I'm a Man Too.
A quiet camp near the Cambodian border.
Woojin sat alone inside his tent and swallowed hard.
All he could still see in his head was the radiant, majestic pillar of light that had risen from Chulsoo’s +15 enhancement that afternoon.
27.94 cm.
Every time he thought of that number, so far beyond human common sense that it might as well have belonged to another species, Woojin felt a strange mix of defeat and competitive fire start to boil in his chest.
“No, I mean, come on. I’m an Augmentor. I shouldn’t be getting outclassed by my big brother, right?”
He glanced around carefully, then slipped a hand into his pants. As though he were looking straight through his own anatomy, a detailed system message surfaced in his mind, just like the window that appeared when he chose an item to enhance.
Target: Kim Woojin's reproductive organ
Available Body Enhancement options: length, thickness, strength, endurance, sensitivity control
Woojin licked his lips.
He had no intention of doing something insane like Chulsoo and driving it all the way to +15.
Still, as a man, the desire to be a little better than average was only natural.
And once the situation had become one where he’d be facing three women, Woojin had begun to justify it to himself.
“Right. Let’s keep it to just +3 across the board. +3 should look good and be a solid level.”
He condensed mana into his palm. Then, keeping his voice as low as possible, he whispered, “Enhance.”
A faint vibration hummed through his fingertips.
Heat gathered in a specific area, and the unfamiliar sensation of cells rapidly dividing while blood vessels restructured themselves sent a shiver through his entire body.
Body Enhancement succeeded: +1
“Oh... that feels kind of weird.”
He didn’t stop there.
With each repeated attempt, the mana spilling from his fingertips grew denser and thicker.
“Enhance. Enhance.”
Body Enhancement succeeded: +3
Woojin carefully checked the results.
Then he barely managed to hold back the exclamation that almost burst from his throat.
“Oh... damn, this is amazing.”
It wasn’t just bigger. The weight it carried, the dense springiness under his fingertips—all of it felt completely different from before.
A thirty-three percent increase had made a far bigger difference than he’d expected, both visually and in pure sensation.
Bathed in the unmistakable feeling of a genuine upgrade at his fingertips, Woojin smiled with satisfaction.
Confidence surged through his whole body.
“Mm, this is good. Too much of anything is poison, after all. Balance is what matters.”
He pulled his pants back into place, thoroughly pleased with himself.
At this rate, he definitely wouldn’t be flinching in front of Eileen, Jihyun, or Ayoung anymore.
Reasonable confidence was now rising from the ground up.
***
Starting the Cambodian campaign the next day, they tore through the region like a tidal wave.
Woojin had already figured out perfectly that his Body Enhancement ability didn’t just work on items—it also created a massive synergy with his summons.
The instant he overlaid the power of an Augmentor onto the goblins created by Gabi, the entire army transformed into an invincible force.
“Appa! There are tons of monsters in the woods over there!”
Perched on top of a vehicle, Gabi shouted toward the forest while pointing as if she were indicating a mango tree. Catherine’s reports were also coming in in real time.
“Monster cluster detected ahead. Estimated number: around five thousand. Large ogres and wyverns are mixed in.”
Woojin climbed out of the car with easy confidence.
In the past, he would have stayed behind Catherine and watched the situation unfold, but now he stepped forward boldly and spread both hands wide.
“Area Body Enhancement.”
A vast golden wave swept through the entire jungle, rolling outward from Woojin’s body.
The goblins born from Gabi’s hands swelled in size in an instant, and the blades and spears they carried began to spit out razor-sharp killing intent.
“All units, advance. Wipe them out.”
The moment Woojin gave the order, the goblins charged in with delighted ferocity and practically bulldozed the jungle flat.
What would once have taken days of gate subjugation and territory reclamation was over in only a few hours.
Two days after crossing the Thai border, the major gates in northern Cambodia began to shut down one after another.
The local residents watched the sudden appearance of a golden army slaughtering monsters and dropped to the ground to bow as though a god had descended from the heavens.
“The goblin dad is here! Long live Kim Woojin, the Guardian of Cambodia!”
“He’s the savior who came to rescue us!”
Every time he heard cries like that, Woojin felt something complicated twist inside him.
What he had wanted was only an ordinary life—eating well and living well with his younger brother, Sangjin. Yet before he knew it, he had become someone who could seize the fate of an entire nation in his hands, a figure so exalted that people were practically worshiping him.
But by now, Woojin had started to enjoy it.
More than anything else, it was the simple pleasure of discovering what it meant to become stronger.
He wasn’t just standing in the back issuing orders, either.
Awakening as an Augmentor had elevated his physical abilities dramatically, opening up entirely new possibilities.
“Gabi, can you call over some of the goblins who are good at martial arts or swordsmanship?”
Gabi’s eyes sparkled as she answered, “Okay! Got it, Appa! Wrestling champs, all of you, come here!”
The goblins Gabi summoned each possessed unique martial prowess according to the characteristics of the items that had become their original bodies.
The swordsman goblin born from the legendary blade Woojin had once taken to +7, and the spearman goblin born from the +8 spear, were true masters of combat.
“Woojin-nim, the way of the sword isn’t simply about swinging with brute force. It’s about flowing along the grain of mana.”
The swordsman goblin casually flicked a twig, and the giant boulder beside it split cleanly in two without a sound.
Woojin watched closely, reinforced his muscles and nerves, and then began copying the motion exactly.
“Like this?”
His body moved like lightning.
Movements so blindingly fast that he would once have been unable to follow them even with his eyes now found his body reacting before his brain could even finish issuing the command.
It was all thanks to the superhuman reflexes and eyesight granted by enhancement.
Woojin had always possessed a fair amount of combat talent to begin with, and with the power of enhancement on top of it, he absorbed the goblins’ techniques like a sponge.
“Hoho, Woojin-nim. That’s looking quite decent now. For a Kim man, your learning speed is nothing short of miraculous.”
The spearman goblin laughed heartily as he praised him.
Woojin wiped the sweat from his brow and adjusted his grip on the sword.
By now, he was skilled enough to clear a B-rank gate on his own in an instant, without needing any help from the goblins at all.
Just recently, when he had faced a giant ogre, he’d cleanly severed the creature’s neck with only two swings of his blade.
“This is fun, actually. I’ve always been the guy stuck in the back because I’m a production-type, but I never expected the feeling of cutting something down myself to be this good.”
The satisfaction of mana filling his entire body, combined with the pure exhilaration of physical strength, was changing Woojin from the inside out.
Watching from the side, Catherine was just as stunned.
“Woojin-nim, your movements are sharper now than those of most A-rank combat awakeners. I had no idea Body Enhancement could be this efficient.”
“Yeah, noona. I’m surprised too. I guess this is why everyone prefers combat classes.”
***
On the road toward the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, Woojin’s group ran into a massive obstacle.
Far in the distance, the sky was swirling in a purple vortex, and a giant hole hundreds of meters across had torn open the heavens.
The oppressive pressure of mana pouring from that opening could be felt even back at camp.
Catherine checked her tablet with a grave expression and reported, “This is the first major obstacle.”
It was an A-rank-or-higher gate, one of the great stumbling blocks in the campaign to subjugate Asia’s gates.
Catherine continued her explanation.
“The energy reading is at the very least top-tier A-rank. It’s the largest anomaly to have emerged in Cambodia’s interior.”
An A-rank gate.
It was a disaster that even a nation’s regular army could barely hope to handle, a death zone where survival couldn’t be guaranteed even if thousands of awakeners were thrown in.
Woojin stared hard at the violet swirl.
If this had been before, he would have contacted Eileen or Jihyun, reported the situation, and asked for support.
But things were different now.
He had the authority of an Augmentor, and he had the skills of the martial goblins he’d personally trained.
Woojin’s heart thudded pleasantly in his chest.
“Gabi, wanna go over there with Appa and have a good wrestling match?”
Gabi beamed. “Yeah! Sounds fun!!”
Catherine gently caught Woojin by the sleeve and tried to stop him. “You’re planning to handle it yourself? It looks like we could just crush it with sheer numbers instead....”
“You can’t do that every time, can you? I’ve got to try things for myself now, too.”
An A-rank gate was a high-risk zone you didn’t get the chance to face often.
If he was confident he could clear it, then going head-on would be a huge help to his growth.
“Woojin-nim, no matter how you look at it, this is top-tier A-rank. There’s no need to push yourself like this. If you contact Eileen-nim, this would be over in no time....”
But Woojin shook his head.
“No need to call anyone, noona. I’m curious how far my own skills have really gone, too.”
A cold, confident smile touched Woojin’s lips.
“Let’s go take a look. And if things go bad, well, we’ve got Gabi, right? We can just run through the Goblin Gate.”
At that, Catherine’s expression finally relaxed.
“Ah! So that was an option!?”
With a guaranteed escape route, there was no need to worry about dying even in the worst-case scenario. A grin tugged at Woojin’s mouth.
“I’m a man too, you know. I can’t spend all day whining to Eileen and Jihyun.”
Catherine chuckled. “That’s true. Good luck, Woojin.”
“Then why are you using honorifics again, noona?”
That only made Catherine laugh harder.
“You’re the one who changed both my life and Chulsoo’s. It’d feel strange to keep speaking casually, wouldn’t it?”
“Forget it... just speak comfortably....”
“Then shall I?”
Woojin smirked at her.
“Let’s go. I wonder what’s waiting inside an A-rank gate.”