Chapter 3
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Kang Han-gyeol (2)
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I looked around. The building I'd just left, the Korea Hunter Association's Seoul branch, stood amidst the skyscrapers of Jongno.
“It seems I need to understand the situation a bit more.”
It would have been convenient if I had the memories of the person I possessed, but unfortunately, that didn't happen.
It couldn't be helped. There seemed to be no other way but to figure things out one step at a time.
I took a worn leather wallet from my bag. Along with a Hunter ID, there was a resident registration card.
The address on the card was about an hour away by subway.
A beep sounded from the turnstile as I tapped my single-use card.
Perhaps because it had been so long since I’d ridden a subway, it felt both nostalgic and somehow unfamiliar.
Except for the existence of things like dungeons and Hunters, it was almost identical to the modern world I remembered.
After finding an empty seat, I placed my bag on my lap and took out my phone.
It would take a while to get home, so I had plenty of time to look up some information.
‘This is much better than when I was first transported to another dimension.’
Back then, I was thrown into a forest without any information whatsoever.
It was three months after I started living in that forest that I learned it was the ‘Devil's Forest,’ a so-called den of monsters.
On top of that, my identity wasn't clear, so I had no idea how much trouble I went through just to get settled.
If I hadn't met Luciel, it wouldn't have been the least bit strange if I had lived my entire life in that forest, ignorant of everything, let alone saving the world.
[The next stop is Geumjeong Station.]
Hearing the announcer's voice overhead, I quickly grabbed my bag and got off the subway.
I walked for about ten minutes from the station and entered a residential area.
According to the address on the registration card, my home was a semi-basement apartment in this building.
I rummaged through my bag and found a faded key. I put it in the lock, turned it, and the door opened.
Bingo.
I took off my shoes, went inside, and turned on the light. Mold was growing on the wallpaper in a corner of the room.
If this had been me before my time on the Arbelicia continent, I might have been horrified by such a room.
Not that studying is easy, but in a world where money is everything, being given an environment where you can focus solely on your studies as a child inevitably means you have some degree of financial stability.
In fact, both my parents had been professors.
But talking about it now was just a useless trip down memory lane.
I took a notebook and a ballpoint pen out of my bag.
It was a habit from my student days, and since the continent I had lived on didn't have things like smartphones, I was much more used to writing things down on paper.
I started jotting down some basic information in the notebook.
Twenty-four years old, Kang Han-gyeol.
Lives in a semi-basement apartment, with a bank balance of about 3 million won.
D-rank, unaffiliated Hunter.
That was the basic information.
Next was what I'd searched for on my way home.
This world was similar to, yet different from, the modern era just before I was summoned.
The biggest difference was the existence of Hunters, also known as the Awakened, and dungeon gates.
Gates leading to dungeons would appear randomly all over the world.
Inside the dungeons were various missions, including monsters, and clearing them would earn you rewards.
Conversely, if a dungeon wasn't cleared a certain number of times—or in some cases, at all—a ‘break’ phenomenon would occur, where monsters from inside the gate would appear in reality.
The gist of it was that people who gained special abilities through an ‘awakening’ became Hunters to conquer dungeons and prevent monster invasions.
The Awakened had a status window, like in a game, where they could view their abilities and skills.
“Next, the Association and guilds.”
The place where I had regained consciousness was the Association.
To put it simply, the Association was like a public corporation, and the guilds were like private companies.
“And then there’s affiliation.”
A post I read online went something like this.
[Question: Why do unaffiliated Awakened Ones get so much hate?]
└Anonymous412: Is being unaffiliated even possible? lol
└Anonymous42758: Honestly, unaffiliated guys don't deserve to be Hunters.
└(OP): Look, I'm not an Awakened One, but what I mean is, why is being unaffiliated bad? I have a friend who's an Awakened One, and they said unaffiliated people aren't even human. Does that make me, a civilian with 0% aptitude, livestock or something? --
└Anonymous784: Damn, your friend is harsh lolol
└Anonymous42758: Let me explain it simply. Not all Awakened Ones are the same. To use a game analogy, awakening is like getting permission to log into the game, and an affiliation is like a job class. Being unaffiliated is like being unemployed. No job, so of course you'd be weak.
└(OP): What about Choi Soo-hyun then? Isn't he unaffiliated?
└Anonymous158: lolol OP is such a Hunter noob, a pure, untainted soul lolol. The comment above was just an analogy; reality can be different. Choi Soo-hyun wasn't unemployed from the start. He's a special case. Usually, unaffiliated people are those the other gods won't accept. I don't know why, but there are rare cases like that. As far as I know, if Choi Soo-hyun wanted to join a guild, they'd roll out the red carpet for him. The MVP isn't called the MVP for nothing lol
…….
└Anonymous548: The guy who made the unaffiliated-unemployed analogy is a genius lol. Choi Soo-hyun is an S-rank unemployed dude lol, I agree.
Every Awakened One needed an affiliation, and the abilities they could use differed depending on it.
The problem was that this ‘affiliation’…
“...was about which god you served.”
When you killed monsters or achieved feats others hadn't, something called ‘Contribution Points’ would increase.
The gods competed using these Contribution Points, and the system was structured so that an Awakened One with more points would be granted more power.
The Awakened Ones of this world seemed to think of Contribution Points as something like experience points and didn't appear particularly interested in whether real gods were actually competing over them.
There wasn't any concrete evidence to prove it.
However, it was a conclusion bordering on inference; the gods I knew would certainly do such a thing.
“There's no rule that a single god must manage only one dimension, but… isn't this a bit strange? Hmm, I should probably put this worry aside for now.”
Hunters had a ranking system from D-rank to S-rank. The higher the rank, the more information and access to difficult dungeons you were granted.
Up to B-rank, you just had to meet certain qualifications.
For ranks above that, they were evaluated on various factors, including level and Contribution Points.
Of course, for me, who had possessed the body of a D-rank Awakened One in his twenties living in a semi-basement, talk of gods and whatnot was, unfortunately, not a problem I could solve right away.
“Being unaffiliated seems good in a way, but also not.”
Affiliation wasn't that big of a deal. If I had to describe it, it was basically like a religion.
“And on top of that, they're using aliases.”
The name of the god I saw on the news, ‘Luce’, was not their true name. It wasn't as if I knew the names of all the gods, but this wasn't an issue of names.
A name holds uniqueness. Without a name, the very meaning of one's existence disappears.
Compared to gods, humans were particularly sensitive about names.
A god's name held a power that could be felt the moment it was spoken aloud.
Excluding Luce, among the many gods I searched for online, there wasn't a single one from whom I could properly feel any divine power.
That was why I concluded the publicly known names of the gods were aliases.
Regardless of the poor reputation of the unaffiliated in this world, I actually felt much more at ease being one.
For me, who had fled from the gods, the very idea of placing myself under a specific god was absurd.
After getting a rough grasp of the situation, I finally opened my status window.
[Kang Han-gyeol]
Strength: C (0%)
Stamina: D (0%)
Magic Power: D (0%)
Healing Power: D (0%)
Skills
Talents
Achievements
“Are you serious? There's nothing?”
This was much worse than I had thought.
I did say I'd do anything to escape the gods, but this was practically like ditching my main character to raise an alt.
I stood up from the floor and threw a punch into the air. Then a kick. Another punch.
Despite having moved only a few times, I was already out of breath.
Compared to his handsome face, his stamina wasn't just bad, it was terrible.
After deciding I needed to exercise, I sat back down on the floor. I searched for the name ‘Choi Soo-hyun’ on a portal site.
Choi Soo-hyun, Public Servant
Affiliation: Korea Hunter Association
Experience: Youngest Awakened One
- Dungeon Clears: Over 1000
- SS-Rank Dungeon Clears: 3
…
- Former Member of Cheongwol Guild's Premier Team
- Former Affiliate of ‘Serbia’
- Korea Hunter Association, Seoul Branch, Hunter Education Division
“That's an incredibly impressive resume.”
Come to think of it, the comment section of that post about the unaffiliated had also been fired up with talk about Choi Soo-hyun.
Even I, who was still figuring things out, could tell he was quite the elite.
I took Choi Soo-hyun's business card out of my pocket.
It was a personal card—white with a red stripe, bearing only his name and phone number.
Currently, Choi Soo-hyun was unaffiliated.
According to rumors circulating online, he had suddenly left his guild after being the sole survivor of a certain dungeon, renounced ‘Serbia’, and chose the path of an Association Hunter without any affiliation.
I didn't know what had happened to Kang Han-gyeol's body before I collapsed, but I needed to think more about whether it was something that warranted Choi Soo-hyun giving me his card and looking out for me.
“Could it be that he felt some pity because we're both unaffiliated?”
But still.
I was unaffiliated from the start, while he had voluntarily kicked his affiliation to the curb. Our situations were different.
For an elite of his rank to give me his business card meant there was likely a reason for it.
“Someone like Choi Soo-hyun must know something.”
Information is life. That was something I had learned back on the Arbelicia continent.
Even if I could only choose one path, having ten options was better than having just one.
I had no intention of contacting him right away, nor any plausible excuse to do so, but thanks to the card, I felt a little more at ease.
I picked up the pen and organized a to-do list again. The first thing I chose was…
“Exercise, of course.”
* * *
As usual, I woke up at dawn to exercise when the phone in my pocket vibrated.
[Hunter Trainee Kang Han-gyeol: ‘Basic Hunter Studies’ lecture, October 23rd (Thurs) 7:00 AM, Korea Hunter Association Seoul Branch, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 3F Training Room 201.]
It was a notification telling me to attend a class.