So, what exactly was a Scavenger?
Simply put, it was a term for Awakened who picked up items from ruined areas like this and sold them.
Normally, when someone awakened, people tended to assume they would become a hunter.
‘After all, hunting monsters means putting your life on the line. It’s dangerous, and if you have no talent for combat, it’s extremely difficult, right?’
Not everyone fought on the front lines.
There were people who, instead of working for the government, made a profession out of rummaging through piles of ruins like these.
The world called such Awakened Scavengers.
‘Ooh, lucky! The door’s already open!’
Grinning from ear to ear, Hae-jin ran over to the convenience store and cheerfully flung open the door.
Dust that had accumulated during the long period of abandonment came cascading down.
‘It’s cleaner inside than I expected.’
Apparently, no other Scavengers had been here yet.
He headed straight for the checkout counter and began searching thoroughly, putting his experience from working part-time at a convenience store to good use.
Then, a short while later.
“Th-this is?!”
Deep inside one of the lower drawers, he found a bundle of cash.
Astonishingly, he had actually hit the jackpot.
Ten-thousand-won and fifty-thousand-won bills had been bundled together with rubber bands.
When he counted them, the total was larger than he had expected.
‘A whole 1.51 million won... Kah! This is so sweet my teeth are going to rot!’
Not only had he recovered the one million won he had spent as his investment(?), he had even made a net profit of 510,000 won.
He had heard that people in rural towns used a lot of cash, and it had already paid off handsomely.
Everyone had evacuated long ago, and even the government had abandoned this town.
Since there was no hope of anyone ever returning, he did not feel particularly guilty.
‘All right, then. Next up.’
He searched the surrounding area more thoroughly, but all he found were cigarettes and some coins.
After carefully placing the bundle of cash inside the backpack he had brought with him, he left the convenience store and looked around for his next target.
‘Ooh? I definitely have to check that out!’
As Hae-jin glanced around, his eyes suddenly widened when he spotted something.
[Yeonggwang Jewelry Store]
He had found a jewelry store filled with luxury goods.
He could smell money.
No.
He could smell gold.
Clutching his pounding heart, he immediately ran over.
However.
“Tsk... someone already looted this place.”
From a distance, it had looked intact, so his expectations had been high.
But up close, the glass front doors were already completely shattered, and every display case inside had been smashed apart.
Other Scavengers had clearly gotten here first.
‘Well, I guess this area isn’t that dangerous.’
Cheorwon had not yet completely transformed into a Demonic Zone.
It had merely been abandoned because large numbers of monsters appeared here and support from the defensive line was difficult to provide.
That made it an ideal place for Scavengers to operate.
Someone else had already had the same idea as Hae-jin.
Of course, that did not mean he could simply walk away.
‘It’s still a jewelry store. There has to be something left, right?’
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
He stepped over the broken glass and entered.
Wearing thick gloves, he began searching the jewelry store.
Probably because the glass doors had been completely destroyed, the interior was in much worse condition than the convenience store.
Even so, surely there had to be something left somewhere.
He ignored all the cabinets that had obviously already been looted and began searching through drawers hidden away in the corners.
He found drawers containing hundreds of boxes for rings, necklaces, and watches.
Of course, every single box was empty.
Still, he stubbornly kept opening them until—
“Niiice! Jackpot!!”
Had heaven truly rewarded Hae-jin for his persistence?
He found a gold bracelet still sitting inside one of the boxes.
It was small, but surprisingly heavy, and most importantly, it gleamed beautifully.
‘This... is real gold, right? I wonder how much it’s worth. Tsk, I don’t know anything about gold prices.’
Still, he knew one thing for certain.
Gold was expensive.
After putting the bracelet into his backpack, he continued searching in case anything else had been left behind.
GRRRR---
“Hup!”
In this silent, eerie place, he suddenly heard the sound of something else.
The moment he heard it, he instinctively hid himself.
He crouched down behind a display case, then carefully peeked his head out and looked around.
Sure enough, a huge dog had entered the jewelry store.
Calling it a dog made it sound somewhat cute and harmless, but that could not have been further from the truth.
For one thing, it was enormous, closer in size to a wolf than a dog.
Worse, nearly half of its body had rotted away. It looked almost like a zombie, yet its razor-sharp teeth remained perfectly intact.
Garbage Dog.
He was fairly certain that was the monster’s name.
‘A low-level monster... Well, this is a monster-infested area.’
Granted, the area had been abandoned for a long time and was relatively safe because it was close to the defensive line.
But Hae-jin had undeniably gotten too excited and wandered around with his guard down.
‘This is bad. I don’t have anything with me.’
Naturally, he had no combat abilities or combat skills.
More importantly, he did not even have a weapon.
No matter how low-level it was, a monster was still a monster.
It was more than capable of tearing a hunter apart.
Hae-jin bitterly cursed his own stupidity.
He should have brought at least a basic weapon or, failing that, prepared some means of escape.
‘No, wait.’
As his entire body trembled, a memory suddenly flashed through his mind like lightning.
[Safe Property]
-Protects properties owned by the user.
-Prevents monsters from invading and prevents unauthorized individuals from entering.
-The user also becomes invincible while inside a property they own.
He did not have any combat skills, but he did have a defensive one.
Safe Property.
As long as he was inside a property he owned, he became ‘invincible’!
The moment he remembered those words, only one thought filled his mind.
‘If I can somehow make it back to the lodge... I’ll live!’
There was a way to survive.
Hae-jin immediately held his breath and began watching the Garbage Dog’s movements.
GRRRRR!
Fortunately, it did not seem to have noticed him yet.
Keeping his body as low as possible, he slowly crept toward the exit.
He desperately hoped he could escape without being noticed.
GROWL—BARK!!
Perhaps even a half-rotten undead dog was still a dog.
It sniffed the air, then somehow located Hae-jin immediately.
There was no point hiding anymore.
“Aaaaargh!”
He burst out of the jewelry store and sprinted toward the lodge like a madman.
It was not that far away.
When he glanced behind him, the Garbage Dog was charging after him at full speed.
It was clearly faster than a human.
“I’m not dying like this... I’m not!!”
Clenching his teeth, he ran without looking back.
“Whew... that was close.”
The Garbage Dog leaped from directly behind him and snapped at his back.
The hood of his sweatshirt was ripped clean off, but he had escaped by the narrowest possible margin.
Hae-jin stood there panting for a moment as he caught his breath.
Once he regained his composure and looked ahead, he found himself staring at a rather comical scene.
-GRRR, BARK! BARK BARK BARK!!
“So this is what ‘invincible’ means.”
The Garbage Dog glared at Hae-jin, frothing at the mouth as it repeatedly tried to force its head forward.
But right at the boundary of the lodge’s property—
It came to a complete stop.
It could not cross the line, as though an invisible wall stood in its way.
Curious, Hae-jin waved his hand through the air.
He could not feel anything, but some kind of barrier that prevented monsters from entering was apparently active.
“Wahahaha! You bastard! I’m a God Landlord who stands above even the Creator!!”
He gave the Garbage Dog a victorious sneer.
As though it could understand human speech, the monster thrashed around even more violently, but Hae-jin was no longer afraid in the slightest.
And what exactly are you going to do about it?
This is my house.
‘Wait. More importantly...’
Now that the tension had faded, his brain started working again.
An idea suddenly occurred to him.
‘Even if monsters can’t enter, I can cross the boundary freely. Doesn’t that mean I can just attack from here?’
Hae-jin’s property worked only one way.
Only Hae-jin could freely cross in and out.
Looking around, he noticed a pipe lying nearby.
It was covered in rust, but it was still a sturdy iron pipe.
With a grunt of effort, he lifted it.
-BARK! BARK BARK BARK!!
He stared at the Garbage Dog, which was still going berserk without showing any signs of exhaustion.
Then he tightened his grip and thrust the pipe forward with all his strength.
STAB!
-YELP!
The iron pipe struck the Garbage Dog squarely in the mouth.
After taking a single solid blow, the Garbage Dog collapsed on the spot.
‘D-did it really die? I killed it?!’
While Hae-jin stood there dumbfounded that something he had only imagined had actually worked in reality, a fanfare rang in his ears.
[Garbage Dog defeated!]
[Level Up!]
“Holy shit...”
The Garbage Dog might have been a low-level monster, but it was not exactly weak.
It was dangerous enough that hunters beyond the beginner level normally formed parties to hunt one.
Perhaps because Hae-jin had managed to kill it at only Level 1, he had immediately leveled up.
But Hae-jin could not have cared less about that right now.
‘Wait, this invincibility mode... isn’t it way more overpowered than I imagined?!’
He had thought he possessed no combat skills.
Strictly speaking, he still did not.
‘Then I can just lure monsters over here and kill them while I’m invincible inside my property.’
He had discovered a hunting method that no one else could imitate.
Its effectiveness was so absurd that even Hae-jin himself could hardly believe it.
Holding the iron pipe, he stared blankly ahead and chuckled.
“Ughhh... Damn it. If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve exercised more.”
For now, he dragged the Garbage Dog’s corpse into the yard.
It was larger than an ordinary large dog, so it was quite heavy.
‘It can’t enter while it’s alive, but once it’s dead, I can bring it inside? Okay. That’s one more thing I’ve learned.’
Killing monsters granted experience, and accumulating enough experience raised one’s Level.
But no hunter hunted monsters purely for experience.
The real value lay in the corpse itself.
Monster corpses were worth money.
Equipment crafting, magical research, alchemy, and countless other fields used monster materials.
Regardless of species or strength, every monster had some kind of use.
However.
‘The real problem is where I’m supposed to sell this.’
Using ‘Go Home,’ taking it back to his studio apartment would not be difficult.
But to actually dispose of a monster corpse, he would have to bring it to a specialized Monster Exchange.
Carrying a carcass that weighed more than twenty kilograms all the way there was ridiculous.
It might have been different if he owned a car, but there was no chance someone as poor as Hae-jin had one.
‘Hmm... No. I need to think like a building owner.’
He had realized something through this experience.
He needed to stop thinking like an ordinary working stiff and start thinking like a building owner.
If he wanted to make proper use of his abilities, that was the most important thing.
‘Why should I go through all the trouble of carrying this to the Monster Exchange? Now that I think about it, there’s no reason. I can just lease a building near one.’
Oh.
That actually made perfect sense.
He had a teleportation skill, so could he not simply pay for a place there and travel back and forth whenever he wanted?
‘Huh... Seriously... Hehehe.’
He had a mountain of things to do now.
He was going to be busy, but he had never felt better.
“Time to go make some money.”