Prologue: Is This Country Worth Protecting?
Hunting is a 3D job. Dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. And the pay is absolute dogshit. Don't people make a fortune selling magic stones and monster byproducts?
Back when the gates first opened, scientists had taken magic stones and put them through every test they could think of. That was their conclusion. Just rocks. And so monster hunting became something humanity had to endure — agonizing, catastrophic work they had no choice but to do if they wanted to survive.
There were no glamorous, envied hunters like the ones you saw in novels and webtoons.
And in the Republic of Korea, 3D jobs like this fell to men. By force.
"Your physical exam results show exceptionally high mana affinity."
"Excuse me?"
"Personnel whose mana affinity exceeds a certain threshold serve as hunters inside the gates instead of regular military service. For three years."
"Wh—what the fuck? Three years?"
"You'll receive a steady salary of two million won a month. They send you on leave fairly often, too. It'll be far better than regular military service."
"I could die in there! I—I don't want to go! Just put me on regular military duty!"
"Refusal means prison time under the Military Service Act."
"Then I'll just do the prison time!"
"No. You'll serve that sentence inside a gate. Five years. Unpaid. So do yourself a favor — take the three years of hunter service when we're still asking nicely. It's much better for your future."
Sound like a lie? It was real.
Naturally, most of the hunters conscripted into the gates tried to run. But military installations ringed every gate, and escapees were rounded up and shoved right back inside. Each attempt added another year to their service.
Inside a gate overflowing with mana, you could use magic, status windows, Aura Blades — the whole package. The moment you stepped outside into a world without mana, you became an ordinary civilian with no special abilities at all. When soldiers with guns came to subdue you, there was nothing you could do to resist.
It was the state driving hunters into a death trap under barely disguised coercion.
And yet, astonishingly — truly, fucking astonishingly — the nation called the Republic of Korea forced this on its young men and kept right on functioning without a hitch.
Beings with an affinity for mana — in other words, the Awakened — averaged roughly one in a thousand. Narrow that further to those who weren't elderly, weren't chronically ill, and weren't women, and out of fifty million citizens you were left with five thousand people at most.
On top of that, hunters who'd already mustered out wanted nothing to do with the gates — wouldn't even piss in that direction — so any solidarity among hunters was impossible.
In other words, even counting every family member of every active hunter, they were an infinitesimal minority. Crushing their tiny voices under the weight of power was not a difficult task.
Hunters died. Their bereaved families protested. They filed damages claims against the state. None of it mattered.
The press never covered hunter deaths in any real detail. No matter how shocking the incident, the public forgot the dead hunters within days. When a hunter died, the body was usually torn apart and eaten by monsters — recovery was rare. The remaining family received a laughable payout of ten million won, and that was the end of it.
And so, today as every day, hunters were dying in the unknown lands beyond the gates — in Eldorado.
Still, they endured.
Because the country ordered it. Because refusing meant punishment. Because the state had forced onto their shoulders a crushing burden they never asked for: if you don't do this, the rifts will open, the nation will fall, and your families will die.
What could a bunch of kids barely into their early or mid-twenties do, even if they wanted to resist?
And then.
The disillusionment keeps growing.
Is this country really worth protecting?