Prologue [National-Level Hunter]
Eleven at night, over Seoul. The sky tore open.
A National Disaster-Level Gate had opened right over the heart of Gangnam, and through the rift came pouring wyverns clad in steel scales. Well over thirty of them.
I climbed atop a building rooftop and wrapped both hands around my staff—a wooden shaft wound thick with coiling vines, the four-leaf clover at its tip spilling out a brilliant white glow.
"Clover, there are already three broadcast drones on you. From here on out it's business, so keep that expression strictly camera-ready. Got it?"
My little sister's voice drifted in through the earpiece, brimming with composure as always. I couldn't fathom what she found so delightful about all this. Was staging a spectacle like this really that much fun? Good grief. The end times, I tell you.
"First, do something about this outfit! What even is this!"
A green cloak with a golden brooch, a white dress with wide, billowing sleeves. Even the twin braids had ribbons tied into them. Every last piece of it, Han Areum's handiwork.
"But it's cute. We're already at twenty million viewers."
"...Enough. Cut the line. From here on, it's combat."
One of the wyverns changed course. Its vertically slit reptilian eye took aim at me with dead precision, and flame began to ripple deep inside its throat.
I drew a breath. This time would be different. Today, of all days, I was going to look cool. A fire spear, a bolt of lightning—failing that, even ice arrows. I would show the entire world magic so spectacular it would leave every last person on the planet stunned!
Painting the image in my mind, I thrust out my hand.
"Come forth!"
Green light burst from my fingertips.
And what appeared in the empty air next was—
A cabbage.
One. Two. Ten. Light-green cabbages swirled into being, multiplying by the second, then shot through the air like artillery shells and slammed dead-on into the wyvern.
Wham. The steel scales buckled, and the wyvern plummeted without even time to scream. The two chasing it caught the same treatment in quick succession, swatted clean out of the sky.
"No, why—?! Why is it this, again!"
I swung my hand again with everything I had, gathering every scrap of focus onto a single thought: flames.
What came pouring out was, of course, cabbage.
"Whoa, big bro, you're in top form today."
"Top form, my foot! Why is it vegetables every single time!"
Even as I yelled, the cabbages diligently went about their work—fielding incoming fire on their leaves, punching straight through wings, and crushing the fallen ones into the road without a shred of mercy. It was, possibly, a little cruel.
And with that, the Gate slid quietly shut.
The road below was strewn with unconscious wyverns and hundreds of cabbages in perfectly pristine condition, every single one glistening with a soft inner light.
And that was when the real war began.
"Deploy the recovery team! Now!"
"The cabbage comes first! The wyverns can wait!"
"It's money! Money's falling from the sky! Yahoo!"
A roar had erupted from beyond the control line. One look at the scene and a sigh escaped me of its own accord. Was this truly the face of humanity? How dark.
Half a year had passed since I threw that first carrot, and in that time, the world had gotten a little strange.
No. It had changed a lot.
The vegetables that came from my hands washed fatigue away with a single bite. Papers had even been published showing they accelerated wound healing and restored mana on top of it. I hadn't wanted to believe it, but I couldn't argue with the evidence. What on earth were these things supposed to be?
At a New York auction house, Clover cabbage had fetched a staggering price. A chef in Paris dropped to his knees mid-broadcast, and the royal family of one nation formally conveyed, through its embassy, a desire to purchase on a regular basis.
These days, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reportedly conducts its negotiations with cabbage.
When kimchi-making season rolled around, an official communiqué even came down from the Ministry of Agriculture requesting that I pull up some napa cabbage. I refused. Honestly, just what did they take me for?
National-Level Hunter. A monster who alone rivaled the full military might of an entire nation. Apparently, I was the sixth such national strategic asset ever registered in the world.
Truthfully, I never wanted any of this—it had been dumped on me against my will. All I wanted was to live a free life, but the world refused to leave me alone.
Hunter registration name: Clover. My real name, Han Chorok, sleeps buried in the deepest drawer of the Management Bureau's classified files. There was a time I'd been a perfectly respectable grown man, but now, well...
The communicator crackled back to life.
"Big bro, we just got word from the American side."
"They want you over for a Gate expedition next week."
"Oh, right! They also asked for corn, apparently?"
"I haven't tried corn yet."
"You can always try it later."
I looked up at the night sky. Drone lights blinked like fireflies. Somewhere beyond them, hundreds of millions of people were watching this pint-sized elf girl at this very moment.
It had all started on that Sunday morning.
One carrot, tossed carelessly in the name of stress relief, and everything had spiraled from there. Who could have guessed it would go so far as to rewrite the common sense of the Earth itself? Haah...