The Strongest Sentinel Wants to Be His Hard-Luck Guide's Dog - Chapter 1

I was getting beaten up.

My rank was low, so my guidance worked slowly. The sentinel assigned to me couldn’t get any relief from his agitation, which meant he could only take it out on me.

I curled up on the floor with my arms over my head.

Just endure a little longer. At this rate, I’d qualify for another day of injury leave.

Then an S-rank alarm blared through the Central Tower.

【ALERT! ALERT! SSS-RANK SENTINEL YOU RAN’S BERSERK INDEX HAS EXCEEDED 95%. FULL BERSERK STATE ESTIMATED IN THIRTY MINUTES. ALL CENTRAL TOWER PERSONNEL, EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!】

【WARNING! WARNING! ONCE THE SENTINEL GOES BERSERK, THE TOWER’S SELF-DESTRUCT SYSTEM WILL ACTIVATE TO MINIMIZE LOSSES. EVACUATE THE CENTRAL TOWER AT ONCE!】

Two hours earlier, an S-rank portal had opened in the central district.

Countless powerful aberrations poured through it, devouring untold numbers of people in moments and leaving a vast swath of ruins behind.

Fortunately, an SSS-rank sentinel had wiped them out almost immediately.

The victory report had barely finished airing when this alarm followed on its heels.

The C-rank sentinel who had been beating me stamped on my foot and fled in a panic.

Everyone in the tower scrambled out however they could. Soon, the entire Central Tower stood empty.

No one cared about the guide who had broken through the bottom limit of the ranking system.

No one cared about the sentinel who had broken through its upper limit, either.

Before today, he and I had been as far apart as the clouds and the mud.

Yet today, without anyone needing to say it aloud, we had both been abandoned.

I gave a bitter smile and wiped the wetness from my face. Then I pushed myself off the floor and limped toward the elevator.

SSS-rank sentinels always received guidance on the top floor of the Central Tower.

I pressed the button for the eighty-eighth floor.

I wasn’t trying to play the saint.

When it came down to it, I wasn’t even qualified to pity anyone.

I just thought that You Ran was both the hero who protected the Blue Planet and a nineteen-year-old kid.

For him to die like this would be too desolate. Too lonely.

I couldn’t escape anyway.

I might as well keep him company on the way out.

Even the elevator took forever to climb that high.

I used the mirror inside to wipe the blood from the corner of my mouth, dusted off my clothes, and straightened them as best I could.

If I was going to die, I at least wanted to look respectable.

When the doors opened, I walked toward the only confinement room on the top floor, built entirely from specialized materials.

The staff had fled in such a hurry—and the tower was about to be destroyed anyway—that they had even forgotten to shut the door.

From the hallway, I saw the man strapped to the guidance table inside.

His hands, feet, mouth, even his eyes had been tightly restrained. Countless monitoring probes were attached to his body, their leads running to banks of equipment.

Every machine was sounding an alarm.

Restraint straps could only hold a sentinel who had not yet gone fully berserk.

Once You Ran crossed that line, the entire tower would be reduced to rubble.

I limped over and half-sat on the floor beside the guidance table, studying him.

He really was young.

His hair was a little long, spilling around him in disarray, and his skin was pale and taut. Emotional overload had pulled every muscle in his body tight, making the strength in him almost palpable.

If I hadn’t looked closely, I never would have noticed that the black blindfold was damp.

He was afraid too.

Who wouldn’t be afraid to die?

I took his hand and soothed him. “Don’t be scared. I’ll die with you.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I gave a self-mocking laugh.

Ordinarily, someone like me would never even get to see someone like You Ran. He didn’t take the stairs or the elevator to reach the top floor.

He just flew up.

Now some complete stranger he had never met was inexplicably announcing that he would die with him.

If You Ran had been conscious, he probably would have been speechless.

His hand was the only part of him that could still move. His fingers clamped hard around my fingertips.

The next instant, something inside me was wrenched away like an ocean being drawn out in one violent, unending tide.

The stimulation was so intense that heat flooded my whole body for no apparent reason.

In the blink of an eye, I lost all reason.

I had no idea what I did after that.

By the time my senses returned, a long while had passed.

The Central Tower was still standing.

You Ran and I were both alive.

He seemed to have fallen unconscious. At some point, all the alarms had stopped.

My head was foggy.

Then I realized I was sprawled over You Ran’s waist and abdomen.

He was still restrained, but his clothes were in disarray. I had undone his pants, and everything below was a mess.

The scene was spectacularly indecent.

It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me.

Had I—had I raped an SSS-rank sentinel?

Oh my God.

I might as well have died.

True, You Ran’s berserk index had dropped to fifty percent, exactly the threshold for safety.

But that couldn’t possibly have been my doing.

I was just a useless F-rank guide. I could barely guide a C-rank sentinel.

I was mortified. And terrified.

I desperately wanted to run.

Sentinels were proud creatures. Once he found out that some worthless guide had gotten it into his head to die beside him—and then gone insane and ridden him—his pride would take a devastating blow.

If I didn’t escape, he might torture me to death. Sentinels loved tormenting people.

Except he was still gripping my hand with all his strength.

With no other choice, I pried You Ran’s fingers loose one by one. I put his clothes back in order, wiped away the unidentified fluids, and fled on shaking legs, limping as fast as I could.

I really wanted to throw myself out a window and be done with it.

Then I looked down from one and discovered I was afraid of heights.

All of a sudden, dying sounded a little frightening.

I chickened out. Then I doubled back and wiped my fingerprints off the elevator buttons.

Just in case, I found the surveillance room and erased the footage too.

Luckily, someone had once dragged me in to cover a night shift, so my retinal data was already registered. Otherwise, there would have been no escaping death.

I returned to the C-rank guidance room on the first floor, completely spent.

I collapsed onto the guidance table and sank into a sleep I couldn’t wake from, one nightmare chasing the next.