The True Path of Awakening
Kang Han-sung nodded, his expression showing he understood perfectly.
He had seen and heard it firsthand in the field—why soldiers took so long to awaken even while hunting monsters.
Stuck in a rear unit under those conditions, it was no exaggeration to say the past few years had been wasted. He didn’t regret it, though. Thanks to that, his family had managed to survive.
“But what matters more than awakening is building solid fundamentals. The same goes even after you awaken. Stats work on a multiplier system.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.”
Kang Han-sung readily agreed with his older brother’s explanation.
Even after awakening, the difference between two people with identical levels and stats could be massive depending on how much each one trained.
“Here, take this.”
What Kang Tae-sung handed through the open window was a military pistol. Checking it in the rearview mirror, Kang Han-sung jerked his chin toward the youngest brother beside him.
“Give it to the kid. He’s the one who sticks closest to the family.”
When he heard there were only twelve rounds left, Kang Han-sung insisted even more firmly that it go to the youngest.
“In a real fight, once you start shooting, twelve bullets is nothing. It’s worse than having no gun at all. It’s useful for defense, so the one staying with the family should carry it.”
“I don’t even know how to use it…”
“You’ll pick it up just by handling it. Just keep your finger off the trigger guard unless you mean to fire.”
The youngest accepted the pistol with an awkward expression and carefully tucked it inside his clothes.
The conversation lulled for a moment after that.
Kang Tae-sung considered what to spend his points on now that they had passed one hundred. But the point shop had nothing worth buying at Level 1.
Most of the tools and equipment could be found on the regular market anyway, so he saw no reason to waste points on them.
Guess it’s experience after all.
After a brief hesitation, he decided to buy experience points.
The biggest reason was that his accumulated experience sat at only about ten percent. Even when he hunted alone, the gains weren’t nearly as fast as he’d expected.
He had simply brushed it off when he heard Kim Myeong-hui wondering whether to spend points on experience, but it seemed most Level 1 hunters used their points exactly that way.
The moment he spent the points and purchased the experience, a beam of light descended from the sky just like during his initial awakening.
The truck was still speeding along, yet the light found him with unerring accuracy, as if it had tracking capabilities, and poured straight into Kang Tae-sung where he sat in the truck bed.
“What the hell? What’s that?”
Startled by the sudden brilliant flash in the rearview mirror, Kang Han-sung eased off the accelerator and asked, but Kang Yeon-sung answered for him.
“Looks like he just raised his level.”
“Ah. He did sell those cores.”
Still, three cores should have only brought in thirty to maybe mid-forties in points at best. That meant Tae-sung must have started with around seventy points already.
“Level 2, huh.”
Among the hunters from other units he had seen in the military, Level 2s hadn’t been common, but one thing was certain—they were far stronger than Level 1s.
The light shining from behind him faded, no longer blinding, yet Kang Han-sung kept glancing at his brother through the rearview mirror.
You have reached Level 2. Congratulations on stepping onto the true path of awakening.
Kang Tae-sung read through the usual dry mechanical voice and then carefully examined the additional information about what had changed or been added.
The immediate difference was, of course, in his stat values.
Where Strength, Agility, Mental Power, and Endurance had each been 1 before, his Mental Power had risen by one to 2. The randomly increased stat had been Mental Power.
That didn’t mean he had any reason to feel disappointed that Strength or Agility hadn’t gone up.
Mental Power expanded the vessel for mana, increased mana recovery, and boosted the power and duration of magic.
For some reason, after leveling up, Kang Tae-sung felt a strange emptiness, as if the mana that had been packed inside him to the point of overflowing had suddenly drained away.
But it wasn’t true depletion. The vessel had simply grown larger, making the previous amount feel relatively small.
He quickly confirmed that the total mana he possessed remained exactly the same as before. He could also clearly sense the mana slowly seeping into him with every breath.
They really call it the difference between heaven and earth.
He had thought the comparison was exaggerated, but even doubling the mana pool alone meant he could last twice as long on the battlefield.
That was an enormous difference.
For Kang Tae-sung, who always fought while conserving mana as much as possible, the increase was more than welcome.
Still, the mana density in the air must be low. Recovery isn’t all that great.
If he spent it recklessly it would bottom out in no time. Saving it like this was the best way to prepare for emergencies.
He stared at the two free stat points he could allocate and eventually put one into Strength and one into Endurance.
Endurance didn’t show outwardly, but the description said it prevented easy fatigue in the same situations, so he judged it necessary.
In other words, it was staying power.
On the battlefield, persistence, patience, and the endurance to last were every bit as vital as raw strength. That was why he chose it.
The moment both stats rose, his entire body’s muscles began to twitch and shift as if they were being reconstructed.
Even his bone structure seemed to change slightly. Finding his seated position uncomfortable, Kang Tae-sung slid down smoothly until he was lying on his back and simply accepted the transformation.
“Did he die back there?”
Kang Han-sung’s voice drifted from the front seat, but Tae-sung had no energy to answer.
His whole body swelled slightly as if someone had pumped air into it, then slowly subsided back to normal. Even from the outside, it was clear something about him had changed.
Not bad.
He hadn’t raised Agility because he didn’t feel the need yet.
And he had chosen Endurance over putting both points into Strength because, while he had been in danger from exhaustion before, he had rarely been in danger from lacking raw power.
“……”
Now that he was Level 2, even the scenery looked different at a glance.
His field of vision had expanded, and among the people moving about he could somehow tell who was a normal person and who was awakened. He could even sense who among the normals was close to awakening through faint aura-like colors hovering over their bodies.
It seemed this was what the notification about “stepping onto the true path of awakening” had meant.
Normal people appeared completely ordinary with no visible energy. The closer someone was to awakening, the more they were wrapped in a faint blue glow.
The system’s information was accurate.
Level 1 awakened showed blue energy, fellow Level 2s showed green, and higher-level hunters appeared yellow.
Another change after reaching Level 2 was that the point shop now offered far more items, and it even displayed products available at the next level—Level 3.
Not that a huge variety had appeared immediately, but several things no hunter could ignore had been added.
Examples included the “Random Magic Book” available for 100 points and the “Random Skill Book” for half that—50 points.
I don’t remember seeing skill books last time.
Maybe he had simply overlooked them while skimming. Kang Tae-sung tilted his head, but since he didn’t have enough points to buy anything right now, he only browsed.
Recovery Reinforcement costs 100 points, yet the random skill draw is cheaper… That probably means there are a lot of useless skills mixed in.
That was how random draws usually worked—luring people with the good prizes and handing out trash.
Still, he had never once seen a skill book or magic tome drop from a monster, so perhaps the normal drop rate was so terrible that random draws were the only realistic option.
When he accumulated more points later, what should he buy? Would it be better to purchase experience again and push straight to Level 3?
That method could only take him as far as Level 3. A quick internet search showed that quite a few people had poured money into raising their levels exactly that way.
Especially members of famous Seoul guilds, children from wealthy families, or the individuals themselves—raising to Level 3 with cash was treated almost like the standard route.
They bought points from other hunters with real money, then used those points to purchase experience and level up.
At the recent exchange rate of one point per million won, reaching Level 2 cost around a hundred million, and climbing one more to Level 3 took roughly two billion.
It was an astronomical sum for some, but relatively cheap for others.
And even stopping at Level 3, the improvement in physical ability compared to ordinary awakened individuals was obvious. There was no point comparing it to regular people at all.
After returning to the school, Kang Tae-sung sent his younger brothers off for a while and sat alone on a bench, turning various thoughts over in his mind.
Hmm.
His decision to awaken his brothers was firm. Even if the country somehow stabilized again, the world had become far too dangerous for ordinary people to live defenselessly, trusting in law, order, and basic morality like before.
Without power of their own, simply stepping outside the house would require courage. Sometimes even staying inside wouldn’t be safe.
Therefore they needed strength.
Just considering that he couldn’t protect the entire family by himself made it clear he needed allies.
That could have gone badly.
Taking both brothers with him to the city hall had been a mistake.
There were no young men left at this school. At least one should have stayed behind to provide even a little help in an emergency.
Of course, the school’s contingency plan mainly involved hiding in the basement, so a young man might not have made much difference.
Still, there was a clear gap between having one and not having one—awakened or not.
I’ll probably be moving separately a lot from now on.
For now, he would awaken his brothers quickly so they could look after the family while he moved alone to earn money.
If the nation was rebuilt, having plenty of money certainly wouldn’t hurt.
If necessary, building a private force with money wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
With enough funds he could fortify the area around the school. Even if they weren’t awakened, he could arm sturdy regular men and set them on guard duty.
What the family needed was safety and convenience.
That required infrastructure and resources.
And what made all of it possible was, ultimately, money.
He wasn’t planning to start earning it immediately, though. The current problem was how to awaken his younger brothers.
In truth, it wasn’t something that required much deliberation.
He could simply take Han-sung and Yeon-sung out one at a time and hunt monsters together.
More precisely, it would be safer to weaken the monsters almost to death and let them finish the kills so they could gain at least some experience.
But.
Kang Tae-sung wasn’t looking at the system’s point shop. Instead, he was reading information about Level 3 that he had searched on the tablet.
The internet contained all kinds of data hunters had released about things the system didn’t explain.
There was especially plenty of useful reference material for those who had not yet reached certain levels. Some of it required payment, but a lot was offered for free.
What caught Kang Tae-sung’s attention was the qualification obtainable at Level 3: “Party Formation and Party Leader Authority Creation.”
Thank you. This cold just won’t go away.
Typing, blowing my nose, typing, blowing my nose…
See you next time…