pouring overwhelming firepower into it.

And…

That implied one fact.

Namely, all A-rank Gates that hadn’t been subjugated until now were special cases.
Just like the Gate I came from.

“Bulimmunja. I’m going to raid the A-rank Gate Bulimmunja. Naturally, with a party of one.”
(TL Note: Bulimmunja (불립문자) literally means “not establishing/standing words/letters”. In Zen Buddhism, it refers to the idea that enlightenment cannot be attained through words or scriptures alone. Here, it’s the name of an A-rank Gate.)

The worst A-rank Gate on the Korean Peninsula, opened in the DMZ.
(TL Note: DMZ stands for Demilitarized Zone, the border buffer zone between North and South Korea.)

I will go there.

Perhaps because she was the Association President’s secretary, the processing was fast.

Thanks to her, I could begin the A-rank Gate subjugation less than half a day later.

“…I never thought I’d come here.”

A lush forest that felt unlike Korea, a desolate atmosphere devoid of human presence.

I was alone in the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula.

-Chirp chirp.

The sounds of insects and animal cries could be heard.
The landmines, practically synonymous with the DMZ, were gone.
They had already been removed during previous attempts to subjugate the Gate.

And there was still some distance to go to reach the Demilitarized Zone recognized by the Gate.

This place was merely the boundary of nature that had expanded its territory in the 21st century due to the creation of the A-rank Gate.
I had to go a little further to reach the place where Bulimmunja touched.

-Thud.

I pushed through the undergrowth, walking through the natural forest established on the Korean Peninsula.
As it was still summer, the sun’s heat was intense, and insects and animals appropriate for the season scurried about.

ROK Army tanks and concrete buildings left by civilization occasionally caught my eye.
Fallen signboards were covered in moss, making their contents difficult to discern.

Human civilization was still relatively well-preserved here.

And.

Panmunjom came into view.
(TL Note: Panmunjom is the location within the DMZ where the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement was signed and is now the site of the Joint Security Area (JSA).)

Panmunjom.
In other words, the Joint Security Area.
A place I hadn’t been able to visit even when I was an ordinary Korean man.

There was a signboard with some characters written on it.
It was heavily rusted, so I couldn’t tell what it meant, but something was definitely written there.

Or rather, exactly half of it.

Though rusted together, the right side still had clear indentations, while the left side was completely smooth, as if polished flat.

The feeling was novel, but my head naturally turned towards an even stranger sight.

Because familiar characters were strewn all over the ground.

KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT

The warning, painted in red, was almost like a solid surface rather than a line.

What was even stranger was the sight of the ‘KEEP OUT’ characters neatly carved out, as if erased with an eraser.

The carved-out warning phrases formed a sort of line that stretched endlessly, and that eerie line extended infinitely east and west.

“…Hunter Agathe. Commencing raid on A-rank Gate Bulimmunja.”

I made a short recording and sent it to the Association.
Then I placed my phone beyond the warning line, passed the surface made of warnings, and crossed the sharply cut boundary.

Bulimmunja (不立文字).

A term from Zen Buddhism.
Meaning enlightenment cannot be expressed through any words or letters.

However, the meaning intended by the A-rank Gate ‘Bulimmunja’ was slightly different from the original meaning.

Here, letters could not stand upright.
Literally, characters could not be used.

I could roughly guess the reason.
The DMZ. Isn’t it the number one place on the Korean Peninsula considered untouched by human hands?

Reality might differ, but that perception was crucial.

When the Gate first opened in the DMZ, human civilization living there reportedly regressed instantly to the prehistoric era.

The name for the time before history is prehistory (先史), and since there is no history without writing, it’s a natural consequence.

After a short while, I could feel the strange texture of mana touching my skin.

“Ah.”

Has it begun?

-Ssss.

My name engraved on the gun evaporated.
I checked the product label inside my clothes.

As expected, it was the same.
The expensive designer brand clothes that Han Sol had half-forced me to buy were instantly reduced to counterfeits.

The strange mana was slowly erasing the traces of human civilization.

Next came language.

-Tap.

“—“

My voice wouldn’t come out.
This was why I came here alone.
In a place like this, being with others would quickly lead to losing each other.

It was only called Bulimmunja because writing was the first thing lost, but writing wasn’t the only thing humans lost here.

“…”

Gates paint over the world with their own reality.
They designate new rules, dye the world with their colors, and destroy the existing world.

However, the DMZ’s Gate painted the world in a slightly different way.

Through emptiness.

Have you ever used an eraser on paper blackened with a thick pencil?

The eraser gets stained black, and the paper fades to grey, but the trail left by the eraser is clearly engraved there.

‘Bulimmunja’ was like this too.

Only after crossing the line filled with warning phrases did I finally see humans beyond.

They mostly wore tattered military uniforms, and their mental state looked extremely poor.

They were a familiar type of human.
The kind I had met endlessly and killed endlessly in the Land of Prosperity, half-dead humans.

However……

They didn’t seem threatening at all.

If one chimpanzee and one human fight, the chimpanzee usually wins.
It’s the same even if you increase the number to three, five, or ten.
Because chimpanzees are also animals that live in groups.

But if the number increases to a thousand, it changes.
If 1000 chimpanzees and 1000 humans fight, the humans will definitely win.

Chimpanzees only recognize their own troop, but humans can see beyond that and can unite in larger units.

That is the power of systematized writing and language.
Human civilization was born within transmitted knowledge.

If so, is a human who has lost that any different from an ape?

I thought this while gazing blankly at the people, barely distinguishable whether they were beasts or humans.

“· · – ·　 · · · ·　 · – · ·　 · · · ·　 – · –　 · ·　 · · – – · ·”
(TL Note: Morse code for “HELP ME”)

“· – – ·　 · · · ·　 · – · ·　 – · –　 · · ·　 · – – ·　 · · · ·　 –”
(TL Note: Morse code for “WHO ARE YOU”)

Silent sounds are heard.
Hearing silence, what a strange thing.

The famous metaphor of a ‘soundless scream’ comes to mind.
Like watching a silent film, the life forms here attempted communication with exaggerated gestures that seemed almost comical.

Realizing that language and writing didn’t work, they were trying to communicate in their own way.

It was futile.

Here, communication lost its meaning.
Even violence, the most primitive means of communication, was like that.
Truly, this place was peaceful.

The absence of communication.

Within the narrow area of the Korean Peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone, all forms of communication lost meaning and slowly crumbled away.

That was the identity of the Korean Peninsula’s worst A-rank Gate, Bulimmunja (不立文字).