It's Not That Kind of Drug!

“So your awakened class is… a drug dealer?”

That was the misunderstanding I got every single time I told someone my class.

“No, not a drug dealer—I’m a Drug Master!”

Drug Master.

The “drug” here was written with the characters for magic medicine. It had nothing to do with the narcotics everyone immediately thought of. Those used an entirely different character.

But in Hangul they sounded identical, so to keep people from getting the wrong idea I had even put the pharmacy sign up in Chinese characters.

…Apparently nobody actually knew what the character for “magic” looked like.

Ding-a-ling—

Today’s first customer walked in.

She was a wide-eyed woman whose mouth corners had gone stiff from smiling too much and whose hands trembled like she was having a personal earthquake.

“Heh, uh-heh. H-hey, little kid—”

“…Yes?”

“Gimme some ice. And candy. C-candy.”

“Haaah…”

I pressed a hand to my forehead.

Around here, “ice” was street slang for meth and “candy” meant ecstasy.

How did I even know that?

I never wanted to know!

With that thought I jammed the button under the counter.

BEEEEEP—!

One day holes opened in the air all over the world.

These holes—commonly called “Gates”—connected to all sorts of places in all sorts of dimensions.

Some Gates spat out friendly otherworldly races. Others spat out dangerous magical beasts.

Modern firearms were useless against them, so people who had awakened by resonating with the Gates’ mana stepped forward to fight the monsters.

My dad had been at the very front of that line.

“Dad…”

“My little Siu. You trust Dad, right? Dad’s the strongest, so don’t you worry.”

Among all the Awakened he had been a top-rank hunter of the highest tier.

Dad always did his duty. He always took the lead on the hardest raids and never spared his own body to save his comrades.

Then he was struck by a terrible curse and collapsed.

“Dad?”

“…Siu. Auntie’s coming right back. Don’t touch Dad, okay? Just stay put a little while?”

When Auntie carried him home on her shoulder, Dad’s body was rotting away.

The moment I saw him I knew: if we left him like this he would leave for the sky the same way Mom had.

Gate beasts were as profitable as they were dangerous, and the byproducts of the monsters Dad had hunted filled our storage room to the ceiling.

Nine-year-old me bawled my eyes out while I mixed the very best materials into a medicine.

A dragon’s reverse scale, a unicorn’s horn, a lich’s soul chain, a spirit’s tear…

Materials so rare you couldn’t even put a price on them went in without a second thought.

BOOM!

“Waaah!”

It exploded.

“Hiiing…”

Covered in the concoction, I cried as I forced the remaining medicine down Dad’s throat.

Color returned to the blackened, dying complexion. But Dad never woke up.

“Kyaaaah! …S-Siu-ni?”

“Auntie… hiiing, there’s something weird floating in front of my eyes…”

“That’s not the problem right now, Siu!”

Auntie scooped me up and rushed me to a hunter-exclusive hospital. That was where I learned that awakening hadn’t been enough—I had also turned into a little girl.

My awakened class: Drug Master.

“It seems the legendary-grade materials resonated with a powerful wind and caused this.”

“Then why did the kid’s gender change?”

“Hmm, that… Miss Siu? What were you thinking while you made the medicine?”

“I just wanted to make the absolute best medicine… so I could cure Dad.”

At my answer the elf doctor clapped his hands.

“Just as I thought. Manufacturing classes place heavy importance on mana control, don’t they? Compared to males, females handle mana more easily, so the change seems to have gone in that direction.”

“So what exactly does a Drug Master even do?”

“Hmm… I’ve never heard of it either. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Roughly speaking it seems to be a class that makes magical medicines…”

Even a thousand-year-old elf doctor had never heard of a class called “Drug Master.”

“It’s probably a higher-tier version of Alchemist… You said the information window is locked and you can’t see the skills, right, Miss Siu?”

“Yes.”

“If it requires class activation, then it’s definitely a higher-tier class. Even if you did dump legendary materials into it, looking at how Hunter Lee Seong-ju’s condition improved, both the class performance and Miss Siu’s talent seem completely specialized for drug crafting.”

Improvement, however, was not a cure. Dad still did not wake.

After that, to protect me from threats to my safety, my identity was changed from Lee Siu to Han Sia.

“Auntie. Sia’s gonna fix Dad.”

At the same time I began studying so I could create the elixir that would wake him.

Some classes needed specific conditions to unlock their still-inactive skills after awakening. Drug Master was one of them.

It was studying I needed to do anyway, so I threw myself into it.

Otherworlders might be different, but Awakened were still human, so the Hunter Association—after consulting with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety—applied extremely strict standards to my class.

I earned two degrees on top of the basic education. When I finally looked up from my books, ten years had passed.

One month ago, on my nineteenth birthday, I finally opened my own pharmacy.

The name was Magic Pharmacy—taken straight from my class.

Underneath I even wrote that an Association-certified Drug Master personally crafted every medicine.

“Aigoo, you’re here again today. Thank you so much for the report!”

…And one month after opening, my pharmacy had become the Narcotics Investigation Bureau’s favorite place for racking up performance points.

Auntie, who had come along with the officers responding to my tip, fretted,

“Sia… maybe we really should change the sign?”

“No way. I like it.”

…Truthfully I wanted to change it, but I had no money left.

After the identity change Dad’s accounts had been locked. I had covered tuition and living expenses with the New Year’s money Dad had given me as a kid plus the allowance Auntie slipped me, then opened the pharmacy on a maxed-out loan backed by my licenses.

I had only stocked the most basic materials, yet Gate-sourced ingredients were so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠expensive that nothing remained. I was living on cup ramen with a hard-boiled egg, sleeping on a blanket on the compounding-room floor.

I felt too guilty to borrow from Auntie, and I had hidden my finances so thoroughly that I couldn’t ask anyway.

“Who sells drugs this openly? The weird ones are the people who keep coming, Auntie.”

“You’re not having trouble dealing with the customers?”

“…Of course not! I mastered customer service during university practicum! I’m doing great!”

At my words Auntie squished my cheeks, then pulled me into a tight hug.

“Haaah… Auntie’s so worried about you, Sia… You’re already such a pure kid, and your height’s still stuck at how you were as a child, and your cheeks are still this soft…”

“Eheheh.”

I sighed along with her. That was exactly why I had tried to give the pharmacy a weighty name in the first place.

Everything’s ruined. Hiiing.

“Sia, if anything happens you press the button right away, okay?”

“Mm-hm. Bye-bye.”

After Auntie and the officers left, the pharmacy fell quiet the way it always did when I was alone.

“Eheungheung…”

Just like every time I was left by myself, I scrolled the recipe window I had gained two months ago when my class activated all the way to the bottom.

Like most production classes, my Drug Master recipes after the early ones were locked; you had to fill experience on lower recipes or clear unlock quests to view them.

Yet the elixir recipe—I didn’t even know what number it was—had been partially unlocked from the moment I first activated the class two months ago, probably because of the circumstances of my awakening.

“Mm…”

Actually, I wasn’t completely sure that was the reason.

The elf doctor had casually suggested that what I made might have been an elixir, but it could also just be that elixirs, like hair-loss cures, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were famous enough that speculative ingredients and recipes floated around everywhere.

After all, the hair-loss cure was also viewable in an incomplete state.

Well, whatever the reason.

“Decoct a dragon’s reverse scale with a unicorn’s horn and a lich’s soul chain… eheungheung…”

Dad had been a top-rank hunter counted among the strongest of the first generation. That was why those materials had just been sitting in a room. Expecting a mere production-class nobody like me to gather all of them was simply too much.

Honestly, it felt pretty hopeless.

Ding-a-ling—

“Welcome…”

Ding-a-ling—

“……”

Anyone who looked halfway normal and seemed to want ordinary medicine—not a drug addict, not a neighborhood auntie demanding I turn lead into gold, not an uncle hunting for hair-loss cure—took one look at my face and backed right out the door.

On top of that the location was terrible, so I still hadn’t seen a single hunter customer, the very people who should have been my main clientele. When was I ever going to sell medicine and buy materials?

The medicines aren’t fully finished yet, but I can still give out samples. Hiiing.

Uuu… just like the professor said, I really should have stayed in the lab doing research and building social experience until I was a bit older…

…Slap slap!

“Snap out of it, Han Sia! You’re an adult now! You have to wake Dad… no, Father!”

I slapped my own cheeks to clear my head. Han Sia, you opened this pharmacy so you could grow your skills and earn even one more coin as fast as possible to wake the father who has been asleep for ten years!

There was no time to feel drained.

For a production class to raise an awakened profession you had to craft as many different items as possible, master each one by filling its experience, and then sell what you made.

Only then could you use the sales money to buy new ingredients, make new medicines, sell those, make more… unlock the elixir recipe, and finally complete the ultimate elixir with the ultimate materials that would wake Father.

…I had no idea when that day would come.

But for now I was taking the first step!

Shak-shak—

“Done… patch complete!”

I steeled myself, stood at the counter, and focused on crafting. The moment I smoothly affixed the protective film over the medicated layer, my first medicine—a patch—was finished.

I thought it would be done a lot sooner.

The medicated dough itself had been ready early, but combining adhesives and backing materials and testing them myself had delayed things.

Still, the self-test results were more than satisfying. My soles and lower back had been killing me from standing all day, yet after applying the patch my body felt brand-new the next morning.

Whether combat hunters would get the same effect was still unknown… but, well.

Drug Appraisal Skill, activate!

At least the efficacy shown by the skill was solid!

“Lower-back version… shoulder version… knee version… sole version… yong-yong-yong. Hehe. Let’s call it the Yongyong Patch. This size should be fine, right?”

With that, the patch was complete.

Now it was time for the second step.

Selling the medicine I had just made!

I couldn’t just sit around waiting for commissions to come through Auntie, who was already swamped with National Intelligence Service work.

She already ordered twenty bottles of potion through the company for me. I can’t burden her any more. I’m an adult now—I have to handle this myself!

So I poured every ounce of my dual-degree high intelligence into the problem and finally found a way to attract customers without spending a single coin.

“Auntie, this isn’t some weird site, is it?”

“……”

…It was the Hunter Gallery!

Tap-tap-tap

With my small hands I typed out a promotional post as nimbly as an eagle.

“Done!”

I finished writing and hit the register button.

“Huuup.”

I held my breath and waited for reactions.

Ding—

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