Chapter 4
Maybe supernatural phenomena were much closer to us than we thought.
Now that he had approached a truth of the world no ordinary person should know and stepped into the curse of knowledge.
If you were wondering what Kang Yul was doing…
Clang—! Clang—!! Clang—!!!
"Haa… haa… haaah…!"
…he was gripping a pickaxe in both hands, drenched in sweat as he diligently dug into one side of the cavern.
Forget the truth of the world—if he couldn't find something worth money within five days, he'd be kicked out onto the streets.
To Kang Yul, that reality was more frightening than supernatural phenomena, so instead of picking up a pen to reveal the truth of the world, he picked up a pickaxe that could earn him money right away.
But.
"Please…!"
Clang—!
"Give me something I can sell…!"
Clang—!
"Come out…!"
Clang—!
Three hours had passed since he started mining without a break.
Kang Yul hadn't found a single valuable mineral, or even a bone fragment large enough to sell.
'Why are these damn bones so pointlessly hard and huge…!'
The unidentified gigantic bones supporting the cavern.
They were so hard that the pickaxe couldn't even scratch them, and every one was enormous.
Clearly, even a small piece would fetch a fortune, but Kang Yul couldn't do anything against their size and hardness.
So in the end, he'd chosen the mining work he was doing now.
He was hoping to get lucky and find minerals, or make an exit leading outside.
But.
Clang—!
If there was one thing Kang Yul had overlooked…
Clang—!!
it was that mining wasn't something an ordinary person could just do because they wanted to.
Clang—!!!
How could an ordinary person manage something even skilled miners found difficult?
Clatter—!
"Haa… haa… I-I can't…! I can't do this!"
Kang Yul flung away the pickaxe and lay flat on the floor, panting hard.
At this rate, rather than striking it rich, he was sure to dry up and die first.
So he needed to find another way.
After panting heavily for a while and thinking over his options, Kang Yul chose…
Ding—!
<Hunter Gallery>
*[Title: Buying Anything—Rare Minerals or Supernatural Byproducts. Bartering OK]
…the supernatural something pretending to be human that had infiltrated Hunter Gal.
It was suspicious, but Kang Yul's situation was so hopeless that unless he put his hopes in such a being, there was no way to change it.
'So this is what it feels like to have no one I can share my secret with….'
He'd thought about it over and over.
Maybe he should just screw his eyes shut, go to the Hunter Management Bureau or a big corporation, and tell them he had this class and these skills.
But after imagining the thousands of possible scenarios that would follow, the result was always the same.
No matter what, they all led to a bad ending where he became either a slave or an experimental subject.
He'd also learned the lesson that humans corrupted by greed were more dangerous than some unknown supernatural being.
'I thought I'd go insane, so I decided to rule out telling anyone at all….'
He had to, if only for his mental health.
Once suspicion had taken root, it sank in deep and kept sprouting again and again, so the only solution was not to leave room for it at all.
Anyway, after thinking through every other possibility, he arrived at the conclusion to turn to the supernatural being on the Gallery.
'There was a time when the Gallery was buzzing about intelligent beings being found inside gates. Maybe this is related.'
Back then, he'd brushed it off as nothing more than an urban-legend-level rumor.
Gates had appeared in the world, and Hunters had come into being, so why wouldn't there be beings from other dimensions?
Above all, his skill had explicitly identified it as a 'being from another dimension.'
'So whatever the outcome, I need to make contact at least once.'
Not knowing something you didn't know was ignorance, but.
Pretending not to know when you could find out was irresponsible.
And if he planned to live as a Hunter, that sort of behavior would surely come back to hurt him someday, so sooner or later he needed to confront it.
Having reached that conclusion, Kang Yul clicked on the Gallery post.
───
[Title: Buying Anything—Rare Minerals or Supernatural Byproducts. Bartering OK]
[Friendly Merchant*]
I buy all minerals, ores, and supernatural byproducts
Purchases will be made using the poster's exchange skill
Unknown rank OK
Unappraised materials OK
Items with unknown names OK
Post a photo or brief description and I can check their approximate value
Cash transactions available
For rare materials, bartering is preferred
Barter list
: weapons, armor, exploration equipment, potions, skill books, special items, etc…
※ Anything obtained inside a gate is welcome
※ No scammers or people just fishing for information
Slow to check comments
Leave me a message and I'll check it
The post's contents were just as he remembered from before.
He'd heard that the post hadn't been changed in years.
Perhaps because of that shtick, the merchant was fairly well known within the Gallery.
But as he read on while thinking that…
The moment he saw the last line of the post… one he'd never seen before, Kang Yul instinctively realized.
*※ Sell items of unclear origin here <Link>
───
[Comments]
"…."
That final link probably wasn't visible to ordinary people.
It was designed to be seen only by supernatural beings living among us.
#####
*※ Sell items of unclear origin here <Link>
It was a suspicious link no matter how you looked at it.
Normally, Kang Yul would probably have hit the back button without thinking and gone to look at another post.
It'd be more useful to his future to read even one more information post than to visit a site that looked like it would spread a virus.
But this time was different.
'There must be a reason.'
There had to be a reason his new skill went out of its way to distinguish beings from other dimensions.
Maybe he could get something that would help him explore gates.
Conversely, maybe it was marked separately because they were dangerous beings.
Or it could be both.
So Kang Yul decided to click the link, even if it meant taking a bit of a risk.
If he had to find out either way, he decided now was the best time, when he had the least to lose.
It might have been an irresponsible choice, but even just ten years ago, being a Hunter was a 3D job where you were lucky just to make it back alive.
'Things are more or less standardized now, so gates can be explored safely, but the vanguard teams still face the same dangers.'
Whether it was a gate where powerful supernatural creatures had to be hunted.
Or a gate that had to be conquered by figuring out its hidden rules.
In the end, it was the Hunters who entered first who went through hell and standardized the rules.
And those who took all those risks and came back alive received rewards to match—and became so enamored with them that they couldn't give up the Hunter life.
That, too, was what being a Hunter meant.
'What I felt yesterday must be one of those reasons, too.'
He still remembered it vividly.
The relief of surviving after gaining a skill, and the dopamine rush that came right after, as if his brain were melting.
Maybe the reality of the Hunter industry was that only people who'd gone crazy from repeating that experience remained.
'I don't want to become that much of a lunatic, but….'
Still, a dopamine party where he bathed in 50,000-won bills might be worth trying.
If he got even greedier, he also wanted to pile up gold and eat it as a side dish with his meals.
So, if only to enjoy that kind of luxury someday.
*※ Sell items of unclear origin here <Link>
Kang Yul clicked the link to investigate the unknown supernatural phenomenon.
And at that moment.
Thump—!
Something fell behind him.
Startled by the sudden noise, he reflexively turned around and saw an old wooden box and a note lying on the floor.
"…."
For a box to appear so suddenly in a place where no one else was around was suspicious and bizarre.
Kang Yul's heart pounded like mad, warning him to run out of the gate right away.
But Kang Yul did the opposite. He forced himself to ignore his racing heart, unfolded the note, and checked its contents.
──────────
Think of what you desire.
Put in what you can afford to lose.
Close the box.
Then the box will pay its price.
──────────
"…."
The note's contents were vague, as if the subject had been omitted somewhere.
But they weren't impossible to infer, so I figured it was probably explaining how to make a transaction.
Think of the payment you want, then put the item you're selling into the box.
After that, close the box and wait, and you'll be paid an amount corresponding to its value.
Something along those lines, anyway.
'I'd like to check if I'm right….'
Checking wasn't all that difficult.
It was a simple matter of putting in any item and closing the box.
But the problem was that he didn't know what kind of disadvantage might come from doing this.
What if the item I put in wasn't good enough?
There was a high chance something bad would happen to me.
In the Hunter world, it was common knowledge that supernatural phenomena involving offerings usually punished you if the offering failed to meet a certain threshold.
So it would be best to put something valuable in, if possible….
'…Come to think of it, the poster said anything obtained inside a gate was welcome, right?'
I looked around.
There were impossibly hard bones, a crude little tunnel he'd only half-dug, and weathered soil somewhere between dirt and stone piled nearby.
I grabbed a handful of that weathered soil and thought.
'This was technically obtained inside a gate, so it should be okay…?'
It was a bit of a stretch, but this was weathered soil from a gate with the grandiose name 'Primordial Land - Terra.'
Surely it had to be useful somewhere.
'It's not like I have anything else to put in, anyway.'
He would've liked to put in one of those gigantic bones, but what couldn't be done, couldn't be done.
Thinking he'd just take the plunge and see what happened, whether it turned out well or badly, he put the weathered soil into the wooden box.
And at the same time, he prayed fervently.
'I need money! Money I can use right now! I need money in my account, which has only 921 won left!'
How long did he pray?
He briefly wondered if he should've brought water from the purifier and put it on a plate to pray over, but then…
Click—!
He heard the wooden box open. When he checked, the weathered soil he'd packed inside had disappeared, and a note had taken its place.
Kang Yul unfolded the note with a puzzled expression.
──────────
D E P O S I T C O M P L E T E
──────────
"Deposit complete…?"
Stunned by the words on the note, Kang Yul muttered to himself in a daze.
But before long, he started to feel that something was off, and when he went outside the gate to check his smartphone, wondering if it could be true…
"…?"
Kang Yul couldn't help checking the screen over and over, wondering if he was seeing things.
And no wonder.
[HT Bank] Deposit: 500,000 won (Sender: Friendly Merchant) Balance: 500,921 won
'I made 500,000 won in a day's wages just by selling dirt…?'
Five hundred thousand won had been deposited into an account that had only held 921 won.
Kang Yul was certain. He was rich now.