The Burden Ledger

Synopsis

In a Seoul plagued by reality-fracturing dungeon gates, nineteen-year-old E-rank porter Kang Ian survives on the bottom rung of raid society. Possessing the cursed innate ability Burden Transfer, Ian can draw any physical trauma, poison, or fatal curse from another person into his own flesh and later discharge it. He endures agonizing fractures and festering lacerations to afford illicit suppressant medication for his younger sister, Soo-ah, who suffers from terminal gate sickness—a horrific condition slowly crystallizing her organs into an active dungeon portal. When Ian absorbs a lethal wound to save his raid leader during a red gate catastrophe, the megalithic Cheongang Guild takes notice. Cheongang offers a permanent stabilizer for Soo-ah in exchange for Ian absorbing the necrotic, unhealable curse eating away at their celebrated S-rank vanguard. Ian accepts the transaction, only to uncover a sinister corporate conspiracy: top guilds have systematically used expendable low-rank awakened as biological waste dumps to absorb the fatal fallout of dungeon anomalies. When his best friend is executed for discovering the guild's secret ledger, Ian is pushed past his moral breaking point. Armed with the law of conserved suffering, he turns the accumulated agony of the awakened elite into an overwhelming weapon of retribution.

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