Illusion and Reality
“...Holy. Shit.”
I made that? Me?
The Azure Dragon that made my knees buckle the instant I laid eyes on it — the one that squeezed a single bead of pee right out of me?
Did my life... just take off?
I stared up at the empty sky where the Azure Dragon had been only moments before. This was a skill that truly deserved the word EX. With this one skill alone, I might leap clean past national-level power straight into world-power territory—
MONSTER APPEARANCE
Ah, right. What am I gonna do about that.
The loudspeaker was still screaming its lungs out, ordering the shantytown to evacuate. Word of the monster would have hunters flooding toward this hill any minute now. Getting a glimpse of a high-grade hunter was already about as likely as plucking stars from the sky — and to face off against my Azure Dragon, they'd have no choice but to send A-Rank or above.
And how exactly are they supposed to beat the Azure Dragon, huh?!
However strong hunters got, the ceiling was A-Rank to S-Rank. But this body of mine was bona fide EX-Rank. Well, "strong" only meant about eleven or twelve times over, but still.
Ahhhh, I'm so damn strong!!!
EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY
Ugh, shut uuup. Fine, fine, I'm evacuating. Evacuating.
Home, that is. The sirens were blaring because of my spectacular dragon anyway, so there was nothing to worry about. The only ones deserving of pity were the poor hunters about to sprint up the shantytown hill first thing in the morning.
Hehe. You're welcome, humans. Be grateful that I harbor no ill will — because if I'd been a bad person, Korea would've been a smoking crater by nightfall!
The moment I got home, I logged straight into the Hunter Gallery. Everyone's gotta be losing their minds, right? Time to read the reactions and bask in it.
Mom, Dad, I'm so sorry!!!!!!!!
Wow. Total pandemonium.
Well, fair enough — the Azure Dragon had been beyond absurd. One look at it and your will to fight just evaporated. Its sheer size blotted out the entire sky. They say the Saulron building in Seoul is visible all the way from Jeju Island, so a dragon even bigger than that? Japan probably saw it too.
Puhuhu. Pretty insane, right?
My lips were wriggling away in the reflection on my phone screen. Hm. It really is a cute face. Like one of those child models from overseas or something. I hammed out a whole range of expressions at the screen.
...Whoops, whoops — not the time for this. I could admire my own face all I wanted later, but this exact moment came around once in a lifetime. I shook myself and jabbed the Write Post button.
Downvotes piled up on my flex post, written as naturally as water flowing downhill.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. And this is exactly the problem with non-awakened people. But who was I, again? King God General Emperor Loyal-Minister-of-Chungmu Majesty Hyper Ultra Fantastic Extreme Genius Hwarong-Summit Master. The one and only EX-Rank holder on planet Earth. Whatever a bunch of mere unawakened nobodies had to say didn't so much as register on my radar.
I tossed my phone onto the blanket without a shred of regret.
DO NOT LOWER YOUR GUARD—! EVERYONE, PLEASE EVACUATE!
Crash-bang-boom—
Judging by all the ruckus outside, the hunters had arrived. I'll finish testing my abilities once things quiet down a little. If I went out there just to gawk and got chewed out for failing to evacuate, that'd be my own stupid fault. Have fun with that, suckers. Puhuhu.
Evening came, and dusk settled over the hill.
Contrary to my expectations, the hunters still hadn't left. When I poked just my eyes past the window to take a peek, there were even broadcasting station vans down below now.
Ugh, come on. Wrap it up and go home already.
Any reasonable person would look at a colossal dragon vanishing in an instant and go, ah, that's a hunter's ability, case closed. What were they planning to accomplish by stubbornly sticking around? My heart ached to burst outside right that second and brag — That Azure Dragon? I made it! I'm an EX-Rank awakened, you know!!
But when I bowed my head and looked down at my soft, squishy little palm, I knew. Coming from this body, it would be dismissed as pure gibberish on sight. Honestly, if you were going to awaken someone, change their ID card while you're at it! Don't you know how many things in Korean society become a nightmare when your identity doesn't match? Zero flexibility. Zero.
That said, it wasn't like I had any real complaints. A lifetime as a penniless unawakened versus life as an adorable little-girl EX-Rank hunter? This wasn't even a debate. The latter, no contest.
I mean, sure, it's a shame my clone vanished before I got any use out of it. But hey, nothing to be done — I've got the spectacular Azure Dragon to make up for it, don't I? By strict fair-trade accounting, the dragon wins by a hair. If only mine had been just a bit bigger, nobody could've argued. A real shame.
One more look out the window showed the hunters still showing zero signs of leaving, so I changed my plans accordingly. They'll clock out by dawn. Guilds everywhere would be throwing a fit about hunters this expensive idling all day in an empty shantytown.
I set an alarm on my phone and burrowed under the covers. Oh, right. I still need to collect my goodnight reaction...
The instant the back of my head hit the pillow, my eyelids slammed shut all on their own.
Out—
Ding-ding-ding— gooood morning—
“Early bird, rise and shine!”
I kicked off the blanket and popped upright in one motion. Ooh. Being young is definitely the way to go. Every time I used to sleep on the floor and wake up, my back was wrecked — but this body? This might actually be an upgrade.
Looking out the window, I found the usual gloomy shantytown scenery. The broadcasting vans and hunters that had been there right up until I fell asleep were gone without a trace. Only the hunter-related trash littering the ground proved they'd ever been there at all.
If you're gonna scarf down high-calorie ration bars, at least clean up after yourselves. Tsk, tsk. What's the point of being a hunter if you've got no manners to match?
Hunters: confirmed gone. Which meant it was time to put my plan into action.
Eeeek—
The rusty hinge shrieked, and I slipped outside—
Whooooosh—
—and immediately shut the door and went right back in. Brrr, that's cold. Already none of my old clothes fit this new body, so I was standing there in nothing but a white t-shirt. March out like this and I might just freeze to death. I frantically dug the hoodie buried in the back of the closet and pulled it on.
Behold: the missing-bottoms look?
With the massive size difference from my male body, the hoodie hung all the way down past my thighs. But hey, when your face does the heavy lifting, even this passes as fashion, right? Truly, the completion of any outfit is the face.
Cold-weather prep complete, I headed back outside—
Whooooosh—
—and the frigid wind went swirling right up the leg of my... situation.
Ugh.
Better than a moment ago, but with no underwear to speak of — everything just sliding straight down — something about this felt... something.
Gotta finish this fast and get back inside. If I dawdled here and ran into another person, it was a recipe for a catastrophic misunderstanding — and my dawn wake-up would all be for nothing.
I already had the test site picked out: the dirt clearing on the hill where the delinquent high schoolers gathered to smoke. At this hour, there wouldn't be a soul around.
“Haa... haa... made it.”
Normally a five-minute walk, but between the much-shorter legs and the bone-deep creepiness of the shantytown at night, it took me double the time. Look, it genuinely felt like something was about to lunge out of every single alley.
Sure, I could've just blasted the area with illusions to keep myself company, but yeah — better safe than sorry. It is absolutely not the case that I got scared, doubled back mid-route, and wasted extra time because of it.
“Alright! Let's do this!”
I had already grilled an AI about the Illusion skill to study up, of course. Though, being the free freeloader tier, its answers were garbage.
“Hehehe. Summoning, magecraft... am I actually an all-rounder?”
What would my market rate be, then? EX-Rank, plus... what do you call it, multiple abilities? Multiclass?
Kiyaahoo! I'm rich!
“Okay, here goes! Fireball!!”
A massive orb of flame crackled into existence above my outstretched hand.
Fwoooooosh—!
Huh? It's not hot? So an EX-Rank skill doesn't harm its own user? Truly special.
“Target: that tree! Fire!”
The fireball shot across the clearing toward the lonely tree standing in the corner.
KWAAAANG—!
“Whoa.”
The explosion snapped the tree clean in half, and flames roared up in an instant.
“...”
Hold on.
“Gah — wildfire. That's gonna start a wildfire!”
I-I didn't bring a fire extinguisher. So this is why the elders always said not to play with fire.
No. Stay calm, Seo Yeoreum. Who am I?
“The one and only holder of a GOAT-grade skill.”
With great effort, I forced down my heart, which had been hammering like it was trying to punch through my ribs.
“Huhaa... huhaa... Okay. Waterball!!”
SPLOOOOSH—!
A huge mass of water bloomed out of thin air and crashed down over the burning tree.
Ssssssss—
White steam billowed up, and the flames were snuffed out in the blink of an eye.
“Kya~.”
My shoulders rolled back all on their own. This right here is why people awaken. Am I seriously an all-rounder or not?
Swelling with pride, I marched over to the tree to inspect the results. The halved tree had lost only its flames — the wood itself was scorched pitch-black, reduced to a lump of charcoal.
“Whoa, it does this in a few seconds?”
That's EX for you. Bulletproof performance.
I was examining the charred, blackened cross-section when I absentmindedly reached out my hand.
And then.
Thk—
“Huh?”
My hand had stopped dead in midair. There was clearly nothing in front of me.
Warily, I swept my palm up and down.
Scritch. Scritch.
A rough, gritty, unmistakably familiar texture brushed my fingertips.
“...”
I touched it again. A hard surface. A bumpy, gnarled bark. No matter how I looked at it, this was—
“Tree... bark?”
But right in front of my eyes, the tree was lying on the ground, split clean in two. This time, I reached toward that.
Swish—
My palm passed straight through the charred tree without meeting a thing.
“...”
I'm not just imagining this... am I?
Swish—
“Huh?”
The thought to withdraw the illusion surfaced in my mind—
Shhhk—
—and the fire-blackened tree, the damp-soaked dirt, all of it vanished in a single instant, like it had never existed at all.
And in its place stood one perfectly ordinary tree, not so much as a splinter different from moments before.
“...”
I pressed my palm flat against it.
Rough. Gritty.
“...”
World-power rank: rejected.
Unemployment: approved.