Awakening
I have a question for you all.
Hunters of the 21st century, what is the single most important thing?
Equipment?
Of course that matters.
Stats?
Do I even need to say it.
But equipment and stats exist for what, exactly?
Sure, deck yourself out in dazzling gear. Sure, get your Strength to 999 by yourself. But if all you do is swing that shining sword and staff around with those stubby little arms of yours, what in the world is the point?!
That's right. No skills, no hunter.
Without skills, no one conquers a Gate. No one conquers a Tower!
So stop disrespecting skills. Never again.
P.S. And while you're at it, use handcrafted skill books. They're better for your body than the mass-produced junk.
That's all. Adios.———
↳ Bet you look like a total incel without even seeing you.
↳ fr. Going broke overnight would break anyone's brain.
Blink. Blink.
I stared at the comments on my screen for a moment, then rested my fingers on the keyboard.
Well, I'm better looking than you.
...If I actually posted that, I'd sound like exactly the loser they think I am.
After agonizing for a good while, I lowered my hands without typing a word. There was no need to prove my looks to people whose faces I'd never seen. A raw diamond doesn't need anyone's approval to shine on its own.
Then again, maybe I should've just hit them with the cold, hard facts like that last comment did.
Not gonna lie, though. That one stung.
"..."
Leaning back in my chair, I let my gaze wander around the shop. A modest little space of maybe forty square feet, bathed in warm lamplight. Handcrafted wooden shelves packed tight with skill books, and on the round window seat, my Totoro plushie stood watch over the alleyway, all by itself, same as every other day.
Honestly, looking at it, the place looked convincing enough. Like a shop that ought to pull in at least one customer a day.
In reality, the entirety of today's customer service had been a student who came in after spotting the Totoro and asked if the plushie was for sale.
"Haaam~"
This shop — my shop — had been scraped together from the inheritance my parents left me, plus every last won I'd saved up from years of part-time work. A residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul, down an alley you'd only find after turning twice off the main road. Generously speaking, it was quiet. Bluntly speaking, there was no foot traffic whatsoever.
Its name: Chae Seon-ho Skill Books.
Truth be told, the location had bothered me even when I first came to see the place six months ago.
But the moment the realtor walked me inside, my mind changed.
"What do you think? It's genuinely great, right? A property like this at this price? You couldn't find a deal like this anywhere."
The previous owner, apparently a lover of Ghibli films, had built the interior by hand — down to the last window frame — and it hit every one of my tastes. The place was so well maintained that I could've moved my books in without a single day of renovation.
Do you know how much interior work costs? Exactly.
By that point, the realtor's patter was starting to sound pretty persuasive too.
"Skill books sell themselves if the product is good. Hunters aren't short on money, are they? What's a couple of turns into an alley to them?"
Put that way, it made perfect sense. Would people who gambled their lives fighting monsters really begrudge themselves a short walk for a quality skill book?
More than anything, making good books was the one part I knew I could handle.
...Certainly more feasible than scraping together enough money to buy a storefront on a main boulevard.
So I signed the contract.
I filled the shelves with skill books I'd transcribed by hand, hung up the signboard, and taped a grand-opening discount notice to the wooden door.
For the first few days, I sprang to my feet with a greeting every time the doorbell chimed.
"Welcome in!"
The very first customer, a female hunter, posted photos of the shop's interior on social media, and that got enough attention that a handful of visitors trickled in after her.
"Dude. The vibes here are absolutely insane. Should I post this on Outstar?"
But before the shop had been open even a full month, the news broke.
Taesan Enterprise — one of Korea's largest conglomerates — had succeeded in the mass production of D-rank and lower skill books.
"...Those bastards."
I knew, rationally, that blaming them wasn't fair. And yet every time I thought about it, the curse slipped out anyway.
A skill book, you see, is a desperately fussy thing to make. You have to feed mana drawn from a magic stone steadily into the nib of your pen, transcribing humanity's undecipherable runic script one glyph at a time. A single stroke out of place and the mana won't flow properly; let your focus waver mid-page and you throw away everything you'd written so far.
"Hey, isn't this one wrong?"
"Gyaaaah—!"
Because it was all done by hand, even the same craftsman produced books of slightly varying quality each time. And now a machine had taken up that finicky work.
A machine that never slept, never dozed, and stamped the exact same runes in the exact same positions on its ten-thousandth book as on its first.
To confess the truth, at first I snorted at the whole thing. Even if the mass-produced junk hit the shelves, how usable could it possibly be? Things like that would always blow up in someone's face eventually, and only after ruining a hunter's career would people appreciate the worth of a handcrafted book.
That's what I told myself as I ordered one volume the day it launched, purely for comparison — and then, the night it arrived, re-inspected the same book three times over.
...There should have been something wrong with it.
The precision of the runes, the efficiency of the mana flow — there wasn't a flaw to be found. It was barely different from a book I'd spent hours carefully crafting, and it cost less than the raw materials I bought.
Short of a god descending into my skull to personally decipher the runes, how was I ever supposed to beat that?
"God...? This is genuinely too much, You know."
To make matters worse, most of the skill books on my shelves were on Taesan's production list. The days of customers asking a price and walking out piled up, and before long, the customers who even bothered to ask stopped coming altogether.
Master's degree in Magical Engineering from Hanguk University.
At graduation, I'd figured a credential like that meant I'd never worry about making a living, wherever I went. How many all-nighters had I pulled in grad school? How many runes did I have in my hands? I'd been confident I could make better books than anyone.
I just hadn't imagined someone would sell those good books at half of half my price.
...And so a promising young skill bookmaker became the owner of a dead shop in less than a month.
My one consolation was that the building was mine, so no rent came due. If I'd had to pay a landlord for the privilege of sitting here breathing, those internet posts of mine would have been considerably less dignified.
"Haa."
On one corner of the counter lay a half-finished skill book, still open to the page I'd left it on that morning. I picked up my pen, thinking maybe I'd finish the thing — then looked at the crammed-full shelves and put it back down.
The truth was, I'd need to worry about where I'd even shelve it if I finished first.
In the end, I reached for the remote instead.
『Breaking news. Hunter Yu A-ra of the Changcheon Guild has today half-destroyed a new training ground at the National Hunter Agency during a performance test. The facility had been advertised as capable of withstanding a full-power attack from an A-rank hunter, yet its defensive barrier was completely demolished just three days after construction...』
『You were asked to attack at full power?』
『Yes.』
『So the facility simply couldn't withstand Hunter Yu A-ra at full strength.』
『No.』
The reporter paused, mid-question.
『...Then, may I ask what you mean by "no"?』
『I didn't attack at full power from the start. It's a test.』
I turned off the TV.
She lived in a different world from mine.
Had I been through that Awakening myself, would I be living a different life right now?
"..."
...Pointless question.
When I was a child, walking into church on a Sunday with my mother's hand in mine, I once heard something that stuck with me.
"The Lord does not grant us every wish."
"But for those who trust in themselves and walk their path with all their strength, He lays a hand upon their back and permits them the strength to go one step further."
Even now, I wouldn't call myself a man of faith. But I still remember how warm my mother's hand was that day, wrapped around mine.
By those words, He only pushes the backs of those who intend to walk forward first...
I glanced at the pen I'd set down earlier. Lately, whenever I resolved to make one more book, one look at the unsold stock drained the will right out of me. Just today, I'd written more nonsense on the internet than runes on paper.
"It's a little embarrassing, honestly..."
And the odds of a person Awakening were one in three thousand.
Given those slim odds already, hoping for a miracle on top — asking the God who supposedly pushes the backs of diligent people for a jackpot — made my cheeks burn all the same.
Well. Statistically, and theologically.
The message was clear: someone like me was never going to Awaken.
Not when I'd abandoned the nights of bookmaking and dreams of glory, and now sat in a café of all places getting called an incel by strangers.
.
.
.
Which is why the miracle that found me that day could only have been.
God's idea of a cruel joke.
You have been chosen by the world and have Awakened.
[Ability]: He Who Sees Through All