Even Heroes Struggle to Find a Job

I was an ordinary job seeker.

At least, I was—right up until I got hit by a truck on my way home from an exam and dropped into another world.

At this point, wouldn't the dump truck's design structure contain... the principles of dimensional travel, or something like that?

But honestly, it wasn't so bad.

Landing a job at a decent company in 2025 South Korea was practically a war. And even if you won that war, the rosy future you'd imagined wouldn't magically materialize.

Given that, wouldn't reincarnating into another world be better in every way?

"Actually, this works out great."

So in a sense, I was even excited about it.

After all, I figured I'd become a hero, just like the protagonists of every otherworld story out there.

That is... right up until I met the maniac fairy who introduced herself as GM Ceria.

I truly believed that, at least.

"Hmm. No matter how I look at it, Hero, I can't find any talent for the sword or magic in you whatsoever."

"W... what are you talking about?"

"Exactly what I said. To slay monsters and save the world, you need 'talent.'"

"Then why am I even the hero?"

"Well, you did get hit by a truck, didn't you?"

"..."

I was speechless.

No talent, huh.

Fair enough.

I'd never exactly been anything special back on Earth either.

So the word "talent" had never really gone well with me to begin with.

But still...

"Then what the hell did you send the truck for?"

Because I'd figured that, at the very least, I'd have some special talent in the other world.

Besides, if they'd picked me out of Earth's billions and sent a truck my way, surely there was some talent they'd spotted, right? That's what common sense would suggest.

Even the maniac Ceria nodded along in agreement with me.

But then.

"That's true. How could you have no talent at all?"

"What?"

"The truck isn't something you can send to just anyone, you know."

"..."

Somehow, the conversation had veered off toward a very strange conclusion.

"So let's find your talent together!"

"Wh... what talent?"

"Let's figure out together what the Hero is good at!"

A strange sense of déjà vu washed over me at the fairy's words.

Isn't this... the exact thing my mom used to say to me when I was sixteen?

The fairy had just dug up the great unsolvable puzzle that my mother and I had failed to crack for over a decade.

From that moment on, the fairy Ceria went full maniac.

Declaring that she'd use her administrator privileges to activate the beta system, she locked Gunyul inside a endless purgatory with no exit in sight.

"The Constellations' game, Laika, has roughly 17,895 system-defined jobs."

"What are you—"

"Ah, that's according to the official data from the Hero Labor Department."

"..."

"But if we group similar ones into categories, it narrows down to about a thousand representative jobs or so?"

"So?"

"Let's try them all. One by one."

"What?"

"You were chosen by the truck! Surely there's at least one thing you're good at!"

And so began a tragedy.

My mother had struggled just to oversee my studies, but the fairy was different.

The maniac fairy's concept of time was very different from a human's.

"N... not this one either?"

"Doesn't look like it, Hero. Ugh... this can't be happening!"

And so I... had to live a thousand lives inside that game-like world called Laika.

No—far more than a thousand.

Whenever she thought she glimpsed some potential, she'd make me run the same class over and over again.

"Haa... th... this can't be right..."

"This one's ambiguous too...! It's too ambiguous!!"

After roughly twelve hundred rounds or so?

The fairy's once-cheerful expression began to rot pitch-black.

But here's the funny part.

"Not this one either, right?"

"Regrettably, no."

"Oh well."

At some point, I had achieved enlightenment.

"How can you be so irresponsible about this...!!"

"What's next? What do I do this round?"

At first, this endlessly repeating life had been agonizing—but before I knew it, I'd passed beyond enlightenment and into actually enjoying it.

Even at a conservative ten years per round, that was easily over ten thousand years of torturous time.

And I hadn't just been phoning it in, round after round.

Every single life, I threw myself into job preparation more diligently than anyone. The only failure was winning the fairy's approval.

But then.

"I just can't do this anymore, Hero."

"What now?"

"I'm afraid..."

Ceria finally shook her head.

"For the first time in HR management history, I'm going to have to give up on you, Hero."

"What? You're giving up on me?"

"Yes. I truly couldn't find a single shred of talent in you."

Ceria had burned out before I did.

"Th... then what happens now?"

And so I had no choice but to return.

"Back to where you came from."

"Huh?"

"You need to go back to Earth."

"What...?"

"This has never happened before in all of history, but... it seems the truck was misdelivered this time."

In Ceria's words, I had become the very first failed job-seeking hero since the dawn of time.

"Thank you for your hard work, Hero."

"..."

And so, having failed even at becoming a hero, I returned to Earth—exactly ten years later.

Apparently, the tens of thousands of years inside Laika amounted to just ten years on Earth.

WHAM—!!

Well, seeing as I materialized in the middle of a road and nearly got run over the moment I arrived.

Compared to everything that had happened over those countless eons, though, this much was a trivial little episode.

This is really... Seoul, isn't it?

I felt oddly hollow, but my feet were already moving on instinct.

Where I'd returned to was that very crosswalk from ten years ago, on my way home from an exam.

So naturally, my feet carried me toward home.

Over the course of those endless years, emotions like "longing" had been diluted many times over.

But now that I was actually back in Seoul, I missed my mother.

"Whoa... the world's changed a lot."

But as I walked along, lost in thought, I soon found myself frozen solid in front of an enormous banner.

"What... is this?"

Because inside that banner...

I discovered that tedious name—the one I'd thought I'd never have to see again, in a completely different sense.

Laika... you say?

Astonishingly, on Earth ten years later... the beta test game I'd played for thousands of years, [Laika], had been officially released.

During those countless eons spent with the fairy, the word I heard most often from her was none other than official release.

"Get your head straight, I said!"

"Mistakes will NOT be tolerated in the official release version!"

What a beta test was. What an official release was.

Conceptually, none of it made any sense to me whatsoever.

In any case, she brought up the official release several times a day.

So one day, I asked Ceria about it.

"What even IS an official release?"

"Uh... well, you see..."

"Where and how are you even planning to release this thing?"

And I did once get a clear answer to that question.

"There are countless dimensional planes in the otherworld."

"So you said."

"And we administrators call those dimensional planes 'servers.'"

"...?"

"But Laika hasn't been released to every server yet. One of them is the 'Earth' server, where you originally lived, Hero."

"What happens when it's released?"

"Gates will open on Earth, of course?"

"Uh...?"

"Gates, through which you can access the official version of Laika."

But even after hearing all of that.

Honestly, it had never once ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠occurred to me that gates might have opened on Earth while I was gone.

So I was flustered.

"...It's a gate."

On my way home.

Right in the middle of the plaza at the heart of Seoul Forest, no less...

Vmmmmm—!

There it stood—completely identical to the gate I'd seen every time I logged into the beta version.

[Laika] for real?

But apparently, the shock I received could not possibly exceed that of a mother discovering her son after ten years.

"Oh... my goodness!"

In front of the apartment recycling bins.

The mother I spotted on my way home collapsed on the spot, unconscious.

The house was exactly as I'd left it.

The only thing that had changed was my little sister, now an adult at twenty-four.

"Wh... what the. Seriously... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it's really you, oppa?"

Astonishingly, my parents hadn't moved even once in ten years, she said.

Even my father's convenience store in front of Seoul Forest Station was exactly as it had been ten years ago.

Apparently, it couldn't have been any other way.

Because their son might come home someday.

Because they believed they couldn't be absent when he did.

"..."

I'd thought every last emotion in me had withered and died, but hearing that made my chest tighten.

Being dragged off to another world had nothing to do with my own will.

And yet I couldn't help feeling guilty.

"Your dad hired hunters ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to search for you... took out loans, sold the car, sold everything he could sell... That's why this house was the one thing he couldn't sell."

Ten years ago, the day I went missing.

Not long after that, gates had begun opening for the very first time, they said.

And the gates that first appeared around the world weren't the peaceful (?) ordinary ones sitting in the middle of Seoul Forest—they were dangerous, unpredictable ones.

So my parents had believed, all this time... that I'd been swallowed up by a gate.

Still, the banner plastered in front of my father's convenience store was a little embarrassing.

"What's 'estimated current appearance' supposed to mean?"

"..."

"You just slapped a photo of Dad on there, didn't you...?"

Seeing my parents driven into wrenching poverty because of me, my hunger for employment surged in a way that couldn't even be compared to ten years ago.

"I'll earn the money now, Mom."

"You will?"

So it seemed I'd have to take another shot at the job hunt after all.

"It's really time I... got a job."

"With what credentials?"

True, I'd failed at becoming a hero—but with all my experience rolling around in Laika, surely I could become a hunter?

"I did train as a hero for over ten thousand years, you know?"

Though my mother apparently didn't find her son's bravado all that reassuring.

"Gunyul."

"Yes?"

"You weren't... dragged into some kind of religious cult, were you?"

"..."

"It's okay, my son. You're home now, that's all that matters. We'll manage to earn money somehow."

My little sister held a similar opinion.

"A job? Won't be easy, oppa."

"Why not?"

"The entire paradigm of job hunting has completely changed from ten years ago."

But when I skimmed through the workbooks my sister brought out from her room, my shrinking confidence swelled back to full.

No matter how I look at it, these look way easier than the TOEIC and TOEFL prep books from ten years ago?

After all, I was a grizzled veteran with a job-seeking career of at least several tens of thousands of years.

Talent may have eluded me all that time, but I'd worked harder than anyone.

Only slightly exaggerating, I figured I could solve half these workbooks correctly right now if I started today.

"The rest I can wrap my head around, but what on earth is a Monster Caretaker license? Earth keeps monsters as pets now?"

"You need one to work at a monster welfare organization..."

"This world has lost its mind."

"And it had its mind ten years ago?"

"Fair point. It wasn't normal back then either."

Looking at how the world's wear had ground my sister down over the past ten years, a sigh escaped me before I could help it.

"Weren't you fourteen ten years ago?"

"That's right."

"Do you remember what the world was like?"

My sister shot my mother a sidelong glance.

"I was solving calculus as a first-year middle schooler."

"..."

"That's honestly not normal, is it?"

True.

That's how it had been.

Unlike me, my sister had actual talent for studying—and she'd become a casualty of the advanced-learning culture.

The memory surfaced, and a touch of sympathy welled up for my sister.

"Can't argue with that."

As we chatted back and forth like this, my father came home as well.

"You... you...!!"

He, too, burst into tears the moment he saw me, though thankfully he didn't collapse the way Mom had.

"Seeing you come back safe and sound..."

"My feelings are beyond words, Father."

"Son, suddenly all the money I spent on hunter search fees feels like such a waste."

"..."

"Welcome home, regardless."

Judging by what he said, he didn't seem all that different from ten years ago either.

"Dad."

"Hmm?"

"Be honest with me. You didn't refuse to sell the house... because you expected its value to go up, did you?"

"Ahem, ahem."

In any case, even a family I'd thought was erased from my mind warmed my heart all over again at the reunion.

The world felt a little colder and harsher than before, but thanks to my family, some long-lost positive energy blossomed in me too.

So really—fine, I could get certified as a hunter and land a job.

Or if I could just log into Laika and farm some equipment...

Wouldn't this be a world where putting food on the table is no problem at all?

Sure, I'd only been a beta test player—a substandard hero who'd played over a thousand rounds without ever even defeating a demon king.

But no matter how different the official release was from the beta, I hardly thought I'd fail to catch a goblin, of all things.

It's not like goblins suddenly turn into trolls just because the official version launched, right?

From what I'd heard, even just handling goblin-tier lowest-rank monsters would net you a comfortable three or four hundred a month, after taxes.

Then again, in my final rounds I was slicing through Death Knights... maybe I could handle up to an ogre?

Honestly, greed was creeping in even further...

That's dangerous territory.

No. Don't get cocky, Lee Gunyul. You have no talent.

Hadn't I poured eons into the beta version only to fail to earn a single hero qualification?

Live thin and long, as they say.

Knowing your own place—isn't that a pretty important virtue for getting through life?

Creeeak—

Chatting with my family, I lost track of time until night had fallen, and after returning to my room for the first time in ten years, I flopped down onto the bed.

Coming home after so long left my head a complicated mess, but...

For now, let's not think about anything and just rest.

In all my time with that maniac fairy, I didn't think I'd rested this peacefully even once.

So surely I could afford to empty my head and relax for a few days.

And with that thought drifting through my mind, I quietly slipped into sleep.