The Box of Heaven
Chime.
The message he had been agonizing over for days had finally arrived.
“Whew…”
Squinting until his eyes were smaller than sesame seeds, Jeon Jaewoo checked his phone with trembling caution.
Please… just this once, please…!
[Interview Results Notice]
Dear Jeon Jaewoo,
First and foremost, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your interest in our company and for presenting your outstanding credentials. Regrettably, we are contacting you to deliver the unfortunate news that we are unable to move forward with your application. Our company has decided…
In short: his resume had failed the screening, so take a hike.
“Fuck.”
Tossing his phone facedown, he let out a venomous curse without bothering to read the rest.
As if the job market wasn’t enough of a living hell already. Another application, another failure. This was his seventieth rejection—a milestone, if you could call a monument of utter defeat a milestone.
Jeon Jaewoo was already twenty-six years old. He had long aged out of the fresh-graduate demographic, yet his resume lacked so much as a single line of real-world experience. A garden-variety unemployed bum, living off his parents' dime and eating his weight in rice.
Frustrated beyond belief, he wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of his lungs. But the walls here were paper-thin. A single shout would instantly summon a barrage of colorful curses from next door. In Jeon Jaewoo's studio apartment, where both the soundproofing and the neighbors were thoroughly rotten, keeping his mouth shut was the only way to preserve his well-being.
It was miserable not even being allowed to yell in his own rented room, but what could he do? The powerless simply had to endure.
Lying limp on his bed like a corpse, Jaewoo finally forced his sluggish body upright.
“…I can’t go on like this.”
There was no one left to ask for money. If corporate employment was out of reach, he would have to take day labor at a logistics warehouse—anything to scrounge up some cash. People said warehouse shifts were brutal nowadays, but so what?
What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like it’ll kill me.
Chime.
Just as he braced himself with newfound resolve, another alert sounded. Startled, he whipped his phone back over. Could it be? A delayed acceptance notice from somewhere else…?
Yet his screen remained completely dark and silent. Come to think of it, that sound hadn’t come from his phone at all.
“??”
Jaewoo looked up—and found something hovering right before his eyes.
Congratulations. You have awakened a new trait.
“…I awakened a trait? Me?”
Unless he had finally lost his mind, this was the translucent prompt only hunters could see—the notification welcoming a newly awakened individual. His heart began hammering against his ribs like a mad drum.
Wait, did I actually get a trait? Does that mean… I just awakened as a hunter?
Monsters, gates, hunters—the classic tropes of popular fantasy web novels. It had been two whole centuries since those fictional tropes became the world’s harsh reality. By now, hunters exterminating monsters was an ordinary, everyday facet of modern life. Ordinary citizens still couldn't lay a finger on a beast, of course, but the spectacle had long lost its novelty.
And recently, 'ruins' had begun cropping up.
Whoever managed to conquer a ruin first was granted its sole ownership—a literal goldmine that could set a person up for luxury for the rest of their days. And only hunters, capable of channeling mana, could set foot inside those treasure troves.
Jaewoo’s heart fluttered as if it might tear straight through his chest. The sting of his seventieth job rejection vanished in an instant. A system window like this held infinitely more value than an acceptance letter from some dead-end small company.
Ever since the Great Cataclysm, the hunter profession had never once slipped from the very apex of society. Beyond being an indispensable pillar keeping nations from collapse, hunters were the envy of the masses—modern-day nobility in all but name.
“C-Calm down.”
Taking a deep breath, Jaewoo tried to steady his racing pulse. If he wasn't careful, his heart might literally burst.
Awakening was undeniably the best news he had received in years. Still, he couldn’t afford to get ahead of himself. The higher one's hopes, the harder the fall. If he got his hopes up only to discover his trait was bottom of the barrel, how would he stomach the disappointment? Statistically speaking, rolling the lowest grade was by far the most probable outcome anyway. Even awakening at all only happened to barely ten percent of the global population.
“Right. Just awakening in the first place is a massive win. Whatever trait comes out doesn’t even matter.”
If it was a decent trait, great. If not, whatever.
…Naturally, it mattered a great deal. Deep down, he didn't want some pitiful E-grade. He wanted at least a B-grade, or maybe—if lady luck took pity on him—an A-grade.
I heard A-grade hunters pull in a base salary of a hundred billion won…
Trembling like an aspen leaf, Jaewoo opened his status window. When an awakened hunter checked their status, the single most critical piece of information was their trait. Because whatever letter grade sat beside that trait defined their entire worth as a hunter.
“……???”
The moment he saw it, the breath hitched in his throat. Jaewoo swallowed dryly. He rubbed his eyes once, twice, three times, convinced he was hallucinating. But no matter how hard he blinked, the text remained unchanged.
◈ Trait:(Sealed) Box of Heaven – Transcendent
◈ Currently Conquered Ruins:None
◈ Available Ruin Conquest Count:12
Good lord.
It wasn't a B-grade, an A-grade, or even an S-grade. It was an honest-to-god Transcendent trait.
Hunter traits normally progressed in order from E-grade through D, C, B, A, and S. Yet beyond that hierarchy lay a domain impossible to gauge even by the system's own status windows: the Transcendent rank. It was a caliber possessed exclusively by the handful of apex hunters sitting at the very pinnacle of the globe.
Holy crap.
At this point, his heart was past pounding—it felt ready to detonate.
Transcendent grade? Is it really okay for an unemployed loser like me to awaken something like this?
Wait, no. What if I drop dead from excitement after hitting the jackpot of a lifetime? Even if I'm about to die of shock, I need to grip my sanity with both hands and survive!
“Wait… what does this even do?”
He had been so floored by the rank that he hadn’t even checked what the trait actually did. Cocking his head, Jaewoo scrutinized the title once more. It was a bizarre name, to say the least. While no one expected a Transcendent trait to sound ordinary, naming it Heaven's Box felt thoroughly obscure.
Does it literally mean a box located in heaven?
If it was called a box, maybe it was an ability to pull random items out of it? Right on cue, a brief description materialized beneath the status window.
[(Sealed) Box of Heaven – Transcendent]
A strategic weapon utilized in the Great War of Prehistoric Earth. Inserting any material will amplify its inherent properties from several to thousands of times and fuse them together to fabricate a brand-new construct.
“……??”
What kind of description is this?
Babbling about some ancient prehistoric war on Earth, and using it by throwing in whatever junk you have lying around to forge new weapons?
“Hmm. Guess I’ll have to test it out to know for sure.”
As a rule, awakened hunters were only supposed to use their traits inside ruins or dungeons unless an emergency struck. But since this appeared to be a crafting trait rather than a destructive combat ability, it hardly posed a danger. Above all, curiosity was eating him alive.
Hummm…
The moment he focused, instinct told him how to activate the power.
So this is mana…
Jaewoo felt the current of mana coursing through his flesh for the very first time. Awakening had definitely changed him; even though he hadn't gained a physical or martial trait, his overall body felt noticeably lighter and stronger.
Without further delay, Jaewoo activated the (Sealed) Box of Heaven.
Thud!
“……??”
A heavy object manifested out of thin air and landed squarely at his feet. Jaewoo stared down at the newly spawned box. But no matter how hard he examined it, all he saw was a plain black cube. Strip away the pitch-black hue, and it looked almost identical to an oversized cardboard delivery box.
“…Is that really it?”
A hollow laugh slipped past his lips. This was supposed to be a Transcendent trait? If this was all it amounted to, standard D-grade or C-grade elemental magic like fire, wind, or earth looked a hundred times more useful. What was he supposed to do, shove the box over a monster's head and send it to heaven?
Did shock make me misread the rank earlier?
He checked the status window again. No, it was definitely Transcendent.
Regaining his composure, Jaewoo reread the description line by line. Inserting any material would amplify its performance several to thousands of times to produce a weapon. Which meant the basic premise of using this trait was feeding materials into the container.
“Several to thousands of times, huh…”
If the description was true, it certainly deserved the Transcendent rank. It sounded suspiciously like a gacha lottery, but extreme amplification was still extreme amplification.
Wait, does that mean tossing in the same ingredients could yield completely random results?
There were no recipes or instructions specifying what ingredient yielded what result. Did he have to figure all that out through trial and error?
The Box of Heaven—though with its ominous, light-swallowing black shade, it looked far more like a Box of Hell—sat silently before him. Jaewoo pondered for a moment.
Can I just toss in regular dirt?
Without overthinking it, he grabbed an old potted plant from the corner of his apartment. The plant had withered and died ages ago, leaving behind nothing but a plastic pot of neglected soil.
Rustle, pour…
Tilting the pot, he emptied every last grain of dry soil into the open container. The moment the final clump settled at the bottom—
Clack.
“Whoa! Jesus, don’t scare me like that.”
The Box of Heaven slammed shut entirely on its own.
Time remaining until completion: 23 : 59 : 57
Judging by the countdown timer, the synthesis process had genuinely begun. Seeing the trait operate in real time sent a shiver of awe down his spine.
“Damn. It actually works?”
Looking at the timer, however, it seemed he would have to wait an entire day for the process to finish.
I’m dying to see what comes out, but that takes way longer than I thought.
Then again, he had only dumped in ordinary potting soil from his apartment; nothing extraordinary could possibly come of it. The description claimed materials could be amplified by thousands of times if he got lucky, but the odds of hitting the jackpot on his first try were practically zero. At best, he’d probably end up with a little clay doll.
“Whatever. What matters right now is that I’m finally an awakened hunter.”
Leaving the sealed box behind, Jaewoo happily began daydreaming about all the ways he could leverage his newfound power.
And exactly twenty-four hours later…
An entity that should never have set foot upon the mortal realm was born into the world.