What Kind of Place Is Jeju Island, Anyway...

CRACK—!!

The creature's scale-covered legs twitched and convulsed.

"Ugh, these bastards never stop coming no matter how many I kill…!"

The Legged Tuna's head was impaled on a trident, smashed clean through. Dark crimson blood poured out beneath it.

I'd defended the tangerine orchard again today.

The tiny tangerine farm on Jeju Island — the only thing my parents had left me.

That's right.

I was a local who'd spent twenty-one years living on Jeju Island, South Korea — a place people called a demonic realm.

Kim Hyunjoo.

Nothing fancy about it. Just an ordinary young man who farmed tangerines and beat up monsters for a living.

…At least by Jeju standards?

Anyway, I tossed the trident aside without much care.

All that was left was cleaning up the tuna carcasses. On Jeju Island, that was just another day.

To survive here, you had to be able to take down low-grade monsters on your own.

Fortunately, Legged Tuna were all bulk and no speed — sluggish as hell. Even an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠unawakened guy like me could dodge their attacks and put them down if I swung a farm tool hard enough.

And they made for excellent concept-post material on the Hunter Gallery.

"Alright, let's get a shot of today's haul."

I pulled my smartphone from my pants pocket and angled the camera so the carcasses filled the frame nicely.

Click!

Nice. It landed as a concept post, and the comments were rolling in pretty well.

Like the comments said, Jeju's tower was ridiculously special. It was the only tower in the entire world that had risen from the deep-sea floor — the so-called Submerged Tower.

Because of that, the waters around the tower were completely unmanageable. Some awakened hunters had entered the first floor through their status windows, but not a single one had ever come back.

The academic consensus was that the full water pressure of the deep sea at 3,229 meters applied inside the tower as well. Wait — the prevailing theory. Academic lunch. Whatever.

Anyway, a tower that had never been cleared and was left to rot meant Breaks were a daily occurrence, and the monsters that spilled out of it settled into the waters off Jeju.

Every so often, they'd crawl up onto land looking for food like they owned the place. The Legged Tuna I'd just killed was a classic example.

By the time I'd grumbled my way through cleaning up all the carcasses, the sun was already dipping low.

"Phew. I'll ask the old man next door to grind these up later and use them as fertilizer."

I stuffed the tuna carcasses into a few burlap sacks. When I finished and looked up, the sun was already sinking in a soft orange haze.

I'd worked pretty hard today, so…

"Maybe chicken feet and a beer."

"Aahh."

I'd scrubbed every last bit of fish stink and tangerine smell off my body.

Spicy chicken feet, an ice-cold canned beer, and a flood of attention from a concept post on top of it all.

This is the life.

I scrolled through the comments with a contented look on my face.

Unawakened.

That's right. I'd once been just another ordinary kid who dreamed of the romantic life of a hunter.

Turn on the news and you'd hear about someone being recognized as a national-power-level hunter, or about the first person in human history to clear the 71st floor of a tower.

Heroes who saved entire cities from Tower Breaks. Star hunters who rode unique abilities all the way to YouTube fame and TV appearances.

It wasn't like I'd never wanted that life for myself.

But my current life wasn't exactly lacking, either. Thanks to Jeju's unique magic particles, pests barely ever showed up. And the magic that soaked into the tangerines multiplied their market value several times over — among awakened hunters, they were basically as reliable as wild ginseng.

It was a small orchard, so average monthly revenue ran about twenty-five million won. After expenses, I still cleared close to twelve million.

Factor in the constant risk of monsters showing up, and it was a pretty reasonable income.

That said, I had no intention of living on Jeju forever. The memory of the day my parents shoved me into the bathroom and locked the door from the outside — the day they never came back — still lingered in this house.

So once I hit around thirty and hit my savings goal, I planned to leave Jeju behind.

I could sell the tangerine orchard and leave tomorrow if I wanted, but I didn't want to dispose of the only trace my parents had left behind.

Instead, I needed to save enough to hire a caretaker, too.

If Seoul was too expensive, I'd just find a cheap house somewhere in Gangwon-do.

Leave the tangerine orchard as it was, and live on the mainland doing whatever I wanted.

That was the ordinary… future I pictured for myself.

"Ugh, now I've gone and ruined my own mood!"

I shoved the empty can aside.

"Screw the daily quests today — I'm just going to sleep~"

And then, completely naturally, I reached for a second canned beer.

Pssht—!

"Ugh…… my head's gonna split open."

I clutched my head and rolled around on the floor.

But something kept catching between my fingers — a strange texture that shouldn't have been there.

…Was my hair always this long?

I pushed myself up, and something slid down over my shoulders in a smooth cascade.

Ordinary black hair. Except now —

It was long enough to reach my waist.

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"…Huh?"

I was staring blankly down at the hair when a weird sensation hit me from behind my hips.

Something was crushed between my body and the floor, tingling like the blood had been cut off.

I awkwardly twisted myself sideways. Something unfamiliar wriggled behind my back.

"…W-what the hell is this?"

I carefully reached a hand behind me. The moment my fingertips brushed whatever was attached above my hips, it flinched hard.

Cold and firm, yet startlingly smooth. The tip split wide, top and bottom.

…No matter how I looked at it —

It was a shark's tail.

That was when I realized everything else was wrong, too, and hurriedly looked down at my own body.

"…Oh."

Beneath the now-baggy clothes, a pair of slightly rounded breasts pushed up. My waist had gone noticeably thinner, and my hands and legs had shrunk, too.

"No. Fucking. Way."

The disaster I'd drunkenly imagined last night had exploded in a completely different direction.

Apparently, I —

Had suddenly become a woman.

Don't tell me… I awakened?

I'd never once seen a news story about someone turning into a woman just from awakening, but still…

I hurriedly scooped up the smartphone that had fallen on the floor. At times like this, the only people you could trust were your friends.

"Status window!"

"…."

Lord of the Deep Sea and Baby Shark.

So those two phrases could actually coexist inside a single class name.

Huh. More importantly — what the hell was EX?

I was pretty sure ranks went from F to S.

Was it an E-rank with an X drawn through it, meaning "you're not E-rank"?

"That's actually pretty creative."

I replied to the hunter-bro who'd told me to check my status window.

"Oho."

That actually made a fair amount of sense.

"Baby shark~ doo doo doo doo doo doo—"

I looked around with expectant eyes.

Obviously, nothing happened.

"…."

Being right just made it more annoying.

"Skill window."

Fwoosh—!

"Ooooh."

So it really was an awakening. Hell yeah — did this mean I could be a hunter now?

I tapped the passive first, but —

It was basically a roundabout way of saying I was still too much of a scrub to look at it. I naturally shifted my gaze to the second skill.

"That's badass as hell — Poseidon's Spear?"

The class name had already been sketchy, but the skill names were even more over the top.

Just hearing the name, you could picture it splitting the ocean and wiping out monsters with overwhelming majesty.

But how do I use it?

I tried shouting the name first.

"Poseidon's Spear!"

Nothing happened. Feeling awkward, I reached toward the skill window floating in midair.

And the moment I pressed Poseidon's Spear —

Fwoosh—!

Thwack!

"Ow—!"

Something shot out from above my head and smacked me hard on the crown of my skull.

What hit the floor was not a mighty golden spear.

"What the hell is this…?"

I picked it up with an utterly dumbfounded expression.

It was the kind of perfectly straight stick that, as a kid, you'd find on the street and immediately start swinging around like a hero's sword, wanting to carry it all the way home.

The only thing that set it apart from an ordinary stick was a single leaf and a thin thread dangling from the tip.

"…It's a fishing rod?"

So what was I supposed to do with this?

I turned the fishing rod over in my hands and started shouting every phrase that came to mind.

"Status window for this."

"Your status window."

"Fishing rod status window."

"Poseidon's Spear status window."

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Fwoosh—!

The last one got a reaction.

Apparently even a wooden stick wasn't willing to give up a name as grand as Poseidon.

It was a fishing rod with a thoroughly dizzying item description.

Why Poseidon and wood were coexisting in the first place was beyond me.

Can fish up anything from any body of water, huh…

I scratched my head and stared down at the fishing rod.

"Hhk…."

In that moment, a heavy signal rose from my lower abdomen.

…Emergency.

All the beer I'd poured down last night had finally found an exit and was staging a full-scale revolt…!!

"Bathroom!"

—Scramble scramble

I bolted for the bathroom, fishing rod clenched tight in my hand.