The EX-Rank Illusionist
It had been fifteen years since the gates opened, and fifteen years since the number one dream job of children everywhere quietly shifted from "YouTuber" to "Hunter."
Why do people want to awaken and become Hunters? The answer is simple.
Because a Hunter can turn your entire life around with zero effort — nothing but a single stroke of luck.
A road to success open to absolutely anyone. A convenience store part-timer could become an A-Rank Hunter carrying the nation on his shoulders overnight. And me — a high school graduate with no job and no prospects — if I just awakened, I'd be a Hunter raking in ten million won a month without lifting a finger.
"Come on, just let me awaken already!!!"
By now it had been a full 1,000 days of posting the same begging thread on the Hunter Gallery, day after day without fail. At this point, surely my dedication deserved some kind of reward. The cost-benefit math demanded it.
Beep—!
No awakening granted — just a rejection text flung back in my face.
"Ugh. Like it was ever gonna work, damn it."
And just like that, today's job hunt went down the drain too. I mean, if they're only hiring people with experience, what the hell are fresh applicants like me supposed to do?
With a petty little grunt of spite I punted a small stone lying on the ground, then trudged up the steep shantytown slope that led home, shoulders slumped.
Creeeeak—.
The hinge let out its usual nasty whine as I stepped back into my tiny house.
Clack—.
The moment the lights came on, what greeted me was the same as always: yellowed linoleum, wallpaper blooming with mold, and a threadbare old blanket sprawled messily across the floor.
It was a dump — but for an orphan like me, it was the only space I had. Precious in its own way.
I yanked off my tie, dug a four-pack of dirt-cheap beer out of the fridge, and cracked one open.
"Ahhh. Without this stuff, I'd have been dead ages ago."
The alcohol made a slow lap through my bloodstream, and a pleasant buzz took the edge off everything. If there was a single redeeming quality about this miserable body of mine, it was exactly one thing: I could hold my liquor like a champ.
With not even a TV in this lonely little house, the only way to kill time was my phone.
📌 [How to Awaken — Grind Up Mana Stones and Drink Them]
📌 [Come Gawk at a B-Rank Hunter's Monthly Salary]
📌 [Photo of A-Rank Hunter Cha Yura]
.
.
.
Scrolling down on autopilot, I froze as a nickname I knew all too well slid into view.
Someone in the exact same boat as me — always whining on the Hunter Gallery about how desperately he wanted to awaken. We'd even stayed up at dawn sometimes, debating what powers we'd want if we ever made it, pointless hypothetical after pointless hypothetical.
No way he's bullshitting... right? He's not, is he?
Hands trembling, I opened the post.
The world blurred before my eyes.
"...Why? WHY!!! Why him and not me!!!"
Envy over your cousin buying land is a time-honored tradition, after all. And now the guy I'd been playing make-believe with all this time had actually awakened?
"I need... I need more to drink."
I scrambled to the fridge and hauled out every last drop of booze I had left — a half-finished bottle of soju and the rest of the beers.
Glug, glug—
I crammed it all down my throat, desperate to erase this moment from my memory.
"Hrk... I'm wasted."
When I lifted my head, the ceiling was spinning in lazy circles. I strained my legs to straighten out my tilting body, but for some reason they simply refused to obey.
"Whoa. Dizzy."
I lowered my gaze to the floor, just to catch my breath for a second.
And then.
The floor kept getting closer.
"...Huh?"
Thud—.
"Ugh."
That was the last thing I remembered.
"Scrap metal for sale—."
The blare of a distant loudspeaker dragged my eyes open all on its own. It was the same truck that rolled through the alley at the same time every day.
"Uuurgh... my head."
Had I really needed to drink that much? A hardened drinker like me, chugging booze to forget a memory — genius move.
"Sigh... bad head, bad body—"
Wait. What was that voice? That clear, lovely, boyish voice echoing through my shabby little house?
Did I fall asleep with YouTube on or something?
"Aaah—. Ah, eh, ee, oh, oo."
Every syllable rang out in that crystalline timbre. Unless someone had broken in during the night, that sound had come from my own throat.
"Also, my neck's been itchy this whole time..."
I absently reached a hand back and tugged at whatever was tickling it.
Shffff—.
A fistful of golden hair swung around into my field of vision.
"......"
The hand gripping that hair was wrong, too. When I spread the palm open, what stared back wasn't the callus-covered hand I'd lived with for twenty-six years.
It was small. White. Soft. Ridiculously soft.
"Hold on."
Something was very, very wrong. I scrambled upright and bolted for the bathroom.
Crash—!
I didn't even make it three steps before my feet tangled and I went down hard.
"Owwwie!"
Tears welled up instantly, blurring everything — but that wasn't the problem right now. I pushed myself up, stumbled into the bathroom, and stopped in front of the sink.
"......?"
The sink was too tall. I couldn't see my face.
"What the hell is..."
My eyes darted around and landed on the old red washbasin sitting in the corner, the one I used to catch leaks. I dumped out the water, hauled it over in front of the mirror with a grunt, flipped it upside down, and climbed on top — and only then did my reflection finally come into view.
"......"
Golden hair. Blue eyes. Lips red as cherries. A forehead swollen bright pink from my fall a minute ago.
And a little girl who, no matter how I looked at her, couldn't have been older than ten.
"This is... me?"
Turning into a girl overnight — a little girl, no less? Within the bounds of anything I knew, only one explanation fit.
"...Awakening?!"
Me? For real?
All those shitposts, a thousand days straight, actually worked?!
"S-Status window!"
Beep—!
"WOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Did the freeloader's jackpot just hit?! IT HIT, SO LET'S POST IT!!!
And look at this. Look at it. An EX rank. An EX rank.
"So S wasn't the ceiling after all..."
An S-Rank could pull a hundred million won a month without breaking a sweat. And I was the one and only EX in existence?
Then that meant... a billion won a month?
"Heheheheh."
The whole "Illusion" thing niggled at the back of my mind, but — it was EX-rank, wasn't it? What could possibly go wrong?
"Ahem. This, my friends, is definitely brag-worthy."
Hopping down off the red washbasin, I scooped the phone lying discarded on the floor up off the ground.
"Now then... what should I write to bait the maximum number of suckers?"
Hmm. I couldn't exactly get a Hunter license issued this very second, so...
"Perfect. That'll do nicely."
The guy who'd posted begging threads for a thousand straight days suddenly drops an awakening announcement? I could say with total confidence that no better clickbait existed on this earth.
Beep! Beep!
Barely a second after hitting upload, my phone started buzzing as comments came pouring in.
"Heh."
This is what rice needs with it. That's right — praise me more, gaze upon me and bask!
"AaaAAAH, this feels SO good."
Unable to contain the joy, I wrapped the ragged old blanket around myself and rolled around on the floor —
"So what do I buy first when the money rolls in? Supercar? Penthouse? A watch?"
I could buy all of it anyway, so why was I even agonizing? From this day forward I was young, rich, and set for life. The one and only EX-Rank Hunter on the planet!
Having indulged in a suitable amount of self-congratulation, I peeled myself up off the floor. Now came the moment to check the most important thing of all: my skill.
"All right... no clue what it does, but."
The occasional real Hunter who wandered into the Hunter Gallery had said it before — shout your skill's name, and the skill activates. I planted one hand on my hip, thrust the other arm straight out in front of me, and struck the most dramatic pose I could manage.
First skill activation deserved a cool stance, after all. Not that anyone was watching.
"Illusion!"
...Huh?
I looked around the room. Nothing had changed. Not one thing.
"Ill...usion?"
......?
You said it was EX-rank. Did I just get scammed?
"Ahaha... no way, right?! There's gotta be some kind of condition, some trigger!"
I snatched up my phone in a panic and started searching.
🔍 Search: how to use Illusion
"Come on, come on..."
[Creatures of fantasy — dragons, starfish, unicorns—]
Not that kind of fantasy, dammit!
My squishy little hands flew across the screen in desperate, frantic searching.
🔍 What is an illusion?
An illusion is the phenomenon of perceiving or imagining something that does not actually exist — or could never exist — as though it were really there.
"Perceiving it as though it's there...?"
So it didn't activate just from shouting the name into thin air...? Hmm. Must be an EX-rank thing — it doesn't fire off easy.
Of course! This is on a whole different level from your dime-a-dozen common skills!
Yep. Yep yep. It should at least be this demanding to earn the name of MY skill.
"So to use Illusion... I have to imagine first."
I clutched my hangover-throbbing head with both tiny hands.
Wow, my hair is so soft...
No wait — focus. That's not it. The fantastical animals from my earlier search floated back into my mind. So you use Illusion to conjure creatures of pure fantasy, huh.
Something about that felt like it might actually work.
"All right! Then appear, dragon! Illusion!!!"
The instant I shouted it at the empty air with full conviction —
the sunlight streaming through the window vanished.
Rumble... KRAKOOM!
"...Eh?"
Thunder? It was clear skies two seconds ago!
And then.
KUWAAAAAAA—!!!!
A colossal roar, loud enough to shred eardrums, shook the entire shantytown to its foundations.
"Oh shit! A m-monster?! A gate opened?!"
I — who had been holding a heroic pose not five seconds earlier — shrieked and kicked my rickety front door open, bolting outside.
FLASH—! KRAKA-BOOM!
Above the ink-black sky,electric-blue lightning was dancing like a madman. And between the churning storm clouds, something enormous and impossibly long writhed and glided, like a serpent swimming through the deep.
Scales shimmering with blue light. A body of overwhelming size that blotted out the heavens. The Azure Dragon — the beast that appeared only in legends.
Pat, pat-pat.
Fat raindrops began hammering down out of the darkened sky.
"I... summoned that? That's insane..."
The awe-struck words tumbled out of me on their own.
But hold on. Something was off.
Rain was pouring down hard enough to crater the dirt underfoot, yet not a single drop seemed to touch my upturned, staring face.
Sight and sound registered the downpour perfectly — but touch alone remained firmly anchored in reality. A deeply uncanny, split sensory experience.
Before I even had time to marvel, the shantytown's speakers blared to life.
"Oh crap — AHHH! Cancel! CANCELLLL!!"
Fwoosh—!
The moment the desperate cry left my lips, everything — the Azure Dragon that had been growling like it would end the world, the storm clouds smothering the sky, the rain drumming against my ears —
vanished without a trace, all of it, in the blink of an eye.
Warm sunlight spilled once more over the shantytown's tattered rooftops. The ground that had been soaked through moments ago was bone-dry, as if the rain had never existed at all.
"...Holy. Crap."