Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Return
—BEEEEEEP
A piercing ringing violently struck his ears.
The surroundings changed in an instant.
Yet somehow, this situation felt incredibly familiar.
“What the hell are you doing?! You crazy bastard, snap out of it!”
“Kang Jihun!! Attack!!”
“Whether you attack or run away, do something already, you fucking idiot!”
Familiar voices rang out around him.
It didn’t take long to understand the situation.
Jihun slowly raised his head a little.
A massive green jaw.
Sharp fangs jutting outward.
A muscular body covered in thick flesh.
King Goblin.
The E-rank gate boss monster stood directly in front of him.
Just moments ago, Jihun had used a high-speed movement skill to rush in close and deliver a decisive strike.
“Ten years ago…”
The King Goblin looked down at Jihun, who had suddenly charged right in front of it.
Its fierce crimson eyes met Jihun’s hollow gaze.
“Goblin? No… King Goblin, was it? Right. I think that’s what it was.”
Jihun lowered his eyes from the monster and looked at the sword in his right hand.
“So I really did return to that exact moment from ten years ago.”
“Why the hell is that psycho just standing there instead of attacking?”
“What, is he trying to have a staring contest with the King Goblin?”
“Hey, but doesn’t he look kinda weird? Was he always wearing those clothes?”
“How the hell would I know? Nobody gives a shit what that loser wears.”
The voices of his classmates behind him sounded crystal clear.
Classmates?
No. Just fellow cadets from Class 11.
As far as he remembered, not a single one of them had ever considered him a companion.
The King Goblin stared at Jihun, who had suddenly rushed right in front of it only to stand there blankly.
Then—
The King Goblin slowly raised its absurdly massive wooden club high into the air.
“Kyaaa! Dodge!”
“Move, you fucking moron!”
“Damn it! I’m going in!”
Professor Jin Seokhyun, who had joined the E-rank gate subjugation mission to command and protect the Class 11 cadets, hurriedly tried to move forward.
But then—
Swoosh—
Along with a smooth yet sharp sound, the King Goblin froze in place with its club still raised.
And a moment later—
A clean line appeared across the monster’s thick neck.
Then its head slowly slid off diagonally.
Gushhhhh—
Was it because the cut was too clean?
The severed head remained in place for a brief second before a waterfall of blood finally erupted from the neck.
“Did he swing his sword? When? I failed to follow the movement of a mere Class 11 E-rank hunter?”
Professor Jin Seokhyun, who had been about to rush forward, couldn’t believe he had failed to track Kang Jihun’s swordsmanship with his eyes.
Leaving behind the headless King Goblin corpse that still remained standing even as blood poured from its neck—
Jihun quietly began walking toward the gate exit.
“Yeonhwa… I left Yeonhwa behind… Yeonhwa…”
Like a man who had lost his mind, he kept muttering incomprehensible words as he walked out of the gate alone.
“W-What the hell was that bastard?”
“Did he seriously just kill that thing?”
“Huh? Why’s he leaving by himself?”
The other Class 11 cadets stared blankly at Kang Jihun before slowly turning confused eyes toward Professor Jin Seokhyun.
“…The boss monster’s dead, so we should leave too. The ones in the back, collect the magic stones. Class 11 Team B is retreating.”
[Reconnecting to the system.]
[Detecting changes in the player.]
Messages echoed inside his head.
Hearing those words again after such a long time strangely made him feel nostalgic.
“Reconnecting? So it really was disconnected in that world.”
For the first time in years, Jihun opened his status window again.
Name: Kang Jihun
Lv: 4
Base Stats
Strength: Measuring due to sudden fluctuation
Agility: Measuring due to sudden fluctuation
Intelligence: Measuring due to sudden fluctuation
Mana: 30
Unknown Energy: Unmeasurable
Skills
C-Rank Lv1
Although his basic stats still couldn’t be confirmed, judging from his level and skill, his abilities as a hunter didn’t seem drastically different.
“Unknown Energy? Is it talking about the internal energy in my dantian? Well, it wasn’t a power that existed in this world, so maybe the system can’t recognize it. Still, it doesn’t seem to have disappeared.”
After exiting the gate and walking to a nearby park, Jihun sat cross-legged and circulated the internal energy within his dantian.
“As expected. It’s still there. Ha… what am I supposed to do now…”
Summer vacation of his senior year in high school.
Jihun had been working a part-time job delivering water jugs to pay rent and living expenses when he suddenly awakened.
Like all awakened people, even without anyone teaching him, Jihun instinctively knew how to open his status window and check his abilities.
“Mister!! Can you see this? This? It’s a status window! I awakened!!”
“What? Where? Wait, don’t you know only hunters themselves can see their status windows, you idiot?! Did you seriously awaken?”
“Yes!! The status window’s right here! This is insane!”
Jihun excitedly grabbed the water delivery driver he worked with and jumped around in joy.
Name: Kang Jihun
Lv: 1
Base Stats
Strength: 8
Agility: 11
Intelligence: 10
Mana: 16
Skills
C-Rank Lv1
Even though his awakening only gave him an unimpressive C-rank skill, Jihun had been overwhelmingly happy.
Even after being officially judged as an E-rank hunter by the Hunter Management Bureau, he was still happy.
Because hunters earned a lot of money in exchange for risking their lives.
After his parents died during middle school, Jihun lived alone while attending high school.
Unable to afford increased housing costs, he had converted part of his jeonse deposit into monthly rent starting in his third year of middle school, using the remaining money to survive through high school.
College had been an impossible dream.
He’d planned to start manual labor immediately after graduation.
But after awakening, Jihun enrolled in Hunter Academy the moment he graduated high school.
Hunter Academy was an institution where the government spared no expense in raising powerful hunters.
All academy cadets received monthly support funds based on their class ranking, almost like a salary.
Top-ranked Class 1 cadets received ten million won each month.
Lowest-ranked Class 11 cadets received two million won.
And through the academy’s advanced education, cadets could raise their player levels, improve combat skills, and occasionally earn extra money through gate subjugation part-time jobs.
Of course, every academy student ultimately shared the same goal—
To be scouted by a prestigious guild.
Just like how the ultimate goal of university students was employment.
Once you joined a good guild, the amount of money you could touch was on an entirely different level from ordinary people.
Not to mention the fame that naturally followed.
E-rank hunter.
Terrible base stats.
A mere C-rank skill.
Poor combat sense.
It was only natural that Jihun ended up in Class 11 Team B.
No—
Maybe he should’ve considered himself lucky.
In truth, Jihun had barely squeezed into the academy in the first place.
Still, because High-Speed Movement could instantly inflict fatal damage on monsters and also worked well for escaping desperate situations—
It was at least an extremely useful combat skill.
Jihun had basically entered the academy entirely through skill luck alone.
“Hey, there he is. The guy who barely slipped in.”
“I heard his combat sense is complete garbage too. Apparently he got dead last in the evaluation again.”
“The admissions officer who accepted him is the real problem.”
“But I heard that loser’s obsessed with Seol Yujeong from Class 4.”
“Yeah, apparently he chased her all the way from high school into the academy. Pfft.”
“Ugh, doesn’t he know his place?”
From the very first day at the academy, the eyes directed toward Jihun had never been kind.
His skills were lacking.
And even without saying it aloud, everyone could tell how poor he was.
Even though his fellow Class 11 cadets were in the exact same lowest-ranked class, they still mocked and looked down on him.
But after losing his parents, Jihun had been too busy surviving to care about human relationships.
It wasn’t like he failed to notice the bullying and contempt from his classmates.
He simply kept silently trying to adapt to academy life.
Even when people openly insulted him, all he could do was respond with a kind smile.
“Alright, you’ve all trained at the academy for over a year now. This is your first real combat mission! Nervous?”
“No, sir!”
“The gate we’re subjugating this time won’t be especially dangerous as long as you stay careful around the boss monster, the King Goblin. And since I’m here with you, don’t worry even if something unexpected happens.”
After training for a year and reaching level 4, Jihun finally joined his classmates on his first real gate subjugation mission.
The Class 11 cadets, hardened by a year of training, swiftly slaughtered the regular goblins.
And finally—
They faced the boss monster, the King Goblin.
Completely surrounded by the Class 11 cadets, it was now Jihun’s turn to move.
His role was to use High-Speed Movement to quickly charge in and slash the King Goblin’s leg.
A strike he had practiced for countless hours.
The very skill that got him accepted into the academy.
Jihun activated High-Speed Movement and charged straight toward the King Goblin—
No.
He had been in the middle of charging.
The High-Speed Movement skill worked by creating a wormhole connecting two spaces and traveling through it.
But a side effect had triggered.
A wormhole connected this world’s space with another dimension entirely.
In the span of a single blink—
Jihun disappeared.
And after spending ten years in a parallel world—
He returned.