The Outcast of the Hanseong Clan
I was born the eldest grandson of the Hanseong Clan, a renowned hunter house, and still I had not awakened by the time I came of age. Survival of the fittest. The weak are meat for the strong. That was the clan's creed, and under it, failing to awaken meant living treated as something worse than a bug.
To the outside world, however, I was known as the Hanseong Clan's eldest grandson, so I couldn't simply leave and live as an ordinary man. The family, vastly stronger than I was, stood in the way of that, and an unawakened nobody had no means of resisting the clan's power.
So I had come to believe that if I could only awaken, I wouldn't care what class I got. Even a mage, armed with skills the polar opposite of the swordsmanship I had trained my entire life, would have been fine. A mage was a noble class, after all.
No—I wasn't even hoping for something as good as a mage. Even if I awakened as a Martial Artist, a Tier 5 piece of absolute trash that earned nothing but mockery, so long as I awakened at all! If that let me enter a Dungeon and gave me the chance to obtain skills that could make me stronger, any class would do. If I was only granted the possibility of revenge against the family that had ignored me...
Hmm. No. Thinking it over again, a Martial Artist really was too much. A Thief, treated as half a criminal for a kit packed with nothing but crime skills—Stealth, Plunder, Intimidation—would still be better. A Martial Artist who couldn't even use a weapon was just a little... I was still turning that over when—
The voice I had waited my entire life to hear—the voice of the Status Window—finally reached my ears. A window rose before my eyes, and its color began to shift at a furious pace.
Awaken as a common class—Warrior, Thief, Archer—and it turned gray. More specialized forms of those basics, like Berserker, Stealth Thief, and Crossbow Archer, turned it blue. Blue would have been ideal, but the accepted wisdom held that even a gray class could reach A-rank through one's own effort.
My Status Window, though, had already blown past both gray and blue. It meant I could awaken as a rare class, the kind that weren't even plentiful within the clan. I stared, mouth hanging open, unable even to swallow, as the window kept changing before me.
It had definitely turned red. Proof that a rare class was coming.
What class am I going to awaken as?
An Elemental Mage, a Tier 1 class? It might even be a Healer—awakening as one was as good as winning a 100-Billion Lottery Ticket on the spot. Attack power would be lacking, but that would be more than enough. I could take my younger sister, frail of body as she was, and seek refuge with another guild.
Or, even if it lacked the renown of those two, something like a Paladin would do. They were hard to grow in the early stages, that was all. Awaken as a class that could cover DPS, Tank, Utility all by itself, and I might even be able to take my revenge on the Hanseong Clan.
But it was not an Elemental Mage. Not a Healer. Not even a Paladin.
The Status Window, flashing red, was already turning gold.
Gold. That meant the class I was about to awaken was Mythic-grade.
In the entire history of the Hanseong Clan, only two people had ever awakened a Mythic-grade class. Han Mu-baek, founder of the clan and the world's very first S-rank hunter, and my half-sister, Han Si-yeon. Those two, and no one else.
Surely, if it had taken this long to awaken, my potential had to surpass anyone else's. While I was still thinking it, the Status Window—shifting so fast a moment ago—had already gone still.
With a hand that wouldn't stop shaking, I pressed down hard on the Status Window.
And then—
The name of the class I had awakened—a class I had never even heard of—rang out.
Dumbfounded, I looked at the Status Window again.
And I understood.
This class I had awakened truly possessed power worthy of Mythic grade. And if I used that power, I would be able to pay back the family that had ignored me and tormented me all this time.