No Talent
A small sigh slipped from Sujin's lips. I nearly got hard without meaning to. Settle down, junior. Read the damn room. I'd been so worked up just moments ago that my emotions still refused to settle.
"I couldn't sleep. I had something on my mind. I thought maybe a little dawn air would help me drift off, so I stepped outside for a moment."
The sigh faded, and she offered a gentle smile as she continued in that calm, captivating voice. She looked like she'd walked straight out of a romance novel. And I used women like her as heroines in my violation novels, putting them through absolute hell. I felt the faintest flicker of remorse for my past sins.
"Something's been troubling you, hasn't it?"
Shin Sujin. She was a Hunter. She never went around advertising it, but everyone in our villa already knew. That was all thanks to the landlady, whose mouth was lighter than hydrogen.
Sujin seemed to think of that woman as a life mentor, freely unloading her worries without a second thought. Those same worries would be circulating among every tenant in the building within a week. Poor Sujin. Of course, it was an enormous advantage for me, so I'd never once told her the truth.
The other residents seemed to share my thinking, at least in private — not a single person had ever tipped her off. For the record, I had never given that landlady a scrap of personal information. That would be about as safe as posting your secrets on social media.
"There's been a bit of trouble at work. Or... can I even call it trouble? Hahh..."
Watching Sujin let out that small sigh, I realized this was my opening — a chance to turn the conversation my way. Sujin and I barely had any point of contact in our daily lives. We were nothing more than neighbors, and she hadn't even remembered my name properly. Needless to say, closing the distance with a beauty like her would be an enormous gain.
"If something's weighing on you, why not talk to me about it? Sometimes just saying it out loud is enough to take the edge off."
I put on the most good-natured expression I could manage. Sujin hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Given that she freely dumped her personal information on the loose-lipped landlady, her resistance was surprisingly low.
Talking to Sujin was this easy? I should've tried this ages ago. It felt like I'd wasted half my life.
"The truth is, I'm a Hunter. Oh — not a Dungeon Hunter. Just an ordinary office-worker Hunter."
I already knew that. Still, I widened my eyes as if I were hearing it for the first time. In truth, I even knew her ability.
"A Hunter? Really!? I had no idea. To think a Hunter was living this close by. That's amazing."
She seemed to take it as a compliment; a faint flush rose to her cheeks. Then she waved her hands in dismissal. Even that pose looked like something a manga heroine would do.
"It's nothing to be that surprised about. Hunters aren't exactly rare."
"This is the first time I've ever been this close to one. If it's not too forward, may I ask what your ability is?"
"It's a Natural-type ability. Water Control."
It matched the information I already had, exactly. Thank you, landlady. That said, Water Control was known as a fairly powerful Natural-type ability. I'd heard that most Hunters who possessed it went on to become Dungeon Hunters.
"Water Control — that's the ability to manipulate water, isn't it? Just hearing it, it sounds incredibly powerful."
She nodded. The hair she'd tied back in a tight bun shimmered as it swayed, mesmerizing — like a river forged from melted black pearls.
"Yes. I shouldn't say this myself, but Water Control has a lot of potential. It's an ability well-suited for combat. Honestly, it's almost a waste to be using it as an office worker."
"Oh? Are you perhaps interested in becoming a Dungeon Hunter?"
I'd caught that intent in the way she spoke. Read enough books and you learn to pick up on what a writer — or a speaker — is really getting at. She looked at me with startled rabbit eyes, as if I'd peeked straight into her heart, and asked in that captivating voice of hers:
"You can tell?"
"Less that I can see it, more that I can hear it in the way you talk. Anyway, I think you'd do extremely well as a Dungeon Hunter. Especially with a powerful combat-type ability like that."
What determined a Dungeon Hunter's potential was their ability and their mana capacity. Both were innate traits, which meant Dungeon Hunters were, in a sense, the chosen among Hunters. Of course, mana capacity could be improved through continuous training, but the difference in growth speed from person to person was bizarrely vast.
Put simply, a talented Hunter could expand their mana reserves at a rapid clip, while a talentless one could spend a lifetime of effort and still fall short of what a gifted Hunter achieved in a single year. Talent decided everything.
"I currently work at Sejin Logistics."
"Oh! Sejin Logistics. That's the company going toe-to-toe with Ilseong Logistics for first and second place, isn't it? That's impressive. I heard even Hunters have a hard time getting in there."
Sejin Logistics and Ilseong Logistics weren't ordinary shipping companies. What they handled were monster byproducts.
Korea had an overwhelmingly higher number of dungeons per unit of territory than any other country, which meant the volume of monster byproducts in circulation operated on an entirely different scale. In raw numbers, it was ten times that of Japan, and only slightly less than the United States or Russia, with all their vast land. Of course, that wasn't solely because of the dungeon count — it was also because the country was packed with excellent Hunters.
"Hehe. I studied a lot to get in. Even with the Hunter special recruitment track, the competition there is pretty fierce."
A rosy smile touched Sujin's cheeks as she slipped in a quiet bit of self-praise. I didn't find it the least bit off-putting. Looks really did make all the difference in this world.
"I've been working hard at the company, but... I still want to become a Dungeon Hunter. That was always my dream, and I keep wondering what I'm even doing here."
"Is there a particular reason you want to become a Dungeon Hunter? You'd know better than I would, but being a Dungeon Hunter is... a dangerous profession."
What made a Dungeon Hunter's staggering income, prestige, and power shine even brighter was their survival rate. A survival rate on par with soldiers in an active war zone was precisely what lent legitimacy to the enormous privileges they enjoyed.
Without the monster byproducts they brought back, modern society simply wouldn't function. But if you were going to shove people into a space that was essentially a cliff's edge, you needed bait. That was why the Hunter Association treated Dungeon Hunters as a special class.
And that mouthwatering bait worked remarkably well. Countless Hunters chased after vast wealth and fame by attempting to become Dungeon Hunters — that was the reality of the present. But Sujin wanting the same thing was unexpected. She seemed like someone with a solid grasp of how the world actually worked.
"My father, my mother, and my older brother and sister are all Dungeon Hunters."
She offered the reason in a few short words.
"What? Your whole family are Hunters? Don't tell me you're a Hunter Family?"
A Hunter Family was a lineage in which most members awakened as Hunters — a house of the highest prestige, designated directly by the state. In a bygone era, they would have been high nobility. In other countries, they would be royalty bearing lofty titles. There were fewer than twenty Hunter Families in all of Korea, and fewer than a thousand worldwide.
The mainstream theory held that abilities were not genetically inherited, and yet, strangely, if one family member awakened as a Hunter, the odds of other members awakening were significantly higher. Scientists attributed it to environmental factors, but the truth was known only to God.
Even so — an entire family of Hunters. For a nobody like me, it was the kind of luck that could make you want to cry. Or... maybe not anymore.
"Ah... n-no. It's not that level. It's just that my mother's generation and ours happened to have a lot of awakenings. We're an ordinary family."
Even so, it was remarkable. This was information I hadn't even heard from the landlady. Which meant she was telling me this for the first time? That fact made me genuinely happy.
"Both my parents have been Dungeon Hunters since the day I was born. Growing up watching them, I naturally started dreaming of becoming one too. And my brother and sister, who are four years older than me, also awakened and became Dungeon Hunters as a matter of course. But I'm the only one falling behind..."
Ah. So that was it. When every member of your family pulled ahead and you were the only one left behind, feeling alienated was only natural. Whether being a Dungeon Hunter actually counted as "pulling ahead" was debatable — though in terms of social standing and income, they were certainly objects of envy.
"Then wouldn't it be all right to try becoming a Dungeon Hunter? Water Control is quite a formidable ability, from what I understand."
At my words, her expression darkened and went still. I could guess what she would say even without hearing it. If she wanted to follow her family into becoming a Dungeon Hunter and still couldn't, there was only one possible reason: she didn't have what it took.
"I was born with a low mana capacity. I've trained hard, but my growth has been slow. The Association said I don't have the aptitude to be a Dungeon Hunter."
Hunters possessed abilities that far exceeded those of ordinary people. But to become a Dungeon Hunter, you had to stand out even among them. That was why Dungeon Hunters made up only one percent of an already small Hunter population.
She let the words she'd been holding back spill out with a short sigh. For some reason, they felt like a blade driven into my chest. No talent... The memory of wandering from publisher to publisher with unsold manuscripts rose unbidden. A bitter taste filled my mouth.
"Haha. Well, I suppose it's an absurdly luxurious worry. Just becoming a Hunter means starting life several times ahead of everyone else. It's a really stupid thing to worry about."
With that, she turned toward the villa. She'd laid her worries out honestly, but her face didn't look the least bit unburdened. Damn it. I got hard again. My dick has absolutely no sense of timing.
"Well then, you should head inside. Have a good night... actually, have a good dawn."
She smiled sweetly and disappeared into the villa. The hunger that had been fiercely tormenting my stomach vanished as if it had melted like snow. All that remained in my mouth was a thick bitterness. I slowly made my way back to my room.
"Talent, huh..."
Anyway, the problem is all these gifted bastards trying to devour the world on easy mode. That's why talentless people like us have to chase after them until our pants split!