Downright Terrifying

The day after the contract was signed.

Around lunchtime, my phone rang.

It was Representative Kang Suk-woo.

"I'm at the office, so that might be a little difficult. Is something going on?"

"An advance?"

I was puzzled. There had been no mention of a signing bonus when we finalized the contract yesterday. I had signed because of the royalty split, not the money.

"Ah, that makes sense."

"Fifty million?"

For a second I doubted my own ears. Not five million — fifty million? No matter how promising the early signs looked, that was not a sum you casually handed a debut author who hadn't even gone paid yet.

And more than that—

"Representative, will you be all right? Even if an advance is recoverable later, you'll be short on capital until then… You still need cover art, and if you're pushing a webtoon adaptation…"

Worry came first. Of course I understood that an advance was different from a signing bonus — it was simply my future earnings paid out early. But I also knew perfectly well that for a small management company to front fifty million won it hadn't yet collected was a serious hemorrhage of cash.

A firm voice came through the receiver.

"Yes?"

"…"

My breath caught in my throat. There was not a shred of hesitation in his voice. The will to carve away his own flesh if that was what it took to protect my writing. That this man was a company representative…

"Yes… please do."

I hung up. I was dazed. It felt as though another storm had just swept through.

Now I understand why he told me to meet the other management companies first.

The others had been desperate to lowball me, gaslighting me with my rookie status as a weakness. But Representative Kang was different. To someone who had come back after staring the raw reality of the industry in the face, he was offering everything he could give and treating me as a true partner.

That feeling every time we spoke — as if I had already become a master who had captivated every reader alive. That surge of elevation.

If I hadn't met those other managers, would I have thought about any of this realistically, even a little?

No. I wouldn't have. Every word the representative spoke pumped so much air into my lungs that my shoulders would have floated right up to the ceiling. The problem was that he meant every word of it. I would have just sat there soaking in the praise, head swelling. He would have known that and kept praising me anyway.

Once again, I was glad I had met the others and learned what reality looked like. Results were the only thing that mattered — though my conviction was hardening by the day.

I turned on my computer, compressed the file I had buried deep in a folder, and hit send.

Studio Nangan's office.

Kang Suk-woo stared at the file that had landed in his inbox and scrubbed his dry face with both hands.

"Hoo…"

It was astonishing all over again. Author Kang Minjun was a full-time office worker. When company employees tried their hand at web novels, nine times out of ten they wrote modern workplace stories or professional dramas — pouring in the misery of corporate life, conflicts with superiors, the granular details of their jobs. That was the easy approach.

But this work was different. A pure hunter story. And not just any hunter story — a regression power-fantasy sitting at the absolute cutting edge of the trend. A genre you had to win with pure imagination and raw writing skill, not lived experience.

How does an office worker write something like this?

Even established authors routinely failed at pacing and collapsed in the early chapters. Push too hard and you had nowhere left to go; go too soft and the readers left. He was walking that razor-thin line to perfection.

With trembling hands, he downloaded the attachment. When he unzipped it, the file list filled the screen.

"Seventy chapters…?"

Kang Suk-woo's eyes went wide. Most debut authors who submitted had a stockpile of maybe ten chapters, twenty at the absolute most. Seventy? That was more than three full volumes' worth.

A stockpile this big? Can the quality possibly hold?

Doubt and anticipation rose together. He carefully opened the first file, swallowed hard, and began reading the opening line.

And then—

"…"

The only sounds in the office were the scroll of a mouse wheel and Kang Suk-woo's ragged breathing. His heart hammered wildly. His palms were so slick with sweat the mouse kept slipping.

Insane.

"Fun" was nowhere near enough. The explosive momentum he had already seen only intensified as the story pushed into chapters twenty, thirty. When a protagonist faced crisis, readers tensed up — but in this story the crises never felt like crises. You couldn't sit still for sheer anticipation of how the hero was about to demolish them.

He lost himself completely. Kang Suk-woo forgot he was a management company representative and was sucked into the text as nothing more than a single reader. He had no idea how much time had passed.

"Huh?"

He scrolled down — and the page would go no further.

"Ah…"

A sigh escaped on its own. Already finished? He had burned through seventy chapters in a single sitting without stopping once. His eyes were dry and his throat was parched, but his head was so flooded with dopamine it felt ready to burst.

He was genuinely stunned. Shocked. Far from collapsing as the story went on, the world expanded and every planted seed was reaped with breathtaking precision. This wasn't just a hit. This was a mega-hit.

At that moment, the employee sitting next to him spoke carefully.

"Representative…"

"Y-yeah. What is it."

"About the advance. Fifty million won… are you really going through with it?"

The employee's face was dark. And for good reason — the company's finances were far from comfortable. As a fledgling management firm, capital was never abundant, and fifty million was a sum that could put a real dent in operating costs.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"If that money goes out, we can forget about recruiting any other authors for a while. No — you'll have to take out another loan just to keep going…"

"Do it."

Kang Suk-woo's voice was absolute.

"What? For real? Representative, you need to think about this coldly."

"I'll take out a home equity loan if I have to. Just process it. No exceptions."

"…To that extent?"

The employee looked appalled.

"We've already signed the contract. You don't have to go that far. The deal is already done."

"No."

Kang Suk-woo shook his head.

"If I were going to approach it that way, I would have rewritten the entire contract from the start. I would have adjusted the split to something more 'realistic,' too."

He stared hard at the monitor — at the number seventy.

"This author is someone I refuse to lose for any practical reason. Honestly, I'd pay out of my own pocket just to keep him."

"I understand that, but…"

"Let's look at our own reality. What is the one way a small management company like ours can walk alongside an author like this? We do everything we possibly can. Weighing every option and hesitating makes it impossible."

Kang Suk-woo's eyes gleamed. He wasn't gambling on money. He had recognized the weight this work carried, and he was ready to stake everything he had to hold it up.

"More importantly."

He swallowed hard.

"Manager Kim."

"Yes, Representative."

"Set up a meeting with a webtoon agency. Immediately."

"What? Right now? We haven't even gone paid yet."

"We don't have time to wait for the numbers."

Kang Suk-woo shot to his feet. Normally you waited for paid-conversion results and used that data to pitch a webtoon adaptation. That was the order of things. But this writing was overwhelming enough to ignore the order entirely.

"I'm going crazy. Seriously."

His chest swelled. Excitement outran fear; conviction outran worry. He clenched his fist tight.

"Fine. Let's either go down in flames properly — or become a legend. Let's do this."

Meanwhile, Kang Minjun's daily life was not merely peaceful — it was overflowing with joy.

Fifty million won in advance royalties sitting in his account. After the 3.3 percent tax took a bite of a full 1.5 million, it was still an enormous sum. And on top of that, the title of Munpia Golden Best #1. The stability and sheer pleasure those two things delivered exceeded anything he had imagined.

So this is what they call financial therapy.

For some reason, even sitting at the company didn't feel hard at all. Managing Director Choi could rant all he wanted; work could pile up all it wanted.

I'm leaving soon anyway. Who cares.

That single thought forgave everything. Of course, the fact that Muse let him finish a full day's work in under thirty minutes helped a great deal. The leftover hours belonged entirely to his writing.

He opened the Munpia app.

Another recommended post had gone up. Before he knew it, eight of the Best Recommended slots were about his work alone. The community reaction was even hotter.

He flinched. AI was helping him. Those people had a sixth sense.

And his phone was stacked with missed calls and texts — from the management reps he had met with before.

They were panicking after the fact. But the bus had already left the station.

People say it gets hard when your hobby becomes your job.

Whoever said that — he was still nothing but happy. Because of the money? Because of the recognition? Those played a part, but the process of writing itself was pure joy. Watching the imagination inside his head become reality, and watching tens of thousands of people go wild for that reality — it was more addictive than any substance on earth.

He forced a double-chapter schedule every single day. With a seventy-chapter stockpile, there was no reason to hold back. He wasn't just rowing while the tide was in — he had bolted a motor to the boat.

And so, before a full week had even passed, he had blown past the twenty-five-chapter threshold for paid conversion.

Views: 32,580. The latest chapter alone had over thirty thousand. For a free serial, those numbers were more than enough to be called monstrous — even by the standards of early-career authors who had already produced multiple hits.

The community talked about nothing but his work. Someone put up a poll.

The result?

Overwhelming. Not just among fans — even in the eyes of cold-blooded readers, his writing was the real thing. The conviction that more than half of free readers would open their wallets.

This was exactly one week ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before paid conversion.

And the moment the notice went up that paid conversion had been confirmed, the influx climbed even steeper. Past Today Best #1, past Golden Best #1, word of mouth spread across every community and social platform. The graph bent vertical, ready to punch a hole in the sky.

Favorites: 50,000 breached.

"Whoa…"

Even he got chills staring at the monitor. It was downright terrifying. Where on earth had all these readers been hiding? Or had they simply been starving because there was nothing worth reading — and the moment prey appeared that could fill that hunger, they came swarming like a pack of hyenas.

And right in the middle of it all — was him.

Now the real beginning starts.

The resignation letter nestled against his chest burned hot.