Chapter 1
Today, I died. Was it from overwork? Or a traffic accident? I don't know.
What I do know is that my life wasn't exactly enjoyable.
It was an utterly ordinary life—or rather, an ordinarily unhappy one—as a Korean man.
And so, I slept for a long, long time.
Then, one day, I woke up.
But why is my life like this?
"Sigh…… Two lives in a row without parents, huh."
I rose onto my tiptoes as high as I could in front of the bathroom sink.
When I stared into the mirror, a tiny kid stared back at me.
Maybe it was because I'd had a hard time as a child?
A body absurdly small in both height and build.
I may look like this, but I'm a full-fledged adult!
ㅡ Grrr
My stomach sounded the alarm.
I needed to find a job soon.
At this rate, I really felt like I might starve to death.
"Please let me get this part-time job today…"
ㅡ Jingle
"Welco— Are you here to run an errand?"
"I'm Baek Soyu. I have an interview for the part-time job today!"
The manager blinked at me as if completely bewildered.
Then the manager snapped out of it and started the interview.
A little while later.
"I'm not a kid. I'm an adult!"
The manager looked flustered as I held out my ID with my tiny hands.
The manager glanced back and forth between my ID and my face, then shook their head with a pitying look.
"I understand your situation, but working the night shift at a convenience store is rough. There are plenty of scary guys and strange people who come in. It's dangerous."
The manager spoke as if trying to frighten a child into behaving.
It was a familiar situation.
"I'll work hard! I'm good at the job!"
"I'm sorry. I don't feel comfortable leaving it to you."
So today's interview had gone up in flames too?
With my head hanging low, I started to leave the store.
Then I heard the manager call after me.
"Wait a second."
The manager pulled three lunchboxes from the corner of the refrigerated section and handed them to me.
"You came all this way. I'm sorry I can't hire you."
"Thank you!"
The manager had given me no less than three leftover lunchboxes.
'This should keep me going for three days, right?'
A silly grin spread across my face before I knew it.
My gloomy mood passed through the Uncanny Valley and soared all the way up to Euphoria Mountain.
But what goes up must come down.
'I'm already running out of the money I made handing out flyers.'
I plummeted from Euphoria Mountain into the Trench of Wailing.
I sighed, wondering how I was supposed to make a living now.
Just then, a loud voice assaulted my eardrums.
"Fuck! I told you, I'm not buying it! I crawled all the way up to the twentieth floor to pick this up, and it's worth zero won? How does that make any sense?!"
A man up ahead was yelling his head off in the middle of the street.
I didn't need to ask what he was talking about to figure out why he was so upset.
That's right. My previous life was ordinary, but this one had towers and hunters.
The only downside was that I didn't get any of those special perks.
I was practically an adult, and I still hadn't seen that famous status window.
"Beef, my ass! I messed up a bid during a raid and got screwed!"
My body reacted to the word beef.
Before I knew it, I was swallowing my drool.
'Ah—I want beef.'
The man irritably tossed something into a flower bed, then stomped off.
As soon as I was sure he was out of sight, curiosity got the better of me and I hurried over to the flower bed.
'Something from the tower…."
I'd heard it was a worthless piece of junk, worth zero won.
But it had come from the tower, a place I'd never be able to enter in my life.
My heart thumped with vague excitement and longing.
I peered into the flower bed and found a fist-sized stone lying there.
"Wow, it's pretty…"
It looked a little like translucent glass, with yellow flecks embedded throughout like stars in the night sky.
It looked completely out of place among all the other stones.
When the light hit it, the flecks even shimmered softly.
"It's this pretty, and it's worth zero won?"
Wouldn't someone buy it if I posted it on a secondhand marketplace app?
There were people who collected stones as a hobby, right?
And this wasn't just some rock from a riverbed. It came from a tower, where only hunters could get them.
"Maybe someone would buy it if I listed it for twenty thousand won?"
Even if it was worthless junk, I couldn't understand why anyone would throw something so pretty onto the street.
At least, by my standards, it made no sense.
"They say even the crappiest hunter makes more from one trip up the tower than a corporate employee does."
It seemed that if something didn't make money, it didn't matter how pretty it was.
I quickly picked up the sparkling stone, dusted it off, tucked it into my pocket, and headed home.
1.
A cramped semi-basement room stank of damp and mold.
After showering, I came out and opened the leftover lunchbox the manager had given me.
"I'm in a bad mood today, so I think I'll bring out a special item for once."
I took a beer out of the fridge.
It was the hardest thing in the world for me to buy.
Showing my ID didn't help.
"You've got to be kidding me. Won't you leave?"
"Has the world gone crazy? Where'd you learn to say things like that?"
"I checked that you're an adult, but I still can't sell it to you. If I sell it to the wrong person, they'll shut my store down!"
I bought this beer at a little corner store next to an orphanage, far from home.
The old lady there had known me since I was little.
But she passed away a while ago, and now that place was gone too.
"I'll eat this and look for work again tomorrow!"
As I nibbled at my lunch and sipped my beer, I turned on my old computer out of habit.
The desktop appeared amid the computer's rattling, and I went to the Hunter Aspirants Gallery.
Maybe it was because everyone there was in a similar situation, but it felt like a place where I belonged.
But one post on today's front page especially caught my eye.
[Title: I'm a Hunter Now.]
(E-Rank Hunter License Proof.jpg)
I was asleep when a status window popped up, so I thought, what the hell?
I went to the Bureau, and they detected mana?
Starting tomorrow, I'm done with that shitty construction job. Screw you, foreman ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
The bait post had completed its summoning ritual.
A moment later, chaos incarnate—or, rather, the comment section—was summoned.
ㄴ Not giving out any freebies?
ㄴ If you awakened, you gotta buy us chicken.
ㄴ (burger-waiting emoticon.jpg)
ㄴ Please let this be fake, you lying bastard. This is seriously pissing me off.
ㄴ An E-rank bug thinks he's a hunter ㅋㅋㅋ
ㄴ One trip up the tower as an E-rank, and you'll make a month's salary in a day, idiot.
ㄴ You'll get picked off by a goblin the second you enter a dungeon. Later.
ㄴ Yeah, an E-rank could out-earn your entire lifetime salary.
ㄴ Fuck, I'm so jealous. I heard even working as a porter beats a big company's starting salary.
ㄴ Please tell us exactly what you did. I want to awaken too. Please, I'm seriously losing my mind.
ㄴ Congrats, congrats. Pick your party carefully, and don't end up as the meat shield in a dungeon.
……
I quietly closed the window.
My stomach was in knots.
It wasn't because of the beer I'd just drunk.
No matter how much people insulted and looked down on that person for being E-rank, it wouldn't change reality.
Wouldn't that person make more from one trip up the tower than I could earn handing out flyers for a month—or even two?
I thought we were all ants crawling along the ground, but it turned out that person was a butterfly with wings.
My eyes fell on the stone on my desk.
I gazed at it in silence.
As soon as I got home, I'd washed it and put the pretty, zero-won stone on my desk.
Yellow crystals sparkled inside the translucent stone.
Looking at it made me feel a little better.
It was like watching a tiny bonfire flicker and crackle.
"Still, it's kind of therapeutic to look at."
Right. Being jealous wouldn't change my life.
Tomorrow, I'd go out and hand out flyers again.
And so, I went to bed.
2.
That night, I had a very strange dream.
It seemed like I'd gone onto a community site as usual, but it wasn't the Hunter Aspirants Gallery.
The words people were using sounded strange, too.
I was sure I'd done something in there, but……
Then I woke up. Was it just a weird dream?
"Uuugh… I think I had a strange dream. I'm tired…"
I had to get back to work starting today.
The moment I rubbed my eyes and got up.
I could only stand there, stunned.
It wasn't anything else. There was a status window floating in front of me.
[Status Window]
Level: @#%#^&
Class: $#%^%^&
Trait: &(#%^@&%
Skills: !@#@$%^!&
"Huh?"
For a moment, I thought I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
The status window floating before my eyes was full of strange characters I couldn't read, but that wasn't the important part, was it?
The important thing was that a status window was floating in front of me, right?
The very thing exclusive to hunters was right before my eyes!
'Quick, to the gallery......"
No, what good would asking them do?
Once you became a hunter, you'd go hang out in the Hunter Gallery. You wouldn't visit the Aspirants Gallery.
Besides, only verified hunters could post in the Hunter Gallery.
Which meant it was impossible to ask there, after all.
No, wasn't that the least important thing right now?
Everything had changed, hadn't it?
All I had to do was go to the Bureau, get tested, and receive my hunter certification!
I barely washed up, splashing water on my face like a cat, then pulled the cleanest clothes I had from the closet and put them on.
Even as I changed, a rosy future unfolded before me like a panorama.
In my imagination, I was grilling beef in a mansion overlooking the Han River.
In such a hurry that I'd never normally do it, I took a taxi to the Bureau.
A few hours later.
"You're not a hunter."
"But… I really can see a status window in front of me. I swear!"
"Please calm down, Baek Soyu."
The person at the desk looked at me with sympathetic eyes.
It was that look people gave a poor child.
In my previous life, I'd have looked at someone like that coldly. In this life, most people looked at me that way.
"Baek Soyu. What you're seeing in front of you right now is a hallucination."
"I really can see it. It's right in front of me even now!"
"Baek Soyu, dozens of people who claim to see a status window like you do come in every day."
"But… it's real…"
"Of course, I don't think you're lying on purpose, Baek Soyu."
…
"It's a hallucination created by an unconscious desire. We call it an imaginary awakening."
"It's not an imaginary awakening… It's real…"
"You'll feel better after resting at home for a few days."
"But I really can see it…"
"Next, please."
In the end, I was ushered away from the service desk as if I were being thrown out.
Behind me, I heard the people waiting whispering.
"That kid's having an imaginary awakening? Is it like a phantom pregnancy?"
"Watch what you say. They must really want to be a hunter to get like that."
The couple looked at me with pity.
I'd rather you just insulted me!
Being looked at with pity, as if I were some poor thing, felt ten times worse.
In the end, I left the Bureau with a bitter sense of injustice.
'Do I have to go hand out flyers again……?'
Then the bills I'd been ignoring came due all at once.
Today's pay, the taxi fare, and the expensive coffee I'd bought on the way.
My stomach was in knots.
Just then, a big man who'd been lingering near the entrance sauntered over.
"Hey, kid. Did you happen to awaken today?"
The man wore a shoddy guild insignia on his chest.
I knew who he was. I'd seen him on the news plenty of times.
A crooked guild that lured in young, naive hunters and trapped them in slave contracts.
The man approached like a predator stalking its prey and spoke in a friendly tone.
"If you join our guild, we'll pay you a ton, and the work's easy. How about it?"
"No, thank you."
It seemed regular people wouldn't hire me because of my looks, but hunters didn't have that problem.
No—if I really were a hunter, I might've been happy to turn him down.
With my mood already at rock bottom, it felt like he'd just insulted me.
"Why don't we go to a nearby café and talk over a drink?"
The man grabbed me and started pulling me along.
The anger that had been building up inside me burst, and I shouted.
"I said I'm not a hunter!!"
I yelled and jerked my hand free. His friendly smile instantly twisted into a nasty scowl.
Was it because I'd suddenly gotten angry?
No, it seemed more like he was angry because someone who wasn't even a hunter had dared to snap at him.
"If you're not one, just say so. Where do you get off talking back to me, you little runt?"
The man barked at me roughly.
He came toward me with his fist clenched. It looked like he was really going to hit me.
If someone like him hit me, wouldn't I really die?
'No. Maybe getting beaten to death would be a relief.'
Just as I squeezed my eyes shut and gave up on everything.
@^%&^&%@!
ㅡ Fwoosh!!
A Black Flame Dragon appeared in my right hand. No—a blazing red fireball sprang up, radiating tremendous heat.
