March 2nd, six years ago.
This was the day Beast’s—no, Brooklyn Morgan’s—husband was killed in an attack.
She had never been the type to count days or commemorate anniversaries. And yet, strangely enough, March 2nd remained deeply engraved in her memory.
“Hmm...”
Brooklyn had possessed two distinctly different personalities since her teenage years, almost as though she wore a mask she could put on and take off at will.
Because of this, she had always struggled to fit into society and spent many years living alone deep in the mountains.
Then, one day, an outsider appeared by chance and showed affection toward her.
Her abnormal childhood had left her with poor social skills.
Unlike her first personality, which was kind and humorous, her other self was impulsive—the sort who, given sufficient knowledge of weapons, might have gone on a shooting spree at any moment.
And yet somehow, that outsider had managed to love even the beastly side of her.
The two women who had been quietly sharing the same body in that remote cabin soon fell in love with the same man.
He understood the Beast’s true nature and accepted it.
That was why the three of them had been able to live together as a peaceful married couple.
No.
Simply calling their life peaceful didn’t quite capture it.
Had those days lasted a little longer, there was a real possibility that the turmoil inside Brooklyn’s mind would gradually have settled.
Perhaps even the problematic personalities within her would have faded away naturally with time.
“March 2nd.”
And then that day came.
The day a certain outsider died.
The day the voice inside her head became clearer.
And the day she gained supernatural powers—
only to discover that she still couldn’t revive the corpse lying before her eyes.
***
Beep. Beep.
Let us continue the dream someone once had.
One day, Brooklyn Morgan received a call from the police on her old cell phone.
They told her that her husband had been caught up in a random murder and had died.
They asked her to come to the hospital and identify the victim.
Not long afterward, Morgan found herself standing before the body.
Cold.
Still.
Just like the corpses so often shown in CSI dramas.
The stiff body, its eyes still open, undeniably belonged to the stranger who had once shared her life.
And yet all traces of the spouse she had loved so dearly seemed to have vanished from it.
“Oh my.”
I liked it when this man smiled.
Does that mean I’ll never see that expression again?
Brooklyn felt a profound sadness at the thought.
Strangely, however, that was the extent of her outward reaction.
Unlike the other bereaved families who received such calls, she did not wail.
She did not shed tears.
She simply stood there with an almost unsettling calm.
Brooklyn had always been unusual when it came to expressing emotion.
But that did not mean she was unaffected.
Her emotions simply did not surface easily.
In truth, her husband’s death inflicted such severe psychological trauma on her that one of her personalities became completely distorted as a result.
Still, whether there truly was a god in this world or not, Brooklyn soon received something in return after losing so much.
An S-rank awakening.
Unfortunately, she felt no excitement whatsoever at the sudden appearance of her supernatural abilities.
She had no desire to become a superhero.
No grand ambitions.
Nothing of the sort.
In the end, she quietly held her husband’s funeral and later confirmed that the young perpetrator responsible for the indiscriminate killings had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
By then, Brooklyn had already returned to her old life.
She lived simply, secluded in a cabin deep in the forest, tending her garden.
From time to time, she ate wild animals caught in traps.
Strangely enough, after her husband’s death, the violent personality that had once caused so many problems never surfaced again.
Brooklyn had never directly communicated with the part of herself that carried that side of her nature, but instinctively, she understood why.
It was probably exhausted by grief.
What a stupid reaction.
It wasn’t as though grieving would bring her dead spouse back.
What possible meaning could there be in wasting emotions on something so useless?
Thud!
Brooklyn brought her axe down into a piece of dry firewood.
Life in the mountains was repetitive and tedious, but hardly leisurely.
Even something as simple as preparing firewood for cooking took time and effort every single day.
And so the newly awakened S-rank of America continued living in isolation, revealing her identity to no one, not even bothering to watch television.
An old-fashioned life untouched by the outside world.
“Hmm.”
About four months passed.
Just when she had begun to think that this peace might continue indefinitely, another disturbance intruded upon her life.
One day, Brooklyn discovered that every rabbit trap she had set around her property had been completely destroyed.
Who the hell would do something like that?
Her husband had once warned her that setting traps could lead to a lawsuit, so she had been careful to place warning signs everywhere, clearly stating that the area was private property and that traps had been set.
And then—
something flew toward her from behind.
A vivid red net.
A unique-rank binding item.
It was an ambush.
Unknown to Brooklyn, someone had already discovered that she was living alone in the cabin.
And because of that, she was about to become the victim of a crime.
“Got you...!”
The instant the woman became entangled in the net, a figure emerged from behind her, breathing heavily as they raised a weapon.
What happened next, however, was not what the attacker had expected.
With a sudden burst of strength, Brooklyn tore apart the net restraining her.
Then, in a single swift motion, she brought her wood axe down on the attacker’s wrist.
“Gaaah!”
“—You can’t kill people, honey.
—You’ll never be able to return to this cabin again.”
Brooklyn remembered the words of her late husband.
And so she restrained the attacker without inflicting any more pain than necessary.
What she had not expected was that the criminal she had captured was actually a serial killer.
Someone who had already committed the very ‘Forbidden act’ many times over.
“Aaah... ugh.”
“Thank you very much for your cooperation with the arrest, ma’am.”
The mysterious awakened person who had attacked her turned out to be a possessor of [Ambition].
A scoundrel born of the new era who repeatedly targeted powerful awakened people in an attempt to steal their abilities.
Several years ago, Brooklyn had personally captured a serial killer in Texas.
To be more precise, the incident occurred at a time when the concept of S-rank Awakeners had not yet become firmly established.
The criminal, himself a B-rank Awakener, had mistakenly assumed that Brooklyn was, at most, an unusually strong A-rank.
So he recklessly attempted to hunt her.
What he failed to realize was that she had simply never used her power before.
Had she chosen to do so, Brooklyn could easily have reduced the entire state of Texas to wasteland.
“Are you alright? You must have been quite startled.”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you managed to subdue that murderer, you must be an exceptionally powerful awakened person. May I ask your name...?”
Brooklyn stood there as the victim of the incident, exchanging a few words with the officer.
Meanwhile, the Texas murderer began shouting from nearby.
“Please spare me! I only wanted to see what kind of abilities she had! I wasn’t planning to kill anyone this time! I swear! I just wanted to ask what she realized from the shock!”
After going through all the trouble of preparing an item and carefully planning the crime, he was now desperately babbling excuses at the last possible moment.
“I just wanted a good skill. I just... I only wanted a good skill...”
Crack!
Immediately afterward, an unexpected sound exploded through the mountain air.
“Damn it!”
“What is this?”
“This is crazy...!”
The officers gathered near the cabin had no idea what had just happened.
Brooklyn herself needed several seconds to process it.
The Texas murderer, who had been securely restrained by a specialized binding device, now lay motionless on the ground.
Dead.
It was almost as though Brooklyn had casually swatted away an insect crawling on her body without thinking.
With a single movement, fast as lightning, she had brought her hands together against the criminal’s head.
And just like that, disaster struck.
“Oh.”
But the real question was—
why had she suddenly resorted to such violence?
Only then did Brooklyn become fully aware of the hatred buried deep within herself.
What had just happened was not the work of her second personality.
Not the violent persona that had remained dormant all this time.
Brooklyn Morgan herself—the personality with at least some understanding of society—had killed the murderer.
“Oh my God.”
At some point, she had come to despise the supernatural powers that had appeared in this world.
Utterly.
Completely.
So when the murderer, even after everything he had done, continued obsessing over the idea of acquiring stronger magic...
Brooklyn found it revolting.
And unable to suppress the disgust rising within her, she crushed the sorcerer’s skull.
What followed was chaos.
By killing the Texas Awakener, Brooklyn inadvertently exposed the immense magical power hidden within her.
Soon afterward, a high-ranking figure in American politics—the person who would later become the Spectrum Guild Leader—approached her with an offer.
They would cover up her crime.
In return, Brooklyn would swear loyalty to them.
Brooklyn accepted.
Perhaps the years she had spent living with her partner had socialized her more than she realized.
“Okay.”
Of course, had the terms of the knight’s oath been too unreasonable, the world would probably have witnessed another major news story that very day.
Fortunately, however, the demands placed upon the newly awakened S-rank Hunter were something she could accept without much resistance.
[Do not harm non-Awakeners without permission.]
Granted, that same higher-up also imposed wages absurdly low for an S-rank hire and saddled her with all kinds of troublesome orders.
But what else could she do?
Even this was less troublesome than making an enemy of a powerful nation.
And so, the United States succeeded in securing an S-rank healer under its control.
The process that followed went more smoothly than anyone had expected.
With the violent persona remaining dormant and only two incomplete identities left behind, Brooklyn discovered that she could navigate society with a surprising degree of gentleness.
“Well, at least I won’t be bored anymore.”
Brooklyn Morgan became the dog of the Spectrum Guild Leader, accepting without complaint the assignments that everyone else hesitated to take.
That was the secret behind her rise to the top.
Unlike Jung Haseong, who voluntarily chose to serve his country, Brooklyn was forced to raid one gate after another in exchange for avoiding imprisonment for her crime.
And because of her oath, she was required to hand over every item she obtained—even treasures that would make ordinary hunters salivate, such as [Dragon’s Heart]—to her superior.
But even then, she didn’t particularly mind.
Ironically, despite being an S-rank Hunter favored by the mana of this world, Brooklyn despised everything related to magic more than anything else.
“Hmm.”
She adapted to her new role as though she were performing onstage, wearing the social mask of the ‘bright and capable Brooklyn Morgan.’
And because she rarely acted impulsively anymore, her superiors gradually began to forget that she had ever suffered from personality problems.
Then, one day, as the anniversary of her husband’s death approached, Brooklyn checked the calendar—
and suddenly heard a low voice whisper in her ear.
Brooklyn.
It was the voice of the one who had been asleep for so long.
The woman inside her mind who had loved the same man.
“Aha.”
It had become far more articulate during its long dormancy.
Before, it had spoken awkwardly, almost like a newborn child.
But now?
Wasn’t it expressing its desires in a surprisingly polite, almost socially appropriate way?
I want to go back.
Back to that blank stretch of life.
Before supernatural powers.
Before her husband.
Back to a time when she had been able to run freely through the mountains, chasing rabbits and listening to no one.
Yeah.
Hunting.
It would be nice to hunt however she pleased again.
But she could no longer simply run wild without consequence.
Too many years had passed.
Acts of violence that might once have been dismissed as the reckless rebellion of a confused young woman would no longer be overlooked.
If she carelessly unleashed her dangerous S-rank power now, she really would end up on death row.
“Ah.”
And then, as if by coincidence, breaking news appeared on a television she had happened to turn on.
[Breaking news: A dangerous monster has escaped from the gate, causing panic...]
It was a report on the [Nuckelavee] incident in Hawaii.
The Spectrum administrator, worried about losing one of his valuable assets, had hesitated to send his ‘slave’ into the field.
But as Brooklyn thought about the situation, an idea occurred to her.
There might be a way for her to run wild without drawing the attention of her superiors.
Not by using the publicly known awakened abilities of ‘Brooklyn Morgan.’
But rather...
Set me free.
By using the power belonging to that voice inside her.
With it, she could simply pretend to be an entirely different awakened person.
What followed was little more than a chain of impulsive decisions.
Driven purely by the desire to indulge in violence however she pleased, Brooklyn Morgan placed another mask over the life she already lived.
An old trophy from some distant hunt.
A souvenir from who knew where.
Nothing more than an ordinary-grade facial ornament.
Then she put on clothing made by stitching together various black animal hides she had collected over years of hunting as a hobby.
“It’s done.”
With both her face and body concealed, she joined the battle against Nuckelavee.
Before long, people came to remember her as the hero who had brought the Hawaii crisis to an end.
And she was given a new name.
‘Beast.’
From then on, as she wandered around the world using the awakening ability she kept hidden from the public, she treated this secret second life as little more than a way to relieve stress.
A novelty.
A diversion.
A chance to do things the public persona of Brooklyn Morgan could never do.
“Hmm?”
Then, one day, while traveling the world under the guise of her hidden identity, Brooklyn discovered a new dungeon inside a cave on a small uninhabited island.
Wooong...
A brilliantly colored light.
The unmistakable sign of an EX-rank.
In a sense, that was where all the trouble began.
The reason Beast suddenly started killing people.
The reason Brooklyn became obsessed with preserving her anonymity.
And the reason she would eventually cross paths with a young hero and a con artist inside an ordinary C-rank dungeon.
In truth, if one traced everything back far enough—
all of this tragedy had begun with that single gate.