Hunter: Baek Jaeseong
Coming back to reality after so long felt strangely unreal. Reality, without a sense of reality — what kind of contradiction was that supposed to be? Human adaptability truly was a marvel. My body still felt like it hadn't fully left the fantasy world behind.
Fortunately, the items in my inventory still worked on this side. Which meant the pouch stuffed with platinum coins was still mine. Platinum was a precious metal in the real world too, so I could always pawn it off for cash if I had to. Of course, that was valuable currency for Solari World, so I wasn't about to. I wasn't hard up for money at the moment anyway.
The first thing I did upon returning was buy my favorite jelly donuts — the tropical variety pack. A little gift to myself after all the hell I'd gone through over there. The moment those sticky-sweet donuts clung to the roof of my mouth, I finally felt like I'd actually come home.
I had plenty to do in the real world. Most important of all was the Dungeon Hunter rookie training, so I got ready for it. Though "got ready" was a generous way of putting it — there wasn't much to actually do. Just some light stretching while I waited. Sujin seemed to have finished handing over her work at the office, so she holed up at home with me, and we let our bodies do the talking. And just like that, the day of hunter training arrived.
The Hunter Training Institute was in Gangwon-do. To my surprise, a limousine sent by the Hunter Association pulled up right in front of our building to collect us. I was going to have to get used to this kind of thing. The Association really did things on a grand scale.
Dungeon Hunters were an extraordinarily rare resource to begin with, so this level of treatment was probably only natural. For someone who'd spent his whole life as an ordinary human, it was still a shock. Sujin, whose family were Dungeon Hunters, didn't look the least bit surprised.
"I can't believe I'm going to the same training institute my unni and oppa went to... It really feels like a dream."
Sujin said it gazing out the window past the limousine glass, her face openly flushed with excitement. I pulled a cold drink from the mini-fridge and idly stroked the hair behind her ear. She started talking without my even asking.
"The Hunter Association has several training institutes, you know. The one we're going to got a huge remodel a few years ago, and they say the facilities are incredible now. My oppa went in right after the renovation finished, and he wouldn't shut up about how nice everything was."
"It's the Hunter Association. They probably threw money at it like it was nothing. That said, the further north we go, the more uneasy I get."
The limousine was taking the highway toward Gangwon-do. I had never been to Gangwon-do in my life. More precisely, I had never once gone anywhere north of the Seoul I lived in. The northern half of the peninsula was a restricted zone so terrifying it was called a holy land of dungeons.
Korea was a peculiar country — the highest dungeon occurrence rate in the world — but the northern region of the peninsula was special even by that standard. A demon realm inside another demon realm. A living hell. A dungeon's paradise where more than fifty gates spawned every year. A godforsaken land to rival Antarctica. Those were the names people gave the North.
People had even taken to splitting the peninsula in two and calling them South Korea and North Korea: the relatively safe South — though by global standards this side was hell enough — and the inhuman wasteland of the North. The reason North Korea in my novels suffered under a fat dictator's iron fist was that it reflected this reality.
Entering North Korea, which lay above the 38th parallel, required strict government clearance. Almost nobody went in of their own sane will, though rumor had it the occasional fool snuck across to harvest monster byproducts. Even Dungeon Hunters weren't allowed in until they'd built up a certain track record, so going to the North was, in its own way, a mark of competence.
All of which made the anxiety I felt riding a limousine northward perfectly reasonable. Getting closer to an inhuman wasteland was never going to be a pleasant feeling.
"That's it, right ahead."
The driver, in a black suit and sunglasses, took a hand off the gearshift and pointed forward. A building like a luxury hotel stood on slightly elevated ground. There wasn't another structure in sight. Hunter training was classified, so they'd apparently put the institute somewhere with nothing else around. Of course, calling it classified was a stretch when the place was all over YouTube. An open secret, then.
The limousine rolled into the underground parking garage of the hotel-like building. The driver got out and escorted us inside. The first floor, which looked to be a lobby, greeted us with a modern design dominated by an enormous chandelier. It felt exactly like walking into a high-end hotel, which was probably what the architect had been going for.
"Hi, unni!"
A strangely bright, excited greeting. I didn't even have to look. It was Lina. Sujin smiled and answered in a warm, cheerful voice.
"Hey, Lina."
"Hello to you too, Jaeseong."
"It's been a while. Almost two weeks, isn't it?"
Lina came toward us in a light, casual outfit. She hadn't changed much since I'd last seen her. Her hair seemed a little longer, though two weeks wasn't enough for it to really show. Last time she'd been wearing something rather charming; today it was a form-fitting tracksuit — practical clothes that suited the purpose of training exactly. Dungeon Hunter training would involve a lot of physical work, after all. That said, a beauty like Lina looked good even in an unusual tracksuit. Like they say, it's the face that makes the clothes.
"So it's just the three of us training?"
"No. I heard there are two more."
Five in total, then. Five trainees in a facility this enormous. Absurdly luxurious. Then again, they apparently used the place for more than just rookie training, so calling it a waste of money felt a little unfair. Given how unpredictable Dungeon Hunter pass rates were, small-scale instruction like this was actually the norm.
We waited a while in the lobby chairs before another Association staffer arrived with two men in tow. I frowned before I could stop myself. I had no interest in dicks.
"Ah, looks like everyone got here first. I'm Hwang Chulmin. My ability is Acceleration."
A guy with dyed blond hair walked up and introduced himself. Announcing his ability right off the bat — this bastard had been watching too many dramas. The name's James Bond. Ability: lockpicking. Lines like that were a staple of movies and TV. I honestly had no idea what was supposed to be cool about it. This Hwang-whatever just looked like an idiot to me.
"Ahn Lina."
"Shin Sujin. I look forward to working with you."
By contrast, the two women delivered greetings that scored a perfect hundred out of a hundred. I had no particular desire to pick a fight with the dick squad, so I gave my name briefly and left it at that.
"Go Yohan. I look forward to working with you."
The second man said it in a voice like a blade of frost. If Hwang Chulmin had the light, flitting quality of a sparrow, this one carried a heavier atmosphere. Similar to Lina when I'd first met her, but several degrees worse. I didn't even need to look to know his personality was going to be a pain in the ass.
Great. This training was going to be a slog.
"Alright! Now that everyone's here, let's head to the audiovisual room. Ah, I should introduce myself. I'm Park Cheonsu, in charge of Dungeon Hunter rookie training. I'll be with you for the next month — I look forward to working with you."
Park Cheonsu, despite the distinctive name, was a man with all the personality of water cut with water. Judging by the complete absence of a hunter-grade mana pulse, he wasn't a Hunter. Not every Association employee was one. Ability users were actually a minority of the staff; the administrative side was mostly ordinary people.
We followed him to the audiovisual room. They called it an audiovisual room, but it was a movie theater in all but name. Nearly a hundred seats. You could have screened an actual film in there. What we watched, unfortunately, was an ethics education video. It was a far cry from the morals classes I'd sat through in school. It laid out in exhaustive detail the enormous penalties you faced if you became a Demonic, and the actual fates that had befallen real Demonics, wrapping the whole thing in a half-veiled threat.
Ability-using criminals were called Demonics. From the Hunter Association's perspective, they were a more troublesome enemy than dungeons or monsters, so this kind of ethics education was only natural on their end. I'd heard that ethics took up a considerable portion of the month-long course.
When the video ended, a staffer led us into a room that looked like a conference chamber. He called it a research lab. A large whiteboard stood at the center, with a round table in front of it, and a row of laptops lined the tabletop. The layout was similar to a corporate meeting room. I'd never actually been inside a conglomerate, but I'd looked it up once for a novel.
"This research lab is where we hold meetings and conduct research for dungeon expeditions. As I'm sure you all know, dungeon exploration is extremely difficult. Even well-known dungeons are no exception. Thorough preparation must always precede an expedition."
He walked us through the basics of operating the program. The software installed on the laptops had been built in-house by the Hunter Association, designed to make dungeon-expedition research and planning as smooth as possible. Through a connected database, you could pull up information on all kinds of monsters at a glance, along with the layouts of well-known dungeons, the monsters that appeared in them, and the resources you could obtain. All of it updated in real time.
"Now that you've learned how to use the program, we'll move on to actual team composition. As you well know, dungeon expedition types fall into three broad categories: Soloing, Party, and Raiders. Soloing is exactly what it sounds like — clearing a dungeon alone. Except in very special cases, however, dungeon expeditions are conducted by parties of at least two. So the lot of you will have little occasion to solo anything."
Soloing a dungeon meant either the dungeon was laughably easy, or the Hunter doing it was absurdly strong. Most cases were the former; the latter was rare. Either way, it was a story that had nothing to do with me yet.
"A Party refers to a Dungeon Hunter coalition of two to ten members. They're broadly divided into 3-man, 5-man, and 10-man parties. Any group between two and ten is classified as a Party, but most people round to three, five, or ten. Does anyone here know why?"
The question landed out of nowhere, and we all sat there like we'd swallowed glue. It wasn't that we didn't know the answer. It was just the kind of question that made you not want to be the one to speak up.
"Because three, five, and ten have the best balance!"
The blond guy suddenly bellowed it out. He'd apparently studied more than his looks suggested. And he was right.
"Correct. A 3-man party is the minimum needed to cover the classic Tanker-Dealer-Healer roles. It's the most basic party you can assemble for low-difficulty dungeons. A 5-man party adds two more Dealers, allowing an expanded formation of two Tankers, two Dealers, and one Healer. The 5-man is also called a Standard Party — the most typical composition for dungeon expeditions."
It went without saying that more people made dungeon exploration easier. But that was a statement that ignored practical constraints. Dungeon Hunters were an extremely scarce human resource. The dungeons that needed clearing were piled up like a mountain, and you couldn't over-invest personnel in any single one. So a variety of party models had been developed to squeeze maximum efficiency from a limited number of people, and the one that could be called the standard was the 5-man party. Represented by the highly stable formation of one Tanker, three Dealers, and one Healer, a 5-man could also be run as two Tankers, two Dealers, and one Healer — or, in extreme cases, four Dealers and one Healer.
"A 10-man party is the baseline recommended for exploring uncharted dungeons. Because you have no idea what dangers might be waiting in an unknown dungeon, the Association recommends a minimum of ten. The usual formation is two Tankers, five Dealers, and three Healers — an extremely stable party."
That said, 10-man parties were generally hard to put together. The more people in a party, the smaller each person's cut of the rewards, so groups larger than five were uncommon. Uncharted dungeons were, in principle, supposed to be run as 10-mans, but in practice most teams punched through with a 5-man or maybe a 7-man. Uncommon didn't mean they didn't exist.
"Raiders refers to any group of eleven or more. It's an expanded concept of the Party. At that scale, they're almost always formed by the Association or a clan for a specific purpose. Now — if you open the party formation window in the program I just showed you, you can form a party remotely. There are exactly five of you here, so you should be able to form a 5-man. Go ahead and try."
We followed his instructions, working the laptops to create a party. Each person's information, ability, and record appeared in the party window as if we were looking at a game screen. A formation matching our respective abilities was assigned automatically.
⊳ Tanker: Go Yohan
⊳ Dealer: Shin Sujin
⊳ Dealer: Ahn Lina
⊳ Dealer: Hwang Chulmin
⊳ Healer: Baek Jaeseong
"You can also change the formation manually. That said, the program collects a wide range of data to recommend the optimal setup, so you probably won't need to adjust it."
The formation had Go Yohan as Tanker; Sujin, Lina, and Hwang-whatever as Dealers; and me as Healer.