The Gamjatang Restaurant's Youngest Son
The official hunter exam venue that opened every January was packed with a record-breaking number of applicants this year. Before the actual test began, the usual national-event formalities—welcoming remarks, congratulatory speeches, and other obligatory rituals—were carried out. Most of the hunters only half-listened at best. Some were outright asleep. I was one of them.
“Hey, uncle. What perk are you chasing?”
A hand tapped my shoulder. I opened my eyes. When I turned my head, a face that felt both strange and eerily familiar filled my vision.
“I’m here for the chance to become a disciple of the Great First Sword if I pass the exam.”
“…Kim Ji-woo?”
“How do you know my name?”
He was young. Painfully, vividly young. For a second I hadn’t recognized him, but there was no doubt. The man standing in front of me was Kim Ji-woo. The A-rank hunter I had raised with my own two hands. The sworn enemy who had betrayed me and taken my life.
The urge to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze until he stopped breathing surged through me. I barely held it back.
“Saw you on NewTube.”
“Whoa, seriously? I only have eight hundred subscribers. Never thought I’d run into one of them here!”
His delighted expression made bile rise in my throat. But the disgust snapped me back to reality.
I died.
The moment I opened my eyes, the entire world had flipped. I had returned to ten years ago—the exact day I had taken the official hunter exam.
There’s only one possibility that makes sense.
Remembering the death I had suffered was nightmarish, but the memory itself came easily. The final moment when I had used my deathbed reversal on the Moon. If my desperate last stand had succeeded in killing it, the raid rewards would have been distributed.
Solo subjugation rewards are always bigger. The only thing that fits is that regression itself was the reward…
A dry laugh slipped out. Easy to say. But how the hell was something like that even possible? Luck in the midst of misfortune. There was no other explanation.
“What’s your name, subscriber?”
Hearing Kim Ji-woo’s voice made the whole question of why I had regressed suddenly irrelevant. I already knew. The Kim Ji-woo standing here had not betrayed me yet. I was the only one who had lived through that future. So of course the current him would find my rage unfair.
Understanding and forgiveness are two different things.
Even if it had happened on a different timeline, the fact that this bastard had betrayed me and eventually killed me remained unchanged. Some people claimed forgiveness was the best revenge. Bullshit. The best revenge was whatever made my anger subside, and nothing less.
“Chae Mu-jin. Twenty-six.”
“I’m twenty-four. What’s your level?”
I didn’t need to open my status window to know what my level was at this point in time.
“Still level 1.”
“A total newbie, huh? Yeah, I figured. For reference, I’m level 16. This isn’t my first official hunter exam either—this is my second try.”
“Then let’s drop the formalities.”
“Huh? Uh, sure.”
I extended my hand first to the guy I would happily watch choke on poison. “Want to party up?”
“Sounds good. What’s your class?”
“Supporter.”
“Ah… a Supporter?”
The moment I revealed my class, his expression soured instantly. In most games, Supporters occupied a noble position. The difference in power with or without their buffs was enormous. But reality was different. The numerical increase from buffs was small, their duration was short, and—most critically—they stole experience points.
The standard party composition is to never bring a Supporter. That says everything.
Just like in my previous life, the instant Kim Ji-woo learned my class, he stood up.
“Gotta hit the bathroom.”
Back then I had genuinely believed he was going to the restroom and waited thirty full minutes for him like an idiot.
“Take your time.”
This time I let him go without a fuss. He would come crawling back to me anyway.
The moment he left, the test supervisor raised the volume on his microphone.
…That concludes the safety protocol briefing. The first round of the official hunter exam will now begin on the central field. All applicants, please proceed to the testing area.
When I stood up, I saw lines of hunters moving below like a well-ordered stream. Watching them advance with tense, disciplined steps made the reality sink in all over again.
“I really came back.”
It wasn’t a dream or an illusion. I had regressed to the past.
My head was spinning with complicated thoughts, but what rose to the surface wasn’t the Moon’s invasion. It was the catastrophe that would strike in just one year.
I have ten years until the Moon descends. But in one year, the Thousand-Stabbed Magical Girl is going to go berserk.
A Named-class boss monster—the Thousand-Stabbed Magical Girl. She had never been hostile by nature, but a certain incident would drive her into a rampage.
Gangwon Province was completely wiped out. Millions died.
The aftermath shattered South Korea’s economy and triggered a nationwide food crisis. And that was only the beginning. Two more massive catastrophes would occur within the next decade—global disasters that would claim tens of millions to hundreds of millions of lives.
The reason we couldn’t stop the Moon was partly because these disasters had already crippled humanity’s strength.
My immediate goal is the Magical Girl. Stop her first, then worry about everything else.
The question was how. If I suddenly claimed she was dangerous and needed to be dealt with, would anyone believe me?
I’d be lucky if they didn’t throw me in a psych ward.
In the end, I would have to stop her myself. But I couldn’t become strong. Born a Supporter, the only role I could play was King Maker. That couldn’t be helped. Still, there was no reason to become a licensed hunter again and accept all the restrictions that came with it.
Every hunter who betrayed me in the past had been someone I personally recruited. This time, I’ll choose whoever I want.
So should I just abandon the exam and leave? No. There were already hundreds of hunters gathered here. No need to look elsewhere.
This place was a buffet. A feast of raw gems waiting for me to pick and choose. And the Kim Ji-woo sitting next to me? He was like tteokbokki. Something you try a couple bites of out of curiosity and then throw away.
The first round of the exam was a class aptitude evaluation. Awakened individuals received unique classes, broadly divided into four categories: Tankers for defense, Dealers for offense, Healers for recovery, and Supporters for assistance.
Countless subclasses branched off from these four, but for this test only one thing mattered—how well you understood your own class. And if your understanding was lacking, at least have the skills to make up for it.
Applicant number 1, Dealer. Please step up to the testing platform. Item usage is prohibited.
Following the speaker’s instructions, applicant number one climbed onto the platform and froze.
“Isn’t something wrong with this?”
In front of him stood a training dummy. But the material was different from last year.
“Why is it made of steel instead of wood?”
“The regulations were updated this year. You have ten minutes to attack the dummy. Begin.”
“Son of a—!”
Applicant number one gripped the provided dagger and swung it at the thinnest-looking part of the neck. It wasn’t a mindless brute swing. He had wrapped the blade in magic power—the exclusive privilege of the awakened. A faint blue glow clung to the dagger, and when it struck the dummy, a surprisingly loud clang rang out.
Kiiiiiing!
Despite the loud impact, the cut was shallow. The hunter continued to hack away, but only bright sparks flew everywhere.
Applicant 1: 3 points
The instant the score appeared on the electronic board right after the test, everyone clicked their tongues.
“A wound like that would kill most normal monsters, wouldn’t it?”
“So the rumor that this year’s exam is the hardest in history was true.”
“Isn’t it only hard for Dealers? They’ve always been strict with close-combat Dealers for the official license.”
The spectators’ speculation was immediately disproven by the next test. The Tanker applicant had to protect the dummy instead, while the attacker was a level-100 C-rank hunter.
Applicant 2: 3 points
The rare Healer class received relatively lenient scoring. They simply had to heal a pre-wounded monster and were guaranteed at least five points.
The real spectacle came with the Supporters.
“Please cast a buff on me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The moment the Supporter applicant number 24 reached out to cast a buff on the supervisor—
Whoosh!
The supervisor vanished from sight. Applicant 24 looked around in confusion.
“Please cast the buff.”
By the time he turned toward the voice coming from behind him, it was already too late.
“I can’t cast a buff if you keep moving like that!”
Exactly. Buffs could not be applied instantaneously to any target. The caster needed clear visual confirmation of the target for the buff to land.
“In real combat, if you stand still waiting to receive a buff, you’ll be completely exposed to monster attacks. Therefore, you must be able to apply buffs to moving targets as well.”
The supervisor kindly explained, but applicant 24 still couldn’t land a single buff.
Applicant 24: 0 points
“W-wait a second! What kind of rule is this? You have to at least let me cast the buff!”
“If you do not descend from the platform immediately, your eligibility to take the exam will be permanently revoked.”
The first zero of the day naturally went to a Supporter. The suffering of Supporters did not end there. Even those who barely managed to land a buff received only one point for “poor judgment.”
“Why did you give me a physical attack power buff? I’m a skill-based Dealer.”
“How would I know that when I’ve never seen you before?”
“Please step down.”
Applicant 47: 1 point
After Supporters kept receiving terrible scores, the remaining ones stood up and shouted.
“This is ridiculous. Just say you’re not accepting Supporters as official hunters!”
“If the first test is already this bad, the rest is obvious. We’re just wasting our time. Let’s go.”
No one tried to stop the Supporters who were leaving. They only received indifferent glances that seemed to ask, You’re only leaving now?
The ceiling cameras whirred, capturing the departing applicants.
“How many left?”
“Forty-two out of seventy-two. Over half, so I win the bet. Hahaha!”
The supervisors in the control room had already predicted this outcome. The state had no desire to accept Supporters as official hunters. That was the truth.
“Shall we see what kind of guts the ones who stayed have?”
One supervisor scanning the remaining Supporters frowned. While everyone else waited nervously for their turn, a single Supporter sat relaxed with his back against the chair and arms crossed. The badge on his chest read “77.”
“What’s with that guy? Why does he look so chill? Is he the chairman’s son or something?”
His colleague quickly typed on the keyboard. All applicants’ personal information had been collected beforehand, so entering the number pulled up everything.
“Hey, look at this.”
“What? Is he really the chairman’s secret son?”
“Name: Chae Mu-jin. Age: twenty-six. Completed mandatory military service two years ago and was discharged. Awakened last summer. He received basic hunter education but has no record of entering any dungeons.”
“A complete beginner?”
“Wait, there’s more. He has an older brother and sister. The brother is D-rank, the sister is a career soldier.”
“Military family?”
“Nope. Parents run a gamjatang restaurant. I know the place. You probably do too. Chae Deok-su’s Gamjatang in the Gwanghwamun alley.”
“That place is good. So he’s just an ordinary extra after all?”
“He may not be the chairman’s hidden son, but he is the youngest son of a gamjatang restaurant. Hahaha!”
“Quiet! Shh! It’s the chairman’s daughter’s turn.”
This exam also included Cheon I-hwa, the cherished daughter of the Hunter Association President. She wasn’t merely the president’s daughter. As the sole disciple of the Great First Sword, she was also famous as the youngest C-rank hunter.
Thud. Roll.
On the camera feed, the steel training dummy’s head was severed and fell to the ground. Even with a high-speed camera, the sword strike was so fast it was barely captured. A lightning-fast draw.
Applicant 76: 9 points
The moment she stepped onto the platform, she severed the steel dummy’s head in a single strike and received nine points. Until now five points had been the highest score, so the assumption that the test was out of five points was shattered.
“Wow, insane. Nine points? Isn’t that a record?”
“Beautiful, monstrous sword talent, and the daughter of the Association President on top of it all. Life is so unfair.”
“Whoever marries Cheon I-hwa must have saved the country—no, the entire planet in his previous life.”
“This whole exam is just a Cheon I-hwa appreciation event. Poor guy who has to go after her. The contrast is going to be brutal.”
While the two supervisors sang Cheon I-hwa’s praises, applicant 77’s test ended in the blink of an eye.
“The guy after Cheon I-hwa is that unlucky gamjatang Supporter.”
“It ended so fast. Definitely a zero.”
The two casually checked the electronic board, then their eyes widened to their limits.