Is This a Junk Shop?
I narrowed my eyes and stared at the massive shadow rising high beyond the horizon.
The Tower.
Everything in my sight felt unfamiliar, but that thing called the Tower struck me as especially bizarre.
According to Daon, the forge where I had existed was also part of this Tower.
Hidden Stage, Apocalypse Forge.
Then was the reason for my death somehow connected to this so-called Tower?
My thoughts branched endlessly, but I knew far too little to reach any conclusions.
Shall I go take a look?
I immediately set off toward the nearest Tower.
The distance was roughly…
“About thirty li, I suppose.”
It wasn’t close, yet my steps felt surprisingly light.
The footprints I left in the snow soon met rough dirt, then continued onto cold asphalt and pavement blocks.
This was a modern street.
The roads stretching between high-rise buildings were packed with people.
Passersby would glance at me and whisper among themselves.
Most of them were middle-aged women.
Countless other voices I wasn’t consciously listening to washed over me like waves.
All at once, yet without causing confusion.
My ears, standing tall above my head, kept twitching at those strange sounds.
“Ugh…”
Was it because this body’s senses were too sharp?
Unwanted information flooded in so clearly that a wave of embarrassment rushed up my spine.
I hurried my steps, dodging the gazes of others.
The area near the Tower was like a marketplace.
Dozens of stalls.
Crowds gathered around each one, peering at the goods on display.
“Whoa…”
It was all so fascinating. My head swiveled left and right, eyes darting everywhere.
Soon my gaze landed on one particular stall.
It was lined with dozens of glass bottles and the owner was loudly calling out to customers.
“Hmm…”
Inside the colorful glass bottles covering the stall, vivid red and blue liquids sloshed gently.
If my memory served me right, this was also something I had never seen before.
The world I had returned to after so long was filled with such unfamiliar things.
“What is this… ahem. What is this?”
Curious, I stepped closer to the stall and asked the shopkeeper.
The sensation of my voice vibrating through my vocal cords still felt strange, so my words kept getting tangled.
The shopkeeper stared at me for a moment, then broke into a wide smile.
“Ah, these are called potions. If you get hurt while fighting, you just rub some on the spot and new flesh grows right back.”
“… I see.”
At least I hadn’t forgotten the language entirely.
The shopkeeper explained the potion’s effects slowly, using gestures to help me understand.
According to Daon, hunters were people who climbed the Tower and hunted monsters.
So this potion thing must be some kind of medicine.
Just as I was beginning to grasp its purpose and turning away, the shopkeeper smiled and waved at me.
Is that… a greeting?
I awkwardly waved back and moved on to the next stall.
A large sign hung overhead.
[JW Guild / Weapons & Consumables]
It was an exceptionally large stall.
I squeezed through the dense crowd and examined the displayed items.
Swords and shields arranged in neat rows.
Along with smaller tools like throwing knives.
“Hmm…”
I rested my chin on my hand while inspecting the stall, my brows furrowing on their own.
I could tell without even touching them—just by looking.
Every single one was of terribly poor quality.
They hadn’t properly filtered out impurities, so the interiors were riddled with microscopic cracks.
The unrefined grain of the metal looked unstable all by itself.
Tap. Tap.
Dust rose from my tail as it thumped restlessly against the ground.
“This really is a junk shop.”
The conclusion that crossed my mind slipped out before I could stop it.
The two men in suits guarding the stall heard me and burst into incredulous laughter.
Their blatantly dismissive tone strangely stung my pride.
I had been about to leave, but I turned back around and looked at the stall again.
A price tag on one of the daggers read ‘80.’
If it’s 80… does that mean 80 won?
That I could understand.
“Hmm… so it’s cheap, that’s why.”
“Wait… what?”
The second clerk’s confident statement made my tail fur bristle.
Had the value of Korean currency dropped that much…?
The cheapest potion I had seen earlier was 50,000 won per bottle, so that didn’t seem to be the case.
I ignored the clerk’s sneering addition and picked up the dagger in question.
“… No matter how I look at it, this is junk.”
I gripped the dagger in one hand and curled my middle finger tightly behind my thumb with the other, gathering force.
The clerk shouted in panic, but my finger was already poised to flick.
I aimed precisely at the side of the dagger where the grain was most twisted and filthy.
—Ting!
The moment my finger struck, a dull, unpleasant cracking sound rang out from the dagger.
Then, as if it had turned to ice, the blade shattered into countless pieces that rained onto the ground.
All that remained in my palm was the lonely, now-useless hilt.
“……… Huh.”
The noisy chatter that had filled the area around the stall died down as if by magic.
The faces of the two men guarding the stall flushed redder than the red potion from the previous stall, then quickly drained of all color.
“See? It really was junk.”
I brushed off my awkward hand and tossed the remaining hilt onto the ground with a clatter.
Of course I did. He had just said 800,000 won himself.
Is he an idiot…?
The man in the suit twisted his face into a menacing scowl and reached over the stall to grab me.
Embarrassed, I quickly twisted away and slipped into the crowd.
“It may be expensive, but it’s still junk.”
Shouts of “Stop right there! Catch her!” followed from behind, but my light, swift footsteps were already carrying me far away.
Tap tap.
The conference room at the Korean Hunter Association was busier than ever.
“Haa…”
Kim Seunghun, president of the Korean Hunter Association, sat at the head of the table and let out a deep sigh.
“You’re certain there were no anomalies in the re-examination results?”
“Yes, sir. They are definitive.”
The focus of the meeting was D-class awakened Lee Daon.
She was the hunter who had gone missing for a month on the fourth floor of the Tower and miraculously returned.
Seunghun accepted the two documents handed to him by an association executive.
One sheet recorded her awakening values from about three months ago.
The other contained the results of the recent re-examination.
Both clearly indicated D-class.
“So you’re telling me that a D-class hunter who awakened only three months ago has shattered every record for the highest difficulty floors of the Tower immediately after returning from being missing?”
At Seunghun’s question, everyone in the conference room lowered their heads.
The primary purpose behind founding the Korean Hunter Association was the management of awakened individuals.
The ranking system divided them from E-class to S-class.
That ranking system served both as a measure of a hunter’s strength and as a national safety mechanism to gauge their level of threat.
Only through systematic management could the association appease the hunters, grant them special privileges, or impose restrictions.
Yet here was a D-class hunter—one who should be at the very bottom of that system—breaking records that shook the entire world.
“Haa…”
From the perspective of the strict, principled Seunghun, this was a clear dereliction of duty.
“… There have been no changes in any of the magic power readings or the list of possessed skills.”
“Then how in the world could a hunter who was struggling on the easy-difficulty third floor two months ago produce these kinds of records?”
In the silent conference room, a woman in uniform rose from her seat.
“I am Han Suhyun, head of the Emotion Management Department. May I speak?”
“Go ahead.”
Suhyun manipulated the tablet in her hands.
A holographic window appeared in the center of the room, playing a slightly blurry video of Daon emerging from the Tower.
“This is footage from the day Hunter Daon reappeared after a month of being missing.”
Suhyun paused the video and drew a large circle around the greatsword in Daon’s hand to highlight it.
“When comparing before and after her disappearance, the only thing that changed is the weapon Hunter Daon is holding. It does not exist in the association’s database of production-class awakened individuals.”
“Are you saying this can all be explained by a single weapon?”
Seunghun’s question was not a rebuke.
It was pure curiosity.
It had been ten years since the Tower had suddenly appeared.
During that time, special equipment had been nothing more than auxiliary tools meant to withstand the power of hunters.
“Um… according to the data, Hunter Lee Daon’s physical stats and total magic power are indeed consistent with D-class.”
The director of the Rank Management Division, who had been holding his breath, seized the moment to chime in.
“A single weapon allowing her to surpass the records of every S-class hunter in the world…”
It was a hard-to-believe hypothesis, but the word opportunity flashed through Seunghun’s mind.
If they could obtain large quantities of equipment like that…
It would only be a matter of time before Korea rose to become the world’s strongest hunter nation.
“Have you attempted to appraise the weapon?”
“It was canceled due to Hunter Daon’s refusal.”
“Then what about the acquisition route of that weapon?”
“… It is currently under investigation.”
In the end, it meant there was nothing they could know right now.
“Haa…”
Seunghun rubbed his face and swept his hair back.
“Section Chief Han, could you send me that video separately?”
“Yes, I will transmit it immediately.”
“… Let’s end today’s meeting here.”
Even as the crowd filed out of the conference room, Seunghun’s gaze remained fixed on the holographic video.
More precisely, on the blood-red curved blade in Daon’s hand.
Even in the blurry footage, an unidentified, mysterious power shimmered with a chilling presence.