I Became the Academy's Hardcore Veteran of the Novel
There was a plausible reason why the likes of Yoon Seokhyeon and Seo Yujin discriminated against me despite us all being S-Rank.
In my case, 'outwardly' I possessed only a single S-Rank skill — Holy Explosion.
But the likes of Yoon Seokhyeon, Seo Yujin, Choi Jiyoon, and Yoo Seolha were different. They had an S-Rank main skill that determined their class, and every auxiliary skill they carried was class-related as well.
Take Seo Yujin, for example. She had Homing Shot, an archer's S-Rank main skill — but that wasn't all. Every other skill in her kit was equally useful to an archer.
So the philosophy of meritocrats like Yoon Seokhyeon and Seo Yujin could be summed up simply enough: Kim Ian is a lucky nobody who barely managed to awaken a single Nametag S-Rank skill, while they themselves are old money — well-rounded elites whose entire class role, archer or mage or assassin, is S-Rank through and through.
'Well, taken at face value, it's not entirely wrong. Using that logic to sort people into castes and discriminate against them is a whole different matter, though.'
One could counter like this:
'Uh, no? Were you born with all those skills already awakened? Now that I've awakened an S-Rank skill, couldn't I just awaken more over time and become like you?'
But that's the hard part. Skill enlightenment — so-called 'awakening' — doesn't happen easily. F-Class skills awaken readily enough, but the odds of awakening useful A or B-Class skills, especially ones tied to your class, are slim.
For that probabilistic reason, when I took down Oh Hyunsoo with River Blow, the S-Rank class students led by Yoon Seokhyeon couldn't think —
'Ah! He has another S-Rank skill besides Holy Explosion, one strong enough to bring down an S-Rank!'
— but rather:
'Ah. Holy Explosion must be a close-range detonation skill, or maybe using it strengthens his body too.'
A single S-Rank skill alone was already jackpot territory. It was hard to imagine that a guy who'd been F-Class just days ago could use a U-Rank Vajra Body on top of an S-Rank skill.
And so, right up until we entered the hotel, the Urban Legend Research Club treated me like an F-Class errand boy —
No, not even that.
They genuinely thought of me as little more than a guinea pig to throw at anything dangerous and see what happened.
Whatever. Doesn't matter.
They're the ones doing the work either way, which means I'm getting paid 1.7 billion won with auto-hunting switched on.
"We are the Hunter Academy's Urban Legend Research Club. Even if we aren't official hunters yet, when it comes to anomalous phenomena..."
Yoon Seokhyeon gave the interview as our representative in front of the hotel. I stood behind him, shoulder to shoulder with the other club members, soaking up a hail of camera flashes.
"We will resolve the anomaly and rescue the survivors."
With Yoon Seokhyeon's closing words, we entered the hotel's first-floor lobby to the fervent cheers of the press and the gathered crowd.
We stepped into the lobby.
The moment we crossed the threshold, the scenery outside reset into something alien. It had clearly been early summer, yet suddenly heavy snow was falling beyond the glass — and there was no way out anymore. Inside the hotel, the air hung warm and thick, as if the heating had been left running.
"Let's go."
True to their familiarity with anomalies, they barely flinched and began their advance into the hotel proper.
Just as we'd arranged in the group chat, we held formation and moved forward step by step. Yoon Seokhyeon the spearman and I took the front line; the glasses-wearing mage and Seo Yujin the archer watched the flanks from the middle. And the chubby girl handling tank and healer duty covered the rear.
Not a bad composition.
The lobby was quiet. Quiet enough that our footsteps rang out perfectly clear.
'Hm?'
I stopped walking on instinct.
A wet, phlegm-choked growl. From the restroom at the far end of the corridor, a bizarre creature on all fours crawled into view, its skin a raw red. More precisely, it was human in shape, but the crimson muscle beneath its skin was exposed to the air. Small horns sprouted from its head, and upon spotting us, it craned its neck at an unnatural angle and bared needle-sharp fangs.
Grrrrr—
A demon.
Right behind me, Seo Yujin loosed an arrow.
Homing Shot
The arrow streaked between Yoon Seokhyeon and me and buried itself in the demon's brow.
Kieeeek!
BOOM!
The arrow detonated and blew the demon's head clean off. Headless, it lunged at us anyway.
The tip of Yoon Seokhyeon's spear glowed. Beside him, I snapped my fingers.
Golden light engulfed the onrushing demon, twisting its body in place —
and with a wet crunch, it collapsed.
Hsssssss—
Wreathed in smoke, the demon's body crumbled to ash and was gone.
Yoon Seokhyeon glanced at me, then turned toward Seo Yujin.
"Nice work, Yujin. Quick reaction, as expected of you."
"Oh, it was nothing."
She turned her head away, fighting down a smile. Her cheeks looked faintly flushed.
Yoon Seokhyeon gazed at her fondly. Ahh, so this is what they call a "thing." Hm? Very sweet to watch, isn't it?
Then Seo Yujin's eyes met mine dead-on. I could see her expression curdle instantly.
She spoke to me.
"Hey."
"What."
"If you spotted it first, you should've thrown out your holy magic immediately. Why are your reflexes so sluggish? Too scared to even move?"
"Bullshit."
"What did you just say to me?"
Seo Yujin glared at me like I'd lost my mind.
"I held back on purpose. We have zero intel on this place — shouldn't the priority be observing how things here behave first? What if it hadn't been about to attack? What if it was a survivor mutated by the anomaly?"
"Wh-what are you even saying? One look and anyone could tell it was a demon!"
"How can you be so sure? You just panicked and fired. And it didn't even die in one hit, did it? Even after taking your precious S-Rank Homing Shot?"
"I only loosed lightly to gauge its reaction, obviously. Ugh. What would a Nametag-rank know about anything?"
It was a jab at people who carried nothing but a single S-Rank skill like a business card and nothing behind it.
The glasses-wearing mage thumped my shoulder.
"Come on, you think Yujin wouldn't know that stuff? The Academy's finest Cutting Board Archer?"
"...Cutting Board Archer?"
What the hell was a cutting board archer?
Seo Yujin rounded on the mage.
"Hey. You actually saw it? Did you see it, huh? You ignorant bastard! I wrap it in bandages because it gets in the way of drawing the bow!"
Ah. So that's the cutting board.
The glasses guy snickered and dodged her kick. The chubby girl grabbed Seo Yujin and held her back. Yoon Seokhyeon cut in.
"Enough, all of you."
He withdrew the meaningful look he'd been giving me.
Yoon Seokhyeon tipped his chin toward the front desk.
"This is no time for joking around. The real ghost stories start now. Everyone, stay sharp."
At the front desk stood a single, perfectly ordinary female employee. Having just dispatched a demon, we couldn't help but tense up further as we watched her stare silently in our direction.
We crossed the hotel lobby toward the front desk. On the display cabinet behind it, severed human heads were packed in neat rows. Hotel guests, staff, or hunters who'd entered before us, probably.
'Ugh. Fuck. This is grim.'
According to the plan we'd hammered out in the group chat, Yoon Seokhyeon and Seo Yujin would handle the ghost story in the first wave while the rest of us kept watch on all sides. My role was to stand guard too — but I couldn't tear my eyes off the stack of pamphlets piled at one end of the desk.
Damn it all.
I quietly watched what Yoon Seokhyeon and Seo Yujin would do.
"Welcome, honored guest. How may I help you?"
The female employee greeted us with a gracious smile and a deep bow.
Yoon Seokhyeon tilted his head at her greeting.
"What are you doing?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
The hotel employee wore a puzzled expression.
"Are you kidding me? Who told you to greet a customer like that?"
"I'm sorry?"
The ghost story's eyes rolled in apparent confusion. Yoon Seokhyeon let out a long sigh and crooked his finger.
"Haaa— get me your manager."
"Guest, if you could just tell me what the problem was, I'll..."
Yoon Seokhyeon lost his patience, visibly irritated.
"After 'Welcome, honored guest,' you're supposed to say: Welcome to the Novelpian Ho-tel. We. Are. De-lighted. To. Have. You. Isn't that right?"
By now the hotel employee's eyes had rolled back to pure white, blood trickling from them. Yoon Seokhyeon didn't so much as blink; he roared instead.
"Goddammit! How do you people train your staff?! A customer is speaking to you and you're staring at me with those dead white eyes!"
"I-I'm so sorry, guest. My eyes are just like this natu... Grrr. Grrrrrr. AAAAAAH—"
The employee's face snapped ninety degrees with a crack, then twisted a full one-eighty into something grotesque. Her fingernails were growing longer in real time. With those nails, caked in dried blood, she moved to attack Yoon Seokhyeon.
"Keeeek! Keeeaaak!"
"Look at those nails. Unbelievable, you cursed bitch. No wonder the Samseong-dong branch is always in the red!"
Yoon Seokhyeon snatched up the bundle of pamphlets in front of me and hurled them at her.
"Kieeeek... I'm so-so-so-so-so-so sorry I'msosorry I'm so sorry..."
Pelted by the pamphlet barrage, the female employee began clawing at her own body with her nails, apologizing all the while.
Hsssss—
Smoke rose from her slashed body, and moments later she crumbled into ash and vanished.
Yoon Seokhyeon stood there, huffing and puffing as he stared at the spot where she'd disappeared. He genuinely seemed pissed off. Seo Yujin came over to comfort him.
"You okay?"
"Goddamn punks. You spend a fortune training them and it's useless. You have to think of it as a learning process, you know~? One little complaint and they quit on the spot? If something's wrong, you fix it. Right, kids? Am I wrong?"
"Well. Nothing you can do."
Seo Yujin shrugged in resignation. The glasses mage and the chubby girl chimed in from behind.
"They wear salary theft like a badge of honor. If you're getting paid, you should work twice as hard as what you take."
"Cut Seokhyeon some slack. That's ordinary folk for you."
It wasn't just Yoon Seokhyeon — every one of them was a chaebol heir from a family anyone would recognize, in construction, distribution, food. Of course, that's not to say all rich kids are like this. If anything, most are more careful precisely because of their image.
'These guys are the strange ones.'
They'd flocked together, birds of a feather. Because to these people, anyone who wasn't S-Tier in their field was counted on the ledger like livestock — property to be worked and owned.
They'd at least given me nominally human treatment, since on paper I technically was S-Rank.
Yoon Seokhyeon turned to me and apologized.
"Ah. Ian, sorry about that. I knew it was a ghost story, but the annoyance just surged up out of nowhere."
"No, no. Who knows, Seokhyeon — you might've just found the way to beat this hotel's ghost story."
Everyone looked at each other with 'huh, really?' faces. No harm in handing them the answer early at this point.
The one and only counter to this hotel's ghost story was fighting back with attitude and sheer customer-entitlement abuse.
As if the guests, staff, or hunters trapped here could ever have known that. A normal person couldn't even conceive of treating a hotel employee with abuse in the first place — and if the other side transformed into that hideous thing right before their eyes, the thought of acting entitled at it would be beyond their wildest dreams.
But these guys were different. They had basic resistance to ghost stories built in, plus the special kind of audacity that let them bully even anomalies, backed by experience.
A warm smile spread across my face.
'Ooh. I feel invincible.'
For this one moment, at least, nothing could feel safer.