Chapter 1
Huh-heh-heh…
A tree branch brushed my arm.
A cool breeze drifted across my face.
A ridiculously huge bottle of liquor in one hand, a dried squid in the other.
After drinking with my peers and feeling a bitter sense of deprivation, I climbed the mountain again.
“I’m sorry, but you cannot climb the Tower, Awakened One.”
“Why?! I even have Traits and everything!”
“We cannot let in anyone who has not passed the Climbing Exam.”
That damn Climbing Exam.
I had failed that exam nine times.
“Heehee… status window!!”
A status window popped up in one corner of my vision.
Name : Yumia
Ability: -
Traits:
[Transformation]
[Archmage's Aptitude]
[Nature Affinity]
[Black Mage's Aptitude]
[Magic Circle Mathematician]
[Blessing of Language]
[Dragon Eyes]
I had no ability.
I awakened.
I could see mana.
I could befriend nature.
There were some weird Traits too.
The Association said they seemed like good Traits, too.
But I still had no ability.
If you have no ability, you can't use mana. At least, that was the consensus worldwide.
And you couldn't pass the Climbing Exam if you couldn't use mana.
But if you can't get into the Tower, there's almost no way to obtain an ability.
Hunters are a profession that grows by clearing Towers.
You strengthen your abilities and raise your stats with the rewards you get from clearing the Tower.
The more risk you take,
the harder the difficulty you tackle,
the more thoroughly you clear it, the better the rewards.
It might seem fair if you looked at it that way, but there was a catch.
The Traits and abilities you got at Awakening were what mattered most.
And I had no ability.
Also known as [Active Skill].
An active action triggered by using mana.
“No… why did my Traits turn out so well if I don’t even have a single ability…?”
Other people were just firing off ice spears and the like…
I even have mana…
“They say hiking after drinking is dangerous, but I’m fineee…”
Trait [Nature Affinity].
Wild animals do not attack me.
They even protect me instead.
After getting this Trait, I started going hiking even more freely than before.
This was my privilege and mine alone!
No one could take it away from me!!
“Puh-heh…”
I exhaled into the bottle I'd been drinking from.
Thanks to my Trait, I ended up looking like I’d be a lightweight, but I was actually very strong when it came to booze.
I had just outdrunk an A-rank fellow trainee.
That bastard was worried about me when we started drinking together, then got plastered himself and went home.
“You stupid girl… I won…!”
Was this also thanks to my Trait?
Maybe I had the ability to break down alcohol.
Well, the other Traits didn't help me in life at all.
I looked at the mana spread out before me.
Mana flowing in streams.
[Archmage's Aptitude]
It was because of this Trait.
Thanks to this Trait, I could clearly see the mana flowing through the air.
“…Pretty.”
But without an ability, I couldn't use it.
“It’s useless, but it’s pretty, so that’s enough.”
Ah, and one more thing.
My appearance changed along with my Awakening.
Some people even said I’d gotten good-looking, so I had pretty high expectations.
My looks stat definitely shot up steeply—no, it was practically a vertical cliff.
I did end up with a face so perfect that everyone who passed by turned around.
The only problem was that I, a man, had become pretty.
I became a woman.
‘At first, I really wondered what the hell was going on.’
My hair turned white and grew longer.
I got shorter, and an unfamiliar softness settled into my body.
My eyes became round, and my arms and legs grew slender.
My pupils were like transparent gems, and my skin was pure white.
Over the year since Awakening, I’d had a rough time adjusting.
Especially when I went into the training camp to climb the Tower and was suddenly made to live with women—now that was rough.
I’m living with it now, more or less, but to think I still can't climb the Tower...!
‘Grrh.’
“To the blue sky above!”
“Build cloudlike houses!”
I started belting it out at the top of my lungs.
It was the mountain at night, after all.
Anyone who might complain had already gone back down the mountain.
I looked around.
Petting fur makes me feel better.
Let’s see, where’s some fur I can pet…
The ability called [Dragon Eyes]—or rather, my one-trick telescope skill—came into its own.
An ability that made my eyesight absurdly sharp, almost Mongolian-level sharp.
If I had to put a number on it, maybe it was over 10 times better.
Let’s set aside the sad fact that the eye surgery money I’d painstakingly saved up had become meaningless the moment I Awakened.
“Oh, it’s Gomi.”
Surname Go, given name Mi.
I named it myself.
I approached the beast.
—Kwoooar!
“Gomiyaaaaa!!”
“K, Kwong!?”
As I ran toward it with my arms spread wide, the startled beast began to flee.
That was what happened because I always fell asleep hugging it while reeking of booze.
Of course, the fact that it was avoiding me instead of attacking me made this a little different from usual.
But I felt wronged by it.
You punk… how dare you run away from me?
“You little bastard!!!”
You can’t even recognize me because I smell like booze!
I even brought you meat! Heck, I even gave you the leftover meat stuck to the bones!
I forgot everything else and started chasing after it.
But there was no way someone like me could catch a bear sprinting at full speed.
I ended up as nothing more than someone who'd gotten lost.
“Huff, huff… I give up…”
I pushed through the undergrowth.
At this rate, getting back down was hopeless, so it looked like I’d have to sleep here until dawn.
“I should find somewhere to sleep… huh?”
A fairly wide open space appeared.
A small flat area, almost like an artificially made clearing.
A large paulownia tree in the middle was radiating presence.
And fireflies drifting through the air.
“Oooh…”
I can't believe I didn't know about a spot like this.
Still, at least one worry was off my shoulders: finding a place to sleep.
If I slept just anywhere, Gomi would sometimes smack me with a forepaw, saying my mouth would go crooked, and it hurt.
I looked closely at the knot hole in the paulownia tree.
There was a hole big enough for one person to fit through.
But something was odd.
“Why is the mana like that?”
The mana was twisted as if it were swirling in a vortex.
Of course, being in a mana-rich environment was comfortable for me.
But wasn’t this a little too twisted?
I’d never seen mana twisted like this, not even in an S-rank Gate.
Of course, I’d never actually gone into an S-rank Gate myself; I’d only caught a tiny glimpse from far away.
Hmm.
“Move aside, I want to try something.”
I shoved aside the squirrel that had come up to my feet without me noticing.
“Squeak.”
It had been trying to rub against me affectionately when it got a rude awakening.
It chattered discontentedly, but I couldn’t hear it.
I took off my shoes.
In a place like this, you have to at least stick a foot in.
Maybe it would give me some kind of interesting ability?
“Hieeeeeek!!”
I was sucked in instantly.
***
I opened the eyes I’d instinctively squeezed shut.
A damp, cozy smell.
Cool air brushing against me.
This was a cave.
Thanks to Dragon Eyes, my night vision was clear.
“Mmmh…”
I didn’t seem to be hurt or anything.
‘The exit is… here….’
Mana was swirling behind me.
I figured I could probably get back out through there.
But that wasn’t my goal.
Comfortable, peaceful sleep.
I needed sleep to clear my tipsy mind.
I steadied myself and walked forward.
Before long, I had come out at the cave entrance.
“Bed… hic. Damn… cold.”
I climbed up onto a broad rock and fell asleep.
***
By the time I opened my eyes, the morning sun was already up.
“Ugh... my head.”
Summer weather was hopeless from the start, and even though the sun was already high, only the flies were buzzing...
Ah, no, that’s not it.
It wasn't even high noon; I’d simply woken up cold from the dawn dew.
The morning sun was barely up, and honestly, it was a little cold.
“Ugh... so where is this place?”
Since I’d come this far, it might be good to expand my stomping grounds a bit.
And the air and mana here were unnaturally clear.
It felt good just to breathe.
It was on a completely different level from Seoul's trash air.
Even a mountain packed with trees couldn't compare to this place.
I straightened my back.
Maybe this place was a hidden Gate.
For someone with magical Traits, my combat ability was nothing but hand-to-hand fighting.
But the training I’d done at the camp had to count for something.
“Hmm… now I want to go home…”
Should I come back later?
Yeah, I should.
My legs hurt, and above all, I was hungry.
I needed to put something in my stomach if I wanted to keep going.
I needed to slam down a bowl of sundae gukbap loaded with pork head meat and chives.
Just as I was about to turn around, someone called out to me from behind.
“Stop! Freshman, this is no place for you!”
[[Blessing of Language] is activated!]
“Huh?”
It was a message from one of my Traits.
Meaning it was a foreign language.
A Trait that activates only for languages I’m seeing for the first time.
I’d heard about it at the training camp.
At a Gate, if someone used an unfamiliar language,
especially a language not found on Earth,
it was highly likely to be something from inside the Gate.
“Ah, screw it, I don’t know!”
Run first!
As I instinctively turned around, I saw a middle-aged man.
Tall, in a black uniform, with short navy hair and sharp, irritated eyes.
“Didn’t I tell you to stop!”
“Would you stop if you were me?!”
He sighed and drew something like a wooden stick from his waist.
The moment his eyes met mine, his voice rang out.
“Bind.”
A net of mana formed and moved to engulf me.
I saw mana gathering around his wooden stick.
“…A magic wand?”
An item some magic-type Hunters sometimes carried, one that boosted their abilities.
But that mana felt far more threatening.
This was different from when I’d watched a demonstration at the training camp.
The mana was lined up as neatly as if it had been arranged with a ruler.
‘The more skilled the Awakened, and the more seasoned the Hunter, the better they are at handling mana.’
But if the motion is neat and simple,
that means the flow is easier to disrupt, too.
“Hup!”
I moved the mana particles in the air and stirred them into the mana's core.
Crackling and sparking, the particles repelled one another.
The net that had been about to engulf me vanished.
He shot me a sharp look.
“You’re quite talented.”