Unix Cube User Registration

A brilliant light erupted from the unidentified die, lancing straight into my right pupil. Caught completely off guard, I grimaced and jerked my face away from the sudden glare.

Fuck!

Getting flash-blinded like that is the worst.

Aside from a faint sting in my eye, nothing seemed wrong. Wait—was a stinging eye actually a pretty big problem? The unidentified light had left something behind in my eyeball, a smeared, paint-like afterimage that refused to fade.

I rubbed my eye with my right hand. Even with it closed, something strange occupied my vision. This wasn't a phantom cooked up by my imagination. It was an image I could genuinely see.

"What the hell is this?"

It looked exactly like a program's loading bar. The bar filled to the end in a rush. Ten seconds, maybe? I wished the programs on my laptop started this fast. That hunk of junk stuttered just trying to open a word processor.

Words I couldn't make sense of surfaced inside my head. I understood the language, sure. The meaning behind it was another story.

Unix Cube. Was that what this die-shaped cube was called? And why the hell was a sentence like that popping into my skull uninvited?

"The situation's already this bizarre. A voice in my head barely even registers as surprising anymore. So what am I supposed to do with this?"

Helpfully—if you could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠call it that—the prompt surfaced again for the guy who still hadn't made a decision. Was this even a help message? I had no idea what to call it. The words had simply appeared in my mind, as naturally as a thought of my own.

It felt like a voice, and like an image, and like something else entirely that I didn't have a word for. I'd always prided myself on a decent vocabulary, but my education was far too short to describe whatever this was.

Alright. Assess the situation first. Fully understanding the dramatic change happening to me right now was a lost cause. Fine. Then I'd reason my way through it.

I had no clue by what principle a telepathy-like signal was ringing inside my skull. Come to think of it, I'd heard there were Hunters with telepathy-type abilities. But this didn't feel like something a Hunter had done. I couldn't be certain, but my gut was telling me so.

My gut wasn't exactly a reliable employee, but I'd trust it for now. It wasn't like I had anything else worth trusting.

"First off, this Unix Cube thing is clearly referring to the cube sitting in front of me. And user registration…"

Register as this cube's owner, then? What would I even get out of that? More to the point—what was a Unix Cube?

One question spawned another, and they lined up in a row, each nipping at the last one's heels. No voice kindly volunteered answers. Instead, the same prompt pressed me for a decision once more.

What happens if I refuse? I sat with that for a moment. Snatching up an offer you don't understand is not a wise move. I decided to make the stupid choice anyway. Typical me.

"Alright. Let's try this registration thing. No idea what'll happen, but sure."

I had the distinct feeling that if I didn't do it now, I'd never get another chance. Unreliable as that hunch was, it was the only thing I had to go on. The moment I answered, a new line of text surfaced in my mind—short, clean, and this time I understood both the surface meaning and everything underneath it.

"Kh—!"

A wave of dizziness slammed into me. I nearly went down on the spot. I clenched my spinning head and forced myself to stay on my feet. Another loading bar filled my vision.

The difference this time was the speed. Comparatively, this bar was crawling. So this was user registration? I still had no idea what was happening or how, but I could tell that something was being planted inside me.

"Don't tell me this is an Awakening. No—I've never heard of anyone Awakening like this. And I've never heard of a Unix Cube either. This doesn't feel like an Awakening."

Awakening.

The word that made every man's heart skip a beat.

When people said Awakening, they usually meant an ordinary person realizing their Ability and becoming a Hunter.

Hunters.

They stood at the peak of humanity's caste, the ones people called the chosen. Of course, plenty of the powerful and the wealthy weren't Hunters at all. Our own president wasn't one. From what I knew, heads of state who were Hunters were rare worldwide. Even so, you couldn't deny that Hunters sat at the axis of human power and wealth. They were humanity's vanguard against dungeons and monsters, so the authority and money that followed them was inevitable.

The definition was simple. We called anyone who had realized an Ability and Awakened a Hunter. That was the broad sense. In the narrow sense, it meant someone registered with the Hunter Association. Since joining the Association required you to prove your Ability, the two definitions were effectively the same.

Most Hunters joined the Association. The ones who didn't were the ones with something to hide—the criminal Hunters people commonly called Demonic.

It felt like a good ten minutes had passed, and the bar was still only at thirty percent. Like downloading a massive game. No matter how I looked at it, this didn't feel like the signs of an Awakening. I'd never heard of anyone Awakening this way. Then again, it wasn't as if I knew everything there was to know about Awakening.

Under Korean law, Hunters were required to join the Hunter Association, no exceptions. They were also forced to fulfill a minimum of twenty years of national defense duty. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That didn't mean twenty years of active military service, of course. The twenty years included reserve duty; actual service was one year. You could enlist as an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠officer or NCO if you wanted, but almost no Hunters ever did.

Put like that, Hunters sounded like three-D laborers stuck doing the country's dirty work. The reality was nothing of the sort.

The moment you officially joined the Hunter Association, you started drawing a pension. Even the lowest grade—a Rank 10 Hunter—took home about fifteen hundred dollars a month, eighteen thousand a year. That was the base. The actual pension scaled with how often you were deployed.

Truthfully, the pension was pocket money. Society had an endless appetite for Hunters. The monster byproducts propping up the modern world were a nightmare for anyone who wasn't one. Take Firestone: it accounted for over sixty percent of the country's thermal power generation, and prolonged exposure drastically shortened an ordinary person's lifespan. Standard safety gear couldn't fully block mana infiltration, so you had to hire Hunters to handle it. By law, any workplace dealing in monster byproducts was required to employ them.

If punching a clock at some company didn't appeal, exploring dungeons was a solid alternative. Hunters who specialized in dungeon exploration were called Dungeon Hunters, and they made up roughly one percent of all Hunters. Hunters themselves were about one percent of the general population, which put Dungeon Hunters in the top 0.01 percent—the genuine elite. They were also the ones who made the most money. Even a Rank 10 Hunter pulled in six figures a year down in the dungeons. Calling the pension pocket money wasn't an exaggeration.

"A Hunter, huh. A pipe dream. But if this really is the Awakening process, I wouldn't complain."

To become a Hunter, you had to realize your own power. A Hunter's power was called an Ability, and awakening to it depended entirely on personal talent. You couldn't study your way into an Awakening. In the entire history of Hunters, not a single person had ever Awakened through education. That was why people called them the chosen. You had to be born with that fate.

"Scholars say every human is born with at least one Ability, but… I don't know if I buy that."

The research sat a long way from common sense. They claimed it was the conclusion of in-depth studies on human mana response, but I couldn't relate to it at all. This world had far too many non-Hunters. Next to nothing had actually been proven about mana or Abilities, which was exactly why I couldn't put much stock in the academics.

I'd been woolgathering, and time had slipped by. The loading bar was closing in on one hundred percent.

I had to admit it: I was a little excited. Somewhere along the way, I'd started enjoying this.

A congratulatory message bloomed in my head. At the same instant, the cube flared with light and vanished. A remarkable sight, sure, but I'd already been through so many remarkable things that it barely registered. What mattered more than a disappearing cube was confirming what had changed in me.

Fortunately, the change was obvious. Literally. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could see it with my own eyes.

"What is this? Status? Skills? Inventory? Quests?"

A row of buttons had appeared along the right side of my vision, the kind that looked like they'd respond if I reached out and clicked them. I tapped the one at the top labeled Status. It had been blinking at me, practically begging to be pressed.

"What is this? It looks like a video game."

What had appeared in front of me was a message window you'd expect to find in any RPG. Come to think of it, Status, Skills, Inventory—those were all terms games used constantly. Before I could even look over the Status window properly, a new line of text surfaced in my mind.

The Status window shifted with the message. The Bonus Points field that had clearly read zero now showed ten. I had a rough idea of what was happening to me.

"I don't have the full picture, but… I just got a reward? If this is a tutorial, that's the starter guide, which means…"

This time the button labeled Skills was blinking, making its case with considerable enthusiasm. I reached toward it.