Awakening in the Ruins
Kang Tae-sung couldn’t recall anyone he could truly call a friend. Of course, during his school days he had mingled with plenty of peers, but after giving up on college and finishing his military service, the contacts had simply faded away one by one, as if it had all been predetermined.
‘Guess our relationships weren’t that deep after all.’
If Kang Tae-sung had been rich or possessed some outstanding talent, there might have been people who clung to him under the pretense of friendship in hopes of gaining something. But since he had neither, it seemed he had lived a life without a single proper friend.
‘No. That’s just an excuse.’
Even without money, if they had been true friends, wouldn’t they have remembered him and reached out first?
‘Was I really that unpleasant of a person?’
As that thought crossed his mind and he tilted his head, Kang Tae-sung’s gaze fell on the two women walking a few steps ahead. Only then did memories he had completely forgotten begin to resurface one by one.
‘Ah, right. That’s how it was.’
The way his friends had cut off contact as if by agreement. He remembered now that it hadn’t simply been because their relationships had grown distant.
‘I had a girlfriend, didn’t I.’
Had he really lived while forgetting something like that?
It suddenly felt ridiculous.
After rolling around on the battlefield for a hundred years, the things that had once filled him with such despair and rage had been quietly erased from his memory.
While he was in the military, one of his friends had started dating his girlfriend. The friends who had chosen that friend over him and cut off contact with Tae-sung. That was all there was to it.
‘We were young.’
Even thinking about it now, it was something that still irritated him a little. But the feeling was so faint he couldn’t tell whether it was his current emotion or merely the echo of a past one.
Just something that had happened. That was the feeling.
It was also because the connections he had made during his hundred-plus years in that other world far outnumbered the ones from here. Among them were women he remembered as far more beautiful than the one who had dumped him.
‘Well, by Earth standards they were basically Westerners… even the prostitutes from the battlefield would have been considered beauties here.’
So it was only natural they had been forgotten.
Had they simply been pushed aside behind the faces of far more extraordinary beauties?
While walking and lost in these thoughts, Kang Tae-sung suddenly stiffened his expression and reached out, grabbing the shoulders of the two women ahead of him and stopping them in their tracks.
“……?”
No one got angry at the sudden contact. The young girl flinched in surprise but only glanced at her senior for cues. The woman in charge turned slightly, checked Kang Tae-sung’s face, then spoke in a small voice with a similarly hardened expression.
“What is it?”
Kang Tae-sung didn’t offer any explanation. He simply pointed at an empty storefront building beside the road. The metal door had already fallen off, and inside was an even deeper darkness than the night outside.
“Is there something in there? I don’t see anything.”
“Get inside.”
“……?”
The woman tilted her head at his words, but something about his intense gaze must have told her this was no ordinary situation. Without another word, she entered the building with her junior and crouched down in a corner.
Right after that, she saw them. Two or three wolves emerging from around the corner of the road in the distance.
“…….”
She quickly covered her junior’s mouth as it began to open in shock, then deliberately slowed her own breathing to show her how to do the same.
But she couldn’t hide her confusion.
Kang Tae-sung had definitely said he was an ordinary person, and from what she could tell, he truly didn’t appear to be a hunter. While hunters couldn’t check each other’s exact levels, they could generally sense whether someone was an awakened individual or not.
Of course it wasn’t perfectly accurate, which was why people sometimes verified by showing the points on the back of their hand. Still, by her senses, he was definitely not a hunter.
Yet that man had noticed the monsters before she had and warned them. And unlike the two of them whom he had hidden, he was instead walking closer toward the wolves.
That was a dog’s death.
The kind of death where you literally get killed by dogs.
Those things couldn’t be compared to ordinary wolves or wild dogs.
Just their size alone was comparable to a decent-sized cow. A simple charge would shatter an ordinary person’s bones and turn their organs into mush that would come pouring out of their mouth and nose.
And their teeth?
Once they bit down, they didn’t just sink in—they tore flesh clean off.
There were already three… four…
‘Five of them.’
She couldn’t help but wonder what she should do. Even if they stayed hidden here, they wouldn’t escape the wolves’ sense of smell. And one man alone wouldn’t be enough to fill the stomachs of five of those creatures.
Should she go out and fight alongside him to increase their chances of survival? Or should they hide deeper inside? Or perhaps run back the way they came and join the two people standing guard?
‘By the way, five of those things crossed over to this side of the bridge and no one noticed? What a bunch of idiots.’
While she was lost in these thoughts, her trembling junior grabbed her collar and began shaking it.
She turned with a face that clearly said how pathetic, getting scared at a time like this, only to see her junior pointing toward the road with the hand that wasn’t holding her collar.
“……?”
Only then did the woman realize that was the direction Kang Tae-sung had walked and turned her gaze that way.
And she saw it.
“…….”
Five wolves were scattered on the ground around Kang Tae-sung, who stood casually in the middle of the road. No, looking closer, their heads had been completely crushed.
She hadn’t heard a single sound.
Not the sound of running, not the sound of fighting, not screams or shouts, not even the sound of the wolves collapsing to the ground.
‘Five wolves are enough to handle a single orc. And he killed five of them by himself? An ordinary person who isn’t even an awakened?’
While she stared in disbelief, Kang Tae-sung, who was still standing there, casually shook the blood off his two fists and then fixed his gaze somewhere in the distance.
At that moment, a single beam of light descended from the pitch-black night sky and illuminated him.
The woman immediately recognized what the phenomenon was.
Her junior, who had heard about it so many times her ears had practically grown calluses, recognized it as well.
“That man… did he just awaken by himself?”
Congratulations!
You have achieved a predetermined accomplishment and stepped onto the path of the Hunter.
The dry, mechanical voice suddenly rang out. Kang Tae-sung instinctively turned his eyes to scan his surroundings, but he couldn’t find any source to fix his gaze on. In the end, he simply stared straight ahead.
He could usually pinpoint the location of a sound the moment he heard it, but this voice hadn’t come from anywhere around him. It felt as if it had echoed directly inside his head.
Almost at the same time as the voice, a single streak of light poured down from the sky.
Unsure of what the light was, he took a step to the side, but it changed direction at nearly the same moment and struck him directly. The light melted into his body as if it had been absorbed.
What followed were the various holographic menus the woman had mentioned, exactly like a game screen. At a glance he could see his current level, and he could even view a map of the area within a fifty-meter radius centered on where he stood.
Welcome to the path of the Hunter.
From now on, you can accumulate experience as a hunter through the accomplishments you achieve, further strengthening both body and mind. You may also receive various benefits by using separately acquired Points.
At the following guidance voice, Kang Tae-sung opened the menu labeled Point Mall and looked inside.
Since he was currently Level 1, there weren’t many items available for purchase, and he could only see up to Level 2 goods. Still, a few items that clearly didn’t belong in reality caught his eye.
‘A potion, huh…’
It was something he had seen plenty of in the other world, but seeing it in this situation felt strangely out of place.
Besides that, various ordinary tools, ropes for camping, multi-purpose knives, and other common items were listed at relatively cheap prices of one to two points. But after hearing that one point was worth about a million won, they didn’t seem cheap at all.
What did catch his eye was the Random Low-grade Magic Tome Draw for 100 points. It seemed only hunters of Level 2 or higher could purchase it. He wondered if the existence of magic tomes meant one could actually learn magic.
‘Random, though.’
They really had copied game systems down to the gacha elements. Kang Tae-sung shook his head slightly and read through the other menus and explanations.
Overall, there were four basic stats: Strength, Agility, Mental Power, and Endurance. Currently, all of his stats were recorded as 1.
‘Hmm.’
He clenched both fists and tried to gauge his current strength. It did feel like his grip had become slightly stronger than before, yet the displayed value was still 1.
‘So the system starts everyone at 1 regardless of their actual condition when they begin.’
Whether that was fair or not wasn’t something he needed to judge right now.
It seemed he could raise his level directly, or increase his experience through points earned from hunting.
When leveling up, one received one random stat point and two points that could be applied freely. As for points, the Point Mall sold items that converted points into experience at different rates depending on the level.
At Level 1, there was an item that gave 20% experience for 20 points. At Level 2, the gap was massive—the cheapest was 100 points for a mere 5%.
According to the description, raising experience with points was limited to Level 3.
Only now did the woman’s earlier words about the gap between Level 1 and Level 2 being like heaven and earth start to feel real. If the current ability was fixed at the number 1, then when that number increased to 2, did it mean both physical and mental capabilities would double?
Of course, for a weak person, doubling their strength might still not amount to much. But for someone who already possessed great power… the stronger one was, the more enormous the difference per single stat point would be.