The Hunter Board Is Brutal

I still had not entirely shaken off the daze by the time I took the elevator back down to the first floor.

Clutched in my hand was the evaluation sheet the staff member had handed me.

Attack Power: 100. That was the benchmark for utterly obliterating the testing mannequin—in essence, the hard ceiling of their measurement equipment. Stronger readings certainly existed out in the world, but once you reached that bracket, standard practice was to gauge your output in a dungeon or the Abyss, not inside an Association testing hall.

Naturally, my potential rating was maxed out at a clean 10 as well.

And this was only the baseline for a growth-type skill sitting at Level 1. I couldn't even begin to fathom how absurdly destructive it would become once it leveled up.

If I had to describe how I felt right now...

...Heh.

My heart was hammering with genuine excitement.

Confidence and anticipation. Two emotions I rarely ever felt. For once, it felt like I could accomplish anything I set my mind to.

"Ah, Ms. Gyeoul! Just one moment, please!"

"Yes?"

Just as I was about to push through the glass revolving doors, the receptionist behind the front counter called out to me.

"There's still one final step left in your registration process."

"What is it?"

"You need to decide on one. Your Hunter Codename."

Ah. Right.

Every licensed hunter had one: a codename, or in plain gaming terms, a handle. And much like character creation in an online game, duplicate names were strictly forbidden.

"...Winter?"

"Already taken."

"Gyeoul?"

"Taken."

"Yuri?"

"You're joking, right? That's an active high-ranker's codename."

What followed was an impromptu, agonizing game of Twenty Questions as I tossed out whatever popped into my head. Because the duplicate check spanned every registered hunter across the entirety of South Korea, finding an unclaimed alias proved remarkably difficult—not helped in the slightest by my complete lack of naming sense.

"...Vid?"

"Oh! That one's completely open. Would you like to lock it in?"

"Yes."

Exhaustion was starting to creep in, but I had finally secured a usable codename. Where did it come from? Look up the Portuguese word for glass, and you'll find your answer.

The sun hadn't even begun to set by the time I made it back to my apartment.

After taking a quick shower, I flopped down onto my bed out of sheer habit and unlocked my phone. Now that my official hunter registration was complete, should I dive straight into the Abyss today?

It wasn't a bad idea—provided I wasn't an unemployed youth on a rapidly ticking survival timer who desperately needed immediate income.

"...Money. That's the problem."

It was a problem, sure, but not one worth sighing in despair over. After all, I was an awakened hunter now. The moment I secured a contract or raiding gig, all my financial woes would vanish in a flash.

To hunt down some employment postings, I opened the browser and navigated to the dedicated hunter community: the Hunter Board.

Oh, it worked.

The Association's backend network was surprisingly efficient. Even though I had accessed the board the second I stepped through my front door, identity authentication and account linking had processed in a single stroke.

Your forum handle was locked to your Hunter Codename with zero option to edit it, but you had the option to toggle an anonymous tag whenever writing a post or leaving a comment.

The site navigation split into three main hubs: [Hunter Board], [Guild Board], and [Abyss Board]. Just glancing at the directory gave me an immediate grasp of what belonged where. For now, I clicked into the general Hunter Board.

Like any massive hub forum, topical discussions and brainless shitposts coexisted in a roughly equal mix. But amidst the clutter, one specific headline seized my full attention.

Seeing support faces these days makes me wanna slap them through a wall.

...Why, though?

Feeling personally targeted as an awakened support, I clicked the thread as if possessed.

What in the world is happening here...?

Past that point, the thread had devolved into a full-scale UFC cage match between self-identified support mages and everyone ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else, tearing into each other with murderous venom—the original poster included.

Backing out to the search bar, I punched in terms like 'support mage', 'support', and 'buffer' to skim through dozens of related threads. Piecing together the discourse, I arrived at three clear conclusions.

1. In the hunter industry, support mages were treated like de facto royalty.

The root causes were severe scarcity and mechanical necessity. When challenging a dungeon above a certain difficulty threshold, the presence of a dedicated support was every bit as critical as that of a main tank. But unlike tanks—who were nearly as plentiful as offensive damage dealers—the raw population of awakened supports was staggeringly minute. Why? Nobody knew. Class allocation upon awakening was entirely dictated by dumb luck.

2. Support mages were acutely aware of their own privilege, and that was precisely where the rot began.

Many supports, like the 'PinkLove' commenter above, lived in an echo chamber of arrogance where being coddled was treated as an innate birthright—conveniently forgetting that their status was purely the result of winning a genetic lottery.

Why behave like that?

I genuinely couldn't wrap my head around it. If someone extends kindness or respect to you, you express gratitude and return mutual courtesy. Wasn't that the most elementary common sense in human relationships? How could so many grown adults fail to grasp that basic principle?

"...It makes no sense."

I silently swore that I would never grow up to be like that. Granted, I was already fully grown physically, but as a licensed hunter, I was practically a newborn babe.

3. Despite all their posturing, support mages were fundamentally incapable of operating alone.

This dependency was the core reason public sentiment resented them so bitterly. Lacking any offensive capability, the overwhelming majority of supports could not earn experience points or grow stronger through solo play. They were chained to finding a party or signing with a guild—even if the reality looked less like 'applying' and more like being 'enthroned.'

Their Abyss clear rate, which sat dead last across all hunter archetypes by an astronomical margin, was undeniable proof of their helplessness.

...I'd been thinking about the Abyss for a while now, but what actually was it?

To put it simply, it was the classic 'Tower' found in modern hunter fiction—except instead of soaring into the sky, it was an inverted structure bored deep into the bowels of the earth. Solo entry only. Dynamic level scaling. Score-based rankings. Massive experience point payouts.

That alone was enough to paint a clear picture. And if it wasn't, I would figure out the rest firsthand, because taking a bite out of the Abyss was already penciled into my itinerary. Seeing the sheer destructive output of Glass Butterfly had solidified my confidence: while double-digit floors might be out of reach, clearing the shallowest tiers should be well within my grasp.

Hmm...

I continued lurking on the forums for quite a while, but the one piece of information I needed most was nowhere to be found: how a newly awakened hunter actually landed a contract or raiding slot.

Resolving to ask directly, I tapped the 'New Post' icon and drafted my very first submission.

That clipped block of text was the absolute maximum length my verbal restriction allowed. While I had grown somewhat accustomed to speaking under the constraint, trying to draft written prose brought the awkwardness right back to the surface. The penalty was an insidious nuisance.

I had debated whether to mention my support class at all. Given how the board was currently a raging inferno over support toxicity, it felt like pouring gasoline onto a burning house. Still, if I wanted accurate guidance, disclosing my specialization felt necessary.

Befitting a massive community, replies landed almost instantly.

One commenter brushed it off as a lame novelty account.

At least the second one offered practical advice. Pinned notices? Weren't those just legal boilerplate people only glanced at when checking why their accounts had been banned?

Following the advice, I tapped into the announcements board, and the mystery behind why my keyword searches had yielded nothing was instantly solved.

It appeared that due to malicious agitators attempting to crash the platform, the administration had severed the community guides entirely and sequestered them in a protected archive.

More importantly, the author's handle struck an immediate chord. Polaris. Even back when I was an ordinary civilian, her name had been ubiquitous as one of the legendary top-ranked pioneers from twenty years ago during the dawn of the awakening era. To think South Korea's former Number One was running the Hunter Board as its lead administrator. Who knew?

Thanks to her directory, locating the exact hiring guide I needed took mere seconds.

Hmm...

After reading the entire manifesto, the reality of the hunter market felt remarkably different from what I had envisioned.

Across guilds of all sizes—small, mid-tier, or sprawling chaebol conglomerates—the universal prerequisite for submitting an application was simply hunter level. Even to slip your business card into a casual, one-day freelance raiding party, you had to be at least Level 20. Securing a stable, salaried desk at an established guild demanded Level 40 to 50.

How was a greenhorn with zero experience supposed to level up in the first place? Simple: conquer the Abyss. Nothing in the world awarded more experience points.

In other words, you didn't conquer the Abyss after getting hired; you conquered the Abyss in order to get hired. For ordinary support mages devoid of offensive skills, the standard path was signing restrictive pre-contracts with guilds to receive gear, skill books, or paid bus runs through low-tier dungeons.

None of that applied to me, of course.

I possessed a skill capable of carrying me through solo clears. I was that fabled, self-sufficient unicorn: an independent support.

Next up was studying the mechanics of the Abyss itself.

What waits inside once you step through...?

Unfortunately, that section contained very little actionable tactical data—not because the guide was poorly written, but because of the Abyss's inherent nature. There was no fixed layout or universal walkthrough. Every challenger encountered a different trial, and the perceived difficulty varied wildly from person to person.

Whether you were a freshly awakened rookie or an elite international ranker, the system dynamically calibrated the environment so that it felt 'sweaty and infuriating enough to force total tryhard mode.' Still, several absolute laws governed the descent:

The deeper you descended—meaning the higher the floor number climbed—the more lethal and complex the trials became. The scoring system that determined rank and completion rewards operated on strict, objective metrics. And every fifth tier guaranteed a floor boss encounter.

That was enough theory for today. It was time for practical application.

Glancing at the bedside clock, it was just shy of six in the evening.

I should be back well before dinner.

Clearing a low-tier floor in the Abyss took an hour at most according to community consensus. Popping down for a quick run right now wouldn't disrupt my evening at all. Naturally, that casual attitude would get you killed on the deeper floors, where dives spanned days or even months at a stretch, but Floor 1 was an entirely different matter.

Entering the Abyss was remarkably straightforward. Just like bringing up the status window, all it took was focusing your intent on the thought: Enter the Abyss.

Flash!

Final pre-flight check. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Not that there was much to inspect.

Physical condition: optimal. Drank a glass of water, visited the restroom. Weapons... none to speak of, so going in bare-handed.

Focusing on the prompt, I selected [YES].

The system window counted down from five to zero. Just as I held my breath and watched the final digit tick down—

What?

A private message had landed in my inbox, but because the timing clashed directly with the transition sequence, I couldn't read even a quarter of it. To whoever sent that: so sorry! I'll finish reading when I get back!

Flash—!

A blinding curtain of luminescence engulfed my vision.

When the light receded, I found myself standing in a desolate expanse that stretched endlessly in all directions. Devoid of vegetation, it was less a plain and more an arid wasteland of cracked earth.

Standing in that expanse were two entities: myself, and a solitary monster.

Crystal clear.

Now, what exactly was that creature standing across from me?

It certainly wasn't a goblin or an orc. Its entire frame was bathed in a murky, dried-blood crimson. The crown of its skull and the tips of its ears were sharp and pointed, though it lacked horns. Its stature was slightly broader than mine, with a pair of leathery wings folded across its shoulder blades and a thick, elongated tail swishing against the dust.

There was a specific mythical classification for beasts like that...

A nymph? No, definitely not that.

An imp. Right, an imp—the archetypal lesser demon.

The imp's slit pupils locked squarely onto mine, the atmosphere turning suffocatingly tense in an instant. A silent standoff before the impending storm.