Good Guy, Bad Guy, Strange Guy
My name is Park Sang-yoon. Twenty-eight years old.
S-class. Class: Poison King.
“Sang-yoon, Mommy will make lots of money and come back for you soon.”
I was eight years old back then.
After that, I grew up in an orphanage. The first thing I did the moment I became an adult was look for my mother.
When I finally found her, she had started a new family. She lived in a high-rise apartment in Gangnam, Seoul, with a son who wasn’t me.
The boy looked about the same age I had been when she abandoned me.
He resembled me a little, but he looked even more like her… my little brother.
I saw the happy smile on my mother’s face as she hugged him after he came running out of a taekwondo academy van. I couldn’t bring myself to reveal my existence.
“Mommy will make lots of money and come back for you soon.”
Maybe she still hadn’t made enough money?
The clothes she wore, the house she lived in…
It looked like she had made plenty.
Just how much money did someone need before it counted as “a lot”?
I started hoarding money obsessively from that day on.
A high-school graduate. A freshly minted adult. An orphan.
No money, no education, no connections, not even a family like everyone else. All I had was my body and my time.
Clueless as I was, I bought a scooter with three months of convenience-store wages and started doing deliveries. Out of the 3.5 million won I earned each month, I saved three million.
Five years later, when I finished paying off the installment savings, the total came to 234,910,385 won.
I was twenty-five.
Judging by the reactions on the internet forum, I felt a spark of confidence.
“So this really is a lot of money? I really am good at earning?”
I went to find my mother again.
“Mom doesn’t have to earn money anymore. I can earn it now.”
I pictured the three of us—Mom, me, and my little brother—living together as a family. I swore I would be a good older brother.
Wearing nice clothes and carrying a bouquet, I went to see her.
This time I didn’t hide.
“Excuse me…”
“Who are you?”
“Mom. It’s me. Sang-yoon.”
I held out the flowers.
She didn’t take them. She only glanced around nervously.
Then she grabbed my sleeve like she was yanking me by the collar and dragged me behind a large car parked in the lot. With an anxious expression, she pulled out her Hermès wallet and shoved every bill inside into my hands.
“You’ve grown up. Yeah… I’m sorry. I was wrong. I know that. I really do. I’ve reflected a lot, so… take this and please don’t ever show up again, okay? I’m begging you. This isn’t the time for me to be dealing with this.”
I counted the money in my hand.
Several one-million-won checks. More than twenty of them.
“I’m barely living my own life now. You’re grown up too, so you understand, right?”
Was my value to her only twenty million won?
Maybe even less?
I asked her, hoping it wasn’t true.
“Back then… if you’d had twenty million won, would you still have left me at the orphanage?”
She stared at me blankly for a moment.
“You need more money? Fine, give me your account number. You want a bigger amount, don’t you? I’ll send more. How much do you need? Five thousand? No, a hundred million? Two hundred million?”
She casually talked about two hundred million.
The exact amount I had scraped together over five years without spending a single won.
It came out of her mouth so easily.
Apparently that wasn’t considered a lot of money to her.
“Mom, you said you’d come get me once you made a lot of money. Is it still not enough? Have you still not earned enough?”
She pressed a hand to her forehead, turned away, and sighed.
She was the mother I had missed so desperately, yet she avoided my gaze like I was something repulsive.
“Are you just immature, or do you have no sense at all?”
Those words stabbed into my heart like an awl.
I wasn’t without sense.
I understood perfectly that she didn’t want me.
That I was never part of her life.
It had always been that way.
I had never been in her plans.
Now that I knew, that was enough.
“Give me six hundred million.”
“What?”
“That should be enough.”
Strangely, I didn’t feel sad.
I was only curious how much money counted as “a lot” to her.
Seventeen years—eight to twenty-five—without a mother. Fifteen years if I subtracted two for good behavior. Six hundred million won for that.
“Blood really doesn’t lie. You really are my son.”
So this was what recognition felt like.
Of course my mother was this kind of person.
I had always known.
Every orphan, every older brother and sister and friend at the orphanage had said the same thing.
“We were just abandoned.”
“No, my mom said she’d come back once she made lots of money.”
“Whose mom?”
“My mom is different!”
I had only believed what I wanted to believe.
Like an idiot.
“Six hundred million. Is that enough?”
“Yes. I won’t ever come back.”
That was how, at twenty-five, I ended up with eight hundred million won.
Meaningless money.
And no one to give it to.
I had lost any reason to keep living.
“At least I’ll have plenty of money for the ferryman.”
I decided to become a zero with eight hundred million won.
I jumped into the Han River. It was cold. That was my last memory.
But the next morning, I woke up on the riverbank.
“Cough…”
When I stepped out of the bushes, I saw people exercising. How could they look so full of life?
No one in the world cared about me.
I was surplus. An unnecessary existence. A zero.
On the way back to my studio, I bought bleach. Two for the price of one—three thousand won. The smell was awful. At home I held my breath and drank it. I forced myself to keep drinking, afraid it wouldn’t be enough. My insides felt like they were tearing apart. I thought I would die this time.
Two days later, I woke up.
Completely fine.
Even hungry.
After eating a pack of ramen and chasing it with bleach, I bought pesticide and drank that too.
Failed again.
But the pesticide didn’t taste that bad.
I searched online and found stories about people dying from drinking pure nicotine liquid. I went straight to every vape shop, bought a million won worth of nicotine e-liquid, and chugged the concentrate straight from the bottle. Gulp after gulp.
Failed again.
It was sweet.
“What the hell?”
My body actually felt refreshed.
Was it my constitution?
“Damn it!”
It felt like this shitty life refused to let me go.
After that, I lived like a hikikomori and never left the house. I had plenty of money, so I ordered delivery, watched movies and dramas…
I would spend all eight hundred million and then die.
I dumped money into games.
I lived lavishly.
Then one day, I heard voices outside my window—people smoking.
“Ha, life is fucking garbage. Must be nice to be a Hunter.”
“This goddamn world is shit.”
Their crude conversation couldn’t even form a sentence without swearing.
“Who knows? Maybe I awakened without realizing it. Try opening your status window.”
“Whatever.”
“These days people even awaken in their sleep. Just try it. Maybe you did it without knowing. Status window.”
“I already did. I check every morning.”
“You too? Me too.”
“Idiots.”
The men’s laughter faded into the distance.
“Status window?”
“What…? When did I awaken?”
I was an Awakened with three traits.
And three skills too.
“This is insanely broken…”
[Toxic Conversion]: Absorbing a new poison grants distributable stat points. The amount depends on the poison’s grade. (Once per day)
The poisons I had consumed so far…
“Bleach, pesticide, nicotine concentrate…”
Distributable stat points: 9
The next day I swallowed pufferfish organs.
My distributable points increased by three.
It was like leveling up.
“Whoa…”
[Awakener Management Agency]
I had known from the very beginning.
“It’s S-class, right?”
Poison King Park Sang-yoon. An orphan.
I started from zero, but I was no longer a zero.
* * *
Poison King Park Sang-yoon.
This guy was completely insane.
“I’ll give you my entire fortune. Just take me. Please, let me lick it.”
Three hundred billion.
The pervert offered an absurd amount.
But the [Mythic] Great Sword of the Ancient Plague could only be equipped by those who qualified.
It wasn’t soul-bound, yet only I could use it.
“Only I can wield this.”
“Then… how about one hundred million per lick? Deal?”
Hansik, Geunsik, Minsik, and Cheolsik all wore the same “we’ve seen every kind of weirdo” expression.
“Just once a day… Please? Please? Can’t we work something out?”
He begged.
He even grabbed my pant leg.
“I’m begging you! Please?”
BOOM—
ROOOAAAR!
Far away, Khalid was still fighting. Taesu-hyung was in there. Damn it, we didn’t have time for this lunatic.
I politely pushed him away.
“Later.”
“You mean it!”
I had no confidence in winning a fight, so arguing would only hurt me. Besides, the offer wasn’t bad.
The Poison King stepped aside.
“Hiyah!”
I spurred my skeletal horse toward the rampaging Khalid.
This was the battlefield where even the chairman of the Wooju Association, Hwang Tae-san, was struggling against Khalid. I was terrified of getting caught between two whales.
But I had an ace up my sleeve.
[(Passive) Khalid’s Trust]
A power only the Black Tortoise Khalid can grant. You have earned Khalid’s favor. Khalid will recognize you as kin and act to protect or cooperate with you.
It was the reward from clearing the hidden quest alone.
The honey pot had truly become my ally.
A three-hundred-meter-tall Black Tortoise, no less.
And that wasn’t all.
[Khalid’s HP has been fully restored. Additional rewards have been granted.]
A reward obtained thanks to Hodu constantly licking Khalid.
It was a trait—something even rarer than skills or items!
[Divine Beast Pheromone] new!
I didn’t know what it did, but…
It felt reassuring.
Clip-clop, clip-clop—
The salty sea breeze rode the wind and stung my nose.
“KRRRAAAAAHH!”
BOOM— BOOM—
CRASH!
This Khalid was nothing like the gentle, adorable creature I remembered. He was enormous and furious, his skin glowing red-hot.
Hwang Tae-san was struggling against him. Beside the chairman stood a long-haired handsome man I had never seen before.
— I’m Hunter Shin Kang-soo, the Immortal, from the Wooju Association.
Hansik was quick on the uptake, as always.
Even so, Khalid was overwhelming both powerful Hunters. Hwang Tae-san and Shin Kang-soo spoke while crossing paths in midair.
“Chairman! Please retreat! The quest is already complete. I’ll open a path!”
“It’s too late. If we pull out now, everyone inside the gate will be in danger!”
“But his regeneration speed is insane!”
“Tch. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but this much…?”
Failing to deal enough damage to a monster was a blow to any Hunter’s pride. It meant the monster could ignore its attackers and simply sleep while remaining unkillable.
Besides, Hwang Tae-san was deeply embarrassed.
This was a fight he had forced through sheer power, even suppressing An Seong-jin and Yoon In-pyo who had opposed attacking Khalid. He had believed killing Khalid would end the disaster. Yet the quest had completed without Khalid dying.
“This is ridiculous.”
He had no excuse.
His judgment had been wrong.
Then—
KRAAAAH!
The moment Hwang Tae-san landed, Khalid slammed his massive foot into the ground.
CRACK—CRACK—
The already ruined floor split open again. Hwang Tae-san leapt away to avoid the stone spikes erupting from the cracks.
This time it was the tail whip.
Khalid had aimed for it.
Dodging in midair was difficult. Hwang Tae-san crossed his arms, curled up, and braced himself, taking the tail strike with his body.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted from the impact.
“Guh!”
The power was tremendous.
Boss monsters this large were rare.
Even though he looked slow, he was hard to avoid.
The size difference was simply too great.
Hwang Tae-san was smashed into the cracked ground like a fly swatted by a flyswatter. Shin Kang-soo rushed over and helped him up.
Blood trickled from Hwang Tae-san’s mouth.
“Chairman!”
“How humiliating.”
Even a full party would have struggled to defeat this boss. What had he been thinking, trying to handle it with just two people?
Had he lost his edge after being away from active duty for so long?
The truth was, they had underestimated Khalid because he was famous for being docile.
Everyone called him cute, kind, Busan’s mascot… They had looked down on him.
Arrogance and carelessness.
Wasn’t he said to have killed the most Hunters of any monster?
“Damn it.”
Khalid looked down at Hwang Tae-san.
Those eyes everyone had called cute were now fierce.
Khalid opened his jaws wide.
Sensing the killing intent, Hwang Tae-san shoved Shin Kang-soo away.
“Come!”
His ultimate skill, Indestructible Diamond Body, activated. Hwang Tae-san’s entire body was covered in golden light.
“GRRRROOOOOOAR!”
Khalid unleashed a roar.
Indestructible Diamond Body was an almost invincible skill that blocked all physical and magical damage. But Khalid’s thunderous roar burst his eardrums with a sharp pop. The world spun as if his inner ear had broken.
Ping—
Sound waves couldn’t be blocked.
“Ugh…”
The shockwave crushed his entire body. His organs trembled. Even after using his ultimate, he was being overwhelmed by a single roar. It was hard to keep his eyes open.
Hwang Tae-san bit his lip until it bled, focusing on the metallic taste to stay conscious. The overwhelming presence and power—Khalid was a monster of an entirely different species.
Then the roar suddenly stopped.
As if it had been a lie.
Or had his ears gone deaf?
Hwang Tae-san felt blood dripping from his ears.
He couldn’t hear anything.
“……”
An unbelievable sight.
He blinked several times, doubting his eyes.
A man riding a giant skeletal horse stood between him and Khalid. Khalid was glaring down at the stranger with a terrifying expression, yet the man was calmly stroking the turtle’s snout.
What on earth…
Hwang Tae-san’s trait [Indestructible Diamond Body] activated, rapidly healing his burst eardrums. The ringing gradually took shape again.
“…… Good boy. Calm down, calm down. It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”
Khalid let out a roar.
A cute one.
“Kyuu, kyuuong! Kwoooong!”