The World's First SSS+ Rank Hunter
Lee Jihyun didn't explain any further.
"I'll make it and show you."
With that, she announced she was going to fetch her tools and headed out. We watched her leave, practically glowing with excitement, and then we left the house ourselves.
"Oppa. You still haven't registered as a hunter, right?"
"Nope."
"Then let's go. We've put it off long enough."
The thing I'd been postponing had finally come due. Truth be told, I almost never set foot in a dungeon out in the real world, so part of me had wondered whether registering was even worth the trouble. When I'd first awakened, I'd been full of plans to make a name for myself as a hunter out here. These days, though, selling off the resources I hauled back from the Rift Dimension was simply more fun, and the quests in there paid far better besides. That particular ambition had cooled considerably.
Even so, I couldn't stay unregistered forever. Maybe not right away, but I still wanted to make a splash as a hunter in the real world and soak up the attention that came with it. For now, the notice I got for bringing back rare resources was filling that hole well enough.
"Money's coming in now. Leave yourself unregistered and the Hunter Association is going to come knocking."
And Kim Sujeong was right. The profits were already absurd. Just a week ago, hunter work had brought in close to three hundred million won. Swallow that without registering, she said, and it wouldn't be booked as hunter income at all—the tax office would take its cut in full. It was only going to get worse. This time the haul would dwarf the last one, and I had no intention of handing it over. Registration mattered for the contracts, too.
"We need to set up a company between us and put it on paper. Think hunter agency. I manage you."
I'd agreed to cut Kim Sujeong in for ten percent. That ten percent wouldn't land straight in her pocket. Once we signed an agency contract, every sale tied to my hunter work would run through the agency she built, and ninety percent of the proceeds would come back to me. A formality, she called it—nothing more.
"The ten percent covers your operating costs. Whatever you buy on the way to the farm. Food, a place to sleep, the stuff you spend just living out here. Hunter items that can't be written off, though—those you buy yourself."
It wasn't some loophole she'd cooked up. These days, she said, most hunters contracted exactly like this.
"Out of that ten percent, I take a set salary on paper. Normally you'd fix the number in advance and spend against it, but it's a one-person company anyway. Cover whatever you spend, and I'll use whatever's left however I see fit."
Honestly, I hadn't thought it through that far. I knew perfectly well that ten percent was a lot, once you considered what the Rift Dimension was actually worth. I also knew that if I simply paid her a salary—a few tens of millions of won—she'd still be grateful and work herself raw. But she wouldn't have worked like this. There is a real difference between collecting a fixed paycheck and doing exactly that much work, and not knowing what you'll make and grinding harder so you can make more.
And above all, she was family. Not that family means you trust someone enough to go into business with them. Still, even if she was my obnoxious, mouthy little sister, she was someone I could actually hand this to—and bit by bit, she was proving it. She knew where the line was, and she handled the annoying paperwork without being asked, which meant I could do whatever I felt like without thinking about any of it.
"Oh! Just so we're clear, cutting me in for ten percent is generous, Oppa. Regular hunters have set agency rates by rank. Ten percent is about... B-rank to A-rank, maybe? From S-rank up it's basically one to three percent, or so people say. The side income is so insane that even one percent still pulls in tens of billions of won a year..."
"So don't go changing your mind later?"
"It's a contract, so if you want to change it, do it now. I know you're giving me a lot because we're family, and I'm not that shameless. Yeah, I'm latching onto you to make some money—I won't pretend otherwise. But I told you. Your farm? I love it. So let's do this properly now, before anybody can say later that I talked you into something."
"Hm."
Did it really need to be that strict? If someone asked whether I cared about Kim Sujeong that much, I could honestly say no. We spent every day in the living room cursing each other out and fighting, and here we were squabbling over who got to look after whom. Ridiculous. But I was only giving her what I was genuinely fine with giving.
"You said it's an agency."
"Yeah."
"Once you start hiring people, you're going to want a bigger cut. Take it while I'm offering. Cash doesn't mean much to me anyway."
Reality wasn't all that different from Farming World. The bigger the farm got, the harder the fixed costs bled. Even a single NPC was a steady drain that grated on me, and if I wanted to hire more of them on top of that, the farm could earn and earn and never see the end of it. Back when I was playing Farming World, I'd had to manage every one of those NPCs myself and worry about putting each of them exactly where they belonged. Out here, I fully intended to dump all of that on Kim Sujeong—and I was already testing how far I could push the load onto her.
If ten percent of what I earned made that possible, and if that same cut later let us hire more people in the real world, it wasn't even that much money. More than anything, the place I actually cared about wasn't Earth. It was Farming World. Everything there—even the junk lying on the ground—sold for a fortune on Earth, so what did it matter whether I made a billion won or nine hundred million? All I'd do is pile it up and pat myself on the back over how much had stacked.
With that, I set down the weight she'd been carrying alone, and we headed for the Hunter Association—hunter registration, the company, and the contract.
Hunter registration is simple. You go to the Hunter Association, show your Status Window to an Association employee, and you're done. There is no other way. The Association exists to manage hunters and to keep the danger they pose in check.
Of course, that comes with plenty of grumbling. Do we really have to show our Status Windows? Couldn't we prove it some other way? In the end, though, nothing is as clean or as certain as showing the window, so the World Hunter Association has held that line and refused to budge. And honestly, there isn't much reason not to.
The Association handles that by keeping ranks under absolute secrecy. People being people, the information can still leak—but the Association answers leaks with brutal punishment. If a hunter's personal information gets out against their will, they investigate to the last detail and put the employee responsible to death. Officially it's a dismissal. Astonishingly, every staff member caught up in that kind of incident was reported missing after being fired.
The country keeps it quiet, and the International Hunter Association—an enormous power in its own right—stands behind them, so you can treat incidents like that as something that almost never happens. No matter how much money you offer, almost no one is willing to bet their life on something that will get them caught in the end. Even getting hired by the Hunter Association means passing a brutally strict exam, so the problems that only happen in novels mostly don't happen at all. Which is why there's no reason not to use the easy, convenient method.
"I'm here to register as a hunter."
"Right this way."
The registration room was sealed on every side. An employee was waiting inside, and they asked to see my Status Window. I showed it without a shred of hesitation.
"Hah!"
The employee stared at my window, face gone slack with shock.
"SSS+ Rank... and... what is a Farming Window?"
"Does it matter?"
"...Could you wait just a moment?"
I understood. Hunters use a Status Window. I'd come over from Farming World, so what I used was a Farming Window. Either way, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Same kind of ability, used the same way any ability is used.
Faced with something they'd never seen, the employee decided this wasn't theirs to handle alone and stepped out. About three minutes later they came back with a middle-aged man who clearly sat a few rungs higher.
"Hello. I'm Team Leader Kim Jinhyeop."
"Ah. Hello."
"My apologies. I received the report, but I don't fully understand it. Would you show me your Status Window once more?"
"Sure."
I brought the Farming Window up again, and Team Leader Kim Jinhyeop's face went rigid.
"SSS+..."
Team leader or not, his reaction wasn't much different from the employee's. First he tilted his head at the fact that it read Farming Window. Then he startled at the rank of my ability. After that he looked at my stats—and looked at me again.
"Forgive me, but... may I ask how you awakened?"
He could tell something was off. What he was looking at, though, was unmistakably a system. I saw no point in stirring up confusion, so I told him the truth.
"You know Farming World?"
"Yes. I'm told it's the game that most closely reproduces the current hunter system."
"I was playing it when I awakened, and my window came up like this."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I pulled an SSS+ ability in there and logged off. When I came to, I'd awakened—and the SSS+ ability I'd pulled and closed out was applied to me exactly as it was."
"..."
Yeah. That's what happened.
The looks on both their faces—pure disbelief—were honestly pretty entertaining.